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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

No, the rules haven't changed—they've been the same for many years. Let me try to dig up some past explanations.

Edit: here's one from a few months ago, which covers the principles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.

Re how we approach political topics (or political overlap) on HN in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Re how we deal with Major Ongoing Topics, i.e. topics where there are a ton of articles and submissions over time: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re how we approach turning off flags: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re the perception that "HN has been getting more political lately" (spoiler: it hasn't - though it does fluctuate): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

If you or anyone will check out some of those links and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

View on HN

Looking at the official HN guidelines, it states that "Most stories about politics" is off-topic, and "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic".

Is the Isreal/Gaza debate not political, and not mainstream news? How does a story like this not directly violate those guidelines?

Furthermore, the guidelines state that stories should be what "good hackers" find "intellectually satisfying". A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?

I just can not understand how a story such as this in any way remotely meets the established, official guidelines for what belongs here.

Considering these threads also, universally, just devolve in political flamewars / hate spreading. There's nothing constructive here. There's no debate. There's no opposing ideas/opinions allowed.

Israel and Israeli businesses are an intractable part of the modern American tech scene. Mellanox, for example, is the cited reason Nvidia ships any datacenter-scale interconnect at all today. America's highest-tech defense contractors work in direct concert with Rafael et. al, and companies like Cellebrite are suppliers of US law enforcement.

When the equation changes vis-a-vis Israel's credibility, this entire Jenga structure has to be reevaluated. It's not satisfying to think about, but it is intellectually prudent and remains important regardless of how civil the response ends up being.

> When the equation changes vis-a-vis Israel's credibility, this entire Jenga structure has to be reevaluated. It's not satisfying to think about, but it is intellectually prudent and remains important regardless of how civil the response ends up being.

If the topics and responses pertained to such a discussion, then that would be one thing. However, it seems like that is not what is being discussed in this topic nor comments section.

Yet buried 3 or 4 levels in the comments is where you find this post :)

you aren't using the word "intractable" right. meant "inextricable" maybe.

> A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?

Personally, one aspect I always enjoyed about this site was how it was often an escape for me from the endless bombardments of political discourse that is constantly being shown/recommend to me on other platforms. I do understand the importance of the nature of these types of discussions, but I agree with you, I am not certain much honest debate is being had here.

In the n number of threads like this, I would be surprised if many leave with any of their opinions changed. All too often do people comment to soothe their own knee-jerk reactions rather than to facilitate understanding or intellectually challenge one another.

Conversely, some of us don't hang out on sites that are an endless bombardment of political discourse. That sounds awful. The HN approach seems uniquely useful. One or two post on an event, easily skipped over and ignored if you want with all the comments hidden behind clicking on that headline. Whole trees of comments trivially collapsed at will when they become uninteresting. It is actually a really great way of getting international news (including US news for me) and sampling opinions and commentary, even if it was not intended that way.

> There's nothing constructive here. There's no debate. There's no opposing ideas/opinions allowed.

That doesn't seem true to me. I'm seeing lots of opinions I don't agree with.

Yes, but as pg once put it, "note those words most and probably" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426). That was in 2012, btw, which shows how far back HN's approach to this goes.

That leaves open the question of which stories to treat as on topic, but the links in my GP comment go into detail about how we handle that.

I'm not saying we always make the correct call about individual stories. There will never be general agreement about that, since every reader has a different set of things they care about. But I hope we can at least make the principles clear, as well as the fact that they haven't changed.

fwiw I think y'all do a fine enough job of dealing with this difficult nuanced stance. I've noticed that when they stick around, it appears to be a combo of: this seems important enough, the community can probably have a civil conversation around this, people who don't participate will find learnings through the comments still. These 3 things always seem well satisfied, personally I appreciate the measured nature of this community and thank you and tom for the genuine work of trying to maintain the balances.

[flagged]

It's a basic need for people to feel safe. I wish that for everybody and most of all for the children of this world.

Legal judgements often make it to the front page of HN as they are as independent as we manage as humans. I don't feel having this post slanders Israel. It would be more interesting to understand what part of the UN investigation you disagree with.

What is legal about this post? You are aware that the UN is not a legal body and by definition investigators are not judges. You’re actively reversing innocent until proven guilty here

> You owe Hacker News users two things, one a statement of what political content will be allowed and what won’t and two a declaration of your political boundaries.

They owe us nothing. Except perhaps sticking to their past commitments. You can always ask for a refund of your membership fee as last resort. HN is not a journalistic endeavour.

> I say this since I have never seen a pro-Israel post on this platform

Seems irrelevant as the OP is actually not anti-Isreal.

> but as an Israeli, I want to feel safe on my news platform

Having to see criticism of the actions of the government and military of the nation you live in when they step over ethical lines is not a threat to your safety. It's healthy.

Serious question: Has anyone accused (I’d say slandered but it’s besides the point) your nation of genocide on a platform you trust? Does your nation have mandatory conscription? Does your nation face mainstream media, politicians, artists, actors and other call to annihilate it? This post on Hacker News genuinely made me feel less safe here: not because of words or criticism (which I am the first to support and accept and encourage even) but because of lies being used to encourage the murder of Jews. The murder of Charlie Kirk isn’t a coincidence: we’ve reached a fever pitch where now many people that others should be murdered for their views and words and not for their actions

As an American, the answers to these questions are yes, no (subject to draft), and yes. Iran considers us to be "the great Satan", to give an example.

Because it's BS. The rules are secondary to someone's political agenda.

[flagged]

Please make your substantive points without crossing into personal attack.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it always has the potential to be "intellectually satisfying" and there's an obvious 'tech' angle woven through it all. So much of it is tied to how information spreads and which technologies enable that. (And, how an actor can use technologies to their advantage).

I think that reference to "TV news" is outdated. Media has changed and there isn't even a clear division between what a media org puts on TV vs on the web.

And this sub-topic in particular (genocide ruling) isn't really getting a ton of mainstream news coverage -- many news orgs are deliberately distancing themselves from proper coverage. The story may exist on news sites, but it's not being surfaced.

Just wanna say this is the kind of day where I feel like I should send you a fruit basket or something for the work you do here.

When having a politically-controversial long-running Major Ongoing Topic with multiple unflagged submissions, is there any obligation to keep some semblance of balance over the submissions that get flags disabled? When the articles making the front page disproportionately favor one side, it is hard to not get the impression that these are the only articles on that issue getting flags disabled.

I think you are the only good moderator on the internet.

It would be interesting to know how articles like this compared to the average article. How are the ratios of downvotes to upvotes, flagged to non-flagged, and comments to views? Are people who comment here positively or negative correlating to creating non-flaged/downvoted comments on other articles?

To phrase it a bit differently, does this kind of articles create a positive or negative engagement for HN?

Many more downvotes and flags for sure. I can't answer your other questions without specifically looking into it, but my guess would be many more comments and much more negativity.

One question went unanswered: Can we get an Epstein thread this week?

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