[endrebak]

What you can't say: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

"Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told."

[vox_mollis]

Absolutely agree with this, as being his best essay.

The unfortunate fact, however, is that both moderators and participants of pg's own discussion site seem to have never read it, or never taken it to heart. There are definitely things you're not allowed to say here. The notion of open discussion of ideas does not exist.

[S4M]

> There are definitely things you're not allowed to say here.

Any example? I am genuinely interested.

[Mz]

I suspect that is a misinterpretation of moderating practices here. As long as you aren't doing things like engaging in personal attacks, you are allowed to express yourself pretty freely here. However, they do penalize articles on certain subjects, in part because the discussion of some subjects typically does not go well.

It is sort of like "Yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater is not a protected form of free speech." Putting inflammatory topics with inflammatory titles etc on HN will get it downmodded (or they will change the title to something less inflammatory, etc). That doesn't mean you can't say it. It does mean they want the front page to be dominated by intelligent, meaty discussion, not ranty, fighty, strongly emotional drivel.

When things get downmodded in order to get less attention by removing them from the front page, inevitably, someone says something about how their right to free speech is being impeded or "Why can't we talk about this here?" I have seen the moderator reply to the effect of "You are talking about it still, it just isn't on the front page anymore."

Some people think "right to free speech = right to be on the front page if I get enough upvotes, no matter how much I have violated the guidelines" and will say something nasty about how things are moderated if their desire to be attention whores has been interfered with by the folks who, you know, get paid to run the place as they see fit.

[vox_mollis]

Most recently, you're not allowed to discuss hypothetical police involvement in the death of Ian Murdock.

In the past, you're not allowed to talk about: - Women/minorities in tech - Israel - Brendan Eich - Crime statistics - Immigration

[fucking_tragedy]

Anything related to tech unionization or is critical of the free market has a way of disappearing.

[beeboop]

I believe they have said the have automatic point penalties for things involving NSA/mass surveillance (could be remembering that wrong)

[eecks]

What? Why on earth would they have that?

[beeboop]

Because it is the moderator's opinion that such content is not very relevant to HN and gets disproportionality upvoted. Basically they disagree with the enthusiasm of privacy advocates.

[endrebak]

There was even a review paper on group differences in genetic markers for cognitive traits posted on HN. How do you get more controversial than that?

[eecks]

I feel like it is a bit too generic