Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week - <AUTHOR> Like everyone else, HN has been on a political binge lately. As an experiment, we're going to try something new and have a cleanse. Starting today, it's Political Detox Week on HN.
For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see what happens.
Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost when political emotions seize control. Our values are fragile—they're like plants that get forgotten, then trampled and scorched in combat. HN is a garden, politics is war by other means, and war and gardening don't mix.
Worse, these harsher patterns can spread through the rest of the culture, threatening the community as a whole. A detox week seems like a good way to strengthen the immune system and to see how HN functions under altered conditions.
Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same time.
A community like HN deteriorates when new developments dilute or poison what it originally stood for. We don't want that to happen, so let's all get clear on what this site is for. What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments. What it is not: a political, ideological, national, racial, or religious battlefield.
Have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them. This really is an experiment; we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term changes. Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens when we try something new. <comment><USER7> Many of the top-level comments here are against this move. I, on the other hand, would like to express my strong support for this move.

Hacker News has never been an anything-goes site. Tight moderation, considerate rules, and low tolerance for bullshit have made this a great site to talk about interesting technical topics and ideas. Remember that we all abide by the rules of the site, and that this isn't a magic free speech zone. If you want to talk political topics, the Internet has more than enough outlets.

Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion. This is not an opinion; look only to sites that allow political discourse (Slashdot?), or even our own comments to see how quickly rational discussion can devolve into flaming. One of the major selling points when I introduce HN to other people is the _absence_ of political topics or discussion: leaving the politics out just produces better technical content.

Also, please consider the idea that politics are regional and differ between countries. In Canada, where I'm from, many of the US political topics would never come up; many European countries might feel even more strongly. As a Canadian, I find American political musings and arguments even less relevant and noisy. By contrast, technological topics are always interesting to me - <USER2> can appreciate these, and I love that there's this corner of the Internet where I can participate in a reasoned, interesting technical community. Please don't ruin it with politics, especially the polarizing American variant.

I appreciate that the site is willing to take this step, and I sincerely hope it can keep this site useful, interesting and level-headed for the future.

<comment><USER8> _Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion._

In fact, what is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion is: emotionally charged, poorly-considered, and dishonest discussion. The topic doesn't matter: health fads, operating systems, or taxes. I agree, many people have terrible style in their approach to political discussion - but see also, e.g. Hobbes and Rousseau for more thoughtful representatives.

<comment><USER9> > The topic doesn't matter

Technically true. But practically speaking, I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. If that's true, then this moderation should boost the general quality of HN comments and topics, which is why most of us come here in the first place. As a comparison, I was initially annoyed that simple jokes / witty remarks that were void of other content were down voted on HN. But long-term I compare it to reddit and agree with the method: I can still go to reddit if I want wit (I often do). I (ideally) come here for high quality technical content.

<comment><USER8> _I 'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others._

This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion.

Part of the beauty of HN is getting opinions about things that matter in the real world, from people who really think about things.

<comment><USER10> > This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to > enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), > whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems > or functional programming enough to have an opinion.

This is true, but I suspect the biggest reason is that politics is more prone to Crony Beliefs ( [http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony- beliefs/](http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/) ) than almost any other field of discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a terrible decision. The tech industry has built powerful tools of social control, and runs vast databases of private data on pretty much everyone in the country. We have a golden period of forty-some days before a new administration comes to power that has shown every intent of using that information to deport people and create a national Muslim registry.

We need to be talking about the political implications of what we've built, and figuring out how to fix our mess. This is like the period before the hurricane: everyone should be busy boarding up windows, and you can't do that if you decide you're just not going to talk about the coming storm because it makes you feel bad.

<comment><USER12> Not to mention that "can we please stop with all the politics" is _not political neutrality_ , it's a position that supports the status quo.

Silence assists certain forms of repression.

<comment><USER13> And it's already the case on HN that political discussions are quickly flagged into oblivion, so I'm not sure how this current week will be any different.

I was pretty let down that HN did not do more to protect political discussions during the US election cycle and I really didn't see all that much vitriolic behavior in the first place. Even if there is bad behavior though, is that something that we need to be protected from at all times? Maybe it is better to let it happen, point it out when we see it, and then hopefully learn to discuss more civilly as a community in the future.

<comment><USER14> > I really didn't see all that much vitriolic behavior in the first place.

There is a setting in your options called "showdead". Is that on or off for you? If it's set to off HN will hide some comments that have been killed by userflags. Thus, you may well have not seen the worst examples.

But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that's over 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816)

> But, yes, to the extent the inchoate Alt Right has a position on it, one of > them is that Jews are to be "excluded if not eliminated from society", as in > all societies that are not Israel. You've got your own homeland now, which > we of the Alt West fully support, relocate yourself there. Specifically > "diversity + proximity = war", and we want to avoid "war" such as it is or > will be.

<comment><USER13> > _There is a setting in your options called "showdead". Is that on or off for > you? If it's set to off HN will hide some comments that have been killed by > userflags. Thus, you may well have not seen the worst examples._

This is a new account of mine but I have accounts going back many years. I usually flip [showdead] to 'yes' as soon as I get reminded by seeing a [flagged] comment.

> _But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that 's over > 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate_

I don't like that comment either at all, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad to know that someone who is solidly part of our community thinks that way and that someone who's probably very smart otherwise can simultaneously hold an opinion like that.

If we just ban that person or even worse disallow a wide swath of conversation topics, what good does it do? hga will still believe that (and he mostly expressed himself civilly, I guess). Are you worried that his ideas will spread? This may be where our mindset differs, but I believe the best and only course of action is for people like you and me respond civilly and with reason, and to prove why hga is misguided.

<comment><USER15> This is a bit of an aside, but related. What's the appropriate response to someone who continues to post civilly and substantively but unceasingly on a topic, even when asked not to? Is it a type of trolling? Is asking them to stop silencing their voice? Or some sort of "agree to disagree"?

Another issue: when do some topics go beyond the pale and must _not_ be tolerated? Is there such a point?

Perhaps these are off-topic for this thread, but they've been on my mind as part of the larger issues "detox week" is intended to address.

<comment><USER13> > _This is a bit of an aside, but related. What 's the appropriate response to > someone who continues to post civilly and substantively but unceasingly on a > topic, even when asked not to? Is it a type of trolling? Is asking them to > stop silencing their voice? Or some sort of "agree to disagree"?_

Probably to just stop replying to them. Sum up your thoughts and respectfully let them know that you've made your point as well as you can, and that this will be your last response. Or, the site could have a feature to block certain users for a period of time so that you just don't have to see it.

> _Another issue: when do some topics go beyond the pale and must not be > tolerated? Is there such a point?_

Not for me, though I know I have a radical view on what should be the limits (or lack thereof) of freedom of speech. In reality though, there are certain types of speech that are illegal and so I understand that moderators will do what they have to in those situations.

I've also been thinking about these things. I am making a real-time reddit clone for fun and I am trying to strike upon a system that keeps discussion civil and substantive with as little need as possible for moderation. Not saying that every place on the internet should be a haven for freedom of speech though, and I really appreciate what dang and the other mods do here. By and large, I have few complaints about how HN is run and they've come up with many good ideas for algorithmically cooling down the flame wars (e.g. not allowing immediate replies when discussion gets heated).

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I appreciate it. The tension between creating a sustainable, civil community while still permitting effective freedom of expression is particularly difficult, in my opinion, and a worthwhile goal. Different communities do have different standards.

I look forward to the Show HN for your project! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The idea that we can carve out a space that exists outside of politics and ideology is delusional.

Ideology is present everywhere. It's built in to the ways we relate to each other, to our employers, to the public and private institutions and technologies we interact with all the time, and especially the way we work and conceive of work. Ideology is often tacit, baked into our assumptions even in "non-political" areas.

Squelching political discussion won't cause us all to transcend ideology, it'll just make it impossible to discuss or critique a dominant ideology whenever one shows up in someone's unstated assumptions.

This is a bad idea and a little dystopian (the world is upside down, but think happy thoughts, folks! Here's a TED talk!)

Not to mention I didn't really see a huge problem on the site, so in a time when politics and ideology are on everyone's minds for good reason, it seems you've chosen to solve a non-problem with censorship.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course it's delusional. The concepts can't be defined to begin with, nor can they be separated in any consistent way. And still we have to moderate this site.

> _the world is upside down, but think happy thoughts, folks! Here 's a TED > talk!_

It's sort of a peeve of mine that people project this onto us because I can't say how I really feel about it without breaking our own rules.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps grounding your moderation policies around concepts you know are undefined and inseparable isn't the best basis for moderating the site.

As for how people see your actions: labeling it as "projecting" might make you feel better, but probably gets in the way of you understanding what they're saying.

In today's environment, you can't simultaneously make the site an welcoming place for people who are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti- trans (etc.) - and for people who are Muslim, immigrant, women, trans and nonbinary people (etc) _or allies to any of these groups_. What people are telling you is that they see YC - and you personally - as siding with the bigots.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the best basis for moderating the site because the alternative is impossible.

You're right, though, that I shouldn't use the word 'project' like that.

<comment><USER17> A classic HN moment: 'dang tells me I'm right, and I'm downvoted to -3 :)

> the alternative is impossible

Interesting phrasing.

<comment><USER18> (guessing here)

The downvotes are not because of the word "project", or anything in the two first sentences. Its because you called people "as siding with the bigots" because they disagree.

There is also some extrapolation that result in insults. Are anti-religion people bigots? Are Egalitarianism bigots because they don't agree with new feminism? Is the illegal vs legal-immigration discussions bigotry?

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the feedback. You're probably right that the downvotes aren't related to the first two sentences. Pro-diversity stuff routinely gets downvoted here, especially when it uses the f-word.

Still, if you read more closely, I didn't call people bigoted because they disagree. I called the people who are "anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti- feminist, anti-trans (etc)" bigots. That seems like the right word to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a _scientific_ community, but it is not the case, and even then politics do interact with science, as one can conduct scientific experiments on government decisions, or politics can attack scientific community positions (e.g. climate change).

The way this sounds is that you are more concerned about politics as in people who take party positions and may feel excluded as a group when the majority of the community takes a different position. This is a slightly different issue i.e. party politics, and I think it is fine/a good thing, but it is also important to distinguish the two. This should essentially be under the same umbrella as personal attacks, as they are essentially the same thing.

<comment><USER20> I fully support this detox week. As someone whose political views don't align with the average HN reader, I often feel marginalized by unfair downvoting in political discussion, even though I have made my points in an informed and respectful way. It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site and those of the majority are free to push their views while the rest of us must either read it and ignore it or face the onslaught of downvotes if we express a dissenting opinion.

I'd rather see HN go politics-free forever. Political discussions do not enjoy the same level of objectivity that technical and business discussions do. Frankly, it may be impossible to expect objectivity within political discussion because our political feelings are so deeply-held and tied to our individual upbringings, culture, and locale.

Unless HN can figure out how to give fair treatment to minority opinions, it's best to exclude these discussions entirely.

<comment><USER21> The rub is, a lot of difficult conversations lead to what are effectively political answers. Take the amazon go which is on the front page right now. We need to be able to have a conversation about job displacing technologies, and hacker news has been a good venue for smart, civilized discussion on the topic.

I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but eliminating discussions outright because they might make people feel uncomfortable or might turn uncivil seems like we are missing a really important piece to the news we discuss here.

Minority opinions are never going to have "fair treatment" by the majority. I've been down voted several times for my opinions and I'll take it again just to be able to have the discussion here.

<comment><USER22> Is political discourse in HN comment threads ever actually "effective", though? What actually results from having those discussions _here_ that couldn't be accomplished just as easily in a forum where it's explicitly on- topic, e.g. /r/politics or similar? It's not as though policymakers or voters are looking to the HN comments section for guidance.

<comment><USER21> Yes, I generally think that the conversations here stay on the relevant technical topic and treat political explanations as just more evidence into an investigation instead of the end-goal. I don't want a board focused on politics, I certainly don't find this kind of civil discussion in reddit.

I also don't think that the hacker spirit responds well to barriers of thought and discussion.

It's just an anecdote, but I know my views have been greatly affected in part by hacker news. I was once a staunch libertarian, but reading a lot about universal basic income and other approaches people have offered to income inequality and social issues, while talking about the technology trends first and foremost, have convinced me to broaden my beliefs.

There is something about having a stated goal outside of political points scoring that helps everyone see themselves as part of the same team. I've always felt hacker news is largely about understanding things related to technology - trends, weird bugs, how startups work, etc. With that as our main focus we can defer to each other and learn from each other. When the main force is to debate the other side there is no room for concessions or finding common ground.

What I want in a community, is for people of all different views and backgrounds to think about a topic with the end goal of solving some problem. Hacker news isn't perfect there but it's close.

<comment><USER23> The basic income discussions are pretty pointless though. There is just a group of people who think we should have it and another who think it's a pointless thought experiment because it the economy is about an order of magnitude short of the output required for the numbers being proposed.

<comment><USER21> That's not pointless, those could be really good points! Maybe UBI is something we have to throw out for now, maybe it can be implemented in a way to get around those challenges.

<comment><USER23> But it's the same points over and over again. Every single time something about minimum wage or job automation shows up someone brings out the UBI horse to beat some more.

<comment><USER24> Maybe a way to flag topics to hide similar ones from _yourself_ would be helpful, but applying this more generally to the entire community doesn't sit well with me.

<comment><USER8> Agree. If topics and comments are going to be hidden because they're "political", there should be a way to view and upvote these if you want to "opt-in".

<comment><USER15> There is. Set "showdead" to "yes" in your profile. You can "vouch" for comments made by banned users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One question that interests/concerns me is making judgement calls about what is/is not a political story.

Some links will be cut and dry, some will not. Some comments will be immediately identified as political, some will just be politics adjacent.

For instance, on a story about self driving cars, will it be appropriate to talk about UBI? On a story about cryptography, will it be acceptable to talk about how it applies to political dissidents?

Still, I have always found HN moderation to be reasonable, and I expect this to be the same. This is also something I think is desperately needed, we could all use a cooling off period, and it'll be nice not to be bombarded with US politics from yet another angle.

Hoping for the best, thanks dang + crew!

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, it's not possible to define "politics" precisely, and it would be a mistake to try. But there's nothing new in that; the HN guidelines have always mentioned politics without defining the term, and we get by.

We can clarify, though. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. We're not so concerned about stories on other things that happen to have political aspects—like, say, software patents. Those stories aren't going to be evicted from HN or anything like that. For this week, though, let's err on the side of flagging because it will make the experiment more interesting.

<comment><USER26> > The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, > ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion

I feel like trying to ban discussion of these conflicts will lead to the same outcome that reddit's weird "free speech" policy had, if more subtly. If Hacker News is the place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel particularly safe, that's going to be the kind of people you attract, at the expense of marginalized hackers.

There is no neutral option around this kind of politics and I'll be sad to see HN throw marginalized people under the bus to ensure the comfort of the privileged.

<comment><USER27> _If Hacker News is the place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel particularly safe, that 's going to be the kind of people you attract, at the expense of marginalized hackers._

I appear to be the top ranked openly female member here and my experience of HN dramatically improved when Dan Gackle (aka dang) took over the role as lead moderator of the site. I have faith in his judgment, plus I have substantial soft skills myself. I do not believe he is going to do anything to shape HN into the sort of thing you are positing here.

<comment><USER28> I am also openly a woman. And I'm probably one of the lowest-ranked members on here, precisely because this community is _already_ so fucking much a "place where racist, misogynist, fascist hackers can feel perfectly safe". So i only come over here when something is really interesting or really appalling, because it is a toxic awful cesspit of a community and Mr. Gackle doesn't seem to have done any better than any of the other mods in that regard. IDK why you have any more faith in him than in any of the rest of them.

<comment><USER29> Looking through your last couple comments you seem like you're constantly looking to get into political arguments by writing inflammatory comments mostly regarding gender. I'm not surprised that when you fish for a political argument, you end up attracting the worst that the site has to offer.

<comment><USER27> It would be super nice if you did not do this. I assure you, women who have been here a long time have good reason to have baggage. Her approach isn't productive at the moment, but your comment will read to quite a lot of women as _victim blaming_ and drive them away.

This undermines the progress that some people here have work incredibly hard for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The idea that you can somehow separate "political" from "non-political" stories seems poorly-thought-out and censorious. Who will make these decisions? It seems clear that many posts that are nominally "about tech and only tech" are pushing some political viewpoint, whether it be the benefits of mass computerization, workaholic tips and tricks, or protection from civil rights violations using encryption.

HN pretends to be largely apolitical, but the quick disappearance of certain threads or topics seems to show that it has a heavy slant towards a sort of techno-utopian quasi-libertarianism that wants to work its way out of challenges to its ideas by sort of putting its fingers in its ears. Instead of attempting to "depoliticize" itself, maybe HN should spend time developing a better understanding and clarification of the extremely political stance it takes every day?

<comment><AUTHOR> > _heavy slant towards a sort of techno-utopian quasi-libertarianism_

Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining a service in which HN users who make opposing claims about its "heavy slant" are introduced to each other.

<comment><USER31> Has there ever been an attempt to run a survey and settle the question? Of course, the risk of the results creating the kind of thread you're trying to avoid with the detox week is pretty high...

<comment><AUTHOR> Such surveys aren't reliable. If anyone wanted to classify comments manually they might come up with something, but I'd guess it would just lead to more arguments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's not possible for HN to have "no political position" on issues such as tech.

As the Amazon Go thread, and this comment from PG demonstrate, the default position - where there is no discussion of race / gender / class / diversity - is for the protections that minority groups enjoy to disappear.

Either because no-one thinks to protect them (as white working classes feel has happened to them) or because SV bigwigs see those protections as an inconvenient fact that should be swept away by technological disruption.

pg: "Any industry that still has unions has potential energy that could be released by startups."

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104?lang=en](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/663456748494127104?lang=en)

It's a fallacy to think that HN and hackers can somehow obsolve themselves from that responsibility any more than it thinks it can obsolve itself from responsibility toward homeless in SF.

By all means take the decision you feel you need to to maintain your community - but don't under any circumstances pretend it's a politically neutral one because it just cannot be.

<comment><USER33> I think we can read PG's tweet a little more favorably.

I consider myself liberal, and generally in favor of things such as unions, workers'-rights, and anti-discrimination regulations, that serve to balance power in our society.

That said, I can definitely see an argument that unions are inefficient - <USER3> slow down rate of change, introduce barriers to new innovation, and require one-size-fits-all negotiation. This doesn't mean we need to remove unions, just recognize the tradeoffs.

Furthermore, I would myself argue that unions are a response (and a rational one) to an inefficient, asymmetric power structure. i.e., unions are a symptom of a problem, not a problem.

example:

Let's say there's an industry, where in a competitive, open, and rights- respecting market, workers could typically get $15/hr.

If there's a monopoly-employer and un-unioned employees, they can suppress the wage to $10/hr, concentrating profits to the employer. If there's a union, and no monopoly of employers, the union can force the wage to $20/hr, stifling the industry, and possibly preventing new employees from entering the marketplace freely. If the employers and union are at equal power levels, the wage sits around $15/hr, but there's a lot of red tape, and slowed rate of innovation, because of the nature of negotiations.

If you create a company that hires non-union workers, but treats them as well or better as unioned workers would be treated, you should have a competitive advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm seeing a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I completely disagree. TL;DR; If HN is your only news source, you have bigger issues than this experiment, go subscribe to another source of political news.

Hacker news is a news aggregation medium for "Hacker News." The purpose of this site is to get your fix of tech news that you can't get other places. It isn't burying your head in the sand to ONLY have "Hacker" news on your Hacker News site. It's sticking your head in the sand not to read any other news sources. That is on the individual. It is not the job of Hacker News to educate you on politics. The responsibility of getting good news is on the user not the medium. HN doesn't claim to be a one stop shop for all of your news.

More importantly, this is an experiment, on a site that is very interested in Science and Programming. It completely makes sense to have an experiment like this to see if it affects the quality of the comments. Being against this experiment is like my dad trying to tell me that God Created the earth 5000 years ago from parts of other planets (complete hyperbole). WTH? It doesn't matter it's one week and then it's over.

I'm assuming a good experiment will THEN make assertions and consult with the community to see if this worked, was bad/good/etc. At that point voice your concerns, but not yet, there is no evidence it's all conjecture.

<comment><USER35> > I'm seeing a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I completely disagree. > (...) Hacker news is a news aggregation medium for "Hacker News."

I'm not sure yet whether I think this is a good or bad idea, though this I'll say: HN is not _just_ a news aggregation medium. If in the beginning it were, it is no longer. It is now much more defined by the people on here. Like reddit, the story pages give the majority of screen real estate to comments. It's not a stretch to say people on here drop by, to a greater extent, for the discussions, ideas, and tips - and to a lesser extent, to be exposed to a story or link that they might not have eventually found elsewhere.

<comment><USER34> Maybe it shouldn't be? Yes that's a question because this is an experiment, they aren't saying it shouldn't be.

I'm 100% behind you if they try to ban politics on HN. But for a week it's ok, we'll live and we may even learn something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Based on Agnolia, these are the most popular stories from the past week on HN that might be construed as "political":

#17 Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for a week [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)

#23 Canadian journalist's detention at US border raises press freedom alarms [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13092330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13092330)

#29 Help Us Keep the Archive Free, Accessible, and Private [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065599](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065599)

#37 Facebook's Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible with News [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103611)

#49 War Is a Racket by General Smedley D. Butler (1933) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13068641)

#59 FBI to gain expanded hacking powers as Senate effort to block fails [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13074285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13074285)

<comment><USER36> > #17 Tell HN: Political Detox Week

I see what you did there

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> As an experiment, I love the idea!

