
Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week - dang
Like everyone else, HN has been on a political binge lately. As an experiment, we&#x27;re going to try something new and have a cleanse. Starting today, it&#x27;s Political Detox Week on HN.<p>For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we&#x27;ll kill such stories and threads when we see them. Then we&#x27;ll watch together to see what happens.<p>Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost when political emotions seize control. Our values are fragile—they&#x27;re like plants that get forgotten, then trampled and scorched in combat. HN is a garden, politics is war by other means, and war and gardening don&#x27;t mix.<p>Worse, these harsher patterns can spread through the rest of the culture, threatening the community as a whole. A detox week seems like a good way to strengthen the immune system and to see how HN functions under altered conditions.<p>Why don&#x27;t we have <i>some</i> politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that&#x27;s exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it&#x27;s insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can&#x27;t be both at the same time.<p>A community like HN deteriorates when new developments dilute or poison what it originally stood for. We don&#x27;t want that to happen, so let&#x27;s all get clear on what this site is for. What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments. What it is not: a political, ideological, national, racial, or religious battlefield.<p>Have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we&#x27;ll try to allay them. This really is an experiment; we don&#x27;t have an opinion yet about longer-term changes. Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens when we try something new.
======
nneonneo
Many of the top-level comments here are against this move. I, on the other
hand, would like to express my strong support for this move.

Hacker News has never been an anything-goes site. Tight moderation,
considerate rules, and low tolerance for bullshit have made this a great site
to talk about interesting technical topics and ideas. Remember that we all
abide by the rules of the site, and that this isn't a magic free speech zone.
If you want to talk political topics, the Internet has more than enough
outlets.

Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion. This
is not an opinion; look only to sites that allow political discourse
(Slashdot?), or even our own comments to see how quickly rational discussion
can devolve into flaming. One of the major selling points when I introduce HN
to other people is the _absence_ of political topics or discussion: leaving
the politics out just produces better technical content.

Also, please consider the idea that politics are regional and differ between
countries. In Canada, where I'm from, many of the US political topics would
never come up; many European countries might feel even more strongly. As a
Canadian, I find American political musings and arguments even less relevant
and noisy. By contrast, technological topics are always interesting to me - I
can appreciate these, and I love that there's this corner of the Internet
where I can participate in a reasoned, interesting technical community. Please
don't ruin it with politics, especially the polarizing American variant.

I appreciate that the site is willing to take this step, and I sincerely hope
it can keep this site useful, interesting and level-headed for the future.

~~~
reflexive
_Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion._

In fact, what is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion is:
emotionally charged, poorly-considered, and dishonest discussion. The topic
doesn't matter: health fads, operating systems, or taxes. I agree, many people
have terrible style in their approach to political discussion - but see also,
e.g. Hobbes and Rousseau for more thoughtful representatives.

~~~
cloverich
> The topic doesn't matter

Technically true. But practically speaking, I'd wager political topics lead to
emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than
others. If that's true, then this moderation should boost the general quality
of HN comments and topics, which is why most of us come here in the first
place. As a comparison, I was initially annoyed that simple jokes / witty
remarks that were void of other content were down voted on HN. But long-term I
compare it to reddit and agree with the method: I can still go to reddit if I
want wit (I often do). I (ideally) come here for high quality technical
content.

~~~
reflexive
_I 'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually
devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others._

This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter
a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas
they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or
functional programming enough to have an opinion.

Part of the beauty of HN is getting opinions about things that matter in the
real world, from people who really think about things.

~~~
cabalamat
> This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to
> enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration),
> whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems
> or functional programming enough to have an opinion.

This is true, but I suspect the biggest reason is that politics is more prone
to Crony Beliefs ( [http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-
beliefs/](http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/) ) than almost any
other field of discussion.

------
idlewords
This is a terrible decision. The tech industry has built powerful tools of
social control, and runs vast databases of private data on pretty much
everyone in the country. We have a golden period of forty-some days before a
new administration comes to power that has shown every intent of using that
information to deport people and create a national Muslim registry.

We need to be talking about the political implications of what we've built,
and figuring out how to fix our mess. This is like the period before the
hurricane: everyone should be busy boarding up windows, and you can't do that
if you decide you're just not going to talk about the coming storm because it
makes you feel bad.

~~~
flashman
Not to mention that "can we please stop with all the politics" is _not
political neutrality_ , it's a position that supports the status quo.

Silence assists certain forms of repression.

~~~
3131s
And it's already the case on HN that political discussions are quickly flagged
into oblivion, so I'm not sure how this current week will be any different.

I was pretty let down that HN did not do more to protect political discussions
during the US election cycle and I really didn't see all that much vitriolic
behavior in the first place. Even if there is bad behavior though, is that
something that we need to be protected from at all times? Maybe it is better
to let it happen, point it out when we see it, and then hopefully learn to
discuss more civilly as a community in the future.

~~~
DanBC
> I really didn't see all that much vitriolic behavior in the first place.

There is a setting in your options called "showdead". Is that on or off for
you? If it's set to off HN will hide some comments that have been killed by
userflags. Thus, you may well have not seen the worst examples.

But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that's over
3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816)

> But, yes, to the extent the inchoate Alt Right has a position on it, one of
> them is that Jews are to be "excluded if not eliminated from society", as in
> all societies that are not Israel. You've got your own homeland now, which
> we of the Alt West fully support, relocate yourself there. Specifically
> "diversity + proximity = war", and we want to avoid "war" such as it is or
> will be.

~~~
3131s
> _There is a setting in your options called "showdead". Is that on or off for
> you? If it's set to off HN will hide some comments that have been killed by
> userflags. Thus, you may well have not seen the worst examples._

This is a new account of mine but I have accounts going back many years. I
usually flip [showdead] to 'yes' as soon as I get reminded by seeing a
[flagged] comment.

> _But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that 's over
> 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate_

I don't like that comment either at all, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad to
know that someone who is solidly part of our community thinks that way and
that someone who's probably very smart otherwise can simultaneously hold an
opinion like that.

If we just ban that person or even worse disallow a wide swath of conversation
topics, what good does it do? hga will still believe that (and he mostly
expressed himself civilly, I guess). Are you worried that his ideas will
spread? This may be where our mindset differs, but I believe the best and only
course of action is for people like you and me respond civilly and with
reason, and to prove why hga is misguided.

~~~
grzm
This is a bit of an aside, but related. What's the appropriate response to
someone who continues to post civilly and substantively but unceasingly on a
topic, even when asked not to? Is it a type of trolling? Is asking them to
stop silencing their voice? Or some sort of "agree to disagree"?

Another issue: when do some topics go beyond the pale and must _not_ be
tolerated? Is there such a point?

Perhaps these are off-topic for this thread, but they've been on my mind as
part of the larger issues "detox week" is intended to address.

~~~
3131s
> _This is a bit of an aside, but related. What 's the appropriate response to
> someone who continues to post civilly and substantively but unceasingly on a
> topic, even when asked not to? Is it a type of trolling? Is asking them to
> stop silencing their voice? Or some sort of "agree to disagree"?_

Probably to just stop replying to them. Sum up your thoughts and respectfully
let them know that you've made your point as well as you can, and that this
will be your last response. Or, the site could have a feature to block certain
users for a period of time so that you just don't have to see it.

> _Another issue: when do some topics go beyond the pale and must not be
> tolerated? Is there such a point?_

Not for me, though I know I have a radical view on what should be the limits
(or lack thereof) of freedom of speech. In reality though, there are certain
types of speech that are illegal and so I understand that moderators will do
what they have to in those situations.

I've also been thinking about these things. I am making a real-time reddit
clone for fun and I am trying to strike upon a system that keeps discussion
civil and substantive with as little need as possible for moderation. Not
saying that every place on the internet should be a haven for freedom of
speech though, and I really appreciate what dang and the other mods do here.
By and large, I have few complaints about how HN is run and they've come up
with many good ideas for algorithmically cooling down the flame wars (e.g. not
allowing immediate replies when discussion gets heated).

~~~
grzm
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I appreciate it. The tension between creating
a sustainable, civil community while still permitting effective freedom of
expression is particularly difficult, in my opinion, and a worthwhile goal.
Different communities do have different standards.

I look forward to the Show HN for your project! :)

------
minimuffins
The idea that we can carve out a space that exists outside of politics and
ideology is delusional.

Ideology is present everywhere. It's built in to the ways we relate to each
other, to our employers, to the public and private institutions and
technologies we interact with all the time, and especially the way we work and
conceive of work. Ideology is often tacit, baked into our assumptions even in
"non-political" areas.

Squelching political discussion won't cause us all to transcend ideology,
it'll just make it impossible to discuss or critique a dominant ideology
whenever one shows up in someone's unstated assumptions.

This is a bad idea and a little dystopian (the world is upside down, but think
happy thoughts, folks! Here's a TED talk!)

Not to mention I didn't really see a huge problem on the site, so in a time
when politics and ideology are on everyone's minds for good reason, it seems
you've chosen to solve a non-problem with censorship.

~~~
dang
Of course it's delusional. The concepts can't be defined to begin with, nor
can they be separated in any consistent way. And still we have to moderate
this site.

> _the world is upside down, but think happy thoughts, folks! Here 's a TED
> talk!_

It's sort of a peeve of mine that people project this onto us because I can't
say how I really feel about it without breaking our own rules.

~~~
jdp23
Perhaps grounding your moderation policies around concepts you know are
undefined and inseparable isn't the best basis for moderating the site.

As for how people see your actions: labeling it as "projecting" might make you
feel better, but probably gets in the way of you understanding what they're
saying.

In today's environment, you can't simultaneously make the site an welcoming
place for people who are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-
trans (etc.) - and for people who are Muslim, immigrant, women, trans and
nonbinary people (etc) _or allies to any of these groups_. What people are
telling you is that they see YC - and you personally - as siding with the
bigots.

~~~
dang
It's the best basis for moderating the site because the alternative is
impossible.

You're right, though, that I shouldn't use the word 'project' like that.

~~~
jdp23
A classic HN moment: 'dang tells me I'm right, and I'm downvoted to -3 :)

> the alternative is impossible

Interesting phrasing.

~~~
belorn
(guessing here)

The downvotes are not because of the word "project", or anything in the two
first sentences. Its because you called people "as siding with the bigots"
because they disagree.

There is also some extrapolation that result in insults. Are anti-religion
people bigots? Are Egalitarianism bigots because they don't agree with new
feminism? Is the illegal vs legal-immigration discussions bigotry?

~~~
jdp23
Thanks for the feedback. You're probably right that the downvotes aren't
related to the first two sentences. Pro-diversity stuff routinely gets
downvoted here, especially when it uses the f-word.

Still, if you read more closely, I didn't call people bigoted because they
disagree. I called the people who are "anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-
feminist, anti-trans (etc)" bigots. That seems like the right word to me.

------
tarikjn
I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects
is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and
entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we
want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and
technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a _scientific_ community, but
it is not the case, and even then politics do interact with science, as one
can conduct scientific experiments on government decisions, or politics can
attack scientific community positions (e.g. climate change).

The way this sounds is that you are more concerned about politics as in people
who take party positions and may feel excluded as a group when the majority of
the community takes a different position. This is a slightly different issue
i.e. party politics, and I think it is fine/a good thing, but it is also
important to distinguish the two. This should essentially be under the same
umbrella as personal attacks, as they are essentially the same thing.

~~~
chrissnell
I fully support this detox week. As someone whose political views don't align
with the average HN reader, I often feel marginalized by unfair downvoting in
political discussion, even though I have made my points in an informed and
respectful way. It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site
and those of the majority are free to push their views while the rest of us
must either read it and ignore it or face the onslaught of downvotes if we
express a dissenting opinion.

I'd rather see HN go politics-free forever. Political discussions do not enjoy
the same level of objectivity that technical and business discussions do.
Frankly, it may be impossible to expect objectivity within political
discussion because our political feelings are so deeply-held and tied to our
individual upbringings, culture, and locale.

Unless HN can figure out how to give fair treatment to minority opinions, it's
best to exclude these discussions entirely.

~~~
mattnewton
The rub is, a lot of difficult conversations lead to what are effectively
political answers. Take the amazon go which is on the front page right now. We
need to be able to have a conversation about job displacing technologies, and
hacker news has been a good venue for smart, civilized discussion on the
topic.

I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but eliminating discussions
outright because they might make people feel uncomfortable or might turn
uncivil seems like we are missing a really important piece to the news we
discuss here.

Minority opinions are never going to have "fair treatment" by the majority.
I've been down voted several times for my opinions and I'll take it again just
to be able to have the discussion here.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Is political discourse in HN comment threads ever actually "effective",
though? What actually results from having those discussions _here_ that
couldn't be accomplished just as easily in a forum where it's explicitly on-
topic, e.g. /r/politics or similar? It's not as though policymakers or voters
are looking to the HN comments section for guidance.

~~~
mattnewton
Yes, I generally think that the conversations here stay on the relevant
technical topic and treat political explanations as just more evidence into an
investigation instead of the end-goal. I don't want a board focused on
politics, I certainly don't find this kind of civil discussion in reddit.

I also don't think that the hacker spirit responds well to barriers of thought
and discussion.

It's just an anecdote, but I know my views have been greatly affected in part
by hacker news. I was once a staunch libertarian, but reading a lot about
universal basic income and other approaches people have offered to income
inequality and social issues, while talking about the technology trends first
and foremost, have convinced me to broaden my beliefs.

There is something about having a stated goal outside of political points
scoring that helps everyone see themselves as part of the same team. I've
always felt hacker news is largely about understanding things related to
technology - trends, weird bugs, how startups work, etc. With that as our main
focus we can defer to each other and learn from each other. When the main
force is to debate the other side there is no room for concessions or finding
common ground.

What I want in a community, is for people of all different views and
backgrounds to think about a topic with the end goal of solving some problem.
Hacker news isn't perfect there but it's close.

~~~
hueving
The basic income discussions are pretty pointless though. There is just a
group of people who think we should have it and another who think it's a
pointless thought experiment because it the economy is about an order of
magnitude short of the output required for the numbers being proposed.

~~~
mattnewton
That's not pointless, those could be really good points! Maybe UBI is
something we have to throw out for now, maybe it can be implemented in a way
to get around those challenges.

~~~
hueving
But it's the same points over and over again. Every single time something
about minimum wage or job automation shows up someone brings out the UBI horse
to beat some more.

~~~
AsyncAwait
Maybe a way to flag topics to hide similar ones from _yourself_ would be
helpful, but applying this more generally to the entire community doesn't sit
well with me.

~~~
reflexive
Agree. If topics and comments are going to be hidden because they're
"political", there should be a way to view and upvote these if you want to
"opt-in".

~~~
grzm
There is. Set "showdead" to "yes" in your profile. You can "vouch" for
comments made by banned users.

------
rustyfe
One question that interests/concerns me is making judgement calls about what
is/is not a political story.

Some links will be cut and dry, some will not. Some comments will be
immediately identified as political, some will just be politics adjacent.

For instance, on a story about self driving cars, will it be appropriate to
talk about UBI? On a story about cryptography, will it be acceptable to talk
about how it applies to political dissidents?

Still, I have always found HN moderation to be reasonable, and I expect this
to be the same. This is also something I think is desperately needed, we could
all use a cooling off period, and it'll be nice not to be bombarded with US
politics from yet another angle.

Hoping for the best, thanks dang + crew!

~~~
dang
Right, it's not possible to define "politics" precisely, and it would be a
mistake to try. But there's nothing new in that; the HN guidelines have always
mentioned politics without defining the term, and we get by.

We can clarify, though. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts
around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get
people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. We're not so concerned
about stories on other things that happen to have political aspects—like, say,
software patents. Those stories aren't going to be evicted from HN or anything
like that. For this week, though, let's err on the side of flagging because it
will make the experiment more interesting.

~~~
ben0x539
> The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party,
> ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion

I feel like trying to ban discussion of these conflicts will lead to the same
outcome that reddit's weird "free speech" policy had, if more subtly. If
Hacker News is the place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel
particularly safe, that's going to be the kind of people you attract, at the
expense of marginalized hackers.

There is no neutral option around this kind of politics and I'll be sad to see
HN throw marginalized people under the bus to ensure the comfort of the
privileged.

~~~
Mz
_If Hacker News is the place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can
feel particularly safe, that 's going to be the kind of people you attract, at
the expense of marginalized hackers._

I appear to be the top ranked openly female member here and my experience of
HN dramatically improved when Dan Gackle (aka dang) took over the role as lead
moderator of the site. I have faith in his judgment, plus I have substantial
soft skills myself. I do not believe he is going to do anything to shape HN
into the sort of thing you are positing here.

~~~
adrienne
I am also openly a woman. And I'm probably one of the lowest-ranked members on
here, precisely because this community is _already_ so fucking much a "place
where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel perfectly safe". So i only
come over here when something is really interesting or really appalling,
because it is a toxic awful cesspit of a community and Mr. Gackle doesn't seem
to have done any better than any of the other mods in that regard. IDK why you
have any more faith in him than in any of the rest of them.

~~~
bradjohnson
Looking through your last couple comments you seem like you're constantly
looking to get into political arguments by writing inflammatory comments
mostly regarding gender. I'm not surprised that when you fish for a political
argument, you end up attracting the worst that the site has to offer.

~~~
Mz
It would be super nice if you did not do this. I assure you, women who have
been here a long time have good reason to have baggage. Her approach isn't
productive at the moment, but your comment will read to quite a lot of women
as _victim blaming_ and drive them away.

This undermines the progress that some people here have work incredibly hard
for.

------
lsy
The idea that you can somehow separate "political" from "non-political"
stories seems poorly-thought-out and censorious. Who will make these
decisions? It seems clear that many posts that are nominally "about tech and
only tech" are pushing some political viewpoint, whether it be the benefits of
mass computerization, workaholic tips and tricks, or protection from civil
rights violations using encryption.

HN pretends to be largely apolitical, but the quick disappearance of certain
threads or topics seems to show that it has a heavy slant towards a sort of
techno-utopian quasi-libertarianism that wants to work its way out of
challenges to its ideas by sort of putting its fingers in its ears. Instead of
attempting to "depoliticize" itself, maybe HN should spend time developing a
better understanding and clarification of the extremely political stance it
takes every day?

~~~
dang
> _heavy slant towards a sort of techno-utopian quasi-libertarianism_

Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining a service in which HN users who make
opposing claims about its "heavy slant" are introduced to each other.

~~~
davidivadavid
Has there ever been an attempt to run a survey and settle the question? Of
course, the risk of the results creating the kind of thread you're trying to
avoid with the detox week is pretty high...

~~~
dang
Such surveys aren't reliable. If anyone wanted to classify comments manually
they might come up with something, but I'd guess it would just lead to more
arguments.

------
kristianc
It's not possible for HN to have "no political position" on issues such as
tech.

As the Amazon Go thread, and this comment from PG demonstrate, the default
position - where there is no discussion of race / gender / class / diversity -
is for the protections that minority groups enjoy to disappear.

Either because no-one thinks to protect them (as white working classes feel
has happened to them) or because SV bigwigs see those protections as an
inconvenient fact that should be swept away by technological disruption.

pg: "Any industry that still has unions has potential energy that could be
released by startups."

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104?lang=en](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104?lang=en)

It's a fallacy to think that HN and hackers can somehow obsolve themselves
from that responsibility any more than it thinks it can obsolve itself from
responsibility toward homeless in SF.

By all means take the decision you feel you need to to maintain your community
- but don't under any circumstances pretend it's a politically neutral one
because it just cannot be.

~~~
Yen
I think we can read PG's tweet a little more favorably.

I consider myself liberal, and generally in favor of things such as unions,
workers'-rights, and anti-discrimination regulations, that serve to balance
power in our society.

That said, I can definitely see an argument that unions are inefficient - they
slow down rate of change, introduce barriers to new innovation, and require
one-size-fits-all negotiation. This doesn't mean we need to remove unions,
just recognize the tradeoffs.

Furthermore, I would myself argue that unions are a response (and a rational
one) to an inefficient, asymmetric power structure. i.e., unions are a symptom
of a problem, not a problem.

example:

Let's say there's an industry, where in a competitive, open, and rights-
respecting market, workers could typically get $15/hr.

If there's a monopoly-employer and un-unioned employees, they can suppress the
wage to $10/hr, concentrating profits to the employer. If there's a union, and
no monopoly of employers, the union can force the wage to $20/hr, stifling the
industry, and possibly preventing new employees from entering the marketplace
freely. If the employers and union are at equal power levels, the wage sits
around $15/hr, but there's a lot of red tape, and slowed rate of innovation,
because of the nature of negotiations.

If you create a company that hires non-union workers, but treats them as well
or better as unioned workers would be treated, you should have a competitive
advantage.

------
bargl
I'm seeing a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I completely disagree.
TL;DR; If HN is your only news source, you have bigger issues than this
experiment, go subscribe to another source of political news.

Hacker news is a news aggregation medium for "Hacker News." The purpose of
this site is to get your fix of tech news that you can't get other places. It
isn't burying your head in the sand to ONLY have "Hacker" news on your Hacker
News site. It's sticking your head in the sand not to read any other news
sources. That is on the individual. It is not the job of Hacker News to
educate you on politics. The responsibility of getting good news is on the
user not the medium. HN doesn't claim to be a one stop shop for all of your
news.

More importantly, this is an experiment, on a site that is very interested in
Science and Programming. It completely makes sense to have an experiment like
this to see if it affects the quality of the comments. Being against this
experiment is like my dad trying to tell me that God Created the earth 5000
years ago from parts of other planets (complete hyperbole). WTH? It doesn't
matter it's one week and then it's over.

I'm assuming a good experiment will THEN make assertions and consult with the
community to see if this worked, was bad/good/etc. At that point voice your
concerns, but not yet, there is no evidence it's all conjecture.

~~~
j1vms
> I'm seeing a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I completely disagree.
> (...) Hacker news is a news aggregation medium for "Hacker News."

I'm not sure yet whether I think this is a good or bad idea, though this I'll
say: HN is not _just_ a news aggregation medium. If in the beginning it were,
it is no longer. It is now much more defined by the people on here. Like
reddit, the story pages give the majority of screen real estate to comments.
It's not a stretch to say people on here drop by, to a greater extent, for the
discussions, ideas, and tips - and to a lesser extent, to be exposed to a
story or link that they might not have eventually found elsewhere.

