It made things worse and we ended the experiment after a couple days. I don't have links handy right now but may try to dig them up later*. It turns out that there's no faster way to politicize everything than to try something that simplistic. Wherever the optimum is for regulating the intense pressures HN is under, it's much less obvious than that.
It was a success in the sense that we learned a lot. If anyone wants to know about that, a lot of it is in the explanations here:
As an Australian, I see most political HN discussion revolving around US interests. For the most part this is to be expected, but in the rare cases that other country's politics enter HN (particularly new laws that affect tech), there seems to be a heavy bias toward comparison to the US's laws, so much so, that I think I understand more of the US laws than I do my own! Again, this is probably to be expected with the big tech companies largely residing in SV...
But it sure does stand out when HN comments are made with the assumption that the fellow HN readership is US. Any time I've tried to highlight how this looks from the outside it's generally met with downvotes, to the point that I self censor comments that I otherwise feel could have enriched this global community.
So, maybe there is the chance in your comments @dang to make a reminder that it serves a global community? It might help soften feelings of any comments that are heavily partisan.
I don't have any ideas to offer but I did want to say thank you. Based on the phrasing I can tell this takes a toll (eg: "this destroys HN and we must ban this account") on both you and HN.
This is one of the last places on the internet I feel that I can go to be free and have genuine conversations with people, even with people I wildly disagree with. Whatever hell you're going through as a result, I regret, but know it's worth it to the masses that come here.
Have you considered something like the mega threads reddit does on like politics? At least the crazyness is contained in one spot. Like there really didn't need to be all the articles rewording parler, Twitter, Amazon news the last week
Keep doing this work. We need sound moderation. It's required to have an open forum like this on the internet. HN is literally the only place I will discuss anything online. And it should be recognized that the rules and the general willingingness of the users to follow them combined with the care taking of those rules that make HN work. Keep at it Dang. It's nice to skip politics for a while.
"..the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error."
There's something I've wondered about but I haven't seen addressed in your posts (I may have missed it):
It seemed to me that in 2016 there were much more political news posts that I'd have said violated the "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic" guideline than there were in 2020. Is that difference because of a change in moderation policy? Or is it because a change in user behavior, where users are posting political articles less fervently?
Sorry, even after looking at those links and rereading your edited comment, I'm not sure I follow: How did it make things worse? Was it that "nothing even remotely political" was just way too broad?
So many stories are political regardless but it really gets worse during election cycles when nearly every story is nothing more than a policy announcement or trial balloon being floated by one candidate or another. Usually its found after a few paragraphs and suddenly candidate X's name appears.
What I would love to see is a "flag political" option so if more than a few people flag it it gets a label.
on a side note, would love to see an option to suppress my karma numbers
In 2019 my New Years Resolution was to avoid all news and social media. The reason I started the ban was because I found my mind unsettled after reading the news and I had trouble coming back to a tranquil headspace.
The inspiration is this simple quote: "The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control." (Epictetus)
I held this resolution for about 5 months and it was profoundly glorious. It's not hard. Treat current events like Game of Thrones spoilers. Focus on what you have control over. Be frank with others that you are taking a break from the news cycle. If your results are anything like mine you will find yourself calmer and able to concentrate on what matters. Your mind wont wander to externalities you don't have control over.
At the end of it, you can go read Wikipedia for 30 minutes and be just as caught up as anyone else because you know the end result of the news cycle instead of suffering through it as it happened.
I started this concept ten years ago. Dropped Facebook, no more economist subscription, no papers, never had TV. That doesn't mean holding a hard line and hiding your head in a pillow. There is enough overflow from HN, the radio, friends, occasional newspapers.
It seems I have a much healthier laid back attitude to work, friends, family. I see them all uptight about some event. Following news story breathlessly, fuming or arguing. Meanwhile, I'm trying to calm every one down, don't worry about it, it doesn't matter. Political parties change, administration doesn't. Think about long term goals, and affects you can have on that. Skip the day to day arguments.
There is so, much valuable news and information on HN, and so much valuable discussion, often from experts in their field. (More rare lately?)
You can gather your data, and solve most of your issues, from links provided in HN. So many interesting intellectual topics to pursue. For example:
Need covid numbers? Look at worldometers.com
Keep it up Dang.
It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you. If you had relatives being deported or being shot by the police, it’s likely that you wouldn’t just tell your friends/family « sorry, i have no control over this »
I know it’s extreme but it’s the reality. For someone who is impacting by politics (say lost their jobs due to COVID), you can’t just stay on the sideline and ignore it.
