[olalonde]

I saw the comment you are referring to and it was most likely wrong. The majority of Chinese people are genuinely "pro-China" and there are vastly more regular Chinese people than professional sockpuppets.

That being said, I do agree with keeping politics off HN and wish it was enforced a bit more strictly.

[pstuart]

Information warfare is both political and technological. It's happening all about and is worth discussing in a mindful manner.

[luckylion]

There is a difference between discussing information warfare and being a soldier on the battlefield though. "Keeping the politics out", to me at least, means "let's not make this place the battleground". I'd welcome that as well.

[cbluth]

I agree.

Let's not silence ourselves.

[adamsea]

Intentionally or not, I believe not talking about politics is politics, because not talking about something strengthens whatever the status quo - good or bad - at that time is.

I’m not advocating for constant political discussions on hacker news. But to pretend that technology can be separated from politics is to hold a false belief about reality.

Politics is fundamentally about social groups, power, and the ethical beliefs and norms of groups of people.

I believe that cultivating civility, genuine listening, and self-doubt in our hacker news community would ultimately be more constructive than pretending that our action or inaction - especially as technologists in this day and age - has no effect on our fellow human beings.

[olalonde]

> Intentionally or not, I believe not talking about X is X [...]

That's extremist talk. HN is just one of many online communities, many of which encourage political debate. Technology can often be separated from politics as demonstrated by the majority of submissions here.

[adamsea]

To say that humans are social by nature and require communities, is not extremist - it's simply science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

"Humans uniquely use such systems of symbolic communication as language and art to express themselves and exchange ideas, and also organize themselves into purposeful groups. Humans create complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families and kinship networks to political states."

To say that all human communities will have politics, is not extremist - it's simply language:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics

"Politics is a set of activities associated with the governance of a country or an area. It involves making decisions that apply to members of a group."

Politics, as in the process of group decision-making, is part of what it means to be human.

You could even say that you and I are engaging in a political discussion right now ;).