
Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden? - peterwwillis
The movements through the world of this individual &quot;don&#x27;t amount to a hill of beans&quot;.<p>Is he on a plane, isn&#x27;t he, will Country X extradite him, won&#x27;t they, does his old girlfriend still pole dance, doesn&#x27;t she, what is Wikileaks&#x27; stance on him, is he allowed to trend on Twitter, etc.<p>The great majority of these stories seem mainly fodder for news companies to gain revenue while people voraciously seek more information about a quickly diminishing story. The documents were released, the hearings have been held, there are some lawsuits pending.<p>But we all know essentially how this will end: Prism isn&#x27;t going away and Edward Snowden&#x27;s fate is grim. And while we can discuss myriad elements &#x27;til we&#x27;re blue in the face, fifteen front-page stories a day aren&#x27;t going to help us understand the issues any better, nor are they coverage of some important event.<p>Let&#x27;s stop turning HN into a tabloid news service and get back to the deeply interesting stories.<p><i>&quot;Essentially there are two rules here: don&#x27;t post or upvote crap links, and don&#x27;t be rude or dumb in comment threads.<p>A crap link is one that&#x27;s only superficially interesting. Stories on HN don&#x27;t have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren&#x27;t only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting.<p>What does &quot;deeply interesting&quot; mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, then perhaps it could be.<p>The worst thing to post or upvote is something that&#x27;s intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter.&quot;</i>
======
swombat
Please post more about Snowden, PRISM, NSA, GCHQ, and all the rest. I will
upvote every one of them.

For those who think that "we all know essentially how this will end", think
about what the world would look like if every major change had been met with
this kind of pitiful attitude. Every revolution, every change for the better,
has come out of people rejecting that sentiment.

It's not too late to turn away from the abyss and go back towards sanity and a
better future.

~~~
Kylekramer
I agree with the sentiment, minus Snowden. We should be talking about this
issue. Snowden is at this point immaterial to the larger issues unless he
leaks more details. Discussing himself distracts from his purposes. His
movements and people's opinions about his movements (which dominated HN this
weekend) are of no consequence to PRISM and the NSA.

The honest truth is we are no closer to discovering the truth about what the
government does than we were on day one of the leak while entertaining
ourselves with platitudes about how "America is now a place where people seek
asylum from" and Bourne movie fantasies.

~~~
ISL
If we stop talking about Snowden, he'll have lost his only viable defense. If
what he leaked is important and worthwhile, then he ought to be defended. The
probability that he'll receive fair treatment by our government and a fair
trial is directly related to his presence in a spotlight.

How the government treats Snowden is a proxy for how the government may treat
each one of us in the future; he's now committed to being the test case for
our possible future.

I'm not stoked about discussing a random dude's travel plans either, but it
would appear that the court of public opinion is more transparent than the
system which would otherwise judge the man.

~~~
davidw
> If we stop talking about Snowden, he'll have lost his only viable defense.

No he won't, because in the grand scheme of things, no one cares whether HN
talks about him or not.

------
yuvadam
Do you honestly believe we've understood this surveillance complex enough that
we can keep on with our lives? Why accept that "PRISM [won't go] away" or that
"Snowden's fate is grim"?

Honestly? Is this cause not worth fighting for anymore?

~~~
ebbv
Most of these stories themselves are at best tangentially related to the
larger issue.

Upvoting them or reading a story about Edward Snowden's favorite brand of
chicken pot pie is not doing anything to fight for civil liberties, though it
will give views to garbage web sites like Business Insider and its ilk.

~~~
gori
Oh give up.

"Edward Snowden's favorite brand of chicken pot pie" "Kim Dotcom braids his
hair!" "Julian Assange orders Cherry Coke instead of regular!" "Elon Musk buys
three rare white leopards!"

Do you really like to argue by ridiculing others this much? There hasn't been
a story even resembling anything like this, people have actually upvoted
things they found interesting.

More links means more people are writing about it. This is good.

~~~
gyardley
Good lord, there was something up here this morning that talked about the
pizza and fried chicken Snowden had for his birthday. Before that, it was 'his
girlfriend's a pole dancer and here's the cache of her deleted blog'.

