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.
Really? Do you really think that a strength of HN is that it is a haven for the alt-right? This is shocking and extremly scary to me. The alt-right wants me to die. Is this site a haven for those who want to kill off people like me? That's abhorrent. I agree that HN is a haven for the alt-right but I do not think that is a GOOD thing! From Wikipedia,
> The alt-right ... is... white supremacist, white nationalist, white separatist, anti-immigration and sometimes antisemitic movement based in the United States
I do not think that it is a strength of HN that it is a haven for the modern day Nazis of the world. I think it strictly devalues the site and reduces conversation quality here dramatically. Those people do not argue in good faith, they flag climate change articles so we cannot talk about good solutions to real problems facing all of us, and they also convince the moderators to ban discussion of Russia's cyberattacks here. The moderators cave their policies to white supremacists and hard-line rules that minimize the points given and comments written about Russian cyberattacks.
That HN is a "haven for [Nazis and racists]" is decidedly not a good thing.
No, it's not. The alt-right uses anonymous web boards like this one (but not HN to my knowledge) to coordinate and celebrate mass shootings that are directly admitted to be race-focused and white-supremacist-led. (Edit: The alt-right does use HN to spread hate and their "ideology", but I have not seen direct specific calls to violence here)
> Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people.
I don't see how this is relevant at all. Being white has nothing to do with being a white supremacist. There are lots of non-white white-supremacists in the world. You're using logical fallacies like whataboutism and appeals to false authority instead of debating anything of substance.
This happens equally on both ends of the political spectrum, and I would not entwine "coordinate" and "celebrate" so closely. If you have any real exposure to these communities you recognize any "celebration" as a performative stunt by losers (for lack of a better term) who have few other outlets for asserting self-worth. I've never witnessed a crime being publicly coordinated online.
> Being white has nothing to do with being a white supremacist. There are lots of non-white white-supremacists in the world.
Do you take it all these people are uncommonly virtuous martyrs? Authentic mental handicaps totally lacking self-awareness and logical consistency? I'm genuinely curious what you think the story is here, because I've always found this observation interesting.
No, it doesn't. The left is not a racist, hateful group and they do not coordinate and perform mass shootings. This particular problem is not shared equally by both sides.