~~~
bargl
Maybe it shouldn't be? Yes that's a question because this is an experiment,
they aren't saying it shouldn't be.

I'm 100% behind you if they try to ban politics on HN. But for a week it's ok,
we'll live and we may even learn something.

------
reflexive
Based on Agnolia, these are the most popular stories from the past week on HN
that might be construed as "political":

#17 Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for a week
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)

#23 Canadian journalist's detention at US border raises press freedom alarms
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13092330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13092330)

#29 Help Us Keep the Archive Free, Accessible, and Private
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065599)

#37 Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103611)

#49 War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068641)

#59 FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13074285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13074285)

~~~
acbabis
> #17 Tell HN: Political Detox Week

I see what you did there

------
haukilup
As an experiment, I love the idea!

Personally, I've found it hard to escape US politics on many of the sites I
frequent. The comments/discussion often end up relating the topic to the last
US election in some manner - and an unproductive conversation follows.

Just my experience, but again - love the idea of running an experiment here.

------
threatofrain
If anything, Hacker News should be more political, and it ought to get its
political act together. People here are always talking about moral issues,
implications of technology on the working class, climate issues,
accessibility, etc.

Well, talking about those issues is just moral posturing without <power>, and
politics is the negotiation of power.

These are all political issues. If you care about your fellow person, you
already have the seeds of a <political> motivation. You want to change the way
the world works -- but that takes power, power like the AMA or AARP has.

People who duck their heads in the sand and scorn politics and power as
something dirty are counterproductive to this highly disorganized technical
community with almost zero union potential.

~~~
clarkmoody
Did the Internet transform the economy with <power>? Do people ride Uber
because Uber has power? Did Apple coerce people into buying its products by
the billions?

I think technology coupled with a market economy shows us the way that
societal transformation happens from the emergent order of individuals acting
in their own self-interest, rather than being forced to choose a "better way"
by those in power.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Did the Internet transform the economy with <power>? Do people ride Uber
because Uber has power?_

Unquestionably. Uber has power because it occupies the bulk of mindshare for
ride sharing. The internet has power because that's where people are. You
can't argue that facebook, MSFT etc... don't have POWER.

 _Did Apple coerce people into buying its products by the billions?_

You're conflating power with coercion. It's possible, and desirable, to have
power without coercion. Most power is not coercive - it's called "soft power."

Though radicals could argue that even soft power is coercive.

------
japhyr
I understand the sentiment here, but it sounds a little...wishful.

Our political climate is affecting all of us in many ways, and we need to
process what's happening. We need to do that carefully and constructively. I
want to know the subtle political aspects of many of the stories I read on HN.

That said, I'll play along for the week. I hope what comes out of this is a
push to encourage critical thinking about the political aspects of important
stories, not to push political conversation off of HN entirely.

~~~
dang
Thanks for this. Your willingness to be open-minded is very much in the spirit
of the idea.

------
Arcsech
Who decides what's "political"? Are discussions of regulations surrounding
Uber political? The ongoing Tesla/dealership feuds? Using machine learning to
detect fake news? New immigration policy that impacts H1B tech workers? The
impact of Brexit on tech companies? Restrictions on cryptography?

I'm split on this: On one hand, firm moderation and keeping things on-topic
makes for a good forum for discussion. On the other, this could easily be used
by YC as a tool to say, silence criticism of YC for not disavowing Peter
Thiel. Either way, there need to be clearer guidelines around what's allowed
and what's not.

~~~
dang
> _here need to be clearer guidelines around what 's allowed and what's not._

We're happy to clarify (e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614))
but it's impossible to draw a precise line. Moderation is about a few core
principles and a lot of case-by-case judgment calls, and it's inherently
unsatisfying.

Whatever rules we have, though, we apply them less rather than more in cases
where YC itself or a YC startup is at issue. That's one of the rules :)

~~~
typomatic
This is amazingly naive. "We apply them less rather than more in cases where
YC itself or a YC startup is at issue." You realize, of course, that YC, PG,
and SA all drive the tech zeitgeist to some extent or another. News that
affects YC itself is all tech and politics, because YC affects these things.

~~~
dang
By that logic it affects a butterfly in China too. I'm talking about what we
can control.

~~~
typomatic
Now you're being amazingly reductive to win a rhetorical point. HN drives a
conversation. You are choosing to change the parameters of that conversation.
You are making a political choice.

~~~
dang
I don't care about rhetorical points but I do care about being able to
truthfully say that we moderate HN less, not more, when stories about YC or YC
startups are involved. That's a fact, and one we take particular care with.

------
TrevorJ
Given that ycombinator _does_ specifically involve themselves in issues of
_policy_ such as universal basic income and others, I find this move to be at
odds with what ycombinator actually is.

Once some ideas are too 'dangerous' or too contentions to be discussed, there
is little hope of ever moving forward in solving the very real problems we
have in this world.

Characterizing values as fragile things which cannot withstand the rigors of
robust debate is also a troubling viewpoint.

edit: typo.

~~~
6stringmerc
Or, to take an even more cynical position, "While we totally can moderate
discussion to keep things within our standards of conduct, we find it's too
much work, and would rather just not have to deal with it."

...then go write another political policy blog post about how a board member's
politics aren't representative of a company's mission, etc, rinse, repeat.

~~~
hindsightbias
Very political board members need safe spaces too.

It's time for HN to move to an independent forum.

------
tunesmith
I'm not really a fan of this move. I don't see it as an addiction that reduces
its power over us by abstaining for a period of time. I also don't agree with
applying system effects to individuals - while political discussion can appear
to create a dulling or muting effect overall it doesn't mean that individual
people aren't being positively influenced, in ways that might have even larger
positive effects on the system over time. Similarly, preventing short term
conflict might have negative longer term system effects over time.

The detox/immune-system metaphor seems really suspect in other words. You
could just as easily argue that there is a "virus" (the changing political
realities, new realities dawning on us), and that ignoring the "virus" or
"symptoms" will make the adjustment that much more traumatic, the later we
accept that it's happening. Or to switch the connotation, perhaps instead of a
"virus", look at it as a "disruptive innovation" \- where if we act as an
entrenched incumbent, we will be disrupted as our competitors rewrite the
rules, and we will be too far behind to pivot successfully.

Letting the community process the new inputs vigorously might seem more
traumatic in the short term but it could also make us stronger overall.

This just seems counter to the principles that I appreciate at HN.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
I'm also concered that the timing of this can be partisan. Clearly Trump is
still appointing high level cabinet members and discussing those things has
merit. Yet during many of Obama's controversies, this site was allowed to chug
away endlessly with an anti-Democratic, anti-Obama narrative. I think HN goes
zero politics entirely or lets us continue as is. This move could be
interpreted as pro-Trump especially if we're going to get the SoS announcement
this week.

>Our values are fragile

No, they aren't. If your values can't handle a basic criticism then your
values are terrible. HN shouldn't be creating 'safe spaces' for the status quo
or the new administration. I'd rather get heckled at Hamilton than live in a
society where we worry about hurting each other's values, feelings, sense of
entitlements, etc. Open discourse is always the superior solution.

If harm is being done, challenge it on a one by one basis. I see some very
rude tones, borderline namecalling here, and other issues that get ignored by
the mods. Encourage a polite discourse, don't eliminate it. I'd also be less
liberal with posting rights. New accounts shouldn't be able to post on day
one. A lot of these political firestorms are via 'green' accounts who may or
may not be paid shills coming here and performing deflection and reading off
bulletpoints or playing up typical 'whataboutisms'. Or regulars who post the
same axe grinding over and over. Sadly, this goes against the religion of
'growth hacking' where conversations and new signups are the only metric that
matters.

~~~
dang
> _this site was allowed to chug away endlessly with an anti-Democratic, anti-
> Obama narrative [...] This move could be interpreted as pro-Trump_

The opposite people feel the opposite:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108689)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108834)

------
woodhull
Do you really think that the techno-capitalist libertarian utopia that many in
silicon valley seem to be trying to build is a-political, immune from
regulation or popular backlash?

Anything political or critical of YC already gets disappeared from this site
quite quickly. I had assumed that this policy (which always seemed misguided
to me) was already in effect.

I think the historical moment we find ourselves in is a time to make ourselves
more uncomfortable rather than retreat and pretend that the only things that
matter are software and how we might make more money on the internet.

Politics is about coming together to find common solutions to problems and
make sure that no one gets left behind. Isn't it the job of a responsible
community (even a VC sponsored one dedicated to making money with tech as HN
is) to lean in when things start to feel hard rather than tune out and ignore
our responsibilities as citizens and fellow humans?

~~~
dang
> _Anything [...] critical of YC already gets disappeared_

That's definitely not true, and we're very careful about it. It's literally
the first thing pg blurted out to me, before I even had a chance to sit down,
on my first morning as an HN moderator. I do my bit by blurting it to everyone
else in turn.

------
AndrewKemendo
As a frequent commenter I think this is a good experiment, but I think it's
worth considering what kind of platform HN considers itself.

Technology and politics are intimately linked, even if it's not always
obvious. Technology's impact on politics is only going to grow in my opinion
so I think the "political" discussions - as they relate to technology - are
vital for the community at large.

If we as a community are going to be "disrupters" whether intentionally or
not, we need to understand and discuss the social and political landscape and
impacts of our work better, so that we can implement our technology in a way
that doesn't spurn backlash from the communities and thus their political
leaders.

Talk about political scandals and the like don't do service to this community,
so I think those topics should be sequestered. However discussions on
encryption, automation etc... are perfect topics for this community in my
opinion.

------
aburan28
"Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are
intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost when
political emotions seize control. Our values are fragile—they're like plants
that get forgotten, then trampled and scorched in combat. HN is a garden,
politics is war by other means, and war and gardening don't mix."

This is so misguided and absurd. What is the definition of politics here?
Trump stories? Or are fake news stories also political? Alot of the HN
community came to value intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation
from political ends

------
opsiprogram
While I see the point, and I can agree with the points made that HN shouldn't
be a "battlefield" for person opinion, I cannot accept that we will concede
politics to be a topic to be too difficult for discussion, difficult
conversations are the most important ones to have.

In the view you've put forward, you say that politics is the problem, a topic
that when discussed causes fights and it can damage the culture of HN. I
disagree. If we don't know how to talk about politics with strangers, we stop
trying to persuade each other, and we bottle up our disagreement, and we go
online and yell at someone else, or we vote for the candidate who screams our
view... because we don't know how else to express it, to find the nuance in
it, and ask ourselves hard questions. We'd rather have an opinion than not
stand for something. All of the flaming is a way of expressing it...

We can suppress the conversations on HN to focus only on specific science or
technology, but on a technology website in this age, and right now that seems
like we'd be the website equivalent of a child covering their ears when they
don't want to hear something. Blockchain tech, cryto, AI, mesh networking, job
loss from automation, cyberwar, Quantum C. Seems incorrect to suggest that
technology and politics can be separated easily (especially at a big picture).

Of course this is the internet, people come here to troll and fight. But we as
individuals can always walk away. We can douse the flames by not engaging in
it ourselves. We can always handle a conversation with care, it's not the
topic that is emotional, it's us. It isn't up to the community to stop people
from talking about touchy subjects, so that we all get along, it's up to us to
learn how to talk about these things better. On the net, just like in the
world.

The experiment shouldn't be to stop political discourse, but encourage it. See
where we go, go forth and be critical thinkers and talk about the hardest
topics facing human civ right now. Lets see what happens. Maybe that is naive,
but we gotta start somewhere. Discouraging the conversation isn't a start, its
an end.

~~~
nkurz
_See where we go, go forth and be critical thinkers and talk about the hardest
topics facing human civ right now. Lets see what happens._

Perhaps that should be next weeks experiment!

(Yes, I'm serious.)

~~~
opsiprogram
yea yea!

------
pshc
Tribalism is so toxic. I'm all for this. But for flagging purposes what's the
boundary between a political/non-political story?

EDIT: @dang in another comment: _Let me clarify. The main concern here is pure
politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, and religion
that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. We 're not so
concerned about stories on other things that happen to have political
aspects—like, say, software patents._

~~~
knz
> Tribalism is so toxic.

And yet isn't one solution to tribalism a respectful exchange of ideas and
dialogue?

Political changes have many direct impacts on this community - net neutrality,
education policy related to STEM, funding for organizations/government
agencies that have a long history of supporting technology, legislation
concerning the development of new technologies (particularly for the medical
and energy sectors), employment legislation, patent laws, and many other
topics are likely of interest to a large number of HN readers and
contributors.

Personally, I don't come to HN looking for political discussion/commentary but
I also don't mind seeing it when it's appropriate.

~~~
anonbanker
Have you been witnessing respectful political exchanges on this site? the past
18 months have been pretty awful, in my experience.

~~~
knz
Compared to other online communities - absolutely. HN rarely devolves into
"Damn [liberals|conservatives]" and people often get called out here for ad
hominem attacks. Political articles without any basis in technology and
clickbait titles are also usually quickly culled.

~~~
brudgers
I think the standard for HN political discussions ought to be other HN
discussions not political discussions elsewhere on the internet. HN having
better political discussions than elsewhere on the internet might even be part
of the problem if HN is attracting people whose purpose is political
discussions.

~~~
dang
That's a good observation and well put.

------
pmoriarty
I am concerned that in the long run political stories about HN and Y
Combinator, and about the tech scene will be excluded.

Where better to talk about the politics of HN and Y Combinator than on HN? As
far as political stories go, these are the most relevant ones to HN readers.
Political stories about the tech scene, and related topics (such as political
reactions to tech employees grabbing up all the real estate in certain tech-
heavy cities like SF) are also very relevant.

I would be more ok with the banning of non-tech-related political
stories/threads. But, I think a better solution than censorship would be
tagging. Tagging would allow every reader to do their own filtering, and
include/exclude what they felt was appropriate, rather than have those
decisions dictated top-down.

On the other hand, I also understand the desire of the site owners/admins to
guide the site to be what they want it to be, rather than what its users want
it to be. That's definitely their prerogative, and much of it I agree with -
particularly the censorship of hate speech, flaming, and trolling.

The guiding of this site towards more tech and less politics is also a desire
I understand and commiserate with. There definitely are plenty of other
political sites out there, where you can argue this stuff 'till the cows come
home. But personally, I don't visit those sites, and would like to be able to
discuss at least some of those topics -- the ones relevant to tech and to
HN/YC, on HN itself.

~~~
contingencies
Agreed, tagging would be a great solution. Three cheers for tagging! Tagging
for president! Oops. :)

------
lossolo
I am running tech site with 10k users on which i made surveys about politics
with possibility to comment by users. I've stopped because there were so many
conflicts, such bad emotions, then users moved their personal conflicts to
other discussions on forum. After stopping the political surveys everything is
a lot more stable and people are nicer to each other, without any biases, they
discuss about software, hardware etc. This was very good decision, will it
work for HN? Probably yes, it worked for us.

------
rcavezza
I disagree. I think if there was ever a time in the history of the world where
more political discourse needs to occur, it should be now. I think this is
especially true with such a smart group of individuals trying to change the
world in many different arenas.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
More reasoned, thoughtful, polite political discourse? Absolutely. More
yelling without listening? No, the world doesn't need another platform where
that happens.

The goal here is to let people get past the yelling so that we can get back to
the thoughtful, polite discourse.

------
guildwriter
This feels a lot like closing the barn doors after the horses have already
gotten loose. This kind of action was sorely needed weeks ago, especially when
political articles turned into flame wars populated by 140 char political
emotional screeds. It was really disheartening to see HN turn towards the same
kind of political discussion I have to endure on other sites. Especially when
commentators who tended to post thoughtfully completely devolved.

These days it feels rarer to see the same kind of inflammatory articles gain
traction. The same kind of discussion is there but the flaming feels less
rampant than it once was. With passions cooled I feel that the community is
slowly returning to normal. Though it's likely with such a contentious
president, especially to the de facto SV culture, it's not going to be smooth
waters.

More brush fires might just be the new normal for now. I think that
controlling the burning in this case is more advantageous to the community
than trying to stamp it out entirely. Giving the silent treatment to unpopular
views is partially how we ended up where we are.

I'm always up for a short term experiment though.

~~~
contingencies
Barn doors and brush fires ... are you Aussie by any chance? :)

~~~
guildwriter
Californian I'm afraid.

------
aikah
> Why? Political conflicts cause harm here

Unfortunately this a consequence of people trying to shove politics
everywhere, including in unrelated communities. I don't want to point fingers
but a specific camp has mastered the art of forcing their political beliefs
upon others in the name of "the right side of history". The result is now, you
can't be just a developer, or a techie. You have to be a techie + or a
developer + qnd also support a specific political agenda, or "you're not a
decent human being". Maybe people should stop doing that at first place. The
same thing happened in atheist communities or gaming and it permanently ruined
these communities, because it forced everybody to take sides. HN is no
different. The dev community will suffer the same fate if people don't come to
their senses before it's too late.

Maybe political subjects that are totally unrelated to tech should be banned
from HN. I don't like censorship, but if the goal is to keep a community
united and focused well, I'm open for alternative suggestions...

~~~
Karunamon
_Maybe political subjects that are totally unrelated to tech should be banned
from HN._

A strict reading of the guidelines would suggest that they already are.
There's nothing interesting or gratifying in those discussions. They devolve
into poo-flinging with a probability approaching 1.

In my experience, obvious political flamebait gets flagged off the frontpage
out what feels like sheer exasperation. Comments not so much, but they
generally end up a few shades lighter.

------
minimaxir
It's worth noting that in order to flag a comment, you must click the
permalink first.

I've seen political stories flagged pretty quickly during normal HN usage, but
rarely comment threads.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
I think this is a great point.

I assume putting the "flag" button one click away is to prevent people using
it as a down vote when arguing, but it definitely means that I never flag
comments, only stories. And comments are the place where "politicalness"
really has the damaging effects.

I wonder if there might be either an opt-in to keep it zero clicks away, or
maybe over a certain amount of karma it is visible, or some other compromise
so that proper comment flagging is more widespread.

~~~
dang
It's a speed bump to prevent impulsive flagging. We could try putting it next
to comments everywhere, but the comment byline ("ianstormtaylor 2 hours ago
[-]") is now so minimal that that would be a massive change.

------
gjkood
To tell you the truth, I put myself into a politics news vacuum the day after
the elections and the results were announced.

I no longer frequent the politics sites (left and right) that I used to visit
being a politics addict. I now no longer want to listen to any politics for
the next 4 or 8 years (whichever the term may end up being).

I have stuck my fingers in my ears and am spouting "la la la la...." loudly
whenever I go near a political discussion.

No more politics for me (at least till I am ready to come out of my self
imposed exile).

~~~
anonbanker
Upvoted for the word "addict".

Do you feel that political posters, regardless of viewpoint, are merely
chasing the endorphin high that comes from the argument?

~~~
gjkood
I am more of a lurker than a poster. I just read comments on the sites.

I really believe that people on either side of the political spectrum should
at the very least listen to the view points espoused by the other side so that
they can get out of their own echo chambers.

Its a real eye opener to know that there are more than one opinion/point of
view on a topic.

Here I go again....finger in ear..."la la la la..."

------
4rtemis
I think this is a bad idea, even as an experiment. Treating groups of ideas as
off-limits, immutable or in need of protection from other groups does more
harm than good. Your analogy of "politics [being] war by other means" is
exactly why we should foster political discussion just as any other
intellectual pursuit. Arbitrary isolation between the political or religious
self and our intellectual self is, I believe, why politics is so violent and
difficult to talk about. You don't need homogeneity for a good discussion and
you shouldn't assume chaos when heterogenous people start talking.

We talk about important things here and should do so in a way that is
conducive to engaging conversation. Topics shouldn't be off the table.

Also, what is 'political'?

Edit: typo

------
andrewljohnson
Thank you, I'll happily flag down politics on HN.

Politics has caused me to start using new software so I can filter Twitter,
change my subreddits, and aggressively unfollow people on Facebook (even
family at this point).

And still I can't avoid it... though perhaps for the best, since social media
by-and-large is just a distraction from real work and real life. I'm far
better off coding, reading books, and playing go than reading garbage
political news nd opinions from shrill internet denizens.

~~~
vinchuco
Not caring is the default state.

------
ProAm
I'm a little skeptical of this.... What's the ulterior motive here? We all
know SamA was very anti-trump, is this an alternative method to keep the new
US political regime from affecting YC? It's almost a weird form of discussion
censorship. Whose idea was this?

~~~
dang
It was my idea and has nothing to do with political preferences, though the
election _season_ was probably a factor.

It has to do with us noticing an uptick in two undesirable things: harsh
ideological comments, and accounts that use HN primarily for political battle.

You can see one example of how the idea developed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052458)

~~~
throwanem
It wouldn't necessarily surprise me to learn that my account is one of those
latter, although it would disappoint me a little and cause me to question my
approach, since "battle" really isn't a good characterization of what I'm
after here.

One of the things I've found most impressive about HN, in fact, is the fashion
in which people disposed across the full width of the US political spectrum
seem able here to discuss potentially divisive subjects in a civil and perhaps
even constructive fashion - I can't speak for anyone else, but I can say that
comments here have given me pause for thought, and on occasion to
significantly reconsider opinions that I've held - not all of which I still
do. This isn't to say that I'm politically progressive or at all likely to
become so, but I have found uniquely valuable some of the political discussion
which has occurred on HN, and the degree of dispassionate consideration and
tenor of general civility I've seen in such discussions here are unique in my
experience.

The point I raise isn't that I think the "political detox week" is a bad idea.
(Or a good one - time will tell.) But I do think it would be a shame if
political discussion were banned or severely curtailed on HN in future. Such a
decision seems to me as though it could only be a deliberate effort to invoke
the "echo chamber" effect which has redounded to such cost throughout US
politics in recent years and especially in recent months. That's something
I've seen happening to a broad extent on both ends of the political spectrum
lately, and especially since the election. No one on either side seems willing
to hear anything from anyone on the other - except here, and I think there's
value in that.

Perhaps I'm alone, or nearly so, in this opinion. But perhaps I'm not, too.
And even if I am, it still seems worth throwing out there. In an increasingly
polarized political environment (and I say this as a veteran of the 2000
election and all that followed it!), HN seems as close as anything I've
participated in, seen, or heard of, to a demilitarized zone where parties on
both sides can meet and interact in something approaching a constructive
fashion. I realize that's not HN's intended purpose, and I don't blame the
mods here if they decide that's not what they want to run. But I do think it's
something that'd be a shame to lose.