This guy stabbed his own cause in the back by going public, doing press
interviews, and doing whatever else he could to make the story all about him,
and for some inexplicable reason y'all want to shove the knife in deeper and
twist.

~~~
mcherm
> This guy stabbed his own cause in the back by going public, doing press
> interviews, and doing whatever else he could to make the story all about him

Really? Because I don't think "the goal" is to get detailed articles written
up in blogs that will show up on Hacker News, I think "the goal" is to get the
story out to as many people as possible and raise its profile in hopes of
influencing governments.

And you have to understand the way that the press works. They've already
WRITTEN a story about PRISM... so they can't write another one, because it's
not "new". However, they CAN report on the daily movements of this guy,
Snowden. And they can publish every interview he gives. And each time they can
(will!) review just what it is that he revealed.

I think that, intentional or not, Snowden has successfully managed to bring
media attention to this issue in a way that previous efforts had not.

~~~
gyardley
Yeah, really. Just anecdotal, of course, but from my own conversations with
(and eavesdropping on) normal people around my town, it's clear that some
people know who Snowden is and are following his travels but they don't have
the slightest clue what he revealed. 'Some military secret to the Chinese' is
the best guess I've gotten so far.

------
rednukleus
> But we all know essentially how this will end: Prism isn't going away and
> Edward Snowden's fate is grim.

That's a very defeatist attitude. I'm sure that there are better arguments for
upvoting or not upvoting these articles than saying "this story is not worth
paying attention to because we are completely helpless, let's go back to
talking about app store metrics".

~~~
tomjen3
>The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political connotations
now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge of
those who favored a negotiated peace. At the start of World War II it was used
extensively by Churchill and his supporters to silence their opponents. In
1940, any argument against Churchill's aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was
it right or wrong? Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that.

Paul Graham, What you can't say.
[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

Please don't go and use words designed to shot down the debate.

~~~
toufka
eh? From your own quote: >>The word "defeatist", for example, has no
particular political connotations _now_.

"Defeatist" has nothing to do with no one 'getting to ask' a question.

------
ebbv
I agree not only with regards to Edward Snowden but generally worthless
articles about people who happen to be in the tech news lately. E.g. "Kim
Dotcom braids his hair!", "Julian Assange orders Cherry Coke instead of
regular!", "Elon Musk buys three rare white leopards!" It's tedious.

Unfortunately what makes good click bait also makes good upvote bait and most
people will just fall for it unthinkingly. And looking at the comments so far,
apparently will defend doing so.

Yes there are larger issues at stake which are why these people are in the
news, but 99% of the stories being upvoted have nothing to do with the larger
issue and are instead press releases with no interesting content, meant solely
to drive clicks and in the case of older stories like Kim Dotcom, meant to
keep their names in the news.

Stop being a sucker; be more critically minded with what you choose to upvote
and read.

~~~
gori
Stop being a douche with crap examples of posts that would never be on Hacker
News; let others have their own opinions. Click and upvote the links you find
interesting?

~~~
ebbv
Right because I meant those as serious examples of what has appeared here and
not humorous, satirical exaggerations meant to highlight the irrelevance of
the actual articles which get posted by extreme comparison.

Also, calling me a douche for expressing an opinion shows that you are clearly
a very intelligent and thoughtful person so I am very interested in your well
considered opinions on important matters. I'm sure you contribute a lot to not
only this community but the world as a whole with that keenly honed intellect
of yours.

~~~
clarky07
While I don't agree with the name calling, I do agree with the sentiment. None
of the articles being upvoted are even close to as absurd as your examples.

The example I keep seeing is people complaining about his flight itinerary. It
isn't irrelevant, not even close. The fact that China allowed him to leave is
very interesting. The fact that Russia has allowed him to enter is very
interesting. If they let him leave and eventually make his way to Ecuador,
that will be interesting as well. This is a window into the relationship being
the US and China and Russia, and it turns out those relationships are very
important. If you think this stuff is irrelevant, you aren't paying enough
attention.

------
gori
This is a story that people are upvoting because they find it interesting. It
is also a very active one, where new interesting information is coming up all
the time.

And "Edward Snowden's fate is grim" so we should stop caring about him? I'm
glad to not see this story go away, and I am actually understanding the issues
better because of the articles about it here.

Let the community decide what should be on here.

