[weberer]

It was obviously a targeted, coordinated attack. People were looking decades back into his donation history to try to find anything that tied him to "the right wing". A thousand dollars a decade before to a anti-gay-marriage proposition in California that most Californians agreed with him on at the time. A few thousand dollars two decades back to Ron Paul. Why do you claim he should "suffer" for that? Should half the country "suffer" as well just for voting Republican?

Meanwhile, around the same time, Bill Gates was meeting with Epstein, and that received less than 1/10th of the media coverage. He was sending emails about "staying late into the night" at Epstein's house with a woman and her underaged daughter. But that's ok, because he's on "our side".

[benwad]

It's not about making people suffer. Eich used his wealth to lobby for something that many people find objectionable. Mozilla is quite an ideological company (many who work there are probably somewhat driven by the "mission" rather than necessarily the company's financial performance), and so the CEO publicly supporting criminalising same-sex marriage could affect hiring and staff morale.

It's not like his career has been destroyed. He's still incredibly wealthy, and has a new browser company. People can use that, and work there, if they want.

[TMWNN]

>Eich used his wealth to lobby for something that many people find objectionable.

Something which a majority of Californians in 2008 voted for, so your many people were the minority.

But even were that not the case, where should the line be drawn? Even if Eich's view were held by 1% and not the 52.24% that voted for it in 2008, should Eich have been fired for holding that position? Yes or no?

[friend_and_foe]

> publicly supporting criminalizing same sex marriage

Same sex marriage simply wasn't a thing legally at the time, and was an issue the american public was discussing. It was not something in the process of being criminalized. The population of California voted not to allow it in the year we are talking about here, just to give you some perspective. Barack Obama opposed it politically.

[Turing_Machine]

> a anti-gay-marriage proposition in California that most Californians agreed with him on at the time.

Not just most Californians.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both agreed with him at the time.

Oddly, neither of those people has been hounded from public life.

[hilux]

I don't think Bill Gates' behavior is okay - and that was true long before the Epstein revelations.

Where have anti-homophobes said that "Bill Gates' behavior is okay because he's 'on our side'"? Do you have a single example?

[weberer]

My example was the media coverage of these two events. Look at how the Guardian covers Eich in the article linked in a comment above. Pay attention at how they go out of their way to throw out labels like "right wing". Now try to find a single article from the Guardian that so strongly rebukes Gates. If his behavior is not OK, then why don't they address it?

[hilux]

Yes, I agree that the liberal aka mainstream media have lost their way, in the sense of favoring political positions rather than what's objectively true.

This became obvious in the coverage of Trump and then Russia's war on Ukraine. If everything I've read for years was true, both Trump and Russia would have been finished long ago. But they're clearly not.

[djkivi]

Maybe everything you've read for years isn't true?

[archagon]

I don't have strong opinions about the Eich situation. But:

> Should half the country "suffer" as well just for voting Republican?

In the past, probably not. With today's Republicans? Absolutely. You don't get to knowingly vote for a fascist and his corrupt sycophants and face no repercussions. If your politics are "I don't give a fuck about democracy unless I win," our world views are entirely incompatible and I don't want to give you an iota of support.

[dang]

Your account has swerved into using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. I don't know why, but it's dismaying, because you've been a great contributor in the past but now you're posting more battle comments than not.

This is not allowed on HN, regardless of which politics you're for or against, or how right you are or feel you are. We have to ban accounts that post like this and I definitely don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop posting like this, that would be good.

[archagon]

I’ve been seeing more and more topics that are strictly politics on the front page, such as this, despite being flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40052403

If “political and ideological battle” is not allowed, then why not ban these topic entirely?

[dang]

I've written about this extensively over the years:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

If you look over that material and still have a question that hasn't been answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

The short version is: (1) some political overlap is inevitable* and ok, but (2) even in those threads, battle-style or flamewar-style comments are not ok, and (3) using HN primarily for such purposes is not allowed and we ban accounts that do. Your account has been on the wrong side of both (2) and (3), which is why I replied to you.

It's a common perception that "HN is getting more political lately" but I think that's an illusion which goes back a long way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869. It's a product of sample bias plus random fluctuation.

* Btw, that is the answer to your question "why not ban [political] topics entirely"—it can't be done. For one thing, there's no agreement about what counts as "politics"; for another, many stories that are clearly on-topic for HN have political aspects. Trying to exclude the political altogether would actually be a surefire way to intensely politicize this place, as we discovered when we once briefly (for a couple days) tried an experiment in doing so. That was quite a learning experience.