[krapp]

>Otherwise it quickly becomes politics all day everyday.

No, it doesn't. This is one of Hacker News' weird phobias but it doesn't reflect reality. I know the mods believe it too so there's no point in debating it but even Reddit isn't politics all day every day. The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism. This thread is not a flamewar, the posted article isn't low quality (certainly not on a forum where posting Twitter posts and Wikipedia articles is allowed,) and it poses literally no threat to the community, but HN still treats it like a cancer.

[tomhow]

> The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism

As if by magic ;)

> This thread is not a flamewar, the posted article isn't low quality... it poses literally no threat to the community, but HN still treats it like a cancer

These threads are bad for HN because they’re not new topics and they don’t yield new insights. The question of whether this label applies to this administration has been discussed for over a decade. What difference does it make to talk about it again? Who is going to be changing their mind or their plans now, in response to this post? Do we ever see any interesting new ideas in these threads?

If we had a steady supply of articles that spawned discussions on HN that could generate new ideas about how to address the political/economic dysfunction we see all over the world, we’d happily have them on the front page every day.

[maratc]

> The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism.

It looks like the community has deployed its self-correcting mechanism in this case.

[JKCalhoun]

The flagging mechanism, as it exists, feels a little… cowardly (?) to me.

What if, instead of the existing mechanism, we posted in the comments, "Please Flag", and follow that with our rationale.

Mods could "read the room" (so to speak) and flag the article. You might still argue as to whether an article should have been flagged but at least the receipts exist to show why the mods acted.

[cosmicgadget]

133 points, 66 comments. Maybe people want to discuss fascism.

[maratc]

Most of them downvoted, including yours (and mine).

This is like a poster example of posts and discussions that we want less of here, not more.

[krapp]

That isn't what I meant, but I know that's the only way it can be interpreted.

The culture here is so deeply self-sabotaging because it's so deeply afraid to be human. It really gets depressing sometimes.

Good day.

[noosphr]

Politics junkies are the least human people around.

[Schmerika]

America does have basically every characteristic of fascism on every important list of fascism characteristics ever made.

That's actually kind of important to the tech community, considering we are wildly complicit in this.

So, maybe consider that more than "politics junkies" might be interested in this, and that the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged (very easily done).

[Henchman21]

Complicit? How about “proximate cause of”?

[Schmerika]

Sure.

[ethbr1]

> That's actually kind of important to the tech community, considering we are wildly complicit in this.

This should be why modern fascism is of interest to the HN community.

Pretending tools exist in a vacuum is shirking ones ethical responsibility for employing ones skills.

Code is politics by other means.

It's disgusting that we have people who avoid taking ethical ownership of their work on adtech, surveillance capitalism, etc.

"If not me then someone else?"

Then let it be someone else, or admit you're making the world worst in exchange for a bigger paycheck.

[maratc]

> the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged

Interestingly, this "anyone with an opinion different from mine must be a paid shill" argument doesn't pop quite as often in the discussions about Clovis Culture tools, Roman Empire letters, or pre-Linotype typesetting -- the fact that makes me think that maybe keeping politics out of HN is actually a good thing.

[tastyface]

Meanwhile, America's tech CEOs are gifting the president with gold statues and accompanying him on diplomatic trips.

[Schmerika]

> "anyone with an opinion different from mine must be a paid shill"

Not remotely what I said. One of the better HN guidelines here is to try and interpret comments you read in the best possible light. I recommend it.

What I actually said is simply correct - there are tech billionaires who do have strong reasons to flag certain topics on HN.

And there's no way to stop them from doing so. We rely solely on 100% opaque moderation to unflag stories.

There's no shortage of people who have complained about how often threads concerning Musk, DOGE, the Lawnmower guy, Thiel, certain genocidal countries etc get wiped from here...

Do you see those threads? Unless you have [showdead] on, and browse /active, almost certainly not... Because they get flagged, and they're not put back. Discussion of how HN's flagging system works - or doesn't - is explicitly banned at the post level. You can only talk about it in comments.

So, no, that isn't just my opinion, or paranoia. And the fact that you don't know how often those stories are unfairly flagged and never put back is actually evidence of the tightness of the blinkers here. It's been crazy this past year - just try looking at my favorites.