Hacker News Reader

Comment by autokad | Hacker News Reader

wow, this is where hackernews has come. All the user stated was "its hard to take the article seriously with such an obvious agenda", something along those lines. and the community thought that was flaggable? this is where we come?

welcome to the great censorship. Believe in all that is holy from a political left, and disbelievers shall be punished and removed from conversation.

If you can't see agenda painting in those opening paragraphs of the article, you need your head checked. Its not the facts that are in disagreement, its how they are presented to spread an agenda.

No one said vaccines didnt work, that was going on in your mind.

View on HN

calling out stupidity is not censorship. Removing stupidity from a conversation on a private website is not censorship.

discussing 'agenda' is not a neutral comment or a meaningful contribution to discourse on this topic, it is stupidity.

> Removing stupidity from a conversation on a private website is not censorship.

Is this not censorship? It sounds like you're assuming that "censorship" is by definition illegitimate or morally wrong, but I don't think this is inherent to the word (except to the extent that we still live in a generally liberal, pro-speech society). HN removing opinions from its boards seems like it clearly qualifies as censorship, even if you agree with the removal.

Removing “stupidity” on any platform, public or private, is absolutely censorship. And discussing any author bias is absolutely a contribution towards conversation surrounding the authors work.

by this definition of censorship, me asking a random person screaming in my house to please leave is censorship.

Author bias, alternative perspectives, etc. can all be contributions to meaningful discourse when they bring evidence or some meaningful engagement. Simply asserting your truth through circular logic isn't a contribution. It's not because the contribution is about 'bias' its because the contribution is stupid. Same rules apply even if think the person agrees with me. Process and structure trump content.

I'm saying this as the type of person who gets concerned when I see a stupid argument that arrives at the same position I hold, I don't get excited just because it's the same outcome.

I wasn't one of the flaggers, but the comment was pretty insubstantial and somewhat inflammatory; I am 0 percent surprised it got flagged.

Edit: every article put on the internet has an agenda. From pushing for vaccines to making the author money to spreading valuable technical information. "Having an agenda" is not cause to not take an article seriously.

If a scientist comes out with a research finding, and you then find out X Corp was backing them, you’d change your confidence on the trustworthiness of the research done. Similar to any op-ed, understanding bias is valuable, and calling out bias with good reasons is useful for the unaware.

Sure. That isn't what the parent-most comment was doing, though. There was no analysis - just blanket dismissal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com