Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

When "politics" is treated as "things that affect other people that we opine about", this decision makes sense.

But this decision is the epitome of privilege. To enter a space thinking "I'm not going to think about politics" is to be someone whose sheer existence in that space isn't a political statement in and of itself. And for many, such a space is "The United States", "The Tech Community", "HN", or whatnot.

Saying "We're going to forget y'all for a week" is... just... fucking... terrible. And whoever conceived of it should be fired on the spot.

This is a pretty well-constructed argument, despite the unnecessary invective at the end. It took me a while to figure out how to rebut it. (Therefore I upvoted you to counter expected downvotes.)

But I think it goes like this: there's a difference between not caring about something for a week and not talking about it. If, as you assume, for most of HN politics is "things that affect other people", then the primary objective of political discussions on HN should be to convince those people - not, say, to make the minority which is affected feel validated. My impression is that when people who are affected by something go and read a ton of Very Strong Opinions put forward by people who aren't, the result is usually more invalidating than validating; validation is important but is a purpose better served by more focused communities. Now, when it comes to convincing people, a constant barrage of discussions on the same topic is probably more unhelpful than helpful; at worst, pausing discussions for a week (which gives them time to reflect) is unlikely to be very harmful.

Notwithstanding that, some people may perceive the idea of taking a break as invalidating, because it reminds them of a generalization about the community (not affected) which does not apply to them. However, so far as it's an accurate generalization, this seems like it can't be helped. I suppose you could argue that it seems more accurate than it really is, since marginalized people are present but silenced…

Anyway, I think "things that affect other people" is an oversimplification to start with. A lot of the specific political topics people like to discuss on this site, like encryption/surveillance, have fairly little direct impact on pretty much any of us; others, like the economy, affect all of us to some extent, albeit some more than others.

What you may not be taking into account, though, is that for some of us, "we're not going to allow 'politics' for a week" is being read in context with the years of previous moderation decisions and community signaling about who and what it cares about. And in that light, "we're not going to allow 'politics' for a week" is pretty obviously a decision that upholds the really toxic status quo of HN. (And that's leaving aside the fact that everything is political, because 'politics' includes - among other things - our fundamental assumptions about how the world works, and that's not something people leave behind when they're talking about technology or anything else.)

Hi adrienne :)

This is a fair point and valid data point for how people view it.

Only thing I'd say is, to me the reasoning seems related to a sentiment that's I've seen in a lot of places, that after all the nastiness that's built up through the course of the (very long as usual) US election cycle, it's time for everyone to cool off a bit. So my instinct isn't to tie it that much to anything about HN in particular. Now of course, the same point applies outside of HN - it gets a lot harder to treat Trump as a topic you can just stop talking about when you're more likely to be directly and immediately impacted. And then there's the idea that we shouldn't normalize him by treating him like a normal candidate where, after the election, even if your ideas lost, at least you know there's a modicum of competence and civic-mindedness at the helm… Still, despite all that, despite the fact that I attended a protest myself (just one so far), for me some of the sentiment of wanting to cool off still rings valid. Maybe it shouldn't - but then it's not like we can do anything to change the election result; we're all in this for the long haul…

There's also the fact that "politics" as described by dang covers a lot more than US electoral politics. But the reason for wanting to avoid it is still the influence of US electoral politics on those conversations.

Hi, comex! :)

I definitely understand electoral politics fatigue. We're all having that. But 'dang explicitly said the intended scope of the ban/"detox" is wider than that, over in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108614

"The main concern here is pure politics: the conflicts around party, ideology, nation, race, gender, class, and religion that get people hot and turn into flamewars on the internet."

So apparently literally anything about race, gender, or class (which are really important issues both in terms of the tech industry and in terms of who technology is for) are considered off-limits for the week. (And at least one relevant story - about big tech companies releasing diversity reports - has already been killed under the policy.) That is one reason I am taking this as such a clear signal of the values of the mods, rather than simply a reaction to election stuff. I could be wrong, of course, but i wanted to try to let you see what i - and many others, i think? - are seeing that concerns us.