I landed on HN from within the tech world (at the time, I'm largely no longer), though critical of the VC element of it. Circa 2011. The site then and now resembles (in both good and bad elements) Usenet and Slashdot of yore.
My sense then was a strong pro-Valley bias, though with some criticism. That criticism has been increasing here, as it has in the media generally ("techlash", "tech backlash", general antitrust / antimonopoly viewpoints, privacy / surveillance concerns, and the like).
I remain somewhat disappointed that there seem to be topics HN is unwilling (in the collective hivemind sense) to discuss, though that's more a case of unable to sensibly discuss than a specific moderator-led political bias. I've shared these frustrations with the mod team (mostly dang, though there are and have been others) over the years, sometimes agreeing, sometimes differing strongly.
Given the state of discourse elsewhere, in the press, in the US, in the rest of the world, and if I may suggest, in other online venues, Hacker News does not do badly. It may not be the best venue, but it is very, very, very far from the worst. Viewpoints do get heard (many of which I disagree with, or simply find based on ideological mantras or a failure to grasp fundamental facts). I try to express my disagreement as respectfully and clearly (and concisely) as possible. For the most part, that seems to be received reasonably well.
Accusations that HN is entirely of the Left, Right, techbro, woke, or other communities strike me as quite false. The culture quite likely skews US, educated, male, and wealthier, though other voices are heard. (I'd like to see more, I suspect HN would as well.)
I generally don't try to win given arguments at all costs, though I'll do my bit to nudge discussion in what I see as more interesting areas, both in terms of topics and insights on those. This includes comments, voting and flagging, submissions, and (where it seems advised) pinging the mods (hn@ycombinator.com) for egregious issues (mostly spam, titles, link disambiguation, and the like, though occasionally behaviour against guidelines).
> I generally don't try to win given arguments at all costs, though I'll do my bit to nudge discussion in what I see as more interesting areas, both in terms of topics and insights on those.
This is pretty much my approach.
I don't try to "win" arguments on HN at all. I try to provide my perspective when it differs substantially from the prevailing, but I try to do that in a way that's not confrontational. I rarely get comments in reply that are directed at me (as opposed to the idea I've presented), but when I do, I almost always just ignore them.
Don't insult my intelligence. Discourse here is confined to the limits of acceptability according to the neoliberal mainstream. This is abundantly obvious to literally everybody. Of course the liberal mainstream endeavors to enforce that.
"Abundantly obvious to literally everybody" is something that all the commenters who I quoted at that link would agree with. They just disagree violently about what is abundantly obvious to literally everybody.
How about this: There is no doubt in my mind -- none -- that you know exactly what I'm talking about.
And all anyone really needs to know, in order to suspect dishonesty and censorship from you, is an awareness of your shadowbanning tactics.
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It's ok though. There are other culturally influential websites where people/groups can market their ideas, cults, viewpoints, albums, etc. And some of them don't shadowban. Some of them do something a little different instead.
That's just way inappropriate. Probably the only reason your comment isn't [dead] is you're in a discussion about moderation.
I wouldn't attack Dan so personally. Instead, think of the community here. There is a hint of who they are in the following quip. Actually it explains things well enough that it tends to get downvoted whenever I post it. Perhaps because it hits a little too close to home:
HN is open minded about intellectual inquiry as long as that inquiry doesn't challenge anything an average Californian already believes
I don't remember exactly where I found that. But just think about it. There are so many people on HN from the Bay Area. The submissions, discourse, and moderation all reflect that "bias". What you're observing is simply an emergent behavior.
Do those numbers also hold true for % of submissions, % of comments, % of upvotes/downvotes, etc?
If you have a cosmopolitan group of "users", but the most active ones are largely from the Bay Area, then the point about Bay Area groupthink still stands.