~~~
levosmetalo
And how can community decide on highly controversial topic if only upvotes are
counted?

~~~
gori
Which is REALLY GOOD.

We end up with divisive topics that only half of us is interested in on the
first page. The other half might completely hate it, even!

------
skwirl
It isn't the quantity of Snowden stories that are the problem. It is the
tenuous relationship with reality of many of the "stories" that have been
posted that is the problem. This morning we had a story at #1 for quite a
while that claimed Twitter was censoring #Snowden from trending in the United
States. Instead of actually going to Twitter and seeing that this was a
ridiculous claim, people just kept upvoting it because it sounded like
something they should upvote. This is a phenomenon that all sites with voting
systems on submissions have. People tend to go and satisfy their slacktivism
itch by upvoting headlines that they agree with without actually reading the
articles or really thinking about them.

To the moderators' credit, they deleted the Twitter "censorship" submission. I
know they have deleted some other very low quality Snowden/NSA related
articles as well.

------
shawabawa3
Agreed. At some point I flagged every snowden/NSA story on the front page (I
believe it was 28 out of 30).

I don't seem to be able to flag any more so I guess that was picked up as
abuse, so unfortunately I can't flag any more of these stories.

I wouldn't mind seeing stories on all of this, as long as they are only posted
when something interesting has actually happened, as opposed to just because
there hasn't been a story on it for 5 minutes

~~~
gori
Why not let the others here decide what they think is interesting instead of
flagging posts?

Things people like gets upvoted and rise to the top. You did abuse the system,
because you used the flagging as a downvote button. This is not Reddit.

~~~
DanBC
> Why not let the others here decide what they think is interesting

Weird that you cannot spot the contradiction here.

Why not let others here decide what they think shouldn't be here instead of
upvoting crap posts? Other people are abusing the upvote button by voting for
content that should not be here.

> This is not Reddit.

The quality over the past week has been lousy.

~~~
gori
Sorry, English is not my first language.

We do not have a downvote button. Major news is allowed here.

This is an active story that a lot of people is interested in, and this means
that a lot of posts about it is upvoted.

Shouldn't the flag button only be about things that are not allowed? Not as a
way to remove things you find not interesting?

The issue here is that the upvoting is democratic. One person flagging posts
based on his opinions (and as you can see in this thread, your opinions are
not the same as others, imagine that!) and them getting completely removed
because of it is not democratic.

If you don't like things, don't upvote them. They get upvoted because others
like them. How can this be so hard to understand?

Your opinion of the quality of the posts here is not what should decide what
posts others read!

~~~
pestaa
You can only moderate other upvotes by flagging the submissions they upvoted.

~~~
gori
Moderation is for removing submissions that are not appropriate, not for
removing the things you don't find very interesting.

There's a clear distinction between the two.

------
shared4you
As a non-US HN'er, I totally agree with this. I come here for tech news, not
US politics.

Some HNer has set up a nice filter:

[http://diff.biz/?remove=%28nsa|prism|privacy|crunch|snowden|...](http://diff.biz/?remove=%28nsa|prism|privacy|crunch|snowden|track%29&only-
show-removed=no)

It filters away all stories containing keywords nsa, prism, etc.

~~~
lucb1e
And even if I were from the US. When I started visiting hackernews, nearly all
stories were about tech, startups, or research results (like whether there is
a correlation between years of experience and code quality, such things). In
the last few weeks it's all about privacy and, worse, politics.

I'm a _huge_ privacy fan, really. But after months of news about it, I'm quite
through with it. We all know Gmail gets wiretapped, we all know how to encrypt
data, and whether you do something about it is up to you. End of story if you
ask me.

Politics too to an extent. It's important to know what's going on in the
world. But I _don 't_ find it important to know where Snowden is going by the
minute.

------
ck2
If it bothers you, take the bigrss feed here and put it through an rss filter
to remove the articles you do not like?

I did that for Steve Jobs. I personally want to read every new element about
the Snowden effect but I realize not everyone else does.

~~~
Sandman
_If it bothers you, take the bigrss feed here and put it through an rss filter
to remove the articles you do not like?_

This doesn't solve the bigger problem, namely, that posting countless stories
on Snowden is really killing HN. Seriously, we're one step away from having
stories on what Snowden had for lunch on his flight to Moscow on the front
page. I don't buy the "Let the community decide what should be on the front
page" argument either. Communities tend to follow the same laws of entropy
like anything else in this universe. Without a certain number of people
putting in considerable effort to keep up the quality of submitted articles
and discussions, they tend to devolve into places with a bunch of articles
that bring nothing new to the table, and with discussions that are nothing
more than long, tiresome rants or flame wars that have no real value.

~~~
dubcanada
Wait he's flying to Moscow?

Joking aside if there is a story about his lunch on his way to Moscow, which
also means he is flying to Moscow. That's important.

I'm indifferent about the situation because I don't live in US. But it still
matters, you're just not interested in it. So you should do what he says and
mentally filter it out. If this was 9/11 or something you felt more connected
with (I'm not saying 9/11 is it, but I'm assuming your American and probably
feel something for that date), you would not be saying this to begin with.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a story of a hacker, a sysadmin, one of us, who made a choice that
could very well cost him his life. He is now being pursued all over the globe
by the world's largest super-power, which has yet to catch him. His story
directly addresses the role of technology in anonymity and privacy, and the
details of his story are full of lots of fun technical details. In addition,
he's carrying notebooks that have even more stories about technology, spying,
privacy, and such.

Yeah, sure, I don't care what he had for lunch or whether he's sitting in the
aisle or window seat, but as far as getting attention on HN? What else would
you expect?

