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Arguments about HN getting too political / ruined by politics go back almost as far as HN itself:

2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=348994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=278434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=243561

2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1542380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320152

2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485

Sound familiar? Those are just the first few I found. In those arguments, pg was in favor of keeping politicized stories if they were intellectually interesting and not just about politics:

2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=243614

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=349168

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196756

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=94861

2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403775

We've kept the original rule that a political story on HN needs to have something intellectually interesting, but we've also tightened it. For example, when a thread turns into a political flamewar, we moderate it more than pg used to. There were many past submissions that neither users nor moderators would allow today, like these from ten years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=94840

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208518

Just look at those threads! (Edit: also interesting how the item IDs more than doubled in the first half of 2008.)




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