Personally, I've found it hard to escape US politics on many of the sites I frequent. The comments/discussion often end up relating the topic to the last US election in some manner - and an unproductive conversation follows.

Just my experience, but again - love the idea of running an experiment here.

</comment><comment><USER38> If anything, Hacker News should be more political, and it ought to get its political act together. People here are always talking about moral issues, implications of technology on the working class, climate issues, accessibility, etc.

Well, talking about those issues is just moral posturing without <power>, and politics is the negotiation of power.

These are all political issues. If you care about your fellow person, you already have the seeds of a <political> motivation. You want to change the way the world works -- but that takes power, power like the AMA or AARP has.

People who duck their heads in the sand and scorn politics and power as something dirty are counterproductive to this highly disorganized technical community with almost zero union potential.

<comment><USER39> Did the Internet transform the economy with <power>? Do people ride Uber because Uber has power? Did Apple coerce people into buying its products by the billions?

I think technology coupled with a market economy shows us the way that societal transformation happens from the emergent order of individuals acting in their own self-interest, rather than being forced to choose a "better way" by those in power.

<comment><USER40> _Did the Internet transform the economy with <power>? Do people ride Uber because Uber has power?_

Unquestionably. Uber has power because it occupies the bulk of mindshare for ride sharing. The internet has power because that's where people are. You can't argue that facebook, MSFT etc... don't have POWER.

 _Did Apple coerce people into buying its products by the billions?_

You're conflating power with coercion. It's possible, and desirable, to have power without coercion. Most power is not coercive - it's called "soft power."

Though radicals could argue that even soft power is coercive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I understand the sentiment here, but it sounds a little...wishful.

Our political climate is affecting all of us in many ways, and we need to process what's happening. We need to do that carefully and constructively. I want to know the subtle political aspects of many of the stories I read on HN.

That said, I'll play along for the week. I hope what comes out of this is a push to encourage critical thinking about the political aspects of important stories, not to push political conversation off of HN entirely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this. Your willingness to be open-minded is very much in the spirit of the idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Who decides what's "political"? Are discussions of regulations surrounding Uber political? The ongoing Tesla/dealership feuds? Using machine learning to detect fake news? New immigration policy that impacts H1B tech workers? The impact of Brexit on tech companies? Restrictions on cryptography?

I'm split on this: On one hand, firm moderation and keeping things on-topic makes for a good forum for discussion. On the other, this could easily be used by YC as a tool to say, silence criticism of YC for not disavowing Peter Thiel. Either way, there need to be clearer guidelines around what's allowed and what's not.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _here need to be clearer guidelines around what 's allowed and what's not._

We're happy to clarify (e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614)) but it's impossible to draw a precise line. Moderation is about a few core principles and a lot of case-by-case judgment calls, and it's inherently unsatisfying.

Whatever rules we have, though, we apply them less rather than more in cases where YC itself or a YC startup is at issue. That's one of the rules :)

<comment><USER43> This is amazingly naive. "We apply them less rather than more in cases where YC itself or a YC startup is at issue." You realize, of course, that YC, PG, and SA all drive the tech zeitgeist to some extent or another. News that affects YC itself is all tech and politics, because YC affects these things.

<comment><AUTHOR> By that logic it affects a butterfly in China too. I'm talking about what we can control.

<comment><USER43> Now you're being amazingly reductive to win a rhetorical point. HN drives a conversation. You are choosing to change the parameters of that conversation. You are making a political choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't care about rhetorical points but I do care about being able to truthfully say that we moderate HN less, not more, when stories about YC or YC startups are involved. That's a fact, and one we take particular care with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Given that ycombinator _does_ specifically involve themselves in issues of _policy_ such as universal basic income and others, I find this move to be at odds with what ycombinator actually is.

Once some ideas are too 'dangerous' or too contentions to be discussed, there is little hope of ever moving forward in solving the very real problems we have in this world.

Characterizing values as fragile things which cannot withstand the rigors of robust debate is also a troubling viewpoint.

edit: typo.

<comment><USER45> Or, to take an even more cynical position, "While we totally can moderate discussion to keep things within our standards of conduct, we find it's too much work, and would rather just not have to deal with it."

...then go write another political policy blog post about how a board member's politics aren't representative of a company's mission, etc, rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER46> Very political board members need safe spaces too.

It's time for HN to move to an independent forum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm not really a fan of this move. I don't see it as an addiction that reduces its power over us by abstaining for a period of time. I also don't agree with applying system effects to individuals - while political discussion can appear to create a dulling or muting effect overall it doesn't mean that individual people aren't being positively influenced, in ways that might have even larger positive effects on the system over time. Similarly, preventing short term conflict might have negative longer term system effects over time.

The detox/immune-system metaphor seems really suspect in other words. You could just as easily argue that there is a "virus" (the changing political realities, new realities dawning on us), and that ignoring the "virus" or "symptoms" will make the adjustment that much more traumatic, the later we accept that it's happening. Or to switch the connotation, perhaps instead of a "virus", look at it as a "disruptive innovation" \- where if we act as an entrenched incumbent, we will be disrupted as our competitors rewrite the rules, and we will be too far behind to pivot successfully.

Letting the community process the new inputs vigorously might seem more traumatic in the short term but it could also make us stronger overall.

This just seems counter to the principles that I appreciate at HN.

<comment><USER48> I'm also concered that the timing of this can be partisan. Clearly Trump is still appointing high level cabinet members and discussing those things has merit. Yet during many of Obama's controversies, this site was allowed to chug away endlessly with an anti-Democratic, anti-Obama narrative. I think HN goes zero politics entirely or lets us continue as is. This move could be interpreted as pro-Trump especially if we're going to get the SoS announcement this week.

>Our values are fragile

No, they aren't. If your values can't handle a basic criticism then your values are terrible. HN shouldn't be creating 'safe spaces' for the status quo or the new administration. I'd rather get heckled at Hamilton than live in a society where we worry about hurting each other's values, feelings, sense of entitlements, etc. Open discourse is always the superior solution.

If harm is being done, challenge it on a one by one basis. I see some very rude tones, borderline namecalling here, and other issues that get ignored by the mods. Encourage a polite discourse, don't eliminate it. I'd also be less liberal with posting rights. New accounts shouldn't be able to post on day one. A lot of these political firestorms are via 'green' accounts who may or may not be paid shills coming here and performing deflection and reading off bulletpoints or playing up typical 'whataboutisms'. Or regulars who post the same axe grinding over and over. Sadly, this goes against the religion of 'growth hacking' where conversations and new signups are the only metric that matters.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _this site was allowed to chug away endlessly with an anti-Democratic, anti- > Obama narrative [...] This move could be interpreted as pro-Trump_

The opposite people feel the opposite:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108689)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108834)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Do you really think that the techno-capitalist libertarian utopia that many in silicon valley seem to be trying to build is a-political, immune from regulation or popular backlash?

Anything political or critical of YC already gets disappeared from this site quite quickly. I had assumed that this policy (which always seemed misguided to me) was already in effect.

I think the historical moment we find ourselves in is a time to make ourselves more uncomfortable rather than retreat and pretend that the only things that matter are software and how we might make more money on the internet.

Politics is about coming together to find common solutions to problems and make sure that no one gets left behind. Isn't it the job of a responsible community (even a VC sponsored one dedicated to making money with tech as HN is) to lean in when things start to feel hard rather than tune out and ignore our responsibilities as citizens and fellow humans?

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Anything [...] critical of YC already gets disappeared_

That's definitely not true, and we're very careful about it. It's literally the first thing pg blurted out to me, before I even had a chance to sit down, on my first morning as an HN moderator. I do my bit by blurting it to everyone else in turn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> As a frequent commenter I think this is a good experiment, but I think it's worth considering what kind of platform HN considers itself.

Technology and politics are intimately linked, even if it's not always obvious. Technology's impact on politics is only going to grow in my opinion so I think the "political" discussions - as they relate to technology - <USER4> vital for the community at large.

If we as a community are going to be "disrupters" whether intentionally or not, we need to understand and discuss the social and political landscape and impacts of our work better, so that we can implement our technology in a way that doesn't spurn backlash from the communities and thus their political leaders.

Talk about political scandals and the like don't do service to this community, so I think those topics should be sequestered. However discussions on encryption, automation etc... are perfect topics for this community in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost when political emotions seize control. Our values are fragile—they're like plants that get forgotten, then trampled and scorched in combat. HN is a garden, politics is war by other means, and war and gardening don't mix."

This is so misguided and absurd. What is the definition of politics here? Trump stories? Or are fake news stories also political? Alot of the HN community came to value intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation from political ends

</comment><comment><USER51> While I see the point, and I can agree with the points made that HN shouldn't be a "battlefield" for person opinion, I cannot accept that we will concede politics to be a topic to be too difficult for discussion, difficult conversations are the most important ones to have.

In the view you've put forward, you say that politics is the problem, a topic that when discussed causes fights and it can damage the culture of HN. I disagree. If we don't know how to talk about politics with strangers, we stop trying to persuade each other, and we bottle up our disagreement, and we go online and yell at someone else, or we vote for the candidate who screams our view... because we don't know how else to express it, to find the nuance in it, and ask ourselves hard questions. We'd rather have an opinion than not stand for something. All of the flaming is a way of expressing it...

We can suppress the conversations on HN to focus only on specific science or technology, but on a technology website in this age, and right now that seems like we'd be the website equivalent of a child covering their ears when they don't want to hear something. Blockchain tech, cryto, AI, mesh networking, job loss from automation, cyberwar, Quantum C. Seems incorrect to suggest that technology and politics can be separated easily (especially at a big picture).

Of course this is the internet, people come here to troll and fight. But we as individuals can always walk away. We can douse the flames by not engaging in it ourselves. We can always handle a conversation with care, it's not the topic that is emotional, it's us. It isn't up to the community to stop people from talking about touchy subjects, so that we all get along, it's up to us to learn how to talk about these things better. On the net, just like in the world.

The experiment shouldn't be to stop political discourse, but encourage it. See where we go, go forth and be critical thinkers and talk about the hardest topics facing human civ right now. Lets see what happens. Maybe that is naive, but we gotta start somewhere. Discouraging the conversation isn't a start, its an end.

<comment><USER52> _See where we go, go forth and be critical thinkers and talk about the hardest topics facing human civ right now. Lets see what happens._

Perhaps that should be next weeks experiment!

(Yes, I'm serious.)

<comment><USER51> yea yea!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Tribalism is so toxic. I'm all for this. But for flagging purposes what's the boundary between a political/non-political story?

EDIT: @dang in another comment: _Let me clarify. The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet. We 're not so concerned about stories on other things that happen to have political aspects—like, say, software patents._

<comment><USER54> > Tribalism is so toxic.

And yet isn't one solution to tribalism a respectful exchange of ideas and dialogue?

Political changes have many direct impacts on this community - net neutrality, education policy related to STEM, funding for organizations/government agencies that have a long history of supporting technology, legislation concerning the development of new technologies (particularly for the medical and energy sectors), employment legislation, patent laws, and many other topics are likely of interest to a large number of HN readers and contributors.

Personally, I don't come to HN looking for political discussion/commentary but I also don't mind seeing it when it's appropriate.

<comment><USER55> Have you been witnessing respectful political exchanges on this site? the past 18 months have been pretty awful, in my experience.

<comment><USER54> Compared to other online communities - absolutely. HN rarely devolves into "Damn [liberals|conservatives]" and people often get called out here for ad hominem attacks. Political articles without any basis in technology and clickbait titles are also usually quickly culled.

<comment><USER56> I think the standard for HN political discussions ought to be other HN discussions not political discussions elsewhere on the internet. HN having better political discussions than elsewhere on the internet might even be part of the problem if HN is attracting people whose purpose is political discussions.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good observation and well put.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I am concerned that in the long run political stories about HN and Y Combinator, and about the tech scene will be excluded.

Where better to talk about the politics of HN and Y Combinator than on HN? As far as political stories go, these are the most relevant ones to HN readers. Political stories about the tech scene, and related topics (such as political reactions to tech employees grabbing up all the real estate in certain tech- heavy cities like SF) are also very relevant.

I would be more ok with the banning of non-tech-related political stories/threads. But, I think a better solution than censorship would be tagging. Tagging would allow every reader to do their own filtering, and include/exclude what they felt was appropriate, rather than have those decisions dictated top-down.

On the other hand, I also understand the desire of the site owners/admins to guide the site to be what they want it to be, rather than what its users want it to be. That's definitely their prerogative, and much of it I agree with - particularly the censorship of hate speech, flaming, and trolling.

The guiding of this site towards more tech and less politics is also a desire I understand and commiserate with. There definitely are plenty of other political sites out there, where you can argue this stuff 'till the cows come home. But personally, I don't visit those sites, and would like to be able to discuss at least some of those topics -- the ones relevant to tech and to HN/YC, on HN itself.

<comment><USER58> Agreed, tagging would be a great solution. Three cheers for tagging! Tagging for president! Oops. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I am running tech site with 10k users on which i made surveys about politics with possibility to comment by users. I've stopped because there were so many conflicts, such bad emotions, then users moved their personal conflicts to other discussions on forum. After stopping the political surveys everything is a lot more stable and people are nicer to each other, without any biases, they discuss about software, hardware etc. This was very good decision, will it work for HN? Probably yes, it worked for us.

</comment><comment><USER60> I disagree. I think if there was ever a time in the history of the world where more political discourse needs to occur, it should be now. I think this is especially true with such a smart group of individuals trying to change the world in many different arenas.

<comment><USER61> More reasoned, thoughtful, polite political discourse? Absolutely. More yelling without listening? No, the world doesn't need another platform where that happens.

The goal here is to let people get past the yelling so that we can get back to the thoughtful, polite discourse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> This feels a lot like closing the barn doors after the horses have already gotten loose. This kind of action was sorely needed weeks ago, especially when political articles turned into flame wars populated by 140 char political emotional screeds. It was really disheartening to see HN turn towards the same kind of political discussion I have to endure on other sites. Especially when commentators who tended to post thoughtfully completely devolved.

These days it feels rarer to see the same kind of inflammatory articles gain traction. The same kind of discussion is there but the flaming feels less rampant than it once was. With passions cooled I feel that the community is slowly returning to normal. Though it's likely with such a contentious president, especially to the de facto SV culture, it's not going to be smooth waters.

More brush fires might just be the new normal for now. I think that controlling the burning in this case is more advantageous to the community than trying to stamp it out entirely. Giving the silent treatment to unpopular views is partially how we ended up where we are.

I'm always up for a short term experiment though.

<comment><USER58> Barn doors and brush fires ... are you Aussie by any chance? :)

<comment><USER62> Californian I'm afraid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> > Why? Political conflicts cause harm here

Unfortunately this a consequence of people trying to shove politics everywhere, including in unrelated communities. I don't want to point fingers but a specific camp has mastered the art of forcing their political beliefs upon others in the name of "the right side of history". The result is now, you can't be just a developer, or a techie. You have to be a techie + or a developer + qnd also support a specific political agenda, or "you're not a decent human being". Maybe people should stop doing that at first place. The same thing happened in atheist communities or gaming and it permanently ruined these communities, because it forced everybody to take sides. HN is no different. The dev community will suffer the same fate if people don't come to their senses before it's too late.

Maybe political subjects that are totally unrelated to tech should be banned from HN. I don't like censorship, but if the goal is to keep a community united and focused well, I'm open for alternative suggestions...

<comment><USER64> _Maybe political subjects that are totally unrelated to tech should be banned from HN._

A strict reading of the guidelines would suggest that they already are. There's nothing interesting or gratifying in those discussions. They devolve into poo-flinging with a probability approaching 1.

In my experience, obvious political flamebait gets flagged off the frontpage out what feels like sheer exasperation. Comments not so much, but they generally end up a few shades lighter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> It's worth noting that in order to flag a comment, you must click the permalink first.

I've seen political stories flagged pretty quickly during normal HN usage, but rarely comment threads.

<comment><USER66> I think this is a great point.

I assume putting the "flag" button one click away is to prevent people using it as a down vote when arguing, but it definitely means that I never flag comments, only stories. And comments are the place where "politicalness" really has the damaging effects.

I wonder if there might be either an opt-in to keep it zero clicks away, or maybe over a certain amount of karma it is visible, or some other compromise so that proper comment flagging is more widespread.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a speed bump to prevent impulsive flagging. We could try putting it next to comments everywhere, but the comment byline ("ianstormtaylor 2 hours ago [-]") is now so minimal that that would be a massive change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> To tell you the truth, I put myself into a politics news vacuum the day after the elections and the results were announced.

I no longer frequent the politics sites (left and right) that I used to visit being a politics addict. I now no longer want to listen to any politics for the next 4 or 8 years (whichever the term may end up being).

I have stuck my fingers in my ears and am spouting "la la la la...." loudly whenever I go near a political discussion.

No more politics for me (at least till I am ready to come out of my self imposed exile).

<comment><USER55> Upvoted for the word "addict".

Do you feel that political posters, regardless of viewpoint, are merely chasing the endorphin high that comes from the argument?

<comment><USER67> I am more of a lurker than a poster. I just read comments on the sites.

I really believe that people on either side of the political spectrum should at the very least listen to the view points espoused by the other side so that they can get out of their own echo chambers.

Its a real eye opener to know that there are more than one opinion/point of view on a topic.

Here I go again....finger in ear..."la la la la..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I think this is a bad idea, even as an experiment. Treating groups of ideas as off-limits, immutable or in need of protection from other groups does more harm than good. Your analogy of "politics [being] war by other means" is exactly why we should foster political discussion just as any other intellectual pursuit. Arbitrary isolation between the political or religious self and our intellectual self is, I believe, why politics is so violent and difficult to talk about. You don't need homogeneity for a good discussion and you shouldn't assume chaos when heterogenous people start talking.

We talk about important things here and should do so in a way that is conducive to engaging conversation. Topics shouldn't be off the table.

Also, what is 'political'?

Edit: typo

</comment><comment><USER69> Thank you, I'll happily flag down politics on HN.

Politics has caused me to start using new software so I can filter Twitter, change my subreddits, and aggressively unfollow people on Facebook (even family at this point).

And still I can't avoid it... though perhaps for the best, since social media by-and-large is just a distraction from real work and real life. I'm far better off coding, reading books, and playing go than reading garbage political news nd opinions from shrill internet denizens.

<comment><USER70> Not caring is the default state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'm a little skeptical of this.... What's the ulterior motive here? We all know SamA was very anti-trump, is this an alternative method to keep the new US political regime from affecting YC? It's almost a weird form of discussion censorship. Whose idea was this?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was my idea and has nothing to do with political preferences, though the election _season_ was probably a factor.

It has to do with us noticing an uptick in two undesirable things: harsh ideological comments, and accounts that use HN primarily for political battle.

You can see one example of how the idea developed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052458)

<comment><USER72> It wouldn't necessarily surprise me to learn that my account is one of those latter, although it would disappoint me a little and cause me to question my approach, since "battle" really isn't a good characterization of what I'm after here.

One of the things I've found most impressive about HN, in fact, is the fashion in which people disposed across the full width of the US political spectrum seem able here to discuss potentially divisive subjects in a civil and perhaps even constructive fashion - I can't speak for anyone else, but I can say that comments here have given me pause for thought, and on occasion to significantly reconsider opinions that I've held - not all of which I still do. This isn't to say that I'm politically progressive or at all likely to become so, but I have found uniquely valuable some of the political discussion which has occurred on HN, and the degree of dispassionate consideration and tenor of general civility I've seen in such discussions here are unique in my experience.

The point I raise isn't that I think the "political detox week" is a bad idea. (Or a good one - time will tell.) But I do think it would be a shame if political discussion were banned or severely curtailed on HN in future. Such a decision seems to me as though it could only be a deliberate effort to invoke the "echo chamber" effect which has redounded to such cost throughout US politics in recent years and especially in recent months. That's something I've seen happening to a broad extent on both ends of the political spectrum lately, and especially since the election. No one on either side seems willing to hear anything from anyone on the other - except here, and I think there's value in that.

Perhaps I'm alone, or nearly so, in this opinion. But perhaps I'm not, too. And even if I am, it still seems worth throwing out there. In an increasingly polarized political environment (and I say this as a veteran of the 2000 election and all that followed it!), HN seems as close as anything I've participated in, seen, or heard of, to a demilitarized zone where parties on both sides can meet and interact in something approaching a constructive fashion. I realize that's not HN's intended purpose, and I don't blame the mods here if they decide that's not what they want to run. But I do think it's something that'd be a shame to lose.

<comment><USER73> Hear, hear! I came to HN specifically to check comments on political news items, because I (generally) found them pretty insightful and excellent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Hallelujah.

My 2 cents: unless it's directly related to tech (net neutrality, SOPA, surveillance, security, etc), it shouldn't be on here.

</comment><comment><USER75> I say make this permanent. A couple of years ago, politics was mostly verboten here, at least unofficially. It's been a slow, steady transition to the current state where political stories have become so prominent.

None of that is to say that politics isn't important, or that I don't enjoy discussing the subject. It just isn't mainly why I come to HN, and I honestly feel a little dirty every time I get drawn into a political discussion here.

<comment><USER76> The BIG wave of identity politics started circa 2011 ... it was easier to be forbidden before that. It is easier to stop a tide than a Katrina.

