The grandparent to my post was talking about politics, not repetition. I shouldn't have strayed and conceded that it's repetitive because this is my point: hacker-politics is on topic here.
"hacker politics" is in the eye of the beholder. There's no clear delineation between "politics" and "hacker politics" in an age when Facebook can be used to organize a genocide.
One could say that many Trump stories are "hacker politics" because of Trump's unprecedented use of social media, and the effect that social media as a whole has had on the American political landscape since his election, leading to the "fake news" phenomenon and controversies about the influence of social media platforms and their ability to manipulate public perception. The investigations into Trump's relationship with Russia, Wikileaks and the DNC leaks certainly touch on "hacker" themes and Assange specifically. And a strong case could be made that stories about gender and racial disparity in tech and programming count as "hacker politics."
Yet again, many such stories are more likely to be flagged than anything to do with Assange exclusively. "hacker politics" is not the standard actually being applied here, rather it's aggregate political bias. Do you think a story about, say, an Antifa or BLM hacking group would stand on technical merit alone?
Stories about "Trump's unprecedented use of social media" could be on-topic. That doesn't necessarily make "Trump stories" in general on-topic.
Stories about "the effect that social media as a whole has had on the American political landscape" could be on-topic. That doesn't necessarily make US politics in general on-topic.
Stories about "the influence of social media platforms and their ability to manipulate public perception" could be on-topic. That doesn't necessarily make stories about "fake news" in general on-topic.
Stories about the Wikileaks organisation could be on-topic. That doesn't necessarily make stories derived from the contents of particular leaks on-topic.
Stories about the DNC data leak could be on-topic. That doesn't necessarily make stories derived from the contents of the DNC data leak on-topic.
Stories about gender and racial disparity in tech and programming could be on-topic. That doesn't necessarily make stories about gender and racial disparity in general on-topic.
Stories about an Antifa or BLM hacking group could be on-topic. That doesn't neccessarily make stories about Antifa or BLM in general on-topic.
Personally, I don't find this distinction particularly hard. As for "bias", I've seen sentiments on this site that could broadly be categorised as Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, etc. Of course, there is a heavy political bias, but I'd say it's generally just "US-centric" (which is to be expected, as this is a US site); e.g. as a UK citizen I find some of the comments very bizarre (usually anything involving guns, healthcare, abortion, etc.). It can still be interesting, and if not I can just collapse the thread or close the page.
