
Ask HN: Are US politics off topic? - veryconcerned
It looks like all political posts are being flagged  — even ones having to do with the tech community. For example: &quot;Lyft Is Donating $1M to the American Civil Liberties Union (theverge.com)&quot; which has no comments and isn&#x27;t by a new user &#x2F; throw away account.<p>Did I miss something?
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dang
Yes, you missed that dozens of these stories have been spending significant
time on HN's front page, including the story you mentioned:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514802),
which has 500 points and 300 comments.

People tend to form conclusions about HN more by the strength of their passion
on a topic than by the actual data. In other words, there's usually sample
bias at work. There's a lot more politics on HN right now than there usually
is, which is appropriate since it reflects what's going on right now. But
obviously we're not going to let the politics dominate, because that would
kill the site.

I wrote more about this here if anyone's interested:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969).

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zzleeper
I saw your last submission ( [https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-
for-a-coup-e...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-
coup-e024990891d5) ) and thought it was quite interesting (being from a South
American country, that m.o. is quite standard).

My guess, following CaliforniaKarl, is that a some users are really intent on
flagging everything anti-Trump, and others want to flag everything that is not
in their own bubble, which is why every politics post gets banned here.

A shame, as I would have liked to see the perspective of HN users on this
topic (and not just the perspective of the 3 users required to flag a post)

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CaliforniaKarl
What you're seeing is, I believe, a combination of other users flagging posts,
and maybe also a moderator placing additional down-weights on a particular
post.

The former (user flagging) is described in the Guidelines
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)),
near the bottom. Since your account is so new (that's why your username is
showing up in green text), you probably don't see the "flag" option. The flag
option appears after your karma passes some threshold, but that threshold
isn't disclosed.

As for the latter (a moderator adding a down-weight on a post), when searching
through old comments I found a comment saying that there was an additional
downweight placed on the parent post
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12715222#12715332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12715222#12715332)).
I didn't know that was possible, although in hindsight I guess it was obvious.

I have to admit, while I do like the sparse-ness of the site (in that it gives
you the content with minimal adornment), I think it sometimes goes too far in
terms of how the guidelines are presented. For example, there's no mention at
all of vouching.

As another example, when 'no politics for a week' was announced, it was via a
"Tell HN" post
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)).
IIRC, that was lifted not too long after, but that lifting was noted in a
comment on a post, not as a separate post. I found that interesting, but
problematic: Things like "Show HN" and "Ask HN" have their own feeds, in
addition to the main and "new" feeds; I think it's very important that "Tell
HN" (or some other feed conveying site updates) also have some sort of feed.

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brudgers
Substitute Brad Pitt for Lyft and it looks like what it is: celebrity gossip.
And all people can say about it is "Yay" or "Boo" or some combination thereof
depending on how they feel about the politics, the company, the ACLU and
money.

There are many places on the internet where yays and boos are the most
interesting class of comments. Hacker News is not typically among them.

------
CyberFonic
I prefer to read my political and business news on Bloomberg, CNN etc. I don't
find it useful to have the same stories linked on HN as well.

Unfortunately the present news climate has a lot of bias in the reporting.
People should be able to choose their flavouring of news, just like their ice
cream or pizza toppings. Keeps the noise level down by sticking to technical
topics on HN.

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ebcode
Given all the hacking of US politics lately, I'd say they are very much _on_
topic. Even sama is submitting political posts.

Shit's been hitting the fan since October, as far as I can tell. I think we've
all missed quite a lot.

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akhatri_aus
Those express political views do they not?

