[edwardjlsh]

I think in general this site avoids political news unless it's directly related to tech. While I agree the US politics is mad right now, it doesn't "gratify one's intellectual curiosity".

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

[Paul-Craft]

Not related to tech? Excuse me? I'm assuming you're aware of how many immigrants work in the tech industry, right? Two jobs go, I was on a team of 10 where only 2 of us were actual, natural born Americans. Not every team at the company was like that, but, still, there was definitely a large percentage of non-Americans in the engineering and product org, at least.

[edwardjlsh]

What's intellectually stimulating about a professor being deported? I'm not denying it's an issue, it needs to be voiced somewhere, but is a tech forum the place?

The rules:

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

[kccoder]

An asteroid hitting the earth would be on the news, should we not cover that here? How about the administration gunning down explicitly non-tech workers? How about the moon turning into cheese?

The word "probably" is probably being ignored. It is a novel situation (which is also referenced in the rules) that the government is ignoring court orders, multiple court orders, and it is going to effect the vast majority of people on this forum, eventually.

[sitkack]

That isn't what is happening at all, our MAGA supporting members are brigading any story that puts the limited operation in a bad light.

[AnimalMuppet]

I'd like to see your concrete evidence for that claim.

The alternate hypothesis is that regular members are flagging political articles because they're tired of the huge upswing in political articles since January 20.

How are you telling the difference between the two?

[sitkack]

From hanging out on [new] and seeing what gets flagged and what doesn't.

Flagging is just a 100x powerful downvote button that is getting abused by folks that want to change the narrative. I don't know what the karma value is for flagging, but it should be raised and flags should come out of a leaky bucket.

> I'd like to see your concrete evidence for that claim.

Please with the language.

[AnimalMuppet]

> > I'd like to see your concrete evidence for that claim.

> Please with the language.

What do you think is wrong with that language?

And, hanging out on [new] and seeing what gets flagged is not evidence for your claim. It gives you no evidence of who is flagging or why - it only shows you what is getting flagged. That doesn't tell you that MAGA people are doing it, or that they're doing it because it puts something in a bad light. That's just your assumption.

Some of us are just tired of politics here on HN. That doesn't make us MAGA. It doesn't make us Trump supporters. It doesn't mean we support this particular deportation. It just means we don't want to discuss it on HN.

[sitkack]

I also see the comments on those posts trying to downplay and deflect. Other political posts make it through just fine. Anything mentioning Elron gets insta flagged. It is the same exact behavior we so with anything even remotely critical of Israel.

I didn't say you were MAGA, nor did I say that all people flagging are MAGA. I have flagged plenty of stories that were about to or already descended into a toxic mess.

These stories are getting flagged with zero comments, and when unflagged, go on to have interesting conversations.

Flagging is not a solution for seeing stories you are not interested in. Downvoting is.

You know full well that any evidence one is going to have is circumstantial. It is a coy way of saying, "you have no concrete evidence, shutup until you do".

[AnimalMuppet]

Kind of. I was saying that "our MAGA supporting members are brigading any story that puts the limited operation in a bad light" is an accusation of bad faith by the downvoters. Such an accusation is in fact the kind of thing where you should shut up until you have evidence.

"Assume good faith" is part of the site guidelines, after all.

> Flagging is not a solution for seeing stories you are not interested in. Downvoting is.

For comments. For stories, flagging is all you can do.

Also note that I am not the downvoter of these stories. I just don't think that everyone who does can be lumped into your "MAGA supporting" category.

[timeon]

Even stories point out flaws of no-lidar approach with particular brand of cars are being flagged. Is that no tech related?

[edwardjlsh]

Any examples? I'd agree that is bad, yes - except if it's excessively shared and Dang is linking to the main conversation.

[curiousgal]

An H1B Worker getting deported seems preeeetty relevant to tech for me. Unless we think Tech workers themselves are somehow superior to medicine professors and this could never ever happen to them.

[fzeroracer]

I think it's an especially important thing for tech, because Silicon Valley and tech companies in general employ a lot of talent that would be affected by these efforts, whether it's H-1B or naturalized citizens.

Tech workers suddenly not wanting to work in the US or entrepreneurs avoiding conferences and such in the US as a result of an increasingly hostile environment is a great way to crater tech companies as a whole.

[edwardjlsh]

I agree, and an article on tech brain drain to Europe would be interesting! But the worst thing for HN is that it becomes another Reddit, full of posts about US politics and comments about political views with no substance.

The site rules explicitly say news articles are not things we should post.

I was an immigrant in the US (J-2) and agree this is an issue, just not one for HN.