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(drewdevault.com)
847 points kick | 10 comments | 20 Nov 19 15:44 UTC | HN request time: 1.399s | source | bottom
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spectramax ◴[20 Nov 19 16:27 UTC] No.21585284[source]▶
Liberal societies, such as the Bay Area (where I live), it’s impossible to criticize anyone without having the doubt of “offending” someone. When it comes to China, I can’t go out in the lunch room and openly criticize CCP because you know, I could “offend” a Chinese National.

This needs to stop. I see this behavior on HN, which is frustrating, counterproductive, anti-free speech and extremely left-winged.

Another problem is to try being a moderate in these liberal pockets of America. The moment you pick out a couple of things that I agree about what Trump is doing, I get intense opposition, lose friendships, get judged, etc.

The Bay Area, the Silicon Valley, the 3 trillion dollar neighbor of America is a suffocating place for anyone who has dissenting opinion about some liberal concepts.

Silicon Valley people think that moderates and right-wing folks hate gays, lgbt community and loves guns, hates China which is far from the truth. Then they feel to justify themselves by overcompensating, supporting China and smearing the truth. Ironically, they make fun of right-wing echo chambers.

If your political ideology looks away from objective truth, you need to question it. No matter how “conservative” or “liberal”.

This is from my personal experience, your MMV.

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echelon ◴[20 Nov 19 16:53 UTC] No.21585610[source]▶
You're being downvoted for expressing a contrarian viewpoint.

This kind of censorship isn't even targeting hate speech, and it drives me crazy. Why downvote them?

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1. big_chungus ◴[20 Nov 19 17:52 UTC] No.21586358[source]▶
Because he's criticizing liberals and most people on HN are liberals. Most censorship ("hate speech" included) is code for shutting your political opponents up. HN makes this really easy by making comments hard to read by removing contrast with the background as they get voted down; post something too much against the grain and it'll get flagged and hidden by default. When you hand users the power to shut those with whom they disagree up, it will inevitably be abused.
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2. kick ◴[20 Nov 19 18:12 UTC] No.21586601[source]▶
Paul Graham:

I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

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3. kd3 ◴[20 Nov 19 18:45 UTC] No.21587016[source]▶
I think the whole voting thing is stupid. It obviously leads to censorship. Someone else's opinion should not count less than others even if you don't agree with them. Assuming we're not talking about plain spam (bots, ads, etc). Graham did not think this through properly. Everyday I come across comments that are downvoted or flagged and can see no reason why that was done apart from subjective ones.
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4. dang ◴[20 Nov 19 19:04 UTC] No.21587240{3}[source]▶
Of course, there's a lot of subjectivity. But if you think you can make a site like HN be interesting without voting, you should give it a try. It would be an order of magnitude easier and cheaper to operate, and that would be a real innovation.
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5. big_chungus ◴[20 Nov 19 19:04 UTC] No.21587248[source]▶
Problem is, it doesn't just attach a "score" to a comment. The UI will gradually hide comments as they are voted farther down; I've seen many that are barely legible. Flagging also hides comments by default. I can't tell you how many reasonable, well-thought out points I've seen that I have to highlight with the mouse to actually read. I wouldn't even see many insightful comments had I not logged in and enabled "showdead".

There is a great deal of difference between giving users the tools to express disagreement and giving them the tools to block out the opinions of those with which I disagree.

Finally, quoting Paul Graham isn't really an argument. Fine, it's his site, but I'm allowed to say I disagree with how the voting on his site is implemented.

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6. dang ◴[20 Nov 19 19:05 UTC] No.21587251[source]▶
> most people on HN are liberals

"There is a definite right-libertarian bias on HN" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21432833

"If you go against any kind of socially conservative or libertarian perspective it will get down voted and very likely flagged" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643695

"chilling effect on discourse from leftists" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20804464

"a leftist can't have a sane discussion on this website" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15926162

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=13110004&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...

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7. dang ◴[20 Nov 19 19:43 UTC] No.21587662{3}[source]▶
If a comment is faded, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page, where it should be in the regular readable black.
8. twgrp ◴[20 Nov 19 19:44 UTC] No.21587677[source]▶
social (left|right) != economic (left|right). But you know that.
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9. dang ◴[20 Nov 19 19:46 UTC] No.21587688{3}[source]▶
Sure, but I think our points are missing each other. Mine is that claims of HN's ideological bias are notoriously in the eye of the beholder. Once people run into a few things they dislike—which is inevitable—they imprint on the idea that the community is biased against them. There's nothing objective about it, and all sides do it. I wouldn't say all users do it, but I suspect the more ideologically committed you are, the more you are likely to. That is, it depends on the magnitude of one's ideological vector, but not the direction. I wrote about this yesterday if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21577584
10. kd3 ◴[22 Nov 19 20:13 UTC] No.21609564{4}[source]▶
Some mentally challenged people actually downvoted you it seems. I have thought about alternatives for a few months now actually. And I admit it's not easy.