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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

This wouldn't be on-topic for HN even if it wasn't running in "Newsweek" --- even if a sitting senator had said it, mere proposals are explicitly off-topic --- but I always feel like it's useful to call out the fact that "Newsweek" is a grift publication. The Newsweek your parents read went out of business a decade and a half ago, and was purchased by a cult and run as an SEO farm.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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The guidelines have:

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

You could argue it's an interesting new phenomenon?

The same story is in loads of publications.

Why is a proposal off-topic? Who decides what is on-topic and off-topic? It seems quite relevant to me, since the administration regularly has people putting out statements that either test the waters or try to normalize some idea. And those statements have significant impact on many readers of HN.

I would change that classification from "mere proposal" to "credible threat".

I'm honestly disappointed to see this flagged. What's the saying, "Even an SEO farm is right twice a day"?

Agreed. Bannon has substantial political influence, and they definitely know that. The parent's comments have a history of unnecessarily concern-trolling posts they don't like, instead of flagging them or moving on.

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