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A comment on /story/42911488. Parent comment

Re: by minimaxir on Sunday February 02, 2025 @03:40PM (#42911580)
I missed that comment (because the parent submission was flagged lol) but dang's argument IMO more drives to the point that current HN policy/culture is insufficient. Flagging for repetition is fair, but the problem here is that there's very little repetition because Elon/DOGE keeps finding new ways to interfere with institutions.
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Re: by pvg on Sunday February 02, 2025 @03:46PM (#42911644)
dang's argument IMO more drives to the point that current HN policy/culture is insufficient.

That's the "This time it's different" bit from his comment so I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying this time it's different except even more different?

but the problem here is that there's very little repetition because Elon/DOGE keeps finding new ways to interfere with institutions.

Right but that's not how 'repetition' works in the narrow context of HN. It's a fuzzy repetition, a repetition by reference not by value. If Elon Musk goosesteps 3 times today and 6 times tomorrow, that doesn't mean it makes sense to put 9 Musk goosestepping stories on the front page of HN. There'd be no HN left.

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Re: by mdhb on Sunday February 02, 2025 @03:51PM (#42911697)
It also doesn’t really take into account the fact that this is part of a very deliberate strategy to push through as much crazy shit as quickly as possible. This ongoing partisan takeover of various parts of government for example right now is a good example of a story that has a lot of different moving parts and it’s not all just “repetition” or anything like that. The entire strategy literally relies on people being able to handwave it away which is what the default policy as it stands today is exactly designed to do.
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Re: by pvg on Sunday February 02, 2025 @04:00PM (#42911778)
The entire strategy may rely on that in some broader sense but if you think the presence or absence of these stories on HN makes an iota of a difference to the actual implementation of any of these things, we're doomed and alwayshavebeen.gif.

The International Brigades don't start mustering on the Ellipse to rescue the Republic, called forth when the 5th muskery story appears on the HN front page on a given day. Nor is Czechoslovakia handed over to Space X if no such stories show up for a bit. It's still just a medium-sized nerd messageboard.

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