You just have the great privilege of letting other people take care of that dirty work.
Is taking a news diet good? Absolutely. Lots of crap out there and a mental break is needed once in a while. But ignoring the suffering of people around you is just bad.
I want to share with you an important quote. It sits at the top of [0] and is used by libertarians, but it is applicable across the political spectrum. "We do not influence the course of events by persuading people that we are right when we make what they regard as radical proposals. Rather, we exert influence by keeping options available when something has to be done at a time of crisis." ~ Milton Friedman
The goal of staying politically informed is not so that you will necessarily take direct action. It is so that you will be able to take direct action if it becomes necessary for you to do so.
As many others have pointed out in the thread, it is quite selfish for you to do what you did. Millions of folks do not have the food security, income security, or essential freedoms and rights which are secured to you. However, selfishness is not inherently bad. What is bad is the myopia and the willingness to be ignorant which comes with it.
At the end of "Game of Thrones", nothing of interest happened. We all just turned off the TV and went on with life. However, politics is not just on TV. Your username suggests that you live somewhere in California; I live in Portland. Not all of us have your luxury.
Im not sure why citizens of representative democracies would want to inhibit political discussion. Presumably one of the benefits of living in such a regime is the ability to participate in policy formulation through voting, political campaigns and various forms of public service. As a result, would it not be reasonable to assume that most of these individuals are very knowledgeable about a variety of aspects of public policy? Therefore the majority of political discussion would be rigorous, fact based and consider a wide variety of points of view.
Analogously it would seem that citizens of dictatorship-based regimes don’t have to worry about these details (hopefully the dictator and their lieutenants have taken care of everything) and can focus on enjoying their lives.
(Edit): If we had the ability to tag posts, and then ignore categories like politics, this might help. While American politics is generally fascinating (whichever side you happen to end up on), everyone likely already has their own means to get this. Some find it divisive and exhausting.
It's part of the ethos of the site that it isn't siloed. When Dan says there needs to be room for sites like HN, that's part of what he means: sites where we're all encouraged to read and discuss the same ideas. If what you want is something with tagged posts and categories, you've already got that in Reddit, at a much greater scale than HN, or in lobsters, if you want a smaller scale.
I wrote a user script that compares each entry to a blacklist and removes the post from the page. Just by blacklisting the top 15-20 news sites I've been happier.
Do you know of any already-established scripts that do something like this? I was contemplating introducing a block site extension, but I don't know how much self control I'd have to not just remove it when I see a juicy article I just have to read.
From what I've seen of Biden's plans, that's what he's going to do - just calm, very little changes.
He isn't going to overturn Trump's things, but also not continue them. (At least the things I checked on - for example he won't keep building the wall, but he's also not going to take it down.)
But he'll probably have pressure to actively overturn everything, so who knows.
Seeing so much political topics, and especially bad news most of the time makes us feeling bad and pessimistic about many things that are objectively not so important.
A big part of the people working for influencial companies (GAFAM) are most certainly members of this community.
So this made me wonder: would it be possible that we have a collective responsibility or influence over those companies through those people? Would making the debates and trends here more interesting, sane and positive have a positive influence on those?
For some people, politics isn't a choice, a luxury, an option to discuss or not, just because of the breadth and width of what politics means. T
Even then, there'd probably be a better time for a politics detox week than the current week, since it will be so impossibly difficult to not discuss the goings on. I mean, these are historic times (in the US, with international repercussions).
I think it's a bad thing to use "political" in this narrow sense. It cultivates the mindset that politics = party politics at the highest level of government. And then paints it as a bad place. Whereas actually people do political things all the time in their work and personal lives and even most of the decisions made by formal political system are made at the local government level in most western democracies.
Redefining a thing narrowly as its uncouth and hard-to-participate subset, and then blasting the thing (using its original wider definition) is a good way to drive people away from participating. Which is what we don't want.
I have been somewhat successful generally avoiding news. This has a benefit of taming a lot of the political backwash that everyone ends up gargling. And as many have mentioned - this doesn't equate to not caring, or being ignorant. Instead, I try trading the quick hit junk food, for material of better lasting value such as research articles, old books, historic writings, etc. (Don't get me wrong, I'm no stoic or saint. It's still easy to get dragged into some current affair. But I always feel stressed, and discouraged which encourages me to keep trying to avoid... ;)
The funny thing I have found is that there truly is 'nothing new under the Sun.' For instance, read through some of Frédéric Bastiat's stuff from the 1850s:
http://bastiat.org/
It could have been written this year.
