Essentially saying that opinions you don't agree with make a website a shithole.

Not blaming you at all, but understand that's why many people feel like Twitter is a shithole.

For some it's just opinions; text on a wall. For others those opinions have a major impact on their lives. It's with them everywhere they go.

These are not the same.

Text on a wall should not have a major impact on your life unless you're already incredibly privileged.

There are a lot of people out there with real problems -- approximately none of them give a shit about hacker news.

You missed the point. That text on the wall has a major impact on people because that text on the wall turns into policy. Turns into laws. Turns into dictation on life.

You think kyrsten sinema or Joe Manchin care about hacker news comments?

Interesting, I always thought that the quality of the conversation was better than on the blue one. But I am a white male.

This varies significantly from thread to thread. I remember the threads from the time of the George Floyd protests and they were pretty awful, but most are completely mundane e.g. I posted a thread about alleged abuse of refugees at some US detention center and it was received as you would expect anywhere else.

That being said I am white and male and probably not who you have in mind. HN being white and male is probably more of a thing about it being aimed at programmers than anything else, plus I have a pet theory that something about the male personality values talking nonsense all day about things we have no control over (i.e. Why is Reddit male dominated? The subs I go on are full of completely sexless nerdtalk about politics for example)

What does Firefox have to do with race and gender?

Never forget the "Netflix for Black People" thread[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28087309

I hadn't even seen this one yikes.

>[...] Anytime a topic about race, gender, etc comes up this website turns into a shithole.

because people are actually racist/sexist, or they're not progressive enough?

Latter.

I would also call attention to how this site talks about trans people, given that the original tweet author is trans.

How?

interesting...

There are definitely more than just white males here because just about every topic specific to some country or region gets comments from people in that area and I doubt they're all white.

People of color around the world have opinions about race, gender, etc which I think would offend you. Some of their countries even have laws, language and cultural traditions that are completely against your own values.

Also, perhaps it's very difficult to avoid becoming reddit when controversial topics are present? Which comment forum do you think gets it right and what's their secret?