The tech industry showed up to bend the knee to Trump. Parts of the tech industry helped get us to this place by funding Trump and Republicans. It is naïve to the point of being obtuse to deny that this could have a large negative impact on how people view the tech industry. One stick they've got to beat the tech industry with is denying permits for data centers. Is that good for tech? Is the fact that normal people hate tech now gotten adequate coverage in mainstream media?
The Maduro one, right at the top of the list, is pretty solidly relevant to your point. If I was paying attention to politics at the time I might have asked the mods to kill it — but I can already predict what they would have said:
‘We run HN mostly hands off, and when people are insistent on flagging or discussing a topic, there’s only so much we can do while remaining largely neutral per our founding ethics.’
I continue to insist that HN will need to take more actions that are perceived as biased, over the objections of its users, if it wants to become a healthy community; but I tend to do so in the form of one or two essay-length emails a year, rather than posting to HN. Here, I think HN needs to openly be willing to kill ‘not sufficiently specialized for this site’ submissions that are still of interest to the community, which will get them labeled ‘anti-this’ and ‘pro-that’ more often than now. (It doesn’t help that most users confuse ‘user action [flagged]’ with ‘algo/mod action [dead]’, either.)
To the best of my understanding, HN’s founding ethics prioritize community votes and flags over adherence to the guidelines up until the violations become hateful, interpersonal, or form a pattern of bad outcomes sufficient to earn action. Pressuring them to take a stand for or against the community on one specific topic that isn’t covered by those points is probably less likely to pan out, but I wish you luck all the same.
I think it’s relevant because regime change delivered is going to directly impact Big Tech and incur regulatory wrath, which may be of interest and importance to many here.
Site guidelines specify that most politics is off-topic. This is "most politics".
I mean, there's no tech angle here. The discussions are mostly "yay, our side won!". That's one step away from turning into a flamewar, if the other side gets out of mourning enough to show up.
Whether it turns into a flamewar or not, there's no fodder for an HN-style discussion here.
It’s not “suppression”, it’s curation. You have no right to post whatever you wish here. You can go to Reddit to celebrate the changing color of the idiocracy if you wish, but unless it’s directly tech-related it isn’t taken kindly. You can write a million emails, but democracy has spoken: those given rights by the site are curating out the noise.
> but democracy has spoken: those given rights by the site are curating out the noise.
I highly doubt what's happening looks anything like democracy. Given that some of the articles, even flagged, have plenty of comments and upvotes, it seems to me that it's more like an empowered minority has spoken.
Plenty of noise still reaches the top, unfortunately. Feel free to join me in curating the off-topic articles as you see them.
> it seems to me that it's more like an empowered minority has spoken.
That is quite literally the original model of democracy, empowering a vested and vetted minority of naturally born citizens. Modern “democracy” is nothing akin to Athenian democracy, but closer to mob rule. We, the posters who have proven ourselves as high-value, have powers vested in us to curate the website. Most commenters either lack the ability or the knowledge to use it, which is for the best.
I agree, and I'm disappointed that the Democratic Party didn't have to change itself more to get this result, but this is a lot more than just winning a few house seats.
The opposition party taking back both the Senate and the House has only happened four other times since 1946 -- notably, in 2018 the Democrats only took back the House. And this result includes states that have basically never flipped before: the last time Kansas had a Democratic senator was 1932, when Democrat meant something totally different.
"Dems win" is generic and boring. If there is something specific you want to discuss like sentiment towards data centres and how that might have shaped voting then I highly doubt that will be flagged if there is a thoughtful article on it. Those are the articles that will lead to the most interesting discussions.
The tech industry showed up to bend the knee to Trump. Parts of the tech industry helped get us to this place by funding Trump and Republicans. It is naïve to the point of being obtuse to deny that this could have a large negative impact on how people view the tech industry. One stick they've got to beat the tech industry with is denying permits for data centers. Is that good for tech? Is the fact that normal people hate tech now gotten adequate coverage in mainstream media?
Submission guidelines state
> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Do you think TV news isn't covering it? The tiny euro country I live was covering it with extra news bulletins in the morning.
How many of these seen and discussed articles on Trump in the last year also were shown on TV news?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
Plenty didn't get flagged for not meeting the submission guidelines.
