Left-right seems like a false dichotomy to me. e.g. the reason to avoid cable news is not because of some sort of "left" or "right" bias (which is already nebulous), but because of conflict of interest: health care and military contractor ads sandwiched between pundits attempting to sway public opinion regarding health care and defense policy.
The biggest problem with cable news (IMO) is instead of presenting a news story and moving on to the next, they present a story and then give their personal opinions on it. Instead of letting the audience form their own opinions.
In other words, cable news has turned into a level of quality that’s no better than late night talk shows.
It seems kind of invalid to try and apply a media bias score to social media. What's the media bias of Reddit? It's going to be very different comparing /r/WhitePeopleTwitter with /r/PoliticalCompassMemes. Similar deal with Wikipedia, bias is more on a page-by-page or contributor basis.
I agree that it seems kind of invalid but only kind of. Any site that has an editorial policy and/or a ranking algorithm for what gets more views will have some forms of bias. I agree that in the case of reddit, it makes sense to evaluate each subreddit on its own. Also, if a page where users make submissions that mostly lean in one direction or another, that could be useful information to know.
The idea that all of Europe is highly left wing isn't really accurate. Recall that Switzerland, the UK, Ireland and even Russia are all countries in Europe.
Anyway, pretty much every HN thread about anything Europe related will be full of top voted comments saying things like "Thank goodness for the wonderful EU regulating American companies, how ever would we survive without that?" and most of the comments will be all about how irresponsible those terrible US startups are. So I don't recognize the idea that this forum is libertarian. There are a few libertarians but they tend to get modded down pretty fast by the big government types.
For a different example go look at any discussion during COVID about lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masks etc. Libertarians were consistently flamed and flagged to death here, as was true on every other social media site. Really I don't know of any forums where libertarians are the majority. If you find one please do let us know.
Calling Al Jazeera and The Guardian obscure sources? They could have used my website as example, not a soul would recognize it but it was on the front page on a few occasions. Interesting choice of evidence there
It also doesn't seem to take the comments into account at all, which is rather the point of HN unless I'm majorly off base here. If the sites submitted are religious extremist but everyone is laughing at them and posting replies based in atheism, you can hardly call the site a good source for religious content. Since they're just looking at the domains being used as "source" here, they might as well not have rated HN at all
IME, only ones negative to the US get moderated away. Users are free to spray gun against other countries all they like, under the guise of "curious" discussion.
So if I set up an aggregator that includes only positive stories about Democrats and only negative stories about Republicans, would you say it's odd to rate that?
There's a [dead] comment that I agree with, making the point that HN is mostly a tech website, and so it shouldn't be surprising that the stories are "neutral" relative to - I'd say orthogonal to - the (historical) left/right political spectrum. Mostly HN doesn't allow political stories - if you lurk on "new" you can find them, usually they don't get discussed or get flagged, but a normal user would just see some tech stuff.
The comments are a different story, I don't think I could pin down a clear average directional bias, but there are lots of different opinions, most of which get downweighted if they're too strong. But I don't think the comments are what the linked website is considering anyway.
A more moderate version of the other post: is lobste.rs politically biased?
Imo, HN has moved from being moderately libertarian/right to today's slight liberal left slant as its user base aged from young, hungry, hopeful entrepreneurs to jaded senior engineers or VPs in large fortune 500 companies. I think the has also been an influx of non-US users over the past decade, which also tend to lean more left. I'd be curious to see if anyone else that's used this site regularly for the past 10+ years would agree with this.
I don't really agree with this. I think HN gets a pretty decent mix of all political viewpoints, just based on the percentage of times I see stuff that I agree with (politically) and the times I don't. If anything, the thing I really like is the stuff that feels blatantly tribal one way or the other is still consistently downvoted. To your specific points:
1. "as its user base aged from young, hungry, hopeful entrepreneurs to jaded senior engineers or VPs in large fortune 500 companies" I think that's a vast, and honestly unfair, over-simplification. I think a lot of folks have become genuinely disillusioned, and it really has nothing to do with changing with age (heck, if anything, I see young people as being more disillusioned than I am). For example, not speaking so much of any political change, but I certainly vastly underestimated how effective the Internet and social media would be as a tool of division. And I personally have some regret of some jobs I had that made this situation worse.
2. As HN has become more popular I've seen a large influx of more right leaning viewpoints. Of course, I think that's probably just because I consider myself more left/centrist, so it's hard for me to say if there has been a real change in direction, but I think I have seen more just blatant political takes, but again I still see informative, quality comments still bubble to the top most frequently.
My impression is that the site has gradually shifted right, but the Overton window has shifted right faster giving the illusion that it has gone left.
Edit: There is something ironic to be said about my very benign comment triggering someone to the point that they felt compelled to create an account and call me classically right wing slurs (subhuman, animal, low-iq). I think its worth considering that the internet/social media has contributed to a growing mental health crisis. Hurt, sick and lonely people seem to congregate online.
On cultural issues I agree this site leans progressive, from a US perspective. (from my international perspective, politics in the US seems to be between far right and religious fundamentalism).
But arguing for more regulation, consumer protections and limiting the influence of corporations or wealthy individuals has never gone well on HN. Which is understandable, given its origins and owner. It's really slanted towards business/entrepreneurship.
