It's so brazen at this point and dang just apparently could not care less about it.
(If you haven't seen any of those many explanations, I could understand why you might jump to such a conclusion, but it's based on a mistaken premise—probably due to the "measure zero" effect that I've described a few times [1].)
Here are a few links in case anyone hasn't seen those posts and needs some trailheads into the forest:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43212835 (Feb 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 (Feb 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 (Feb 2025)
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[1] The "measure zero effect" is the strange phenomenon that no matter how many times we repeat something, the set of users who hear (or at any rate remember) it seems to have measure zero. I also call this the statelessness of the internet, but I like the 'measure zero' analogy better because it includes the fact that many users do hear these things—they're just negligible in number, compared to the ones who don't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923707 (Feb 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25787443 (Jan 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24380376 (Sept 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22741427 (March 2020)
"A dedicated hacker news of politics site is long overdue. Civil discussions, amazing moderation, and the intelligent insight of experts to hash out complex issues. I’d be on it and participating nearly all day long."
Any thoughts on this?
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43375462
Many years ago, I created a section of a site making the history of each commenter a major part of the discussion. This meant the trick of attempting a cleverly-structured and seemingly reasonable statement could more easily be revealed as a bad faith effort to promote hidden motives. It didn't tamp down moderation needs as much as it made the discussion far more useful for getting at how facts were related to how the discussion was being framed.
We required users to declare either neutrality or allegiance to one side of position on major issues and sub-issues. This forced users (in a limited way) to choose between spending time on honest, good-faith arguments for what they declared allegiance to, or be a "spy for the other side" and pursue dishonest, bad-faith arguments.
If a discussion site were structured to potentiate advanced moderation, you would be one of the world's premier experts in how to measure success, and in predicting the likelihood of success of different approaches. Somewhere, we need to be able to take the next step past sites like TheMotte.org
I think it would be a very different site than HN, and much harder to moderate. Moderating HN pushes me to my limit, so I can't imagine what it would take to run such a site. That doesn't mean it can't be done, of course, and I'd be interested if someone could pull it off! But it would probably take a special person to do it—for most of us, the pressure would be too high.
dang thank you for all the hard work you do to moderate this site. But I have to ask…do you ever take time off or go on vacations? You almost seem like an inhuman machine that works a lot (I mean this in a positive way btw lol)
Seriously man you do a great job taking care of this place. Please don’t forget to take care of yourself too.
It just seems that one of the most valuable uses of the internet could be in the area of politics, and with the high value, the high difficulty is worth tackling.
The Neutral Politics subreddit is one example of such a place. I do not go to Reddit anymore because I feel the website overall is too addictive so I can't speak to the current quality of that specific subreddit but it was quite good several years ago and might offer you a little bit of what you want.
I agree that the current situation is not normal and that there's a danger in normalising it - plus I have some private thoughts about how the tech scene is partially complicit in what's currently happening. I'm also not sure if anyone can afford to be neutral forever (something that HN usually tries to do), simply because the stakes are so high that most participants from both sides won't accept neutrality anymore.
But even outrageous news wear off - it's human nature. I'm sure it happened during WWII, too. And there's a certain point at which, even if you do care, you don't want to have to engage with it all the time. So limiting the amount of discussion about political matters becomes a matter of mental health.
But with respect I would suggest that people here can do the same, choose not to click on things they don't want to discuss or ease of visiting the site a little during this time.
Or if that's not possible then it comes back to the question I was asking: Where can we discuss these things? Is there appetite for a new HN fork where we don't have to be neutral or considerate in the face of facism?
Because right now I don't know where else to go. If this was a non-political post about crypto then I wie immediately come here for discussion because I know I can trust my peers here to have a deep and nuances understanding of the technologies involved. But now I come here and I see it is flagged and hear we can't have it visible because it's "too much." That's ok, but where can we do it?
It feels very necessary for my own mental health that these discussions have a space, can you see that side too? And I feel Furthermore a responsibility to the people whose mental health and everything else is being affected directly by these off the wall decisions.
I feel that there is definite emotional need for seeing that at least some of your peers share enough of your values to have a similar reaction to you - although that can cut both ways. For example, during COVID, many of the discussions were IMHO cesspools of misinformation with incredibly angry takes. In that situation I preferred having fewer of these threads on the main page.
Intellectually, I'm not so sure. I mean, at some point you either agree that all of this is crazy or you don't. You can certainly discuss immigration, government spending, even some hot button issues like DEI with some amount of civility, but when you're faced with what looks to be a descent into authoritarianism, is there really anything left to discuss? I'm not sure.
It's fair what you're saying about Covid but HN is not where I come to hear the opinions of medical experts. But this crypto stuff, DOGE having physical access to servers etc.? The question again is where do we discuss it if not here? If it wasn't connected to Trump this would be the obvious place to come.
Health, law, relationships. Those are pretty much my main exceptions to stuff I can justify culling misinformation from. It's very specific, personal (or region-based', and bad advice can cost lives. No physical life is worth upholding some free speech on the internet.
This meanwhile is simply a mix of news and opinion. It's not harming anyone and HN never really gets "full on the front page". The algorithm does tailor to variety and the moderation strives to make sure duplicate stories are merged.
>but when you're faced with what looks to be a descent into authoritarianism, is there really anything left to discuss? I'm not sure.
Yes. It's more important to discuss than ever. You need to talk about organizing and rebelling. About how to use the system against itself. How to find allies. Keeping people ignorant and isolated is how you get hat regime to begin with.
I wouldn't have thought myself that calling my reps works without the right forums. I wouldn't know when and where protests in my area are. HN wants to say it's a community, but times like this reminds me we're more of some amourphous Meetup, mostly a revolving door of people who come in anf out with this pressure to talk about specific topics. But never make any deep connections.
We need community more than ever.
I agree that actually discussing what can be done would be more productive.