This is a completely human response to the horrible things happening the world both domestic and abroad.
It’s also history repeating itself: doing nothing when bad things are happening in our communities is what allows them to happen.
Think what the villages around the concentration camps must have known and yet did nothing.
Sure you could just focus on tech. You alone can’t stop Donald Trump or Stephen Miller from their racist move toward autocracy usurping norms and the world order … but you can join in with others who are trying to make a difference.
Apathy is a human emotion to such dire things. But we are better than that.
They explicitly stated they knew where to read / hear about US politics and did not see the need to have that news domain echoed across every forum.
I haven't really noticed politics of other countries get flagged that much, does it? Other than stuff that looks like propaganda from one country against another, that seems to get quickly flagged.
Finally I don't know what makes you think that HN is an unrelated to American politics forum, given that the guidelines of what the forum is for is quite lax.
Surely the answer is, when you see news related keywords in an article title, to simply not click through. Same as when there’s so bit of technology or corporation that doesn’t interest you.
However, looking at the current political climate in my own country, I too have lost faith in them solving local and global issues. When the people I can vote for don't actually solve pressing societal problems, then what's the point? Now factor in the influence of people in large countries that are in power that I can't even vote for...
There is a glimmer of hope that the EU now seems to have finally found some balls somewhere though, with their response to the Greenland situation. Maybe they've finally learned that a strategy of appeasement does not work for strongmen in power (hey, that sounds familiar...)
It would seem that in your view, we should be discussing all things at all times due to this "oppressor" mindset.
This simply cannot be true.
Maybe the villages around concentration camps did nothing because they were consuming nazi propaganda.
Currently on the front page I see three stories that are not tech related, if I expand the definition of tech to include anything math or science related, there is really only one story, ironically this one that you posted in.
Often however I can find as many as 6 stories on the front page that are not tech and not any politics, as HN also handles art, history, and writing quite well.
But for some reason you seem to think it's a place for tech, and American politics should be kept out, which I find somewhat funny.
There are other platforms for discussing Trump and his shenanigans. Reddit for example.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panorama_(British_TV_programme
It's not exclusively (or mostly) U.S.A. residents who complain about contemporary politics topics getting flagged. We see plenty of complaints from Europe and elsewhere.
We've long accepted that there is a large overlap between politics and technology. The Snowden leaks in 2013 were huge on HN, as were several other Wikileaks releases well before that.
HN has never been a politics-free zone. It’s just subject to the same standard as everything else on HN: there has to be some “significant new information” to the story.
Right now I see two posts about Rust (don't program in it, don't care), Kyber is hiring (retired, not interested in a job), etc. That's fine though, I just don't visit those links/comments.
Sounds familiar. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Attribution appears to be a matter of debate.)
I think it's a fair issue for people trying to avoid triggering news topics. Sometimes the headlines can be really inflammatory. Avoiding them might be feasible for you and me but may be tougher for others. For example, the top post right now is titled, "ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants", which is tricky because it is tech related and straddles the line of politics and tech. But I can see how someone might get triggered by reading that. Telling someone, "Just don't click on it", may be akin to telling an alcoholic, "Just don't drink that poured beer" in this case.
It would be nice if you could unsubscribe from certain tags like you can on Tildes. That way, you would have slight control over what you see while allowing others to keep what they want to see.
I fully agree that it all seems fucked and there is no point in following anything other than specific tech stuff I'm interested in. Anything else actually important someone else in my life will probably mention it to me. Or the explosion will vaporise me and knowing it's coming won't have helped much.
I vaguely remember checking one of those ICE posts out the other day, and there was not a single comment going against the grain that was neither flagged nor heavily downvoted, out of over a hundred. Nuance/dissent wasn't even vaguely on the cards.
I don't know what your definition of Reddit-like is, but that's mine.
Regarding the past couple of weeks, I think it's rather difficult to find nuance when we all saw the videos of protesters being killed by a federal police force. Anyone trying to take the Administration's side is, I imagine, going to come across as shrill.
