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Comment by declan | Hacker News Reader

It's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008025

I don't pay close attention to the way HN does these things, but I recall that NSA was one of the terms that the HN moderators chose to penalize. Or they could have manually penalized it as well.

HN is a sandbox that YC created for folks to play in. Their sandbox, their rules. I'm not criticizing you for complaining about the Intercept article being buried on the fourth page or whatnot (I would have more liberal rules if it were my sandbox), but merely saying it's probably not that productive to complain about theirs.

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It isn't just the rules. I think the post is greyed out because a number of members seem to have flagged it, for no specified reason as far as I can tell. If you look at the post about their Reddit AMA it's the same story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009696

I didn't flag it and wouldn't, but I could understand people flagging it for not fitting in with the type of content they find most valuable on the site. If enough people feel that way and act accordingly, it should indeed be buried quickly.

I personally find this community as a haven away from the types of stories that will be featured on the 10 O'clock news and multiple front pages of common news sites. Especially anything that's highly political.

I enjoy reading about new programming frameworks, thoughtful and fresh approaches to launching a business, or someone that has done something "cool" with any type of "technology". HN is a happy place, and politics are anything but happy.

I'm sorry but this:

> HN is a happy place, and politics are anything but happy.

makes me want to puke a little. I think you are probably right though, I can sense a major demographic on this site who are eager to ignore controversial issues. As I said earlier, maybe it's time to move on, but to where I am not sure.

There is a difference between ignoring controversial issues and not desiring to see all controversial issues in all places including HN. Why assume because it doesn't appear here that HN readers are not aware of an issue?

Not trying to ignore the issues entirely. Trying to ignore them when I come to HN.

I'll gladly read about such issues when I'm in the mood for it from a source where such articles are expected: r/worldnews, firstlook.org/theintercept/, aljazeera.com, etc.

I don't think articles with "NSA" in them should be penalized just because... a lot of this still is very relevant, affects a large number of the HN users, is newsworthy, etc. Granted, there is a lot of "NSA" stuff floating around... but that doesn't mean it should be suppressed... no?

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