Once again: maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. The guidelines make it clear we're aiming for something better here, and we eventually have to ban accounts that post like this.
Downvoted? You must be thinking of the success women have as senior politicians and military officers. Or the societal rejection of viewpoints like incel, tradwife or manosphere.
There are a surprising number of right-wing people on HN, or bots - impossible to tell from just downvotes. If anything is even remotely critical of Cheeto Benito[1], it is automatically [flagged] as well. This site is a part of the trumposphere…
1: I love the fact that autocorrect capitalises that for me!
As someone who reads the discussions for hours each day, whenever this trope "anything even remotely critical of [blah] is flagged" it seems always to actually be an example of the opposite of what it's purporting to prove.
These kinds of comments get flagged because (a) flamebait and political/ideological battle is against the guidelines and longtime users know that very well, and (b) those sentiments about particular figures have been expressed so often for so long that they're now considered completely uninteresting.
The purpose of HN is curious conversation about interesting topics, in which we hope to learn something new. Saying the same critical things about the same people year after year is antithetical to that, and is not the kind of thing people value HN for, even if they've agreed with the sentiment for years. People who are comfortable with their views about the world don't need to say – or read – the same things over and over.
Calling a spade a spade, while quite repetitive, is pertinent. The business and social environment needed to work in the field and more importantly start or maintain businesses in the field is inherently political. Politics ebbs and flows or a long time scale and the current trends really suck for most groups.
People who are comfortable with their views could and often are full of shit. Reality happens independent of one’s viewpoint.
The purpose of HN is to increase the gloss on Y Combinator, increase the allure of startups and get some more business heading their way. Any altruism is merely the price they pay for marketing.
The purpose of HN is to be interesting, and to gratify intellectual curiosity.
That's it. There's no need for any secret corporate or political agenda. HN is most valuable and useful to YC if it just attracts an audience of people who are intellectually curious, because those are the kinds of people who are interested in learning about new things, including new technologies and companies.
Given that, the most counterproductive thing we could do is alienate more than half our potential audience by promoting/tolerating views that they find abhorrent.
It also means our audience isn't easily deceived, because the most intellectually curious people are hard to bullshit, pretty much by definition. And this is the thing you learn quickly as a moderator here: even if you ever wanted to get away with any kind of deception of the audience, you soon find you wouldn't be able to, because people are so quick to notice and point it out if anything seems a bit off.
My greatest hope for HN is that if we could somehow keep raising the bar of intellectual curiosity, maybe we could yield new ideas that might help to break the world out of the stupid politics that seems to prevail these days. Hopelessly idealistic perhaps, but we all need something to dream about.
Repetition of the same old rhetoric, day after day, year after year, doesn't get us anywhere, other than making this place boring and miserable. By all means, criticise powerful figures and institutions. Sure, let's talk about the ways "current trends really suck for most groups" – we talk about that a lot here. But an argument only really belongs on HN if it gives us something new to think about.