~~~
RangerScience
Hear, hear! I came to HN specifically to check comments on political news
items, because I (generally) found them pretty insightful and excellent.

------
notadoc
Hallelujah.

My 2 cents: unless it's directly related to tech (net neutrality, SOPA,
surveillance, security, etc), it shouldn't be on here.

------
mindcrime
I say make this permanent. A couple of years ago, politics was mostly verboten
here, at least unofficially. It's been a slow, steady transition to the
current state where political stories have become so prominent.

None of that is to say that politics isn't important, or that I don't enjoy
discussing the subject. It just isn't mainly why I come to HN, and I honestly
feel a little dirty every time I get drawn into a political discussion here.

~~~
venomsnake
The BIG wave of identity politics started circa 2011 ... it was easier to be
forbidden before that. It is easier to stop a tide than a Katrina.

~~~
dang
HN can't be immune from macro trends.

------
danso
I respect that HN wants to stay away from the burning dumpsters that have been
online political discussions lately. I probably post more than my fair share
of political discussion here, but i try to do so only when I see it being
relevant to the general aims of HN, even if you're here only for the tech and
entrepreneurship. A lot of tech and business is influenced by political
machinations, and I value the HN quality commentary on it.

But yeah, partisanship, not so much. Maybe a week of non-politics will help
level the conversations here, though it's still a relative oasis compared to
just about anywhere else online.

------
jrnichols
I have no complaints. This is where I come more and more often because I am so
fed up with endless political bickering on Facebook, Twitter, and, well,
pretty much every other place I go that has some sort of comment section or
forum. It's frustrating. For me, this is the last bastion of rational
discussion.

------
abathur
It's your prerogative to enforce HN's own rules about political posts, but I
think identifying "politics" as a "topic" is a misguided (political) gesture.

It's one thing to say pogo sticks are off-topic in a unicycling forum, and
quite another to say basic human drives (thought, sex, hunger, curiosity,
creation, expression, socializing, prediction, story-telling, bonding, power,
respect, exploration...) that pervade everything we do are "off-topic".

On the road to pathologizing and demonizing people who don't agree with us,
this kind of compartmentalization is itself a mechanism we use to flatten and
stereotype away the human needs, desires, and drives that animate others.

You may benefit HN (and society) more by acknowledging these entanglements and
focusing instead on how to model, shape, and cultivate responsible civic
discourse.

------
nerfhammer
Politics stories seem to get flagkilled 95% of the time already, and despite
the difficulty of discussing it politics affects our daily lives a lot more
than the latest release of some javascript framework.

~~~
rubicon33
There are different forums for politics though... I think the point Dang is
making is that this place isn't primarily (even tangentially) a place for
politics.

~~~
pjlegato
Evidently a large subset of the user base disagrees.

~~~
dang
It seems that a majority (though not a huge majority) of the commenters do.
But if you consider that plenty of the 600 users who posted comments also
support the idea, and factor in the 1400+ upvotes on the submission (which
tend to be expressions of approval), it's likely that community feedback is
between moderately and highly positive. Though you wouldn't guess it from
reading the thread.

~~~
pjlegato
Those who favor prohibiting political discourse are only mildly in favor --
even if it's allowed on the site, they can simply ignore any threads with
political content and approximate the same effect in terms of user experience.
They are thus less likely to bother writing, since it doesn't make as much
difference to them.

Those who favor allowing political discourse, however, are angry, since there
is no substitute, other way to approximate "discussing politics with the HN
community" other than doing so on the HN site.

------
komali2
I like the idea of it being a detox and nothing more. I understand that
political discussions can drag a site down, just look at reddit, but in the
long term ignoring everything political can only hurt us. When it comes to
topics like net neutrality, environment, and security/encryption, we can be
doing the job of the government itself by crippling our grassroots/discussion
efforts.

Being aware of the government stepping in our gardens is important, and if the
side effect is sometimes we get mad at eachother, well, at least we're aware.

------
Futurebot
No objection whatsoever to a pause period, but it's important for people to
realize there's no separation between politics and anything else, including
technology. "Everything is political" is a cliche, but it happens to be true.

"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics
alone, but politics won't leave you alone." -RMS

------
BinaryIdiot
I feel some irony was lost with the posting of this topic. The relationship
the actions HN moderation takes against HN users is, by definition, political.
So, by definition, this post should be removed.

Yes the moderation team is going to be handling this on a case by case basis
and a thread like this isn't actually going to be shut down but I think it
illustrates my point: politics is woven through society at virtually every
level. There are very few stories that lack at least some form of politics.

So why not let the community decide what they feel it a topic worth discussion
and what is not by flagging posts (like what they do today)? Why must there be
interference to steer the community in a specific, editorialized direction?

------
freddyc
The beauty (in my eyes at least) of Hacker News has always been that the most
interesting/relevant stories and discussions find their way to the top of the
feed. I've discovered topics and perspectives (including those I disagree
with) that I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to if it weren't for HN.
I've always felt there is something of a built-in filter present, so this move
feels a little forced and unnecessary to me.

~~~
dang
It sounds like you may not be seeing the worst of the threads we're talking
about, which tend not to remain on the front page but burn like tire fires
anyway.

~~~
freddyc
That's entirely possible and a fair point.

------
rokosbasilisk
I support this even permanently. Not everything is political as some people
believe.

Hackernews articles and comments about flask, django, and mongo helped me get
my first job. Ask hn helped me learn about consulting. I love reading the
comments about the em drive to help me understand when the mainstream media
doesnt explain or misrepresents.

Even today I still learn so much about js frameworks, and cool plugins or tips
and tricks, seeing all this swamped by politics sucks.

------
bootload
While I agree with the idea, HN as a whole cannot totally avoid these kinds of
issues: _" Tech Companies Delay Diversity Reports to Rethink Goals"_. I
haven't posted the link because it's not in the spirit of the detox and it's
only one week. Do we avoid these types of discussions because they are
ambiguous and hard?

    
    
      "Fashion is mistaken for good design; 
       moral fashion is mistaken for good."
    

I understand the re-calibration of HN here. The choice of topics drift over
periods of time and a reminder of the rationale is good hygiene.

    
    
       "Moral fashions more often seem to be 
        created deliberately. When there's 
        something we can't say, it's often 
        because some group doesn't want us to."
    

I'm also reminded of a great essay [0] that for today should be mandatory
reading.

[0] _" What you can't Say"_ ~
[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

------
estsauver
This doesn't feel nonpartisan, it feels like it's actively quashing what
little political traction can be gained here.

And frankly, a 'detox' is absolutely the wrong word for it. The emotions for
me at least come from feeling scared. I have several family members who will
lose coverage if the ACA is repealed and I have muslim friends who are looking
at the prospect of being sent to interment camps.

This is anger and fear that should be cultivated, not extinguished.

    
    
      sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" >> /etc/hosts'

~~~
ixtli
Yes, "taking a break from politics" is a privilege granted to those not
directly effected by it.

------
Jeaye
I come here to talk and learn about tech and science, not banter about
politics. I'm all for a politic-free HN.

Find just about any article on the hacker mindset and politics, aside from the
desire for freedom, won't be anywhere near the top of the list. Nothing about
Republicans, Democrats, race, etc.

Some examples:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28subculture%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28subculture%29)
[http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-
howto.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html)
[http://suntzu23.blogspot.com/2006/11/five-principles-of-
hack...](http://suntzu23.blogspot.com/2006/11/five-principles-of-hacker-
mindset.html) [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-
hack.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-hack.html)

------
stevethyc
"Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me, I wish none of this had
happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to
decide, All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to
you."

Information/Internet technology is inseparable from politics now. I never
asked for that and neither did any of us, but that's the inescapable reality.
Our inventions are being used to both enhance and disrupt democracy, and they
are causing real people real pain along with the huge benefits to millions of
others. Like many, my own productivity has taken a huge hit in the last year
because of all of the political news. I resent this in the same way I'd resent
a hurricane hitting my house, but pretending it isn't happening won't help. HN
being a blend of pure tech stories along with political+tech stories is
absolutely the right blend because IT REFLECTS THE REALITY OF TODAY'S WORLD.
Trump's election is the biggest change in politics in the last 50 years, and
IT was at the heart of that election, in terms of the forces that have caused
the desire for change (e.g. worker displacement, cultural upheaval), and the
mechanics of the election itself (e.g. Twitter, news feeds, fake news, media
manipulation, big data, etc.). We, the IT workers of the world, are the new
weapons-makers. That we never meant our work to be used that way is
immaterial. Everybody in tech should now be politically informed. We should be
tuned in. We should know details. We should learn the facts. I'd love to spend
100% of my time learning about new frameworks and hardware, and that's what I
enjoy doing. We have the ring now, even if we never wanted it. Now it's our
job to keep it out of hands of evil.

P.S. I started writing this response with, "Good! I am so sick of reading
about politics everywhere. Great move, HN!". Then I changed my response to the
one above.

------
pizza
We all share a responsibility to behave like adults. Is this really the way to
deal with some people being quick to anger? What's the difference between
people debating over the best political theory vs, say, unproven quantum
theory, or lay speculation on economics, or on history, or on aesthetics, or
on evolutionary post hoc rationalization, or on predictions of the future?

And as per the US-centrism aspect, personally, I can't see how muting
political debate will shift the average discussion _away_ from US-centric
politics, in general..

------
smoyer
That will give us all more time to discuss religion (the other topic my
parents always said was verboten between casual acquaintances).

More seriously, I'm not going to rock the boat (and won't miss the discussions
about politics) but I always figured those stories would disappear from the
front page when the community at large didn't want to discuss them. It's a
dangerous slope since you can also make the argument that other topics are
also too dominant. I personally would like to see fewer articles on Angular
but I wouldn't have suggested that they be off-topic for a week. I guess I
assumed the up-voters wanted them.

OFF-TOPIC: Any chance we can down-vote articles with enough karma?

EDIT: I guess I should also note that I rarely flag articles since that seems
like it should be reserved for some sort of abuse. My thought about down-votes
is that it's the opposite of an up-vote ("I'm not interested in this" versus
"this is interesting").

~~~
TeMPOraL
Tricky thing about politics is that - as dang explained - triggers specific
reactions in all of us, in a self-amplifying way. So while I often do comment
on political topics, I also like this experiment very much. Politics will
never disappear from HN completely, but what I desire is for the occasional
political discussion on HN to be of high quality - both civil and insightful.
So I 100% support this experiment.

------
bradleyjg
I've been hesitant to go into new and just start flagging all the terrible
stories because I've read about people that lost the ability to flag. So I
only flag on relatively rare occasion. Does such an overuse mechanism actually
exist?

~~~
sctb
Not overuse, just abuse. If you'd like to flag some more but are worried about
that, just send us an email at hn@ycombinator.com and we'd be thrilled to take
a look and give some feedback.

~~~
nkurz
I don't know how automated the system is, but would it be feasible to say
something like "If your email address is in your profile, we'll try to give
you a warning by email before we take action?" As it is, there's not much
feedback on whether the flagging action is appropriate or not.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
As someone who is a regular (permanent?) attender on HN's rate limit
blacklist[0], I can say that from personal experience: You will likely not be
notified before HN punishes you, but from contacting HN about said incidents,
it's generally (maybe always?) a manual process by an irritated HN mod. And if
you email them (hn@ycombinator.com) about your apparent ban, they're generally
willing to converse.

[0]I was unable to post this comment when I wrote it, and had to wait.

------
cryoshon
Just passing by this thread to register intense negativity against this plan.
HN shouldn't be a "safe space".

Shutting down discussion of "politics"\-- the methodology of distribution of
resources within a society-- is the complete opposite of gratifying
intellectual curiosity and having substantive comments. How is it possible to
gratify curiosity, when you're not allowed to start the discussion? How can
the substance of your comments be displayed when the topic is verboten?
Perhaps what dang is upset about is the tone with which these comments are
conducted. Sure, they're shrill, sometimes. But isn't it natural to be shrill
when discussing issues of morality and heavy consequence?

As far as HN not being intended for use as a political or ideological
battlefield: that dream is dead. Technology touches every aspect of humankind,
and yes, that means it's political.

------
alistproducer2
Politics was definitely a problem right after the election, but it seems to
have calmed down a lot and nakedly political stories don't seem to make it to
the front page anymore.

I would hope this purge would not include stories related to privacy
legislation, as I think the topic is very relevant to the community.

------
jonahrd
Some of the most politically important events and eras were defined and made
possible by the technology and engineering that came out of these periods. In
the past, engineering has been taught as a separate entity, focusing on
monetary and technological risks/rewards. This leads to impressive engineering
projects that sometimes devastate communities, wildlife, marginalized groups,
etc.

But the truth is that engineering is intrinsically linked to the impacts it
has on the environment, its social impacts, its political impacts, and
everything else that it affects in this complex web that is reality. When
engineering is taught in schools now, these impacts are a major focus. In
civil engineering this means that projects are planned that at least take into
account the people and communities they are displacing. In industrial
engineering, it means sourcing materials from the right places, focusing on
environmental impact, etc.

It's absolutely no different in software engineering, or high tech in general.
By enforcing an 'apolitical' atmosphere in a tech discussion, you're
consciously shifting the intelligence and nuance of the discussion back to a
period before we started to consider the impact that technology has on
society. This is a dangerous shift, and dumbs down the level of discussion
that's achievable by muting voices that connect the discussion with its
impacts in other areas. In effect, this actively enforces the status quo, and
doesn't allow our discussion here to progress the industry as a whole.

I come to HN because it's a great resource to find interesting tech articles.
It's also a great way to stay informed with the latest tech related news. But
equally, I find discussion so engaging here because it seems to be so deeply
ingrained the heart of the tech community, and because of that, can affect the
way the tech world operates as a whole (even just slightly). Stripping down
the discussion to a frankly old-fashioned apolitical "tech doesn't affect
anything except tech" would be a sad thing for me to witness happen to HN.

------
jressey
I disagree with this idea, the point where I consider it cowardly. This is a
forum for a community, so let us talk about what we want to, and upvote it if
it's good content. If this is actually a concern about a problem happening
like on Reddit with upvote bots, then let's talk about that.

C'mon, hearing people talk positively about working with JS lights a fire
inside me and my veins pop, so I just don't upvote their comments. Pretty
simple.

------
whybroke
Very true, high emotions preclude clear thinking and this week will be a
worthwhile experiment. But unfortunately web technologies are at the core of
recent political events making this a very hard problem. For example will
discussion on the following topics be disallowed for the week?

-Discussions of intrusions into US infrastructure by Russia which, curiously, always engender enormous political controversy.

-Manipulation of social media for political ends both manual and automated.

-Policy changes on net neutrality proposed by the president elect or others.

-Governmental surveillance as is and as likely to evolve.

-Trolling as a political tool to disrupt opposing communities.

One level up, there is also the possibility that calm well informed discussion
is the exact thing that is targeted for destruction. But perhaps this week's
experiment will take some steps towards thinking about that.

------
proactivesvcs
If the result of political articles is a break down in polite, thoughtful
discourse, such so that the site operators feel the need to take such drastic
action, then we as users should also consider how we are voting comments.

I've recently realised I was upvoting comments (across various sites) that I
agreed with and sometimes vice-versa, and I have started making a concrete
effort to ensure that I upvote views I disagree with, if they add to the
discussion.

I agree with the proposal of a one-week political moratorium here because I
think that experiments can make good science. Let's also try to change the way
we vote (and comment) for a week, by trying to ensure quality discourse is
promoted, not just our views.

It's sometimes good for the soul to respect what you disagree with.

------
dkural
How do you draw boundaries of what's political? Everything is political -
rules for how and where Cars can drive, rules for who can host whom in their
house, gender equality and the job market, drones, and accountability abroad,
encryption and government surveillance. It's impossible to have a conversation
about Uber, AirBnB, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Twitter without talking about
whom it affects and how.

~~~
stevedonovan
Of course, from a broader perspective everything is political, but not
necessarily party-political. That's a partisan minefield, and the degeneration
of public discourse means that it's a very shallow muddy pool these days. But
we have to start talking about things beyond election cycles, like how
everyone can live dignified lives when automation really starts biting.

------
tyingq
How broadly are we defining "politics" here? Some topics I see here
frequently...are these flaggable for the week?

Uber Contractor vs Employee, AirBnb vs Zoning Laws, Universal Basic Income,
Privacy Issues

~~~
Apocryphon
Yeah, I think there's definitely things that seem overtly political
"politician/organization/nation X did Y" and "this tech affects public via Z"

------
pmiller2
What counts as political? My only real concern is that this is pretty vaguely
specified. E.g can we discuss net neutrality? The economy? Economics in
general? Professional licensing requirements? Arbitration agreements? All of
these have produced interesting discussions in the past, and, while I could
stand to go a week without, I'd hate to ding someone's account for posting
them.

------
pjlegato
This supposes that legimitately intellectual and civil political discourse is
simply not possible, that some sort of "primitive brain" must always take over
in any political discussion. This is empirically false. Hacker News generates
much more calm and rational political discourse than otherwise.

Of course people sometimes get angry and flame each other in political
threads. That should be flagged. For that matter, people flame each other on
"Technology A versus Technology B" threads all the time, too, and many other
topics.

The way to promote more civil political discourse is to promote more civil
political discourse, not to ban political discourse as a dirty, taboo topic
altogether.

~~~
inimino
I think it is based on empirical volume of comments and shifts in discourse,
not a belief that civil political discourse is impossible a priori.

------
rubicon33
While I don't general like censorship... I think this is great. I don't come
to this forum for political discussions. I come here to here interesting
stories from like minded scientists and inquisitive people. Politics is
incredibly divisive and very rarely results in intriguing conversations, more
usually name calling and flaming. Nice bold move from HN Mods.

------
celticninja
I approve, politics tends to be US centric on HN and whilst I like to keep
informed there are plenty of other dedicate sources for that sort of
information. Also as this isn't a politics site inevitably the debate is a bit
of an echo chamber.

------
abtinf
This is a great idea. I assumed that political discussion would die down a bit
after the election, but it only seems to have escalated. Detox is the right
word for what is needed.

------
mesto
I just wanted to say that I'm incredibly disappointed in this decision and
even more so by its rationale.

The idea that Hacker News or tech in general is a 'garden' which should exist
separately from politics is simply naive and very privileged. Taking no
position, or worse suppressing opposition is itself a position. This is a
critical time of political organization and resistance in the days before the
Trump administration takes control.

Even 7 days lost in this process, allowing the readers of this site to ignore
the reality outside their doorstep is a concrete injury to the disadvantaged
communities which will be targeted in the first weeks of the Trump
administration.

------
taurath
Discussing politics is truly a bit of a black hole - we have unlimited ability
to argue for our principles but the truth is that if the sides are relatively
secure in their positions and have data they trust to back it up there is no
point in discussing further.

I applaud the admins for attempting something like this - communities need to
develop strong opinions to survive, or else they will be torn apart by
infighting when it becomes big enough that people no longer assume goodwill.
This creates an ever-more toxic environment and poisons the well. At least
then people are making a conscious choice to agree or disagree with the
purpose/opinions of the community.

------
pavlov
_... war and gardening don 't mix._

Well, victory gardens were a thing not very long ago:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden)

~~~
sctb
These probably weren't planted in the Somme.

~~~
pavlov
No, they were more like a morale booster to give those at home something to
do.

But during WWII in Finland there were definitely gardens built by soldiers. As
the Soviet Union defended against Germany and its Finnish front was
effectively paused, the Finnish soldiers began to build temporary houses on
the front lines. Here's a photo from 1943:

[http://www.nautelankoski.net/sota/kuvat/sotakuvat/jatkosotak...](http://www.nautelankoski.net/sota/kuvat/sotakuvat/jatkosotakuvat/jatkosota1943_008.jpg)

------
gopher2
What exactly defines a story as political?

Some recent topics I can think of... Facebook + fake news is about technology
and user behavior, and also very political. Government use of surveillance
technology is both technological and political in nature. Role of social media
in elections has technological, sociological, politic aspects to it that can
be discussed.

To me, being "political" is both what you're talking about, and how you're
talking about it.

I enjoy reading what the HN audience has to say about the above examples. I'd
be disappointed if they're considered too political and off limits going
forward.

Interested to see how this experiment goes.

------
therealgimli
I am disappointed by this decision, but I don't love HN any less for it.

Many comments have pointed out that there are plenty of places on the web to
have discussions about political topics, so let's keep the HN about tech.

I see the merit in this sentiment, but for me reading the political
discussions within this community is something I value greatly. For one thing,
there are a great many non-US based people here. In my experience I have been
exposed to a relatively balanced set of perspectives, and generally commenters
are thoughtful and un-troll-like.

In short, I learn many things from other folks in this community, and that
includes political topics.

------
ixtli
"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics
alone, but politics won't leave you alone."

\-- RMS, "O'Reilly Open Source Conference: Day 3" by Paul Weinstein, in Apache
Week (26 July 2002)

------
russelluresti
> Those things are lost when political emotions seize control

> but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political
> conflicts activate the primitive brain.

Wait, is the entire premise behind this the idea that political differences
can't be discussed in a respectful manner? History would disagree with you on
this statement. People are capable of having political discussion without
having a flame war, it happens all the time. You're taking the actions of a
minority group and saying that because a few people are disrespectful we all
have to bury our heads in the sand and avoid politics completely.

This is ridiculous.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I think " _at the moment_ , politics is considerably less likely to be
discussed in a respectful manner" is a very defensible point, though...

~~~
russelluresti
Perhaps, but just because something is difficult doesn't mean it should be
completely disengaged. It's when things are difficult that issues need to be
discussed the most. Instead, we should continue to engage and be more adamant
about enforcing our own rules.

------
aroberge
Thank you very much for attempting this experiment.

