[jacquesm]

You won't be reading about the end of the world on HN either, it will be flagged as off topic. HN is a lot of good things but there are also some very annoying sharp edges and abuse of flagging privileges is definitely one of those. But you take the good with the bad.

[wltr]

I do agree, thanks for formulating this. A brief thought visited me, isn’t that how propaganda works? Like, you’re getting mostly correct info, with some things censored, others saturated.

[jacquesm]

Yes, that is part of it. And part of it is 'useful idiots' doing what the propagandists would do as well.

On HN you will find people from a lot of different countries with a lot of different viewpoints. The main reason politics (and religion) are mostly taboo on here is because those subjects tend to polarize and turn the place into yet another shithole. So I can see why there is a strong push to keep those off the site.

But at the same time I'm realistic enough to know that everything has a political angle and that you can not solve a problem like this by denying its existence. That just makes it a bigger problem.

The mods here have an un-enviable job, they walk a very fine line with an extremely smart audience, and they are doing an absolutely amazing job of it given that most people would fail in that position in about 30 seconds flat. It is as even handed as you could possibly make it. But flagging is not a moderator action, it is the users and I've seen them be abused more than once, either because of personal dislikes or because of brigading.

Even so, you'd be hard pressed to find a place with better discourse on a large variety of subjects.