~~~
DanBC
> but as far as getting attention on HN? What else would you expect?

No-one is calling for zero Snowden articles.

What people are asking for is for a reduction in the flood of Snowden trivia.

"Snowden Does X" will be reported by the twelve different news sources, and
each of these will be posted to HN. Some of these will have blogpost
reactions, which also get posted. An hour later some politician will respond
to "Snowden Does X", which will be reported by 12 different sources, and
blogged about, and etc etc.

The submissions are tedious and very repetitive.

But, worse, so are the comments. It's pretty much "The NSA is bad, and what
they did is bad"; "Snowden is a traitor" or "snowden isn't a traitor".

Some of it was mildly interesting but now there's very little new "deeply
interesting" commentary.

Snowden stories are, now, a good example of "intensely but shallowly
interesting".

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Front page stories on HN right now that mention Snowden:

"Edward Snowden is not on the flight from Moscow to Cuba"

and

"Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?"

I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Has there been a bunch of
noise/trivial stories about Snowden? No doubt. But I already said that.

Looks like the voting system is working as it should.

------
zeroDivisible
One of fellow geeks had chosen to risk everything which he had - whether it
was recklessness or courage is a different thing - and publish classified
information, shedding some light on the topic of people being monitored by the
government.

As much as you might be irritated by the amount of information related to him
which is being published here, personally, I'm curious how the story will
unfold. I presume that there are others who are curious and others who are
irritated as well.

In most of the cases you are right - hn is not the place for gossip about
famous people. The thing here is that we are not discussing what did
Kardashian ate for dinner and why it's bad for her cellulite, but following a
story of somebody who is not giving a shit and trying to if not defend, then
at least shed some light on our privacy, as it's being taken from us.

Please don't get me wrong, but I'd strongly advise using some filtering tools
(there are dozens) for hn in this specific case.

------
cletus
I'm not normally in favour of "political" stories on HN but this one is an
exception for three reasons.

Firstly, mass surveillance and the end-run around the Constitution is a
technological as well as social and political issue that also touches on the
hot button issue of privacy and how the legal system is increasingly at odds
with the Internet (eg distinguishing between "US persons" and "foreign
persons" is increasingly difficult and makes less and less sense in a
connected world).

Secondly, most of these stories have been surprisingly informative if you read
between the lines.

\- Hong Kong (as a plausible deniability front for the PRC basically) stalled
on the arrest warrant and essentially ignored the cancelled passport. When
prompted by the US AG they further stalled by requesting more information.
Basically they took the approach of "who is this Snowden guy?" and threw up
their hands saying "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas; we're
confused!" Make no mistake: this is the PRC making a stand against US policy;

\- Russia likewise (it is reported today) claims it has no "legal authority"
to detain Snowden and don't know where he is (despite him being contained to
the airport as he has no valid Russian visa as far as anyone knows). This,
too, is Russia taking a stance against US policy.

\- Ecuador too of all countries is taking an anti-US stance. It's a strange
country to claim to be supporting human rights (given its record and
persecution of journalists who criticize the president). In a news article
today it was mentioned that the US refused to extradite bankers to Ecuador.
Are we seeing the true tit-for-tat motives here?

\- Whether the US will interfere with a Russian commercial airliner that
travels in or near US airspace (being the flight from Moscow to Cuba) is an
open and noteworthy question. It seems unlikely but the very fact that we even
need to ask that question says a lot.

\- Obama's war on whistleblowers exceeds that of all presidents that came
before him. "Justice" is not the only goal here. Making an example of these
"traitors" is. That can be the only explanation for the disgusting behaviour
(arguably torture) that applied to, say, the detention and solitary
confinement of Bradley Manning (ostensibly under the guise of "suicide
watch").

