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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Front page of HN…

I'm new to HN. Does it always get like this before US elections?

I was really enjoying the apolitical vibes, but then that all went off a cliff about two weeks ago. Hard to tell if it's astroturfing or if it's just on people's minds.

I'm surprised you've had an apolitical experience up until two weeks ago. HN has always had politics creep onto the front page, less so during the off-season, but still pretty present IME. Especially prevalent over the last two years. Lots of side conversation bickering in random threads.

I guess I just expect a high baseline from...everything else. It's hard to avoid these days.

It's definitely been increasing compared to what it used to be, but this may also be natural consequence of the fact that big tech itself has become much more "political". It didn't use to be the case that the owners and managers of technology corporations displayed their political preferences quite so brazenly (in the case of Elon Musk, even to the point of taking on a leading government position).

Of course, corporations have always had policy preferences, but those tended to be mostly about taxation and regulation, where debate is less emotionally charged, and compromise is more achievable. These days, though, it seems that tech and political culture have become almost inextricably linked.

We're (sadly) living in interesting times…

Because the us government leaders have become extreme and have also taken drastic steps that effect the economy in bad ways, people naturally post more on this in more places since often people only start caring and talking about things when it effects them economically

Apolitical vibes is a luxury that's hard to keep up given the level of insanity all around us.

It's pretty hard to ignore if your government not only intertwines with the tech industry in ways that no government should with any industry, but even starts changing language used in the field by decree [0] in a 1984-esque way. Us non-USers run into these kind of things on platforms we use everyday (platforms that are gracefully provided by the US, for sure! Although we have our own here in the EU, the US still sets the standard... for now) like [1].

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inau...

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

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