Comment by foldr
3 days ago
There's more overall discussion of US politics for sure, but it tends to occur tangentially (as articles about US politics are pretty reliably flagged). To give a concrete example, the following article was not flagged and got quite a lot of discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46600194 I do not think an article on an obscure website with a similarly 'provocative' headline relating to current US politics would escape flagging.
Single instances and hypotheticals don't tell us much. That particular topic spent only four hours on the front page, and it was times that are peak for the U.K. and off-peak for the U.S. Plenty of stories related to U.S. politics spend at least that amount of time on the front page. People often remember the stories that are flagged that they strongly felt should have been given front page time, but forget about the stories that did get plenty of exposure.
I doubt you can point me to a recent story about US politics that spent four hours on the front page and had a similarly inflammatory headline. It would be as if this discussion were occurring under the headline "ICE thugs murder second US citizen" and linked to the website of a left-wing political organisation with an anonymous byline.
Unless peak US times are very late in the day, I'm pretty sure I do look at HN quite often during peak US hours. I'm only 5 hours ahead of the East Coast here. Gemini (ha!) tells me that
>...peak engagement hours generally align with US workday hours, particularly in Pacific (PT) and Eastern Time (ET). The highest activity typically occurs between 11 AM – 4 PM UTC (roughly 6 AM – 11 AM ET / 3 AM – 8 AM PT).
The story you're talking about was on the front page mostly between about 1pm and 3pm U.K. time, then hovered around the bottom of the front page and dropped off as most of the U.S. came online. And you're talking about one article but asserting a trend or pattern.
Here are recent stories about U.S. politics with inflammatory titles that spent multiple hours (over 22, in one case) on the front page.
The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45505103 - Oct 2025 (163 comments - 3 hours)
We could debate what counts as "recent" or "inflammatory," but I don't think that would be productive.
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