I disagree.

There is a tremendous amount of technical integration needing to be done for this project and others in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, etc.

Many of the people who do, or might, take part in that work are here on this forum And I think a frank discussion of these issues is on topic.

Conjectures aside on the % of the posters on here that overlap with work and sphere of influence surrounding this exact topic, you can have that frank discussion elsewhere.

Hacker News is not the forum for that.

Tell me more about what HN is for …

From the guidelines, first two:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

This topic by far does not gratify one’s intellectual curiosity, which is what I opened my thread with. It is dog-piling and that can be done elsewhere. The discussions don’t provide anything interesting nor anything new that a curious mind can grab and hold onto.

It might be time to read the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's relevant because Saudi Vision includes smart city construction.

By flagging, you are effectively helping the Saudi regime censor this story and allowing them to continue what they are doing.

I'm getting tired of this moral virtue signaling on HN

Agreed. Would have expected a more thoughtful analysis. Though found this to be a bit light. Not against it, though i think a better analysis or link to something else would have been better

I personally think it's relevant because of the tech investments that the Saudis are making around the world. Based on my years of reading Hacker News, I feel the focus here is is about VC/investment/business first, "hacking" topics second.

Flagging this is wrong on so many levels and the absolute worst feature of Hacker News.

Disagree. I am on a discussion forum where a community doesn’t have to wage an internet war over Ukraine, Palestine, Iran or UAE on a regular basis. I want a forum where I can discuss hacker topics, topics that ignite a hacker curiosity with a bit of tinkering and product building, and Hacker News is for that.

You have the World Wide Web to discuss whatever geopolitical pet peeves you have. Hacker News isn’t your fighting ground and flagging is the right thing to do.

Read the guidelines. This topic is intellectually lazy and not in the spirit of hacking whatsoever.

Read the guidelines. The topic scope is definitely not centered on, let alone restricted to "tinkering and product-building". In fact it explicitly says that it "includes more than hacking and startups." While the scope asks that politics be dialed down, this does not mean that stories should be suppressed just because they have an implicit political angle. My read of what it asks for is that new posts not be simply "politics for the sake politics", which I am wholly on board with.

As to the current post: I find it interesting, because (if its findings are valid) it is somewhat surprising (we knew that abuses were happening over there, but not to this extent); which raises questions of why we haven't heard about this yet; also interesting. Also simply because it relates to how that country is trying to develop itself, and the fact that is paradoxically quite archaic and quite modern; also interesting, and not even necessarily political.

We're also getting to hear from people who are from or who have lived in the region (or the countries supplying its labor pool); also interesting, and not intrinsically political.

If you don't like the political tangents, that's what the [-] element is for.