zlacker

That's helpful in that it clarifies a difference in assumptions. I don't believe that HN, or its admins, have anything like the power you're attributing to it/us. We're basically janitors.

That's not a criticism. I understand how a perception like what you're expressing can arise, but it can only arise from afar.

>>dang+(OP)
Alex Pretti was a nurse. What power did he have? I'm not attributing ultimate power over the fate of the nation to you or HN. You are a tiny cog in a huge machine, but you're still a bigger cog than me. So I'm asking you to consider when you will use the power you do have. Current events should have us all considering that question

>>slg+qa
It's a mistake to think that deep pocket YC investors will suddenly become aware of current events that otherwise escaped their notice if only current event stories made it to "the front page of HN".

Another mistake would be to think that [flagged] and down weighted submissions do not get many many eyeballs and that C-suits of large SV and other tech companies don't take part.

>>defros+nb
Every reminder that powerful people see that the status quo is unacceptable has value. It's also obvious that a post being flagged reduces the number of people who will see that post, that's the whole purpose of flagging.

>>slg+dd
If it's really true that "some of the richest and most powerful people in this country and on this planet look at this website", what do we want them to see here? Do we want them to see enraged people saying the same things that they keep hearing over and over and thus dismiss as background noise? Or do we want them to see intelligent, thoughtful people having sophisticated discussions and making new points that might give them pause and provoke them to think about things in a different way?

>>tomhow+Td
We were discussing post level moderation and not comment level moderation. I'm suggesting the site allow more politics, I'm not condoning abandoning all the site’s rules. I don't think the level of discourse in the comments is being improved by the current level of post level moderation. The most noticeable impact is simply prompting tangents into the post level moderation itself like it did here which arguably lowers the level of discourse.

>>slg+jg
Let's be honest: you're doing much more than "suggesting".

The whole reason we can't have these posts on the front page is that the comments in the threads so frequently break the guidelines and turn the site into a place that repels people who want to have thoughtful discussions. So there is no yet-known way to have our cake and eat it; the presence of these stories on the front page means abandoning the site's rules, because so many commenters are unable discuss them in a way that respects the site's rules. And the outcome of this is that it pushes HN towards being irrelevant, precisely because these discussions offer so little that powerful people would find persuasive.

I would love it if HN could be the very best place for discussing difficult topics and be a place where we really could push politics in the right direction. That can't happen if the discussions about the most important topics rapidly devolve into easily-ignored background noise.

>>tomhow+Gl
The discussion on this thread has actually been fine, apart from one account that has been all over the place repeating absolute nonsense (consistent with their overall recent post history on political topics). Most of their posts have already been flagged, and much of the resulting noise could have been avoided by rate limiting them. So I’m not sure that this particular discussion really proves your point (though it is only one example). You could easily find more contentious discussions about Rust or Apple.

Provocative political articles about the UK seem more likely to escape flagging, which has the strange consequence that HN sometimes seems to spend more energy decrying the current state of the UK than that of the US, despite the relative imbalance in user numbers.

>>foldr+Cv
> HN sometimes seems to spend more energy decrying the current state of the UK than that of the US, despite the relative imbalance in user numbers.

I have to assume this perception has mostly to do with the time of day you're normally looking at HN. As someone who is looking at the threads for hours each day, there's certainly far more politics-related discussion about the U.S. than any other country.

>>tomhow+6K
There's more overall discussion of US politics for sure, but it tends to occur tangentially (as articles about US politics are pretty reliably flagged). To give a concrete example, the following article was not flagged and got quite a lot of discussion: >>46600194 I do not think an article on an obscure website with a similarly 'provocative' headline relating to current US politics would escape flagging.

>>foldr+WL
Single instances and hypotheticals don't tell us much. That particular topic spent only four hours on the front page, and it was times that are peak for the U.K. and off-peak for the U.S. Plenty of stories related to U.S. politics spend at least that amount of time on the front page. People often remember the stories that are flagged that they strongly felt should have been given front page time, but forget about the stories that did get plenty of exposure.

>>tomhow+LM
I doubt you can point me to a recent story about US politics that spent four hours on the front page and had a similarly inflammatory headline. It would be as if this discussion were occurring under the headline "ICE thugs murder second US citizen" and linked to the website of a left-wing political organisation with an anonymous byline.

Unless peak US times are very late in the day, I'm pretty sure I do look at HN quite often during peak US hours. I'm only 5 hours ahead of the East Coast here. Gemini (ha!) tells me that

>...peak engagement hours generally align with US workday hours, particularly in Pacific (PT) and Eastern Time (ET). The highest activity typically occurs between 11 AM – 4 PM UTC (roughly 6 AM – 11 AM ET / 3 AM – 8 AM PT).

>>foldr+5O
The story you're talking about was on the front page mostly between about 1pm and 3pm U.K. time, then hovered around the bottom of the front page and dropped off as most of the U.S. came online. And you're talking about one article but asserting a trend or pattern.

Here are recent stories about U.S. politics with inflammatory titles that spent multiple hours (over 22, in one case) on the front page.

The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis - >>46633378 - Jan 2026 (858 comments - 2 hours)

Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves - >>46355548 - Dec 2025 (471 comments - 22 hours)

A Developer Accidentally Found CSAM in AI Data. Google Banned Him for It - >>46233067 - Dec 2025 (93 comments - 2 hours)

You can't refuse to be scanned by ICE's facial recognition app, DHS document say - >>45780228 - Nov 2025 (509 comments - 7 hours)

Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' - >>45505103 - Oct 2025 (163 comments - 3 hours)

We could debate what counts as "recent" or "inflammatory," but I don't think that would be productive.

>>tomhow+GR
You're really comparing these to the following headline?

> The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management

All of your examples focus on specific events and factual claims, not sweeping doom and gloom claims about the state of the US. I'll leave the reader to draw their own conclusions.

By the way, we're both making claims here based on what we've seen of HN, not some kind of objective scientific analysis. I asserted a trend and gave an example of the trend that I was talking about. It's silly to complain about that when you are doing the exact same thing.

>>foldr+vS
You've cited one example and claimed it to be evidence of a trend. But you haven't shown evidence of a trend. One-offs happen all the time on HN for all kinds of reasons – randomness as much as anything else. I've provided five examples I could find quickly. I'm not getting further into a debate about the definition of “inflammatory”. When discussions turn into debates about definitions of inherently subjective terms it's definitely time to stop.

>>tomhow+kU
The point is that we are both basing our point of view on our accumulated experience of reading HN and then looking for examples to illustrate that point of view. It's a misreading of the discourse to complain that these examples aren't strong 'evidence' for the points of view in question. Of course they are not; they are merely illustrative examples. And realistically, you don't even really want me to send you a 100 page evidence dossier, do you?

Your specific examples are not very convincing, but as I said, anyone reading can compare the headlines and judge for themselves on that point.

>>tomhow+Gl
>Let's be honest: you're doing much more than "suggesting".

Lol, I don't know what that is supposed to mean. I'll admit to including an undercurrent of shaming with that suggestion to hopefully cause some introspection, but it's still just a suggestion.

Beyond that, I just fundamentally disagree with the point you seem to be making People can't be trusted to talk nicely so they won't get any place to talk at all just doesn't feel like the right principle for the moment.

Regardless, my original point stands. Everyone's unique role in life grants them a certain amount of power. Now is the time to consider what it will take before you use your power to exert whatever positive influence you can.