[dang]

That's a common misperception. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23807579. There is a lot more where that came from.

People make generalizations about HN based on what they see, but they see what they notice and are far more likely to notice what they dislike and weight it more heavily (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Basically that means your image of HN is likely to fill out as an inverse image of your own views. In other words, HN will seem to be full of your enemies. That explains why the other side sees the forum as being made up of their enemies.

Everyone here needs to accept—because it's reality—that the forum is simply divided on divisive topics. It's divided roughly the way that society at large is divided in the many countries whose citizens participate here. No doubt there is some skew (because of factors like education and class), but with the exception of a small number of issues like, say, software patents, it's likely not a major skew. Perceptions of major skew on HN are overwhelmingly rooted in cognitive bias, which explains why they're so contradictory and all over the place.

One reason this is so important is that when someone perceives HN as being dominated by enemies, they are much more likely to go into battle mode. If instead you perceive it as being a more-or-less representative sample of the world, that's still rough—the world is not as we would like it to be—but there's at least a greater possibility of openness. I wrote more about this here, if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

[femiagbabiaka]

I wrote out a longer post, but decided to delete it because it wasn't as charitable as I wanted it to be. Simply put I disagree. What is considered to be divisive is also political.

[dang]

Sure, divisive topics are political, almost by definition. No argument there.

This point is a factual one though. People's perceptions of skew on HN are massively distorted by cognitive bias, and that includes your perceptions if you think that HN is "made up of primarily right wing users".

Please don't underestimate this phenomenon. It's probably the most significant one that I observe here and it's incredible how reliable it is.

For example: you're reacting to two police-related submissions getting flagged and seeing that as a sign of right-wing users dominating the site. (Actually, I can tell you for certain that some of the users flagging these are left-wing users who must have other reasons for flagging it.) Meanwhile you're not counting the many major threads that HN has had about police brutality in the last couple months. There was one yesterday, in fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860829.

If you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962, you'll find an analysis I did a few weeks ago showing how George Floyd-related topics, including police brutality, were by far the most-discussed topics on HN in the previous month. That's a fact—and yet it doesn't stop people from claiming, not just that the topics are underrepresented (which would already be completely mistaken) but that they are being completely suppressed! ("aggressively removed from discussion", one complaint said.)

That is the bias I'm talking about in action. You simply can't go by what you notice and dislike (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If you do, you may well end up with a picture that it is the exact opposite of what's really going on here. Needless to say, I'm not talking about you personally, but about all of us.