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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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