Ask HN: Should HN be tech news and discussions only? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should HN be tech news and discussions only?

12 pointsletmetweakit32 comments

I always get caught in these political discussions and news, like just recently as a result of the US military actions in Venezuela. To be honest, it's the kind of news I try to stay away from. It would be nice (for me) if Hacker News was strictly tech only, no politics.

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It should, but it's impossible: the line between politics and tech is blurry, everything is political to some extent.

They are intertwined these days, true, but maybe there should at least be a direct link between the tech and the political discussion around it.

What are you talking about? What link? Link where to? Your initial question is "should this site be only for white news? I'm tired getting caught in discussions of black news!"

You are being told, that it's impossible, since the world is not black and white: everything is of a shade of gray - either brighter or darker, but neither black, nor white.

But not everything is techy.

It shouldn't be, and it isn't. The guidelines explicitly state that Hacker News is not strictly for tech news and discussions, and the mods have said numerous times that politics is not de jure banned. And the guidelines make that clear as well.

Just accept that some people want to discuss things other than computers and startups from time to time.

The guidelines also say this isn't a place for stuff you'd see on the news. Like Venezuela, the exact thing OP mentioned.

There was no tech in the story, no overlap.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Nowhere in there does it require "tech in the story."

You may not consider anything non tech-related to be interesting, but that isn't your decision to enforce on behalf of the community.

I didn't say it required tech, just that it didn't have any. It's exactly what they'd put on mainstream news. It IS mainstream news.

I'm usually in the thread defending the unusual, non-tech posts. One of the most consequential reads of all time, for me, was a personal blog posted by Paul Buccheit about the death of his brother.

I'm all about the intellectual curiosity aspect, so you read me wrong.

The Venezuela story that is/was near the top of the front page is just pure politics. There's nothing else it brings.

I'm not policing or enforcing things on behalf of the community, no need to be a smarmy jerk. I'm presenting my arguments just like you are. Thanks for the lesson, Chad.

Mainstream news often involves tech too, so even that isn't a hard and fast heuristic. And it's never been the case that "pure politics" is off topic for HN. Most of the time someone dies and an obituary thread is posted it's mainstream news as well, yet you'll be flagged into oblivion for pointing that out.

Here are some comments by dang clarifying the matter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43142682

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43272671

Who tf is Chad?

I think we agree, you're just misrepresenting my position.

The OP is talking about the Venezuela story on the front page. It's not a good example of what you're talking about.

This just in: 1776 comments on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473348

No guideline will divert a determined, thundering herd.

We are what we do, and it appears we do care about the world beyond our immediate technical interests.

Special occasion. Exception to prove the rule.

[EDIT] I just realized, I'd already added some tech into the otherwise political discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46476424

Oh don't get me wrong, I've got multiple comments in that exact thread.

I still would rather not see it here. I get my fill of politics elsewhere.

Direction action is a thing.

I get why folks saying "if you don't like it don't read it" feels jerky, but "if you don't like it, don't participate in it" seems pretty reasonable, I'd think.

That's fair, but it's also fair for me to have priorities, and to participate in something I think should change.

I think the non-political threads are where HN shines, and I believe in playing to your strengths. This is a wonderful place where subject-matter experts come crawling out to give you wonderful, deep knowledge about some esoteric discussion on the regular.

We don't get political experts here as often, and the average political commentary on this site probably rivals...well, the rest of the internet.

But while we're rooting around in the mud, I might join in. And I'm okay with occasional politics, I just wish it didn't get enough upvotes to make random political stories the front-page news here. In the past, much bigger stories either didn't make the front page, or were moderated--I'm not sure which.

Anyway, I'm not really complaining here about the moderation, either. I think they do a great job. I can live with the amount of politics we have here, I just hope it doesn't increase.

Anything that satisfies one's intellectual curiosity.

This is the correct answer. One of the best things about HN is the comments section. I enjoy the discussions on the non-tech topics almost as much as the tech ones because you get the same sort of skeptical / critical sentiment, (mostly) well-thought out opinions, etc. which is difficult to find elsewhere at such a large scale.

Then you can just improve your self discipline. And post more interesting links than the ones you've posted so far.

If there is one thing that is tiring about HN it is new accounts that want to change it into something that it isn't.

You don't have to click on it. I don't understand why some people want to stop others from discussing a topic just because they don't like it. No one is forcing you to read the news or the comments, so why deny others the opportunity to discuss it on HN?