The Maduro one, right at the top of the list, is pretty solidly relevant to your point. If I was paying attention to politics at the time I might have asked the mods to kill it — but I can already predict what they would have said:
‘We run HN mostly hands off, and when people are insistent on flagging or discussing a topic, there’s only so much we can do while remaining largely neutral per our founding ethics.’
I continue to insist that HN will need to take more actions that are perceived as biased, over the objections of its users, if it wants to become a healthy community; but I tend to do so in the form of one or two essay-length emails a year, rather than posting to HN. Here, I think HN needs to openly be willing to kill ‘not sufficiently specialized for this site’ submissions that are still of interest to the community, which will get them labeled ‘anti-this’ and ‘pro-that’ more often than now. (It doesn’t help that most users confuse ‘user action [flagged]’ with ‘algo/mod action [dead]’, either.)
To the best of my understanding, HN’s founding ethics prioritize community votes and flags over adherence to the guidelines up until the violations become hateful, interpersonal, or form a pattern of bad outcomes sufficient to earn action. Pressuring them to take a stand for or against the community on one specific topic that isn’t covered by those points is probably less likely to pan out, but I wish you luck all the same.
Flag 'em, brother. Help us out here.
Thank god this is one day when the flaggers are winning.
I think it’s relevant because regime change delivered is going to directly impact Big Tech and incur regulatory wrath, which may be of interest and importance to many here.
Well, then post an article that talks about that, and let's discuss it. But just the "horse race" numbers are not particularly a relevant-to-HN topic.
Site guidelines specify that most politics is off-topic. This is "most politics".
I mean, there's no tech angle here. The discussions are mostly "yay, our side won!". That's one step away from turning into a flamewar, if the other side gets out of mourning enough to show up.
Whether it turns into a flamewar or not, there's no fodder for an HN-style discussion here.
It’s not “suppression”, it’s curation. You have no right to post whatever you wish here. You can go to Reddit to celebrate the changing color of the idiocracy if you wish, but unless it’s directly tech-related it isn’t taken kindly. You can write a million emails, but democracy has spoken: those given rights by the site are curating out the noise.
Example of what succeeds: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50365982
Well, pretty selective curation then? Examples:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...
Plenty of non tech articles make it to the top.
> but democracy has spoken: those given rights by the site are curating out the noise.
I highly doubt what's happening looks anything like democracy. Given that some of the articles, even flagged, have plenty of comments and upvotes, it seems to me that it's more like an empowered minority has spoken.
> Well, pretty selective curation then?
Plenty of noise still reaches the top, unfortunately. Feel free to join me in curating the off-topic articles as you see them.
> it seems to me that it's more like an empowered minority has spoken.
That is quite literally the original model of democracy, empowering a vested and vetted minority of naturally born citizens. Modern “democracy” is nothing akin to Athenian democracy, but closer to mob rule. We, the posters who have proven ourselves as high-value, have powers vested in us to curate the website. Most commenters either lack the ability or the knowledge to use it, which is for the best.
Oh, they have the right to post whatever they want. They just have no right to have it taken seriously, to not have it flagged.
>Since 1946, the president's party has lost seats in the House of Representatives in 18 out of 20 midterm elections.
You shouldn't treat this bigger than it is. Democrats still have a lot of work to do.
I agree, and I'm disappointed that the Democratic Party didn't have to change itself more to get this result, but this is a lot more than just winning a few house seats.
The opposition party taking back both the Senate and the House has only happened four other times since 1946 -- notably, in 2018 the Democrats only took back the House. And this result includes states that have basically never flipped before: the last time Kansas had a Democratic senator was 1932, when Democrat meant something totally different.
My point is that we should be able to see the articles and discuss them here.
We should be able to debate the significance...not have every article flagged/hidden.
"Dems win" is generic and boring. If there is something specific you want to discuss like sentiment towards data centres and how that might have shaped voting then I highly doubt that will be flagged if there is a thoughtful article on it. Those are the articles that will lead to the most interesting discussions.
Many of the flagged articles have votes and discussion. While you may not think they are interesting, there are clearly others who do.
That they have to be flagged to get suppressed is telling.