Hacker News Reader

Comment by marcinzm | Hacker News Reader

The HN rules are as follows:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Given that it is being covered by basically every news channel out there it seems pretty clearly off-topic.

View on HN

I would think the apparent leak of the president's tax info qualifies as "interesting new phenomenon" -- this has been anticipated for years, and de facto does not happen every day.

This is a landmark article revealing information that people have been calling on for years to be released in a hotly contested presidential race. We are literally watching history be created and we should have the ability to discuss it.

No. it is not interesting or new, it is way off-topic and falls under politics.

Irrelevant according to the HN guidelines.

It is both interesting and new.

Articles on politics that affect the tech industry might be relevant but this has nothing to do with that. There are other forums for this kind of thing.

114 points, not flagged - "As Joe Rogan’s platform grows, so does the media and liberal backlash" (Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24561534)

264 points, not flagged - "You're Not Allowed to Film: The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland (Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24390909)

Funny how stories about right-wing corruption and mal-governance get instantly flagged to oblivion, while culture-war stories that favor right-wing and right-libertarian agendas stay up.

These examples are hints that at least some of the flagging is politically motivated and not simply about relevance to hackers.

This took me 10 seconds:

393, not flagged- "Trump offered to pardon Assange if he provided source for DNC emails – lawyer"

259, not flagged- "Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns"

81, not flagged- "Peter Thiel Met with the Racist Fringe as He Went All in on Trump"

270, not flagged- "Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores"

All stories negative to the right wing and that's just the first four I found by searching for the word Trump.

You have a perception bias which doesn't reflect reality.

At least three of those four have an undeniable technological/VC subject matter, clearly relevant to HN (WeChat, Peter Thiel, and TikTok)

I'd have to read them all to be certain, but 2 stories on OP's side and the 4 stories you presented aren't convincing for either argument, 10 seconds of research or not.

The parent comment argued that the tax evasion post was flagged because it's not directly relevant to the tech industry.

In response, I found examples that are also not directly relevant to the tech industry, but are recent, popular and unflagged on HN.

Since each of your examples is directly relevant to the tech industry, they are not evidence of political neutrality in flagging posts.

To counter my argument that flagging is biased to support right-wing politics, a better response would list HN posts that are (a) not directly relevant to the tech industry, (b) critical of right-wing or right-libertarian politics, (c) 100+ points, (d) posted recently, and (e) not flagged.

I would be happy to be proven wrong!

One of the key takeaways of this story is the relationship between business-ownership and income tax. This is of interest to the audience here because many are directly involved in small business start-ups. The fact that this discussion is also flagged is also absurd.

Are we not here to discuss things anymore?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com