Notwithstanding the enormous influence the U.S. has on the world, as someone
living in another country, I welcome this very much. In my opinion, HN shines
when it comes to discussions of technology, it does an ok job when it comes to
discussing scientific topics, but it __tends __to break out into parochial
cliques (with full cultural blinders on) when discussing topics like politics.
This is worst (again, imo) when this happens in comments on other topics; when
it is the main topic, at least one can easily avoid it.

------
rileyriley
This is the time for making ourselves uncomfortable and leaving room for
others to speak.

It's dangerous to avoid short-term pain by stifling conflict. HN is about
technology news and I don't think we should separate the "oh cool" part from
the "how will this affect our neighbors" part.

------
feral
Technologists have above average wealth, and have influence on the future of
technology and society. There are many here. At some point the size and power
of a news site increases beyond the point where its just a toy - like it or
not (see Facebook).

And with power comes responsibility.

I can understand adjusting the amount of political discussion, but banning it
seems like a derogation of responsibility - certainly if the ban were to
persist.

Alternatively, if another leak like Snowden's comes out this week, would
discussion be prohibited? What if a big tech company was found to be building
a Muslim registry? Could you please clarify whether stories that are _both_
technology and political will remain?

> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity
> and civil, substantive comments.

If that's the clear extent of the mission, that's a pity.

I'd argue there was always a subtext on HN, whereby hackers giving prominence
to their intellectual curiosity is justified because this path also eventually
produces Good Stuff, technology which solves real problems, and eventually
creates wealth and makes people's lives better. I would thus recommend against
drawing a bright line around 'gratify intellectual curiosity'.

If we're just clicking stories purely because it gratifies us, how's it
different to just eating candy? It'd be a pity if that was all the community
is intended to be.

------
bluetwo
Dear lord yes.

I've been off Facebook for most of the year, and have noticed how many people
have dropped Facebook like a rock after the election.

I have to wonder if their stats are going to suffer as a result.

------
Mz
I have almost zero interest in politics. I can think of one politically-framed
piece I posted recently because of the GIS content and it was flagged to death
promptly. I wish I could have found a non political write up of the project,
which I believe predated the political situation that the article spun it
around. Perhaps I shall look a little harder today to see if such a thing
exists.

I am totally cool with this experiment. It is hard enough to foster good
discussion online even without politics.

Best.

~~~
Mz
As promised, here is the GIS related works I posted a couple of weeks back,
though I had to brew my own to get a piece without the political angle:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110904)

------
pelario
What is the limit that defines "politics" from everything else ? I personally
believe that (more or less) "everything is politics", therefore it is quite
difficult to follow this directive.

Actually, the OP is very politic, as it is about how HN is governed, should we
flag this post and should you kill the story?

This may sound pedantic, but the example shows the importance of defining what
you consider is the limit between "politics" and "everything else"

------
aaachilless
To toe the line between censorship and curation is an incredibly difficult
task and I think, as a civilization, it's a fundamental problem. The thought
and care and effort that's going into this problem right now is deeply
important and I'm grateful towards those who take it seriously, and it's clear
that dang (and other HN moderators) are of this class of people.

So my only piece of (hopefully) constructive criticism is that I think there's
a prima facie less biased stance to take with an announcement like this. It
might go like:

Dear HN,

HN, as a public discussion forum, is a dynamical system that's always
"attempting" to spiral out of control. Hence, we have moderators. Our
moderators can only inject so much stabilizing energy into HN, and we've
noticed that many or most political discussions are more energized than we can
handle. So, we're going to see what HN looks like from a moderator's POV when
we disable political discussions.

I guess this too sounds a little alarming, but my point is that I think there
could be a way to talk about the issue at hand in terms of pure magnitudes
instead of using language that says anything qualitative about different types
of discussions. Something about the idea that "we have certain values, these
discussions aren't aligned with our values, these discussions don't belong
here" is a little off-putting.

All that said, it's not at all ridiculous to test whether or not banning
political debate may in fact make HN a more robust and effective knowledge
hub. Hopefully this experiment will yield interesting results.

~~~
dang
That's really good, and I wish we'd consulted you beforehand.

------
kanzure
"Well-kept gardens die by pacifism"
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/)

------
jc_811
A submission on climate change was flagged and removed due to these political
guidelines. Is this really considered political? Wouldn't it be more justified
to call it 'scientific'?

How is anyone supposed to realistically draw the line between what is
political and what is not? Couldn't any topic in the world be related back to
politics one way or another?

This seems like a blatant plot to censor 'unwanted' topics and articles. A
huge downvote from me.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
If it's the one I recall, it was about "how to talk to climate change deniers"
or something like that. I flagged it (dang says to overflag rather than
underflag in this regard anyhow). I'd have a hard time categorizing it as "not
political". It's a charged political topic, the details of that conversation
had nothing to do with technology, and almost entirely were about "how to
argue with the people you disagree with" who happen to almost entirely belong
to a single political party.

~~~
jc_811
I do see what you're saying however, climate change is not a political topic
in itself. It is a scientific topic that has to do with the world getting
warmer.

The article was not "how to argue with people you disagree with" but how to
connect with an audience who does not believe in a scientific consensus due to
misinformation. In fact the point of the article had nothing to do with
arguing (or political parties), but rather empathetically connecting with an
opposing viewpoint.

This is exactly what I meant from my parent comment. Because a topic has been
hijacked by political parties we can't bring it up? Climate change = science
topic. It is a well documented phenomenon that 97% of the world's climate
scientists agree on [1].

Being on either side of the political spectrum is irrelevant here, as at its
core this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with science.

[1] [http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-
consensus/](http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/)

~~~
grzm
I sympathize with the sentiment you express here. In some ideal world where
people are purely rational beings this might be the case. However, that's not
the world we live in, and empirically has not been the case here on HN. You
can see that on any climate change thread (at least any I've seen here). You
mention in another comment that anything can be eventually connected to
politics. I agree. And unfortunately some members will always make that
connection rather than fighting against it to have a civil, constructive
discussion. There are plenty of interesting topics that don't slip as easily
into inflammatory political back-and-forth. Avoiding those that do seems
prudent and which is what the HN guidelines explicitly state. And that's what
the detox week is trying to reinforce.

------
mmaunder
I wasn't aware there is a problem.

~~~
minimaxir
The threads which dang moderates are a good chronicle of political discussions
gone bad:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang)

------
inimino
I am all for experiments, and I think this is a good thing to do for a week.

Long term, politics is inseperable from many other issues, so I suspect this
isn't a viable long-term rule. However, insisting on thoughtful discussion may
be easier after some "detox".

I for one certainly miss the functional programming articles that used to be
so much more common on the front page. Here's hoping for a week of new and
non-political food for thought!

------
knowtheory
Hey Dan,

This seems like a dramatically misguided attempt to rectify conversational
tone.

You can't de-program or disregard people's politics, it's shot throughout
everything. Politics frame the foundational approach to recommending policy,
how we make decisions and the stories and topics we care about.

It's important to find common ground and ways to discuss topics _in spite of_
politics, not deny the fact that politics pervades everything.

------
fdgdasfadsf
I get what you are doing - HN has been in eternal September mode for a while
now. I'm not sure it will work but I hope it does I don't want to have to find
a new message board.

My question is what counts as political? HN has been an important place for me
to get news about censorship, surveillance and copyright issues that are just
not covered by my country's press (UK). I would be sad to lose this news
source.

~~~
dang
This is just for a week, so you're unlikely to lose much, and those topics
aren't going to disappear from HN.

~~~
fdgdasfadsf
Thank you for addressing my concerns. I hope that you don't end up having to
ban all political discussion permanently.

~~~
dang
We're not going to.

------
spinchange
I appreciate this effort and get the gist of the experiment. At the risk of
being too philosophical, I'd just say, _everything_ is inherently political,
so drawing a line may prove to be tough in some cases. "Politics" can
expressed in subtle ways and not necessarily as the central topic at hand, but
imbued into it.

I'm reminded of Ted Nelson's notion that politics, loosely defined, is "clash
and reconciliation of agendas" and, "If software is successful, it steers the
path that many users take, and selects among many possibilities to further the
creator's agenda...Suppressing the other possibilities may also be part of the
agenda."

[https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/video/the-politics-of-internet-
soft...](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/video/the-politics-of-internet-software-
geeks-bearing-gifts/)

In any case, I get & appreciate the practical goal here and what you're
looking to accomplish. I know I specifically need a Trump-related detox, in
general (although not because of anything I've seen on HN).

------
throw2016
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This camel in the sand
approach clamors to roll back to a time when tech was not political.

But now tech is political, surveillance and the surveillance economy being
built by SV companies is political, techologists working for the government
building invasive surveillance systems is political, the betrayal of people by
a technical elite is political, the censorship advocated by social media based
out of sv is political, AI is political.

Ignoring this is like an arms supplier turning a blind eye to his weapons used
to kill innocents choosing to focus on specifications. ie a world without
morality. That's not protecting values or intellectual curiosity, its killing
it.

The kind of forum HN has morphed into for lack of an alternative cannot be run
by an organization with commercial interests. Then you get knee jerk arbitary
decisions like this that begets a culture of passivity accepting what ever is
handed down to you. I think the technical voice needs more robust expression
and to speak as one with the rest of the population rather than seek isolation
and alienation.

------
stcredzero
In recent threads, I've made some factual observations, only to have people
imagine a slant or motivation, then argue with that commenter of their
imagination. I think HN is succumbing to the "Arguments as Soliders"
antipattern:

[https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers)

------
stenl
Why isn't this exactly like playing "Nearer My God to Thee" on the deck of the
Titanic? The ship is sinking and we're going to talk not about the water
rushing in through the hole in the hull, but about ...gardening?

By all means let's have a civilized conversation but we're in a political
crisis and "we" as "hackers" need to help fix it, not wish it wasn't so.

------
justinzollars
Please god. Great idea. Also I'm sick of reading about "Fake News". Please
stop it. Please.

------
narrator
I know an engineer from Iran. He's a great guy, not particularly religious at
all. Pretty much a totally normal guy. I asked him about politics in Iran. He
said when he was going to school for engineering in Iran where he grew up, his
friends all made a pact to completely ignore and stay out of politics. He said
it with a smile on his face and absolutely no regret.

~~~
crucini
That's also a good answer for someone who was highly involved in politics -
and might explain the smile.

------
criley2
It's a half measure and it won't help much.

Hackernews is like reddit before subreddits.

It's too big now, too many people, too disparate of subjects, too much noise
and not enough signal.

Over the past couple years, definitely in the past 2, hackernews has gone from
say a reddit SV subreddit, to a generalized, worldnews/politics/general news
generic reddit.

That's not what this is. And when hackernews becomes what
reddit.com/r/reddit.com used to be, it dilutes the userbase and
invites/attracts people who have nothing to do with the hackernews ideology
and culture.

This is a positive first step, but far too little and maybe too late.

This site is becoming a generic catch-all subreddit for all news, and with
that change the userbase is reflecting the lack of focus on
SV/technology/hacker culture.

Without dramatic intervention, the tides will turn and hackernews will not be
an attractive place for real hackers, real innovators. Won't be worth their
time anymore. They'll find greener pastures. Many already are.

~~~
tropo
Who counts? I don't think by "SV/technology/hacker culture" you literally mean
Silicon Valley only.

How about a devops person, working with all the latest tech? Does it matter if
they reside in Virginia and work for the CIA?

How about a GPGPU and FPGA programmer in Kansas? Does it matter if the code
they write is for cruise missiles and they attend Westboro Baptist?

------
jprzybyl
I think this is a good idea. I realize that, you know, freedom of speech and
all, but this is called HACKER NEWS.

I would personally like it best if the political news just lessened overall,
rather than stopping entirely for a week, but what can you do. Can't just tell
people "actually, the political thermometer is at 25°C, gotta let it cool down
to 21°C."

------
pfooti
Here's a couple of problems.

1) Many things are political on some level. Consider encryption, the future of
technology, automation, global trade. What counts as political?

2) Not discussing things that are deemed "political" is itself a political act
- you're basically saying, "we don't need to talk about these things that are
actively causing harm." Often times, this is a show of support for the status
quo - it's the privileged who get to say what conversations can and cannot be
had, and they rarely say, 'let us stop talking about this subject that deeply
affects us'. They say that about things that don't matter to them, because
they're worried about civility.

3) Some people are actually actively fighting for their very right to exist,
politically and in the physical world. Consider the current administration's
(especially the VP) stance toward LGBTQIA people, or toward abortion, or
consider the active physical harm perpetrated on the bodies of non-white
people by institutions and corporations. If you're upset because people are
getting their feelings hurt, consider the people whose actual bodies are being
hurt, whom you are now potentially silencing.

Sure, maybe hackernews should be a place where people post stuff like "Show
HN: Version 1.2 of my parsing state machine" and _nothing_ else. Maybe we
yearn for the yester-days of freshmeat or whatever.

I don't operate under the assumption that HN is a free space or a space for me
in particular or demand the right to say anything I want on its platform. I
did appreciate its relative openness and the general quality of its
commentariat. But this experiment has radically altered my opinion of HN as an
online space. I'm going to re-evaluate that, I guess.

This really does feel like someone grumpily saying, "keep it down, kids, we're
trying to eat dinner here!"

------
jimjimjim
Yay, I fully endorse this policy and hope that it gets extended forever.

Would you always try to car discussions in a baseball forum?

They are both valid topics. But there is a reason why forums specialize on
particular topics.

------
mschuster91
Hi,

my personal POV is that a lot of issues affecting the tech community at large
resolve to politics in the end - be it the fight of cities and entire
countries against AirBnB and Uber for example, the infamous Flint water
disaster, the "fake news" battle, internet censorship, snoopers' overreach,
the role of Big Data in elections, voting machine fraud...

Nearly every story (even those about new startups "disrupting" a specific
market - markets ripe for disruption are usually created by political
decisions, be it Republicans or Democrats!) has its base in politics, and I
believe it is our duty as citizens and educated people to call politicians and
their parties out when they mess stuff up.

Therefore, I believe that prohibiting political discussions outright is a
dangerous move - I'm all fine with penalties or flagging if a discussion
devolves into outright fight, but not for simply bringing up the topic.

------
giardini
Not a gripe but an idea: rather than ban persons from HN for bad behavior,
would it possibly be better to "emprison" them, that is, disallow them from
posting for awhile and then, after a few days or weeks, permit them to resume
posting?

Reason I ask this is that I recently encountered an HN situation where someone
who appeared to be a productive member of the HN community was banned from
posting because of (truly) poor etiquette, if not outright bad behavior.
However, seeing that he had for over a year been a contributing member, I felt
that a total ban was heavy-handed and that simply being punished temporarily
for a transgression might have served better.

Is anyone familiar with an online forum that merely temporarily punishes
transgressors w/o permanently banning them? Does anyone else think banning is
sometimes a bit too much punishment?

~~~
dang
We effectively have that already, because if users continue to post good
comments after being banned, other users will vouch for those and we review
vouched comments. When someone who was banned reforms their ways and starts
abiding by the site rules, we unban them.

Of course that can be a slow process, but anyone who doesn't want to be banned
is invited to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
they'll abide by the rules in the future. And if you see a case of someone
being banned that you think is incorrect, you should email us about that too,
because we don't see everything.

~~~
chris_wot
You don't do that anymore. Your correspondence has increasingly turned into
approbation and you show an unwillingness to explain why someone is even rate
limited.

~~~
dang
I realize the rate limit is upsetting you, but we've given you a ton of
explanation and detailed information about what you need to do in order to
have it lifted. Instead you've been doing the opposite. I'm not sure why that
is, but it would be good if you'd stop.

~~~
chris_wot
I can publish our correspondence if you'd like, perhaps others can say what
you told me I need to do?

------
twalling
I think its a sad day that we can't attempt to be intellectually curious just
because its politically related. This last election has prompted me to start
reading more on both sides and has lead me to some other readings such as the
constitution, economic theory, history, etc.

It _is_ possible to talk about these topics from an academic perspective and
it feels like banning it for a week is equivalent to putting your head in the
sand and ignoring it because its too hard to have a conversation about it.
This is exactly the behavior I was motivated to try and change in myself
(stick to tech only, ignore other issues).

Yes, its very difficult to talk about some politics in thoughtful ways but I
would hope a community like HN has the people needed to try and address some
of the issues coming up. Be it technical (detecting fake news, biases, etc) or
intellectual commentary.

~~~
grzm
I understand and sympathize with what you've said here. I also know that
empirically this is not the case on HN, at least not under the current
environment (e.g., community, guidelines, moderation, current events and
political situation). Ignoring that puts what HN is and strives to be at risk.

I've also been actively working on engaging constructively in difficult,
contentious conversation. HN is one forum. If politics is on area that's
generally avoided here for the benefit of quality discussion on other topics,
there are other forums where one can. And perhaps after a detox week (or
two?), constructive political might work on HN. I certainly hope so, but am
also aware of how difficult that can be in person, and even more so online.

------
elcapitan
Can we have a Javascript framework detox week the week after?

------
27182818284
I welcome this experiment. There are so many other places for discussion and
news about politics, but less so about startups and technology-hacker-related
stories.

------
Alex3917
> Political conflicts cause harm here.

If not the ideal scenario, this certainly isn't the worst possible outcome. To
paraphrase Martin Niemöller, if you don't speak up for other people then who's
going to be left to speak up for you?

Although it may appear the politics and gardening are unrelated or in
opposition, there is actually an important link. PG always lists Kenneth Clark
as one of his biggest influences. And if you actually watch Civilisation, in
the first episode he says that it's a misconception that art arises whenever
people have the resources to do things other than working or whatever. Rather,
making art (loosely defined) always entails an enormous personal sacrifice,
one which people only undertake when they have faith in the longterm stability
of society.

------
epaga
Though I do not consider this a wise move, it is limited to a week so I don't
think the "harm" will be that great (however, nor do I think the benefit will
be at all worth the effort of explaining the flags to people who didn't see
this Tell HN).

The reason I don't consider it wise is that I think the current political
situation is completely unique at least in my lifetime (<40 years) and is not
the typical political camps bickering with each other over simply "politics".

Rather, this time around there are Real Issues that are Important. The current
trend of populism will have global ramifications for many decades to come. Not
allowing discussion on these topics seems counter-productive to me.

------
freshflowers
Politics isn't some isolated thing. Politics is about everything we do and
say. A techie elite deciding what they do isn't political, or worse, beyond
politics, is part of what got us to this point in the first place.

> HN is a garden, politics is war by other means

Denial, denial, denial. This is like the arms dealers selling to both sides in
third world conflict and claiming they are ethically above the killing.

You claim intellectual curiosity, but you peddle intellectual dishonesty.

Thank you, btw. I left HN months ago, and today come back to see exactly the
pathetic hypocrisy that turned me off in the first place. Shit like this makes
me be ashamed to be part of the tech community.

Sure, let's hide from the real world and pretend it isn't happening.

------
peterkelly
> _Political Detox Week_

I don't understand how so many people have missed the word "week" in this
sentence.

This is an experiment, and it's going to last a very short period of time; I
support it. I oppose banning political articles & discussion on HN in the
long-term, but that's not what this is. It seems the distinction has been
missed in most of the comments.

One option I would like to suggest is an option whereby people can enable or
disable a filter for political stories. This way if you just want to come and
geek out about tech, you can do so, or if you want to follow political issues
you have that option as well. I'd use both modes at different times depending
on my mood.

------
ada1981
This seems like yet another symptom of a culture that doesn't see the value of
emotional states and thus tries to prevent triggers to such states. I think
perhaps a system of encouraging rational thought and healing the underlying
issues would be more effective. Also, politics is about how resources are
allocated in society -- that means everything has a political implication for
the most part. Politics doesn't have to be war. If hacker news is a garden,
then politics is how we decide who gets to enjoy the fruits of the garden and
who doesn't.

I see a need for an upgrade in political discourse, yet I'm not convinced
eliminating conversations entirely is the answer.

------
jrubinovitz
"Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well,
that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to stop
people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive
brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually
curious ones. We can't be both at the same time."

I think this calls for more moderation so users that can speak civilly and
intellectually about politics can do so, not banning speaking of politics
entirely. "Conflict activat[ing] the primitive brain" is rather infantilizing,
gaslighting, and not true.

~~~
dang
It is true, and quite literally so. Our fight-or-flight threat detection
systems (what I meant by 'primitive brain') get activated when these topics
flare up, and when that happens people can't even see each other as human, let
alone engage each other in intellectual curiosity, which is the purpose of
this site.

------
alphonsegaston
I fail to see how encouraging this kind of mentality, even in this small of a
dose, doesn't further the historically disastrous mentality that engineering
is separate from a social and historical context. There are scenarios now
where the digital infrastructure of Google, Facebook, et al are seized upon
(even more so) for widely destructive ends that have spiked in their
probability. Apple is already showing signs of caving. And given the examples
of companies like IBM, I'm not terribly optimistic that there's gonna be some
kind of ground swell rebellion against the worse possible outcomes.

------
int_19h
It's interesting that comments seem to be either strongly in favor, or
strongly against. I'll buck the trend and say that I personally don't actually
care all that much.

I do like talking about politics, especially when it's polite and level-headed
discussion (which seems to be the norm here in NH), and a lot of my comments
are on that subject. So yes, it would be somewhat sad to see that go.

But the bulk of HN's value lies mostly elsewhere, and not being able to talk
about politics here would still keep it a valuable platform and an interesting
community to participate in.

So it's really not a big deal one way or the other.

------
matheweis
Politics are deeply engrained in the fabric of HN. Just a few examples that
come immediately to mind:

* Peter Thiel's support of Trump. * Mass Surveillance Laws. * Net Neutrality.

Are we going to simply avoid any and all potentially controversial subjects?

------
politician
Hi dang. About 45m ago, I added a comment [1] in the Amazon GO mega-thread
that mentions the concept of religion. Is this comment acceptable per new
policy?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108455)

(Aside: I believe that this detox experiment is treading on dangerous ground,
that it will be a struggle to contain the amount of censorship that will
happen as a result of encouraging people to flag each other in this way, and
that the effects will linger beyond the 1 week time limit.)

~~~
anonbanker
I'm not a mod, but I wouldn't flag your comment. Mentioning faith-based
alternatives for human interaction may not be 100% on-topic, but it isn't
political or divisive.

Now, if you had recommended one faith/sect over others for a superior
experience of human interaction, then maybe you'd have a problem.