Another goal of mine has been, if I get tangled in some current affair, to try and dig into what first principals are being addressed (or ignored) and reflect on my core beliefs in that area (rather than arguing the more surface issue that is being currently discussed). It's certain I don't have very much correct.
And lastly, and most obvious: avoid Teh socialz except where they build up value. Like, I might engage other illustrators through instagram - where we encourage each other, but completely avoid the fomenting and political bickering etc.
Well met. Just curious if one has approached this site from a usability perspective? For example, one formality in usability studies is that of personnas. The name "Hacker"suggests a preconcieved personna? Who is this hacker? My usability and marketing spidey senses tell me hacker embodies on one hand a elite group of programmers and on the other hand a lawless band of brigands? Have you ever conducted studies on how just the name Hacker alone gates this community? Who shies away from this place and who doesn't? I highly recommend courses by NNG for usability. The word hacker certainly has stigmas associated with it. The last study I read from NNG concluded that while many gains have been made in usabilty in the last decade, their findings were that IA, information architecture, lags significantly. IA is about word choices. If I saw an application menu with the word Hacker as a selection I would definitely flag that for review? Also I enjoy the site and Happy New Year!
I wanted to emphasize to people that there's a date attached to this post. I don't think they're currently considering having a political detox week. It seems there are a lot of comments that assume they are.
I have another question, is profit a motive for HN? It does not appear to be. Before HN there was slashdot.org, whicj is still around. Slashdot lost the thread I think because of revenue concerns and change of ownership. If this place is truly 100% a finacial loss then it does seem to validate yet again that news for profit is a bad idea because the news is soon compromised in the name of more viewership to drive ad revenue. If Reddit went 100% loss then I'm sure better moderation decisions would be available to them, likewise for Twitter and Facebook.
Why not ban it forever? Unless it's directly connected to tech it just makes this site more of the same and means one less place to escape toxic politics.
How about trying to encourage better political discussions rather than banning the whole topic?
We are in a very tense political landscape. Obviously people on HN need to talk it out. At least let's encourage healthy and proper conversations.
Maybe even have a specific "political discussion guidelines". The using downvotes to remove noise/unhealthy conversations we can have some proper arguments.
That seems like not a great mood when the nation (USA) is apparently under attack by domestic terrorists. I can understand if people are just being overly political, but it's hard to be political when a sizeable faction of the country evidently thinks it's time for the US experiment to get cancelled.
The OP was an experiment from 4 years ago. We haven't done anything like that since, nor will we.
Even at the time there was no intention to get rid of politics on HN permanently, but it turns out if you say "we're just trying X for a week", people hear "we're instituting X". That's one lesson it taught me.
In the end, I think we got to the right place about how to handle political topics on HN. It isn't entirely simple, but it's as simple as possible, and it works, and it has proven stable. More on that in the links up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785637.
Just realized this was from 4 years ago. But it's an evergreen concept almost even more needed now. I do appreciate even the political perspectives on HN which feel more reasoned to me then elsewhere, but also can apprectiate the one week sabbatical from it here.
One of the main problems with banning political subjects on the site is that it favors the mainstream political ideas and disfavors the alternative political ideas.
This makes it essentially a political move on HN mods side, ie. not neutral at all, even though it "bans everything equally".
Mainstream political ideas disseminate through all other sorts of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or even cable news. Whilst alternative ideas do not. (Arguably not even on Reddit anymore)
Whilst you can certainly make the argument that what we post here doesn't matter because there isn't a million users on Facebook that it might reach, I think reaching the correct people, even if only less than a hundred, is worthwhile and arguably more impactful.
Now, with the way the world is moving forward right now, with Twitter and Parler, it turns out that allowing political subjects to be debated isn't exactly a neutral stance either. That it is essentially a stance that is "for" the alternatives, at least according to some powerful people in control.
Which puts the HN mods team in a damned if you do damned if you don't kind of seat.
I think in a more healthy world a site like this could and should stay on topic, avoiding political subjects outside the occasional coding-language or distro flamewars. ;)
But since the world is arguably terminally ill right now, HN should continue on it's current trajectory and "keep siding with the alternative political ideas", and allowing politics to be discussed.