The shitty stuff rarely survives the race to the front page so you could probably start by avoiding "/newest". As of Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:06:17 GMT, there is only one irrelevant item on the front page… and surprisingly little AI, which is quite refreshing.

Have a way to tag political posts in the same way other webpages have a way to tag NSFW posts, and have an opt out for posts with the tag?

I agree with you, although I did reply to that post. I believe the topics should be at least tangentially aligned with tech.

Political news will affect technology in one way or another. Chat Control in Europe shoven down out throats. Venezuelan oil and a war excuse for it in order to distract from Epstein (and to avoid news on Tesla being really behind BYD on sales). Further wars in the Arctic because of shipping routes. Unless some permafrost virus kicks out both armies fast and some ceasefire happens for the good, because that would happen.

And vulcanoes, too; if some biggie erupts in the Canaries or some Asian place, that would kickstart some really big tsunamies or something worse. That would be news in HN too because it would affect shipping too, if not literal industries in California, China, Russia or Japan.

But then you'd have to stop all the anti-EU and anti-UK stuff too. Is that really a price worth paying?

Tech has it's political side. Try having a discussion about Tesla.

I think where the politics bleed into tech, we should allow the politics to bleed into discussions, staying on topic.

If the Tesla article commenters are talking about ICE, it's a problem.

But just posting political news to the front page sucks. And, thankfully, we have a working system for handling it.

HN has traditionally not let much politics through, and it's the better for it. Some does get through, and that's okay--it's not a moratorium. But I think we should endeavor to keep it pretty limited.

Tech is entwined with politics, and sad to say, an enabler of its worst actions, but that is a choice that people make.

Prove to me that DOGE hasn't planted backdoors and time b0mbs in critical government systems. And when Vance takes over, his pals Thiel and Musk will be running much of the show. BTW, both are immigrants.

I wouldn't mind a built-in filter facility. Other forums have them. Mainly, I use several devices to access HN and filtering means vary on my side.

Techie participation in authoritarian, privacy-robbing and murderous projects is a choice. I worked in aerospace, strictly in defensive projects, and departed the aerospace business per the customary cycles. Bush senior actually cut the defense budget. I worked for university, and per economic cycles, left that. Politics not involved? Very involved.

Great stuff lives past the home page, which I never read. Just checked, maybe one is of interest, whereas the daily scan turns up 10 or so, and I forward a couple a day to friends. I finally found an auto-pager that works on latest, so I can finally create the daily local/searchable digest. No slight on Algolia.

As for popularity, I can't read really long threads. I just scan "best" now and then to see if a goodie slipped past my scanning.

I grew up just post Hiroshima and Nagasaki and spoke with someone last Thursday who survived Hiroshima in the womb. Open science and free and open source software mean a ton to me, as liberating, the opposite of surveillance, control and giant databases. The more that government and tech oligarchs have them, the less free we are. [0] What Technology "wants" is liberation, not capture and control.

[0] https://fluidself.org/books/science/what-technology-wants

I wish it were. I don’t like politics or ideologies.

We already have lobste.rs. I would not mind if flagged/dead got removed from active but I understand why they are kept. Flag and hide political threads which are likely to derail you.

>Flag and hide political threads which are likely to derail you.

Or, you know, just hide them or ignore them and leave other people be to have the discussions they want.

Answer: No.

Reason: 1. Our tendency to compartmentalize developments, be it social, cultural, political or technical, results in governance that let things rot and escalate. When the crisis becomes big enough, the Political Value of Time comes into play, aka we don't have time for plebs rights.

2. Without understanding of context, tech will misfire. A lot of problems only exist because we are conditioned to NOT take the bigger picture in mind. In media, in policy, people try to handle things as context-free phenomena. For example, western democracies have/had a very narrow focus on foreign threats. If an adversary is bombing you, than we can talk about defense, because: kinetic threats = mil. defense. Simple, but that is exactly our weakness:

  Economic sabotage      => you will be lucky if there is any joint action over gov. branches
  Political infiltration => uhm, we haven't thought about that. Lets pretend 
                            nothing happens.
  Disinformation campaigns, bribing influencers, sowing discord 
                         => uhm that is maybe something for the other department

I do understand the will to escape, but imho tech people should not flight reality; they should not lock themselves in a cave of ignorance. We don't have that luxury, especially as tech is the enabling instrument of authoritarians. Reality is complex and we should face it.

I wish

lobste.rs does it right. literally only tech. people make excuses but lobsters doesn't have that problem. it's only this way because it's moderated to be that way.

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