[tyleraldrich]

> left-leaning google/facebook/youtube/twitter using alt-right as a banner to ban conservatives

What? Citation needed. I haven't heard of any conservatives getting banned from these services due to their political affiliation.

> Then when programmers are on a list, or a project doesn't support the diversity license, you get banned from github, hackathons or talks.

Again, what? Has this happened? I've never heard of this, and this seems like fairly extreme hyperbole.

What is your argument here? Tech companies are against conservative americans? If reading HN has taught me anything, the tech scene is full of conservatives and libertarians.

[malvosenior]

> Citation needed

James Damore was fired from Google for posting his opinion to a mailing list about the topic in question.

Brendan Eich was forced out of Mozilla for voting the “wrong” way years earlier.

Look into “opal-gate” or “dongle-gate”.

Look into Strange Loop banning speakers.

The threat of being fired or hurt professionally for not being left leaning is very real.

EDIT:

My comment providing the requested citations is now being aggressively downvoted. Just further proof that it’s most definitely not ok to question the left in this industry. I simply listed incidents that have happened.

[Danihan]

Even on YC. For a long while, you couldn't adopt any sort of conservative stance without a moderator (who is a self-admitted socialist on his startup bio) potentially banning you for being "inflammatory."

[dang]

Unless I'm missing something that's not true at all. Who are you talking about?

We ban accounts when they break the site rules at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We don't ban people for ideological reasons. That has the ironic effect of leading most partisans to see us as secretly aligned with the opposite ideology, but what can you do.

[Banthum]

I had an account before this one that was shadowbanned one day with no notification at all.

I hadn't broken any stated rules. I had posted some points about IQ, which would be considered offensive or "harmful" from the leftist viewpoints that dominate the San Francisco tech overculture.

Probably this rule was the excuse: "We ban accounts that use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle, regardless of which politics they favor."

However, it seems very unlikely that this rule is enforced in an even-handed manner.

Thankfully, I haven't had this account banned yet, which is nice at least. But it does happen.

[dang]

When people post comments like this they never supply links. Usually this is because what actually happened doesn't fit their narrative. What actually happened is almost always that they violated the site guidelines in a way that is plain to the majority of the audience here.

[Banthum]

Here's your link: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Snargorf

Certainly I made points that are culture war relevant a few times, but I think that account is clearly still within the rules. Certainly no rules were blatantly broken. I am human, but I've always engaged in good faith.

A warning, at least, would've been appropriate. But, it just got flat silent shadowbanned after a decent history of participation. I'd still love to know why.

Side note: "the majority of the audience agrees it's rule-breaking" should not be the standard you apply to determine what's rule-breaking. That's just a recipe for ideological uniformity; an obvious slippery slope into the space being being under the exclusive power of one tribe or another. A healthy discussion space needs moderators who will take unpopular positions and stick to the rules as written, in an even-handed way.

[fareesh]

> What? Citation needed. I haven't heard of any conservatives getting banned from these services due to their political affiliation.

See: Professor Gad Saad, whose YouTube videos are regularly demonetized. Sometimes they are demonetized while they are processing. Dennis Prager's "Prager University" is currently suing Google for a similar situation with their channel (https://www.prageru.com/press-release-prager-university-prag... and https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/10/14/youtube-rest...)

> Again, what? Has this happened? I've never heard of this, and this seems like fairly extreme hyperbole.

There is this tweet from the npm CEO, which I subjectively find quite disgusting. Not that it affects me, but I care about javascript and node, not the identity or background of the speaker. I would even listen to Pol Pot if he gave a good talk on these subjects. https://twitter.com/izs/status/911105515798720513

Then there was this incident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868. The link of the submission is no longer relevant, but the first comment is consistent with how I also feel about the subject. It covers what happened as well.

> What is your argument here? Tech companies are against conservative americans? If reading HN has taught me anything, the tech scene is full of conservatives and libertarians.