I don't want to come off as accusing them of actually siding with any side however, I'm just stating that in the current climate, they come off that way whether they like it or not. In my personal opinion, a forum that allows moderated political debate is truly neutral, period. But my personal opinion doesn't set the tone for the political climate just yet.
No one has banned political subjects on HN. There was a brief experiment to see what the site would be like without them—it was scheduled to last a week, instead it lasted 2 days, and we've never dreamt of trying anything like it since.
Why is this coming up? Is it due to the five or so posts a day regarding the recent censorship? It's been pretty repetitive but I think it's definitely relevant to pretty much everyone here. While maybe it hasn't been the absolute highest quality debate, I don't think it's been at all nasty. I've found it quite interesting and I'm still thinking about it.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
It was a success in the sense that we learned a lot. If anyone wants to know about that, a lot of it is in the explanations here:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490.
These explanations have become pretty stable by now—stable enough that I repeat myself incessantly: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
*Edit: here's where we called it off: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251
[+] [-] cmroanirgo|5 years ago|reply
But it sure does stand out when HN comments are made with the assumption that the fellow HN readership is US. Any time I've tried to highlight how this looks from the outside it's generally met with downvotes, to the point that I self censor comments that I otherwise feel could have enriched this global community.
So, maybe there is the chance in your comments @dang to make a reminder that it serves a global community? It might help soften feelings of any comments that are heavily partisan.
[+] [-] kodah|5 years ago|reply
This is one of the last places on the internet I feel that I can go to be free and have genuine conversations with people, even with people I wildly disagree with. Whatever hell you're going through as a result, I regret, but know it's worth it to the masses that come here.
[+] [-] tayo42|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobertRoberts|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jsm111|5 years ago|reply
- John Stuart Mill
[+] [-] COGlory|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbar13|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LukeShu|5 years ago|reply
It seemed to me that in 2016 there were much more political news posts that I'd have said violated the "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic" guideline than there were in 2020. Is that difference because of a change in moderation policy? Or is it because a change in user behavior, where users are posting political articles less fervently?
Or is this just selection bias on my part?
[+] [-] yjftsjthsd-h|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] powersnail|5 years ago|reply
Reading political discussion alone gives me a heavy heart; I can't imagine moderating it.
[+] [-] Shivetya|5 years ago|reply
What I would love to see is a "flag political" option so if more than a few people flag it it gets a label.
on a side note, would love to see an option to suppress my karma numbers
[+] [-] minimaxir|5 years ago|reply
Politics nowadays is irreversibly different, and an attempt at a detox now would be even worse.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Sn0wCoder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SftwreEngnr|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] antonvs|5 years ago|reply
I'm laughing at the naivete of this. Don't quit your day jobs, y'all.
[+] [-] stevecalifornia|5 years ago|reply
The inspiration is this simple quote: "The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control." (Epictetus)
I held this resolution for about 5 months and it was profoundly glorious. It's not hard. Treat current events like Game of Thrones spoilers. Focus on what you have control over. Be frank with others that you are taking a break from the news cycle. If your results are anything like mine you will find yourself calmer and able to concentrate on what matters. Your mind wont wander to externalities you don't have control over.
At the end of it, you can go read Wikipedia for 30 minutes and be just as caught up as anyone else because you know the end result of the news cycle instead of suffering through it as it happened.
[+] [-] pomian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeromegv|5 years ago|reply
I know it’s extreme but it’s the reality. For someone who is impacting by politics (say lost their jobs due to COVID), you can’t just stay on the sideline and ignore it.
You just have the great privilege of letting other people take care of that dirty work.
Is taking a news diet good? Absolutely. Lots of crap out there and a mental break is needed once in a while. But ignoring the suffering of people around you is just bad.
[+] [-] tomjen3|5 years ago|reply
Unfortunately I actually do need to follow news in order to keep up with covid rules which at least here in Denmark changes with very low warning.
I am looking forward to getting out and getting drunk with my friends and forgetting the news even exists once this is over.
[+] [-] myWindoonn|5 years ago|reply
The goal of staying politically informed is not so that you will necessarily take direct action. It is so that you will be able to take direct action if it becomes necessary for you to do so.
As many others have pointed out in the thread, it is quite selfish for you to do what you did. Millions of folks do not have the food security, income security, or essential freedoms and rights which are secured to you. However, selfishness is not inherently bad. What is bad is the myopia and the willingness to be ignorant which comes with it.