~~~
politician
This detox experiment calls for all members of the community to police all
comments for all mentions of the censored concepts.

Regardless of whether a given comment is OK now, once this detox experiment
gains steam will anyone be able to mention anything about any of the
designated concepts under the anxious eyes of a newly deputized membership?

(I'm specifically thinking about the 99th percentile of moderation activity
given the large number of people on the site and the fact that neutral
opinions are not counted by the current voting system.)

Or, will these sorts of down votes be weighted? And if so, by what? Using the
karma system doesn't seem appropriate - there are many well-spoken members on
HN that hold wildly different, even antagonistic, viewpoints.

What inhibits abusive moderation activity of the sort observed when a CTR-like
group was actively manipulating /r/politics?

~~~
anonbanker
Ah, the "Slippery Slope" fallacy. I can't prove you wrong, but time might be
able to.

the downvotes will likely not be weighted. flagged comments will likely have
+3 karma as much as they have -3 karma. at least, that's the hope of a 1-week
moratorium, right?

To answer your question, the only thing stopping the abusive meta-moderation
activity are the two mods here. So long as the posts otherwise meet the
posting guidelines, they'll likely remain unmoderated. If they're not flagged,
they might not even pop up on the moderator's radar.

Basically, it is up to you to point the mods at things that may or may not be
abusive. Which I guess answers your question.

------
godmodus
a welcomed move really.

i come here to read tech news and be part of one of the least toxic
communities that's not my old irc channels.

as to politics, there's futurology and discussing sociology, and there's left
vs right, "make mericuh gr8 agin" vs "gief all monies to poor" politics, which
would put HN on some political brigade's list.

i don't have anything against future speculation and theorizing about
conservative\liberal angles to automation and rise of AI or voting machine
tech.

it'll be interesting to see what results the detox week will bear!

------
bendmorris
>...it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political
conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become
tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the
same time.

I 100% agree with this analysis, but is the answer really to avoid discussion
of politics altogether? I don't agree, and I think of the forums I visit, this
one has the best chance of maintaining a high percentage of rational
discussion to tribal noise.

------
derefr
This is an interesting experiment. I personally think decreasing the political
"tone" of HN is a sensible goal, but I don't expect that this _approach_ will
do well for meeting that goal. Specifically, I don't think the people who most
_want_ HN to be political will respond well to this.

There is a reason the shadow-ban was invented: when loudmouthed/trollish users
are allowed to _realize_ they are unwelcome, they get angry, and express that
anger by defacing, defaming, DDoSing, etc. the community that has rejected
them.

My personal belief is that the best thing to do is to not _disallow_ this
content altogether, but rather to _ghettoize_ it.

Two examples of this:

• How Metafilter treats posts about Metafilter: they're allowed, but they have
to go into a special "meta" ghetto, separate from regular content, where only
people who _want_ to see that kind of thing will have to see it.

• 4chan frequently makes new boards—new "homes" for certain content types—just
to quarantine content it doesn't like. For example, /soc/ was not created
because the 4chan moderators think 4chan _should have_ a meetups+dating board,
but rather because such threads were incessant on /b/.

\---

Now, HN already has something quite like these approaches, but IMHO better:
the "showdead" system for negative-scored posts, which ghettoizes posts but
also individual comment subthreads of posts, in a very granular way.

Here's the experiment I'd like to see done, re-using the "showdead" code:

• Split downvotes into an "irrelevant/Obviously Did Not Read The Article"
button and a separate "is political" button (where you can press either or
both on any given post.) Track the totals separately.

• If a post's (upvotes - irrelevant) is negative, then it's "dead" as happens
now, and you have to have "showdead" on to see it.

• If a post's (upvotes - is_political) is negative, then it's "politics", and
you have to have "showpolitics" on to see it.

• If _both_ scores are negative, then you have to have _both_ filters on to
see the post.

• Posts would sort/rank according to (upvotes - sqrt(irrelevant^2 +
is_political^2)).

I think this alternative would ensure that the people who most want to get
into tribal flamewars would "go quietly into the night" (from everyone else's
perspective), rather than becoming the sworn nemesis of the community.

------
tzs
It's not clear to me what is politics.

For instance, I just came across this interesting article from The Brookings
Institution: "Another Clinton-Trump divide: High-output America vs low-output
America" [1].

It's a look at how the election broke down by county. Clinton won 472
counties, Trump won 2584. The counties Clinton won produce 64% of the
country's GDP, with Trump's counties producing 36%. With the exceptions of the
Phoenix, Fort Worth, and a big chunk of Long Island, Clinton won all the
counties that have large economies.

They have a neat visualization of all the counties by size of contribution to
GDP and who won them.

The discuss how this big a divide is "unprecedented in the era of modern
economic statistics".

The article itself is not taking any political position. It is just providing
a way to perhaps get some insight into how the election came out the way it
did.

Would this article count as politics and so be subject to this week's ban? Or
is it an interesting look at data that happens to be data about a political
event?

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-
avenue/2016/11/29/another...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-
avenue/2016/11/29/another-clinton-trump-divide-high-output-america-vs-low-
output-america/)

~~~
parsnipsumthing
But wouldn't this clearly be politics? And is this really necessary for HN?

------
dragonwriter
Is this some special narrow definition of "political", or is the expectation
really that everything touching in any way upon government or public affairs
of any country will be deemed off-topic and killed?

Because a very large share of HN stories and comments have political content
in the dictionary definition (it's hard to address the societal impact of
anything even in a descriptive way, much less to discuss views of the merits
of such impacts, without such content.)

------
mesozoic
Thank you this is fantastic. I try to keep political discussions separate from
technology and being unable to read hacker news without facing political
discussions is taxing.

------
tn13
> Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are
> intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost
> when political emotions seize control.

Decides and all wise and smart moderator. People on HN somehow are capable of
perfectly logical and intellectually enlightening arguments when discussing
Javascript frameworks, best practices of team management, recruiting processes
and if women are less paid in tech industry and their love and devotion for
Elon Musk.

> Worse, these harsher patterns can spread through the rest of the culture,
> threatening the community as a whole. A detox week seems like a good way to
> strengthen the immune system and to see how HN functions under altered
> conditions.

How a detox week helps compared to outright banning it ? Isnt that better ?

This is how I read above comment:

Some HN users might be feeling triggered to hear opinions that go against
their own political opinions. Such people might be in large numbers. Censoring
political opinions might help HN to keep these users. But HN moderators are
not sure if this hurts HN very badly. This detox week is basically an A/B test
to see if HN does indeed lose by censoring political opinions.

This must be renamed to "Political Safe Space Week to figure out if we can
outright ban political speech on HN".

------
jlebar
> Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well,
> that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to
> stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the
> primitive brain

The unfortunate fact is that political discourse in America (and, I
understand, in many places elsewhere), has been reduced to lizard-brain
questions.

In particular, but certainly not as the only example, the US president-elect
ran on a platform that many of us would characterize as playing off machismo
and fight-or-flight, rather than actual policy proposals.

HN is a good thing not because it's a way to waste time at work, but because
discussing technology ultimately helps us create better technology. But the
assumption in this decision seems to be that discussing politics _doesn 't_
help us make better political decisions.

I think it's clear to most of us that tech's recent success is due in large
part to communities -- open source, StackOverflow, and yes, HN. We learn from
each other, and this makes us all better.

If we think this model doesn't apply to politics, that each of us is better
left to make up our minds independently, and that we cannot learn from each
other, I fear for the future of democracy.

------
grandalf
> Have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them.
> This really is an experiment; we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term
> changes. Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens
> when we try something new.

What are the criteria you've established for evaluating whether the experiment
was a success? Do you have evidence of HN being used to seed political
clickbait stories? Voting rings? Etc.?

------
sixstringtheory
Was this decision made top-down or in response to the desire of the community?

As someone who values the contributors to HN and appreciates the diverse set
of opinions, perspectives and critical thinking I find here, which are all
handled 99% of the time with decent respectfulness as far as I can tell, I
find this effort kind of sad.

Hopefully we learn something good from this, but not sure what that could be,
how to decide if it's good, or if it will be worth the effort.

------
RA_Fisher
Politics is about the distribution of power, in that way it's much broader
than government. It goes all the way from UN, WHO through nation-states down
to the community, home and even bedroom. The personal is indeed political as
they say [0].

Speech is a form of power. Decisions about which speech is allowed affect the
distributions of power and it's easy to see how the decision to ban politics
is itself political.

In this sense it's not possible to ban politics from HN, only to change the
distribution of politics.

We should examine the ways that a ban like this might change the distributions
of politics and power among the HN community. I suspect we'd find it reduces
the power among marginalized communities. Even if you're not from one of those
communities you can really benefit by reading their writings. In that case to
cut off those voices is a shame. It's a loss.

Who's deciding what counts as political and not? Moderators. We should examine
that. "Banning politics" essentially becomes "Moderators politics."

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_personal_is_political](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_personal_is_political)

------
legostormtroopr
Everyone on the left is calling this oppression and suppression.

Everyone on the right is calling this an affront to free speech.

When you piss off everyone, you are probably doing the right thing.

------
headcanon
A lot of people seem to be reacting to the idea that all political discussion
will always be banned forever on HN. Politics is important and affects
everything in its own way, but this is just a post-election cooldown from all
the super-polarizing Trump bullshit that has been preoccupying America for the
past eighteen months. We're going to have plenty more to talk about starting
January; I for one, welcome the break.

------
bjourne
I think not talking about politics is counter-productive. I think if more
people would talk to each other about political topics, then liars like Donald
Trump wouldn't get elected.

Btw, if there are any Trump supporters on HN, it would be interesting to hear
their views. Likely, due to how the community works they can't be heard due to
downvoting and/or flagging which I think is a shame. I prefer more debate over
less.

------
irickt
I have had the feeling that HN has been surreptiously invaded by a troll army,
specifically tasked with corrupting the ongoing discovery of consensus.

------
mgalka
I think it's a great idea. Will this be posted publicly somewhere so people
who did not see this post will know not to submit political stories?

~~~
DanBC
Not sure why you got downvoted. Any thread from a paywalled site has people
asking why it's okay to post paywalled content, or how to get around the
paywall, even though that was announced in a similar thread.

------
mrbill
This is welcome and refreshing.

------
netcraft
What is the experiment? What is the hypothesis and what are the metrics we
will be using to measure success or failure? I cannot understand how this is
healthy or beneficial. If there are disrespectful comments, moderate them. But
saying "some people cannot talk about these things constructively so lets not
talk about these things at all" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

------
thegrandwizard
The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful
conversation.

Thank you for reminding us here about that. Let's make it a month? A year? :-)

------
rjdevereux
I understand the sentiment, and promoting civil discourse is a wonderful goal.
But the way forward is figuring out how to promote the good, and discourage
the bad, not disengagement.

I don't think I can say why it is important to engage better than Charles
Krauthammer, so I'll just put his words here.

"While science, medicine, art, poetry, architecture, chess, space, sports,
number theory and all things hard and beautiful promise purity, elegance and
sometimes even transcendence, they are fundamentally subordinate. In the end,
they must bow to the sovereignty of politics.

Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything
because, in the end, everything – high and low and, most especially, high –
lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of
cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept
away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933… Politics is the moat,
the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and
everything burns."

------
nunez
Yes! This is awesome. All of the politics is tiring.

------
ideonexus
HN isn't a constructive forum for arguing politics anyway. I don't know that
such a forum even exists.

If you want to influence people, take Confucius' advice and live a model
public life that inspires (or shames) others into behaving ethically. Don't
waste time dragging yourself down into arguments with base people, live a life
that contrasts yourself with base people in the eyes of others. Let you
successes, your intelligence and your quality of life, sell your politics. I
make sure all my friends, especially my politically- and religiously-extreme
ones, know how great my life is. Every time I post a picture of my smiling
happy family and our successes, I am advertising my moderately-liberal
politics and my Humanist philosophy. And when my conservative Christian
friends do the same, they are successfully influencing me to have a more
positive outlook of their politics and religion. Be a friendly, caring
representative of your side of the aisle and you will constructively influence
others.

------
delegate
All censorship is done with good intentions. Things are censored because they
are somehow against a certain set of values or they threaten the well-being of
the establishment.

So this move is on thin ice.

But I also think that politics and politicians in particular are getting a lot
more media exposure than they deserve or need.

Politicians are the new rock stars... but they shouldn't be. They should be
spending time working on actual societal problems - the things they've been
elected for.

All the rest of us, too, should give them a lot less attention and focus our
attention on issues rather than people.

Political affiliation is a very subjective thing, similar to tastes in music
or art or sex. There's no perfect solution to all the problems we're facing
and that's why we disagree on things.

So often political discussion is a futile attempt to convince the other side
that the worst (their point of view) is the best (our point of view). Which is
a waste of energy and time and should be avoided.

Considering all of these factors, with a shade of worry I think this is the
right thing to do.

------
mch82
You've used the word experiment to describe this ban, so I'm interested to
know: \- What hypothesis is being tested? \- What are the metrics that will be
used to conduct the test?

My gut reaction is one of disappointment. I've enjoyed and appreciated the
political discussion on HN, which has stood out from other political
discussion on the web. My experience has been that the HN community respects
facts and evidence-based discourse and that's been refreshing in an
environment swirling with fake news.

Further, as a community interested in startups that often seeks "disruption"
we need to think more about the social impact and ramifications of technology
on society and on those who are disrupted.

Edit: I agree with the idea of holding the HN community to a high standard of
civil dialog for political discussion or any topic like tabs vs spaces or
language vs language. A tech-infused alternative to this thread might be, "Ask
HN: Chat bot for managing / extinguishing flame wars?"

------
julian_1
Excellent decision. You only need to look at what happened on reddit in
/r/politics or /r/the_donald. The polarization is poison for creating a shared
culture for intelligent discussion of topical issues. To be sure - these
debates are important - but it's not like there's a shortage of forums that do
cater to this stuff.

------
schoen
This item immediately came up with the really great news that the California
drought is ending:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108944)

So, that immediately prompted follow-up comments about rivalries between
northern and southern Californians over water use (edit: including whether the
choice of this metric is southern-Californian political propaganda!), about
whether Californians can manage to reduce the amount of water that we need,
about whether the west has too much human settlement, etc. While those may not
align very well with political ideologies that have been the most
controversial here, they could be seen as political questions (and they could
potentially lead to flamewarring over different aspects of environmentalism).

How does this kind of topic fit in with this plan, dang?

------
ocdtrekkie
This sounds awesome. Politics has weighed heavily on here at times, even on
topics that... just aren't relevant to the tech industry.

It'll be interesting to see where this line falls on tech politics stories
this week. Is a post about like... the FCC transition team in or out this
week? It's definitely political, but also very tech.

------
mnx
To all the people saying there are lot's of other places to discuss politics -
what good quality ones (with reasonable moderation, not total echo chambers,
accessible to normal people) would you recommend? I'm genuinely asking, I feel
like they are not that easy to be found. For my part, I like slatestarcodex.

------
drivingmenuts
I already did my detox. Deleted my bookmarks to political news sites,
unfriended some IMHO toxic people on FB and have generally refrained from
commenting on politics, of any kind, since the election.

Kind of plan on staying that course.

Keep the political links, discussions, etc. It's not like I have to read them
or comment on them if they appear.

And neither do you.

------
jgord
Disagree, not because it isn't a good idea right now, but :

a) we should not abandon the general rules, unless under the most exceptional
circumstances [ ie. unless these posts threaten to kill the HN site or render
it unusable in the main, we should not adopt a special rule ]

b) its un-needed, in the sense we can choose to self impose this by not
upvoting overly political stories/comments

c) HN is already practicing too much self-censorship - we need to tolerate
some extremes / ugly points of view, in order to keep a healthy community
where free speech is highly valued and where any subject can be discussed

d) imo HN is equally susceptible to hostile takeover by ugly "trumpism"'s as
it is by political-correctness / overly tolerant relativism. It is for each of
us to upvote/downvote/comment in order to fight against memes that might
enslave this community and its freedoms.

------
Karunamon
One concern I immediately have is that what is politics to one person might
not be politics to another, and given that too many flags that are judged to
be inaccurate result in the removal of the user's ability to flag...

You see where I'm going with this. It may be worth rescinding that policy
during the testing period.

------
johngalt
There are dozens of comments saying in effect "but politics are important!!!!"

That could certainly be true, but does that mean that they are important and
appropriate in all circumstances? Are no areas allowed to have a politics free
discussion?

I applaud this change. The only criticism I have is that it's limited to a
week.

------
nico_h
A big part of today's media environment is mediated through tech's most
popular and/or biggest companies (Facebook and Google, Reddit, probably to a
smaller degree Apple), with the internal choices of tech's last big success
(Facebook) having likely strongly influenced the last election.

I disagree strongly with suppression. You break it, you own it. the point of
view of most younger and not so young people is nowadays mediated through tech
via social media. Here is the place where it is most important to have a
debate about that.

If you want to moderate it differently from other subjects, add a different
set of tags or karma reservoir so that it doesn't spill over from it. I think
it's important to keep the political stories on the front page, especially as
this election's outcome will create incredible changes.

------
oxide
I fully support this and think it's been a long time coming.

Civil discussion and political discussion are fully incompatible.

~~~
inimino
You might want to check where the word "civil" comes from...

------
KirinDave
Given the profound affect tech has had on the last US election cycle, it is
difficult not to read this ban as the execution of a political agenda.

The idea that the two can be extricated from one another is absurd on its
face.

But what's also notable is the boldness of saying it out loud. It has always
been the policy of HN to flag out the majority of "politics" before it resides
in the new queue for more than an hour or two.

This "experiment" will surely quash conflict, but by banning anyone who has
any reason to express contention. The burden of social censure has always been
placed firmly on the head of the aggrieved on HN, but it's been an unofficial
policy until now. People like me are rate limited for being "too contentious"
on political subjects already. Now we're outright forbidden from talking about
it.

------
vic-traill
I'm not sure how I feel about the idea. [Rumination Required]

However, I definitely like that you're trying it out.

------
ForrestN
I am a hacker and a part of this community and have been for many years. My
little family is gay and mixed race, and because I work for a non-profit
relies on the government for health insurance. My in-laws are brown people
living in a hostile part of the United States where vicious hate crimes are
spiking.

Why don't I qualify as part of the community? Politics is now more and more
bearing down on my family, oppressing us, threatening us. We are afraid and
depressed every day, even while probably cowering from fully facing the
gravity of the threat this administration poses. It is hard to code when you
are terrified.

Why doesn't HN care about me? Why aren't its powerful, its brilliant, its
wealthy, abandoning all other projects to protect me? Why? I need you to save
my family. Please.

------
tomwrenn
I'm worried about how this will effect civictech, edtech, govtech story
coverage which has been great in recent years on HN and are important for
helping the community to be informed of how it's contributing and how
individuals can contribute to addressing societal issues.

------
Findeton
Thank you, I'd also prefer HN is only tangentially political. I don't want it
to become reddit.

------
wyldfire
_shrug_ , I haven't seen any submissions or threads I'd consider political for
over a week.

------
kup0
I see all the re-assurances about this being "only for one week", but what's
the point of a one-week experiment if you're not at least remotely considering
making it long-term?

You even say yourself that "we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term
changes" and I assume you're hoping the experiment maybe helps you form that
opinion?

While I understand the intent behind this decision I don't see it
accomplishing anything worthwhile. It may reduce flamewars temporarily, but
people get flamey on tech topics too.

It's a hell of a privilege to think that technology and business discussion
can be separated from political discussion. Politics will constantly intersect
with technology and business.

You're using a battering ram to hammer a nail.

------
binarysolo
I get it, the spate of political discussion on HN is stressful as politics is
people and the recent change in political climate means a musical chair of
winners and losers of the process.

But I disagree about the approach -- what is politics anyways? Most polarizing
these days: probably gender, race, and socioeconomic status, and the various
parties cater to those human categories. We all inherently have these things
that form the basis of our thoughts and how we see the world -- so I honestly
don't think it's easy to separate.

If the cost of thoughtful conversations on politics is dealing with flame,
then many of us are glad to pay the cost of doing business -- and I hope you'd
find a majority of people here would behave similarly.

------
erelde
I first came to HN because I wanted someplace to escape the political news
cycle. Not because I because I wanted to avoid politics altogether.

This seems like the right move for now. But we should be able to discuss
political matters when they intersect with the topic at hand.

------
masterponomo
I understand, and I know HN has the right to control speech in the forum it
owns. So I will only write this in the thread where I have been invited to
write it (and will note that I am a Libertarian so I of course did not vote
for Trump): The major theme of the media and in many comment threads on many
sites has been to decry the totalitarian, authoritarian nature of the coming
Trump regime. I find it ironic that the response of HN is to implement thought
control by suppressing an entire genre of thought. After all, once you rise
above the level of bits and bytes, you are going to get into political speech.
But go ahead. It's a free country. Just not a free forum (here, that is).

------
protomyth
It might be a very boring week for stories, and I do share drzaiusapelord's
concern this is happening when a new cabinet is being announced. Plus some
troubling laws out of Australia and the UK.

Science without philosophy is dangerous, and philosophy without science has no
use. The political implications of technology are a big part of the
discussion.

I guess I don't believe this step would have been taken if someone else won,
and that belief, justified or unjustified, troubles me.

But, I guess anything that gets the damn pipeline news off HN is fine. I'm
getting a little sick of the distortion field and do gooders that are going to
leave people high-and-dry on that one.

[I voted 3rd party for the top spot in ND if it matters]

------
grey-area
I do think you should clarify what you mean by politics.

Clearly you don't mean stories touched by politics like uber tracking users or
everything tech would be offtopic. Clearly you do mean stories about Trump.
Somewhere in the middle a line has to be drawn.

------
srpablo
Many of us were skeptical when visible HN leadership expressed sentiments over
and over like this:

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/785769454516916228?lang=en](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/785769454516916228?lang=en)

And we, in turn, were criticized for daring to express our thoughts that, if
Trump were elected, YC would play the typical role of the moneyed,
comfortable, and powerful, and not use any of its significant power to work
towards a better end.

