And I personally think it is even more insidious. When I'm on facebook and see some extreme rightwing nutjob upvote ring I see what's going on On HN on a lot of downvoted commets it makes sense, they are poorly written and full of bs. But every time there is a little more political and/or contentious issue on all I see is Political Correctness police mercilessly downvoting and flagkillig anything that dares to even doubt. It is insidious and ironically has exactly the oposite effect (look:most of europe extreme right rise in popularity)

> But every time there is a little more political and/or contentious issue on all I see is Political Correctness police mercilessly downvoting and flagkillig anything that dares to even doubt.

Yes.

> It is insidious and ironically has exactly the oposite effect (look:most of europe extreme right rise in popularity)

Let me add a little detail here for non-Europeans. "Far right" in some western European countries has come to mean about Obama-ish politics (health insurance for all instead of government-pays-everything-for-everybody like those contries have today.)

As emp_zealoth points out this constant framing of anything that isn't way left and politically correct as "brown" and "extreme right" is now starting to backlash.

People starts to question mainstream media and conservative/right wing media/pro Israel groups/conservative political parties seems to see a surge in readers/participation.

> "Far right" in some western European countries has come to mean about Obama-ish politics (health insurance for all instead of government-pays-everything-for-everybody like those contries have today.)

Not as far as I see. Far right in Europe today means hostility to immigrants, religious and ethnic minorities, with varying degree of disguise. Far right stands for isolationism and nationwide NIMBY policies.

Far right universally has secessionist sentiment from EU, no exceptions, as this is required to implement their policy. EU legislation founded in humanitarian values stands in the way.

If anything, Trump would be much more at home with Euro far right than Obama.

It so happens that Western Europe has settled on a political system or set of systems which aren't perfect, but basically work well for everybody. Europeans have much less "stuff" than Americans, but when it comes to the basics -- health, education, public infrastructure, in some cases even housing -- everybody, rich and poor, has more or less equal access.

America, by contrast, has got its shit so not in one sock that despite vast increases in productivity, the vast bulk of the excess wealth has gone to the 1%, with the remaining classes not much better off than they were 30 or 40 years ago. And how healthy you can expect to be is positively correlated with how rich you are.

So when people say that America is a two party system: a right-wing corporatist party and a far-right-wing corporatist party, they're not blowing smoke. They're reckoning from a different origin than you. Apparently, relative to your political origin, sane policies are considered "way left and politically correct".

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy the European system and I think you are mostly right.

What I don't like is the constant framing going on from the currently politically correct ones on the left. I do not think it would be better the other way around, just state my wish for a bit of sane discussion.

"democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the rest" I guess.

> What I don't like is the constant framing going on from the currently politically correct ones on the left

Speaking of framing, that's a nice job you've done right there.

Everyone in politics reframes things, and constantly, too. It's a fundamental part of politics. People even get hired to reframe things as a profession ("PR Consultants" or "Spin Doctors"), and all varieties of politics hire them.

Each community specializes in something (which may be a bit tautological), but they do not do so well in the other things, too. So when I see some sort of political post on HN, I go in knowing it's going to be a little bit pants. Probably not terrible, probably a bit noisy as an echochamber, but certainly not what this community is good at. By contrast, if there's a bug writeup for how a screen redraw glitch was fixed by bitfiddling, well, that's the cake I came here for.

You don't have to score the two using the same metric.

Ars Technica's comment system scores agrees and disagrees separately, and reports them separately. The extra axis of information seems useful.

> Political Correctness police mercilessly downvoting and flagkillig anything that dares to even doubt.

We really need to move beyond the idea that just because an idea is contentious, it must be downvoted due to the "PC police", and not just due to "unpopular".

And seriously, blaming the rise of the right in Europe as being due to downvote/mark-unpopular mechanisms? That has to be the most banal political statement I've heard all year.

In any case, "the right to be heard" is not the same as "the right to be uncriticised".

Flagkilling/hiding something that is not blatantly offensive or false just because you don't agree is not criticism. It's censorship.

Banal political statement? What about western media trying to cover up the whole Kologne debacle (at least for few days) It's just an obvious recent example And it's just a tiny symptom

> 100% agree. And note that HN is already running this experiment; we have downvotes as well as upvotes.

I'd say that even though upvotes and downvotes are somewhat helpful it is the mentality that differentiates HN from other communities most significantly. We can't outsmart human stupidity with technology.

Sure, we have loads of people who want to game HN to push their own agendas but at its core HN users actually welcome new points of view.

There is nothing wrong wrong with, say, fighting for animal rights. But the moment you consider yourself an animal rights activist you're very likely to give up common sense and the ability to value any input that doesn't conform with your peers' opinion. Basically you become a one-dimensional character.

Pleas note I used the word "likely." I am not ruling out that there are open-minded animal rights activists!

> but at its core HN users actually welcome new points of view.

No. Try posting anything here that opposes the groupthink. You'll get the downvote hammer used against you very quickly.

This is one of the few tech sites where you can post something positive about Microsoft and not get moderated into oblivion.

I agree that there's some "groupthink" going on here, but it's not nearly as bad as any other sites I've used.