<comment><AUTHOR> HN can't be immune from macro trends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I respect that HN wants to stay away from the burning dumpsters that have been online political discussions lately. I probably post more than my fair share of political discussion here, but i try to do so only when I see it being relevant to the general aims of HN, even if you're here only for the tech and entrepreneurship. A lot of tech and business is influenced by political machinations, and I value the HN quality commentary on it.

But yeah, partisanship, not so much. Maybe a week of non-politics will help level the conversations here, though it's still a relative oasis compared to just about anywhere else online.

</comment><comment><USER78> I have no complaints. This is where I come more and more often because I am so fed up with endless political bickering on Facebook, Twitter, and, well, pretty much every other place I go that has some sort of comment section or forum. It's frustrating. For me, this is the last bastion of rational discussion.

</comment><comment><USER79> It's your prerogative to enforce HN's own rules about political posts, but I think identifying "politics" as a "topic" is a misguided (political) gesture.

It's one thing to say pogo sticks are off-topic in a unicycling forum, and quite another to say basic human drives (thought, sex, hunger, curiosity, creation, expression, socializing, prediction, story-telling, bonding, power, respect, exploration...) that pervade everything we do are "off-topic".

On the road to pathologizing and demonizing people who don't agree with us, this kind of compartmentalization is itself a mechanism we use to flatten and stereotype away the human needs, desires, and drives that animate others.

You may benefit HN (and society) more by acknowledging these entanglements and focusing instead on how to model, shape, and cultivate responsible civic discourse.

</comment><comment><USER80> Politics stories seem to get flagkilled 95% of the time already, and despite the difficulty of discussing it politics affects our daily lives a lot more than the latest release of some javascript framework.

<comment><USER81> There are different forums for politics though... I think the point Dang is making is that this place isn't primarily (even tangentially) a place for politics.

<comment><USER82> Evidently a large subset of the user base disagrees.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems that a majority (though not a huge majority) of the commenters do. But if you consider that plenty of the 600 users who posted comments also support the idea, and factor in the 1400+ upvotes on the submission (which tend to be expressions of approval), it's likely that community feedback is between moderately and highly positive. Though you wouldn't guess it from reading the thread.

<comment><USER82> Those who favor prohibiting political discourse are only mildly in favor -- even if it's allowed on the site, they can simply ignore any threads with political content and approximate the same effect in terms of user experience. They are thus less likely to bother writing, since it doesn't make as much difference to them.

Those who favor allowing political discourse, however, are angry, since there is no substitute, other way to approximate "discussing politics with the HN community" other than doing so on the HN site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I like the idea of it being a detox and nothing more. I understand that political discussions can drag a site down, just look at reddit, but in the long term ignoring everything political can only hurt us. When it comes to topics like net neutrality, environment, and security/encryption, we can be doing the job of the government itself by crippling our grassroots/discussion efforts.

Being aware of the government stepping in our gardens is important, and if the side effect is sometimes we get mad at eachother, well, at least we're aware.

</comment><comment><USER84> No objection whatsoever to a pause period, but it's important for people to realize there's no separation between politics and anything else, including technology. "Everything is political" is a cliche, but it happens to be true.

"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone." -RMS

</comment><comment><USER85> I feel some irony was lost with the posting of this topic. The relationship the actions HN moderation takes against HN users is, by definition, political. So, by definition, this post should be removed.

Yes the moderation team is going to be handling this on a case by case basis and a thread like this isn't actually going to be shut down but I think it illustrates my point: politics is woven through society at virtually every level. There are very few stories that lack at least some form of politics.

So why not let the community decide what they feel it a topic worth discussion and what is not by flagging posts (like what they do today)? Why must there be interference to steer the community in a specific, editorialized direction?

</comment><comment><USER86> The beauty (in my eyes at least) of Hacker News has always been that the most interesting/relevant stories and discussions find their way to the top of the feed. I've discovered topics and perspectives (including those I disagree with) that I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to if it weren't for HN. I've always felt there is something of a built-in filter present, so this move feels a little forced and unnecessary to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It sounds like you may not be seeing the worst of the threads we're talking about, which tend not to remain on the front page but burn like tire fires anyway.

<comment><USER86> That's entirely possible and a fair point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I support this even permanently. Not everything is political as some people believe.

Hackernews articles and comments about flask, django, and mongo helped me get my first job. Ask hn helped me learn about consulting. I love reading the comments about the em drive to help me understand when the mainstream media doesnt explain or misrepresents.

Even today I still learn so much about js frameworks, and cool plugins or tips and tricks, seeing all this swamped by politics sucks.

</comment><comment><USER88> While I agree with the idea, HN as a whole cannot totally avoid these kinds of issues: _" Tech Companies Delay Diversity Reports to Rethink Goals"_. I haven't posted the link because it's not in the spirit of the detox and it's only one week. Do we avoid these types of discussions because they are ambiguous and hard?

      "Fashion is mistaken for good design;
       moral fashion is mistaken for good."

I understand the re-calibration of HN here. The choice of topics drift over periods of time and a reminder of the rationale is good hygiene.

       "Moral fashions more often seem to be
        created deliberately. When there's
        something we can't say, it's often
        because some group doesn't want us to."

I'm also reminded of a great essay [0] that for today should be mandatory reading.

[0] _" What you can't Say"_ ~ [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

</comment><comment><USER89> This doesn't feel nonpartisan, it feels like it's actively quashing what little political traction can be gained here.

And frankly, a 'detox' is absolutely the wrong word for it. The emotions for me at least come from feeling scared. I have several family members who will lose coverage if the ACA is repealed and I have muslim friends who are looking at the prospect of being sent to interment camps.

This is anger and fear that should be cultivated, not extinguished.

      sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" >> /etc/hosts'

<comment><USER90> Yes, "taking a break from politics" is a privilege granted to those not directly effected by it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> I come here to talk and learn about tech and science, not banter about politics. I'm all for a politic-free HN.

Find just about any article on the hacker mindset and politics, aside from the desire for freedom, won't be anywhere near the top of the list. Nothing about Republicans, Democrats, race, etc.

Some examples:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28subculture%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28subculture%29) [http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker- howto.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html) [http://suntzu23.blogspot.com/2006/11/five-principles-of- hack...](http://suntzu23.blogspot.com/2006/11/five-principles-of-hacker- mindset.html) [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms- hack.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-hack.html)

</comment><comment><USER92> "Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me, I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide, All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you."

Information/Internet technology is inseparable from politics now. I never asked for that and neither did any of us, but that's the inescapable reality. Our inventions are being used to both enhance and disrupt democracy, and they are causing real people real pain along with the huge benefits to millions of others. Like many, my own productivity has taken a huge hit in the last year because of all of the political news. I resent this in the same way I'd resent a hurricane hitting my house, but pretending it isn't happening won't help. HN being a blend of pure tech stories along with political+tech stories is absolutely the right blend because IT REFLECTS THE REALITY OF TODAY'S WORLD. Trump's election is the biggest change in politics in the last 50 years, and IT was at the heart of that election, in terms of the forces that have caused the desire for change (e.g. worker displacement, cultural upheaval), and the mechanics of the election itself (e.g. Twitter, news feeds, fake news, media manipulation, big data, etc.). We, the IT workers of the world, are the new weapons-makers. That we never meant our work to be used that way is immaterial. Everybody in tech should now be politically informed. We should be tuned in. We should know details. We should learn the facts. I'd love to spend 100% of my time learning about new frameworks and hardware, and that's what I enjoy doing. We have the ring now, even if we never wanted it. Now it's our job to keep it out of hands of evil.

P.S. I started writing this response with, "Good! I am so sick of reading about politics everywhere. Great move, HN!". Then I changed my response to the one above.

</comment><comment><USER93> We all share a responsibility to behave like adults. Is this really the way to deal with some people being quick to anger? What's the difference between people debating over the best political theory vs, say, unproven quantum theory, or lay speculation on economics, or on history, or on aesthetics, or on evolutionary post hoc rationalization, or on predictions of the future?

And as per the US-centrism aspect, personally, I can't see how muting political debate will shift the average discussion _away_ from US-centric politics, in general..

</comment><comment><USER94> That will give us all more time to discuss religion (the other topic my parents always said was verboten between casual acquaintances).

More seriously, I'm not going to rock the boat (and won't miss the discussions about politics) but I always figured those stories would disappear from the front page when the community at large didn't want to discuss them. It's a dangerous slope since you can also make the argument that other topics are also too dominant. I personally would like to see fewer articles on Angular but I wouldn't have suggested that they be off-topic for a week. I guess I assumed the up-voters wanted them.

OFF-TOPIC: Any chance we can down-vote articles with enough karma?

EDIT: I guess I should also note that I rarely flag articles since that seems like it should be reserved for some sort of abuse. My thought about down-votes is that it's the opposite of an up-vote ("I'm not interested in this" versus "this is interesting").

<comment><USER95> Tricky thing about politics is that - as dang explained - triggers specific reactions in all of us, in a self-amplifying way. So while I often do comment on political topics, I also like this experiment very much. Politics will never disappear from HN completely, but what I desire is for the occasional political discussion on HN to be of high quality - both civil and insightful. So I 100% support this experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> I've been hesitant to go into new and just start flagging all the terrible stories because I've read about people that lost the ability to flag. So I only flag on relatively rare occasion. Does such an overuse mechanism actually exist?

<comment><USER97> Not overuse, just abuse. If you'd like to flag some more but are worried about that, just send us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'd be thrilled to take a look and give some feedback.

<comment><USER52> I don't know how automated the system is, but would it be feasible to say something like "If your email address is in your profile, we'll try to give you a warning by email before we take action?" As it is, there's not much feedback on whether the flagging action is appropriate or not.

<comment><USER98> As someone who is a regular (permanent?) attender on HN's rate limit blacklist[0], I can say that from personal experience: You will likely not be notified before HN punishes you, but from contacting HN about said incidents, it's generally (maybe always?) a manual process by an irritated HN mod. And if you email them (email@example.com) about your apparent ban, they're generally willing to converse.

[0]I was unable to post this comment when I wrote it, and had to wait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Just passing by this thread to register intense negativity against this plan. HN shouldn't be a "safe space".

Shutting down discussion of "politics"\-- the methodology of distribution of resources within a society-- is the complete opposite of gratifying intellectual curiosity and having substantive comments. How is it possible to gratify curiosity, when you're not allowed to start the discussion? How can the substance of your comments be displayed when the topic is verboten? Perhaps what dang is upset about is the tone with which these comments are conducted. Sure, they're shrill, sometimes. But isn't it natural to be shrill when discussing issues of morality and heavy consequence?

As far as HN not being intended for use as a political or ideological battlefield: that dream is dead. Technology touches every aspect of humankind, and yes, that means it's political.

</comment><comment><USER100> Politics was definitely a problem right after the election, but it seems to have calmed down a lot and nakedly political stories don't seem to make it to the front page anymore.

I would hope this purge would not include stories related to privacy legislation, as I think the topic is very relevant to the community.

</comment><comment><USER101> Some of the most politically important events and eras were defined and made possible by the technology and engineering that came out of these periods. In the past, engineering has been taught as a separate entity, focusing on monetary and technological risks/rewards. This leads to impressive engineering projects that sometimes devastate communities, wildlife, marginalized groups, etc.

But the truth is that engineering is intrinsically linked to the impacts it has on the environment, its social impacts, its political impacts, and everything else that it affects in this complex web that is reality. When engineering is taught in schools now, these impacts are a major focus. In civil engineering this means that projects are planned that at least take into account the people and communities they are displacing. In industrial engineering, it means sourcing materials from the right places, focusing on environmental impact, etc.

It's absolutely no different in software engineering, or high tech in general. By enforcing an 'apolitical' atmosphere in a tech discussion, you're consciously shifting the intelligence and nuance of the discussion back to a period before we started to consider the impact that technology has on society. This is a dangerous shift, and dumbs down the level of discussion that's achievable by muting voices that connect the discussion with its impacts in other areas. In effect, this actively enforces the status quo, and doesn't allow our discussion here to progress the industry as a whole.

I come to HN because it's a great resource to find interesting tech articles. It's also a great way to stay informed with the latest tech related news. But equally, I find discussion so engaging here because it seems to be so deeply ingrained the heart of the tech community, and because of that, can affect the way the tech world operates as a whole (even just slightly). Stripping down the discussion to a frankly old-fashioned apolitical "tech doesn't affect anything except tech" would be a sad thing for me to witness happen to HN.

</comment><comment><USER102> I disagree with this idea, the point where I consider it cowardly. This is a forum for a community, so let us talk about what we want to, and upvote it if it's good content. If this is actually a concern about a problem happening like on Reddit with upvote bots, then let's talk about that.

C'mon, hearing people talk positively about working with JS lights a fire inside me and my veins pop, so I just don't upvote their comments. Pretty simple.

</comment><comment><USER103> Very true, high emotions preclude clear thinking and this week will be a worthwhile experiment. But unfortunately web technologies are at the core of recent political events making this a very hard problem. For example will discussion on the following topics be disallowed for the week?

-Discussions of intrusions into US infrastructure by Russia which, curiously, always engender enormous political controversy.

-Manipulation of social media for political ends both manual and automated.

-Policy changes on net neutrality proposed by the president elect or others.

-Governmental surveillance as is and as likely to evolve.

-Trolling as a political tool to disrupt opposing communities.

One level up, there is also the possibility that calm well informed discussion is the exact thing that is targeted for destruction. But perhaps this week's experiment will take some steps towards thinking about that.

</comment><comment><USER104> If the result of political articles is a break down in polite, thoughtful discourse, such so that the site operators feel the need to take such drastic action, then we as users should also consider how we are voting comments.

I've recently realised I was upvoting comments (across various sites) that I agreed with and sometimes vice-versa, and I have started making a concrete effort to ensure that I upvote views I disagree with, if they add to the discussion.

I agree with the proposal of a one-week political moratorium here because I think that experiments can make good science. Let's also try to change the way we vote (and comment) for a week, by trying to ensure quality discourse is promoted, not just our views.

It's sometimes good for the soul to respect what you disagree with.

</comment><comment><USER105> How do you draw boundaries of what's political? Everything is political - rules for how and where Cars can drive, rules for who can host whom in their house, gender equality and the job market, drones, and accountability abroad, encryption and government surveillance. It's impossible to have a conversation about Uber, AirBnB, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Twitter without talking about whom it affects and how.

<comment><USER106> Of course, from a broader perspective everything is political, but not necessarily party-political. That's a partisan minefield, and the degeneration of public discourse means that it's a very shallow muddy pool these days. But we have to start talking about things beyond election cycles, like how everyone can live dignified lives when automation really starts biting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> How broadly are we defining "politics" here? Some topics I see here frequently...are these flaggable for the week?

Uber Contractor vs Employee, AirBnb vs Zoning Laws, Universal Basic Income, Privacy Issues

<comment><USER108> Yeah, I think there's definitely things that seem overtly political "politician/organization/nation X did Y" and "this tech affects public via Z"

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> What counts as political? My only real concern is that this is pretty vaguely specified. E.g can we discuss net neutrality? The economy? Economics in general? Professional licensing requirements? Arbitration agreements? All of these have produced interesting discussions in the past, and, while I could stand to go a week without, I'd hate to ding someone's account for posting them.

</comment><comment><USER82> This supposes that legimitately intellectual and civil political discourse is simply not possible, that some sort of "primitive brain" must always take over in any political discussion. This is empirically false. Hacker News generates much more calm and rational political discourse than otherwise.

Of course people sometimes get angry and flame each other in political threads. That should be flagged. For that matter, people flame each other on "Technology A versus Technology B" threads all the time, too, and many other topics.

The way to promote more civil political discourse is to promote more civil political discourse, not to ban political discourse as a dirty, taboo topic altogether.

<comment><USER110> I think it is based on empirical volume of comments and shifts in discourse, not a belief that civil political discourse is impossible a priori.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> While I don't general like censorship... I think this is great. I don't come to this forum for political discussions. I come here to here interesting stories from like minded scientists and inquisitive people. Politics is incredibly divisive and very rarely results in intriguing conversations, more usually name calling and flaming. Nice bold move from HN Mods.

</comment><comment><USER111> I approve, politics tends to be US centric on HN and whilst I like to keep informed there are plenty of other dedicate sources for that sort of information. Also as this isn't a politics site inevitably the debate is a bit of an echo chamber.

</comment><comment><USER112> This is a great idea. I assumed that political discussion would die down a bit after the election, but it only seems to have escalated. Detox is the right word for what is needed.

</comment><comment><USER113> I just wanted to say that I'm incredibly disappointed in this decision and even more so by its rationale.

The idea that Hacker News or tech in general is a 'garden' which should exist separately from politics is simply naive and very privileged. Taking no position, or worse suppressing opposition is itself a position. This is a critical time of political organization and resistance in the days before the Trump administration takes control.

Even 7 days lost in this process, allowing the readers of this site to ignore the reality outside their doorstep is a concrete injury to the disadvantaged communities which will be targeted in the first weeks of the Trump administration.

</comment><comment><USER114> Discussing politics is truly a bit of a black hole - we have unlimited ability to argue for our principles but the truth is that if the sides are relatively secure in their positions and have data they trust to back it up there is no point in discussing further.

I applaud the admins for attempting something like this - communities need to develop strong opinions to survive, or else they will be torn apart by infighting when it becomes big enough that people no longer assume goodwill. This creates an ever-more toxic environment and poisons the well. At least then people are making a conscious choice to agree or disagree with the purpose/opinions of the community.

</comment><comment><USER115> _... war and gardening don 't mix._

Well, victory gardens were a thing not very long ago: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden)

<comment><USER97> These probably weren't planted in the Somme.

<comment><USER115> No, they were more like a morale booster to give those at home something to do.

But during WWII in Finland there were definitely gardens built by soldiers. As the Soviet Union defended against Germany and its Finnish front was effectively paused, the Finnish soldiers began to build temporary houses on the front lines. Here's a photo from 1943:

[http://www.nautelankoski.net/sota/kuvat/sotakuvat/jatkosotak...](http://www.nautelankoski.net/sota/kuvat/sotakuvat/jatkosotakuvat/jatkosota1943_008.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> What exactly defines a story as political?

Some recent topics I can think of... Facebook + fake news is about technology and user behavior, and also very political. Government use of surveillance technology is both technological and political in nature. Role of social media in elections has technological, sociological, politic aspects to it that can be discussed.

To me, being "political" is both what you're talking about, and how you're talking about it.

I enjoy reading what the HN audience has to say about the above examples. I'd be disappointed if they're considered too political and off limits going forward.

Interested to see how this experiment goes.

</comment><comment><USER117> I am disappointed by this decision, but I don't love HN any less for it.

Many comments have pointed out that there are plenty of places on the web to have discussions about political topics, so let's keep the HN about tech.

I see the merit in this sentiment, but for me reading the political discussions within this community is something I value greatly. For one thing, there are a great many non-US based people here. In my experience I have been exposed to a relatively balanced set of perspectives, and generally commenters are thoughtful and un-troll-like.

In short, I learn many things from other folks in this community, and that includes political topics.

</comment><comment><USER90> "Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone."

\-- RMS, "O'Reilly Open Source Conference: Day 3" by Paul Weinstein, in Apache Week (26 July 2002)

</comment><comment><USER118> > Those things are lost when political emotions seize control

> but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political > conflicts activate the primitive brain.

Wait, is the entire premise behind this the idea that political differences can't be discussed in a respectful manner? History would disagree with you on this statement. People are capable of having political discussion without having a flame war, it happens all the time. You're taking the actions of a minority group and saying that because a few people are disrespectful we all have to bury our heads in the sand and avoid politics completely.

This is ridiculous.

<comment><USER61> I think " _at the moment_ , politics is considerably less likely to be discussed in a respectful manner" is a very defensible point, though...

<comment><USER118> Perhaps, but just because something is difficult doesn't mean it should be completely disengaged. It's when things are difficult that issues need to be discussed the most. Instead, we should continue to engage and be more adamant about enforcing our own rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER119> Thank you very much for attempting this experiment.

Notwithstanding the enormous influence the U.S. has on the world, as someone living in another country, I welcome this very much. In my opinion, HN shines when it comes to discussions of technology, it does an ok job when it comes to discussing scientific topics, but it __tends __to break out into parochial cliques (with full cultural blinders on) when discussing topics like politics. This is worst (again, imo) when this happens in comments on other topics; when it is the main topic, at least one can easily avoid it.

</comment><comment><USER120> This is the time for making ourselves uncomfortable and leaving room for others to speak.

It's dangerous to avoid short-term pain by stifling conflict. HN is about technology news and I don't think we should separate the "oh cool" part from the "how will this affect our neighbors" part.

</comment><comment><USER121> Technologists have above average wealth, and have influence on the future of technology and society. There are many here. At some point the size and power of a news site increases beyond the point where its just a toy - like it or not (see Facebook).

And with power comes responsibility.

I can understand adjusting the amount of political discussion, but banning it seems like a derogation of responsibility - certainly if the ban were to persist.

Alternatively, if another leak like Snowden's comes out this week, would discussion be prohibited? What if a big tech company was found to be building a Muslim registry? Could you please clarify whether stories that are _both_ technology and political will remain?

> What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity > and civil, substantive comments.

If that's the clear extent of the mission, that's a pity.

I'd argue there was always a subtext on HN, whereby hackers giving prominence to their intellectual curiosity is justified because this path also eventually produces Good Stuff, technology which solves real problems, and eventually creates wealth and makes people's lives better. I would thus recommend against drawing a bright line around 'gratify intellectual curiosity'.

