Protein World: The Body Shaming Protest That Turned Decidedly Ugly | Hacker News Reader

Protein World: The Body Shaming Protest That Turned Decidedly Ugly

breitbart.com

4 pointsformulaT6 comments

Hmm... breitbart.com link... "Social Justice Warriors" appears on first screen. tc;dr.

I know US elections exist, but I really hope the HN front page isn't like this for the next 17 months.

It won't be.

Are you saying this because you believe the HN population is skewed to the left (and hence articles from a different point of view will continue to be rare, while left wing articles continue to flood the front page), or do you plan to actively prevent articles from a right wing perspective, as a moderator?

Dang won't/can't say this, but I think it's important someone does: if you knew dang personally, and were aware both of his political/ideological standpoint and the sincerity of his commitment to fairness and decency, you'd be horrified at the suggestion you've made in the second part of that comment.

On the first part: I personally sit somewhat to the right (ie Hayekian) economically, and I find hysterical leftist social campaigns tiresome and annoying.

But HackerNews is a place I come for respite from that, and where I feel most likely to see discussions conducted with a sincere intent by participants to transcend political biases and seek the truth in any issue.

The bias I do see on HN is towards materialist reductionist positions on science, particularly medicine, but I see that throughout society, largely independent of political ideology.

But to the original point, I'm guessing what Dan meant is that the front page won't be filled with articles like this because they don't fit the guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Articles that fall outside that get flagged for being irrelevant, or ignored for being uninteresting. I suspect the latter happened in this case.

I think you contradict yourself when you say that my implication in my second point is unfair do dang, and then go on to say why you think that stories like mine should be treated negatively by moderators (note that dang has unflagged political stories before, so it's not just about the community).

Anyway to the main point, you cannot escape hysterical leftist social campaigns, HN is already full of them. And there have been numerous stories on them on the front page (most notably https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9150107). The story I posted was unfortunately from a source that used language that will distract from the real issues. But it was also the best story on the issue I found.

I don't follow US elections. I posted it because left wing bullying via social media is a phenomenon that is intimately connected with tech. And this story is unique in that it's the first time I'm aware of a company standing up to a major social media bullying campaign by the left. Feel free to post your opinion on the actual topic rather than the source.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com