On the more nuanced political issues though I have been happy to see opposing viewpoints well reasoned—even when I disagreed with them. There was a time when reddit was young that you might have found the same level of discussions.
I do not care to understand American news. I don't give a fuck. I follow your politics in the same way I watch a circus, but I do not need to "understand" it.
Overwhelming majority of people concluding that shooting protesters to back or head is a bad thing does not imply lack of nuance or low quality of the discussion. Overwhelming majority of people concluding that political repressions and fear based government are bad thing does not not imply lack of nuance or low quality of the discussion either.
The both sides and truth in the middle knee jerk is does not represent nuance or meaningful discussion. It frequently muddles nuances, creates false equivalences and makes the discussion loose the substance.
If you mean extermination camps, they knew. They were also part of occupied, conquered and heavily terrorized lands. They occasionally did something, terrorist attack against Germans here and there, usually retaliated against by killing a lot of random citizens. Usually motivated by plight of own people.
Extermination camps were located in Poland - German plans involved moving away and killing all Polish, so that they can be replaced by Germans. Germans seen Jews as primary danger to be exterminated fast, Slavic as secondary lower value being to be exterminated slowly in time. Polish army lost the war. And random villagers were not in position to do anything about the highly violent occupying army.
(And yes, Jews were at danger of being denounced by anti semitic locals too. Turned out one could be subject of racial oppression and being oppressor himself).
There are a great many such domains, and the insistence that everything is political is one of the chief problems with modern society. We can, and should, be able to enjoy some things together without bringing up bickering and strife. If you drag politics into a politics free zone you aren't taking responsibility for anything, you are just being a jerk.
I am upset when stories that are critical of the country that has threatened to annex my country are spiked by people who don’t want us to pay attention to the actions of the American government that is aided by American tech corporations and the people who work for them.
From my perspective we’re not talking about politics, we’re talking about an existential threat and we shouldn’t be letting these people’s inability to talk about these current events constructively be the reason why we can’t talk about them at all.
We should continue to talk about things like open source, self hosted software, digital sovereignty, defeating DRM, surveillance, and sousveillance and the real world reasons why these things matter.
We shouldn’t let people with brainrot stop us from talking about these very important things.
Others are just regular politics.
It’s the very last line:
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
FWIW, dang et al do a great job and don’t deserve this slander.
PS: you were the first person I saw mention that politician’s name in this thread
Not all topics are nuanced when discussed by an educated, well-intended audience. Is the world flat? Does evolution lead to speciation? Dissent is for the sake of dissent, and nothing else.
So if the prevailing opinion is that ice is committing murder, it makes sense a contrary comment would be heavily down voted.
I agree that hn is heavily liberal and holds a lot of the toxic leftist anti-thought patterns that are prevalent on reddit. But I think it's more of a symptom of the country and perhaps the West being wound-up over "things".
This to me is one (of many) sign that the community here cannot healthily discuss these topics. IMO the community here isn't healthy at all. That's why I don't post here much anymore. It's a sign to me that too many discussions in this community are about seeking emotional catharsis. And I'm sorry but for my own mental health, I'm not going to listen to someone else's panic attack resulting from political uncertainty.
I feel for dang and tomhow. It seems that most of their work is doing emotional labor. And emotional labor can grind a person down quickly.
If you disagree with that, be explicit about exactly what part.
Get it? Bad people in power = you don't get to do the things you love, at some point.
The problem is that the world is always on fire and people are always suffering.
Especially so because now we hear about the whole world’s problems, and no matter how peaceful a state the world is in there’s always a war or something happening somewhere. It’s been like that for all of human history and I don’t expect it to change any time soon.
I don’t think it’s healthy to live your whole live hearing about these problems that you have no ability to affect at all. In my experience it only has negative effects on your life and whether you’re tapped into the real time news feed or not, it doesn’t actually change these events in any way.
This prevents any reasonable discourse so is unlikely to be successful, no matter how dogmatically or assertively you present your case. Others will simply perceive it as unreasonable, I suspect.
This doesn't mean that you can't still believe it to be true - it just means that others will not engage with the points you mention, and you'll then end up being more isolated and frustrated.