[cannedslime]

This was seriously flagged in this thread: "You don't find it just a little dystopian that the biggest player in information exchange has begun to act like the arbiter of truth?"

What the hell is wrong with HN, flag and downvote instead of arguing. This place has become a worse place than 4chan and reddit combined in regards to discussion.

Im outta here! Dang fucking just ban me already! I am tired of being a gimp among a bunch of brain dead over privilged nerds who brigade and flag anyone who counters their bullshit beliefs.

You literally have to BEG people with the privilege of downvote to elaborate their viewpoints and counter argue instead of just clicking a button, like an ape recieving a treat. Dopamine addicted retards!

SNEED!

[bleepblorp]

We're on different sides of the disinformation control debate but I completely agree with your take on the toxicity of HN.

This place is much worse than most of non-ideological Reddit.

Serious discussion of matters at the intersection of tech and policy, is not possible on HN when the downvote and flag tools are routinely used to suppress posts for ideological heresy rather than low effort, irrelevance, or bad faith argumentation.

Community moderation is incompatible with a community culture that values ideological conformity over respect for good faith argumentation.

An upvote-only karma system would be much more appropriate for tech policy threads.

[cannedslime]

The way the site is shaped right now just leads to amplification of conformity. I don't even know how you even get downvote rights, and even if I had it I wouldn't use it as a tool in the debate out of principle. I guess some people just don't have principles worth two sacks of donkey dung.

[effingwewt]

I wish dang could see your comment. Many times I've thought 'I cant downvote and that's fine, if I disagree I can say why.'

This should be site-wide. No need for bullshit numbers just discussion.

Hackers used to be the outliers, the nerds, the outcasts. We came together and became a community (not here, this was 80s).

But now it feels as co-opted as everything else. Its cool and hip to be nerdy, we now have things like brogrammers.

I once had a journalism professor insist to me that hackers were people who knew things about computers, and could get illegal unrestricted access. I tried to explain about phone phreaking and such, social engineering, black and white hats, and direct him to the Wikipedia articles. I was told I was being disruptive

Maybe I was but I gave real information instead of tv tropes.

HN is starting to feel like that. People less and less want information, they just want to feel good.