Possibly because the comment section will inevitably collapse into a partisan flamewar.

Shouldn't be a partisan issue.

While I agree with you, it is observably true that many people take different positions on the issue and then demonize those who disagree with them, converting it into a partisan issue.

And here in lies the problem: wedge issues. Taking something, blowing it out of proportion and turning into a partisan issue on purpose. Abortion, LGBTQ rights, immigration. It becomes impossible to have nuanced, rational discussion about those topics, and its on purpose. One side thrives off of making them emotional, hot-button issues. Shunning discussion of it here or elsewhere because it's an emotional, hot-button topic, is just conceding to the side making it like that.

> One side thrives off of making them emotional, hot-button issues

Certain people on both sides do. It's not just whichever side you're thinking of.

This is not the case, what you're observing is people on the left rationally responding and defending themselves. But they did not start the conversation.

Take, for instance, transgender people. Leftist don't care about transgender people outside of the care every person should receive. From their perspective, the subject is a settled matter. However, the right wants to consistently lie about transgender Americans and pass legislation limiting their rights.

The left, in turn, has no choice but to respond.

We can tell this is the case because, say, 6 years ago nobody was talking about transgender people. It became a culture war issue when the right chose to bring it into the culture war. It's intentional - the right understands these Americans are not a real problem, but they also understand their constituents are hanging on by a thread. These are distractions.

The left gains absolutely nothing from these hot-button wedge issues. In fact, they lose a lot. They alienate some voters and they're forced to direct their messaging to those issues instead of their fiscal policy. The result is that some more moderate democrat voters left, and a lot of people on both sides believe the delusion that conservative fiscal policy is good. I mean, even right now, there are people who genuinely believe the current economic state of the US is acceptable. They're not stupid, they're just not told what conservative fiscal policy actually is and how it hurts them and their family. Because they're too busy being distracted by things that don't really matter.

The question we all need to ask is - how many people are personally victimized by transgender Americans? Gay Americans? Green card holders? Once you start asking those questions, the current conservative zeitgeist becomes untenable, and the platform quickly crumbles.

> Take, for instance, transgender people. Leftist don't care about transgender people outside of the care every person should receive. From their perspective, the subject is a settled matter. However, the right wants to consistently lie about transgender Americans and pass legislation limiting their rights.

> The left, in turn, has no choice but to respond.

> We can tell this is the case because, say, 6 years ago nobody was talking about transgender people. It became a culture war issue when the right chose to bring it into the culture war.

This is interesting, because my perspective is nearly the opposite - that in the past 10 years, it's the left that has decided that trans people need, among other things:

- the right to use the bathroom/changing facilities of their choosing,

- the right to go to sex-segregated spas or gyms of their choosing, and

- the right to play sports on the team of their choosing.

The left has also decided that children should receive "gender-affirming care" if desired, sometimes without parental approval or even notification.

Do you think those things were popular, "settled" positions 6+ years ago, before "the right" chose to bring them into the culture war? Going back a bit further, in 2004, when Obama needed to claim to oppose same-sex marriage for political reasons - you think that at that time, trans women with penises had, say, the "settled" right to go into a women-only nude spa? The only reason we weren't talking about it at the time was because it was so obviously settled, and the right just wanted to stir up trouble by "taking away" that settled right?

To me it seems quite clear that the left, rightly or wrongly, sought to extend new protections, some of which were controversial, to trans people.

To be blunt, your perspective does not align with reality.

The reality is that transgender Americans have been doing these things, all these things, for many decades. And nobody, and I do mean nobody, cared. Ultimately you are not inspecting penises in the Men's room. You, yourself, do not care.

What do you believe transgender people did in the 70s, or 80s, or 90s? You've never thought about it because you know, deep down, it's not a real issue. But, if you do think about it - or better yet, just ask them - you'd know they've already been doing these things.

Women do not run into burly men with beards when they go to the women's room. Do you know why? Because those transgender men have always gone to the men's room, and have never been questioned. Never been questioned, until conservatives decided to question it.

I have been alive for a long time now. We always knew trans people existed. Nobody batted an eye. Conservatives too, including conservatives that exist still, and including even you. Yes, that's correct - I am speaking for you, because I know you were not protesting these things in the 2010s, or the 2000s, or the 90s, or the 80s, or the 70s.

So no, you don't care, and no, you yourself believe these are not real issues. You might not say that now, because as I've already stated, the conservatives brought it into the zeitgeist to distract you. And now, you are distracted. Before, you were not.

