[tomhow]

I don't even know what your position or point was. It’s irrelevant. We're don't moderate for/against any side or position. We just don't have time to take that into account. The guidelines apply regardless of what you're trying to say, and we routinely get these kinds of grandiose claims about our covert motivations and biases, when the reality is far more boring: just preventing this site from turning into a flaming hellscape is a big enough task, without trying to complicate things further by promoting any particular ideology or narrative.

For what it's worth I was here behind the scenes in 2020-21, and I know very well that plenty of effort was made to give all perspectives a fair hearing.

What we're asking for is quite simple. The guidelines are a condition of participating here. A sincere effort to observe them is expected from everyone, otherwise it's fine to choose not to participate.

[isaacremuant]

You realize that you're putting your "boring moderating reality" against the very real claims of goverments and people here to

- Remove people who didn't obey the house imprisonment rules during covid from society.

- Removing their jobs and ability to make a living

- Stealing their money

- Denying their ability to healthcare for any procedure

- Be put in camps permanently until they "complied" because "their body, our choice".

Once you factor that type of attack where no human rights nor Nuremberg trial result was respected, the faux civility and non bias rings absolutely hollow.

I'll try to attack their points with more faux civility like you want because staying silent is what got us there, but sometimes it may come up as more raw, since it's very easy to repeat state euphemisms to destroy people's lives but it's harder to counter permeated propaganda.

Edit: Reading my post again, it's absolutely on point. Hard to regret that. How would you write it?

[tomhow]

Please don't try to turn this into a debate about pandemic policies. You don't know what any of us personally believed about any of it then or now, and it's nothing to do with the issue at hand.

There's no point having any guidelines or standards for the way this place operates if they change based on the particular issue of the day. The purpose of HN's guidelines is that we should be able discuss any topic, no matter how difficult, as long as we do so in the spirit of curiosity.

Outside HN there's no shortage of places where people can engage in ideological battle and vigorous protest, and I'm fully supportive of your right to do whatever you want to do to fight for the issues you believe in. Indeed, you're welcome to fight for what you believe in here too, but the way it's done on HN is through respectful conversation and persuasion, not aggression.

As for your own history here, the first time I can see moderators having to ask you to follow the guidelines is in 2014, so this pattern goes back years before the pandemic. HN is only a place where people want to come to discuss important topics because other people make the effort to raise the standards rather than dragging them down. Please be one of the ones to make this place better, not worse, otherwise you're welcome to choose not to participate here.

[isaacremuant]

Mmmm...

I'll make it short-ish:

- I'll say goodbye for now. You've given me pause and not because I buy into the fake politeness because I think that's BS (If you may grant me that expletive). - I think bringing 11 year old stuff (2014) without actually even putting the comment shows bad faith and an imbalance of power which tells me all I need to know not to engage further. You win. Point proven. You have power. I don't. Go pretend your world is fair and equitable but, if you have a lot of free time, do analyze how much you stopped calls for denying healthcare and putting people on camps the same way you stop someone telling others to parent their kids instead of removing their freedoms.

Au revoir and thanks for all the fish.

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33765437 holy dolphin. Really? Well, honorary deletion. Too much of a hassle. Way to ruin the dramatic exit with bureocracy.