[proline]

Have you looked into how much of DF was about Apple and how much was about Donald Trump during the affected time periods? It seems that you write about tech a lot less and politics a lot more. Which is fine, it's your blog! But don't expect tech enthusiasts to automatically be interested in your opinion on immigration or whatever.

[JohnBooty]

Have you looked into the linked article? That's not what gruber is questioning.

1. Obviously, a political article on DF is a poor fit

2. But DF's non-political articles are also seemingly pooplisted, even ones that are clearly relevant to HN's audience

3. There have been quite a few political articles from other sites that have gotten traction on DF without being pooplisted

yeah I dunno it doesn't add up to me. i'm not saying it's a conspiracy or anything. perhaps it is just users flagging his articles and not some concerted moderator action.

[micromacrofoot]

You have to also consider a shift in reader affinity, which is impossible to measure

I bet his overall blog traffic has dipped

[proline]

My question was, has Gruber written enough non-political articles to know? Like if the number of high quality, original (many DF posts are just links to content elsewhere), about tech articles is down 90%, then of course his article performance here will be down 90%. And that's before considering that Apple itself may have become less interesting and his writing skills may have slipped (reading too much politics on social media rots the brain, Google Elon Musk to find out more).

[CarlitosHighway]

This touches on the actual reason, IMHO. A significant number of HN users is obviously leaning towards supporting the cult, and of course do the part which cult members are supposed to do - scour the internet for inconvenient speech and then downvote, barricade, and whine.

[xcrunner529]

Yep, all while shouting "free speech, no censorship" and claiming to abide by the constitution. How embarrassing for them.