Looks like a majority of it’s all politics and LLMs. I think we’re all as a collective tired of both and want something ‘interesting’ for once to post.

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JKCalhoun 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I get that. And if an LLM story disappears from the front page—oh well.

I'll defend the political stories though. For me, all the other places out there that vend politics are truly awful. While a political post lingers briefly on the HN front page, I find I actually learn something from the comments. If there are shit-posts in the discussion, they are quickly "dead". More often though there are (seemingly) reasoned debates about the issues in the comments.

I appreciate (what I am embarrassed to call) a more intellectual discussion on politics than I have been able to find anywhere else. (Embarrassed because I'm walking a fine line trying not to appear to cast the discussions as "elitist". Or maybe I am an elitist, who knows.)

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bee_rider 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s not that the quality of politics posts here are very high (you get plenty of “engineers outside their domain” type stuff). Just, it is hard to find sites with

* Active political discussion communities

* That haven’t swung dramatically to some extreme and eventually worn down the local “opposition” party

I’ve got boards I go to for politics but the ratio is so lopsided, and the one or two remaining posters that disagree with the consensus seem to be more or less sticking around out of contrarianism (which unfortunately decreases the quality of their posts).

I think if HN let too many political threads stick around, that would destroy the whatever quality the discussion has.

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ThrowawayR2 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The low quality posts and low quality responses and them being flagged makes the users affected, to use the moderators' terminology, "activated". It's not conducive to maintaining the HN we know and love.

Also the site moderators have plainly said that moderating these controversial political threads is a strain on them. You may be enjoying yourself but someone else is paying a hefty price.

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blackcatsec 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I always agree with a good-faith, well-reasoned political argument. And HN generally seems to have a much more educated base than most of the other stuff out there--but agreed with the other person that I think it's probably best to keep that content off of HN, unfortunately.

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JKCalhoun 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Please, point me to "Wonk News" then so I can get a reasoned discussion about what the hell is going on in the world.

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pjc50 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That used to be possible with a carefully curated Twitter feed, then a series of bad decisions made that impossible.

It's no longer even the case that reason helps. Wonkery has got run over by mass emotion.

	▲	matsemann 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> That used to be possible with a carefully curated Twitter feed, then a series of bad decisions made that impossible But you wouldn't know from reading HN that X, the tech company, has become a shitshow, as all discussions about this are "political" and flagged by users.

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DangitBobby 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I feel the same way. I crave high quality political discussion about what's going on in the US and this is one of the few places I can get it. Most places just offer memes and hot takes.

	▲	5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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homeonthemtn 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nah, politics is a cancer that's infected everything. Let the addicts get their fix someplace else

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b40d-48b2-979e 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hand-waving everything as "politics" is not healthy. It's necessary for us to be able to make collective decisions on societal questions which is what "politics" are.

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AznHisoka 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I remembered when politics used to be called “current events”.

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bavell 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

HN is the wrong forum for this.

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buellerbueller 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is what the biggest names in the VC class want you to think as they continue to enrich themselves, while (in the USA at least) they support a regime that is growing in its authoritarian output.

Thiel, Musk, et. al., support, for example, Curtis Yarvin, who believes that democracy is a failed experiment and should be replaced with an all-powerful "CEO"

	▲	ryandrake 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Thiel, Musk, et. al., support, for example, Curtis Yarvin, who believes that democracy is a failed experiment and should be replaced with an all-powerful "CEO" These guys all benefit when the No-Politics Purity Brigade drives by and flag-kills every article pointing out their wrongdoing as "political." By flagging this stuff, they're actually making HN more political: They are defending billionaires, their agendas, and their status-quo politics.

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hobs 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The idea that hackers are non political is very silly and very unbacked up by evidence.

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fzeroracer 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So I, as a software engineer, have to deal with the impacts of this administration both making my employment harder as well as terrorizing the city I live in. Where do you suggest I would go to share these issues other than the site that is specifically for hackers and tech workers?

I get that people want to make the place 'non-political', but a lot of us in the US live in major metropolitan areas and are very directly impacted by all of the shit going on.

	▲	29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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JKCalhoun 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Let the addicts get their fix someplace else"

Open to suggestions from anyone.

	▲	a-french-anon 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Seeing the kind of discourse you get here, how about Reddit?

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rune-dev 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Everything is political. Including ignoring politics.

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homeonthemtn 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Only if you make it political.

	▲	nathan_compton an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is such a weird idea. Everything is political because there are no universally agreed upon values. Humans literally do not always agree on what the purpose of society is, what is good and what is bad, how much power we should have over one another and nature. And, as far as I can tell, neither god nor philosophy seems willing to descend from heaven in order to resolve our differences. Thus, we are stuck discussing things amongst ourselves and deciding how to move forward, a process called politics.
	▲	b40d-48b2-979e 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		This is coming across to me as "things I don't like are 'politics'" if I'm being honest.
	▲	pixl97 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		"I'm not political, I stay out of politics and I don't vote" ... time passes ... "What do you mean the people that I didn't vote for are sending me to war to die?!, I'm not political, why am I involved in this" --Modern day Russia.
	▲	hobs 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Its a tired trope, but you are wrong. The haves and the have nots define everything about our society and Not Addressing The Situation is a very active choice, thus politics.

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buellerbueller 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When is the last time that ignoring cancer has stopped it from metastasizing?

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LooseMarmoset 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I come to HN to escape endless ragebait and political drama. HN is for me what places like Ars Technica or Slashdot used to be.

Thanks, @dang! keep up the good work.

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esseph an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

If the world around you isn't "interesting" right now you are extremely lucky.