Anyways, cool to put a moratorium on political discussion < 15 days before the
electors vote and 45 days before Inauguration. I feel relieved, and not proven
right at all.

~~~
dang
pg hasn't had any role on HN for a long time. Which is too bad for HN, but he
definitely isn't "HN leadership". Leadership emeritus maybe.

------
ozten
Politics are against the guidelines of HN. That is why I created Commit
[https://commit.ws/](https://commit.ws/) after the election.

Everyone wanting to continue these conversations, please join us there.

------
imafish
> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity
> and civil, substantive comments. What it is not: a political, ideological,
> national, racial, or religious battlefield.

What Hacker News really is: a community of smart, mostly rational, tech-
interested people of the world, impacted by world politics, who share stories
and ideas.

Nobody asks for it to be an ideological or political battlefield - common
sense and moderation should be able prevent this. But if this somewhat like-
minded community can have a political impact in any way (anywhere in the
world) by sharing and discussing political ideas, I cannot see why you would
stand in the way of that.

------
ehh314156
> Political conflicts cause harm here.

Preventing political discussions causes far more harm than it prevents. I
understand the intent. I understand the problem. Flame wars are not
productive. But I think this is a poor response to a valid problem.

------
chillingeffect
If this is an experiment, what is the hypothesis? And how will we know if it
was successful or not?

"Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens when we try
something new." is very vague.

This sounds more like an exercise of power.

------
pessimizer
Anything even vaguely political gets flagged to hell within minutes anyway,
even if they're directly applicable to technology such as labor issues,
electronic surveillance, antitrust, FCC news, the editorial control of news in
walled gardens, electronic voting, domestic organized commenting squads (as
opposed to Russian and Chinese, which are always fair game.) The idea that
it's somehow clogging up HN more than the endless glut of random light WaPo,
NYT and Nautilus science articles is weird.

I'd be interested in examples of what a political story or a political thread
are, because none were given.

------
phreakout
Preaching to the choir here, but I would like to voice my strong dissent
towards this move.

Trump and his cabinet directly effect everything HN stands for: the planet,
space exploration, online surveillance. These are not "off-topic" at all. In
fact, I'd go as far to argue that even this week-long ban should not touch
anything to do with climate change. Climate change is science, not politics,
and what Trump does now (see: EPA pick) affects this like nothing else.

Please let this be an experiment and nothing more. I come to HN to have a
discussion on a wide range of topics, including politics.

Thanks.

------
zacharycohn
"It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."

------
DougN7
I'm laughing at how pedant this group is. Viewed under a microscope, sliced
and diced a thousand ways and all possible repercussions and views are
debated. It's just a week! We'll survive :)

------
spoiledtechie
If you need political discourse in your week with something just like HN, feel
free to go [http://swintonreport.com](http://swintonreport.com)

Sister site to HN the way it looks.

------
hooande
It seems like you're doing a dry run of your ability to censor the community.
By asking members to flag posts pertaining to politics, you're going to
drastically offer what people see by default.

And when are you going to use this newfound ability again? When you
arbitrarily get tired of some other topic? And even if you use this
responsibly, what about the person who has your job next?

I've been active on this site for over eight years now. We've managed to
govern ourselves just fine. I really hope this isn't a moment we all point
back to in the future.

------
lettergram
Most of the politics on HN has been significantly less than previous years.
Previously, I could go to HN and get knowledge about various topics related to
election results, polling bias, etc. Now, it's pretty limited, literally I
saw/see zero items related to politics most days. Honestly, I think politics
has as much to do about "hacking" as just about everything else.

Also, who decides what's political. I'm sick of hearing about socialist
ideology, and I consider it politics, but I'm guessing that's not what you
mean...

------
SloughFeg
Politics (outside of those that affect tech) should have never been allowed in
the first place. Any place where politics isn't specifically forbidden always
degenerates into this sort of situation.

------
SixSigma
Life is politics here's 2 from the current front page :

8 - Silicon Valley’s Culture, Not Its Companies, Dominates in China
(nytimes.com)

21 - Russian deaths from malnutrition rate 5x lower than in the US
(worldlifeexpectancy.com)

------
debergalis
This is a most unfortunate framing. Politics is not toxic. It is the means by
which our society discusses and makes big decisions. Perhaps s/Detox/Vacation/
could have worked?

Certain types of political discussion most certainly can be toxic. I'd support
any effort to keep HN free of that. I'd also respect a choice to keep HN
completely free of politics if you chose to go in that direction, though I'd
rather see a more positive attempt to get the HN community more engaged with
the serious political issues of our time.

------
shrikrishna
I am curious; does this apply to all of world's political sphere? Or only the
United States'? If this applies to only US politics, then it becomes that much
harder to qualify this as a political detox. If this is a detox from _all_
politics, then it is fundamentally unfair, as no recent political event in any
other country has been controversial enough to warrant a censoring from HN.
You cannot (you _can_, but you shouldn't) be biased towards any one section of
HN userbase to the detriment of _all_ of the users.

------
armenarmen
Are we talking just us election controversy stuff? If so, this sounds like a
welcomed reprieve.

However if this blackout includes government level censorship and attacks on
internet freedom it seems like a bad move

------
prewett
As a one-off thing, this sounds good. Implemented longer, term, though, I
think it would be trying to solve a problem by treating the symptoms. Politics
isn't the problem, since politics is simply the process of making group
decisions. The problem is not the _topic_ but the _behavior_.

So what does good, relevant, political discussion on HN look like? What does
bad (but relevant) political discussion look like? Then update the guidelines
accordingly. Maybe the guidelines could even have examples.

------
KingOfMyRoom
Why not look at Wikipedia and see how they are tackling controversial topics?
Here it sounds like a disappointing ostrich experiment. Let's bury our head in
sand, let the storm pass away and see what happens.

I think it's a good think that people are indignant on both side. Let's
organise ourself. We have the tools, the concepts, the technology. I am sure
it's possible to find some common ground and have some data-driven
debates/discussions and form some more balance opinions/belief.

------
pklausler
What I really fear is that simple statements of fact, e.g. "average global
temperatures are increasing", will be flagged as being (scare quotes)
political (end scare quotes).

------
unclesaamm
Can we migrate to an open-source alternative to Hacker News already?

~~~
grzm
I'm curious about the choice of words "open-source" here. What would having
the source available change with respect to this "Tell HN"? Something along
the lines of no mods? No voting/flagging? Nothing off-topic?

~~~
unclesaamm
Community operated and moderated. It's amazing how the entire tech community
has come together on a message board run by venture capital. It's not a
neutral forum. At the very least, a GNU-friendlier alternative would be
appreciated.

~~~
Mz
I have prior moderating experience and I have been online a long time. My
experiences suggest that having paid mods dramatically improves a forum.
Volunteer staff cannot be expected to meet the same rigorous standards as paid
staff and they never do.

As someone whose moderating experience was unpaid, I can tell you part of the
reason for that: We resent having to deal with assholes who make our jobs
difficult and don't appreciate us giving our time and energy to the site for
free, because we believe in the cause.

No, it is not a neutral forum. There is no such thing.

Also, my honest feeling is "Feel free to start one." That isn't snark, but I
assume it would be interpreted as such because you are asking people to start
this rather than saying "Hey, guys, I am tired of this and I have started an
open source version over at (THIS LINK) and if you are as fed up with HN as I
am, hey, here is an alternative."

People who propose the kind of seemingly idealistic suggestions of the sort
you are proposing almost never want to roll up their sleeves and do the work
-- because, hey, work is hard and no one is paying them and yadda. Which is
likely why HN is the place to be for so many people: Because it is well
moderated by folks who get paid, because it supports a business agenda and
doesn't need ads or the like to pay the bills. The business -- YC -- is plenty
successful and can afford to support the forum for its purposes in a way that
doesn't unduly impinge on what people can discuss here.

------
ben_jones
I read HN multiple times a day and I feel like I'd have to go out of my way to
find a post that was political, or even a comment that was political. Yes
people will go off about anything NIMBYism, housing markets, javascript
saturation etc, but what are the numbers? How much politics is really going on
here?

Admittedly I'm probably at the point where I don't even see it when it's right
in front of me, but it would be interesting to here from the mods of people
who frequent /new.

------
slater
Can we have an Amazon/AWS "news" detox week, too? :D

~~~
viraptor
Those news were due to the Amazon's event. They shouldn't be that common in
the next weeks. Same thing happens around the google i/o and apple's
announcement events.

------
tomkat0789
Even if they don't totally ban politics on HN forever, what if we keep a
week/a few days a month where no politics are allowed - just as an occasional
reminder that this is isn't supposed to be a political website. Maybe we can
make Fridays politics free or something to remind people to chill.

I support the experiment! This is the sort of creativity and character that
brings me to this site! I'm OK with topics with too much political overtone
being a little stigmatized.

------
zeveb
My biggest concern is the question of what is politics? Surely partisan
political issues are politics, but is the position of women in tech also
politics? Is climate science? I can see good arguments in either direction.
The problem, then, is that it places too much power in the hands of those who
answer the question of whether something is politics or not.

HN is already pretty bad at silencing opinions outside the groupthink common
wisdom; I think this would just make it worse.

------
grandalf
This is all well and good unless this happens to be the week our government
passes a law to require muslims to register, etc.

Considering the low quality of political discussion in general (and especially
on the internet), HN is one of the few places where there are generally
reasonable, well-thought-out views.

Obviously YC doesn't want HN to discuss politics because it could create a
divisive atmosphere and alienate people, resulting in lower levels of
engagement and harm to the YC brand.

~~~
maxerickson
There's at least some reason to believe that discretion won't be completely
discarded.

------
js8
This is slightly off topic, but I think what would be interesting if someone
would build a website with news that are actually _actionable_ by readers. So
no politicians saying this or that, no crimes or disasters, no gossip. On the
other hand, they would carry things like events that you can attend, petitions
you can sign, rallies that you can participate in, items/services you can
actually buy (as opposed to things you can buy next week), and so on.

------
SFJulie
So I love Condorcet's works .... on voting. Nothing politics ... just maths.

So I love Plato's work on SiFi hypothesis : what it means to be invsible and
the implication on moralilty (cf privacy) ... just philosophy.

So I love Jeremy Bentham nerdy works of architecture on how to build perfect
jails where the one in power can watch everything the others do without being
watched ... just architecture.

Finally, I love Gary Gigax (D&D) quote : evil (or politic) is in the eye of
the beholder!

------
Uhhrrr
I like this experiment, so long as we can have exceptions for obviously
relevant new material, i.e. "Trump advocates backdoor for Linux kernel" or
some such.

------
ronnier
Thanks. I stop reading facebook because I've grown so tired of the political
posts and comments. As for reddit, thankfully I can filter out political
reddits now.

------
csdreamer7
I disagree. As other have said, there is a great deal of anxiety over Trump's
victory and what it means for our industry.

Arbitrarily banning relevant political topics could take away alot of the
value I get from Hacker News. I expect news on Trump banning net neutrality to
be on Hacker News. I expect news on fully automated McDonalds to be on Hacker
News or Amazon suffering a bot revolt.

I can understand a need to flag unrelated political comments on non-political
topics.

------
d3k
I had always seen HN as a place where people curious about technology, culture
and society share article links and comment about them. The moderation is what
makes it work. I really do not see why censorship (or detox if you prefer) on
political matters should be necessary. if HN really needs this, it might even
mean that its audience needs to be educated. And if that is the case it might
mean the level you get in here is deemed to decline.

------
clamprecht
I wish we could do this on the Internet for a week (or more).

------
psook
While it is fine that you have decided to no longer be news or for hackers,
that means I don't care to continue reading this. Hackers are supposed to
question the systems they're presented with, and news is supposed to deal with
the issues of the day--political news and computer news are linked
inextricably these days. The idea of removing one is asinine, this is not the
proper community for it. Lobsters is good.

------
binarymax
Can you please give specific examples of what "politics" entails, aside from
the obvious (so we know where to draw the line)?

For example, as of writing, the #3 post is _" Silicon Valley’s Culture, Not
Its Companies, Dominates in China (nytimes.com)"_. I would classify this as
political, but others might not.

\--EDIT-- I would also classify this front page post as (internally)
political: _" Dear JavaScript (medium.com)"_

------
tdutreui
Experimenting it just 1 week cannot hurt. That said, defining the scope of
what should be banned is tricky. Exemple on recent Amazon Go article and the
so famous "Is massive automation implying jobs removing a good thing" : This
question is not about politics but will led to "tribal behaviour" as you call
it. Will you also ban such debates? If so where is your censor power limit?

------
jmcgough
Does this include local bay area news (housing discussion etc)? A lot of that
can be borderline political but still very relevant to startuppers.

------
6stringmerc
Considering the consistent nature of at least one very prominent YCombinator
staff member (leader) inserting themselves into political and/or low-rent
gossipy slap-fights, I can both appreciate the "sentiment" or "rationale"
behind a Detox Week on HN, and concurrently derisively laugh at the ignorant
hypocrisy deploying such an edict reflects in practice.

I mean, yeah I get it's probably a lot of work to moderate all the political
related discourse and keep the lanes wide enough for a lot of different
voices, but it's the catch that comes with having a "community" in the first
place.

If this is the first of a series of "experiments" I wonder which other
"conflicts" might "cause harm here" \- Identity Discussions? Health care in
the US? As cheap as it might sound to pull out a slippery-slope card here, it
seems rather apropos.

I get a lot of flack for it here, but if you don't think Politics and Tech are
coiled together in significant ways - eg. DMCA and Copyright - then you're
just ignorant, childish, and a fool. SV and tech culture is actively using the
"Political System" just like every other special interest. Pretending there's
some kind of effin' halo over the Hacker News community where such
conversations are "below" or "too conflict loaded" then just shut down the
forum altogether.

Man discovers fire. Man burns self. Man puts out fire. The end.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If this is the first of a series of "experiments" I wonder which other
> "conflicts" might "cause harm here" \- Identity Discussions? Health care in
> the US?

Aren't those just subset off politics?

~~~
6stringmerc
Not from a technology perspective - if Health Care research like Stem Cells or
Generic Drugs can be wielded like political discussion weapons, in spite of
their STEM roots, then does that make them off limits now too? Or finding a
genetic marker which might have Sexual Orientation implications. Controversy
and discussion are bedfellows, and wanting the latter devoid of the former is
childish.

------
CN7R
I disagree.

Detox will not strengthen the immune system of HN.

Immunity is conferred when the 'garden' is threatened and unifies to counter a
problem.

That problem? Inflammatory, unsubstantiated comments that cause people to
upvote and downvote not based on the validity of the comment but whether it's
favorable to their ideological values.

I believe people can have civilized discussions about politics in HN -- I've
seen it before.

------
justathought123
If you think political conflicts cause harm, maybe you should change how you
approach conflict rather than pretending it doesn't exist?

------
kafkaesq
Sounds like a worthwhile enough experiment. And at the risk of sounding
political: what _better_ time than now?

Either way, we'll see how it goes.

~~~
kafkaesq
The downvotes on this illustrate the point of dang's experiment.

------
feedjoelpie
Are you trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist except for the most
hardcore HN users?

Because I haven't lately noticed much of the phenomenon you're talking about.
And in the first 3 pages I just skimmed over, I didn't see anything that was
so political as to be flamewar fodder.

Are you sure you're not trying to solve a problem that your average user
doesn't even have?

------
shaunol
Not sure what to think about this in the context of HN. I've seen other such
stances in other communities where it just ends up being a way to
enforce/preserve a political bias. Where some stories get a pass for special
reasons "oh, this is noteworthy, and from a credible source!", it's just
laughable. I hope this doesn't happen here.

------
fosco
I feel this is oddly appropriate.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13111026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13111026)

[http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground-
burn...](http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground-burning-
world/)

------
Isamu
We could, I dunno, talk about tech, I suppose ...

------
davidw
Thank you!

------
datashovel
After seeing this, I just had to post this (btw I think it's probably a good
idea). This clip is kind of a funny metaphor for what I tend to see in comment
threads about many topics, but politics especially:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj_ghGKy1PY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj_ghGKy1PY)

------
karmacondon
I don't know why we couldn't have voted on this. Whether it's a good idea or
not, trying to impose something so broad on a community of hackers is an
exercise in masochism.

I agree with everyone who has said that we're capable of making up our own
minds about what to talk about. I don't think political discussions were ever
a problem

~~~
colmvp
Voting? Why that sounds positively political of you.

------
nanna
Well, the week's up. Personally HN lost its spark for me over the past week so
I hope this experiment ends swiftly. I'm sure I'm not the only progressive
ready to jump ship if it doesn't - if HN wants to protect Trump supporters'
feelings from the devastation many of us are feeling then fine but goodbye.

------
crucini
It's probably a good move. Of course I wish we could have intelligent, calm
discussions - if not of political ideals per se, then of the peripheral issues
like polling, voting machines, etc. But political rage and snark always get
injected. And more subtly, individual biases are smuggled in under reasonable
sounding language.

------
wu-ikkyu
No force is affecting the sociopolitical landscape more than technology.
Ignoring this weakens the community.

Carl Sagan, Buckminster Fuller, Thoreau, MLK and many others all spoke about
how our technological development is far outpacing our sociopolitical
development, to our own demise.

Arbitrarily attempting to censor and separate the two is grossly negligent.

------
tmnvix
Politics is not discrete.

While I agree that posts about election results or political leadership
changes are mostly unrelated to topics I come to HN to read about, I think
that there are many ostensibly political posts that are very relevant (e.g.
Snowden or Wikileaks related posts). I would hope that they will not be
subject to exclusion.

------
geuis
I disagree with this. Trying to divorce issues related to the tech industry
from HN is irresponsible. We can't bury our heads in the sand and hope for the
best.

Purely political posts rarely make it to the front page anyway. And having
those discussions in comments is what comments are there for.

The only thing I'm going to flag is this post.

------
drallison
I think a political detox week is a bad idea. What some see as gratification
for their intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive commentaries and seen
by others as political rants and flames. I much prefer a larger world view and
a thoughtful "fire department" to quell flames when they get out of hand.

------
unimpressive
I don't have a lot to say, except that I support this measure and wanted to
comment so that's in the record.

------
jljljl
Here's an article that was on the front page when I clicked into this
discussion:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/librarians-act-now-
pro...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/librarians-act-now-protect-your-
users-its-too-late)

Is this political?

~~~
dang
For the purposes of this week, surely yes.

------
shawndumas
Can we have an objective criteria with which to judge which comments/stories
are political?

Examples would be helpful as well...

------
markkhazanov
Statements like this are exactly the reason why I have always been hesitant
about having a relationship with Y Combinator. Reminders to be courteous are
welcome, but a ban of political "stories" is completely inappropriate
especially at a time when minority voices are already consistently silenced.

------
keepper
Who says you get to ask why? No, really!

If hacker news is getting political, that is a function of it's users ( and
the social climate ). A community is built by its members. For better or
worse.

Work on addressing the issues that make the discourse toxic. What does
covering the sun with the censorship finger actually accomplish?

------
robinduckett
I would argue that any startup or financial news is political, in that
politics shapes the capitalist foundation of our society. HN is Politics, and
to try and separate and moderate this type of news is exactly the kind of
thing that makes people leave your site in droves.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If you define politics as including everything, then everything is political.
That doesn't make it a useful definition, though.

I just saw a story about Paul Allen resurrecting a CDC 6500 supercomputer.
Yes, that took place in an environment where politics shapes the capitalist
foundation of our society, and that's where Paul Allen got the money to be
able to do that. It takes an extreme stretch to call that a political story,
though...

------
sebastianconcpt
The metaphor is good and the approach and description is actually great. The
challenge is that this issue doesn't only happen in the political domain, it
can happen in the philosophical and intellectual domains too via the cultural
competition (AKA cultural war)

------
qguv
This is a mistake. The sort of problems we have in the US can't be solved with
censorship and earplugs. If anything, we need more conversation, not less.

Ditto to the many commenters who point out that nothing is apolitical and that
such censorship would be subjective anyway.

Don't do this.

------
lez
I was planning to delay the point when I get to know who the winner was on the
elections... (I live in Europe) In work nobody speaks about politics. I don't
read traditional news sites. I was just curious who will tell me first. Then I
opened Hacker News...

------
thehooplehead
I'll never understand why people act like a forum is a TV channel. Can't
people just hide threads, or avoid topics that don't interest them? It's not
like HN only has one discussion at a time and that politics has crowded out
other topics.

------
a3n
And when the experiment is over, please remember ... If you don't like
political posts, they're usually obvious and you don't have to read (or
upvote) them. The front page goes by slowly enough that the news you like
won't get crowded out.

------
scblock
This is a bad idea. I don't know how you managed to convince yourself that
it's not.

------
whack
I like this idea as a short-term experiment. Here's another in the same vein:
stories with voting enabled but comments disabled. Kind of like a focus group
where you just _listen_ to others, without jumping in to assert your own
viewpoints.

------
redthrowaway
Given the political issues that are of extreme interest to people here that
_aren 't_ toxic (crypto backdoors, h1b, etc), why not modify the rule to be
"no election discussion, broadly defined" rather than "no politics"?

------
rudolf0
I'd rather there be some kind of isolation of political discussion rather than
an outright ban for a week.

Maybe just have a permanent/rotating "politics/culture/society" thread for
people to share whatever?

------
fillskills
As an experiment and a temporary detox, I am all for it. Totally worth
testing. But something to keep in mind is that politics is something that
needs the help HN community can provide with a thoughtful discussion

------
fractalwrench
What happens if something incredibly important happens during this week in
politics, is it simply not up for discussion at all? For example, what happens
if a world leader is assassinated or a conflict breaks out?

------
drewrv
What's considered political and what's considered non-political?

Can we discuss ethics? Is saying "racism is bad" political?

What about facts? "Torture is ineffective" or "carbon emissions harm the
planet"?

------
eli_gottlieb
Aye-aye sir. I'll be following the new rule with enthusiasm, actually. It'll
be nice to have fewer discussions of $POLITICAL_THING_RUINING_THE_WORLD and
more about interesting stuff like OpenAI.

------
denom
We live in a political world. Any attempt for the HN community to bisect the
set of stories that make up our everyday experience will only illustrate the
_political_ bias of the aggregate opinion.

