A certain amount of politics should/must be tolerated on HN, because you cannot compartmentalize technology, politics and morality.

No-one, not even people who say they like technology but do not care about politics, should be able to live their life wihtout knowing that we live in a world where six-year old blind children are murdered with automatic assault rifles.

(For the same reason that no-one should be able to live not knowing that jewish once were murdered in the millions in gas chambers.)

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TacticalCoder 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> (For the same reason that no-one should be able to live not knowing that jewish once were murdered in the millions in gas chambers.)

Or much more most recently than WWII: not knowing that 1200 civilians were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, whom palestinians did vote in power.

Or even more recently: not knowing that the islamic republic of Iran slaughtered 30 000 unarmed civilians and went as far as sending its guards into hospitals to finish the wounded.

That's the main issue with politics on HN: it's slanted towards making one side look evil while making excuses or being lip-sealed about the causes of all this mess.

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oulipo2 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Technology IS politics.

Technology is a form of control. And in the capitalist system, this control is mostly exerted by private companies, on which the rules of democracy do not apply.

There must be guardrails

	▲	fc417fc802 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[flagged]

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vybandz 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

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pasquinelli 6 hours ago | parent [-]

i've been on hn a long time, and if there's a prohibition against anything vaguely political if it can't be connected to technology, i've never known it.

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muzani 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not strictly tech. But tech tends to be both new and intellectual. Sometimes it can be an old phenomenon but also curious; people often just paste Wikipedia links here and they trend.

From the guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

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

there is and always has been a strong prohibition of anything political on HN. it is widely and frequently discussed as the main problem with HN. Usually, a post like this would be removed very quickly

	▲	pasquinelli 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		odd that i've never noticed

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nxor2 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I was shadowbanned for mentioning Iryna Zarutska. Most political topics can be connected to technology: technology after all is often how we hear of and discuss these things.

	▲	disqard 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		How did you realize you were shadowbanned? I'm curious because I sometimes wonder, if that happened to me, would it affect the way in which I engage with this website? FWIW, I often lurk, but sometimes engage (like right now). Perhaps it could happen to me and I would not realize it for a while...

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throw4748t858 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

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fc417fc802 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> automatic assault rifles

Trying hard to embellish your language I see. Might I suggest "military style automatic tactical assault rifle"?

My impression is that topics that involve politics are tolerated, even encouraged. It's politically charged discourse such as yours that's not welcome. It's near impossible to have an intellectual exchange with a political pundit.

I wonder if any VC out there would fund my pitch for an AI enhanced military style automatic tactical assault rifle with a copilot 360 targeting integration to ensure our troops can noscope420 at all times as well as a blockchain layer for auditing discharge events.

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MSKJ 2 hours ago | parent [-]

this comment is very pedantic

	▲	fc417fc802 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are many objections that could be raised to both my tone and content there but I don't think "pedantic" is one of them. It's certainly mocking. The subject matter is overly political. It's even plausible that it strays across the line laid down by the HN guidelines, although personally I think it's acceptable given the context. Something about fighting fire with fire.