\- the administration's adoption of the "Insider Threat Program" basically
turns all Federal employees into informants on each other where you can be
punished for not informing. This is straight out of the Stasi playbook and
happening in the US in 2013. Not only that but different departments and
agencies have leeway on defining what "sensitive" information is, which goes
beyond "classified".

Third, nothing changes and nothing works... until it does. To take the
fatalistic and cynical position that there's no point in trying is just...
sad.

This issue matters and it's germane to HN on several fronts. If you don't feel
the same, just don't click on the links.

~~~
techtalsky
Thanks for writing this post so I didn't have to. The readers of HN for the
most part belong to a sort of protected class and do, in fact, have some
political power. It's the time to beat this drum as hard as we can. I think
it's time for this issue to stay at the very top of our consciousnesses.

Obama's twitter account is blithely tweeting about climate change (also
important) when the blatant end run around the bill of rights should be one of
the most important issues of our lives. If this kind of practice becomes the
norm, then the 4th amendment is a hollowed out shell that once meant
something, and future generations will never even know what it was like to be
protected from unwarranted search and seizure.

~~~
davidw
Beating the drum in the echo chamber will accomplish two things:

* Jack.

* Shit.

As Steve Blank is wont to say, if anything is to happen, you need to "get out
of the building". That means interacting with real life politics, not upvoting
stories on a niche news site. Unlike upvoting stories, this is actually _hard
work_.

What's the point of visibility for a story anyway? The point is to actual do
something that improves the situation. Voting things up seems like "gee, I
wish _someone_ would do something about this, maybe if _they_ happen to see it
it will happen".

~~~
discostrings
You're presenting two options, of which you imply only one can be chosen:

 __* "Getting out of the building" and engaging others with an important issue

 __* Continuing to discuss the development of that important issue and
organizing action with a community that is already mostly sympathetic

But the truth is that _these options are not mutually exclusive_. One can do
both quite easily. As you said, the hard work is interacting with real life
politics. I imagine many who post here are doing that. But doing the hard work
doesn't preclude also keeping the issue fresh in the minds of one's mostly-
sympathetic peers who are at the forefront of calling for (and hopefully
making) change.

~~~
davidw
If you crowd out the tech and the startups with politics, you'll be left
without much of anything.

------
npalli
Thank you. It also appears that there has been some aggressive filtering of
the Snowden topic on reddit so we have all those "discussions" spill over here
and turn this site into NSA news.

------
mehwoot
This is a problem with Hacker News. Maybe because most people can't downvote
(or I dunno some other reason), it has a big big problem with duplicate
stories. When Steve Jobs died for example, 30/30 stories were "Steve Jobs has
died" for quite some time.

It is irritating, that's for sure.

~~~
DanBC
People can flag submissions. I don't know if there's a karma threshold for
flagging.

People should be visiting new and flagging articles that don't belong here,
and upvoting good articles.

It's a bit worrying that "over flagging" could cause someone to lose their
ability to flag articles - some users have reported that.

Still, most of the Snowden articles are garbage and should be flagged.

~~~
levosmetalo
No you can't flag stories. Theoretically you can, but if you try to actually
flag 25 Snowden stories today, since all of them are off-topic according to HN
guidelines, your flag ability will be removed in a matter of minutes.