If we're just clicking stories purely because it gratifies us, how's it different to just eating candy? It'd be a pity if that was all the community is intended to be.

</comment><comment><USER122> Dear lord yes.

I've been off Facebook for most of the year, and have noticed how many people have dropped Facebook like a rock after the election.

I have to wonder if their stats are going to suffer as a result.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have almost zero interest in politics. I can think of one politically-framed piece I posted recently because of the GIS content and it was flagged to death promptly. I wish I could have found a non political write up of the project, which I believe predated the political situation that the article spun it around. Perhaps I shall look a little harder today to see if such a thing exists.

I am totally cool with this experiment. It is hard enough to foster good discussion online even without politics.

Best.

<comment><USER27> As promised, here is the GIS related works I posted a couple of weeks back, though I had to brew my own to get a piece without the political angle:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110904](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110904)

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> What is the limit that defines "politics" from everything else ? I personally believe that (more or less) "everything is politics", therefore it is quite difficult to follow this directive.

Actually, the OP is very politic, as it is about how HN is governed, should we flag this post and should you kill the story?

This may sound pedantic, but the example shows the importance of defining what you consider is the limit between "politics" and "everything else"

</comment><comment><USER124> To toe the line between censorship and curation is an incredibly difficult task and I think, as a civilization, it's a fundamental problem. The thought and care and effort that's going into this problem right now is deeply important and I'm grateful towards those who take it seriously, and it's clear that dang (and other HN moderators) are of this class of people.

So my only piece of (hopefully) constructive criticism is that I think there's a prima facie less biased stance to take with an announcement like this. It might go like:

Dear HN,

HN, as a public discussion forum, is a dynamical system that's always "attempting" to spiral out of control. Hence, we have moderators. Our moderators can only inject so much stabilizing energy into HN, and we've noticed that many or most political discussions are more energized than we can handle. So, we're going to see what HN looks like from a moderator's POV when we disable political discussions.

I guess this too sounds a little alarming, but my point is that I think there could be a way to talk about the issue at hand in terms of pure magnitudes instead of using language that says anything qualitative about different types of discussions. Something about the idea that "we have certain values, these discussions aren't aligned with our values, these discussions don't belong here" is a little off-putting.

All that said, it's not at all ridiculous to test whether or not banning political debate may in fact make HN a more robust and effective knowledge hub. Hopefully this experiment will yield interesting results.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really good, and I wish we'd consulted you beforehand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> "Well-kept gardens die by pacifism" [http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/)

</comment><comment><USER126> A submission on climate change was flagged and removed due to these political guidelines. Is this really considered political? Wouldn't it be more justified to call it 'scientific'?

How is anyone supposed to realistically draw the line between what is political and what is not? Couldn't any topic in the world be related back to politics one way or another?

This seems like a blatant plot to censor 'unwanted' topics and articles. A huge downvote from me.

<comment><USER98> If it's the one I recall, it was about "how to talk to climate change deniers" or something like that. I flagged it (dang says to overflag rather than underflag in this regard anyhow). I'd have a hard time categorizing it as "not political". It's a charged political topic, the details of that conversation had nothing to do with technology, and almost entirely were about "how to argue with the people you disagree with" who happen to almost entirely belong to a single political party.

<comment><USER126> I do see what you're saying however, climate change is not a political topic in itself. It is a scientific topic that has to do with the world getting warmer.

The article was not "how to argue with people you disagree with" but how to connect with an audience who does not believe in a scientific consensus due to misinformation. In fact the point of the article had nothing to do with arguing (or political parties), but rather empathetically connecting with an opposing viewpoint.

This is exactly what I meant from my parent comment. Because a topic has been hijacked by political parties we can't bring it up? Climate change = science topic. It is a well documented phenomenon that 97% of the world's climate scientists agree on [1].

Being on either side of the political spectrum is irrelevant here, as at its core this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with science.

[1] [http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific- consensus/](http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/)

<comment><USER15> I sympathize with the sentiment you express here. In some ideal world where people are purely rational beings this might be the case. However, that's not the world we live in, and empirically has not been the case here on HN. You can see that on any climate change thread (at least any I've seen here). You mention in another comment that anything can be eventually connected to politics. I agree. And unfortunately some members will always make that connection rather than fighting against it to have a civil, constructive discussion. There are plenty of interesting topics that don't slip as easily into inflammatory political back-and-forth. Avoiding those that do seems prudent and which is what the HN guidelines explicitly state. And that's what the detox week is trying to reinforce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> I wasn't aware there is a problem.

<comment><USER65> The threads which dang moderates are a good chronicle of political discussions gone bad: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang)

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> I am all for experiments, and I think this is a good thing to do for a week.

Long term, politics is inseperable from many other issues, so I suspect this isn't a viable long-term rule. However, insisting on thoughtful discussion may be easier after some "detox".

I for one certainly miss the functional programming articles that used to be so much more common on the front page. Here's hoping for a week of new and non-political food for thought!

</comment><comment><USER128> Hey Dan,

This seems like a dramatically misguided attempt to rectify conversational tone.

You can't de-program or disregard people's politics, it's shot throughout everything. Politics frame the foundational approach to recommending policy, how we make decisions and the stories and topics we care about.

It's important to find common ground and ways to discuss topics _in spite of_ politics, not deny the fact that politics pervades everything.

</comment><comment><USER129> I get what you are doing - HN has been in eternal September mode for a while now. I'm not sure it will work but I hope it does I don't want to have to find a new message board.

My question is what counts as political? HN has been an important place for me to get news about censorship, surveillance and copyright issues that are just not covered by my country's press (UK). I would be sad to lose this news source.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is just for a week, so you're unlikely to lose much, and those topics aren't going to disappear from HN.

<comment><USER129> Thank you for addressing my concerns. I hope that you don't end up having to ban all political discussion permanently.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not going to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER130> I appreciate this effort and get the gist of the experiment. At the risk of being too philosophical, I'd just say, _everything_ is inherently political, so drawing a line may prove to be tough in some cases. "Politics" can expressed in subtle ways and not necessarily as the central topic at hand, but imbued into it.

I'm reminded of Ted Nelson's notion that politics, loosely defined, is "clash and reconciliation of agendas" and, "If software is successful, it steers the path that many users take, and selects among many possibilities to further the creator's agenda...Suppressing the other possibilities may also be part of the agenda."

[https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/video/the-politics-of-internet- soft...](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/video/the-politics-of-internet-software- geeks-bearing-gifts/)

In any case, I get & appreciate the practical goal here and what you're looking to accomplish. I know I specifically need a Trump-related detox, in general (although not because of anything I've seen on HN).

</comment><comment><USER131> The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This camel in the sand approach clamors to roll back to a time when tech was not political.

But now tech is political, surveillance and the surveillance economy being built by SV companies is political, techologists working for the government building invasive surveillance systems is political, the betrayal of people by a technical elite is political, the censorship advocated by social media based out of sv is political, AI is political.

Ignoring this is like an arms supplier turning a blind eye to his weapons used to kill innocents choosing to focus on specifications. ie a world without morality. That's not protecting values or intellectual curiosity, its killing it.

The kind of forum HN has morphed into for lack of an alternative cannot be run by an organization with commercial interests. Then you get knee jerk arbitary decisions like this that begets a culture of passivity accepting what ever is handed down to you. I think the technical voice needs more robust expression and to speak as one with the rest of the population rather than seek isolation and alienation.

</comment><comment><USER132> In recent threads, I've made some factual observations, only to have people imagine a slant or motivation, then argue with that commenter of their imagination. I think HN is succumbing to the "Arguments as Soliders" antipattern:

[https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers)

</comment><comment><USER133> Why isn't this exactly like playing "Nearer My God to Thee" on the deck of the Titanic? The ship is sinking and we're going to talk not about the water rushing in through the hole in the hull, but about ...gardening?

By all means let's have a civilized conversation but we're in a political crisis and "we" as "hackers" need to help fix it, not wish it wasn't so.

</comment><comment><USER134> Please god. Great idea. Also I'm sick of reading about "Fake News". Please stop it. Please.

</comment><comment><USER135> I know an engineer from Iran. He's a great guy, not particularly religious at all. Pretty much a totally normal guy. I asked him about politics in Iran. He said when he was going to school for engineering in Iran where he grew up, his friends all made a pact to completely ignore and stay out of politics. He said it with a smile on his face and absolutely no regret.

<comment><USER136> That's also a good answer for someone who was highly involved in politics - and might explain the smile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER137> It's a half measure and it won't help much.

Hackernews is like reddit before subreddits.

It's too big now, too many people, too disparate of subjects, too much noise and not enough signal.

Over the past couple years, definitely in the past 2, hackernews has gone from say a reddit SV subreddit, to a generalized, worldnews/politics/general news generic reddit.

That's not what this is. And when hackernews becomes what reddit.com/r/reddit.com used to be, it dilutes the userbase and invites/attracts people who have nothing to do with the hackernews ideology and culture.

This is a positive first step, but far too little and maybe too late.

This site is becoming a generic catch-all subreddit for all news, and with that change the userbase is reflecting the lack of focus on SV/technology/hacker culture.

Without dramatic intervention, the tides will turn and hackernews will not be an attractive place for real hackers, real innovators. Won't be worth their time anymore. They'll find greener pastures. Many already are.

<comment><USER138> Who counts? I don't think by "SV/technology/hacker culture" you literally mean Silicon Valley only.

How about a devops person, working with all the latest tech? Does it matter if they reside in Virginia and work for the CIA?

How about a GPGPU and FPGA programmer in Kansas? Does it matter if the code they write is for cruise missiles and they attend Westboro Baptist?

</comment></comment><comment><USER139> I think this is a good idea. I realize that, you know, freedom of speech and all, but this is called HACKER NEWS.

I would personally like it best if the political news just lessened overall, rather than stopping entirely for a week, but what can you do. Can't just tell people "actually, the political thermometer is at 25°C, gotta let it cool down to 21°C."

</comment><comment><USER140> Here's a couple of problems.

1) Many things are political on some level. Consider encryption, the future of technology, automation, global trade. What counts as political?

2) Not discussing things that are deemed "political" is itself a political act - you're basically saying, "we don't need to talk about these things that are actively causing harm." Often times, this is a show of support for the status quo - it's the privileged who get to say what conversations can and cannot be had, and they rarely say, 'let us stop talking about this subject that deeply affects us'. They say that about things that don't matter to them, because they're worried about civility.

3) Some people are actually actively fighting for their very right to exist, politically and in the physical world. Consider the current administration's (especially the VP) stance toward LGBTQIA people, or toward abortion, or consider the active physical harm perpetrated on the bodies of non-white people by institutions and corporations. If you're upset because people are getting their feelings hurt, consider the people whose actual bodies are being hurt, whom you are now potentially silencing.

Sure, maybe hackernews should be a place where people post stuff like "Show HN: Version 1.2 of my parsing state machine" and _nothing_ else. Maybe we yearn for the yester-days of freshmeat or whatever.

I don't operate under the assumption that HN is a free space or a space for me in particular or demand the right to say anything I want on its platform. I did appreciate its relative openness and the general quality of its commentariat. But this experiment has radically altered my opinion of HN as an online space. I'm going to re-evaluate that, I guess.

This really does feel like someone grumpily saying, "keep it down, kids, we're trying to eat dinner here!"

</comment><comment><USER141> Yay, I fully endorse this policy and hope that it gets extended forever.

Would you always try to car discussions in a baseball forum?

They are both valid topics. But there is a reason why forums specialize on particular topics.

</comment><comment><USER142> Hi,

my personal POV is that a lot of issues affecting the tech community at large resolve to politics in the end - be it the fight of cities and entire countries against AirBnB and Uber for example, the infamous Flint water disaster, the "fake news" battle, internet censorship, snoopers' overreach, the role of Big Data in elections, voting machine fraud...

Nearly every story (even those about new startups "disrupting" a specific market - markets ripe for disruption are usually created by political decisions, be it Republicans or Democrats!) has its base in politics, and I believe it is our duty as citizens and educated people to call politicians and their parties out when they mess stuff up.

Therefore, I believe that prohibiting political discussions outright is a dangerous move - I'm all fine with penalties or flagging if a discussion devolves into outright fight, but not for simply bringing up the topic.

</comment><comment><USER143> Not a gripe but an idea: rather than ban persons from HN for bad behavior, would it possibly be better to "emprison" them, that is, disallow them from posting for awhile and then, after a few days or weeks, permit them to resume posting?

Reason I ask this is that I recently encountered an HN situation where someone who appeared to be a productive member of the HN community was banned from posting because of (truly) poor etiquette, if not outright bad behavior. However, seeing that he had for over a year been a contributing member, I felt that a total ban was heavy-handed and that simply being punished temporarily for a transgression might have served better.

Is anyone familiar with an online forum that merely temporarily punishes transgressors w/o permanently banning them? Does anyone else think banning is sometimes a bit too much punishment?

<comment><AUTHOR> We effectively have that already, because if users continue to post good comments after being banned, other users will vouch for those and we review vouched comments. When someone who was banned reforms their ways and starts abiding by the site rules, we unban them.

Of course that can be a slow process, but anyone who doesn't want to be banned is invited to email email@example.com and give us reason to believe that they'll abide by the rules in the future. And if you see a case of someone being banned that you think is incorrect, you should email us about that too, because we don't see everything.

<comment><USER144> You don't do that anymore. Your correspondence has increasingly turned into approbation and you show an unwillingness to explain why someone is even rate limited.

<comment><AUTHOR> I realize the rate limit is upsetting you, but we've given you a ton of explanation and detailed information about what you need to do in order to have it lifted. Instead you've been doing the opposite. I'm not sure why that is, but it would be good if you'd stop.

<comment><USER144> I can publish our correspondence if you'd like, perhaps others can say what you told me I need to do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER145> I think its a sad day that we can't attempt to be intellectually curious just because its politically related. This last election has prompted me to start reading more on both sides and has lead me to some other readings such as the constitution, economic theory, history, etc.

It _is_ possible to talk about these topics from an academic perspective and it feels like banning it for a week is equivalent to putting your head in the sand and ignoring it because its too hard to have a conversation about it. This is exactly the behavior I was motivated to try and change in myself (stick to tech only, ignore other issues).

Yes, its very difficult to talk about some politics in thoughtful ways but I would hope a community like HN has the people needed to try and address some of the issues coming up. Be it technical (detecting fake news, biases, etc) or intellectual commentary.

<comment><USER15> I understand and sympathize with what you've said here. I also know that empirically this is not the case on HN, at least not under the current environment (e.g., community, guidelines, moderation, current events and political situation). Ignoring that puts what HN is and strives to be at risk.

I've also been actively working on engaging constructively in difficult, contentious conversation. HN is one forum. If politics is on area that's generally avoided here for the benefit of quality discussion on other topics, there are other forums where one can. And perhaps after a detox week (or two?), constructive political might work on HN. I certainly hope so, but am also aware of how difficult that can be in person, and even more so online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER146> Can we have a Javascript framework detox week the week after?

</comment><comment><USER147> I welcome this experiment. There are so many other places for discussion and news about politics, but less so about startups and technology-hacker-related stories.

</comment><comment><USER148> > Political conflicts cause harm here.

If not the ideal scenario, this certainly isn't the worst possible outcome. To paraphrase Martin Niemöller, if you don't speak up for other people then who's going to be left to speak up for you?

Although it may appear the politics and gardening are unrelated or in opposition, there is actually an important link. PG always lists Kenneth Clark as one of his biggest influences. And if you actually watch Civilisation, in the first episode he says that it's a misconception that art arises whenever people have the resources to do things other than working or whatever. Rather, making art (loosely defined) always entails an enormous personal sacrifice, one which people only undertake when they have faith in the longterm stability of society.

</comment><comment><USER149> Though I do not consider this a wise move, it is limited to a week so I don't think the "harm" will be that great (however, nor do I think the benefit will be at all worth the effort of explaining the flags to people who didn't see this Tell HN).

The reason I don't consider it wise is that I think the current political situation is completely unique at least in my lifetime (<40 years) and is not the typical political camps bickering with each other over simply "politics".

Rather, this time around there are Real Issues that are Important. The current trend of populism will have global ramifications for many decades to come. Not allowing discussion on these topics seems counter-productive to me.

</comment><comment><USER150> Politics isn't some isolated thing. Politics is about everything we do and say. A techie elite deciding what they do isn't political, or worse, beyond politics, is part of what got us to this point in the first place.

> HN is a garden, politics is war by other means

Denial, denial, denial. This is like the arms dealers selling to both sides in third world conflict and claiming they are ethically above the killing.

You claim intellectual curiosity, but you peddle intellectual dishonesty.

Thank you, btw. I left HN months ago, and today come back to see exactly the pathetic hypocrisy that turned me off in the first place. Shit like this makes me be ashamed to be part of the tech community.

Sure, let's hide from the real world and pretend it isn't happening.

</comment><comment><USER151> > _Political Detox Week_

I don't understand how so many people have missed the word "week" in this sentence.

This is an experiment, and it's going to last a very short period of time; I support it. I oppose banning political articles & discussion on HN in the long-term, but that's not what this is. It seems the distinction has been missed in most of the comments.

One option I would like to suggest is an option whereby people can enable or disable a filter for political stories. This way if you just want to come and geek out about tech, you can do so, or if you want to follow political issues you have that option as well. I'd use both modes at different times depending on my mood.

</comment><comment><USER152> This seems like yet another symptom of a culture that doesn't see the value of emotional states and thus tries to prevent triggers to such states. I think perhaps a system of encouraging rational thought and healing the underlying issues would be more effective. Also, politics is about how resources are allocated in society -- that means everything has a political implication for the most part. Politics doesn't have to be war. If hacker news is a garden, then politics is how we decide who gets to enjoy the fruits of the garden and who doesn't.

I see a need for an upgrade in political discourse, yet I'm not convinced eliminating conversations entirely is the answer.

</comment><comment><USER153> And to think, HN is already where I go to get away from politics. The site already only barely tracks the daily/weekly news cycle.

</comment><comment><USER154> "Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same time."

I think this calls for more moderation so users that can speak civilly and intellectually about politics can do so, not banning speaking of politics entirely. "Conflict activat[ing] the primitive brain" is rather infantilizing, gaslighting, and not true.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is true, and quite literally so. Our fight-or-flight threat detection systems (what I meant by 'primitive brain') get activated when these topics flare up, and when that happens people can't even see each other as human, let alone engage each other in intellectual curiosity, which is the purpose of this site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER155> I fail to see how encouraging this kind of mentality, even in this small of a dose, doesn't further the historically disastrous mentality that engineering is separate from a social and historical context. There are scenarios now where the digital infrastructure of Google, Facebook, et al are seized upon (even more so) for widely destructive ends that have spiked in their probability. Apple is already showing signs of caving. And given the examples of companies like IBM, I'm not terribly optimistic that there's gonna be some kind of ground swell rebellion against the worse possible outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER156> It's interesting that comments seem to be either strongly in favor, or strongly against. I'll buck the trend and say that I personally don't actually care all that much.

I do like talking about politics, especially when it's polite and level-headed discussion (which seems to be the norm here in NH), and a lot of my comments are on that subject. So yes, it would be somewhat sad to see that go.

But the bulk of HN's value lies mostly elsewhere, and not being able to talk about politics here would still keep it a valuable platform and an interesting community to participate in.

So it's really not a big deal one way or the other.

</comment><comment><USER157> Politics are deeply engrained in the fabric of HN. Just a few examples that come immediately to mind:

* Peter Thiel's support of Trump. * Mass Surveillance Laws. * Net Neutrality.

Are we going to simply avoid any and all potentially controversial subjects?

</comment><comment><USER158> Hi dang. About 45m ago, I added a comment [1] in the Amazon GO mega-thread that mentions the concept of religion. Is this comment acceptable per new policy?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108455)

(Aside: I believe that this detox experiment is treading on dangerous ground, that it will be a struggle to contain the amount of censorship that will happen as a result of encouraging people to flag each other in this way, and that the effects will linger beyond the 1 week time limit.)

<comment><USER55> I'm not a mod, but I wouldn't flag your comment. Mentioning faith-based alternatives for human interaction may not be 100% on-topic, but it isn't political or divisive.

Now, if you had recommended one faith/sect over others for a superior experience of human interaction, then maybe you'd have a problem.

<comment><USER158> This detox experiment calls for all members of the community to police all comments for all mentions of the censored concepts.

Regardless of whether a given comment is OK now, once this detox experiment gains steam will anyone be able to mention anything about any of the designated concepts under the anxious eyes of a newly deputized membership?

(I'm specifically thinking about the 99th percentile of moderation activity given the large number of people on the site and the fact that neutral opinions are not counted by the current voting system.)

Or, will these sorts of down votes be weighted? And if so, by what? Using the karma system doesn't seem appropriate - there are many well-spoken members on HN that hold wildly different, even antagonistic, viewpoints.

What inhibits abusive moderation activity of the sort observed when a CTR-like group was actively manipulating /r/politics?

<comment><USER55> Ah, the "Slippery Slope" fallacy. I can't prove you wrong, but time might be able to.

the downvotes will likely not be weighted. flagged comments will likely have +3 karma as much as they have -3 karma. at least, that's the hope of a 1-week moratorium, right?

To answer your question, the only thing stopping the abusive meta-moderation activity are the two mods here. So long as the posts otherwise meet the posting guidelines, they'll likely remain unmoderated. If they're not flagged, they might not even pop up on the moderator's radar.