------
arca_vorago
Technology is inherently political, you cannot separate _hackers_ from
politics, and to try is a fools errand.

That being said, I think I understand where this is coming from, so I have
empathy with dang and the hn team about it, but I disagree with this move on
principle, _especially now, at a time when some very important techno-
political moves are being made_.

For example, the FBI now claims to have the ability to use 0-days to hack
thousands of computers on a single search warrant! It's completely
unconstitutional, and that is a huge deal, technologically, and politically,
that I haven't seen addressed by any crowd very well, and it's the kind of
discussion HN _needs_ to have, not to avoid. To suddenly have a non-political
week when some of the most important things, time sensitive things, are
happening right now is not good at all.

The timing of this also feels suspicious, and there is something else that
feels suspicious to me as well, and that's the algorithm that controls what is
on the front page. I've seen repeatedly, enough to no longer call it just
coincidence, that stories of techno-political important, like the FBI one, get
~250/500+ points and have ~100/300 comments, that are completely off the front
page long before is normal for more mundane stuff. I think the hn userbase
deserve more transparency on this front.

HN is an American based forum, so while I understand the want to lean towards
a type of globalistic technocratic neutrality, I think that is a mistake and
fails to take into account the primary user-base, and I think the hackers and
geeks of the world, but in particular America, have a duty to participate in
the political discussion that is going to be needed to steer policy of our
American system, because the revolutionary nature of technology is quickly
getting out of control for ordinary citizens and politicians, and our system
impacts the rest of the world.

We need more politics, not less, but we need it in the unique HN style where
people can have good manners on the discourse, which is much more conducive to
intellectual conversation than just about any other internet forum I can think
of other than slashdot in it's heyday.

With the increasing totalitarian surveillance society that _we as hackers_
have handed to the politicians through technology, I think we have a duty to
also protect the citizen-victims of our technology run amok in the hands of
others. We can't, and shouldn't, hand a technological nuclear weapon to nation
states and just walk away and say, but we just want to talk about the
technology of the thing. It's a naive and fundamentally flawed process of
thinking. I also think it's time for the HN team and it's users to have a more
serious discussion about how they want to participate in the future of the
internet, and the dystopian society it is enabling, piece by piece.

I also have a single question for the HN team:

Have you been pressured by the US government in any way shape or form on this
subject?

In protest of this move, I will not be participating on HN until the week is
up.

------
mmanfrin
What is the line? Does Net Neutrality count as 'politics'? It is a very
political topic, but also one that is important to this community. How are you
drawing the line?

------
JoeAltmaier
No need; the new 'hide' feature lets me ignore all that for days at a time.
The flamers are burning somewhere, but I don't see it and I don't get singed.

------
clackanon
Hacker News: the place were conservative viewpoints are not welcome.

It's not _discourse_ here. It's we shoot the messenger if they don't agree
with us on everything.

I welcome the detox.

------
ryancnelson
This'll be interesting. What defines "political topics"?

Is climate change news political? Edward Snowden news? Wikileaks? A new build
of the Signal app? Hyperloop news?

------
Jach
Yay, my five year old request for a moratorium (though it was for 2 months,
not just a week...) is being honored. :) But really thanks for trying it, I
hope it does good.

------
dannyr
It is such a great privilege that to some people, politics is just noise that
you can turn off.

To some people, their livelihood and survival are on line based on what our
politicians do.

------
yk
I like the experiment, even if I am not too fond of the idea. However it is
2016, so is there a procedure when politics becomes very clearly relevant in
the coming week?

------
someguydave
I have a permanent solution to the "politics problem": require all comments be
cryptographically signed, and give users the tools to rate the signing keys.

------
Gargoyle
I 100% support this and would like to see it made permanent.

------
Chris2048
Relevant:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruGBWLk9s8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruGBWLk9s8)

------
ClassyJacket
That's a shame. I don't want to see Hacker News become reddit, with anything
that has the slightest chance of upsetting someone being banned.

------
shermozle
[http://hastrumpmadeamericagreatagainyet.com/](http://hastrumpmadeamericagreatagainyet.com/)

------
Lagged2Death
Making an "is politics / is not politics" judgement is itself a political act.
The goal itself is sort of impossible-in-principle.

------
adamfeldman
Much needed

------
maxxxxx
How about not using the words liberal/conservative/Democrat/
Republican/socialist/racist and discuss issues instead?

------
awesomerobot
I'm done. If I could delete my account I would.

------
Dowwie
Uh oh! Now you've really thrown down the gauntlet! If the message forum has an
immune system, you're one tough white blood cell.

------
johnhess
Is there data (say a drastically increased flag rate, number of flame wars,
etc.) that show that today is different than 2 months ago?

------
jcoffland
I thought this was already every week on HN. There are very few politics
related articles. Pushing the point is a bit much IMO.

~~~
dang
There's a lot more than appears on the front page, and many of those threads
turn into flamewars that go on a long time. You can see them at /active (from
/lists linked at the bottom of each page) if you want to.

------
stefek99
For me Hacker News is the only source of news. I know that major events are
surfacing anyway - I want them to keep surfacing.

------
adzicg
being outside US, I strongly support this. I couldn't care less about who
leads team america world police, it's all the same anyway. HN is my tech news
site, and politics is just a distraction. I understand that US citizens feel
strongly about their government, but it's not really tech news.

------
peterashford
I think this is paternalistic. Individual readers can avoid political topics
if they don't want to engage.

------
fredgrott
avoiding what is coming is no way to critically think..its like say oh holding
technology to this loft position without acknowledging jobs due to technology
progress and government's lack of solutions..

The flames,etc are symptoms..and this is just as bad..

We need a somewhat deeper solution and the discussion of one...

------
sosuke
What metrics are you planning on using to measure the results of this
experiment?

I'm all for it, yay experiments!

------
ccarter84
Wish you'd wait til voting machine tapering allegations were cleared, but hey,
go nuts.

------
metaphorm
I appreciate the sentiment but I fear a slippery slope. What counts as
"politics"?

------
nemof
when one of the most significant figures in politics right now uses twitter as
their platform for communicating with their support base, for better or worse,
the idea of being politics agnostic just seems silly.

------
hackuser
> Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well,
> that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient ...

Agreed. I've been thinking about how communities can handle this problem for
awhile. A solution to it would be revolutionary, in a very good way for the
entire Internet, and what better place to experiment with and develop a
solution than HN. Here's my over-ambitious shot at a solution, based only on
experience in online communities:

\------------------------

I propose that we have different rules, much higher standards for commenting,
for hot button issues. When these situations come up, our moderators could
post something like,

    
    
      ** Hot button rules apply **
    

(Or make up a different name: 'Cool head rules' 'Ice down rules'
'Rationality'?) For those issues, the guidelines would add the following and
be strictly enforced:

\----

1) Be precise: Who? Did? What?

 _Who_ should be a proper noun; only individuals (and in some cases, specific
organizations like 'Acmesoft') actually have thoughts, motives, and perform
actions; groups do none of those things - we are not hive minds. This
eliminates lazily broad statements with huge implications that provoke anger
and fear, stereotype large groups, and don't make us any better informed.
'Tennesseans hate Kentuckyians' doesn't inform anyone - there is nothing all
Tennesseans agree on, and nobody can possibly read all their minds, and we
know nothing more after reading it than we did before - but '60% of
Tennesseans who responded to this survey say they have stopped visiting
Kentucky' is fine.

 _Did_ : HN readers mostly grasp empirical science and should be able to
understand: Only actions are observable, not other people's thoughts and
feelings - though you can observe what they say about their thoughts.

 _What_ , used precisely, eliminates sloppy characterizations. 'Tennessee
Governor Jane Jones despises Kentucky BBQ.' No, what actually happened?
'Tennessee Governor Jane Jones said, "I despise seeing Kentucky BBQ taking
jobs from hardworking Tennessee chefs."'

Finally, _Be precise_ also means: No hyperbole.

\----

2) Context is required: Where and when

 _Where_ and _when_ are essential context. Think of your high school writing
guidelines: Who, what, where, when, etc. 'Tennessee Governor Jane Jones said,
"I despise seeing Kentucky BBQ taking jobs from hardworking Tennessee
chefs."': It is essential to know when she said that (1985? 2010? Before the
Kentucky-Tennessee trade war began or after?) and where (On a campaign stop in
a TN BBQ restaurant? The title of a book? A tweet? A warm-up joke for a
speech?); otherwise, we have no idea what really happened.

\----

3) Back it up:

The burden of proof is much higher, and on the commenter: Respected scholarly
research (not someone's self-published book) or highly respected news media,
and not in a column or editorial. Wikipedia's Reliable Source rules may help
here, but with higher standards for sources (and also actually applied here;
Wikipedia articles often ignore the standards).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources)

\----

4) Be 100% respectful, as if talking to someone important to you whom you
respect. No exceptions; no grey areas; stay well away from this line.

\----

5) The only idea we don't tolerate is intolerance itself. See Karl Popper's
Paradox of Intolerance if you want to go deeper on this. Or a simpler way to
approach it: Tolerance is a social contract - you tolerate me and I'll
tolerate you.

\----

6) These rules apply to anyone you quote, also. You can't say 'Kentuckians
suck', and you can't quote someone else saying it (except to talk about the
quoted person's habit of broad stereotypes).

\----

Comments violating these guidelines are immediately, mercilessly killed dead.
Busy moderators may not have time to explain why, but in most cases you can
find the reason(s) here pretty easily. Feel free to rewrite according to the
guidelines and try again.

\------------------------

By now you may be thinking: 'With those standards, I won't have much to say on
inflammatory topic X!' or 'Those will be much shorter threads!' or 'I'd really
need some good information and think it through in order to comment!' Good;
you understand. Imagine if we restricted those discussions to only valuable,
informative content. The contents of the threads could actually _advance our
knowledge_ about inflammatory, often very important, issues. It's almost hard
conceive of. We could actually, in the heat of an issue, advance rational
public discussion - a goal that has seemed so intractable that it's almost
forgotten; it seems almost fanciful. The perfect challenge.

It also eliminates the prominent problem of people making endless wild
allegations for others to refute (see rule #3 - they must back up what they
post). So instead of endlessly repeating the same low-value information back
and forth, we'd actually gain real knowledge from each other. And if some
threads are very short, then what have we lost? A bunch of low-value comments
from uniformed commenters? Ideological rants? Things we've heard a thousand
times before? It even will save some disk space and bandwidth, and reduce page
load times.

Finally, if it works - which not at all a sure thing and will require fine-
tuning at the very least - the concept could be used by other online
communities. What we develop here - not software, but guidelines for community
interaction - it could change the world, in a way that it badly needs and
longs for.

~~~
igravious
Interesting idea.

One hitch perhaps: topics that start off non-political but veer into politics
… happens often enough.

A more democratic way would be for the community to either enable the hot-
buttoning or be able to disable it with enough flagging.

When you think about it you're suggesting something akin to Wikipedia's
sensitive page rules where extremely divisive pages are locked down and
subject to higher scrutiny.

~~~
dragonwriter
Isn't there already a flamewar detector that penalizes threads? Couldn't it
also, probably earlier, trigger the "hot-button" rules and notification?

------
Chris2048
Could we have a banner that makes this well-know?

This isn't top of HN right now.

------
kakarot
Yeah, and we can have safer sex too if we just don't have sex.

------
fixxer
I think I'll just take a break from HN for one week instead.

------
AlexCoventry
Overall, I think this is a good idea, but it probably needs to be made more
precise for it to work. What is a political topic, exactly? Are IETF politics
off-topic this week? What about advice for NSA employees trying to pull a
Snowden?

------
losteverything
Growing up

Religion Sex Politics

All "no nos"

Still Good Advice!!

Now I add

Money, abortion, Hitler, the holocaust, child care, and elder care.

------
neom
Thank you! I hope we can still talk about Leonard Cohen though.

------
walshemj
Good luck with that :-) everything is political with a small p

------
kaeluka
I love this experiment!

------
swehner
I guess that covers posting articles from the economist too?

------
user5994461
The title could have been: Let's make HN great again!

------
outforgotpsswd
Question: does that include startup relevant law changes?

------
ohstopitu
if this is happening, could we have a weekly political thread?

(kind of like how we have monthly who's hiring thread)

That way we can have the cake and eat it too.

------
donohoe
I want to register my disgust at this suggestion.

------
baq
might as well declare 'emotion detox week' and bury everything not written by
robots.

this decision is actively contributing to erosion of the free world, as if not
talking about politics makes them go away. hint: it's not and technology and
hackers are changing the world so much politics necessarily enters the debate
and it just can't be worked around.

ps. is uber breaking labor laws around the world politics or not?

~~~
DanBC
"Uber breaks labour laws" maybe okay.

"Uber breaks labour laws, and that's why we need Clinton" not okay

"Uber breaks labour laws, and that's why we need Trump" not okay.

------
smpetrey
Not a bad idea.

------
geff82
Nice idea in the current climate. If we now also stopped talking about
religion, we'd have a freemason-like room for open conversation.

------
guelo
A "safe space" if you will.

------
CalChris
I disagree but those are the rules.

~~~
pshc
_> Ok, have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay
them._

Want to share your specific concerns?

~~~
CalChris
This 'detox' is an equivocation, that both sides are somehow equally at fault.
That is most definitely NOT the case and shushing everyone up about it will
not make this go away, garden or not.

~~~
grzm
_that both sides are somehow equally at fault. That is most definitely NOT the
case_

I've seen uncivil behavior well-represented here on HN from across the
political spectrum(s).

------
MrZongle2
God, where was this two weeks ago?

~~~
DanBC
Six months ago. US election shit is seemingly endless.

------
Fiahil
What about non-American politics?

------
pfarnsworth
dang, doing things like this is turning HN more into reddit with heavy-handing
modding, than just letting the community dictate for itself what it wants to
see. The community has existed and guided itself a lot longer than the time
you've been around, I think you should trust us.

~~~
baq
HN has always been more heavily moderated than reddit, perhaps you just didn't
notice.

------
banach
Good idea.

------
LordFrith
I'm glad you didn't announce this last week. Then it would have been AWS
articles only!

------
livestyle
I wonder if this policy would be coming down the pipe of Madame President were
elected..

------
Jd
Next up, Rilke week? ;)

------
facepalm
I hope that includes stories about alleged racism and sexism in the tech
industry...

------
smkellat
Politics? Are we referring to Clinton versus Trump or vi versus emacs? :-)

------
llamataboot
There's no such thing as a "non-political" story.

------
demimonde
Loved the detox. Decided to extend it to the rest of the year!

------
anotheryou
only if we do a no tech week after that :)

------
s_q_b
This will be my final comment on HN.

As my parting words from this site, I would ask that you please pay close
attention to what is happening politically with regard to the laws which shape
technology: the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Criminal Rule of Procedure
41, PATRIOT Act 215, FISA 702, and Executive Order 12333, but just as
importantly, the individuals in the NSC, DNI, DCIA, DNSA and DIA/DCS
leadership positions.

Community members, remember it is crucial for engineers, scientists, and
entrepreneurs to have a voice in the forthcoming discussions of digital
privacy, the extent of state power, and the policies that will be chosen. If
you wish to conduct this experiment, perhaps a different time period would be
better, as these officials are being chosen now, and the policies will be
decided very soon.

Moderators, I ask you to use your power judiciously, and allow the maximum
free discourse that you feel appropriate. Remember that you yourselves are not
immune to the cognitive defects inherent in human nature. If you do adopt a
more narrow curation policy, please guard against those passions carefully.
Protect well this place you have built. It is more special than you realize.

Founders, design your technologies with an eye to how they shape public
discourse, promote fact, and expose deception. Be better than my generation.
Pursue ideals more noble than mere monetary profit. Don't just make something
people want. Make something that _matters._

Build the change you wish to see in the world. You did not risk everything to
sell digital sugar water.

Others of greater tact than I will shape these discussions as they evolve
here. But I myself will not abet censorship without objection, particularly at
this moment in time. The time has come to vote with my feet. It has been a
pleasure to know you all.

I wish you well in the days to come.

------
dvh
politics.ycombinator.com?

------
boneheadmed
Hear, hear!

------
CmdrSprinkles
So I assume this means that yc is now concerned over alienating a certain
political party/faction that tends to have a lot of money but not a lot of
support among college grads.

And as many others have said, this is a horrible idea. ESPECIALLY for a site
oriented toward start-ups (or, at least, people who like to talk about start-
ups). Guess who is going to be signing off on the regulations that determine
what is and isn't allowed? Guess who is going to determine where research
money goes and what gets subsidies or tax breaks?

Oh yeah, that thing which you don't want anyone to discuss.

A few years old and more geared toward HPC and scientific computing, but
Michio Kaku gave a great talk at SC about how politics and lobbying are very
important and are actually vital and that if technology wants to advance it
needs to not plug its ears and hide but actually be involved and fight for our
interests.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_MbkVozydE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_MbkVozydE)

Rather than sit around, gazing at our navels, and talking about how amazingly
smart and above it all we all are maybe, just maybe, people should actually
consider "disrupting" the world into an "agile" state that can actually result
in a government and laws that aren't a hindrance. And you sure as sugar don't
get that by talking about how nobody else knows how to communicate with anyone
because they aren't "hackers".

But hey, gotta make sure you don't alienate anyone who might be a good
business partner.

\---

Maybe, just maybe, enforce rules about not making emotional and unfounded
posts. Because that is largely independent of politics and is the kind of
thing that makes it hard to take this place seriously as a "meeting of the
minds" and mostly causes it to feel like "A marginally less meme filled
reddit".

------
abvdasker
I think this moment officially marks the point at which the American tech
industry disappeared up its own asshole.

------
s_q_b
I live in Northwest Washington, D.C. I am a technologist, a government
contractor, and an HN member for many years under various accounts since 2008.

I respectfully disagree.

Yesterday someone motivated by the "Pizzagate" story, spread and enabled by
the social media systems _we designed_ , fired multiple shots from a semi-
automatic weapon into a crowded restaurant near my home.

My partner and I passed the crime scene shortly thereafter on our way back to
our apartment.

The new National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, endorsed the
totally false rumors that led to this shooting. He will soon be empowered by
the full force of the nation's intelligence agencies.

I want you to very carefully consider the implications of what he could do
with access to that power, and the potential result of blocking discussion of
such issues, particularly at this moment in time.

~~~
bargl
I empathize with your view, but I very much disagree with you.

1) It's an experiment, there should never be any disagreement with an
experiment unless the experiment itself can cause harm to someone/something.
The _results_ of this experiment should be evaluated closely, and if they make
new guidelines for HN I'm fully onboard. But it's an experiment.

2) The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this
is a fair assumption. I'm not saying no one here could shoot a gun in public,
but they wouldn't come here as anything but a complete troll and shoot a gun
based on some crap story like that. If I'm wrong in this then the experiment
is terrible and stop it now. But I very much doubt it.

3) The issue is that news in general has degraded. This degradation of
journalism has led to many of the issues we experience today. If experimenting
on HN can lead to some sort of anecdotal evidence that Politics = bad for
communities I'm all for it. I believe part of the issue is pointed to in this
video.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4)
24 Hours news is the issue. 24 Hours politics is the issue. Taking a purge is
a great idea.

4) HN should not be where you get your news about politics.

~~~
gibrown
"The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this
is a fair assumption"

The systems on which that person read the false information that drove them to
shoot the gun were built by people who read HN. That may sound like a lot of
levels of indirection, but to ignore politics for a week seems like a symptom
of pretending that we are not a part of the problem.

I think the technology running the web needs to be thought of as a part of the
fourth estate. We are not separate from the media which we have restructured.

~~~
bargl
While I think that we should use every tool at our disposal to work to
mitigate disasters like the one you mention, I also don't think it's on
Technology to fix this issue itself. Facebook isn't the cause of people being
stupid, people are. This is not a new issue and it is not something that the
people who read this site are responsible for.

It is also an experiment. I'd like to emphasize that. It is an experiment. It
is OK to not get politics on HN for a week. It will not be the cause of a
global meltdown in society.

I'm also pretty confident that if some ground breaking news broke about Donald
Trump wanting to launch a nuclear weapon that dang would allow that, but the
current noise that is happening can be removed for a week is a good
experiment.

~~~
gibrown
As an experiment it is interesting, and there certainly community management
is hard. Also, I think that better community management is maybe some of the
problem on Facebook and Twitter, so there is quite a bit of irony in me
arguing against it.

But...

The media and technology revolution that we are both living through and
shaping with the technologies that we deploy should be something that we
actively discuss and wrestle with. I've recently been reading more history of
the impact of the printing press (scientific revolution, monarchy =>
democracy, reformation, and a lot of war).

"This is not a new issue and it is not something that the people who read this
site are responsible for."

I could not disagree more strongly. The web is quite new, and we don't
understand its impact on society. Certainly the people on this site are not
entirely responsible for it, but I think that we should feel some
responsibility for it. I certainly do.

------
t1mg
HN has long gone from being dedicated just to programming and tech news. Why
is it just now that you want it to be so "on-topic"?

In turbulent times like these, with hate speech, racism and sexism out of the
shadows and in it's highest, it is crucial to be having conversations.

Being silent, burying head in the sand - not much different than siding on the
side of the oppressor.

Whatever news are posted here - is a reflection of a community. If politics
are posted, that is what people read. Instead, concentrate your efforts to
battle those who game your algorithms for rankings.

~~~
dang
HN was never dedicated just to "programming and tech news"—not from the day it
was named, and this has been in the first paragraph of the site guidelines
since forever:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
So that's not the issue. The issue is that this site exists for the
gratification of intellectual curiosity, and political battle not only
threatens that but runs roughshod over it. I tried to make this clear in what
I posted above.

------
bambax
> _HN is a garden_

and Attila is going to trample all over it.

------
sean_patel
I really welcome this move. I couldn't get out of bed on Nov 9th and a few
hours of introspection later, I realized I have no control over any of the
Political changes and that I shouldn't be causing myself so much stress.

So I stopped watching the news -- both online and on TV -- since Nov 9th. It's
been an incredible month for me since then.

I've made significant progress on my languishing side-projects ( a Show HN
coming soon in Jan 2017!!!) and am generally less stressed and more mindful
and happy.

