Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

>>dang+(OP)
It's not possible for HN to have "no political position" on issues such as tech.

As the Amazon Go thread, and this comment from PG demonstrate, the default position - where there is no discussion of race / gender / class / diversity - is for the protections that minority groups enjoy to disappear.

Either because no-one thinks to protect them (as white working classes feel has happened to them) or because SV bigwigs see those protections as an inconvenient fact that should be swept away by technological disruption.

pg: "Any industry that still has unions has potential energy that could be released by startups."

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104?lang=en

It's a fallacy to think that HN and hackers can somehow obsolve themselves from that responsibility any more than it thinks it can obsolve itself from responsibility toward homeless in SF.

By all means take the decision you feel you need to to maintain your community - but don't under any circumstances pretend it's a politically neutral one because it just cannot be.

>>kristi+Tn
Do you really feel the political discussion here advances the interests of any of those marginalized groups? I've seen people explicitly change their minds on technical issues due to comments here; politics, not so much. Whatever the solution is, I don't think it can be found on HN. The recent flare up in politics here seems far more likely to make things worse if anything.

I also don't see how it is impossible to restrict discussion to technical issues that are not politically relevant. Here's a few things on the front page receiving quite a bit of discussion right now:

  - R vs. Python for Data Science
  - Why does calloc exist?
  - Mux – A lightweight, fast HTTP request router for Go

I haven't read all the comments, but I think you'd have to try really hard to discuss anything political on those, unless you consider language flamewars political. So there appears to be plenty of things to discuss on HN other than politics without moving to a malignant "default position".

zlacker