Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

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> To those who view this story as political (such as HN moderators), think about it.

It is political. That's not even really debatable.

> Press freedom is a much more fundamental issue than political affiliation.

Maybe, but that doesn't make it not a political issue.

> Much of the discussion that has been suppressed by mods on HN has had to with the knee-jerk characterization of stories like this as political.

This story is one “relating to the government or public affairs of a country”. It is, therefore, squarely political.

This story is also badly distorted and hyperbolic; most of the things at issue were done to mainstream reporters before they were done to WikiLeaks, especially including investigating attempts to get and reveal classified information as potential espionage or conspiracy related to espionage, and not giving reporters advance notice of surveillance related to investigations in which the reporter or the people they were communicating with were subjects or targets. (Notifying the subjects and targets of surveillance of the surveillance tends to be counterproductive.)

> HN mods have shown a strong pro-authoritarian sentiment

Support for this inflammatory claim is called for here.

By your definition I'd argue that everything is political. The internet, because it was initially funded by ARPA, is deeply political. This devolves into logical absurdity.

> Support for this inflammatory claim is called for here.

HN was initially very friendly to discussion of Wikileaks when it was revealing the misdeeds of the Bush administration and foreign governments. But more recently some more beloved political figures have come under attack and now anything about WL on HN is quickly removed.

What is WL? To some it is a journalistic organization. It symbolizes the place where there is first amendment related tension between the people and the government. It is not fundamentally different from other news orgs (many publish leaked info), it just does so in a way that irritates those in power.

HN mods have actively suppressed this, etc. I need to stop typing b/c surely they have throttled this account by now so not sure it's worth time explaining further. Many examples abound.

> By your definition I'd argue that everything is political.

There's certainly an argument that can be made that virtually everything connects to government or public affairs in some way, but this is literally and directly discussing the actions of government directed at people who are, overtly, trying to provide information about the actions of government to the public so that the public can effectively supervise the actions of government. The connection to government is not distant, indirect, or of dubious centrality to the issue.

> HN was initially very friendly to discussion of Wikileaks when it was revealing the misdeeds of the Bush administration and foreign governments.

Initially, WikiLeaks was itself an example of a novel phenomenon, which is right there in black and white in the guidelines as an exception to the general rule that most political, crime, and sports stories are off topic.

HN is not, and does not want to be, a general-focus news channel. There are plenty of those, most people in HN have their preferences for those, but HN is something else, by design.

I find your points interesting and worth discussing. But we can't have this discussion on HN b/c my account was throttled (punished) for my other comments in the thread. If this account stays un-throttled I will post a reply later today.

You're writing this as though the HN mods were fine with Wikileaks ten years ago, when the majority of the leaks had to so with Bush, but started censoring it nine years ago, when the leaks started being about Obama.

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