Comment by tomhow
19 hours ago
I'm a moderator here, and defrost is right. It's not cool to berate or “shame” people on HN. The very first phrase in the "In Comments" section of the guidelines is "Be Kind".
We can critique issues and trends in the industry or broader economy, including advertising; that happens all the time here. But also, on HN we're trying for conversation that is curious and thoughtful, at a standard that is higher than the average discussion forum. If we're going to make sweeping assertions like “advertising shouldn't exist”, we also need to offer suggestions of viable alternatives for ways that companies can get their products known about by people who might need them, and for websites to generate income to fund their operations. These are absolutely valid topics of thoughtful discussion in the spirit of curious conversation, which is entirely what HN is for.
Shaming an individual for working in a domain you've decided you don't like (though legal and widespread) is never okay here.
Weak response imo. Shame is a powerful tool and lots of people on this forum should feel more shame for what they do.
In fact, I see quite a bit of shaming that occurs here on HN when someone says something completely out of pocket (in fact, in a way you are shaming both me and the original poster) - but that rarely gets called out by moderators because it’s already accepted as not impolite. I often see shaming when users are outright racist - which to be clear I also agree with the use of shame in that instance.
The moderation is not unbiased in this regard.