[dudefeliciano]

these topics are controversial for people who support the current US government, they don't want to see it on their tech-news website (even though it's called hacker news, the spirit of the hacker manifesto is not alive here).

Funnily enough, these flagged topics seem to spark a lot of conversation, and the voices of the government supporters are not heard here...So they just flag and move on, not even trying to defend their position

[direwolf20]

It only takes 4 HN users in support of something to silence opposition to it

[Teever]

That's the acutal number, 4 flags from users allowed to flag with a full weight? Where did you learn that?

[thunky]

> the voices of the government supporters are not heard here

This is sad to me because I really want to hear the other perspective, and there is no place that exists (that I know of) for people who disagree with each other to have a real conversation. Nothing left but echo chambers.

But I think HN falls into this trap because the down vote button is used when people disagree with the other person, which imo is a misappropriation and what prevents people from sharing unpopular opinions.

[archagon]

Respectfully, I think it’s impossible to have “real conversation” on a site where users are (essentially) anonymous, discussions are threaded, and comments are boosted or hidden based on their upvotes. For deep, nuanced discussions where people can actually change their minds, you want a discussion board — but it’s a paradigm that’s difficult to scale, and so isn’t compatible with the modern notion of social media.

[Steltek]

I'd replace "real conversation" with "community". And I think communities don't prohibit anonymity. I think the impossibility is really having a community with a very large active userbase. A macro version of Dunbar's number.

[skibidithink]

The solution if you really want to hear from the other side is to visit their echo chamber.

But most people who talk politics aren't really interested in changing their perspective. That's why these echo chambers exist.

[bigbadfeline]

> The solution if you really want to hear from the other side is to visit their echo chamber.

That's not a solution at all, the point isn't to hear unopposed, highly selective talking points, we know all that already, the media is full of it. The point is to see them defend their positions against fairly simple criticism which they block and the mainstream media doesn't address.

[lovich]

Patriots.win if you want to see what they really think

[colpabar]

This will sound crazy but this is why I still use 4chan. Everyone is anonymous, there is no voting, and the only moderation is to remove illegal things or flagrant rule breaking. It's 99% dogshit (and worse), but if you go into it knowing that, you can find some good stuff sometimes. Not good as in morally good, just sometimes someone will post a link to a video or an article that will actually make me think.

Here, and on reddit, and anywhere with voting or people caring about the number next to their username, it's the most popular opinions at the top and everything else at the bottom or flagged. I genuinely don't understand what people get out of that.

And I guess I should specify that this is also why political topics get flagged. Sure, it probably has a lot to do with people flagging stuff that goes against their beliefs. But I also think that political threads here offer absolutely nothing aside from reaffirming existing beliefs. No one is trying to change anyone's minds, everyone is just yelling at each other. Threads about actual tech stuff can be very interesting and I do learn things from them sometimes. But political threads here are worthless.

edit: I do not mean /pol/, no one should ever go there

[LexiMax]

> This will sound crazy but this is why I still use 4chan. Everyone is anonymous, there is no voting, and the only moderation is to remove illegal things or flagrant rule breaking.

What you see is a mirage.

The problem with 4chan is that the loudest voices are the ones that have no lives, and can flood the board with their bullshit. You could be having a conversation with someone in one thread, meanwhile they're busy posting about the same damn thing in 3-4 other threads at the same time.

And that's assuming the person on the other end is real. These days, there are bot armies of paid shills or AI to worry about, flooding the zone with their narrative to the point where your voice gets drowned out.

You cannot have a decent social space without some form of active moderation and some protection against sockpuppeting. Not every place with both of those gets it right, but without both you're guaranteed to fail, and 4chan has neither.

[xphos]

it would be interesting to see up and down levels rather than just a net effect. That lets a user see this is 50/50 split issue or like 70/30 split maybe it has more substance

[insane_dreamer]

I think the downvote on comments is; it's the flagging that's the problem because it essentially hides the post from the HN community (which is why I now always go to /active instead of the home page).

[thunky]

...replying to my self to point out that ironically my post is being downvoted.

I guess wanting to hear the other side's perspective is not looked upon favorably here, just like everywhere else.

[JKCalhoun]

Be careful though. It's easy to think you know why you are being downvoted (BTW, it looks like the pendulum has swung the other way—you don't look downvoted to me).

When you have a handful of sentences in your post, it may well be the one you're not expecting that triggered the downvotes.

[dogleash]

> voices of the government supporters are not heard here...So they just flag and move on, not even trying to defend their position

Why are you're assuming flagging indicates support of the government?

Maybe they're flagging because it's a topic that will generate much more heat than light. It doesn't have to be deeper than that.

[ndsipa_pomu]

There's a clear pattern of stories that paint oligarchs in a bad light being flagged. Even simple tech-based articles about Tesla get flagged if they highlight a negative about the company or cars.

[zombot]

> not even trying to defend their position

Hard to do when your position is essentially indefensible.

[atomic_reed]

It is defensible.

First, there is no evidence that they were censored because of keywords. Crazily enough, they may have been censored by god (or simply datacenter issues).

Second, if there were such censorship features, then it shows that the US was right to buy TikTok. Imagine if National Socialists or those who are against liberty and justice had access to such features.

