> The poster, a European, said that one of the things they liked about HN was that when the discussion drifted too deep into an SV-centric view, people from other parts of the world would often provide a useful corrective that would then be upvoted.

It's actually fascinating to observe how the "tone" of HN varies through the day. My impression (I haven't carefully analyzed) is that during the morning in Europe you tend to have more left leaning points of view politically and more advocacy of Stallman-esque Open Source.

Once the US gets online though the political spectrum of opinions shifts right and towards Libiterianism. You also have people working at places like Google and Facebook adding their 2 cents, which tends to lead to "moral outrage" (European) vs "here's the reality" (US).

If your point is not well argued you'll get a few down-votes. If you point is very well argued you'll get a lot of down-votes. Nothing makes people down-vote more than an opinion they don't like but can't easily refute or dismiss.

This is a very interesting theory! I hope somebody gets a bee in their bonnet enough to gather some data.

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What were the mindcuffs?! Examples? What a great word!

Common ones: everyone speaks English or pays in dollars. People are not familiar with Chinese internet, or even non-American-centric companies. People have access to some local service (typically delivery services or local chains) or are familiar with their idiosyncrasies, including Amazon (Amazon is only present in 11 countries https://services.amazon.com/global-selling/global-selling-gu...). Issues around food or water quality are very local; American conspiracy tropes.

Less common are understanding of legal issues, typically common law needs at least one case to clarify an issue as opposed to positive law countries; the right to bear arms is a big one, so is American-style freedom-of-speech.

More specific are things like: non-American universities provide a good education, non-American companies can innovate meaningfully, tipping is omnipresent in services, keyboard layouts, American references in literature, sport, movies, etc.

One of the latest obvious examples of such mindcuffs outside of HN is Apple’s announcement around battery replacement: it’s impossible to find conditions that are not meant for the US market. You can redirect the offer to local stores or find it there. That is actually quite typical of Apple, in spite of 60% of their sales being outside of the US.

I have made the mistake to point at similar mindcuffs on HN and I will not do it again.

It's worth adding that these mindcuffs are more tied to social class and one's political leanings than they are to geography.

How? Can you explain?

Also aren't political views geographicaly tied?

They are to some extent but my point is that a doctor from NYC or Austin TX is more likely to think like someone from SV than a programmer from Boise or Bangor.

The SV way of thinking is present to some extent in most urban people of similiar socioeconomic class. A plumber from SF will not necessarily take the same things for granted that a programmer from SF will.

I think class is definitely a part of it, but I believe SV's paradigm is notably distinct from other geographies. A programmer from Chicago is much less likely to talk about disruption as an unalloyed good, or to take a militant free-speech line that refuses to consider race or class.

I wanted to strike a balance between conveying the point and respecting the poster's deletion, so I left out those specifics. But I hope the poster turns that list into an expanded essay; I thought they were great. And yes, I loved the word.