Comment by KarlKemp

HN will endlessly preach to you about rationality and open discussion. Time and time again they'll come down hard on Cloudflare et al doing the bare minimum against the most vile of people using their services.

And yet any story on, say, racism or misogyny in the tech community is immediately flagged into oblivion. The complaints about censorship also started only when it became relevant for "Proud Boys", QAnon, and similar outfits. Everyone was totally fine with it when youtube restricted Islamic State propaganda. Still, everyone will go out of their way saying that they don't agree with the toxic content, and how it's just about "principals".

Moderators have largely enforced a policy of removing content that is potentially divisive. In doing so, they employ the sort of false balance that even the NYT complains about these days. It's arguably working for HN, although, given the perceived influence the site has, it's questionable if the fate of HN is ultimately more important than taking a stand and occasionally bothering the community with stories it would rather avoid.