[Dalewyn]

The thread is about a tuberculosis outbreak in the US. Subsequent comments include conversations about a US federal government department agency publishing (or not) data on that outbreak.

This is all taking place on an online forum hosted in the US and managed by US entities.

And you (and like minded individuals) expect to not see US politics?

I appreciate that the US has an outsized presence on the intertubez, but you also need to realize you're first of all talking in the midst of Americans.

[gonzobonzo]

You can read the MMWR reports, the OP linked to them: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html

The ones that were published in the weeks prior to the current administration weren't talking about the Kansas tuberculosis outbreak either.

So we're not really discussing the "US federal government department agency publishing (or not) data on that outbreak." Someone's implying that's what happened, and then people are spinning off into political discussions without even looking into the link they provided to see if that was actually the case.

It's not just going off topic to discuss politics. People are actively spreading misinformation to justify going off topic to discuss politics, and lots of other people are joining in without bothering to check if what was claimed is actually true. Two-thirds of the comments now are using the claims about the MMWR to discuss politics, and it doesn't look like anyone actually looked at the MMWR to see what it actually is.

[Dalewyn]

I at least didn't read any of the links because I couldn't care less beyond seeing what everyone was talking about in a thread about tuberculosis in the US.

My point still stands that if someone doesn't want to see conversations regarding the US, politics or otherwise, maybe he should stay out of threads regarding the US and maybe also find other forums not hosted in America and managed by Americans where the vast majority of participants will be Americans.

It's like taking a trip to Mars and complaining that all the dirt is red, y'know?

[dmix]

That’s a wholly unambitious worldview

Online communities need constant self checking and introspection to not go off the deepend. This isn’t like Reddit where you can unsubscribe from the crazy big politics subreddits or unfollow people on Twitter. I still think the old ideal of HN where we have some higher goal than yet another US political rant forum is still worth fighting for.

> I couldn't care less beyond seeing what everyone was talking about in a thread about tuberculosis in the US.

I was interested in the issue in Kansas because I read the article. 66 people almost entirely in 2 counties isn’t exactly a national statistics collection issue

[johnnyanmac]

This is HN and I'm sure there are all kinds of filters people have made as add-ons if news like this truly bothers you. Users here are more than likely to make their own as well. You can also always reach out to Dang for feature requests. I'm never going to not want more flexibility in my newsfeed.

>. 66 people almost entirely in 2 counties isn’t exactly a national statistics collection issue

Patient zero starts somewhere. It's not national news per se when a few individuals die of an unidentified disease either.

[dmix]

Meh I don’t need 3rd party plugins, I spent years using them on HN and my iPhone doesn’t have browser plugins.

I don’t care enough anyway I just use HN less and less every year like all the old userbase. The only old usernames I recognize at the top of threads these days are the ones who like the politics stuff (I could list at least 4-5). Just my own nostalgia for a dying small community of thoughtful nerds.

[johnnyanmac]

I'm sorry to hear that but it seems that's simply a natural part of the internet. Even 4 Chan was susceptible to this cultural shift and it seems the whole point was the gatekeep as much as possible.

[Dalewyn]

>This isn’t like Reddit where you can unsubscribe from the crazy big politics subreddits or unfollow people on Twitter.

Sure it is. This is the internet, Hacker News is just one website someone could choose not to patronize among countless others.

If you don't want to see US centric conversations, don't patronize American websites like Hacker News and certainly centralized American services like Reddit or X.