Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsuvc | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News is better without unrelated political news.

The problem is that people draw the related/unrelated line very differently. The site mandate is intellectual curiosity, not political battle—but that still leaves quite a few stories with political overlap. If you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html you'll see the phrase "interesting new phenomenon". The current story surely qualifies as that.

I've posted various explanations about this over the years - a bunch are at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869, which shows how far back political discussion goes on HN, as well as the argument about politics on HN.

If anyone reads those past explanations and has a question about this that I haven't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

Thanks dang! Hope your day is going well!

This has NOTHING to do with intellectual curiosity.

Just try stating that Trump is innocent from another account and watch your comment get flagged and downvoted into oblivion.

This kind of thread can be a lynch party, but nothing else. Anyone with any other thoughts will be silenced and punished by the majority.

It's an interesting phenomenon which is perfectly fine for intellectual curiosity, and there are plenty of comments in this thread relating to it that way. And of course there are also plenty of commenters bashing each other with partisan clubs. In that sense you are right. You're exaggerating the bias in the thread, though. For example the top subthread says "looks like a weak case" and was heavily upvoted.

The unfortunate thing is that many people do look at this article as a political piece. That it is, but it is also a piece of news that carries with it significant impact to our judicial system. It is an unprecedented case. Surely its novelty alone qualifies it for HN readers, much less its complexity or implications. Whether looking at it as a political piece, or a curiosity, that is a choice.

My knowledge of political events is sparse because I haven't dedicated the time it takes to acquire the prerequisite knowledge.

However, I'd be interested in learning more from those here who do have that knowledge and are willing to share perspective on these sort of events.

In general, I think it's valuable to be curious about things you're not necessarily interested in.

Everything you say can be true and it doesn't change the fact the HN would be worse because of it.

HN is a place I come to escape the rest of the internet.

I hope it doesn't get ruined by politics, like everything else in the world seems to have been.

There was a busy front page thread for each of Obama's election wins, Trump's First, and Biden's win. There were numerous busy threads on the Obama campaign's use of technology leading up to his first election. I'd say it's working out okay ~15 years into the experiment of unkilling certain historically significant political threads.

There are usually a few threads discussing major or controversial political news. Dang is good about collapsing them and keeping things isolated there. It is pretty easy to avoid these threads and they fall off the front page quickly. I don’t think they add much to HN, but I like to skim them as this community’s take is the least biased.

I like hearing and considering arguments to change the status quo.

I already understand the status quo, so I don't enjoy hearing arguments which defend the status quo.

What's the status quo?

Wikimedia maintains a world news section [0] that is well linked to the context. Hacker News is not optimized to provide the prerequisite context for a topic like this. Topics like these attract bikeshedding value statements rather than extended breakdowns of topics and links to primary sources.

[0] https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

This is simply not a good forum for that, precisely because it's populated by people whose knowledge of political events is sparse.

Mods suggest otherwise: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27608484>

Yes. I am disagreeing with dang.

Have to agree. I don't read extremist right- (or left-) wing websites, so HN is really my only exposure to how some of these people think. It's not a good look.

If it's discussions about how X person is bad and Y person is good, then I would agree (even if I dislike X and like Y). If it's a meta discussion about the judicial process or such, then I would disagree.

Edit: The comments above yours (at the time of writing) are mostly okay, but as I read further down, it ventures into the territory of 'such and such person and party is bad' which I think HN is not a good place for that kind of discord.

It is isn't it? However, it seems that someone wants outrage. If it was a different political person, it wouldn't be on the front page.

The admission here is that the only reason why this was upvoted or on the front page is because the only good news is Trump schadenfreude and the opportunity for launching cheap attacks here.

The only 'bad news' is any good news that benefits Trump. (Which never makes it on top on HN anyway, and it shouldn't and vice versa because it is pure politics and creates a complete mess of the comments and dang knows it.)

Just look at the wave of flagged comments everywhere in this thread. It tells use that there is good reason why such news like this should not be on top of this page. (It is not intellectually interesting, it is partisan and a heavily divisive flame-bait topic.)

It never helps pouring fuel on the flames.

Hacker News has been a shitstorm of political news since at least 2010.

I think you misspelled "the United States".

Europe isn't any different, just the things being argued about.

But no, back in those days this board was absolutely dominated by ancaps and other libertarian types. The socialists and other progressives only really started getting active in the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street. Like any other causeheads, they tirelessly fill these boards with their messaging. The only thing that they really come together to agree on is "fuck the poor". You see it whenever posts about homelessness, zoning or rent regulation pop up.

Lectures are fun though. At least here in the United States, we're so serious about bigotry that even a statement that can be misinterpreted will destroy your career. Then Europeans deride us for being a divided, racist country...meanwhile all across Europe you have major political parties getting large double digit percentages of the vote running on hateful anti-immigrant platforms, major political candidates pulling stunts like burning the Quran as a party demonstration and football players getting racist expletives shouted at them during their matches. And we haven't started talking about Asia yet. That gets even more special.

So please, tell me more about how this is limited to the United States.

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