And, to you and other conservatives, you should focus. The economy is in danger. Due process is being violated. Our constitution is in hot water.

The American right has been able to propagandize you, and others, so completely and so severely, that you not only do not pay attention to these issues, but you legitimately think you willingly chose to not pay attention. You didn't choose anything, this was carefully crafted for you. I challenge you to think back to an earlier time you were alive and question what you saw then.

Feminists were protesting this way back in the 1970s. Janice Raymond even wrote a popular book about it.

Here's a review of her book, from 1979, which lays out many of the same points around this issue as are being discussed today: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/06/10/archives/male-and-female-...

While these sub-ideologies did exist, they were fringe. This is now a primary issue for conservatives and it has been brought into the zeitgeist and their political platforms. That is different. Most, close to all, conservatives were not considering this in the late 70s. I know you know that.

Not as fringe as you may believe. Raymond's book sold a lot of copies. But more impactfully, radical feminist ideas on this topic and others continued to develop, and became increasingly influential from then to now.

One aspect of this that often isn't considered is how women with shared feminist ideals but differing political backgrounds have been working together across the aisle. As a result, radical feminists on the left have had significant influence on conservative policymakers via these informal collaborations. Look at EO 14168 for example.

> The reality is that transgender Americans have been doing these things, all these things, for many decades.

Do you have any evidence for that?

For example, do you have evidence of any of these happening in the US before, say, 1990?

- any openly transgender athlete participating in sports on the team of their preferred gender rather than their sex assigned at birth?

- large numbers of children receiving "gender-affirming" hormones or puberty blockers?

- transgender prisoners being housed with the sex they identify as, regardless of whether they actually "present as" that sex?

- a transgender woman being accepted to attend a all-women college?

Maybe all of these happened quietly, so common and uncontroversial that they were totally unremarked upon. But surely there's some evidence that they occurred?

For me it simply doesn't pass the laugh test that a trans woman with a penis could walk into a nude spa in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s without anyone batting an eye.

Nice steel manning, of course transgender people without bottom surgery don’t walk into nude spas. If you find a single example, great, find me the hundreds of examples you folks claim there are which threaten you. You’re not arguing honestly, just coming up with wild situations that don’t match reality. You may be uninformed, or misinformed, I suggest you actually read more than surface articles on Fox News.

I don't claim that there are hundreds of examples of this.

My claim:

- A: today, the left, broadly construed, insists that there is a right for transgender women to go into women-only spaces, including nude spas. For my point, it doesn't matter how often this "right" is exercised - merely that the left asserts that there is such a right.

- B: this was not true of the left 6 years ago (or 45 years ago).

- Consteval's claim that the left is merely defending "settled," uncontroversial rights that trans people have had for decades is therefore wrong.

Evidence for A:

In 2021, a 52 year old sex offender who had been convicted in multiple instances of indecent exposure went into a nude spa. It caused a huge controversy with dueling protests and counterprotests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi_Spa_controversy

In San Francisco, a Russian nude spa announced a policy that 1 night a month would be "ladies only" for people who were assigned that sex at birth, to provide a "phallus-free environment." For that decision, they were investigated by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. They reversed their policy after this intervention.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250307232755/https://www.sfchr...

https://sfstandard.com/2025/03/12/archimedes-banya-ladies-ni...

In Washington, a Korean spa which requires nudity for some services restricted people from male genitalia from entering the facility. A transgender woman with male genitalia was denied service at the facility and sued: https://www.courthousenews.com/after-banning-trans-women-was...

So it seems to me that either:

- transgender women without bottom surgery could go into nude spas in 1970 without issue, or

- I'm wrong about A, and the left doesn't actually insist that trans women have a right to women-only spaces, or

- Consteval is mistaken, and people on the left are in fact pushing for more rights for transgender people that were not settled 6 years ago (or 55 years ago).

I'm asking for some evidence I'm wrong, you're just saying it doesn't really matter if I'm wrong - it's unlikely to affect me personally. Maybe! Nevertheless...

Are you interested in hearing from the perspective of a trans person who mostly doesn't agree with the person you've been replying to, but does feel there's gaps in your perspective here?

I ask this way especially because I don't know if you'll actually see this since I see one of the comments is flagged, and given how it's been most of a day already.

I would be very interested, thank you. The flag is probably justified since HN is not really the place for these culture war things :) but I'm genuinely trying to understand the perspective here, because it does seem like a big gap between my understanding (the Democratic party has moved left on these issues) and theirs (the Democratic party is just playing defense on these issues).

