The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while raking in both upvotes and downvotes. And even those who refer to it as "the orange site" still come back and comment. In other words, HN may be an echo chamber but it is a pretty big one with a lot of voices in it.
I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discussion, but when technological issues inevitably and undeniably involve politics, either by influencing or being influenced, it seems a little cowardly that the general attitude of HN is "just don't discuss it" when the it in that case is core to the issue at hand, even if it happens to be political.
Example: The advice to get at least 8 hours of sleep at a regular time each night. This reflects:
- the economic privilege of not needing to do irregular shift work
- not having a chronic disease which interrupts sleep
- not being a parent
- having a regular place to sleep at all.
However, it is still a good idea for one’s physical and mental health.
Likewise, a community might reasonably decide that certain political discussions are too acrimonious to have productively. Even if this decision reflects privilege, it might be the only decision under which the community could survive without rupturing.
I feel inclined to agree with your second paragraph, but just don’t know if such discussions are actually productive.
BUT, and this is a big but here, there are a small number of discussions on HN where it can be argued that the politics involved in an issue are more important than the technology. Or, that the technology involved is actively shaping the politics related to it. Or, that the politics of those building the technology are informing the technology. And so on.
And I feel like the attitude here is one mirrored strongly in the tech industry at large, that somehow by not discussing it openly, we avoid the stains and the ugly realities of the situations we're involved in, and I'm sorry but that's just not true. Simply refusing to discuss the political angles of what we all do doesn't mean we're above it or beyond it, we're simply ignoring it, and ignoring politics can have catastrophic consequences.
I definitely agree that tech lately is so intertwined with politics.
What happens if on the 17th, during a big ML conference, a prominent computer vision scientist was able to conclusively prove that x% of current facial datasets are majority white male and that this results in y% increase of false positive rates when identifying nonwhites as criminals?
What happens if on the 19th there is a report delivered by a special UN comissioned research group that issues that global warming has destroyed coral reefs in a way such that they will never recover?
What happens if on the 25th it is definitively revealed through a security report that voting machines were actively hacked to detect if the voter was registered female and made them vote for $party?
What happens if on the 1st Reuters publishes a investigative piece that explores how Microsoft has been delivering accurate censorship algorithms to China and the specific people behind it?
What happens if on the 12th a NIH paper is published unveiling definitive brain architecture differences between male, female, and nonbinary brains due to an innovative computer vision collaboration in MIT?
What happens if on the 14th a scientist who happens to be an assigned-female-at-birth nonbinary latin american publishes the definitive proof that P != NP? Also, this researcher takes 'they' pronouns, so commentors can either use "she" or "they" and both are political statements? (Or is it inappropriate to talk about the researcher and their/her work to discover this at all?)
That is to say- in the article, it was discovered that "what is political debate" turned out to itself be a political debate, because some things are obviously political, and other things are political just by existing and referring to it.