------
jimhefferon
> But we all know essentially how this will end

The thing I have learned from reading history is that it often does not turn
out the way people expected at the time. The details of what happens matter.

~~~
lucb1e
At least give us the important details when we have them. Right now it's just
cranking out any and all details we can find about his current whereabouts,
which are of no value as far as I can see. Do a writeup two days later about
where he is, how he went there, and why. That'd be totally fine. All it takes
is _one_ story, not a filled homepage like we had for the past few days.

------
hartator
I guess I'd like to have more technical news too. The issue is what happening
is way more important than anything else. I guess we can bare some "gossip"
news if it can help the community a little.

------
crocowhile
I actually came to HN every day in the past two weeks just because I want to
read more about the Snowden affaire. From the technological, political,
dramaturgical points of view this is one of the most interesting stories a
hacker could think of.

------
whiddershins
Honestly, the timbre of this post implies a viewpoint which is fatalistic and
frustrated with the issue, from someone who perhaps doesn't think the issue is
as severe as others do.

I say, don't hide your opinions in a separate complaint, just because it is
easier to defend. It is easy to criticize the headlines for being superficial,
even if your issue is that you don't want to talk about Snowden anymore.

Keeping the headlines up keeps awareness up. Perhaps that is precisely what
you don't like. Why do you think PRISM is inevitable? Why do you think his
asylum requests in Ecuador are less interesting than the latest coffee script
variation?

I think it is fascinating that Hacker News is having such a political reaction
to this issue. That, to me, is deeply interesting in and of itself.

------
lignuist
I would love to see more posts, which discuss how PRISM will change the future
of the technology world.

------
proksoup
Turn your tv back on, pay your taxes, shut up and let us keep killing and
watching whomever we want.

------
adamors
Good luck with this. A week or so ago I even lost the privilege of flagging
submissions because I flagged one too many PRISM posts. It's been a boring
couple of weeks, that's for sure.

------
clarky07
People keep suggesting that his flight itenerary and whereabouts aren't
interesting. This is simply not true. This is extremely important and could
have much larger implications. China and Russia are essentially spitting in
the US governments face by allowing him to move in and out of their countries,
and if that isn't interesting to you maybe you should spend more time on
reddit or imgur.

------
karpodiem
I reject your analysis. I will be upvoting every Snowden story on HN.

PS - Hi NSA.

------
ryguytilidie
Yeah we need to clear out this news about the most important case of domestic
spying in the history of the world so that I can finally see some stories
about which startup raised money...?

Perspective please.

~~~
outworlder
Agreed. This is better and more relevant than the usual Techcrunch parroting.

------
levosmetalo
You can install "Selectivity for HN" Greasemonkey script to hide those
stories. It reduced my front page to just about ~10 relevant posts.

It might help to flag those posts too, but if you try it they will most likely
just remove flag privilege for you, since this Snowden thing seems to be a new
fetish here on HN, similar to the time Steve Jobs died when you couldn't read
anything else.

Btw, from the HN guide: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or
sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of
pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV
news, it's probably off-topic."

These Snowden/NSA/PRISM articles are pretty much the definition of off-topic,
and it seems that we can't fight them out of front page, since we can't
downvote posts, and flagging them will just lead to removal of flag privilege.

~~~
publicfig
Could you possibly link to the script, I'm having trouble finding it for some
reason.

~~~
levosmetalo
You can find a script home page at
[http://swapped.cc/#!/iip](http://swapped.cc/#!/iip)

However, I had to manually enable script on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/*](https://news.ycombinator.com/*) since it is
enabled only on http by default.

------
kposehn
In general I'm in agreement with the OP.

The majority of the stories, even those where Snowden is claiming something,
are just that: stories. There is little deeply interesting or worthwhile here.

They spark serious discussion for sure, but one thing I've seen is that many
of us on HN are taking Snowden's claims at face value.

This disturbs me. We should be sitting down and asking ourselves "what
information here is valid? How can we even trust this guy? Can we analyze the
source, the data and the conclusions to find inconsistency and think through
what is _really_ going on here?"

Ask any veteran spook and they'll tell you to trust your instincts. My (non-
spook) instincts - and those of many people I know - are screaming "there is
something really, really wrong with this story."

------
thezach
Because Congress and the President clearly care about how many upvotes some
cause gets on Hacker News.... seriously voting something up on Hacker News
isn't advocacy at all and I can guarantee that everyone on Hacker News is
pretty much 400% more educated on this issue than the general public.

If your passionate about something and you feel it needs to change write your
congressman a hand written letter. Go visit their local office. Remind them
your the person who decides if their unemployed during the next election.

If your passionate enough that you need to upvote everything on a subject then
spend 10-15 minutes a day and write a handwritten letter to one of your
elected officials. Thats more likely to make a difference than upvoting on
hacker news.

