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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

There's something really interesting going on with the flagging in this post. There are several on topic, polite discussions that have been flagged to death. (Along with some replies which, rightly, have been flagged to death.)

Maybe it's just folks expressing political views with the flag button, but it's interesting to see it used so dramatically here.

Edit: Either someone did something or a bunch of vouching happened, because a lot of comments have come back.

View on HN

That's unfortunately what HN comments has become, a popularity contest where instead of replying to views you disagree with using counter arguments, you just downvote them and if their statement particularly offends your sensibilities, flag them.

Honestly, downvoting - especially as implemented here in HN where it fades out things - was a mistake. I do not understand why people still insist on it and ask people to not use it as a "disagree" button (and flagging as a "super disagree" button) when many years of evidence show that despite any effort, it will be used as such.

I can understand (even if disagree) with Reddit-the-company wanting it to stay there because it increases "engagement" with the platform (regardless of the engagement's quality) and thus gets more ad revenue, but why anyone else (and any site that doesn't monetize such "engagement") would insist on downvoting is beyond me (and i especially do not understand people acting as if the topic itself is some sort of taboo to not even be discussed and treat its existence as unquestionable dogma).

Agreed, I wish there was no downvoting, it's long run its usefulness in this forum

The better option would be to get rid of political BS entirely. I am incredibly sick of hearing each side scream into the wind while the other screams back. This was originally mostly a tech forum; it's grown to a size where it needs to be only a tech forum. People can go to reddit if they want to scream about politics.

That's a position that's ok if and only if you are ok with the status quo. It is, in itself, a political stance.

Now, screaming into the wind is also far from ideal, but I think the answer shouldn't be "Ignore politics because I'm fine."

There are a ton of places where tech intersects with politics, whether that's in climate science, gender, mental health, medicine, art/culture, public transit (and other public shared resources), copyright, privacy, safety, etc. Strictly restricting the discussion to tech doesn't erase those intersections between tech and political domains.

Except all the issues you just raised are primarily things about which one side cares. The cares of the other are ignored or, in the rare case they are visible, flagged down.

What? These aren't boolean propositions. Each of them has a pretty complex set of connections with tech, across a variety of subdomains and interests....

Maybe a better way to describe it is as a venn diagram. If there are circles with "lefty" things and "righty" things, you took (as HN tends to do) the whole lefty circle. That includes things in the center, but not those on the right.

Ah yes, the "lefty" concerns of privacy, safety, medicine, public land use, and intellectual property and how they intersect with tech. I somehow always manage to forget that the "righty" folk are disinterested in discussion on how those topics might intersect with tech.

Again, these issues aren't binary, they aren't left v. right, there's much more to understand than just two fixed points. I didn't even dive into any specific issues. Public resources could mean parks or it could mean the Bureau of Land Management, eminent domain or subsidized bus fare. Safety and privacy could be a discussion of the TSA, or gun rights, or immigration, or facial recognition.

Those are obviously concerns that impact a wide group of people, across many different political ideologies.

You are seeing something that isn't there.

You cherry-picked stuff from the center of the diagram. Stuff like climate "science" and "gender" gets posted a good bit; these are things of which the left has made issues. My point is that the whole left circle - issues important to the left and important to both left and right - are posted and discussed. Issues important only to the right are flagged down. Right-wing perspectives on political posts are flagged down. To take an example, very occasionally, I see a mention of guns that includes a right-wing perspective. Even if it's politely stated, flagged down. Example, something like: "The arguments about taking guns lowering mass shooting-rates does mot affect the right because priorities are different. The right is willing to tolerate some death as tragic but a fact of life to maintain rights, and mass shooting death rates are vastly below other public health issues any way."

Such a comment would be flagged down. A comment taking the opposing point-of-view, even much less politely, would be supported. Comments with vulgarity and rudeness are also tolerated only from certain perspectives. This disparity is particularly galling because low-ranked comments become greyed to the point of un-readability, and flagged ones don't appear at all by default. I couldn't care less about the internet points, but HN ought to leave un-popular opinions visible.

Your image of the old days is inaccurate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869

The issue is a lot of tech companies, especially the larger ones are in larger metro areas that tend to lean left, and staffed by those who went to very left leaning schools and as a result lean further left than most. Combine this with a bit of elitism and you get what we have today.

A set of professions guided more by feelings that knowledge and reasoning. Not to mention an ever increasing inability to actually have a civil conversation with someone you disagree with. I'm relatively center/libertarian/classic-liberal and I seem to feel it from all sides at times.

Maybe it's just folks expressing political views with the flag button

I would hope said individuals would lose their flagging privileges if they demonstrate a pattern of inappropriate flagging. The purpose of flagging is to report posts in violation of the site guidelines, not to express disagreement; that's what down-votes are for.

Posts can't be downvoted on HN iirc, only comments.

Those that flag these types of posts are often the first to scream about their right to free speech, while loving places that bootstomp it like /r/The_Donald, freespeechextremist, smugglo, pleroma.social, etc.

In those communities, there are tons of posts and comments along the lines of "if I'm wrong about x debate me!". When you reply citing multiple research papers, you will get banned. There is no room for challenging views on these caustic sites.

I went through and vouched for the reasonable looking comments in this thread. (You should be able to do so as well, unless you've lost your privileges to do so.)

I was about to say the same thing. I was in mid-reply to someone as I saw their post was flagged and has since been taken away. I am not really sure what is going on.

Per HN guidelines, if you think there's some kind of organized abuse, you should report it to moderators [instead of discussing it here].

My humble opinion is many people here are fed up with climate discussions, and see them as off-topic. On the other hand, a vocal group (which as a disclaimer, I belong to), seems to believe not talking about climate change is currently akin to a Jewish family in 39` Germany not talking about the National-Socialist party.

The two groups communicate with each other almost as effectively as my 3 and 5 yo kids.

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