Comment by eleventen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eleventen | Hacker News Reader

I have to say I'm a little perplexed by HN's perpetual willingness to use grok like it's a normal product made by a normal company.

There's often frustration that every thread related to a Musk company includes a discussion about Musk, but Musk himself caused that by being the only tech founder to actively campaign for Trump. (Zuck, the runner up, didn't do anything even close to this). Every product at every company he owns is hopelessly tethered to his decision to do that, and deserves to be judged on those terms.

Another popular story today is about US rollback of climate regulation [1] under Trump. Some fraction of every cent you spend on Grok goes to support stuff you hate, and yet people get genuinely annoyed when you point it out. Musk and his companies really _are_ special and should be treated as special.

Every thread about a Musk company or product needs a comment like this one. If we had the right values, every comment would look like this one.

[1] https://text.hrw.org/news/2026/09/17/us-revokes-limits-on-po...

Thank you for your perspective and I agree as repetitive as it is, I hope hn can continue to surface disagreement/substantial views on a topic.

These comments don't stay up much anymore and I can't tell if it's structural to the forum (flag weight + statistical mechanics of votes + guidelines) or if it's the userbase sentiment.

Except for now HN doesn't do that. Every single comment that points the issue with Grok being built by a pro-fascist team is being "locked" so that they can't be upvoted

For what it's worth, I've watched the vote fight on my comment swing back and fourth over the last hour. It got flagged, unflagged, and flagged again. It appears to now be locked and dead.

But I think it represents real malaise in the community. It's not a moderator plot, people here really just don't care and might even support this.

We really are in the minority of opinion for giving a damn about liberal democracy.

I think I was trying to bring up the mechanics of the forum as another reason.

Between the guidelines + user thoughts (e.g. repetition, low novelty/new info), there's other reasons these types of replies might end up dead.

I am worried that it leads to people self selecting to other forums biasing the remaining userbase vote/vouch/flag distributions. In an exit vs voice situation, the voice kinda dies out. Then we end up other-izing people and homogenizing our communities.

But I concede it's also possible that the minority opinion issue could be the core driving force.

dilate

Yeah, not touching xAI for several glaring reasons. I share your confusion.

I wont touch his products and neither will my organization

100% agree. It speaks volumes that HN down-votes this...

I completely agree. But this has been true for many years. This sort of head in the sand compartmentalization seems to be a core feature of the culture here.

It’s either compartmentalization, or something else

Definitely not a musk fan, but what exact is your point? Other big labs aren't innocent little virgins.

Yes, but the other ones we don't like for ethical reasons, rather than religious reasons.

I think I already made my point, but I'll make it again.

Nobody both worked and spent their money to get Trump elected like Musk. 300 million to his 2024 campaign [1]. DOGE. On-stage endorsements. Nobody even came close.

No, other big labs are not "innocent little virgins", but they're not even in the same solar system of harm as Musk. To hand-wave at the differences is to permit them.

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race/donald-tr...

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