------
warrenmiller
"Can we please slow down the stories about ..." \- If the community didn't
want them they wouldn't surface. They clearly do.

~~~
ebbv
Come on. We should never, ever make a post asking the community to reconsider
what's been going on? That's ridiculous.

------
PavlovsCat
No hacking without freedom.

This is like asking on a weapons manufacturer forum to only discuss small arms
used privately.

News services are making money of this? Oh my, as opposed to the usual posts
here, which never are about money, at all? Are you actually serious? If I read
the current front page, there is _so_ much stuff on it that is not "deeply
interesting". I just don't want to bash any particular one of it, I don't mind
that, but I gotta call hilarious, unintentional irony here.

If you're that worried about deeply interesting subjects, and not an apologist
for power and its abuses, then I am looking forward for your threads on all
the other stuff. Funny how so far the people who complain seemed to have more
of a problem with this particular topic, than superficial things in general?
You think there is a connection?

As for the "this will not stop anyway", that's nonsense.

 _Somebody is saying this is inevitable - and whenever you hear somebody
saying that, it 's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make
it true._ \-- Richard Stallman

------
hysterix
What an unbelievably awful defeatist attitude.

If everyone had your terrible attitude, nobody would ever do anything about
any issue and just simply bend over, cry, and take it.

I'm glad this joker peterwwillis has absolutely no say on what is and isn't
upvoted on this site.

Btw peter, I checked your submissions and I thought the majority were
extremely boring, unoriginal and worthless, much like this post.

------
marmot1101
I don't have a problem at all with the volume of stories, I just think that we
need to honor Snowden's wishes. He explicitly asked that focus remain on the
content of his leaks rather than about him personally. Let's talk about his
leaks and how we are going to create a future without the need for them rather
than about the man himself.

------
seferphier
We need stories on Snowden because ultimately this story is not about Snowden
but how the government deals with the privacy of individuals.

We are at the intersection of privacy of individuals and technology. The
internet made information abundantly available for anyone (including govt) to
search. Our entire lives is being tracked and recorded permanently in history.
The people ("big brother") that control this information can control our lives
(we all have secrets and/or broke the law one way or another without knowing
it).

We as the tech community, we have a responsibility to protect the privacy and
the rights of individual more than anyone else. Some of us on Hacker News
build products that millions of people use. We need people that build these
product bring awareness of privacy concerns to their companies. If we will not
stand up for the privacy of individuals, who will? the Senators of our
country?

We need to make people more aware of privacy issues, not less.

------
bsbechtel
Considering many of these stories are a pain to find in MSM sources (unless
you are continually checking every media source's homepage), I appreciate the
fact that HN is aggregating them all to one location. I understand that it can
be annoying to see HN full of stories about the next plane that Edward Snowden
may hop on. However, I would rather see that crap on here and still be updated
on new developments regarding the issue as a whole vs missing out on new
information because stories about PRISM, Edward Snowden, and the NSA are no
longer being shared on here.

In addition, your defeatist attitude towards the whole PRISM ordeal is ironic,
considering your willingness to speak out against Snowden stories being
upvoted on here. If you were willing to channel that energy into action or
ideas against PRISM, maybe things would change. Oh, and you're comments are in
direct conflict with the second rule of HN.

------
bionerd
> "But we all know essentially how this will end: Prism isn't going away and
> Edward Snowden's fate is grim."

> "Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking [...] but they do have to be
> deeply interesting."

I understand that many people here share your pessimism and this NSA business
is surely getting tiresome for them.

It might be I'm just more naive and personally invested in this widescale
spying thing because privacy on the internet is something I've always deepely
cared about. But that's why, until this thing is sorted out (if at all, I have
no idea how), all this wonderful technical stuff that's usually discussed here
appears somehow less important in the lights of recent events (to me).

Edit: That doesn't mean that we should flood Hacker News with links to
unreliable tabloid articles and force out the technical content entirely, of
course. There has to be a middle ground.

------
adestefan
I never thought I'd see the day when /r/programming was better than HN.
However, it's happened ever since Bitcoin, Asange, Dotcom, and now Snowden has
taken over here.

I've gone from checking HN, including the new section, a couple times a day,
to taking a look every 4 or 5 days.

------
drawkbox
It involves all the largest Silicon Valley companies so it will be of interest
to everyone running a company or working with technology in the valley and the
US.

I'd also argue all the linking from sites like HN and reddit are keeping this
in the news since it gets the hits on the mainstream sites. The interest in it
on these sites might actually keep the heat on to change this bad situation.

A week or two is too little to give to this immensely impactful story. With
that said I am only up-voting stories that I feel are defining of our times
and major breaks, trouble is so may of them have been recently.

Yes, we'd all like for it to end and get back to business which we must
continue doing but ignoring it isn't going to change the general community
interest in it as it is a huge issue.

------
pvnick
