That's not even close to true—not by orders of magnitude. This seems like a classic of the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...): that is, you've seen things that you didn't like in one discussion and weighted it more heavily than everything else, including the by-far-most-discussed theme of the last month.
That bias is so powerful that I'm not sure I've seen even a single counterexample, and it seems to make objective assessment impossible. I don't know what to do about it. We can't remove everything that somebody dislikes—there would be nothing left—but the presence of material that people dislike makes them draw extremely distorted conclusions. I believe this is an outcome of HN being a non-siloed site. Most other places on the internet, you choose your silo so you're surrounded by friendly views and don't encounter so many nasty things. Here, everyone's in one silo and it creates a shock experience. This leads people to dramatically false conclusions, but it doesn't matter because they feel intensely true. I wrote about this recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23614128 was on the front page all day today. Edit (12 hours later): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628394 is on the front page now. Below is a sample of other major threads on these topics. There are many more, but I suppose 52 is enough to make the point.
There are over 15k comments in these 52 threads alone. Let's double that and guess that there have been 30k comments on George Floyd-related themes. (I think that's conservative, since I came up with these 52 threads by ad hoc searching and there have been many others.) There have been 283k total comments on HN since George Floyd was killed, so if my guess is reasonable then over 10% of the comments on HN have been on these themes. On a site that seeks to avoid repetition, that is beyond massive.
For comparison, I picked the most popular technical topic I could think of, which is Rust. There have been 2664 comments on posts with 'Rust' in the title over the same time period—an order of magnitude less. When you're 10x bigger than Rust on HN, and someone calls that "aggressively removed from discussion", we seem to have left behind shared reality.
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Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23604277 - June 2020 (232 comments)
‘BlueLeaks’ Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599081 - June 2020 (343 comments)
NYC passes POST Act, requiring police department to reveal surveillance tech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23586791 - June 2020 (91 comments)
Nextdoor ends its program for forwarding suspicions to police - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23586228 - June 2020 (121 comments)
U.S. Watched George Floyd Protests in 15 Cities Using Aerial Surveillance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23579438 - June 2020 (59 comments)
Navigating the Venture World as a Black VC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564048 - June 2020 (75 comments)
FBI used Etsy, LinkedIn to make arrest in torching of Philadelphia police cars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556608 - June 2020 (376 comments)
‘Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: Records police interaction, sends location - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23544749 - June 2020 (101 comments)
For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162 - June 2020 (775 comments)
After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528224 - June 2020 (790 comments)
George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23522602 - June 2020 (794 comments)
Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23504445 - June 2020 (313 comments)
Microsoft won’t sell police its facial-recognition technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23491226 - June 2020 (53 comments)
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23488307 - June 2020 (852 comments)
Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23484574 - June 2020 (293 comments)
Police have been spying on black reporters and activists for years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23482979 - June 2020 (153 comments)
Wikipedia became a battleground for racial justice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474974 - June 2020 (23 comments)
Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it, so far - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467912 - June 2020 (29 comments)
Transcribed police scanners in real-time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23461607 - June 2020 (105 comments)
Protests about police brutality are met with wave of police brutality across US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445980 - June 2020 (71 comments)
Americans' perceptions of police drop significantly in one week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23443410 - June 2020 (250 comments)
Facebook limits spread of 'Boogaloo' groups amid protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442294 - June 2020 (97 comments)
If you see the cops, start recording - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23432463 - June 2020 (256 comments)
Why So Many Police Are Handling the Protests Wrong - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23428606 - June 2020 (107 comments)
The Unmarked Federal Agents Occupying Washington, D.C - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23428432 - June 2020 (158 comments)
Signal app downloads spike as US protesters seek message encryption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23424245 - June 2020 (356 comments)
CIA veterans who monitored crackdowns see parallels - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23415447 - June 2020 (63 comments)
How much do we need the police? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23409370 - June 2020 (464 comments)
ACLU sues Minnesota for police violence against the press - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23406844 - June 2020 (247 comments)
A Git Repo to Document Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23399533 - June 2020 (254 comments)
DEA authorized to conduct surveillance on protestors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397868 - June 2020 (313 comments)
Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914 - June 2020 (768 comments)
Lawmakers begin bipartisan push to cut off police access to military-style gear - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392393 - June 2020 (324 comments)
The business of tear gas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391669 - June 2020 (214 comments)
Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23390707 - June 2020 (192 comments)
White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23386626 - June 2020 (225 comments)
De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23385741 - June 2020 (721 comments)
Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23385727 - June 2020 (117 comments)
The Police Data Accessibility Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23384556 - June 2020 (90 comments)
George Floyd died of asphyxia, private autopsy finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23382954 - June 2020 (52 comments)
Facebook employees stage virtual walkout in protest of company’s stance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23382573 - June 2020 (81 comments)
As Qualified Immunity Takes Center Stage, More Delay from SCOTUS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379910 - June 2020 (313 comments)
How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379397 - June 2020 (396 comments)
Police act like laws don't apply to them because of Qualified Immunity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23373329 - May 2020 (133 comments)
Caught on camera, police explode in rage and violence across the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371048 - May 2020 (114 comments)
Image Scrubber: tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23369873 - May 2020 (379 comments)
Surveillance tools used by the Minneapolis Police Department - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23355572 - May 2020 (177 comments)
US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23352785 - May 2020 (412 comments)
CNN reporter arrested live on air while covering Minneapolis protests [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349294 - May 2020 (344 comments)
CNN team arrested by Minnesota police on live television - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23348464 - May 2020 (31 comments)
Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155 - May 2020 (1467 comments)
Everywhere, including HN.