That does not counter the points made. They exist, but they are censored, so it is not in anyone's interest in terms of job security or career advancement, to express their conservative views. Diversity and multiculturalism is essentially the equivalent of halal or kosher now. If it isn't there, seemingly nothing can be done. In general, conservatives these days don't subscribe to these ideas of classification on the basis of various identity properties, but if you do not think this way, there seems to be no place for you. James Damore is a good example of this as well. You are apparently not allowed to think differently, which is sort of ironic, coming from the birthplace of Apple.

[fzeroracer]

Would you believe that if I cherry picked a few examples of left-leaning people being censored or harassed out of their company that there exists large, right-leaning groups and companies whose sole purpose is to censor people even slightly left of center?

For example, there are a fair amount of liberal channels being demonetized on youtube as well.

[fareesh]

You are free to make that case if you believe it has merit. I can reinforce mine with plenty of examples and lots of other evidence. I am for freedom of speech in principle. Nobody should be censored for discussing a political opinion.

[neveroffensive]

> You are apparently not allowed to think differently, which is sort of ironic, coming from the birthplace of Apple.

I hate to be "that guy", talking about the "normies" invading his favorite community, but I feel like this is essentially what happened in tech. The shear value of the industry has mandated the involvement of more conventional groups. It's no longer a space of cold logical computer nerds, emotion and ideology has crept in.

My main point is, I don't think that the innovators, or the "different thinking" is gone at all, it's just been overwhelmed by the cookie cutter college intellectuals we churn out these days. I mean lets face it a College education isn't what it used to be...

I'm not trying to say that computer nerds are somehow smarter than other people, or that College grads today are idiots. My College GPA alone would suggest I'm the idiot. I'm more talking about the death of cold logic, doing whats effective, and living ones own life, which seemed to be the mantra of the old school libertarian "big thinkers".

And yes, I do hate myself for using the term "normies". I'm washing my keyboard with bleach as we speak.

[neveroffensive]

> If reading HN has taught me anything, the tech scene is full of conservatives and libertarians.

In my experience, libertarians yes, conservatives not so much. Also, libertarians have to tread extremely carefully in tech. The true libertarian perspective doesn't fit with the new left at all, and can be easily misinterpreted as supporting racism/harassment etc... Try making a joke about dongles with a friend at a conference (totally fine from the libertarian perspective), and watch the dominate ideology of the left in tech crush you...

[IronWolve]

Wasn't an argument, but I seem to have ruffled your feathers with my statement. I can tell you are a tad upset by your tone and inflammatory argumentive leaning questions.

Instead of countering my statement, you implied since you never heard of such things happening, it doesn't happen. This is the same argument the left uses for whites not knowing about police violence on minorities. Which is true, minorities are pulled over more by police and have a different viewpoint, just because I/we don't see/know about it, doesn't mean people need to be called out as liars.

This is exactly the "us" vs. "them" in action. Since it doesn't fit your view, its a "them" Argument.

But to answer you for some examples, not sure if you really asked in good faith, but here are some.

Check out Google engineer ousted, James Damore a liberal engineer spoke out about diversity and now is classified as alt-right hero. I would clearly say hes no alt-right or even conservative, but he is now "Them".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/08...

Check out Drupal developer ousted. http://reason.com/blog/2017/04/18/drupal-developer-ousted-ov...

For Github diversity training thats slanted against whites. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/44ttzj/racist_diversi...

Code of Conduct war that happened in Ruby. It gets worse, but here is an example. https://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004

Now I won't say google these topics, because google will return from the anti-right viewpoints. Example, If you tried to google gamergate you would think gamers hate women. Try reading /r/KotakuInAction/ over on reddit for these types of stories, they happen all the time. The sub is very middle of the road and will call both sides bullshit out. Which is refreshing.

The "US" vs. "Them" has invaded all my hobbies, news, and entertainment. And I'm sure I'm not the only tech person around who feels the same. Facebook alone has turned to shit.