Basically, it is up to you to point the mods at things that may or may not be abusive. Which I guess answers your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER159> a welcomed move really.

i come here to read tech news and be part of one of the least toxic communities that's not my old irc channels.

as to politics, there's futurology and discussing sociology, and there's left vs right, "make mericuh gr8 agin" vs "gief all monies to poor" politics, which would put HN on some political brigade's list.

i don't have anything against future speculation and theorizing about conservative\liberal angles to automation and rise of AI or voting machine tech.

it'll be interesting to see what results the detox week will bear!

</comment><comment><USER160> >...it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same time.

I 100% agree with this analysis, but is the answer really to avoid discussion of politics altogether? I don't agree, and I think of the forums I visit, this one has the best chance of maintaining a high percentage of rational discussion to tribal noise.

</comment><comment><USER161> This is an interesting experiment. I personally think decreasing the political "tone" of HN is a sensible goal, but I don't expect that this _approach_ will do well for meeting that goal. Specifically, I don't think the people who most _want_ HN to be political will respond well to this.

There is a reason the shadow-ban was invented: when loudmouthed/trollish users are allowed to _realize_ they are unwelcome, they get angry, and express that anger by defacing, defaming, DDoSing, etc. the community that has rejected them.

My personal belief is that the best thing to do is to not _disallow_ this content altogether, but rather to _ghettoize_ it.

Two examples of this:

• How Metafilter treats posts about Metafilter: they're allowed, but they have to go into a special "meta" ghetto, separate from regular content, where only people who _want_ to see that kind of thing will have to see it.

• 4chan frequently makes new boards—new "homes" for certain content types—just to quarantine content it doesn't like. For example, /soc/ was not created because the 4chan moderators think 4chan _should have_ a meetups+dating board, but rather because such threads were incessant on /b/.

\---

Now, HN already has something quite like these approaches, but IMHO better: the "showdead" system for negative-scored posts, which ghettoizes posts but also individual comment subthreads of posts, in a very granular way.

Here's the experiment I'd like to see done, re-using the "showdead" code:

• Split downvotes into an "irrelevant/Obviously Did Not Read The Article" button and a separate "is political" button (where you can press either or both on any given post.) Track the totals separately.

• If a post's (upvotes - irrelevant) is negative, then it's "dead" as happens now, and you have to have "showdead" on to see it.

• If a post's (upvotes - is_political) is negative, then it's "politics", and you have to have "showpolitics" on to see it.

• If _both_ scores are negative, then you have to have _both_ filters on to see the post.

• Posts would sort/rank according to (upvotes - sqrt(irrelevant^2 + is_political^2)).

I think this alternative would ensure that the people who most want to get into tribal flamewars would "go quietly into the night" (from everyone else's perspective), rather than becoming the sworn nemesis of the community.

</comment><comment><USER162> It's not clear to me what is politics.

For instance, I just came across this interesting article from The Brookings Institution: "Another Clinton-Trump divide: High-output America vs low-output America" [1].

It's a look at how the election broke down by county. Clinton won 472 counties, Trump won 2584. The counties Clinton won produce 64% of the country's GDP, with Trump's counties producing 36%. With the exceptions of the Phoenix, Fort Worth, and a big chunk of Long Island, Clinton won all the counties that have large economies.

They have a neat visualization of all the counties by size of contribution to GDP and who won them.

The discuss how this big a divide is "unprecedented in the era of modern economic statistics".

The article itself is not taking any political position. It is just providing a way to perhaps get some insight into how the election came out the way it did.

Would this article count as politics and so be subject to this week's ban? Or is it an interesting look at data that happens to be data about a political event?

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the- avenue/2016/11/29/another...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the- avenue/2016/11/29/another-clinton-trump-divide-high-output-america-vs-low- output-america/)

<comment><USER163> But wouldn't this clearly be politics? And is this really necessary for HN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER164> Is this some special narrow definition of "political", or is the expectation really that everything touching in any way upon government or public affairs of any country will be deemed off-topic and killed?

Because a very large share of HN stories and comments have political content in the dictionary definition (it's hard to address the societal impact of anything even in a descriptive way, much less to discuss views of the merits of such impacts, without such content.)

</comment><comment><USER165> Thank you this is fantastic. I try to keep political discussions separate from technology and being unable to read hacker news without facing political discussions is taxing.

</comment><comment><USER166> > Why? Political conflicts cause harm here. The values of Hacker News are > intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. Those things are lost > when political emotions seize control.

Decides and all wise and smart moderator. People on HN somehow are capable of perfectly logical and intellectually enlightening arguments when discussing Javascript frameworks, best practices of team management, recruiting processes and if women are less paid in tech industry and their love and devotion for Elon Musk.

> Worse, these harsher patterns can spread through the rest of the culture, > threatening the community as a whole. A detox week seems like a good way to > strengthen the immune system and to see how HN functions under altered > conditions.

How a detox week helps compared to outright banning it ? Isnt that better ?

This is how I read above comment:

Some HN users might be feeling triggered to hear opinions that go against their own political opinions. Such people might be in large numbers. Censoring political opinions might help HN to keep these users. But HN moderators are not sure if this hurts HN very badly. This detox week is basically an A/B test to see if HN does indeed lose by censoring political opinions.

This must be renamed to "Political Safe Space Week to figure out if we can outright ban political speech on HN".

</comment><comment><USER167> > Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, > that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to > stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the > primitive brain

The unfortunate fact is that political discourse in America (and, I understand, in many places elsewhere), has been reduced to lizard-brain questions.

In particular, but certainly not as the only example, the US president-elect ran on a platform that many of us would characterize as playing off machismo and fight-or-flight, rather than actual policy proposals.

HN is a good thing not because it's a way to waste time at work, but because discussing technology ultimately helps us create better technology. But the assumption in this decision seems to be that discussing politics _doesn 't_ help us make better political decisions.

I think it's clear to most of us that tech's recent success is due in large part to communities -- open source, StackOverflow, and yes, HN. We learn from each other, and this makes us all better.

If we think this model doesn't apply to politics, that each of us is better left to make up our minds independently, and that we cannot learn from each other, I fear for the future of democracy.

</comment><comment><USER168> > Have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them. > This really is an experiment; we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term > changes. Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens > when we try something new.

What are the criteria you've established for evaluating whether the experiment was a success? Do you have evidence of HN being used to seed political clickbait stories? Voting rings? Etc.?

</comment><comment><USER169> Was this decision made top-down or in response to the desire of the community?

As someone who values the contributors to HN and appreciates the diverse set of opinions, perspectives and critical thinking I find here, which are all handled 99% of the time with decent respectfulness as far as I can tell, I find this effort kind of sad.

Hopefully we learn something good from this, but not sure what that could be, how to decide if it's good, or if it will be worth the effort.

</comment><comment><USER170> Politics is about the distribution of power, in that way it's much broader than government. It goes all the way from UN, WHO through nation-states down to the community, home and even bedroom. The personal is indeed political as they say [0].

Speech is a form of power. Decisions about which speech is allowed affect the distributions of power and it's easy to see how the decision to ban politics is itself political.

In this sense it's not possible to ban politics from HN, only to change the distribution of politics.

We should examine the ways that a ban like this might change the distributions of politics and power among the HN community. I suspect we'd find it reduces the power among marginalized communities. Even if you're not from one of those communities you can really benefit by reading their writings. In that case to cut off those voices is a shame. It's a loss.

Who's deciding what counts as political and not? Moderators. We should examine that. "Banning politics" essentially becomes "Moderators politics."

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_personal_is_political](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_personal_is_political)

</comment><comment><USER171> Everyone on the left is calling this oppression and suppression.

Everyone on the right is calling this an affront to free speech.

When you piss off everyone, you are probably doing the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER172> A lot of people seem to be reacting to the idea that all political discussion will always be banned forever on HN. Politics is important and affects everything in its own way, but this is just a post-election cooldown from all the super-polarizing Trump bullshit that has been preoccupying America for the past eighteen months. We're going to have plenty more to talk about starting January; I for one, welcome the break.

</comment><comment><USER173> I think not talking about politics is counter-productive. I think if more people would talk to each other about political topics, then liars like Donald Trump wouldn't get elected.

Btw, if there are any Trump supporters on HN, it would be interesting to hear their views. Likely, due to how the community works they can't be heard due to downvoting and/or flagging which I think is a shame. I prefer more debate over less.

</comment><comment><USER174> I have had the feeling that HN has been surreptiously invaded by a troll army, specifically tasked with corrupting the ongoing discovery of consensus.

</comment><comment><USER175> I think it's a great idea. Will this be posted publicly somewhere so people who did not see this post will know not to submit political stories?

<comment><USER14> Not sure why you got downvoted. Any thread from a paywalled site has people asking why it's okay to post paywalled content, or how to get around the paywall, even though that was announced in a similar thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER176> This is welcome and refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER177> What is the experiment? What is the hypothesis and what are the metrics we will be using to measure success or failure? I cannot understand how this is healthy or beneficial. If there are disrespectful comments, moderate them. But saying "some people cannot talk about these things constructively so lets not talk about these things at all" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

</comment><comment><USER178> The values of Hacker News are intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation.

Thank you for reminding us here about that. Let's make it a month? A year? :-)

</comment><comment><USER179> I understand the sentiment, and promoting civil discourse is a wonderful goal. But the way forward is figuring out how to promote the good, and discourage the bad, not disengagement.

I don't think I can say why it is important to engage better than Charles Krauthammer, so I'll just put his words here.

"While science, medicine, art, poetry, architecture, chess, space, sports, number theory and all things hard and beautiful promise purity, elegance and sometimes even transcendence, they are fundamentally subordinate. In the end, they must bow to the sovereignty of politics.

Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything – high and low and, most especially, high – lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933… Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns."

</comment><comment><USER180> Yes! This is awesome. All of the politics is tiring.

</comment><comment><USER181> HN isn't a constructive forum for arguing politics anyway. I don't know that such a forum even exists.

If you want to influence people, take Confucius' advice and live a model public life that inspires (or shames) others into behaving ethically. Don't waste time dragging yourself down into arguments with base people, live a life that contrasts yourself with base people in the eyes of others. Let you successes, your intelligence and your quality of life, sell your politics. I make sure all my friends, especially my politically- and religiously-extreme ones, know how great my life is. Every time I post a picture of my smiling happy family and our successes, I am advertising my moderately-liberal politics and my Humanist philosophy. And when my conservative Christian friends do the same, they are successfully influencing me to have a more positive outlook of their politics and religion. Be a friendly, caring representative of your side of the aisle and you will constructively influence others.

</comment><comment><USER182> All censorship is done with good intentions. Things are censored because they are somehow against a certain set of values or they threaten the well-being of the establishment.

So this move is on thin ice.

But I also think that politics and politicians in particular are getting a lot more media exposure than they deserve or need.

Politicians are the new rock stars... but they shouldn't be. They should be spending time working on actual societal problems - the things they've been elected for.

All the rest of us, too, should give them a lot less attention and focus our attention on issues rather than people.

Political affiliation is a very subjective thing, similar to tastes in music or art or sex. There's no perfect solution to all the problems we're facing and that's why we disagree on things.

So often political discussion is a futile attempt to convince the other side that the worst (their point of view) is the best (our point of view). Which is a waste of energy and time and should be avoided.

Considering all of these factors, with a shade of worry I think this is the right thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER183> You've used the word experiment to describe this ban, so I'm interested to know: \- What hypothesis is being tested? \- What are the metrics that will be used to conduct the test?

My gut reaction is one of disappointment. I've enjoyed and appreciated the political discussion on HN, which has stood out from other political discussion on the web. My experience has been that the HN community respects facts and evidence-based discourse and that's been refreshing in an environment swirling with fake news.

Further, as a community interested in startups that often seeks "disruption" we need to think more about the social impact and ramifications of technology on society and on those who are disrupted.

Edit: I agree with the idea of holding the HN community to a high standard of civil dialog for political discussion or any topic like tabs vs spaces or language vs language. A tech-infused alternative to this thread might be, "Ask HN: Chat bot for managing / extinguishing flame wars?"

</comment><comment><USER184> Excellent decision. You only need to look at what happened on reddit in /r/politics or /r/the_donald. The polarization is poison for creating a shared culture for intelligent discussion of topical issues. To be sure - <USER5> debates are important - but it's not like there's a shortage of forums that do cater to this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER185> This item immediately came up with the really great news that the California drought is ending:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108944)

So, that immediately prompted follow-up comments about rivalries between northern and southern Californians over water use (edit: including whether the choice of this metric is southern-Californian political propaganda!), about whether Californians can manage to reduce the amount of water that we need, about whether the west has too much human settlement, etc. While those may not align very well with political ideologies that have been the most controversial here, they could be seen as political questions (and they could potentially lead to flamewarring over different aspects of environmentalism).

How does this kind of topic fit in with this plan, dang?

</comment><comment><USER98> This sounds awesome. Politics has weighed heavily on here at times, even on topics that... just aren't relevant to the tech industry.

It'll be interesting to see where this line falls on tech politics stories this week. Is a post about like... the FCC transition team in or out this week? It's definitely political, but also very tech.

</comment><comment><USER186> To all the people saying there are lot's of other places to discuss politics - what good quality ones (with reasonable moderation, not total echo chambers, accessible to normal people) would you recommend? I'm genuinely asking, I feel like they are not that easy to be found. For my part, I like slatestarcodex.

</comment><comment><USER187> I already did my detox. Deleted my bookmarks to political news sites, unfriended some IMHO toxic people on FB and have generally refrained from commenting on politics, of any kind, since the election.

Kind of plan on staying that course.

Keep the political links, discussions, etc. It's not like I have to read them or comment on them if they appear.

And neither do you.

</comment><comment><USER188> Disagree, not because it isn't a good idea right now, but :

a) we should not abandon the general rules, unless under the most exceptional circumstances [ ie. unless these posts threaten to kill the HN site or render it unusable in the main, we should not adopt a special rule ]

b) its un-needed, in the sense we can choose to self impose this by not upvoting overly political stories/comments

c) HN is already practicing too much self-censorship - we need to tolerate some extremes / ugly points of view, in order to keep a healthy community where free speech is highly valued and where any subject can be discussed

d) imo HN is equally susceptible to hostile takeover by ugly "trumpism"'s as it is by political-correctness / overly tolerant relativism. It is for each of us to upvote/downvote/comment in order to fight against memes that might enslave this community and its freedoms.

</comment><comment><USER64> One concern I immediately have is that what is politics to one person might not be politics to another, and given that too many flags that are judged to be inaccurate result in the removal of the user's ability to flag...

You see where I'm going with this. It may be worth rescinding that policy during the testing period.

</comment><comment><USER189> There are dozens of comments saying in effect "but politics are important!!!!"

That could certainly be true, but does that mean that they are important and appropriate in all circumstances? Are no areas allowed to have a politics free discussion?

I applaud this change. The only criticism I have is that it's limited to a week.

</comment><comment><USER190> A big part of today's media environment is mediated through tech's most popular and/or biggest companies (Facebook and Google, Reddit, probably to a smaller degree Apple), with the internal choices of tech's last big success (Facebook) having likely strongly influenced the last election.

I disagree strongly with suppression. You break it, you own it. the point of view of most younger and not so young people is nowadays mediated through tech via social media. Here is the place where it is most important to have a debate about that.

If you want to moderate it differently from other subjects, add a different set of tags or karma reservoir so that it doesn't spill over from it. I think it's important to keep the political stories on the front page, especially as this election's outcome will create incredible changes.

</comment><comment><USER191> I fully support this and think it's been a long time coming.

Civil discussion and political discussion are fully incompatible.

<comment><USER110> You might want to check where the word "civil" comes from...

</comment></comment><comment><USER192> Given the profound affect tech has had on the last US election cycle, it is difficult not to read this ban as the execution of a political agenda.

The idea that the two can be extricated from one another is absurd on its face.

But what's also notable is the boldness of saying it out loud. It has always been the policy of HN to flag out the majority of "politics" before it resides in the new queue for more than an hour or two.

This "experiment" will surely quash conflict, but by banning anyone who has any reason to express contention. The burden of social censure has always been placed firmly on the head of the aggrieved on HN, but it's been an unofficial policy until now. People like me are rate limited for being "too contentious" on political subjects already. Now we're outright forbidden from talking about it.

</comment><comment> vic-traill I'm not sure how I feel about the idea. [Rumination Required]

However, I definitely like that you're trying it out.

</comment><comment><USER193> I am a hacker and a part of this community and have been for many years. My little family is gay and mixed race, and because I work for a non-profit relies on the government for health insurance. My in-laws are brown people living in a hostile part of the United States where vicious hate crimes are spiking.

Why don't I qualify as part of the community? Politics is now more and more bearing down on my family, oppressing us, threatening us. We are afraid and depressed every day, even while probably cowering from fully facing the gravity of the threat this administration poses. It is hard to code when you are terrified.

Why doesn't HN care about me? Why aren't its powerful, its brilliant, its wealthy, abandoning all other projects to protect me? Why? I need you to save my family. Please.

</comment><comment><USER194> I'm worried about how this will effect civictech, edtech, govtech story coverage which has been great in recent years on HN and are important for helping the community to be informed of how it's contributing and how individuals can contribute to addressing societal issues.

</comment><comment><USER195> Thank you, I'd also prefer HN is only tangentially political. I don't want it to become reddit.

</comment><comment><USER196> _shrug_ , I haven't seen any submissions or threads I'd consider political for over a week.

</comment><comment><USER197> I see all the re-assurances about this being "only for one week", but what's the point of a one-week experiment if you're not at least remotely considering making it long-term?

You even say yourself that "we don't have an opinion yet about longer-term changes" and I assume you're hoping the experiment maybe helps you form that opinion?

While I understand the intent behind this decision I don't see it accomplishing anything worthwhile. It may reduce flamewars temporarily, but people get flamey on tech topics too.

It's a hell of a privilege to think that technology and business discussion can be separated from political discussion. Politics will constantly intersect with technology and business.

You're using a battering ram to hammer a nail.

</comment><comment><USER198> I get it, the spate of political discussion on HN is stressful as politics is people and the recent change in political climate means a musical chair of winners and losers of the process.

But I disagree about the approach -- what is politics anyways? Most polarizing these days: probably gender, race, and socioeconomic status, and the various parties cater to those human categories. We all inherently have these things that form the basis of our thoughts and how we see the world -- so I honestly don't think it's easy to separate.

If the cost of thoughtful conversations on politics is dealing with flame, then many of us are glad to pay the cost of doing business -- and I hope you'd find a majority of people here would behave similarly.

</comment><comment><USER199> I first came to HN because I wanted someplace to escape the political news cycle. Not because I because I wanted to avoid politics altogether.

This seems like the right move for now. But we should be able to discuss political matters when they intersect with the topic at hand.

</comment><comment><USER200> I understand, and I know HN has the right to control speech in the forum it owns. So I will only write this in the thread where I have been invited to write it (and will note that I am a Libertarian so I of course did not vote for Trump): The major theme of the media and in many comment threads on many sites has been to decry the totalitarian, authoritarian nature of the coming Trump regime. I find it ironic that the response of HN is to implement thought control by suppressing an entire genre of thought. After all, once you rise above the level of bits and bytes, you are going to get into political speech. But go ahead. It's a free country. Just not a free forum (here, that is).

</comment><comment><USER201> It might be a very boring week for stories, and I do share drzaiusapelord's concern this is happening when a new cabinet is being announced. Plus some troubling laws out of Australia and the UK.

Science without philosophy is dangerous, and philosophy without science has no use. The political implications of technology are a big part of the discussion.

I guess I don't believe this step would have been taken if someone else won, and that belief, justified or unjustified, troubles me.

But, I guess anything that gets the damn pipeline news off HN is fine. I'm getting a little sick of the distortion field and do gooders that are going to leave people high-and-dry on that one.

[I voted 3rd party for the top spot in ND if it matters]

</comment><comment> grey-area I do think you should clarify what you mean by politics.

Clearly you don't mean stories touched by politics like uber tracking users or everything tech would be offtopic. Clearly you do mean stories about Trump. Somewhere in the middle a line has to be drawn.

</comment><comment><USER202> Many of us were skeptical when visible HN leadership expressed sentiments over and over like this:

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/785769454516916228?lang=en](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/785769454516916228?lang=en)

And we, in turn, were criticized for daring to express our thoughts that, if Trump were elected, YC would play the typical role of the moneyed, comfortable, and powerful, and not use any of its significant power to work towards a better end.

Anyways, cool to put a moratorium on political discussion < 15 days before the electors vote and 45 days before Inauguration. I feel relieved, and not proven right at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> pg hasn't had any role on HN for a long time. Which is too bad for HN, but he definitely isn't "HN leadership". Leadership emeritus maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER203> Politics are against the guidelines of HN. That is why I created Commit [https://commit.ws/](https://commit.ws/) after the election.

Everyone wanting to continue these conversations, please join us there.

</comment><comment><USER204> > What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity > and civil, substantive comments. What it is not: a political, ideological, > national, racial, or religious battlefield.

What Hacker News really is: a community of smart, mostly rational, tech- interested people of the world, impacted by world politics, who share stories and ideas.

Nobody asks for it to be an ideological or political battlefield - <USER6> sense and moderation should be able prevent this. But if this somewhat like- minded community can have a political impact in any way (anywhere in the world) by sharing and discussing political ideas, I cannot see why you would stand in the way of that.

</comment><comment><USER205> > Political conflicts cause harm here.