I made a conscious effort to stop watching news and ride out the next 8 years
(I expect Trump, like Dubya, will get Re-elected in 2020). I still need my
"tech" fix, and visit only HN since I gave up the news. Yet I found a few
Trump stories on HN recently, so this is a great move.

Thanks mods!

~~~
ben0x539
I hope you recognize that you can only opt out of being stressed about
politics because you're not on the receiving end. :/

~~~
sean_patel
> because you're not on the receiving end.

Nope. I actually am at the receiving end. 2 of my cousins are married to
illegal aliens (both Mexican women) and 1 couple has a child born here (so
citizen).

Still I had a moment of clarity when I realized that

1) Trump was indeed Democratically elected, and 2) I don't gain anything by
fretting over and stressing over after reading 1 bad news after another about
his policies, because I really can't do anything as a single person (unless,
of course, I make 1 issue my life long pursuit, then it's different).

I've chosen to focus on my Circle of Control and reduce or altogether
eliminate my Circle of Concern

Related Reading: Circle of Control vs Circle of Concern: =>
[http://www.jdroth.com/images/circle-concern-
control.jpg](http://www.jdroth.com/images/circle-concern-control.jpg)

~~~
inimino
An excellent choice.

Perhaps I shouldn't comment without having more to add, but I just wanted to
support this very healthy perspective. It is a much calmer way to go through
life, and not limited to politics!

------
brilliantcode
This is a slippery slope, I read it as "lets censor ourselves for this week
and everybody should do their part".

Tech is like any other industry, it's rife with politics. I don't agree with
trolling but obviously this place isn't reddit, lot of political debates are
valuable and offer insights for those less politically inclined.

If we agree to this policy what guarantee is there in the future that other
topics that HN leadership doesn't like will be censored?

This is censorship pure and simple. Shame on you Dang for even suggesting it,
my question is:

Is HN an America based community that reflects the core beliefs in freedom of
speech & expression?

If yes, we shouldn't even have this kind of thread. Let trolls be flagged but
everyone else having meaningful discussion should _not be collectively
punished_.

~~~
vacri
> _This is censorship pure and simple._

No, it's 'moderation'. Censorship is where you can't say something in any
(public) outlet.

> _Is HN an America based community that reflects the core beliefs in freedom
> of speech & expression?_

No, because downvoting 'ghosts' a comment, there's shadowbanning, dead
comments, and the mods can already kill stories. Moderation is already alive
and kicking on HN; there's plenty of it done by both mods and users.

Also, it's only for _one week_. It's bizarre to see just how many commentors
are treating it like the end-times of civilisation.

~~~
brilliantcode
> Censorship is where you can't say something in any (public) outlet.

HN is a public outlet, anyone is free to register and participate in the
discussion. The thread is soliciting the community to censor themselves with a
pretty vague and large blanket under "politics".

HN is run by an American corporation correct, it's servers are in America,
then it should follow American values. If this was a Chinese or Russian
company, well, their land their rules.

People are freaking out because dang set a precedent for future discourse, the
community leadership can declare any topic they deem unsuitable with a pretty
vague set of rules and discretion which does not follow a democratic process.

~~~
dang
No precedent for future discourse is being set.

It's true that HN doesn't follow a democratic process that way, but it never
has, nor pretended to.

------
rick_perez
I find this part of the main problem with the recent US election. You only
want political discussions when you agree with it. No matter how civil a
person is, it's considered 'uncivil' when it's against San Francisco politics.

When this happens, many people are forced to get their news from the sites
deemed 'fake'. The mass banning of opposing viewpoints (which has been
happening for a couple of years now) has pushed more people towards these
sites and may have actually won Trump the election. If you want to change it,
stop silencing all opposing views.

The problem is that politics is in every part of our lives. If you ban
politics and religion, people still get political and religious about other
things. It's part of human nature (GNU VS BSD), (VI VS Emacs).

------
PravlageTiem
When most people talk about "politics" what they really mean is they want to
recite talking points told to them from their favorite dying old media echo
chamber.

Reddit went full political and I left. The chans went full political and I
left. Facebook went full political and I left. Twitter went full political and
I left.

I go on the internet to escape being repeatedly told I'm not doing enough to
live up to the moral supremacist standards set by the Baby Boomers in the
1960s.

Nearly every single massive social network on the internet exists and have for
a decade to cater to your daily fill of Silicon Valley bicoastal "look down
the nose of the flyover plebs" equality porn. Go there for your schadenfreude.
Don't bring it here.

Spirituality means having an imaginary friend. Politics means having imaginary
enemies.

------
anon987
Why are they allowed, period?

Is the community OK with turning HN into Reddit-lite - because that's clearly
what's happening based on the topics that get upvoted.

~~~
anonbanker
I really don't think the community is OK with it, but the last year or two has
experienced a massive influx of redditors to this site, bringing their "This"
posts, and near 4chan-tier of shitposting.

Many of those people now have more than 500 karma, by appealing to the
majority opinion, so they're allowed to downvote all they want, skewing the
demographics of the site. If you've been here a while, you probably noticed
the shift in discourse and submission quality.

It happens with all "Nerd News" sites; they're great at the begining, then the
people that shouldn't be here start coming, and the signal-to-noise ratio gets
closer to 1:1.

------
ebbv
I understand the motives behind this decision but after deliberating for the
last two hours I have to say I think it's a bad decision.

HN should stand up for values it believes in, not just tech as if it exists in
a vacuum. If HN believes in diversity and LGBT rights, it should stand up for
it. If HN believes in corporate deregulation and dismantling of the EPA, it
should stand up for it.

The idea that HN is neutral on all these issues is just false. HN is the
people who run it. They have views and a vision for the site. What kind of
site do they want it to be? Stand up for that vision. People who don't like it
can go elsewhere.

Reddit and Twitter and other sites have made a huge mistake in the past
allowing racism and hate to fester in their midst. They should have thrown
those people off years ago. They have other sites to go to.

Anyway, that's my view. It's time for people to stand up for what they believe
in.

------
madgar
And to think, HN is already where I go to get away from politics. The site
already only barely tracks the daily/weekly news cycle.

------
calibraxis
> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity
> and civil, substantive comments.

It's "startup news": computing for capitalism. We work on social media without
knowing anything about sociology. We work on advertising, which is corporate
propaganda. We have no vision of the future, unlike technologists in a sane
world, so we build a dystopian bureaucratic nightmare where I'm literally
filling out a form right now.

Anyway, politics is for billionaires.

------
vacri
Good show, I say. Should have gone for a month though, not a week (can't
please everyone, eh?)

About 15 years ago I was part of a general forum run by a kiwi, who was
frustrated at US politics overtaking his site (which was the bulk of political
talk there). He implemented a month-long ban on US politics... and the site
got more peaceful and more interesting. The effect lasted afterwards, too,
though the userbase was < 100.

------
jowiar
When "politics" is treated as "things that affect other people that we opine
about", this decision makes sense.

But this decision is the epitome of privilege. To enter a space thinking "I'm
not going to think about politics" is to be someone whose sheer existence in
that space isn't a political statement in and of itself. And for many, such a
space is "The United States", "The Tech Community", "HN", or whatnot.

Saying "We're going to forget y'all for a week" is... just... fucking...
terrible. And whoever conceived of it should be fired on the spot.

~~~
comex
This is a pretty well-constructed argument, despite the unnecessary invective
at the end. It took me a while to figure out how to rebut it. (Therefore I
upvoted you to counter expected downvotes.)

But I think it goes like this: there's a difference between not caring about
something for a week and not talking about it. If, as you assume, for most of
HN politics is "things that affect other people", then the primary objective
of political discussions on HN should be to convince those people - not, say,
to make the minority which is affected feel validated. My impression is that
when people who are affected by something go and read a ton of Very Strong
Opinions put forward by people who aren't, the result is usually more _in_
validating than validating; validation is important but is a purpose better
served by more focused communities. Now, when it comes to convincing people, a
constant barrage of discussions on the same topic is probably more unhelpful
than helpful; at worst, pausing discussions for a week (which gives them time
to reflect) is unlikely to be very harmful.

Notwithstanding that, some people may _perceive_ the idea of taking a break as
invalidating, because it reminds them of a generalization about the community
(not affected) which does not apply to them. However, so far as it's an
accurate generalization, this seems like it can't be helped. I suppose you
could argue that it seems more accurate than it really is, since marginalized
people are present but silenced…

Anyway, I think "things that affect other people" is an oversimplification to
start with. A lot of the specific political topics people like to discuss on
this site, like encryption/surveillance, have fairly little direct impact on
pretty much any of us; others, like the economy, affect all of us to some
extent, albeit some more than others.

~~~
adrienne
What you may not be taking into account, though, is that for some of us,
"we're not going to allow 'politics' for a week" is being read _in context
with_ the _years_ of previous moderation decisions and community signaling
about who and what it cares about. And in that light, "we're not going to
allow 'politics' for a week" is pretty obviously a decision that upholds the
really toxic status quo of HN. (And that's leaving aside the fact that
_everything is political_ , because 'politics' includes - among other things -
our fundamental assumptions about how the world works, and that's not
something people leave behind when they're talking about technology or
anything else.)

~~~
comex
Hi adrienne :)

This is a fair point and valid data point for how people view it.

Only thing I'd say is, to me the reasoning seems related to a sentiment that's
I've seen in a lot of places, that after all the nastiness that's built up
through the course of the (very long as usual) US election cycle, it's time
for everyone to cool off a bit. So my instinct isn't to tie it that much to
anything about HN in particular. Now of course, the same point applies outside
of HN - it gets a lot harder to treat Trump as a topic you can just stop
talking about when you're more likely to be directly and immediately impacted.
And then there's the idea that we shouldn't normalize him by treating him like
a normal candidate where, after the election, even if your ideas lost, at
least you know there's a modicum of competence and civic-mindedness at the
helm… Still, despite all that, despite the fact that I attended a protest
myself (just one so far), for me some of the sentiment of wanting to cool off
still rings valid. Maybe it shouldn't - but then it's not like we can do
anything to change the election result; we're all in this for the long haul…

There's also the fact that "politics" as described by dang covers a lot more
than US electoral politics. But the reason for wanting to avoid it is still
the influence of US electoral politics on those conversations.

~~~
adrienne
Hi, comex! :)

I definitely understand electoral politics fatigue. We're all having that. But
'dang explicitly said the intended scope of the ban/"detox" is wider than
that, over in this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614)

"The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology,
nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into
flamewars on the internet."

So apparently _literally anything_ about race, gender, or class (which are
really important issues both in terms of the tech _industry_ and in terms of
who technology is _for_ ) are considered off-limits for the week. (And at
least one relevant story - about big tech companies releasing diversity
reports - has already been killed under the policy.) That is one reason I am
taking this as such a clear signal of the _values_ of the mods, rather than
simply a reaction to election stuff. I could be wrong, of course, but i wanted
to try to let you see what i - and many others, i think? - are seeing that
concerns us.

~~~
comex
Fair enough!

------
fatdog
Can we train up a sentiment analyzer on the delta between the stories and
comments this week vs. all others, and then apply it to discovering "political
discussion?"

------
BuuQu9hu
We should flag this thread instead.

------
camperman
Top kek.

------
thesimpsons1022
perfect week for trump to trample digital rights and we have to stay quiet
about it because crybaby racists who voted him in don't want their feelings
hurt.

------
honkhonkpants
I for one think the imminent demise of human civilization is of interest to
the intellectually curious and thoughtful readers of HN. I also believe that
hurting the feelings of willful climate change deniers and suchlike people is
a really good idea.

------
eevilspock
So HN is yet another filter bubble?

 _> We become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones._

HN is designed to be a tribe. The HN tribe and the Silicon Valley ethos it
espouses are by their nature very political, having profound effects on the
direction of our economy, our society, and our world. By censoring challenges
to this ethos, you are reinforcing the tribal boundaries, and members of the
tribe continue on without the constant challenge and testing that is the very
nature of truth finding and even science.

This _Tell HN_ is itself a political act.

------
tristanb
This is ridiculous. Becoming an Ostrich is never a solution. Shame on you.

------
kevinthew
The pedantic bullshit in these comments is why America is in the shitter.

------
vinchuco
Let me get this right. Are they saying politics is to be hated actively for a
recurring period of time?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate)

------
kingkawn
Lol the primitive brain, the entire premise of this worldview is wack peace

------
btbuildem
Sure, bury your heads in the sand. Your country is taking a shortcut to Mad
Max land, and there's not much to be done at this point anyway.

------
balloons
It just goes to show how white and privileged Silicon Valley as a whole is. Be
glad that you only have to think about politics when it's time to elect your
next president, that it won't affect whether you have a place to sleep or
money in your pocket.

This is the same attitude YC showed the world when it kept Thiel on board. If
Silicon Valley as a whole really cared about diversity (and it's becoming
clear in many cases that it's only for PR), then you should find ways to
facilitate constructive discourse (as HN has done with many other topics) and
not ignore politics outright.

------
jamez1
Is this because the HN preferred candidate lost? HN staff are upset and censor
things in response?

I'm disappointed, if you can't handle politics how are you meant to disrupt an
industry? Everything about our industry is political.. how are we meant to
navigate our world if we can't debate one of the most defining aspects of it.

If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen. Don't censor important
relevant discussions because of your emotions! You are failing your community

------
johanneskanybal
Terrible.

------
paulddraper
> It's over. After 20 months it's finally over...I'm free.

[https://xkcd.com/500/](https://xkcd.com/500/)

------
hooph00p
This is cowardly.

------
newobj
Hacker News is OVER

------
staticelf
This fucking sucks.

------
ForrestN
I flagged this post because supressing political speech systematically, and
even ignoring it, is actually active political discourse. Politics is not and
never will be a separated topic, it is inextricable from everything we care
about. This Tell HN is arguing for a specific political position about the
nature of public discourse (that it is best stewarded from the top down by
extremely rich people who overwhelmingly skew white, straight and male), and
is arguing that intellectual curiosity and conflict are generally exclusive.
This post is one tribe within the broader community of HN exerting its
dominance over other tribes while pretending to be high-minded in resistance
to tribalism.

Don't confuse yourselves: your tribe doesn't feel in immanent danger, doesn't
think this community is in a unique position to help the world in a dangerous
moment, and wants to stop being bothered by the imposition of reality on the
dominant tribe that seems able to weather the storm and continue peacefully
enriching itself. That is the tribe that owns HN, that seems to be the tribe
that is in control of Silicon Valley's immense resources which are, to the
profound shame of the entire industry, not being used to try to save its
country.

The president is deeply unstable, lies constantly and has hired a team of
bigoted, addled, corrupt old white men to serve him. Autocracy is incredibly
dangerous. But it won't affect the leaders of the tribe who wrote this
shameful post. Rich straight white people will almost certainly be safe from
suffering. My family won't be and already isn't in vast swaths of the country.

This post and others in the last month have taught me that HN is not a
community of smart people interested in technology. It is an apparatus of a
few privileged people and their businesses that serves mostly one narrow
community (engineers who are focused on earning money and/or luxuriating in
their own preoccupations) that the owners want things from (talent and money).
We can't learn together by hiding from this moment.

When talking politics means talking about the internment of muslims, talking
about a conspiracy of Jews puppeteering the global economy, talking about
refusing to enforce any civil rights laws that happen to mostly protect black
people, when politics means the destabilization of the global economy and the
global military equilibrium established since Workd War II, well then
enforcing the state of not talking about politics is itself an act of
violence.

~~~
imafish
Agreed. We live in scary times for a lot of people. Smart people agreeing not
to talk about it, cannot be the right solution.

------
jksmith
Far more interesting is to post your favorite SNL political clips. We need a
levity injection attack around here.

------
johnchristopher
Well. Let me just flag this post since its a political one.

------
shitgoose
so HN users admit that they are incapable of carrying out a civilized
discussion on political issues? sad.

banning all political topics just because current state of affairs upsets
someone is ridiculous. country is split in the middle, so what, when liberals
win we will ban political topics again just because now the other side feels
offended? how about you stop feeling offended and start listening to each
other?

~~~
scrollaway
> _so HN users_

I'd appreciate if you didn't make accusations like these which include me in
it. This is coming from a moderator - IIUC, it's entirely dang's idea.

> _admit_

a one week experiment.

> _banning all political topics_

Temporarily.

> _just because current state of affairs upsets someone_

It sounds like it has nothing to do with that.

> _how about you stop feeling offended and start listening to each other_

 _It starts with you_. There is no other word than _offended_ for your
reaction to this little announcement here. And if you actually _listened_ ,
you'd perhaps glance more than just "we're offended Trump won so we're banning
politics forevah".

My initial reaction to this announcement was actually negative - I like
politics on HN, the community does a decent job of keeping the trashy comments
flagged. But then, seeing your post essentially proved dang's point: You've
been here for 3.5 years, but just couldn't help yourself and take a piss on
the community you're a part of, to try score some political points.

 _Urgh_. It's so disappointing.

~~~
shitgoose
sigh... after reading this, we probably should ban politics. sad.

------
ajamesm
> For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also
> flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill
> such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see
> what happens.

Okay, I've flagged this one thread titled "Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No
politics on HN for one week". It was this strange and laborious screed about
how political speech is harmful or something?

Privileging "non-political" speech is an implicit endorsement of the status-
quo, and thereby, an incredibly political action.

------
koolba
This sounds like a cop out and I question whether this post would have been
made had Trump lost and Clinton won.

------
polymotivated
Here's an idea. If a story is clearly political, then just turn off comment
moderation except for flagging.

Objectively, HN has a huge problem with leftists and socialists downvoting
conservative/libertarian comments.

Dang knows this. I haven't read all the comments, but if he denies that simple
fact, then HN has bigger problems.

You can't have legitimate conversations if the other side is openly hostile to
the very idea of even displaying contrarian to their beliefs opinions.

There was a big bubble that many on HN lived in until election day, when they
must've realized that there's another half of the country that doesn't think
like them.

Here's a perfect example of living in the bubble. Look at all the car hatred
on HN, where people are almost giddy over ideas to ban them, limit them,
etc...

The vast majority of the people in the world don't think that way.

HN is just a bubble and why it's a parody.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Objectively, HN has a huge problem with leftists and socialists downvoting
> conservative/libertarian comments

It's funny how partisans on the right often say this, and partisans on the
left often say the same thing, with the sides reversed.

The fact is, HN has sizable and active contigents from all parts if the
political spectrum, and partisan voting (up and down) comes from all sides.

~~~
polymotivated
Maybe those on the right aren't as trigger-happy with the down-votes as the
leftists are. Leftists aren't so keen on free speech anyway. Just look at the
SJWs and the global warming crowd.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Maybe those on the right aren't as trigger-happy with the down-votes as the
> leftists are.

Or maybe they are.

> Leftists aren't so keen on free speech anyway.

And many leftists would say the same thing about rightists, with the same
amount of justification.

Both the right and left have large factions with little devotion to free
speech beyond what agrees with them. And both have factions that view
disagreement and criticism as suppression.

------
anonbanker
I need to preface this by saying I voted for Jill Stein.

You're right that HN should be a place for intellectual curiosity and
substantive comments. But here's what I've seen in the past year:

* Flagrantly allow anti-prop-8 posts and submissions to assist in the smearing of Brendan Eich.

* Flagrantly allow pro-clinton posts and link submissions to thrive on HN.

* Never step-in to stop downvoting brigades on pro-conservative/libertarian/tea party posts.

* After unpopular (with silicon valley) president is elected, ban political conversations on the site.

I won't call you biased, because you've been a damn good mod, but this is
probably your worst decision, because it looks like sour-grapes-in-retrospect.

Perhaps you're doing it because the pro-clinton camp is actually becoming too
toxic to tolerate. Perhaps you're doing it to avoid the 4chan brigade from
promoting Trump. Either way, this is a site full of people skilled at reading
between the lines, and, correct or not, this action doesn't look like a way of
promoting reasonable discussion.

~~~
dang
> _it looks like sour grapes_

This is one of those unintended consequences that gobsmack me any time we try
out some new idea here. I'm sure anyone who deals with large internet
communities has the same experience. The funny thing is that it's always
obvious that it was bound to come up, in retrospect—just never beforehand.
It's like the unveiling of the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel: hidden in
plain view every time.

I don't know if I can respond in a way that satisfies you, but let me try.
First, Clinton and Trump stories are equally penalized on HN. Second, it
_always_ seems like HN is biased against whatever views you personally hold,
not because it is, but because the community is divided and we're biased to
notice the things we dislike, and that offend us, more than the ones that
don't. Your use of the word "flagrantly" is an instance of this. Why do the
things you listed seem flagrant while others do not? Because they're mirroring
your own preferences. (See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13083111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13083111)
and
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias&sor...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)
for more on this if you want.)

I guarantee you that the people who feel oppositely to you about X, Y, Z
issues feel like their side is flagrantly the underdog in the same fights.
This is one of the dynamics behind why political fights are so toxic to begin
with.

> _Either way, this is a site full of people skilled at reading between the
> lines_

Read my lines, please! Just don't imagine lines, then imagine subtexts between
them, and then read the imaginary subtext. Instead, ask. We're happy to
explain what's going on—what's actually, really going on, as best we
understand it.

~~~
koolba
I'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like this
if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election. It's not like things
were _less_ contentious then.

Say if this were announced the day before the election, regardless of the
outcome, with a hold period of say a month.

~~~
dang
> _I 'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like
> this if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election._

Can't help you there. We don't have anything like that degree of finesse in
planning.

The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay
that much attention to other stuff, and when we think something is a good idea
and finally get around to it, we do it. About the only thought that went into
_political_ timing was
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098321).

~~~
koolba
(emphasis mine):

> The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay
> that much attention to other stuff, and _when we think something is a good
> idea and finally get around to it, we do it_.

I do sincerely believe the italicized last part.

I also suspect that nobody on the HN mod team thought that Trump would
actually win. It was such a far off concept that planning for it and the
ensuing gloating / division / trolling would have been laughable. If they did,
they would have put more thought into stating this type of thing in advance as
I'm pretty sure it's been suggested more than once over the past few months.

~~~
dang
Even if we had guessed, we don't plan for things like who might win an
election. That would be crazymaking.

