[olfactory]

> Political discussions usually descend into arguments about competing values. People have different interpretations of the trade-offs, and the friction turns into a lot of heat, without much light.

The same can be said for discussion of any topic that pulls in peoples' identities and not just their rational faculties. It's something we should strive to overcome through thoughtful discussion, feedback, and examples from the community of HN users, not something to suppress or avoid.

Most people go through some period of time in their lives when they are highly emotional/irrational in their analysis of important factual information. It's something to be outgrown, not simply shut down.

Sadly in this case, the mods have not outgrown it and they have been given moderation powers, and rather than respectfully engage with others they use those powers to suppress and intimidate, in the process decimating what was once an occasionally feisty but ultimately respectful community.

It was truly bad judgment to give the mods such power. Unlike the youthful vision that makes young startup founders visionaries, the mods have youthful hubris and a strange, disturbingly machiavellian taste for authoritarian control.

[Retric]

Bitcoin discussions for example have similar limitations and I would be happy to ban them as well. In the end HN has limited bandwidth and there are more interesting things to discuss.

[olfactory]

Not sure how HN has limited bandwidth. It would seemingly be easy to simply ignore Bitcoin discussions if you don't care for the topic. I avoid discussions of Ruby on Rails but do not believe they should be suppressed.

[Karunamon]

There are only a certain number of spaces on the front page, and I think there's a legitimate argument that the vitriol political discussions tend to generate will subtly seep into a community over time. I'd rather see the political garbage relegated to the many other places more suited for it.

This means accepting that certain topics are not a good fit here. Do we really need to re-litigate "what about the jobs?" anytime an AI discussion comes up? Or "what about Trump?" every time Twitter comes up?

[na85]

I agree that there is a need to limit topics that can result in vitriol, but I disagree with the notion that we should blanket-ban stories that are deeply intertwined with tech as an industry or as a concept.

This story about the inexorable scope creep of surveillance technology is far too important to ban discussing simply because some users will be vitriolic.

Surveillance and the technology that enables it will be the defining issue of the next decade.