Preventing political discussions causes far more harm than it prevents. I understand the intent. I understand the problem. Flame wars are not productive. But I think this is a poor response to a valid problem.

</comment><comment><USER206> If this is an experiment, what is the hypothesis? And how will we know if it was successful or not?

"Our hope is that we can learn together by watching what happens when we try something new." is very vague.

This sounds more like an exercise of power.

</comment><comment><USER207> Anything even vaguely political gets flagged to hell within minutes anyway, even if they're directly applicable to technology such as labor issues, electronic surveillance, antitrust, FCC news, the editorial control of news in walled gardens, electronic voting, domestic organized commenting squads (as opposed to Russian and Chinese, which are always fair game.) The idea that it's somehow clogging up HN more than the endless glut of random light WaPo, NYT and Nautilus science articles is weird.

I'd be interested in examples of what a political story or a political thread are, because none were given.

</comment><comment><USER208> Preaching to the choir here, but I would like to voice my strong dissent towards this move.

Trump and his cabinet directly effect everything HN stands for: the planet, space exploration, online surveillance. These are not "off-topic" at all. In fact, I'd go as far to argue that even this week-long ban should not touch anything to do with climate change. Climate change is science, not politics, and what Trump does now (see: EPA pick) affects this like nothing else.

Please let this be an experiment and nothing more. I come to HN to have a discussion on a wide range of topics, including politics.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER209> "It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."

</comment><comment><USER210> I'm laughing at how pedant this group is. Viewed under a microscope, sliced and diced a thousand ways and all possible repercussions and views are debated. It's just a week! We'll survive :)

</comment><comment><USER211> If you need political discourse in your week with something just like HN, feel free to go [http://swintonreport.com](http://swintonreport.com)

Sister site to HN the way it looks.

</comment><comment><USER212> It seems like you're doing a dry run of your ability to censor the community. By asking members to flag posts pertaining to politics, you're going to drastically offer what people see by default.

And when are you going to use this newfound ability again? When you arbitrarily get tired of some other topic? And even if you use this responsibly, what about the person who has your job next?

I've been active on this site for over eight years now. We've managed to govern ourselves just fine. I really hope this isn't a moment we all point back to in the future.

</comment><comment><USER213> Most of the politics on HN has been significantly less than previous years. Previously, I could go to HN and get knowledge about various topics related to election results, polling bias, etc. Now, it's pretty limited, literally I saw/see zero items related to politics most days. Honestly, I think politics has as much to do about "hacking" as just about everything else.

Also, who decides what's political. I'm sick of hearing about socialist ideology, and I consider it politics, but I'm guessing that's not what you mean...

</comment><comment><USER214> Politics (outside of those that affect tech) should have never been allowed in the first place. Any place where politics isn't specifically forbidden always degenerates into this sort of situation.

</comment><comment><USER215> Life is politics here's 2 from the current front page :

8 - Silicon Valley's Culture, Not Its Companies, Dominates in China (nytimes.com)

21 - Russian deaths from malnutrition rate 5x lower than in the US (worldlifeexpectancy.com)

</comment><comment><USER216> This is a most unfortunate framing. Politics is not toxic. It is the means by which our society discusses and makes big decisions. Perhaps s/Detox/Vacation/ could have worked?

Certain types of political discussion most certainly can be toxic. I'd support any effort to keep HN free of that. I'd also respect a choice to keep HN completely free of politics if you chose to go in that direction, though I'd rather see a more positive attempt to get the HN community more engaged with the serious political issues of our time.

</comment><comment><USER217> I am curious; does this apply to all of world's political sphere? Or only the United States'? If this applies to only US politics, then it becomes that much harder to qualify this as a political detox. If this is a detox from _all_ politics, then it is fundamentally unfair, as no recent political event in any other country has been controversial enough to warrant a censoring from HN. You cannot (you _can_, but you shouldn't) be biased towards any one section of HN userbase to the detriment of _all_ of the users.

</comment><comment><USER218> Are we talking just us election controversy stuff? If so, this sounds like a welcomed reprieve.

However if this blackout includes government level censorship and attacks on internet freedom it seems like a bad move

</comment><comment><USER219> As a one-off thing, this sounds good. Implemented longer, term, though, I think it would be trying to solve a problem by treating the symptoms. Politics isn't the problem, since politics is simply the process of making group decisions. The problem is not the _topic_ but the _behavior_.

So what does good, relevant, political discussion on HN look like? What does bad (but relevant) political discussion look like? Then update the guidelines accordingly. Maybe the guidelines could even have examples.

</comment><comment><USER220> Why not look at Wikipedia and see how they are tackling controversial topics? Here it sounds like a disappointing ostrich experiment. Let's bury our head in sand, let the storm pass away and see what happens.

I think it's a good think that people are indignant on both side. Let's organise ourself. We have the tools, the concepts, the technology. I am sure it's possible to find some common ground and have some data-driven debates/discussions and form some more balance opinions/belief.

</comment><comment><USER221> What I really fear is that simple statements of fact, e.g. "average global temperatures are increasing", will be flagged as being (scare quotes) political (end scare quotes).

</comment><comment><USER222> Can we migrate to an open-source alternative to Hacker News already?

<comment><USER15> I'm curious about the choice of words "open-source" here. What would having the source available change with respect to this "Tell HN"? Something along the lines of no mods? No voting/flagging? Nothing off-topic?

<comment><USER222> Community operated and moderated. It's amazing how the entire tech community has come together on a message board run by venture capital. It's not a neutral forum. At the very least, a GNU-friendlier alternative would be appreciated.

<comment><USER27> I have prior moderating experience and I have been online a long time. My experiences suggest that having paid mods dramatically improves a forum. Volunteer staff cannot be expected to meet the same rigorous standards as paid staff and they never do.

As someone whose moderating experience was unpaid, I can tell you part of the reason for that: We resent having to deal with assholes who make our jobs difficult and don't appreciate us giving our time and energy to the site for free, because we believe in the cause.

No, it is not a neutral forum. There is no such thing.

Also, my honest feeling is "Feel free to start one." That isn't snark, but I assume it would be interpreted as such because you are asking people to start this rather than saying "Hey, guys, I am tired of this and I have started an open source version over at (THIS LINK) and if you are as fed up with HN as I am, hey, here is an alternative."

People who propose the kind of seemingly idealistic suggestions of the sort you are proposing almost never want to roll up their sleeves and do the work -- because, hey, work is hard and no one is paying them and yadda. Which is likely why HN is the place to be for so many people: Because it is well moderated by folks who get paid, because it supports a business agenda and doesn't need ads or the like to pay the bills. The business -- YC -- is plenty successful and can afford to support the forum for its purposes in a way that doesn't unduly impinge on what people can discuss here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER223> I read HN multiple times a day and I feel like I'd have to go out of my way to find a post that was political, or even a comment that was political. Yes people will go off about anything NIMBYism, housing markets, javascript saturation etc, but what are the numbers? How much politics is really going on here?

Admittedly I'm probably at the point where I don't even see it when it's right in front of me, but it would be interesting to here from the mods of people who frequent /new.

</comment><comment><USER224> Can we have an Amazon/AWS "news" detox week, too? :D

<comment><USER225> Those news were due to the Amazon's event. They shouldn't be that common in the next weeks. Same thing happens around the google i/o and apple's announcement events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER226> Even if they don't totally ban politics on HN forever, what if we keep a week/a few days a month where no politics are allowed - just as an occasional reminder that this is isn't supposed to be a political website. Maybe we can make Fridays politics free or something to remind people to chill.

I support the experiment! This is the sort of creativity and character that brings me to this site! I'm OK with topics with too much political overtone being a little stigmatized.

</comment><comment><USER227> My biggest concern is the question of what is politics? Surely partisan political issues are politics, but is the position of women in tech also politics? Is climate science? I can see good arguments in either direction. The problem, then, is that it places too much power in the hands of those who answer the question of whether something is politics or not.

HN is already pretty bad at silencing opinions outside the groupthink common wisdom; I think this would just make it worse.

</comment><comment><USER168> This is all well and good unless this happens to be the week our government passes a law to require muslims to register, etc.

Considering the low quality of political discussion in general (and especially on the internet), HN is one of the few places where there are generally reasonable, well-thought-out views.

Obviously YC doesn't want HN to discuss politics because it could create a divisive atmosphere and alienate people, resulting in lower levels of engagement and harm to the YC brand.

<comment><USER228> There's at least some reason to believe that discretion won't be completely discarded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER229> This is slightly off topic, but I think what would be interesting if someone would build a website with news that are actually _actionable_ by readers. So no politicians saying this or that, no crimes or disasters, no gossip. On the other hand, they would carry things like events that you can attend, petitions you can sign, rallies that you can participate in, items/services you can actually buy (as opposed to things you can buy next week), and so on.

</comment><comment><USER230> So I love Condorcet's works .... on voting. Nothing politics ... just maths.

So I love Plato's work on SiFi hypothesis : what it means to be invsible and the implication on moralilty (cf privacy) ... just philosophy.

So I love Jeremy Bentham nerdy works of architecture on how to build perfect jails where the one in power can watch everything the others do without being watched ... just architecture.

Finally, I love Gary Gigax (D&D) quote : evil (or politic) is in the eye of the beholder!

</comment><comment><USER231> I like this experiment, so long as we can have exceptions for obviously relevant new material, i.e. "Trump advocates backdoor for Linux kernel" or some such.

</comment><comment><USER232> Thanks. I stop reading facebook because I've grown so tired of the political posts and comments. As for reddit, thankfully I can filter out political reddits now.

</comment><comment><USER233> I disagree. As other have said, there is a great deal of anxiety over Trump's victory and what it means for our industry.

Arbitrarily banning relevant political topics could take away alot of the value I get from Hacker News. I expect news on Trump banning net neutrality to be on Hacker News. I expect news on fully automated McDonalds to be on Hacker News or Amazon suffering a bot revolt.

I can understand a need to flag unrelated political comments on non-political topics.

</comment><comment><USER234> I had always seen HN as a place where people curious about technology, culture and society share article links and comment about them. The moderation is what makes it work. I really do not see why censorship (or detox if you prefer) on political matters should be necessary. if HN really needs this, it might even mean that its audience needs to be educated. And if that is the case it might mean the level you get in here is deemed to decline.

</comment><comment><USER235> I wish we could do this on the Internet for a week (or more).

</comment><comment><USER236> While it is fine that you have decided to no longer be news or for hackers, that means I don't care to continue reading this. Hackers are supposed to question the systems they're presented with, and news is supposed to deal with the issues of the day--political news and computer news are linked inextricably these days. The idea of removing one is asinine, this is not the proper community for it. Lobsters is good.

</comment><comment><USER237> Can you please give specific examples of what "politics" entails, aside from the obvious (so we know where to draw the line)?

For example, as of writing, the #3 post is _" Silicon Valley's Culture, Not Its Companies, Dominates in China (nytimes.com)"_. I would classify this as political, but others might not.

\--EDIT-- I would also classify this front page post as (internally) political: _" Dear JavaScript (medium.com)"_

</comment><comment><USER238> Experimenting it just 1 week cannot hurt. That said, defining the scope of what should be banned is tricky. Exemple on recent Amazon Go article and the so famous "Is massive automation implying jobs removing a good thing" : This question is not about politics but will led to "tribal behaviour" as you call it. Will you also ban such debates? If so where is your censor power limit?

</comment><comment><USER239> Does this include local bay area news (housing discussion etc)? A lot of that can be borderline political but still very relevant to startuppers.

</comment><comment><USER45> Considering the consistent nature of at least one very prominent YCombinator staff member (leader) inserting themselves into political and/or low-rent gossipy slap-fights, I can both appreciate the "sentiment" or "rationale" behind a Detox Week on HN, and concurrently derisively laugh at the ignorant hypocrisy deploying such an edict reflects in practice.

I mean, yeah I get it's probably a lot of work to moderate all the political related discourse and keep the lanes wide enough for a lot of different voices, but it's the catch that comes with having a "community" in the first place.

If this is the first of a series of "experiments" I wonder which other "conflicts" might "cause harm here" \- Identity Discussions? Health care in the US? As cheap as it might sound to pull out a slippery-slope card here, it seems rather apropos.

I get a lot of flack for it here, but if you don't think Politics and Tech are coiled together in significant ways - eg. DMCA and Copyright - then you're just ignorant, childish, and a fool. SV and tech culture is actively using the "Political System" just like every other special interest. Pretending there's some kind of effin' halo over the Hacker News community where such conversations are "below" or "too conflict loaded" then just shut down the forum altogether.

Man discovers fire. Man burns self. Man puts out fire. The end.

<comment><USER164> > If this is the first of a series of "experiments" I wonder which other > "conflicts" might "cause harm here" \- Identity Discussions? Health care in > the US?

Aren't those just subset off politics?

<comment><USER45> Not from a technology perspective - if Health Care research like Stem Cells or Generic Drugs can be wielded like political discussion weapons, in spite of their STEM roots, then does that make them off limits now too? Or finding a genetic marker which might have Sexual Orientation implications. Controversy and discussion are bedfellows, and wanting the latter devoid of the former is childish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER240> I disagree.

Detox will not strengthen the immune system of HN.

Immunity is conferred when the 'garden' is threatened and unifies to counter a problem.

That problem? Inflammatory, unsubstantiated comments that cause people to upvote and downvote not based on the validity of the comment but whether it's favorable to their ideological values.

I believe people can have civilized discussions about politics in HN -- I've seen it before.

</comment><comment><USER241> If you think political conflicts cause harm, maybe you should change how you approach conflict rather than pretending it doesn't exist?

</comment><comment><USER242> Sounds like a worthwhile enough experiment. And at the risk of sounding political: what _better_ time than now?

Either way, we'll see how it goes.

<comment><USER242> The downvotes on this illustrate the point of dang's experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER243> Are you trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist except for the most hardcore HN users?

Because I haven't lately noticed much of the phenomenon you're talking about. And in the first 3 pages I just skimmed over, I didn't see anything that was so political as to be flamewar fodder.

Are you sure you're not trying to solve a problem that your average user doesn't even have?

</comment><comment><USER244> Not sure what to think about this in the context of HN. I've seen other such stances in other communities where it just ends up being a way to enforce/preserve a political bias. Where some stories get a pass for special reasons "oh, this is noteworthy, and from a credible source!", it's just laughable. I hope this doesn't happen here.

</comment><comment><USER245> I feel this is oddly appropriate.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13111026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13111026)

[http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground- burn...](http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground-burning- world/)

</comment><comment><USER246> We could, I dunno, talk about tech, I suppose ...

</comment><comment><USER247> Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER248> After seeing this, I just had to post this (btw I think it's probably a good idea). This clip is kind of a funny metaphor for what I tend to see in comment threads about many topics, but politics especially:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj_ghGKy1PY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj_ghGKy1PY)

</comment><comment><USER249> I don't know why we couldn't have voted on this. Whether it's a good idea or not, trying to impose something so broad on a community of hackers is an exercise in masochism.

I agree with everyone who has said that we're capable of making up our own minds about what to talk about. I don't think political discussions were ever a problem

<comment><USER250> Voting? Why that sounds positively political of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER136> It's probably a good move. Of course I wish we could have intelligent, calm discussions - if not of political ideals per se, then of the peripheral issues like polling, voting machines, etc. But political rage and snark always get injected. And more subtly, individual biases are smuggled in under reasonable sounding language.

</comment><comment><USER251> Well, the week's up. Personally HN lost its spark for me over the past week so I hope this experiment ends swiftly. I'm sure I'm not the only progressive ready to jump ship if it doesn't - if HN wants to protect Trump supporters' feelings from the devastation many of us are feeling then fine but goodbye.

</comment><comment> wu-ikkyu No force is affecting the sociopolitical landscape more than technology. Ignoring this weakens the community.

Carl Sagan, Buckminster Fuller, Thoreau, MLK and many others all spoke about how our technological development is far outpacing our sociopolitical development, to our own demise.

Arbitrarily attempting to censor and separate the two is grossly negligent.

</comment><comment><USER252> Politics is not discrete.

While I agree that posts about election results or political leadership changes are mostly unrelated to topics I come to HN to read about, I think that there are many ostensibly political posts that are very relevant (e.g. Snowden or Wikileaks related posts). I would hope that they will not be subject to exclusion.

</comment><comment><USER253> I disagree with this. Trying to divorce issues related to the tech industry from HN is irresponsible. We can't bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best.

Purely political posts rarely make it to the front page anyway. And having those discussions in comments is what comments are there for.

The only thing I'm going to flag is this post.

</comment><comment><USER254> I don't have a lot to say, except that I support this measure and wanted to comment so that's in the record.

</comment><comment><USER255> I think a political detox week is a bad idea. What some see as gratification for their intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive commentaries and seen by others as political rants and flames. I much prefer a larger world view and a thoughtful "fire department" to quell flames when they get out of hand.

</comment><comment><USER256> Here's an article that was on the front page when I clicked into this discussion:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/librarians-act-now- pro...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/librarians-act-now-protect-your- users-its-too-late)

Is this political?

<comment><AUTHOR> For the purposes of this week, surely yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER257> Can we have an objective criteria with which to judge which comments/stories are political?

Examples would be helpful as well...

</comment><comment><USER258> Statements like this are exactly the reason why I have always been hesitant about having a relationship with Y Combinator. Reminders to be courteous are welcome, but a ban of political "stories" is completely inappropriate especially at a time when minority voices are already consistently silenced.

</comment><comment><USER259> Who says you get to ask why? No, really!

If hacker news is getting political, that is a function of it's users ( and the social climate ). A community is built by its members. For better or worse.

Work on addressing the issues that make the discourse toxic. What does covering the sun with the censorship finger actually accomplish?

</comment><comment><USER260> I would argue that any startup or financial news is political, in that politics shapes the capitalist foundation of our society. HN is Politics, and to try and separate and moderate this type of news is exactly the kind of thing that makes people leave your site in droves.

<comment><USER61> If you define politics as including everything, then everything is political. That doesn't make it a useful definition, though.

I just saw a story about Paul Allen resurrecting a CDC 6500 supercomputer. Yes, that took place in an environment where politics shapes the capitalist foundation of our society, and that's where Paul Allen got the money to be able to do that. It takes an extreme stretch to call that a political story, though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER261> The metaphor is good and the approach and description is actually great. The challenge is that this issue doesn't only happen in the political domain, it can happen in the philosophical and intellectual domains too via the cultural competition (AKA cultural war)

</comment><comment><USER262> This is a mistake. The sort of problems we have in the US can't be solved with censorship and earplugs. If anything, we need more conversation, not less.

Ditto to the many commenters who point out that nothing is apolitical and that such censorship would be subjective anyway.

Don't do this.

</comment><comment><USER263> I was planning to delay the point when I get to know who the winner was on the elections... (I live in Europe) In work nobody speaks about politics. I don't read traditional news sites. I was just curious who will tell me first. Then I opened Hacker News...

</comment><comment><USER264> I'll never understand why people act like a forum is a TV channel. Can't people just hide threads, or avoid topics that don't interest them? It's not like HN only has one discussion at a time and that politics has crowded out other topics.

</comment><comment><USER265> And when the experiment is over, please remember ... If you don't like political posts, they're usually obvious and you don't have to read (or upvote) them. The front page goes by slowly enough that the news you like won't get crowded out.

</comment><comment><USER266> This is a bad idea. I don't know how you managed to convince yourself that it's not.

</comment><comment><USER267> I like this idea as a short-term experiment. Here's another in the same vein: stories with voting enabled but comments disabled. Kind of like a focus group where you just _listen_ to others, without jumping in to assert your own viewpoints.

</comment><comment><USER268> Given the political issues that are of extreme interest to people here that _aren 't_ toxic (crypto backdoors, h1b, etc), why not modify the rule to be "no election discussion, broadly defined" rather than "no politics"?

</comment><comment><USER269> I'd rather there be some kind of isolation of political discussion rather than an outright ban for a week.

Maybe just have a permanent/rotating "politics/culture/society" thread for people to share whatever?

</comment><comment><USER270> As an experiment and a temporary detox, I am all for it. Totally worth testing. But something to keep in mind is that politics is something that needs the help HN community can provide with a thoughtful discussion

</comment><comment><USER271> What happens if something incredibly important happens during this week in politics, is it simply not up for discussion at all? For example, what happens if a world leader is assassinated or a conflict breaks out?

</comment><comment><USER272> What's considered political and what's considered non-political?

Can we discuss ethics? Is saying "racism is bad" political?

What about facts? "Torture is ineffective" or "carbon emissions harm the planet"?

</comment><comment><USER273> Aye-aye sir. I'll be following the new rule with enthusiasm, actually. It'll be nice to have fewer discussions of $POLITICAL_THING_RUINING_THE_WORLD and more about interesting stuff like OpenAI.

</comment><comment><USER274> We live in a political world. Any attempt for the HN community to bisect the set of stories that make up our everyday experience will only illustrate the _political_ bias of the aggregate opinion.

</comment><comment><USER275> Technology is inherently political, you cannot separate _hackers_ from politics, and to try is a fools errand.

That being said, I think I understand where this is coming from, so I have empathy with dang and the hn team about it, but I disagree with this move on principle, _especially now, at a time when some very important techno- political moves are being made_.

For example, the FBI now claims to have the ability to use 0-days to hack thousands of computers on a single search warrant! It's completely unconstitutional, and that is a huge deal, technologically, and politically, that I haven't seen addressed by any crowd very well, and it's the kind of discussion HN _needs_ to have, not to avoid. To suddenly have a non-political week when some of the most important things, time sensitive things, are happening right now is not good at all.