> But we all know essentially how this will end: Prism isn't going away and
> Edward Snowden's fate is grim

Not only do I disagree with this point, I would go so far as to say your
defeatist attitude will make this terrible outcome a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The more we talk about these things the more we can fix them.

Shoving your head in the sand will guarantee the programs stay and Snowden's
outcome be grim. Talk about the issue enough, forcing it into the spotlight,
and _only then_ is an effective debate possible.

------
Mustafabei
As a community, instead of solely upvoting news about snowden (which I believe
we occasionally should), I think we need to write to attack the core of the
problem: We (the HN community) obviously agree on how whistleblowers need to
be treated and how any government authority should keep off of our privacy.
Easy champs. Solely upvoting news is not fighting. Dare and write to your
congressman. Give me a little bit of the old HN where it was not 80% about one
man and which used to be awesome.

------
gesman
And this is yet another post dedicated to Edward Snowden :) It's sort of like
asking kids not to think about pink elephant.

The moment you asked - everybody is thinking and discussing it.

------
cabalamat
> But we all know essentially how this will end: Prism isn't going away and
> Edward Snowden's fate is grim

It is not obvious to me that either of these propositions is correct.

------
vijayr
Perhaps we can have a button - purely tech articles, and everything else.
Readers can turn off/on this button and the links appear/disappear
accordingly?

------
allenp
I'd really like to see topic-based threads of submissions here, or tag-based
grouping. Even if this lives at the top of the active topics list, it would
consolidate and give other topics room on the front page.

I believe there are ways to both accommodate extensive discussion on the
breaking / on-going news as well as keeping space for the core HN topics
(hacking, CS, entrepreneurship, etc).

------
DavideNL
Unwarranted surveillance is an intrusion on basic human rights that threatens
the foundations of a democratic society.

People are commenting and upvoting because they are angry; not only because of
the above, but also because on top of that the US government wants to punish
Edward Snowden for telling the truth to the world.

Just adding my 50 cents...

------
mayneack
This will be followed in 2 months by "why does the US have such a short
attention span? Our news cycle is too short for anything to every happen."

I'm very happy to have my sacred tech news site "cluttered" with Snowden
stories because it means that enough people, like me, still care about them.

------
saltonc
The same thing happened when Aaron Schwartz died, and earlier with Steve Jobs'
death. It's the mark of a community that cares. Sometimes, I agree it's
frustrating, but I prefer that it happens and I have the minor inconvenience,
than for it not to happen at all.

------
stevewilhelm
Google Trends [1] seems to indicate that Snowden has become the story and the
underlying issues less so.

This is understandable, Snowden is the classic Robin Hood character.

[1] [http://s831.us/12ZUwZP](http://s831.us/12ZUwZP)

------
hispeedencrypt
"It means stuff that teaches you about the world."

I guess you do not find the story is teaching you anything about the world?

"But if this... was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, then perhaps it
could be."

Maybe it is, but you just are not seeing it?

------
austenallred
It seems that the HN mods is killing most of the bad Snowden related content.
Yesterday morning the front page was covered in his flight details, then in
the afternoon it only had 1-2 Snowden related pieces of content.

------
dschiptsov
...and links form medium.com, please!)

Unfortunately, it can't be helped. The visitors set up trends. As long as it
just _a popular tech site_ the quality of its content will match the average
intelligence of its visitors.

------
return0
If I m not mistaken, the PRISM story is directly related to the IT sector. If
surveillance is going to be a permanent situation in online media, people will
grow reluctant to use them over time.

------
sebastianconcpt
Great points. And good techniques for compensating the problem.

This is giving mainstream a great story to focus on while other things can get
passed hidden under our noses.

------
dllthomas
Snowden's past is immaterial. Snowden's future is being watched by potential
leakers, and thus is very important.

------
jere
Just had a thought, but obviously not a unique one:

>whereisedwardsnowden.com is already registered, but these options are
available...

------
norswap
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
(Edmund Burke)

------
noonespecial
Paul Revere just rode by shouting something. Back to bed then?

------
andrewcooke
if you hadn't posted this there'd be 50% less stories about him on the front
page right now.

------
Ultron
This is the most riveting real-life drama in history, and it's unfolding
before our eyes. I want more stories on Snowden, not less (although my
productivity will surely suffer).

Besides, half the stuff that gets voted up to front page is regurgitated
anyway.

~~~
heurist
Is it? It feels more like an "Edward Snowden Goes to Cuba" road trip movie
right now.

------
abraininavat
_Please don 't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to
its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there
is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that
you did._

If the guidelines state that you shouldn't complain in comments about
submissions, then certainly you shouldn't post whole Ask HN submissions. And
the irony of this comment hasn't escaped me.

------
throwaway10001
_Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?_

They will, as soon as I finish writing my "How I made $7 billion on an app
built while sharing the screen with Snowden stories"

------
infinitone
Indeed.

------
kybernetyk
That these stories are upvoted so much only proves that it's an interesting
topic to the community.

So your post is kind of senseless.

