The entire world runs on technology now. It's all inherently political.
And which politics? American internal politics are foreign and distant to me. How much do you care about my country internal affairs? Probably not much. And it's OK, you can't fix every country in existence, and if you tried to care you would get insane.
The reason "no politics" zones exist is because there are enough people going out of their way to shout at everybody, everywhere, in every corner of the internet and enough people are tired of it that they flock to...no politics zones. In real life, a person like that confronts you...you remove yourself from the situation, because that person who can't stop shouting at everybody comes across as nuts.
"My children are starving. Militants have surrounded our village. But let me pop into HN for a bit and drop my hot take on the San Remo Pasta Measurer."
Not to mention every leader of YCombinator has had some kind of wild politics that come from having money that separates you from any kind of consequence.
Also, I totally understand pruning back discussion that is political, and way off the topic of the actual post/story. People should reasonably be able to read and discuss a non-political story without big political discussion springing up.
I'd agree with your no politics preference if we were in a functioning society that wasn't actively spiralling towards fascism. I recognize that this line is blurry, and that's exactly the reason why no politics zones exist, there is always someone yelling about fascism. He might be a crazy guy on the corner who yells about everything.
I think the difference here is that there is a big critical mass of people who have recognized that the pillars on which our country sit are being actively sabotaged. It's not that everyone wants to be talking about politics all of a sudden, it's that the frog is finally boiling.
Everything we do is political. When we are making software and publishing it, whether or a company or ourselves, for sale or for free, there are political implications to those actions.
But this simply isn't the case. The fact that "no politics" zones exist is a response to the fact that politics is everywhere else.
People here aren't blissfully unaware, they're just tired of it and many realize that arguing about it on the internet won't accomplish anything other than wasting time. As I sit here writing this, I'm thinking that I'm probably wasting my time.
We all have this idea in our head that if people are confronted with enough evidence, they'll change their minds. But that doesn't happen. People rationalize.
My goodness, people attack RFK Jr non-stop simply because he's part of the Trump administration and all he's done for his entire life is try to help the country be healthier. Every point he's made, every plan he's had and every policy he has advocated for have been totally logically sound. There's been nothing extreme in any of it. Every young parent I know is so relieved with what he's doing and frustrated that it took so long to do what seemed obvious.
But it's not that. It's inflammatory headline after inflammatory headline. It's putting words in his mouth, saying things he didn't say, making statements he didn't make, berating him in front of Congress for click bait video nonsense reading from a script.
It's exhausting. We're all tired of it. If you show me something that you think will convince me of something, I will look at it. And then I will look deeper. I will look to see if any information has been left out. I will look to see if editing has happened.
Because almost every time I invest the time to look into something, I find that it's exaggerated internet nonsense that only plays well in echo chambers. When you do that enough times, your skepticism meter goes to 11.
HN does not have, and never has had (except for a very brief experiment that failed spectacularly and was very quickly aborted) a “no politics” rule, and, in fact, politics is usually all over the site.
That said, there's a disappointingly significant number of HN members who hew to the latter and embrace the current regime. I consider this to be a forum of intellectual engagement, and that those people walk amongst us is quite distressing.
And besides, what does discussing technology itself have anything to do with it? If you work at big tech you're not allowed to particpate in tech forum as a hobby?
We already discuss politics here as it has to do with tech (privacy is a pretty common topic here for example).
I generally try to assume that everyone has good intentions, but we’re all being fed massive amounts of different information. I learned years ago that it wasn’t an issue of people reporting things that were factually inaccurate, it was an issue of people leaving out details to frame the story in the context that supports your readers/viewers belief system.
And then there are the Stanford studies like this:
Right, but we should be able to shame, ostracize, and criticize the people that do work at those places because if we don't then it's a tacit approval of what they do.
You know that saying about how if you have three people sharing a bench with a Nazi, you actually have four Nazis? Tech has social and political ramifications, the discussion of which is artificially suppressed on HN.
Most of the time you can't do that here. Try saying something negative about Sam Altman, for example. dang has certain topics he just won't permit and then hides behind the excuse of "if everyone is upset with you, you must be doing something right".
>If you work at big tech you're not allowed to particpate in tech forum as a hobby?
I don't understand what you mean, can you please clarify?
There's a nuance to this -- the current political environment is not normal and cannot be emphasized enough. The GOP is now a cult of personality and there is no allegiance to country by its members. Its all to one man, who many believe is wholly unqualified for the job.
Its a well-documented phenomenon that millions of people have joined this cult -- many coming from the other side of the aisle. There is no possible reasoning, dialog, or engagement that can make them reconsider.
I would be classified as a "Lefty" if evaluated on my values, but I actually believe in the value of old school conservatism as of "limited government", the value of families, and the ability to have their own personal relationship with God (I am an atheist but I get it).
One of the things that makes America great is the Constitution -- that we are ostensibly a nation governed by law. The current regime does not share those values and is actively hostile to all who do not worship or pay tribute to their leader.
I've been following US politics for half a century and what's happening now would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago.
My man, the dude is a former heroin addict that has admitted to eating roadkill. He's pushed the vaccines cause Autism narrative.
Trying to make the country healthier while taking huge gifts from lobbyists who work for industrial scale meat producers? Come on.
As far as I can tell nobody's advocating this. Anyone is free to spin up a private instance of a hackernews clone (e.g. [0]) or a phpbb instance, or a discord.
But working at DOGE or Palantir or whatever doesn't mean you're entitled to the freedom from consequences of your actions.
Oh how I wish this were true of non-Americans.
Most people I know who voted for Trump this time around did it specifically because of what a train wreck the Biden administration was, the terrible candidate that the Democrats tried to put up to replace him and that Trump ran on essentially fixing all of it. Cult of personality and/or hero worship had nothing to do with it.
The man is absolutely abrasive, there's no question about that. But the stock market is at all time highs, the trade deficit is the lowest it's been since 2009, GDP is up 5.5%, inflation has leveled off, gas prices are the lowest I've seen in many years (I just filled up for $2.39 / gallon), the border was closed on day 1 despite years long calls that it couldn't be helped without legislation and today I saw that drug overdose deaths have been cut in half nationally in a single year.
People voted for him to clean up a mess. The cult of personality stuff has been the algorithm at work from everything I've observed to this point.
> "safe spaces" (like HN)
HN is not a "safe space". Saying that most politics is off-limit most of the time for very good reasons (that only either insane or malicious people would deny) does not make this a "safe space". Go look up how Wikipedia defines it and it's easy to see that your statement is literally false.
> where there's a "no politics" rule
This is false. There is no "no politics" rule.
> enabling people to hide and avoid being confronted with the ramifications of their actions.
This statement is just insane. The direct logical conclusion of this statement is that if every site on the internet is not blasting out political news all the time, that it's enabling people to "hide" from something. That's not just false - that's a deranged position that 99.999% of people will disagree with.
> It's all inherently political.
False. Deciding your backend architecture (microserves vs monolith) is not political. Picking a text editor is not political. Helping a friend install Linux is not political. Not everything is political - the fact that you is means that something is wrong with the way that you view the world.
And even for the things that are political - only a crazy and/or evil person would take the fact that emacs is made by GNU and vim is not as a reason to incite political flamewars on the internet and try to inject politics into every online forum.
People like you are the main reason that modern American culture is so toxic and politically polarized and that democratic discourse is breaking down.