The timing of this also feels suspicious, and there is something else that feels suspicious to me as well, and that's the algorithm that controls what is on the front page. I've seen repeatedly, enough to no longer call it just coincidence, that stories of techno-political important, like the FBI one, get ~250/500+ points and have ~100/300 comments, that are completely off the front page long before is normal for more mundane stuff. I think the hn userbase deserve more transparency on this front.

HN is an American based forum, so while I understand the want to lean towards a type of globalistic technocratic neutrality, I think that is a mistake and fails to take into account the primary user-base, and I think the hackers and geeks of the world, but in particular America, have a duty to participate in the political discussion that is going to be needed to steer policy of our American system, because the revolutionary nature of technology is quickly getting out of control for ordinary citizens and politicians, and our system impacts the rest of the world.

We need more politics, not less, but we need it in the unique HN style where people can have good manners on the discourse, which is much more conducive to intellectual conversation than just about any other internet forum I can think of other than slashdot in it's heyday.

With the increasing totalitarian surveillance society that _we as hackers_ have handed to the politicians through technology, I think we have a duty to also protect the citizen-victims of our technology run amok in the hands of others. We can't, and shouldn't, hand a technological nuclear weapon to nation states and just walk away and say, but we just want to talk about the technology of the thing. It's a naive and fundamentally flawed process of thinking. I also think it's time for the HN team and it's users to have a more serious discussion about how they want to participate in the future of the internet, and the dystopian society it is enabling, piece by piece.

I also have a single question for the HN team:

Have you been pressured by the US government in any way shape or form on this subject?

In protest of this move, I will not be participating on HN until the week is up.

</comment><comment><USER276> What is the line? Does Net Neutrality count as 'politics'? It is a very political topic, but also one that is important to this community. How are you drawing the line?

</comment><comment><USER277> No need; the new 'hide' feature lets me ignore all that for days at a time. The flamers are burning somewhere, but I don't see it and I don't get singed.

</comment><comment><USER278> Hacker News: the place were conservative viewpoints are not welcome.

It's not _discourse_ here. It's we shoot the messenger if they don't agree with us on everything.

I welcome the detox.

</comment><comment><USER279> This'll be interesting. What defines "political topics"?

Is climate change news political? Edward Snowden news? Wikileaks? A new build of the Signal app? Hyperloop news?

</comment><comment><USER280> Yay, my five year old request for a moratorium (though it was for 2 months, not just a week...) is being honored. :) But really thanks for trying it, I hope it does good.

</comment><comment><USER281> It is such a great privilege that to some people, politics is just noise that you can turn off.

To some people, their livelihood and survival are on line based on what our politicians do.

</comment><comment><USER282> I like the experiment, even if I am not too fond of the idea. However it is 2016, so is there a procedure when politics becomes very clearly relevant in the coming week?

</comment><comment><USER283> I have a permanent solution to the "politics problem": require all comments be cryptographically signed, and give users the tools to rate the signing keys.

</comment><comment><USER284> I 100% support this and would like to see it made permanent.

</comment><comment><USER285> Relevant: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruGBWLk9s8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zruGBWLk9s8)

</comment><comment><USER286> That's a shame. I don't want to see Hacker News become reddit, with anything that has the slightest chance of upsetting someone being banned.

</comment><comment><USER287> [http://hastrumpmadeamericagreatagainyet.com/](http://hastrumpmadeamericagreatagainyet.com/)

</comment><comment><USER288> Making an "is politics / is not politics" judgement is itself a political act. The goal itself is sort of impossible-in-principle.

</comment><comment><USER289> Much needed

</comment><comment><USER290> How about not using the words liberal/conservative/Democrat/ Republican/socialist/racist and discuss issues instead?

</comment><comment><USER291> I'm done. If I could delete my account I would.

</comment><comment><USER292> Uh oh! Now you've really thrown down the gauntlet! If the message forum has an immune system, you're one tough white blood cell.

</comment><comment><USER293> Is there data (say a drastically increased flag rate, number of flame wars, etc.) that show that today is different than 2 months ago?

</comment><comment><USER294> I thought this was already every week on HN. There are very few politics related articles. Pushing the point is a bit much IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot more than appears on the front page, and many of those threads turn into flamewars that go on a long time. You can see them at /active (from /lists linked at the bottom of each page) if you want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER295> For me Hacker News is the only source of news. I know that major events are surfacing anyway - I want them to keep surfacing.

</comment><comment><USER296> being outside US, I strongly support this. I couldn't care less about who leads team america world police, it's all the same anyway. HN is my tech news site, and politics is just a distraction. I understand that US citizens feel strongly about their government, but it's not really tech news.

</comment><comment><USER297> I think this is paternalistic. Individual readers can avoid political topics if they don't want to engage.

</comment><comment><USER298> avoiding what is coming is no way to critically think..its like say oh holding technology to this loft position without acknowledging jobs due to technology progress and government's lack of solutions..

The flames,etc are symptoms..and this is just as bad..

We need a somewhat deeper solution and the discussion of one...

</comment><comment><USER299> What metrics are you planning on using to measure the results of this experiment?

I'm all for it, yay experiments!

</comment><comment><USER300> Wish you'd wait til voting machine tapering allegations were cleared, but hey, go nuts.

</comment><comment><USER301> I appreciate the sentiment but I fear a slippery slope. What counts as "politics"?

</comment><comment><USER302> when one of the most significant figures in politics right now uses twitter as their platform for communicating with their support base, for better or worse, the idea of being politics agnostic just seems silly.

</comment><comment><USER303> > Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, > that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient ...

Agreed. I've been thinking about how communities can handle this problem for awhile. A solution to it would be revolutionary, in a very good way for the entire Internet, and what better place to experiment with and develop a solution than HN. Here's my over-ambitious shot at a solution, based only on experience in online communities:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

I propose that we have different rules, much higher standards for commenting, for hot button issues. When these situations come up, our moderators could post something like,

      ** Hot button rules apply **

(Or make up a different name: 'Cool head rules' 'Ice down rules' 'Rationality'?) For those issues, the guidelines would add the following and be strictly enforced:

\----

1) Be precise: Who? Did? What?

 _Who_ should be a proper noun; only individuals (and in some cases, specific organizations like 'Acmesoft') actually have thoughts, motives, and perform actions; groups do none of those things - we are not hive minds. This eliminates lazily broad statements with huge implications that provoke anger and fear, stereotype large groups, and don't make us any better informed. 'Tennesseans hate Kentuckyians' doesn't inform anyone - there is nothing all Tennesseans agree on, and nobody can possibly read all their minds, and we know nothing more after reading it than we did before - but '60% of Tennesseans who responded to this survey say they have stopped visiting Kentucky' is fine.

 _Did_ : HN readers mostly grasp empirical science and should be able to understand: Only actions are observable, not other people's thoughts and feelings - though you can observe what they say about their thoughts.

 _What_ , used precisely, eliminates sloppy characterizations. 'Tennessee Governor Jane Jones despises Kentucky BBQ.' No, what actually happened? 'Tennessee Governor Jane Jones said, "I despise seeing Kentucky BBQ taking jobs from hardworking Tennessee chefs."'

Finally, _Be precise_ also means: No hyperbole.

\----

2) Context is required: Where and when

 _Where_ and _when_ are essential context. Think of your high school writing guidelines: Who, what, where, when, etc. 'Tennessee Governor Jane Jones said, "I despise seeing Kentucky BBQ taking jobs from hardworking Tennessee chefs."': It is essential to know when she said that (1985? 2010? Before the Kentucky-Tennessee trade war began or after?) and where (On a campaign stop in a TN BBQ restaurant? The title of a book? A tweet? A warm-up joke for a speech?); otherwise, we have no idea what really happened.

\----

3) Back it up:

The burden of proof is much higher, and on the commenter: Respected scholarly research (not someone's self-published book) or highly respected news media, and not in a column or editorial. Wikipedia's Reliable Source rules may help here, but with higher standards for sources (and also actually applied here; Wikipedia articles often ignore the standards).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources)

\----

4) Be 100% respectful, as if talking to someone important to you whom you respect. No exceptions; no grey areas; stay well away from this line.

\----

5) The only idea we don't tolerate is intolerance itself. See Karl Popper's Paradox of Intolerance if you want to go deeper on this. Or a simpler way to approach it: Tolerance is a social contract - you tolerate me and I'll tolerate you.

\----

6) These rules apply to anyone you quote, also. You can't say 'Kentuckians suck', and you can't quote someone else saying it (except to talk about the quoted person's habit of broad stereotypes).

\----

Comments violating these guidelines are immediately, mercilessly killed dead. Busy moderators may not have time to explain why, but in most cases you can find the reason(s) here pretty easily. Feel free to rewrite according to the guidelines and try again.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

By now you may be thinking: 'With those standards, I won't have much to say on inflammatory topic X!' or 'Those will be much shorter threads!' or 'I'd really need some good information and think it through in order to comment!' Good; you understand. Imagine if we restricted those discussions to only valuable, informative content. The contents of the threads could actually _advance our knowledge_ about inflammatory, often very important, issues. It's almost hard conceive of. We could actually, in the heat of an issue, advance rational public discussion - a goal that has seemed so intractable that it's almost forgotten; it seems almost fanciful. The perfect challenge.

It also eliminates the prominent problem of people making endless wild allegations for others to refute (see rule #3 - they must back up what they post). So instead of endlessly repeating the same low-value information back and forth, we'd actually gain real knowledge from each other. And if some threads are very short, then what have we lost? A bunch of low-value comments from uniformed commenters? Ideological rants? Things we've heard a thousand times before? It even will save some disk space and bandwidth, and reduce page load times.

Finally, if it works - which not at all a sure thing and will require fine- tuning at the very least - the concept could be used by other online communities. What we develop here - not software, but guidelines for community interaction - it could change the world, in a way that it badly needs and longs for.

<comment><USER304> Interesting idea.

One hitch perhaps: topics that start off non-political but veer into politics … happens often enough.

A more democratic way would be for the community to either enable the hot- buttoning or be able to disable it with enough flagging.

When you think about it you're suggesting something akin to Wikipedia's sensitive page rules where extremely divisive pages are locked down and subject to higher scrutiny.

<comment><USER164> Isn't there already a flamewar detector that penalizes threads? Couldn't it also, probably earlier, trigger the "hot-button" rules and notification?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER285> Could we have a banner that makes this well-know?

This isn't top of HN right now.

</comment><comment><USER305> Yeah, and we can have safer sex too if we just don't have sex.

</comment><comment><USER306> I think I'll just take a break from HN for one week instead.

</comment><comment><USER307> Overall, I think this is a good idea, but it probably needs to be made more precise for it to work. What is a political topic, exactly? Are IETF politics off-topic this week? What about advice for NSA employees trying to pull a Snowden?

</comment><comment><USER308> Growing up

Religion Sex Politics

All "no nos"

Still Good Advice!!

Now I add

Money, abortion, Hitler, the holocaust, child care, and elder care.

</comment><comment><USER309> Thank you! I hope we can still talk about Leonard Cohen though.

</comment><comment><USER310> Good luck with that :-) everything is political with a small p

</comment><comment><USER311> I love this experiment!

</comment><comment><USER312> I guess that covers posting articles from the economist too?

</comment><comment><USER313> The title could have been: Let's make HN great again!

</comment><comment><USER314> Question: does that include startup relevant law changes?

</comment><comment><USER315> if this is happening, could we have a weekly political thread?

(kind of like how we have monthly who's hiring thread)

That way we can have the cake and eat it too.

</comment><comment><USER316> I want to register my disgust at this suggestion.

</comment><comment><USER317> might as well declare 'emotion detox week' and bury everything not written by robots.

this decision is actively contributing to erosion of the free world, as if not talking about politics makes them go away. hint: it's not and technology and hackers are changing the world so much politics necessarily enters the debate and it just can't be worked around.

ps. is uber breaking labor laws around the world politics or not?

<comment><USER14> "Uber breaks labour laws" maybe okay.

"Uber breaks labour laws, and that's why we need Clinton" not okay

"Uber breaks labour laws, and that's why we need Trump" not okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER318> Not a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER319> Nice idea in the current climate. If we now also stopped talking about religion, we'd have a freemason-like room for open conversation.

</comment><comment><USER320> A "safe space" if you will.

</comment><comment><USER321> I disagree but those are the rules.

<comment><USER53> _> Ok, have at this in the thread and if you have concerns we'll try to allay them._

Want to share your specific concerns?

<comment><USER321> This 'detox' is an equivocation, that both sides are somehow equally at fault. That is most definitely NOT the case and shushing everyone up about it will not make this go away, garden or not.

<comment><USER15> _that both sides are somehow equally at fault. That is most definitely NOT the case_

I've seen uncivil behavior well-represented here on HN from across the political spectrum(s).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER322> God, where was this two weeks ago?

<comment><USER14> Six months ago. US election shit is seemingly endless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER323> What about non-American politics?

</comment><comment><USER324> dang, doing things like this is turning HN more into reddit with heavy-handing modding, than just letting the community dictate for itself what it wants to see. The community has existed and guided itself a lot longer than the time you've been around, I think you should trust us.

<comment><USER317> HN has always been more heavily moderated than reddit, perhaps you just didn't notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER325> Good idea.

</comment><comment><USER326> I'm glad you didn't announce this last week. Then it would have been AWS articles only!

</comment><comment><USER327> I wonder if this policy would be coming down the pipe of Madame President were elected..

</comment><comment><USER328> Next up, Rilke week? ;)

</comment><comment><USER329> I hope that includes stories about alleged racism and sexism in the tech industry...

</comment><comment><USER330> Politics? Are we referring to Clinton versus Trump or vi versus emacs? :-)

</comment><comment><USER331> There's no such thing as a "non-political" story.

</comment><comment><USER332> Loved the detox. Decided to extend it to the rest of the year!

</comment><comment><USER333> only if we do a no tech week after that :)

</comment><comment><USER334> This will be my final comment on HN.

As my parting words from this site, I would ask that you please pay close attention to what is happening politically with regard to the laws which shape technology: the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Criminal Rule of Procedure 41, PATRIOT Act 215, FISA 702, and Executive Order 12333, but just as importantly, the individuals in the NSC, DNI, DCIA, DNSA and DIA/DCS leadership positions.

Community members, remember it is crucial for engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to have a voice in the forthcoming discussions of digital privacy, the extent of state power, and the policies that will be chosen. If you wish to conduct this experiment, perhaps a different time period would be better, as these officials are being chosen now, and the policies will be decided very soon.

Moderators, I ask you to use your power judiciously, and allow the maximum free discourse that you feel appropriate. Remember that you yourselves are not immune to the cognitive defects inherent in human nature. If you do adopt a more narrow curation policy, please guard against those passions carefully. Protect well this place you have built. It is more special than you realize.

Founders, design your technologies with an eye to how they shape public discourse, promote fact, and expose deception. Be better than my generation. Pursue ideals more noble than mere monetary profit. Don't just make something people want. Make something that _matters._

Build the change you wish to see in the world. You did not risk everything to sell digital sugar water.

Others of greater tact than I will shape these discussions as they evolve here. But I myself will not abet censorship without objection, particularly at this moment in time. The time has come to vote with my feet. It has been a pleasure to know you all.

I wish you well in the days to come.

</comment><comment><USER335> politics.ycombinator.com?

</comment><comment><USER336> Hear, hear!

</comment><comment><USER337> So I assume this means that yc is now concerned over alienating a certain political party/faction that tends to have a lot of money but not a lot of support among college grads.

And as many others have said, this is a horrible idea. ESPECIALLY for a site oriented toward start-ups (or, at least, people who like to talk about start- ups). Guess who is going to be signing off on the regulations that determine what is and isn't allowed? Guess who is going to determine where research money goes and what gets subsidies or tax breaks?

Oh yeah, that thing which you don't want anyone to discuss.

A few years old and more geared toward HPC and scientific computing, but Michio Kaku gave a great talk at SC about how politics and lobbying are very important and are actually vital and that if technology wants to advance it needs to not plug its ears and hide but actually be involved and fight for our interests.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_MbkVozydE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_MbkVozydE)

Rather than sit around, gazing at our navels, and talking about how amazingly smart and above it all we all are maybe, just maybe, people should actually consider "disrupting" the world into an "agile" state that can actually result in a government and laws that aren't a hindrance. And you sure as sugar don't get that by talking about how nobody else knows how to communicate with anyone because they aren't "hackers".

But hey, gotta make sure you don't alienate anyone who might be a good business partner.

\---

Maybe, just maybe, enforce rules about not making emotional and unfounded posts. Because that is largely independent of politics and is the kind of thing that makes it hard to take this place seriously as a "meeting of the minds" and mostly causes it to feel like "A marginally less meme filled reddit".

</comment><comment><USER338> I think this moment officially marks the point at which the American tech industry disappeared up its own asshole.

</comment><comment><USER334> I live in Northwest Washington, D.C. I am a technologist, a government contractor, and an HN member for many years under various accounts since 2008.

I respectfully disagree.

Yesterday someone motivated by the "Pizzagate" story, spread and enabled by the social media systems _we designed_ , fired multiple shots from a semi- automatic weapon into a crowded restaurant near my home.

My partner and I passed the crime scene shortly thereafter on our way back to our apartment.

The new National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, endorsed the totally false rumors that led to this shooting. He will soon be empowered by the full force of the nation's intelligence agencies.

I want you to very carefully consider the implications of what he could do with access to that power, and the potential result of blocking discussion of such issues, particularly at this moment in time.

<comment><USER34> I empathize with your view, but I very much disagree with you.

1) It's an experiment, there should never be any disagreement with an experiment unless the experiment itself can cause harm to someone/something. The _results_ of this experiment should be evaluated closely, and if they make new guidelines for HN I'm fully onboard. But it's an experiment.

2) The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this is a fair assumption. I'm not saying no one here could shoot a gun in public, but they wouldn't come here as anything but a complete troll and shoot a gun based on some crap story like that. If I'm wrong in this then the experiment is terrible and stop it now. But I very much doubt it.

3) The issue is that news in general has degraded. This degradation of journalism has led to many of the issues we experience today. If experimenting on HN can lead to some sort of anecdotal evidence that Politics = bad for communities I'm all for it. I believe part of the issue is pointed to in this video. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4) 24 Hours news is the issue. 24 Hours politics is the issue. Taking a purge is a great idea.

4) HN should not be where you get your news about politics.

<comment><USER339> "The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this is a fair assumption"

The systems on which that person read the false information that drove them to shoot the gun were built by people who read HN. That may sound like a lot of levels of indirection, but to ignore politics for a week seems like a symptom of pretending that we are not a part of the problem.

I think the technology running the web needs to be thought of as a part of the fourth estate. We are not separate from the media which we have restructured.

<comment><USER34> While I think that we should use every tool at our disposal to work to mitigate disasters like the one you mention, I also don't think it's on Technology to fix this issue itself. Facebook isn't the cause of people being stupid, people are. This is not a new issue and it is not something that the people who read this site are responsible for.

It is also an experiment. I'd like to emphasize that. It is an experiment. It is OK to not get politics on HN for a week. It will not be the cause of a global meltdown in society.

I'm also pretty confident that if some ground breaking news broke about Donald Trump wanting to launch a nuclear weapon that dang would allow that, but the current noise that is happening can be removed for a week is a good experiment.

<comment><USER339> As an experiment it is interesting, and there certainly community management is hard. Also, I think that better community management is maybe some of the problem on Facebook and Twitter, so there is quite a bit of irony in me arguing against it.

But...

The media and technology revolution that we are both living through and shaping with the technologies that we deploy should be something that we actively discuss and wrestle with. I've recently been reading more history of the impact of the printing press (scientific revolution, monarchy => democracy, reformation, and a lot of war).

"This is not a new issue and it is not something that the people who read this site are responsible for."

I could not disagree more strongly. The web is quite new, and we don't understand its impact on society. Certainly the people on this site are not entirely responsible for it, but I think that we should feel some responsibility for it. I certainly do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER340> HN has long gone from being dedicated just to programming and tech news. Why is it just now that you want it to be so "on-topic"?

In turbulent times like these, with hate speech, racism and sexism out of the shadows and in it's highest, it is crucial to be having conversations.

Being silent, burying head in the sand - not much different than siding on the side of the oppressor.

Whatever news are posted here - is a reflection of a community. If politics are posted, that is what people read. Instead, concentrate your efforts to battle those who game your algorithms for rankings.

<comment><AUTHOR> HN was never dedicated just to "programming and tech news"—not from the day it was named, and this has been in the first paragraph of the site guidelines since forever: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). So that's not the issue. The issue is that this site exists for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, and political battle not only threatens that but runs roughshod over it. I tried to make this clear in what I posted above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER341> > _HN is a garden_

and Attila is going to trample all over it.

</comment><comment><USER342> I really welcome this move. I couldn't get out of bed on Nov 9th and a few hours of introspection later, I realized I have no control over any of the Political changes and that I shouldn't be causing myself so much stress.

So I stopped watching the news -- both online and on TV -- since Nov 9th. It's been an incredible month for me since then.

I've made significant progress on my languishing side-projects ( a Show HN coming soon in Jan 2017!!!) and am generally less stressed and more mindful and happy.

I made a conscious effort to stop watching news and ride out the next 8 years (I expect Trump, like Dubya, will get Re-elected in 2020). I still need my "tech" fix, and visit only HN since I gave up the news. Yet I found a few Trump stories on HN recently, so this is a great move.

