Comment by krapp
1 day ago
It only takes a few flags to be effective and there are definitely more than a few Trumpists on HN so theoretically yes. Could also be the likely much larger contingent of people who flag all "political" and "non-technical" content by default.
Like it or not Hacker News has never been (and will never be) a platform for free and open debate. It's designed around aggressive curation for quality over quantity and that makes it very easy to brigade by design.
> Could also be the likely much larger contingent of people who flag all "political" and "non-technical" content by default.
It could, but that'd be odd. We've seen oodles of structurally similar posts hang out on the front page unflagged before. There are even past examples of major posts criticizing the journalistic integrity of 60 Minutes. Only once the material becomes critical of the regime does it become flagged.
I upvoted the story itself, but the endless comments discussing flags on HN are a bigger nuisance than the occasional community-flagged story.
I am tempted to go over each such complaint on this page (there must be a couple dozen so far) and reply "Quiet, please! People are reading."
[flagged]
As an American whose mental health struggled for a while after the election, I now thoroughly curate my media diet so that I only get "just enough" political news. So I understand your desire.
However, HN has huge sway over tech culture, for better or worse (probably worse). Many of the wealthiest and most influential fascists in America also run companies that HN users might work at or strive to work at. Probably not because they're fascists, but because they mostly care about the cool tech they use or just want a better job.
Applicants and employees of ̶I̶B̶M̶ Palantir, ̶I̶G̶ ̶F̶a̶r̶b̶e̶n̶ Tesla, and ̶K̶o̶d̶a̶k̶ Oracle should know what they're supporting. If they take the job anyway, at least we know whose side they're on.
I don't know if it's so much about making sure these people know what they're supporting but it's definitely significant that this is one of the few places where you can have a dialogue with the people who work at these companies.
That won't change anything.
Those companies are quickly becoming majority Asians and they don't care at all and never will.
And the Americans laid off by Big Tech? I suspect even some of the left-leaning ones will take a job at Palantir just to not lose their house.