I personally wonder if people were arguing and complaining that America was moving left or failing back when racial integration was the big fight. I’m sure there were people arguing that letting non-whites drink from the same water fountains was dangerous for white women. Think about that a bit while you lament transgender people.

You're proving my point here - the original comment claimed that the left was merely defending the pre-existing, settled rights that trans people have "always" had against the right's aggression, I'm saying that the left has been actively pushing for change and new rights. I think the left sees trans rights as a continuation of the civil rights movement. This is an empirical question, entirely separate from the question of whether this is a good thing.

No, I'm saying you're derailing the conversation with your "empricism", congratulations. That's what you people do around here. If there are simply a few examples of the "danger" you people claim, then why is it such a problem? Answer is that there is no problem, it's a made up issue that is being used to divide us politically, like abortion or gay rights or weed. It doesn't matter if "the democrats are moving left", you're either for the rights of people to exist as they wish, or you are for limitations on how people can express themselves in this way. I'm finished with this line of conversation, you have wasted enough of my time.

Could you explain the racial analogy in more detail please? It's not obvious how restricting males from using female-only spaces is similar in concept or principle to racial segregation.

> For me it simply doesn't pass the laugh test that a trans woman with a penis could walk into a nude spa in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s without anyone batting an eye.

They weren't, and they still aren't. The idea that transwomen want to be around ciswomen and hang brain is a conservative fantasy. You would very much like to believe that is true, because you believe transwomen are inherently perverted sexual deviants. Not unlike how conservatives viewed homosexuals. Of course, this is not so. This is one of the most classical forms of a projection. Meaning, you cannot view transwomen in a light that isn't sexual, so you project your own sexual objectification onto them. Again, exactly how was done with homosexuals in the past. Even today, there are a lot of people I've met who can't see a gay man without thinking "dick in ass dick in ass!". That's not the homosexual's fault.

On the topic of gender affirming care: the primary recipients of gender affirming has always been cisgender people. I take testosterone myself, because unfortunately I lost my testicles to cancer. I identify as a man and I want to present as a man as much as possible, so I take testosterone. And again, with puberty blockers, same thing - mostly cisgender people.

To be clear, gender affirming care for minors typically includes things like a new haircut and new wardrobe. In some cases, particularly for teens, puberty blockers may temporarily be used. The idea that minors are mutilating themselves is, surprise, another conservative fantasy.

But, even then, the Conservative's desire to get in the way of the rights of parents, their children, and their doctors, is very out of character. If you told conservative's 10 years ago that the government is going to want to vet what treatment their children can and cannot receive, they would be aghast. Even today they would be. After all, a lot of them have a big issue with the principle behind vaccine mandates.

> They weren't, and they still aren't. The idea that transwomen want to be around ciswomen and hang brain is a conservative fantasy.

I think you're probably right that the vast majority of trans women are completely uninterested in such a thing. And yet:

In San Francisco activists protested a policy that excluded trans women from a nude bathhouse one night per month for a "phallus free" womens night. They were investigated by the city's Human Rights Commission after numerous reports and reversed course - no more "phallus free" nights. In Washington State a trans activist sued a nude female-only Korean spa for not providing her with service because of her male genitalia.

Are these specific people merely fighting back to try to retain a right that was already "settled" back in 1970? Or are they trying to claim a new right?

I grew up in locker rooms. I started swimming competitively at age 7. The whole, "you were actually surrounded by trans people your whole life and never knew it till 5 years ago!" is absolutely delusional and my guess is you don't actually have much experience in men's rooms at all.

This will blow your mind: in Hawaiian culture, transgender people held a place of honor and respect. Hawaii is part of America (illegally overthrown), so there’s a cultural history of transgender people that you can point to here that is respectful, though today a lot of Hawaiians use it as a derogatory term due to hate brought in with Christianity and continental culture.

I don’t get why it’s such a threat, please explain that rather than trying to erase transgender people. Gays also have a very long history, and they’re also in the crosshairs today, why them? Did gays not exist to you in the past as well?

I have, of course, been in Men's rooms. In my experiences in Men's rooms, I have seen remarkably few penises.

These transgender people did not suddenly pop out of nowhere. For context, I know several trans women who are in their 50s, and transitioned a long time ago.

I see with transgender people what I saw with homosexuals. That they were some type of phenomena, a new social contagion. That they are on the attack. I thought, surely the general population would never be stupid enough to fall for such an obvious falsehood yet again. Of course they've always existed.