At the end of "Game of Thrones", nothing of interest happened. We all just turned off the TV and went on with life. However, politics is not just on TV. Your username suggests that you live somewhere in California; I live in Portland. Not all of us have your luxury.
[0] http://www.erights.org/
[+] [-] basementcat|5 years ago|reply
Analogously it would seem that citizens of dictatorship-based regimes don’t have to worry about these details (hopefully the dictator and their lieutenants have taken care of everything) and can focus on enjoying their lives.
[+] [-] joshka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krapp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devmunchies|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raunakdag|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lesderid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elihu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WaitWaitWha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ars|5 years ago|reply
He isn't going to overturn Trump's things, but also not continue them. (At least the things I checked on - for example he won't keep building the wall, but he's also not going to take it down.)
But he'll probably have pressure to actively overturn everything, so who knows.
[+] [-] Seb-C|5 years ago|reply
A big part of the people working for influencial companies (GAFAM) are most certainly members of this community.
So this made me wonder: would it be possible that we have a collective responsibility or influence over those companies through those people? Would making the debates and trends here more interesting, sane and positive have a positive influence on those?
Edit: I just noticed that it was from 2016
[+] [-] bmcn2020|5 years ago|reply
Even then, there'd probably be a better time for a politics detox week than the current week, since it will be so impossibly difficult to not discuss the goings on. I mean, these are historic times (in the US, with international repercussions).
[+] [-] fulafel|5 years ago|reply
Redefining a thing narrowly as its uncouth and hard-to-participate subset, and then blasting the thing (using its original wider definition) is a good way to drive people away from participating. Which is what we don't want.
[+] [-] andrew-dc|5 years ago|reply
The funny thing I have found is that there truly is 'nothing new under the Sun.' For instance, read through some of Frédéric Bastiat's stuff from the 1850s: http://bastiat.org/
It could have been written this year.
Another goal of mine has been, if I get tangled in some current affair, to try and dig into what first principals are being addressed (or ignored) and reflect on my core beliefs in that area (rather than arguing the more surface issue that is being currently discussed). It's certain I don't have very much correct.
And lastly, and most obvious: avoid Teh socialz except where they build up value. Like, I might engage other illustrators through instagram - where we encourage each other, but completely avoid the fomenting and political bickering etc.
[+] [-] mybrid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davesque|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mybrid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WaitWaitWha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkjaudyeqooe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emilsedgh|5 years ago|reply
We are in a very tense political landscape. Obviously people on HN need to talk it out. At least let's encourage healthy and proper conversations.
Maybe even have a specific "political discussion guidelines". The using downvotes to remove noise/unhealthy conversations we can have some proper arguments.
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
Even at the time there was no intention to get rid of politics on HN permanently, but it turns out if you say "we're just trying X for a week", people hear "we're instituting X". That's one lesson it taught me.
In the end, I think we got to the right place about how to handle political topics on HN. It isn't entirely simple, but it's as simple as possible, and it works, and it has proven stable. More on that in the links up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25785637.
[+] [-] hawktheslayer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosmax_1337|5 years ago|reply
This makes it essentially a political move on HN mods side, ie. not neutral at all, even though it "bans everything equally".
Mainstream political ideas disseminate through all other sorts of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or even cable news. Whilst alternative ideas do not. (Arguably not even on Reddit anymore)
Whilst you can certainly make the argument that what we post here doesn't matter because there isn't a million users on Facebook that it might reach, I think reaching the correct people, even if only less than a hundred, is worthwhile and arguably more impactful.
Now, with the way the world is moving forward right now, with Twitter and Parler, it turns out that allowing political subjects to be debated isn't exactly a neutral stance either. That it is essentially a stance that is "for" the alternatives, at least according to some powerful people in control.
Which puts the HN mods team in a damned if you do damned if you don't kind of seat.
I think in a more healthy world a site like this could and should stay on topic, avoiding political subjects outside the occasional coding-language or distro flamewars. ;)
But since the world is arguably terminally ill right now, HN should continue on it's current trajectory and "keep siding with the alternative political ideas", and allowing politics to be discussed.
I don't want to come off as accusing them of actually siding with any side however, I'm just stating that in the current climate, they come off that way whether they like it or not. In my personal opinion, a forum that allows moderated political debate is truly neutral, period. But my personal opinion doesn't set the tone for the political climate just yet.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerrilla|5 years ago|reply