It seems like every day, more and more political posts about the US are made here. It's getting to the point that it seems that 35% of the point of HN is about getting opportunities to make political statements about the US. There are so many, so so many, places to have on-going political arguments.
I'm of the mind that any place that allows free commentary ultimately becomes a political discussion board, and HN is proving this well. It used to be that HN was a place to get away from that - but it looks like these days it's becoming not much different than the comment section on any political newspaper.
It's hard to comment on this post considering how many times we've seen the "HN-is-dying" meme, but for me this time it really resonates.
What has made HN interesting is the fact that it was boring to the vast majority of people on this planet. The topics were generally speaking on a very specific set of subjects that you largely had to be in the technology world (and of a certain technical disposition) to relate to.
The relative boringness of these topics led to comments by folks who found them particularly fascinating, setting a high community standard and discouraging soapboxing (comparatively speaking, of course -- I'm under no illusions that HN was ever the most pristine and idealistic place). For a long time I thought PG did a good job of enforcing that culture by shutting down off-topic conversations and keeping the focus fairly intense.
The problem with political posts is that they are often extremely relevant to hackers, especially these days. But everyone finds politics interesting, and everyone (myself included) believes their political beliefs are equally valid. Watching snarky posts and soapboxes get rewarded does send a message that this is how to get noticed. Long-term, I fear this fundamentally coarsens the level of discourse by making it easier to dismiss the beliefs of others and making it easier to participate in situations where I feel ignorant.
Unfortunately, I think there's only one way I know of to stop this -- which would be for PG and/or the moderators to take an active role in enforcing the "no politics" rule that's already in the guidelines. But I think they're perhaps legitimately concerned about censorship -- anathema to hackers -- and have kept a loose hand. Beyond that I'm not sure what they can do.
I thought pg was just waiting for this stuff to blow over post-Snowden, but maybe he's happy with the direction the community has taken. That's fine, it's his site, and I've noticed an interesting inverse correlation between the quality of hn and /r/programming posts which will hopefully continue.
On one hand, I like the "politics" posts (especially the Snowden-related ones).
On the other, I also agree that they mostly detract from the "unique" HN topics, BUT I like discussing them WITH the HN crowd (not with whomever might hang around on other sites).
I also feel like I can contribute more to these kind of posts than to others that I also find interesting and more on-topic (Javascript library for reactive documents, how to hack a high-performance board for a notebook, etc...)
Would it be possible to "wall off" the politics posts from the HN "main topic" posts? Much like what's done with the Ask HN posts...
Definitely not intimating that "HN is dying," more pointing out that pure community-based "karma" systems will veer towards popular politics in the given community. Considering the concept that such a transition is universal for any site that doesn't heavily moderate - as politics seem to the #1 sport in the world.
I think hacker culture and freedom have always gone hand in hand. In bygone days hackers could claim apoliticalness in already "free" places which is also generally where they flourished. Now when they are realizing they are much less free than they thought they are seen/see themselves as "politicizing". But being a hacker always was a political statement, it used to just mesh more with the popular culture so they mistook themselves for being like everyone else, and having no agenda.
Furthermore, here in particular, you have the instincts of a entrepreneurial community.
It isn't difficult to conclude that the foundation of support for authoritarianism from the general population comes from a desire to preserve order, and a fear that unregulated or unrecorded speech and communication is more likely to enable bad changes and events than good changes.
Entrepreneurs however tend toward believing that disruptive innovation on balance does more good than bad, and believe that one of the hurdles that must be surmounted is to undermine the influence of established businesses and centers of power that have a stake in limiting innovation.
I'm of the mind that any place that allows free commentary ultimately becomes a political discussion board, and HN is proving this well. It used to be that HN was a place to get away from that - but it looks like these days it's becoming not much different than the comment section on any political newspaper.