[burger_moon]

> Every single day this is posted there is a raft of comments that either use ad hominems to attack the source without addressing what it had to say or red herrings

Those comments are getting really tiring and it's disappointing to see this place accept ad hominems against the source over and over in those threads instead of actually discussing the trial.

Ofc complaining about comment quality isn't new, that's existed before I started coming here.

Hn does a pretty good job of being off topic in threads but it's the nastiness of the comments that degrades the quality of conversation (I myself am guilty of this too, and I need to work on that).

[marvin]

Assange threads are truly something else. A few years ago, most of the commentary was about how he didn't clean up his cat's poop at the Ecuadorian embassy and therefore, by implication, he deserved whatever he got.

Either the disinformation campaign has been spectacularly successful, a lot of HN commenters are truly daft enough to let alleged cat hygiene decide their opinion on a person's fate, or there is really some deliberate misinformation going on specifically in these threads. Maybe a combination of the three.

Regardless, it disheartens me greatly to see the state power of the US used like this. Truly removes the veil of supposedly unailenable democratic rights.