Being apolitical is fine. I try to be that way publicly and in my work. I fail sometimes, but I try.

But when I look at huge messed up things in society, and I know there are people on HN who had a big role in making them that way?

At some point you gotta cut the crap. Not taking a stand is taking a stand. Nobody gets a free ride. There's no special "get out of difficult conversations for free" card that we tech folks get that others don't have.

I do not think HN needs to be reddit. But yes, I do think a second room for the intersection of tech and politics (and only that topic) is way overdue. We are better than this.

> We are better than this.

We could be, but we're not. This is what we are right now, a bunch of people that can't even have a rational discussion on a subject such as this.

I spent my entire youth reading sci-fi stories about mankind making new technology that eventually wipes out the species: giant robots, viruses, nuclear bombs, and so on.

And this it what we got? Tweeting and liking posts? This is the scary tech that's destroyed mainstream media and now threatens to lay waste to civil discourse in general? Typing little comments into boxes? Really?

Nobody can say the universe doesn't have a sense of humor.

Some of us have spent our entire adult lives working to prevent technology that "wipes out species". It's not an accident that these things did not occur.

There are places for cutting the crap, and taking a stand... that doesn't necessarily have to be here.

To call upon the topic of "safe spaces", I think HN ought to be a safe space for people involved in technology to simply... be... without having to constantly add disclaimers to their comments referencing their employer, or watching out for attacks due to their involvement in something that's suddenly politically volatile.

There are many different forums in the world, and the only way they stay different is by drawing a line as to what topics and discussion patterns they won't except.

The line drawn on HN is hardly a "hard line". Political topics are acceptable, but only one at a time and only if participants remain somewhat aloof.

In conclusion, I think HN is nice simply because it has only one room. Adding other rooms isn't something I'd like to consider, whilst the existence of other multi-room sites exist with the same population.

I am on Reddit, but I use pseudonyms there ... merely because I am afraid.

> Adding other rooms isn't something I'd like to consider, whilst the existence of other multi-room sites exist with the same population.

That doesn't parse, but even if it did I disagree with it, i don't think that those other sites exist with the same population.

And the thing is, by being a startup board, we support exactly the kind of actions, movements, and organizations that have greatest new impact on fellow humans

It might be okay to turn away if that "new impact" is something like faster pizza delivery. It's another thing entirely when we're instrumenting every action that every cell phone user does and then selling the data off to the highest bidder.

There might be plenty of other places for this discussion. There are no other places with these people who are responsible for doing these things.

And this is exactly what the social media companies want: everybody to find some other place besides their forum to talk about difficult things, because difficult conversations turn away eyeballs.

It's us. The founders, inventors, and senior executives and engineers at these companies that are most in need of these discussions. And we not only have created a world where these things don't happen, we revel in the fact that we've separated all these concerns into different compartments

It is a vile and corrupt system. I refuse to believe that people who give some time to think about it would continue supporting it the way it is.

Spot on. Thanks for these comments and this discussion.

That's a nice notion, but being called out as "vile and corrupt" is exactly what my fear is. I would want a teensy bit more nuance before we decide to stake people out as corrupt.

There are some challenges, especially in written communication, and especially when it involves large audiences. Many times there's no comprehension, yet communication happens anyway. That's when we say people are "talking past one another"

For instance, you said "I would want a teensy bit more nuance before we decide to stake people out as corrupt."

But I never said that. I said it was a vile and corrupt system. I also explicitly said that I had faith in people. I believe if they consider these systems (that I believe they created in good faith) they would realize that they are hurting mankind, not helping it.

I also believe there is a difference between "wanting to be right" and "wanting to have a difficult conversation" I have no desire to be right. Like everybody else, I believe I am in the right. But one person or group of people wanting to be proven right is not what this is about.

Jacques and I probably disagree on this particular Google issue. I don't know. I am a right-leaning libertarian and, I think, Jacques leans left. But I'm okay no matter how this shakes out. The reason I'm speaking out is that there is a innate conflict between efficiency, usefulness, and attractiveness of the public square and tolerance of dissent.

Mankind solved this problem and it gave us all of the technological miracles we see today. But now the concept of "public square" is primarily being owned by multinational corporations or governments with no knowledge or desire to hear or apply those lessons from our past. They just want a more attractive and useful public square, not one that encourages and tolerates difficult conversations.

The irony here is that this one conflict is driving what many perceive to be the greatest technological danger to the species.

The system we have created in response to this conflict made sense at the time. But it was short-sighted. By trying to compartmentalize troublesome people and conversations, oddly enough, it is contributing to a vicious cycle where the net swings wildly one way or the other. It is a vile and corrupt system. I continue to believe the people who created it are not.