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by nitrobeast 2190 days ago
Just an observation, it seems HN is more interested in topics semi-related to China than BLM or policing reform. I wonder if this reflects something about HN readers.
4 comments

I'd be cautious about drawing conclusions from what you happen to notice. People's general conceptions of HN are mostly drawn from things they saw that they disagreed with. There have been plenty of BLM-related threads also, and I'm sure there will be more.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Ok, I guess it is my bias.
Many of us live in the SF Bay Area, where the Chinese population is much larger than the black population.
That is a red herring in at least four ways:

At most 10% of the HN community is in the Bay Area, last I ran the numbers.

People in the Bay Area are extremely aware of BLM, police reform, and related issues.

There's no reason to believe that interest in China-related topics is coming more from the Bay Area than elsewhere.

Interest in these topics is not about local demographics.

Interesting. I would have guessed more like a third of the community, but you'd know better than me.
HN tries to avoid topics that turn into flamewars. True, topics around China often turn into flamewars. But BLM and policing reform are even more likely to do so.
I think HN readers are smart enough to discern the relative difference in threat between redneck cops and a nuclear-armed, fascist state.

Also if you think tech isn't concered about "BLM" then you haven't visited a single tech website in the past two weeks. There are banners and calls for change everywhere...

I'm certainly concerned about both the out of control nuclear-armed fascist state and about China.