I don't view it as a community and every time a topic goes outside that space (e.g. society, culture, economics etc) I'm frequently horrified by some of the comments I see here.
I have some sympathy for the cost to mods. But people having strong opinions about what other people are allowed to share is anti my interest and imo a mockery of hacker spirit.
I personally regard hackers who are intersectional, who see the relationships of things broadly & see how aspects of the world reflect in each other as great. But some people are obsessed with limiting and filtering, and I cannot understand what they are going for.
Paul Graham’s essay "How to Disagree" remains essential reading for anyone engaging in online discourse . It provides a clear framework for constructive debate, and I agree that posts falling into the lowest forms of disagreement (ad hominem attacks or name calling) deserve to be flagged.
Yet, I share your concern, sometimes a post isn’t inherently bad, but attracts low quality replies. Flagging the entire thread in such cases feels disproportionate like amputating a limb just because there’s an itch you can’t scratch. It risks silencing potentially valuable discussion due to the behavior of a few.
I empathize with the moderators. Their job is thankless and difficult, and I appreciate that the warnings we see aren’t automated bots but messages from real humans trying their best. We all have limits and that’s ok.
FWIW, it’s a little more nuanced.
Do all human lives have equal intrinsic moral worth? Many, though not all ethical systems say yes. I think this is the case you’re thinking of.
Are all lives valued equally in decisions, emotions, or outcomes?
If all lives are truly equal, how do we justify medical triage? War? Immigration limits? Prioritizing children over the elderly? Choosing to save your family over strangers?
If lives are not equal, on what basis do we rank them without sliding into cruelty or abuse?
There’s no fully stable resolution to this tension and every society lives with it.
The only gripe I have is that a certain segment of the community feels compelled to flag comments on topics that don't align with their personal vision of what HN should be.
If there's a topic I'm not interested in, I just ignore it. I don't feel compelled to block other people from having a discussion they are interested in.
Lately I’m seeing more comments though that interact with others like a LLM. Curt demands/instructions as in “show me a source” / “explain this aspect”. Makes me wonder about who the site is attracting
I'm sure that there's still some people who try (and/or test their pet project) but it seems far less of an issue than on Reddit.
I also generally enjoy the comment section because people here tend to at least argue intelligently, even if I don't always agree with the viewpoints. I will say I find the dissonance between the "hacker" and the "tech startup" ethe to be quite amusing. I may work for a large company in their 'tech' area, but I can never feel fully at home among the more entrepreneurial-minded people. I really struggle to cheer for tech companies' stocks like they are football teams, but to each their own.
Thank you HN for being a unique place on the Internet, it's truly refreshing.
Once you land the YC startup job and lurk around here for a few years, it starts to feel like the same links and comments regurgitated over-and-over. It's a valuable resource for brand-new tech workers that want to sharpen their mind a bit, but also a tarpit of backwards thinking once you reach a certain level of seniority.
There’s also an astonishingly high number of people who supposed to be smart and educated but are in fact just a bunch of idiots with hurt egos rolling on karma.
Nothing as frustrating as finding what seems to be an interesting and engaging discussion but then finding several key posts missing...
Deletion doesn’t remove negative karma no. Just prevents more. Sorta
How?
[1]
news.ycombinator.com##tr.athing.comtr:has(a.hnuser):has-text(/\bUsername\b/)I'm quite happy that HN seems to stay mostly free of Musk (irrespective of positive/negative posts).
But alas, we can't discuss any of this without being flagged by Musk fans. Someone commented on the thread I posted that the mods could unflag if they wanted to.
But you can post almost anything here. You want to post Marxist stuff? You can, but you need to be more than just a propagandist. Actually thoughtfully interact with opposing ideas; admit when the data is against you.
You want to support capitalism? You can do that too, but again, be more than a shill (though being a shill for capitalism is more accepted here).
You want to criticize the US? Many of us do, from time to time. But again, don't just be a propagandist or ideologue. "USA is only evil! Down with USA!" gets censored. "The United States is acting like a bully in international relations, and has a long history of doing so" is (mostly) accepted as a reasonable and accurate statement.
You want to support Hitler, Stalin, or Mao? Yeah, that's a tougher sell here. You're probably going to get downvoted to oblivion for it.
This is not true, which is the worst moderation decision about the site. This site would be greatly improved, if this actually was how it worked.
If you post any actually extremely anti-consensus opinion here you get one or two down votes, your post gets flagged and everyone ignores it. This is obviously an anti-trolling measure, but obviously people will just abusively flag anything they really do not like.