I do not mind, the tech scene is understandibly americanized but telling that the discussions are hidden is simply not true.
(to be clear, I am just piggy backing on your quote to not repeat it, I agree with what you say)
Do they know the site has a search function? I didn't for a while. There's a search box on the bottom of the page
If nothing else people here should stop pretending they're above the zeitgeist. How many others remember the slashdot threads on 9/11, for example? This is a big defining moment in our times worth more conscious observance. Tech cares too.
If you want all the stories, there's https://hckrnews.com/ sorted by time. Lots of politics gets through enough to follow the zeitgeist, without getting forever lost, like this guy.
What does that even mean?
That’s the sort of sweeping generalization about a group of people that racists make.
Our professions, our tendency towards rational view of the world, should not be a mechanism to deny reality and put ourselves on pedestals, to create distance with other human beings. When we dismiss a major event as not relevant to tech that is what we are doing. I see it as somewhat egotistical.
It is also nice to have a broad range of topics which are intellectual based also. Given the emotional nature of the protests, it wouldn't be surprising that if such a topic was left unmoderated it would lead to a lot of mirrored content and information.
In most tech threads, the top comments are often those with an insider opinion or "back in my day" tale. A sociological thread doesn't typically lend itself to those. And I assume HN has a far smaller proportion of experts (and less motivation to snag that ego boost from flaunting wisdom) on the trending topics (e.g. black persons and other victims of police brutality) than it would for, say, such-and-such Ruby feature.
I've noticed that sometimes, when people rise through ranks or otherwise mature in the world of business, they become disconnected from regular humanity and forget that emotions are real signals.
I always ask myself how people arrive at these perceptions in the first place, and what makes them so sure that they're right that they will make rage posts about it on e.g. Twitter without even a small effort to find out the truth. Any ideas? Here are my theories: (1) we are much more likely to notice the things we dislike, and to weight them much more heavily, than the things we like or agree with—so people on all sides end up feeling like this community is against them; (2) everyone always feels like the stories they care the most about are under-represented on HN, no matter how well-represented they actually are—this is an artifact of frontpage space being so scarce.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
As an older person, this is another iteration of the same shit and unfortunately nothing will change.
Part of the reason it won't change is that a bunch of upper-class white people try to make it all about their sociological theories instead of the really simple premise of "cops aren't accountable and that's not ok". They're spending their effort going after Scott Alexander, who's generally on their side on this stuff, for his insufficient group loyalty. It's a total self-own, constantly from these people, and it plays right into the cops' hands.
We're up against a lot of resistance and there's no room for selfishness like that.
I mean, would you want to see people discussing here whether Derek Chauvin was justified in killing George Floyd? Because I don't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962
Sorry not to have listed the titles, but there are many tech-overlapping threads in there, and many more that I didn't list. HN Search can help—for example:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
So I think I too am done with HN.
What about this discussion is not relevant? I remember HN getting over COVID about a month ago too.
> Moan that HN won't support you spilling your politics that already fill your twitter feed over into the site, despite many alternatives existing
> Recognize it's a free site and it can do what it wants
> Assert it's wrong, and doing wrong, by disagreeing with you, that voice of karma-provided authority
> Post your Twitter rant to HN for attention
> HN democratically removes your rant
> Whimper on Twitter that HN, the site you're apparently done with, aren't facilitating your anti-HN rants, implicitly encouraging your following to do some bandwagoning
God only knows what drama this person would be capable of if HN kowtowed and facilitated their self-approved topics for discussion.
Why ask for Reddit 2.0 when you can just stick to Reddit.com?
A thread or two on big cultural trends of the day makes sense but this isn't reddit or twitter.
It seems like this user demands a silo where his views are not questioned. Certainly HN is better without people like that.
Is this site for the intellectually dishonest? If not this b.s. needs to stop. How many "I quit facebook" posts make it to the front page all the time? How many social activism related topics make it to the front page. Counter argument to those who say it's not relevant: technology made these protests possible and technlogy is where the fight is happening right now.
I hope the moderator team (@dang) pays attention to this.
If you haven't seen these comments, and are willing to read them, I'd be curious to hear if you feel like there's anything that remains unaddressed. I listed 52 threads but it could just as easily have been 102.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624916
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962
Since you mention intellectual honesty: do you think the OP or any of the people who jumped to the same false conclusions will correct anything? I would be surprised if they did, even though acknowledging a mistake of this nature is the bare minimum that intellectual honesty requires.
Edit: on reflection, that last bit crossed a line and I owe the OP an apology. It's one thing to go on about intellectual honesty in general but there was a specific person in the mix and I should have left more room for the possibility that I was misunderstanding him, especially since I know how easy that is on the internet. I was doing the very thing I was complaining about—jumping to conclusions! Sometimes it takes a while to realize this, but it's embarrassingly obvious now. I've told the OP that I'm sorry, and want to say so publicly also.
What I didn't like was the constant flagging. And censorship. It's not ok to allow a "i quit facebook" post where commenters discuss the factual nature of the authors reasoning and at the same time ban/censor an "I quit HN" post. I have no problem with downvotes but when a post gets popular enough to make it to the front page and gets removed because it contains incorrect claims the result is people like me who didn't care much about the topic before but the fact the authord HN censorship claim was validated before my eyes made me believe him. Censorhsip does not correct false claims (streissand effect).
I would like to see all popular posts and read commentors opinions so I can make up my own opinion (short of spending time researching the accuracy of every claim for every post first hand).
I hope HN will allow that but I do understand this is a private topic specific platform.
See e.g https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Gericht... or https://www.mondaq.com/germany/social-media/735562/munich-co...
