Comment by JoshTriplett

In fairness, at least it isn't becoming 2013 Slashdot.

HN has always had a small smattering of political stories upvoted and discussed, with a specific focus on those that actually matter to hackers. Recent events have increased the proportion of political stories that get upvotes and discussion, but not across the board: there's a specific focus on NSA/surveillance stories, and in the absence of those I think the political content has not dramatically increased. Thus, I wouldn't conclude that the HN audience has become more political, but rather that HN has a higher threshold for wanting to talk about politics and recent stories pass that threshold far too often for comfort.

Politics on Slashdot has so little impact, because it shows up far too often. Politics on HN tends to focus on the most important issues, filtering out the noise. And the recent NSA stories are by far the most important news in tech politics in years. As long as the political stories remain confined to issues of that level of importance, and leave out the daily sources of new outrage, I wouldn't fear for the future of HN. (It also helps that HN doesn't have Slashdot's blatant editorialization to stir up those types of stories.)

HN may be an island away from real-world news, but that island still carries tsunami warning stories.