(no title)
yiyus
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3 years ago
A story about a new IDE is not political. A story about the stand of the US government in the Ukranian war is political. There is some grey area too, but let's not pretend like it is not clear what "political stories" means in this context.
CaptArmchair|3 years ago
Context absolutely matters. And "some grey area" is really a massive grey area.
Suppose that story - hypothetically - is about an IDE that continuously logs developer activity potentially giving employers more control over workers, well, that's political. Because now that story isn't about the IDE itself, it's actually about worker rights.
Even if that same hypothetical story was really a blogpost by the makers of the IDE outlining the technical details behind such a feature... then it's still a story that fits in a wider debate regarding worker rights. One side will definitely argue that the makers are tone deaf for only providing a "technical solution" without considering it's wider impact.
> A story about the stand of the US government in the Ukranian war is political.
Well, in the same vain, a story got posted this week about SpaceX warding off a Russian attack against it's Starlink constellation over Ukraine. One could focus on the technical details of how that happened and argue that, as such, it's fitting to discuss this on this particular forum.
However, a strict "no politics" rule would be hard to enforce since the story fits into current affairs that affect public opinion regardless. Inevitably, people will expand the discussion by asking questions regarding the involvement of the U.S. in the war.
It's not just the stories that gets posted, but also the intent with which they are posted that matters, the kind of debate that posters try to elicit, and how other commenters try to bend the direction of the debate below different posts.
That's why moderation and curation are important and labor intensive. Voting comments/posts up/down doesn't improve quality of content towards an optimum level. Instead, it's a reflection of the emergent sentiment of the audience of HN, which isn't always based on reason or objective facts. Nor should it be. At the end of the day, every comment / post hides a complex human being raising their voice from their own particular bubble of perception. All one can do is acknowledge that reality and deal with it without falling into fallacies regarding absolute truths or maxims about how reality ideally ought to be.