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Re:Law Enforcement Uses Border Search Exception as Fourth Am... by ggreer on Saturday December 10, 2016 @04:23AM (#13144853)
Pretty much every political thread on HN accomplishes nothing more than to increase the net amount of frustration in the world. The same ideologues rehash the same arguments. No one's mind is changed. And each time a few people get fed-up and quit HN, causing the remaining community to be slightly more strident.

The sooner these threads are dealt with, the healthier our community will be.

Re:Law Enforcement Uses Border Search Exception as Fourth Am... by wfo on Sunday December 11, 2016 @11:24AM (#13151722)
Not the case, of course. I've changed my mind thanks to political discussion on HN. I've seen others do the same. I don't believe you that there are people quitting HN because of politics threads -- there's no evidence for that or reason to believe it.

Politics can be really, really relevant to tech and vice versa. A lot of the things that have been discussed in this election are explicitly about technology and software (H1B visas, 'closing up the internet', social media to name a few). It would be ridiculous to plug our ears and pretend they don't exist -- that's how non-technical people end up making the rules about technology that we have to follow, i.e. how we got into a lot of the messes we are in today. Tech nerds like us love to pretend it doesn't matter because it's hard and it involves feelings and emotions and you can't reason your way out of it but we always, always lose big time with that approach.