Third, we are in a time of great danger, thus requiring great actions. What is the danger? It cannot be explained. What is the solution? To re-use the past. In early 1000s, the Germans were both holy and roman and justly created living space in the East. Hundreds of years later, we started Manifest Destiny. Similar to 南进 of the Vietnamese, we should recognize the job has not been finished. This requires rewriting history. While China existed for 5000 years, the US has existed for 6000. The Jewish, Christian, and American spirits merged together, and people of 100s of different dialects were pulled into the area, and the wave of freedom moved back abroad. This was the formation of the American language, a true melting pot. While many Americans have genetic ties to Europe, they have one difference, a spirit that is free and mobile. Unlike the Europeans who stay in one place and look down at the wandering Roma, the Americans are inherently mobile, experiencing new ways at life. This is the Spirit and what allows for Americans to manifest the destiny of the world from East to West.

[solaris2007]

Most original "hacker" (1980s, 1990s) and open source people are quietly right wing anyway.

[ndsipa_pomu]

Maybe, but the fundamental ideas of sharing knowledge/software and preventing corporate control of technology is far more left wing than right wing.

[zenmac]

Left vs right distinction is not accurate nor does help us to reflect the reality of our current world any more.

Fascism and authoritarianism can come in both left, right, color, sizes, sex and age.

[spacechild1]

like who?

[dudefeliciano]

"Cool? It's commie bullshit." -Hackers.

[xtracto]

My problem with these type of posts in HN is that the discussion doesn't offer ANYTHING constructive.

I comment a lot about these matters on Reddit, and I'm very much against all that's happening in the USA.

But the reality is that the discourse i see here in these types of political posts is the same as on Reddit and the like. (Whether For or against )

It would be great if somehow the discussion added something different. Like the post about Iran censorship and the suggestions on technology to bypass it (I learned about Snowflake) .

But the problem with US related politics is that HN people are very emotionally invested (being Americans most of them) and that makes the discussion become very visceral.

[Schmerika]

> My problem with these type of posts in HN is that the discussion doesn't offer ANYTHING constructive.

They offer a chance for awareness, which is literally step one. Americans are some of the most propagandized people on Earth, and most don't even know it.

It's crucial that the tech community develops more awareness around censorship - no small share of the responsibility is with us.

Censoring stories about censorship, on a premier tech community and investment forum, just because the discussion gets 'visceral' is simply capitulation to any entity willing to try and make a discussion toxic. We need to do a lot better than that.

[jamincan]

I was talking to my uncle last September who is a chaplain in the US Army, and I was shocked by the disparity between what he understood was going on in the US and what I understood. That's not to say that I'm not influenced in certain ways either, but it really cemented my understanding that people in the US (and here in Canada and I'm sure other countries too) are operating within two entirely different realities.

He's not even what I would call MAGA, but it still seemed like a gulf that is impossible to bridge.

[Schmerika]

> people in the US (and here in Canada and I'm sure other countries too) are operating within two entirely different realities

They're not entirely different though. The similarities are critical to understand; the parts where both parties differ wildly from reality in the exact same way.

For example: 98.15% of 2024 voters didn't hold openly arming genocide as a red line for their vote. I don't believe you can blame the 2 party system for that, not entirely - every adult human has an extremely clear moral and legal duty not to be voting for anyone arming genocide.

Speaking to Americans about this will furnish extremely consistent and predictable responses; none of which hold the smallest amount of weight. There is no rationale for genocide, ever. There is never a good reason to enable the mass slaughter of children, the bombing of an entire healthcare system, the mass targeting of journalists and their families, the poisoning of wells, etc etc etc.

Yet no matter how predictable the responses, there's still no getting through. We all know how delusional the MAGA crowd can be - but Biden repeated lies about 40 beheaded babies long after they were debunked to virtually zero pushback. That lie, and the one about mass rape, was used to 'justify' genocide. Millions of people still believe it. No one was ever held responsible for those lies, not so much as a slap on the wrist.

Biden vetoed 4 UN ceasefires against a genocide that had been already called out by virtually every relevant human rights org. And even after those vetoes, people like AOC - the supposed left wing of the supposed left wing party - told us he was "working tirelessly for a ceasefire". The entire political and media class chose to overlook this, and instead get worked up about, Idk, the 8 trans people competing in professional sports instead.

A party that can inspire such loyalty that it's members overlook participation in genocide can only be described as a cult. The blue cultists says the red cult are in a cult, and the red cultists say the blue cultists are in a cult.

And then there's the other third of the voting population - the faction who intensely dislike both parties, but can't be bothered to vote for a third option even against the most documented genocide in history. Absolutely astounding propaganda work.

And that's just regular people. Imagine how much worse it is for people in the military, where only Murdoch media is permitted and you can get jailed for reading things like Wikileaks. Imagine growing up in a 'privileged' elite bubble, where poverty is "necessary" and "deserved", where every billionaire "earned" their wealth, where some families with generational wealth are simply genetically "superior". Ugh.

So yes, many people live in wildly different realities - but the parts where the blue cult and the red cult have the exact same opinions, and so do even the "independents" (again, things like the 'necessity' of tolerating genocide from your leaders, or the socialist evils of feeding hungry children)... Wow. Truly, there is a vast, almost unimaginable gulf between America and the rest of the world.

... And they think they're free. They think the US is hated for its freedoms. It's fascinating, and terrifying - and the tech community has played no small part in every aspect of things getting this way, for decades.

[insane_dreamer]

I don't go to Reddit or other forums that discuss politics. HN is the only forum I visit, and it's important to be aware, and talk about, these issues that involve large tech companies but also have to do with politics, because of the widespread implications. The comments are sometimes informative of what similar things may be happening elsewhere, or technical-oriented perspectives on the matter, which aren't going to come up in a NYT or similar article.