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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

Deleting a thread on a tech forum with no substantive discussion about great ape behavior is not "censorship" or "censoring everything"

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HN is not strictly a tech form. The goal is what’s interesting, the audience is tech focused but the third ranked link is currently:

Lost world revealed by human, Neanderthal relics washed up on North Sea beaches (sciencemag.org) 226 points by chippy 8 hours ago 81 comments

Yesterday’s top 10 had: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2021-07-20

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Baltimore Museum of Art will host an exhibition curated by the museum's guards (artbma.org) 415 points by hampelm 1 day ago 139 comments

MAPS Celebrates California Senate Passage of Psychedelic Reform Bill (maps.org) 303 points by pmoriarty 1 day ago | 87 comments

My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (danlawton.substack.com) 480 points by mudita 1 day ago | 539 comments

I think what the commenter was referring to was with type of discussion than the nature of the post.

The comment you responded to responded to the comment it responded to.

To be fair, substantive discussion has emerged and all the tomfoolery has been downvoted. Steady as she goes

It most certainly is censorship done arbitrarily-- the voting system is there to reflect the attitudes and desires of the users.

But let's go further and just delete articles on gorillas and the dangers of mindfulness meditation as well? They have nothing to do with tech, anyways...

> is not "censorship" or "censoring everything"

Actually, that would in fact be a very straightforward example of censorship. Which isn't to say that it would necessarily be a bad thing - moderation involves limited and targeted censorship.

Let's not go redefining words in order to defend a particular course of action. We should argue the actual merits instead.

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