Ask HN: Why do DOGE stories never make it to the frontpage?

As someone who's got a quick finger on the "flag" button I am inclined to flag anything that involves Elon Musk whether is someone who thinks he is a hero or thinks he is a villian.

There are topics that go viral because of emotionally negative content and I feel like I have to be very careful who I follow on Mastodon and Bluesky so that my feed is not dominated by outrage. I appreciate that HN isn't like that and I want to keep it that way. There are enough places you can participate in breathless discussions about the outrage of the day.

Also there are fellow HNers whose comments I really enjoy, who seem thoughtful and intelligent and who I have a great time interacting with who seem to turn into werewolves [1] when certain topics come up and keeping those topics away helps me experience their best.

[1] circa Spring 2025 I'm starting to wonder if is fair to werewolves to talk like this though

I tend to flag things that Hacker News simply has no unusual insight into. Or, if you prefer, one in which I can essentially write the entire comment thread in my head in advance, arguments and all. That doesn't have to be "just programming", but this sort of political news fits into that category plainly. HN has expressed its opinion, the gestalt is so vigorous, if not outright vicious, about its opinion that dissent is effectively impossible, so there is basically no information content in it.

If you're upset that Hacker News is getting these flagged, well, you've got a thousand other sites to go to to be outraged about politics, where the conversation will be indistinguishable from the ones here. The things that Hacker News does other than being outraged about politics I do not have a lot of other places to go to get.

So, yeah, I'm flagging them and will continue to do so. No one is getting any value from the discussions on HN. Some people just feel they are, but they can get those feelings from any number of other places.

I can understand this standpoint, but it's also a bit hypocritical (on a site-wide basis, not specifically you).

HN has been a place where the people currently running the government got praise. Elon Musk had huge thousand post threads every time he did something marginally interesting. Now that he's running roughshod over the government, any negative actions he takes are suddenly political and do not deserve to be here.

A lot of the current admin is a beast of Tech's creation. The time to stop this problem from coming to roost was years ago.

Heh, I also think rather a lot of what is happening right now is the direct result of what I've frequently called "Silicon Valley Liberalism" coming home to roost, and the rage is basically the rage that their actions and beliefs had consequences other than what they desire, and the universe should conform itself to what consequences were "supposed" to transpire rather than what did. However, things do not work that way. I'm not about to try to inject that concept into the rage threads, though.