[dcminter]

That's absolutely the kind of thing I would flag and I'm very much a left winger. The posting guidelines⁰ explicitly say: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." You don't need a conspiracy to account for this kind of thing disappearing swiftly.

⁰ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[memesarecool]

I'm not a left winger just anti-fascist; and I posted the question because I am curious about the thoughts of the employees. I don't want to discuss the gesture. There's a lot of discussion here about work environment and career decisions and this is what I was asking about. I think it was a valid question and a shame it got self-censored by part of the community.

edit: this was the OP btw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42781509

[dcminter]

You wouldn't find out, you'd just get to see a lot of people talking across each other. Those kinds of destructive conversations then colour the other non-political discussions.

[computerthings]

> Those kinds of destructive conversations then colour the other non-political discussions.

How so? I honestly don't see what mechanism could lead to that. Are you saying that people would remember user names they disagreed with on political topics they care deeply about, hold a grudge, and then that would "color" their reply to someone (who is their "political enemy") about code etc.? I mean, I get the idea that people might be petty and personal, but how would they express that in an non-political topic? What is this "coloring"? Can you give an example?

I do see the opposite being possible, easily: if people aren't allowed to discuss something like Elon's Hitler salute in a dedicated topic freely, then they'll probably use the opportunity to bring it up in other topics about something else Musk/SpaceX/Tesla did. I see this all the time, for every topic where I'm bothered that discussion is flagged, it's a.) still discussed by people arriving there via search, and b.) brought up in orders of magnitude more unrelated threads, usually garnering approval rather than downvotes. It's HackerNews after all, not StartTheWizardAndClickOKNews after all.

[computerthings]

They do the same hand waving in the news mostly. They are not "covering" it any more someone saying "install malware, it's fine!" would be "covering" the subject of computer security. They're covering it up more than covering it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42777716

^ And do you think this is covered in the news? Of course it is, the same is true for thousands of other topics discussed last year. You don't need a conspiracy to apply the generic verbiage in the guidelines arbitrarily, just double standards.