I think it's shifted somewhat in a US-specific authoritarian-left direction as that becomes a bigger force in US tech culture. I don't think people are more cynical than before, but it's expressed differently; the live-and-let-live culture has vanished under polarization and toxic positivity, and again I think that's a strongly US phenomenon. I also think that it's partly an explicit top-down shift, particularly with dang taking over and having an explicit policy that is anti- particular kinds of negativity even when that negativity is correct (e.g. telling people they're wrong is moderated a lot more harshly than before).
Can you please point me towards someone using non-linux servers in a production environment? Besides naturally vendor locked developer tools (my company uses them to build Windows desktop software), I'm genuinely confused why someone would want Windows Server. Same is true for MacOS except my company definitely doesnt use them. Are you referring to BSD's? Or, maybe IOT or industrial things with sel4 (which doesn't seem to meet the term "server")?
[+] [-] mysecretaccount|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cj|2 years ago|reply
In other words, cable news has turned into a level of quality that’s no better than late night talk shows.
[+] [-] Moncefmd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Manuel_D|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brucethemoose2|2 years ago|reply
But its a fairly specific/topical subreddit, where a left-right score is questionably meaningful.
[+] [-] stephendause|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wsgeorge|2 years ago|reply
A couple of ways you could answer this:
1. Where does the Reddit user community lean, taken as a whole. That shouldn't be hard to compute or guesstimate.
2. Where do the owners of Reddit lean (as reflected by the subset of their policies which can reasonably dictate political leaning)?
3. Where do the most influential Reddit user accounts and communities lean?
Computing a media bias score for social media isn't that far fetched, even if the result may be fuzzier than, say, a journal with an editorial bent.
[+] [-] hgsgm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daveoc64|2 years ago|reply
HN is very far to the right by European standards, as even the Democrats are.
That perhaps shows why "left" and "right" are overly simplistic labels.
[+] [-] revelio|2 years ago|reply
Anyway, pretty much every HN thread about anything Europe related will be full of top voted comments saying things like "Thank goodness for the wonderful EU regulating American companies, how ever would we survive without that?" and most of the comments will be all about how irresponsible those terrible US startups are. So I don't recognize the idea that this forum is libertarian. There are a few libertarians but they tend to get modded down pretty fast by the big government types.
For a different example go look at any discussion during COVID about lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masks etc. Libertarians were consistently flamed and flagged to death here, as was true on every other social media site. Really I don't know of any forums where libertarians are the majority. If you find one please do let us know.
[+] [-] kaba0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|2 years ago|reply
It also doesn't seem to take the comments into account at all, which is rather the point of HN unless I'm majorly off base here. If the sites submitted are religious extremist but everyone is laughing at them and posting replies based in atheism, you can hardly call the site a good source for religious content. Since they're just looking at the domains being used as "source" here, they might as well not have rated HN at all
[+] [-] diziet|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Freedom2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panny|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantg2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clipsy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] version_five|2 years ago|reply
The comments are a different story, I don't think I could pin down a clear average directional bias, but there are lots of different opinions, most of which get downweighted if they're too strong. But I don't think the comments are what the linked website is considering anyway.
A more moderate version of the other post: is lobste.rs politically biased?
[+] [-] andreygrehov|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomrod|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|2 years ago|reply
1. "as its user base aged from young, hungry, hopeful entrepreneurs to jaded senior engineers or VPs in large fortune 500 companies" I think that's a vast, and honestly unfair, over-simplification. I think a lot of folks have become genuinely disillusioned, and it really has nothing to do with changing with age (heck, if anything, I see young people as being more disillusioned than I am). For example, not speaking so much of any political change, but I certainly vastly underestimated how effective the Internet and social media would be as a tool of division. And I personally have some regret of some jobs I had that made this situation worse.
2. As HN has become more popular I've seen a large influx of more right leaning viewpoints. Of course, I think that's probably just because I consider myself more left/centrist, so it's hard for me to say if there has been a real change in direction, but I think I have seen more just blatant political takes, but again I still see informative, quality comments still bubble to the top most frequently.
[+] [-] cup|2 years ago|reply
Edit: There is something ironic to be said about my very benign comment triggering someone to the point that they felt compelled to create an account and call me classically right wing slurs (subhuman, animal, low-iq). I think its worth considering that the internet/social media has contributed to a growing mental health crisis. Hurt, sick and lonely people seem to congregate online.
[+] [-] Maarten88|2 years ago|reply
But arguing for more regulation, consumer protections and limiting the influence of corporations or wealthy individuals has never gone well on HN. Which is understandable, given its origins and owner. It's really slanted towards business/entrepreneurship.
[+] [-] lmm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barbarr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reducesuffering|2 years ago|reply
Also expected that the right wing claims about HN being too left contain:
“But you're a worse-than-an-animal, low IQ, mentally ill, incompetent leftie after all.”
with no equivalent.
[+] [-] jiggawatts|2 years ago|reply
The Silicon Valley ex-FAANG startup slant is very obvious to me, as a foreigner working in an ordinary big enterprise setting.
Examples of this slant:
Microsoft is evil and Azure is just a myth.
All servers are Linux by definition.
Developer time costs infinity moneys, servers are free.
Etc...
[+] [-] gcoakes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpmx|2 years ago|reply
Next up, their analysis of the political bias of the Linux kernel mailing list?
[+] [-] shusaku|2 years ago|reply