Thanks mods!

<comment><USER26> I hope you recognize that you can only opt out of being stressed about politics because you're not on the receiving end. :/

<comment><USER342> > because you're not on the receiving end.

Nope. I actually am at the receiving end. 2 of my cousins are married to illegal aliens (both Mexican women) and 1 couple has a child born here (so citizen).

Still I had a moment of clarity when I realized that

1) Trump was indeed Democratically elected, and 2) I don't gain anything by fretting over and stressing over after reading 1 bad news after another about his policies, because I really can't do anything as a single person (unless, of course, I make 1 issue my life long pursuit, then it's different).

I've chosen to focus on my Circle of Control and reduce or altogether eliminate my Circle of Concern

Related Reading: Circle of Control vs Circle of Concern: => [http://www.jdroth.com/images/circle-concern- control.jpg](http://www.jdroth.com/images/circle-concern-control.jpg)

<comment><USER110> An excellent choice.

Perhaps I shouldn't comment without having more to add, but I just wanted to support this very healthy perspective. It is a much calmer way to go through life, and not limited to politics!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER343> This is a slippery slope, I read it as "lets censor ourselves for this week and everybody should do their part".

Tech is like any other industry, it's rife with politics. I don't agree with trolling but obviously this place isn't reddit, lot of political debates are valuable and offer insights for those less politically inclined.

If we agree to this policy what guarantee is there in the future that other topics that HN leadership doesn't like will be censored?

This is censorship pure and simple. Shame on you Dang for even suggesting it, my question is:

Is HN an America based community that reflects the core beliefs in freedom of speech & expression?

If yes, we shouldn't even have this kind of thread. Let trolls be flagged but everyone else having meaningful discussion should _not be collectively punished_.

<comment><USER344> > _This is censorship pure and simple._

No, it's 'moderation'. Censorship is where you can't say something in any (public) outlet.

> _Is HN an America based community that reflects the core beliefs in freedom > of speech & expression?_

No, because downvoting 'ghosts' a comment, there's shadowbanning, dead comments, and the mods can already kill stories. Moderation is already alive and kicking on HN; there's plenty of it done by both mods and users.

Also, it's only for _one week_. It's bizarre to see just how many commentors are treating it like the end-times of civilisation.

<comment><USER343> > Censorship is where you can't say something in any (public) outlet.

HN is a public outlet, anyone is free to register and participate in the discussion. The thread is soliciting the community to censor themselves with a pretty vague and large blanket under "politics".

HN is run by an American corporation correct, it's servers are in America, then it should follow American values. If this was a Chinese or Russian company, well, their land their rules.

People are freaking out because dang set a precedent for future discourse, the community leadership can declare any topic they deem unsuitable with a pretty vague set of rules and discretion which does not follow a democratic process.

<comment><AUTHOR> No precedent for future discourse is being set.

It's true that HN doesn't follow a democratic process that way, but it never has, nor pretended to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER345> I find this part of the main problem with the recent US election. You only want political discussions when you agree with it. No matter how civil a person is, it's considered 'uncivil' when it's against San Francisco politics.

When this happens, many people are forced to get their news from the sites deemed 'fake'. The mass banning of opposing viewpoints (which has been happening for a couple of years now) has pushed more people towards these sites and may have actually won Trump the election. If you want to change it, stop silencing all opposing views.

The problem is that politics is in every part of our lives. If you ban politics and religion, people still get political and religious about other things. It's part of human nature (GNU VS BSD), (VI VS Emacs).

</comment><comment><USER346> When most people talk about "politics" what they really mean is they want to recite talking points told to them from their favorite dying old media echo chamber.

Reddit went full political and I left. The chans went full political and I left. Facebook went full political and I left. Twitter went full political and I left.

I go on the internet to escape being repeatedly told I'm not doing enough to live up to the moral supremacist standards set by the Baby Boomers in the 1960s.

Nearly every single massive social network on the internet exists and have for a decade to cater to your daily fill of Silicon Valley bicoastal "look down the nose of the flyover plebs" equality porn. Go there for your schadenfreude. Don't bring it here.

Spirituality means having an imaginary friend. Politics means having imaginary enemies.

</comment><comment><USER347> Why are they allowed, period?

Is the community OK with turning HN into Reddit-lite - because that's clearly what's happening based on the topics that get upvoted.

<comment><USER55> I really don't think the community is OK with it, but the last year or two has experienced a massive influx of redditors to this site, bringing their "This" posts, and near 4chan-tier of shitposting.

Many of those people now have more than 500 karma, by appealing to the majority opinion, so they're allowed to downvote all they want, skewing the demographics of the site. If you've been here a while, you probably noticed the shift in discourse and submission quality.

It happens with all "Nerd News" sites; they're great at the begining, then the people that shouldn't be here start coming, and the signal-to-noise ratio gets closer to 1:1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER348> I understand the motives behind this decision but after deliberating for the last two hours I have to say I think it's a bad decision.

HN should stand up for values it believes in, not just tech as if it exists in a vacuum. If HN believes in diversity and LGBT rights, it should stand up for it. If HN believes in corporate deregulation and dismantling of the EPA, it should stand up for it.

The idea that HN is neutral on all these issues is just false. HN is the people who run it. They have views and a vision for the site. What kind of site do they want it to be? Stand up for that vision. People who don't like it can go elsewhere.

Reddit and Twitter and other sites have made a huge mistake in the past allowing racism and hate to fester in their midst. They should have thrown those people off years ago. They have other sites to go to.

Anyway, that's my view. It's time for people to stand up for what they believe in.

</comment><comment><USER349> > What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify intellectual curiosity > and civil, substantive comments.

It's "startup news": computing for capitalism. We work on social media without knowing anything about sociology. We work on advertising, which is corporate propaganda. We have no vision of the future, unlike technologists in a sane world, so we build a dystopian bureaucratic nightmare where I'm literally filling out a form right now.

Anyway, politics is for billionaires.

</comment><comment><USER344> Good show, I say. Should have gone for a month though, not a week (can't please everyone, eh?)

About 15 years ago I was part of a general forum run by a kiwi, who was frustrated at US politics overtaking his site (which was the bulk of political talk there). He implemented a month-long ban on US politics... and the site got more peaceful and more interesting. The effect lasted afterwards, too, though the userbase was < 100.

</comment><comment><USER350> When "politics" is treated as "things that affect other people that we opine about", this decision makes sense.

But this decision is the epitome of privilege. To enter a space thinking "I'm not going to think about politics" is to be someone whose sheer existence in that space isn't a political statement in and of itself. And for many, such a space is "The United States", "The Tech Community", "HN", or whatnot.

Saying "We're going to forget y'all for a week" is... just... fucking... terrible. And whoever conceived of it should be fired on the spot.

<comment><USER351> This is a pretty well-constructed argument, despite the unnecessary invective at the end. It took me a while to figure out how to rebut it. (Therefore I upvoted you to counter expected downvotes.)

But I think it goes like this: there's a difference between not caring about something for a week and not talking about it. If, as you assume, for most of HN politics is "things that affect other people", then the primary objective of political discussions on HN should be to convince those people - not, say, to make the minority which is affected feel validated. My impression is that when people who are affected by something go and read a ton of Very Strong Opinions put forward by people who aren't, the result is usually more _in_ validating than validating; validation is important but is a purpose better served by more focused communities. Now, when it comes to convincing people, a constant barrage of discussions on the same topic is probably more unhelpful than helpful; at worst, pausing discussions for a week (which gives them time to reflect) is unlikely to be very harmful.

Notwithstanding that, some people may _perceive_ the idea of taking a break as invalidating, because it reminds them of a generalization about the community (not affected) which does not apply to them. However, so far as it's an accurate generalization, this seems like it can't be helped. I suppose you could argue that it seems more accurate than it really is, since marginalized people are present but silenced…

Anyway, I think "things that affect other people" is an oversimplification to start with. A lot of the specific political topics people like to discuss on this site, like encryption/surveillance, have fairly little direct impact on pretty much any of us; others, like the economy, affect all of us to some extent, albeit some more than others.

<comment><USER28> What you may not be taking into account, though, is that for some of us, "we're not going to allow 'politics' for a week" is being read _in context with_ the _years_ of previous moderation decisions and community signaling about who and what it cares about. And in that light, "we're not going to allow 'politics' for a week" is pretty obviously a decision that upholds the really toxic status quo of HN. (And that's leaving aside the fact that _everything is political_ , because 'politics' includes - among other things - our fundamental assumptions about how the world works, and that's not something people leave behind when they're talking about technology or anything else.)

<comment><USER351> Hi adrienne :)

This is a fair point and valid data point for how people view it.

Only thing I'd say is, to me the reasoning seems related to a sentiment that's I've seen in a lot of places, that after all the nastiness that's built up through the course of the (very long as usual) US election cycle, it's time for everyone to cool off a bit. So my instinct isn't to tie it that much to anything about HN in particular. Now of course, the same point applies outside of HN - it gets a lot harder to treat Trump as a topic you can just stop talking about when you're more likely to be directly and immediately impacted. And then there's the idea that we shouldn't normalize him by treating him like a normal candidate where, after the election, even if your ideas lost, at least you know there's a modicum of competence and civic-mindedness at the helm… Still, despite all that, despite the fact that I attended a protest myself (just one so far), for me some of the sentiment of wanting to cool off still rings valid. Maybe it shouldn't - but then it's not like we can do anything to change the election result; we're all in this for the long haul…

There's also the fact that "politics" as described by dang covers a lot more than US electoral politics. But the reason for wanting to avoid it is still the influence of US electoral politics on those conversations.

<comment><USER28> Hi, comex! :)

I definitely understand electoral politics fatigue. We're all having that. But 'dang explicitly said the intended scope of the ban/"detox" is wider than that, over in this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614)

"The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet."

So apparently _literally anything_ about race, gender, or class (which are really important issues both in terms of the tech _industry_ and in terms of who technology is _for_ ) are considered off-limits for the week. (And at least one relevant story - about big tech companies releasing diversity reports - has already been killed under the policy.) That is one reason I am taking this as such a clear signal of the _values_ of the mods, rather than simply a reaction to election stuff. I could be wrong, of course, but i wanted to try to let you see what i - and many others, i think? - are seeing that concerns us.

<comment><USER351> Fair enough!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER352> Can we train up a sentiment analyzer on the delta between the stories and comments this week vs. all others, and then apply it to discovering "political discussion?"

</comment><comment><USER353> We should flag this thread instead.

</comment><comment><USER354> Top kek.

</comment><comment><USER355> perfect week for trump to trample digital rights and we have to stay quiet about it because crybaby racists who voted him in don't want their feelings hurt.

</comment><comment><USER356> I for one think the imminent demise of human civilization is of interest to the intellectually curious and thoughtful readers of HN. I also believe that hurting the feelings of willful climate change deniers and suchlike people is a really good idea.

</comment><comment><USER357> So HN is yet another filter bubble?

 _> We become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones._

HN is designed to be a tribe. The HN tribe and the Silicon Valley ethos it espouses are by their nature very political, having profound effects on the direction of our economy, our society, and our world. By censoring challenges to this ethos, you are reinforcing the tribal boundaries, and members of the tribe continue on without the constant challenge and testing that is the very nature of truth finding and even science.

This _Tell HN_ is itself a political act.

</comment><comment><USER358> This is ridiculous. Becoming an Ostrich is never a solution. Shame on you.

</comment><comment><USER359> The pedantic bullshit in these comments is why America is in the shitter.

</comment><comment><USER70> Let me get this right. Are they saying politics is to be hated actively for a recurring period of time?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate)

</comment><comment><USER360> Lol the primitive brain, the entire premise of this worldview is wack peace

</comment><comment><USER361> Sure, bury your heads in the sand. Your country is taking a shortcut to Mad Max land, and there's not much to be done at this point anyway.

</comment><comment><USER362> It just goes to show how white and privileged Silicon Valley as a whole is. Be glad that you only have to think about politics when it's time to elect your next president, that it won't affect whether you have a place to sleep or money in your pocket.

This is the same attitude YC showed the world when it kept Thiel on board. If Silicon Valley as a whole really cared about diversity (and it's becoming clear in many cases that it's only for PR), then you should find ways to facilitate constructive discourse (as HN has done with many other topics) and not ignore politics outright.

</comment><comment><USER363> Is this because the HN preferred candidate lost? HN staff are upset and censor things in response?

I'm disappointed, if you can't handle politics how are you meant to disrupt an industry? Everything about our industry is political.. how are we meant to navigate our world if we can't debate one of the most defining aspects of it.

If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen. Don't censor important relevant discussions because of your emotions! You are failing your community

</comment><comment><USER364> Terrible.

</comment><comment><USER365> > It's over. After 20 months it's finally over...I'm free.

[https://xkcd.com/500/](https://xkcd.com/500/)

</comment><comment><USER366> This is cowardly.

</comment><comment><USER367> Hacker News is OVER

</comment><comment><USER368> This fucking sucks.

</comment><comment><USER193> I flagged this post because supressing political speech systematically, and even ignoring it, is actually active political discourse. Politics is not and never will be a separated topic, it is inextricable from everything we care about. This Tell HN is arguing for a specific political position about the nature of public discourse (that it is best stewarded from the top down by extremely rich people who overwhelmingly skew white, straight and male), and is arguing that intellectual curiosity and conflict are generally exclusive. This post is one tribe within the broader community of HN exerting its dominance over other tribes while pretending to be high-minded in resistance to tribalism.

Don't confuse yourselves: your tribe doesn't feel in immanent danger, doesn't think this community is in a unique position to help the world in a dangerous moment, and wants to stop being bothered by the imposition of reality on the dominant tribe that seems able to weather the storm and continue peacefully enriching itself. That is the tribe that owns HN, that seems to be the tribe that is in control of Silicon Valley's immense resources which are, to the profound shame of the entire industry, not being used to try to save its country.

The president is deeply unstable, lies constantly and has hired a team of bigoted, addled, corrupt old white men to serve him. Autocracy is incredibly dangerous. But it won't affect the leaders of the tribe who wrote this shameful post. Rich straight white people will almost certainly be safe from suffering. My family won't be and already isn't in vast swaths of the country.

This post and others in the last month have taught me that HN is not a community of smart people interested in technology. It is an apparatus of a few privileged people and their businesses that serves mostly one narrow community (engineers who are focused on earning money and/or luxuriating in their own preoccupations) that the owners want things from (talent and money). We can't learn together by hiding from this moment.

When talking politics means talking about the internment of muslims, talking about a conspiracy of Jews puppeteering the global economy, talking about refusing to enforce any civil rights laws that happen to mostly protect black people, when politics means the destabilization of the global economy and the global military equilibrium established since Workd War II, well then enforcing the state of not talking about politics is itself an act of violence.

<comment><USER204> Agreed. We live in scary times for a lot of people. Smart people agreeing not to talk about it, cannot be the right solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER369> Far more interesting is to post your favorite SNL political clips. We need a levity injection attack around here.

</comment><comment><USER370> Well. Let me just flag this post since its a political one.

</comment><comment><USER371> so HN users admit that they are incapable of carrying out a civilized discussion on political issues? sad.

banning all political topics just because current state of affairs upsets someone is ridiculous. country is split in the middle, so what, when liberals win we will ban political topics again just because now the other side feels offended? how about you stop feeling offended and start listening to each other?

<comment><USER372> > _so HN users_

I'd appreciate if you didn't make accusations like these which include me in it. This is coming from a moderator - IIUC, it's entirely dang's idea.

> _admit_

a one week experiment.

> _banning all political topics_

Temporarily.

> _just because current state of affairs upsets someone_

It sounds like it has nothing to do with that.

> _how about you stop feeling offended and start listening to each other_

 _It starts with you_. There is no other word than _offended_ for your reaction to this little announcement here. And if you actually _listened_ , you'd perhaps glance more than just "we're offended Trump won so we're banning politics forevah".

My initial reaction to this announcement was actually negative - I like politics on HN, the community does a decent job of keeping the trashy comments flagged. But then, seeing your post essentially proved dang's point: You've been here for 3.5 years, but just couldn't help yourself and take a piss on the community you're a part of, to try score some political points.

 _Urgh_. It's so disappointing.

<comment><USER371> sigh... after reading this, we probably should ban politics. sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER373> > For one week, political stories are off-topic. Please flag them. Please also > flag political threads on non-political stories. For our part, we'll kill > such stories and threads when we see them. Then we'll watch together to see > what happens.

Okay, I've flagged this one thread titled "Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week". It was this strange and laborious screed about how political speech is harmful or something?

Privileging "non-political" speech is an implicit endorsement of the status- quo, and thereby, an incredibly political action.

</comment><comment><USER374> This sounds like a cop out and I question whether this post would have been made had Trump lost and Clinton won.

</comment><comment><USER375> Here's an idea. If a story is clearly political, then just turn off comment moderation except for flagging.

Objectively, HN has a huge problem with leftists and socialists downvoting conservative/libertarian comments.

Dang knows this. I haven't read all the comments, but if he denies that simple fact, then HN has bigger problems.

You can't have legitimate conversations if the other side is openly hostile to the very idea of even displaying contrarian to their beliefs opinions.

There was a big bubble that many on HN lived in until election day, when they must've realized that there's another half of the country that doesn't think like them.

Here's a perfect example of living in the bubble. Look at all the car hatred on HN, where people are almost giddy over ideas to ban them, limit them, etc...

The vast majority of the people in the world don't think that way.

HN is just a bubble and why it's a parody.

<comment><USER164> > Objectively, HN has a huge problem with leftists and socialists downvoting > conservative/libertarian comments

It's funny how partisans on the right often say this, and partisans on the left often say the same thing, with the sides reversed.

The fact is, HN has sizable and active contigents from all parts if the political spectrum, and partisan voting (up and down) comes from all sides.

<comment><USER375> Maybe those on the right aren't as trigger-happy with the down-votes as the leftists are. Leftists aren't so keen on free speech anyway. Just look at the SJWs and the global warming crowd.

<comment><USER164> > Maybe those on the right aren't as trigger-happy with the down-votes as the > leftists are.

Or maybe they are.

> Leftists aren't so keen on free speech anyway.

And many leftists would say the same thing about rightists, with the same amount of justification.

Both the right and left have large factions with little devotion to free speech beyond what agrees with them. And both have factions that view disagreement and criticism as suppression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I need to preface this by saying I voted for Jill Stein.

You're right that HN should be a place for intellectual curiosity and substantive comments. But here's what I've seen in the past year:

* Flagrantly allow anti-prop-8 posts and submissions to assist in the smearing of Brendan Eich.

* Flagrantly allow pro-clinton posts and link submissions to thrive on HN.

* Never step-in to stop downvoting brigades on pro-conservative/libertarian/tea party posts.

* After unpopular (with silicon valley) president is elected, ban political conversations on the site.

I won't call you biased, because you've been a damn good mod, but this is probably your worst decision, because it looks like sour-grapes-in-retrospect.

Perhaps you're doing it because the pro-clinton camp is actually becoming too toxic to tolerate. Perhaps you're doing it to avoid the 4chan brigade from promoting Trump. Either way, this is a site full of people skilled at reading between the lines, and, correct or not, this action doesn't look like a way of promoting reasonable discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _it looks like sour grapes_

This is one of those unintended consequences that gobsmack me any time we try out some new idea here. I'm sure anyone who deals with large internet communities has the same experience. The funny thing is that it's always obvious that it was bound to come up, in retrospect—just never beforehand. It's like the unveiling of the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel: hidden in plain view every time.

I don't know if I can respond in a way that satisfies you, but let me try. First, Clinton and Trump stories are equally penalized on HN. Second, it _always_ seems like HN is biased against whatever views you personally hold, not because it is, but because the community is divided and we're biased to notice the things we dislike, and that offend us, more than the ones that don't. Your use of the word "flagrantly" is an instance of this. Why do the things you listed seem flagrant while others do not? Because they're mirroring your own preferences. (See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13083111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13083111) and [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias) for more on this if you want.)

I guarantee you that the people who feel oppositely to you about X, Y, Z issues feel like their side is flagrantly the underdog in the same fights. This is one of the dynamics behind why political fights are so toxic to begin with.

> _Either way, this is a site full of people skilled at reading between the > lines_

Read my lines, please! Just don't imagine lines, then imagine subtexts between them, and then read the imaginary subtext. Instead, ask. We're happy to explain what's going on—what's actually, really going on, as best we understand it.

<comment><USER374> I'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like this if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election. It's not like things were _less_ contentious then.

Say if this were announced the day before the election, regardless of the outcome, with a hold period of say a month.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _I 'd have a lot more confidence in the unbiased nature of a request like > this if it was suggested prior to the outcome of the election._

Can't help you there. We don't have anything like that degree of finesse in planning.

The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay that much attention to other stuff, and when we think something is a good idea and finally get around to it, we do it. About the only thought that went into _political_ timing was [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098321).

<comment><USER374> (emphasis mine):

> The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay > that much attention to other stuff, and _when we think something is a good > idea and finally get around to it, we do it_.

I do sincerely believe the italicized last part.

I also suspect that nobody on the HN mod team thought that Trump would actually win. It was such a far off concept that planning for it and the ensuing gloating / division / trolling would have been laughable. If they did, they would have put more thought into stating this type of thing in advance as I'm pretty sure it's been suggested more than once over the past few months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if we had guessed, we don't plan for things like who might win an election. That would be crazymaking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>