HN is purely tech? But tech is now political. How to discuss? | Hacker News Reader

HN is purely tech? But tech is now political. How to discuss?

Hacker News is where purely tech-focused people discuss purely tech issues.

Discussing politics is generally discouraged.

But now, tech is political. Big Tech—FAANG and others—have become political blocs, in some cases more powerful than national governments. SpaceX is vital to Ukraine, for example.

So how do we talk about this?

We need to consider the influence and direction tech leaders are pushing toward (Private Cities?).

What about this piece? Moldbug Sold Out – Astral Codex Ten

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out

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Not all tech is political. People can discuss the non political tech here without issue. For the political issues related to tech one could spin up their own similar site to HN, a forum or Mastodon or some other platform of their choosing. It will get heated so put it behind a CDN and use a throw-away registrar, domain, bank, etc... If feeling really adventurous use one of the chan platforms to discourage identities. For more fun create a web-ring of sorts and link to each others experiments. A person could link to their site in their profile ideally with some warning.

> So how do we talk about this?

You can talk about it on many, many sites across the web. You will soon find that talking politics is useless. You're not going to convince anyone that they are wrong, just as their arguments will not alter your view. It is a waste of electrons.

Still, many sites welcome it as it generates traffic for their ad revenue. Keep users engaged in heated 'debates', to eek out a few cents more.

Please, keep politics out of HN. Let's keep this site reasonably sane, whatever that means.

I agree, was hoping HN would be where more 'civil discourse' could happen with those that are embedded in this particular area.

Like if you were a nuclear scientist, and wanted to talk to other nuclear scientist, while developing the bomb. And wanted to go beyond discussing the latest formula/experiment, and wanted to talk about the politics of what you're building. While building it.

Maybe huggingface?

Think I meant lesswrong.

HN was never purely tech, and people discuss politics here all the time.

Not completely true. Politics is frequently flagged and dead before any discussion happens.

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