All of the boys in the swim club changed together. All the boys in middle school and high school sports changed together. As an adult, working out at gyms and rec centers, all the men change and shower and talk and joke butt naked. Half the YMCAs I've been to over the years have a group of old guys that will tease you for being shy. The high school swim team I was on was... wild, I guess I'll say. Not buying what you're selling, sorry.

There are children who are transgender today and they're not changing in front of other's.

I don't know where this delusional that dudes are just hanging brain around women is coming from. You're right, that doesn't happen. That's a conservative's wet dream. I'm sure you, and others, would be beyond ecstatic if transgender people were doing that. Maybe then, you'd have a smidge of justification for all this.

For the record, nobody actually cares if you're "buying what I'm selling". You're missing the big picture here. These people aren't a threat to anyone, and to suggest otherwise is un-American. You can either face the reality that lays before you, or you can continue to be ridiculed for having obviously false beliefs. The world around you doesn't rely on you "buying" anything.

> I don't know where this delusional that dudes are just hanging brain around women is coming from. You're right, that doesn't happen. That's a conservative's wet dream. I'm sure you, and others, would be beyond ecstatic if transgender people were doing that. Maybe then, you'd have a smidge of justification for all this.

Me: "I want our society to allow businesses to prohibit people with penises from receiving certain services, for example a nude massage at a women-only spa."

You: "This is not happening, it's a conservative's wet dream, maybe if it were happening you'd have a smidge of justification for all this."

If it's not happening, why not allow businesses to prohibit it? Like, if no trans women want to hang out naked with natal women, is it a problem for Wi Spa or Olympus Spa or Archimedes Banya to say "as a nude facility that serves women, we are uncomfortable having phalluses on the premise"? Why are there protests and lawsuits and investigations when people implement these policies?

Do you personally think that those policies are objectionable? Do you think they should be illegal?

> If it's not happening, why not allow businesses to prohibit it?

Well, we aren't.

But, more specifically, the stuff the left does have a problem with is not doing this. You, and other conservatives, are trying to play innocent. This "what, lil ole me?" approach to policy making and the publicity associated with it does not fly.

If you read the bills, any of them, take your pick, proposed by states across the US you would understand they aren't doing innocuous things like this. They are targeting transgender people and crossdressers in a much more extreme fashion. Limiting adults access to medical care, enforcing dress codes in public, and even making their very existence untenable.

You, as, I'm assuming, a proponent of government restraint should be against these. These affect non-trans people as well, and set a dangerous precedent for what the government is allowed to know. It harms privacy, autonomy, healthcare.

When these other vast downsides are brought up, you, predictably, put on the "nooo we're not going to do that!" charade. Surprise, after this administration we can no longer believe that. Practically everything everyone thought was off limits is no longer so. You can continue to play stupid, yes. But you should be careful - after a certain point, people might start believing you are just stupid.

You seem more interested in debating the imaginary version of me in your head than in having an actual discussion here, so have fun, I think you can do that on your own.

You and another poster in this thread keep trying strawman me with "trans people aren't a threat" stuff but I never said anything about any threat. I responded, explicitly, to your post that trans people have actually been passing in their preferred changing rooms forever, and I can tell you from years of personal experience (perhaps if I said, "my lived experience", you'd listen better?) that they have not. As another posted has pointed out, women have been complaining about this for decades. Your paragraph about "hanging brain" and conservative wet dreams is simply unhinged and your attempt at putting words in my mouth is unimpressive.

> The question we all need to ask is - how many people are personally victimized by transgender Americans? Gay Americans? Green card holders? Once you start asking those questions, the current conservative zeitgeist becomes untenable, and the platform quickly crumbles.

I agree that that statement is technically correct, but I have observed various forms of it in American media, and here's my issue with it: the Conservative platform seems to not have run on it at all.

Broadly, I don't see the point in straw manning (conflating all immigration with illegal immigration, for example) in a good faith discussion. I've seen it a huge amount in left wing media, but I think honestly have to dismiss that discussion as bad faith and try and desperately search for the remainder.

Specifically, they haven't run on "gay Americans" that I've seen at all (I'm not sure what that would look like, even), and they haven't run on green card holders. They have run on trans ideation and surgery for children, and trans women in female spaces, and illegal immigration, it's true, but that is far more specific, and it's those precise issues that got them elected.

This is simply not true. If you turn on Fox News or even listen to the current administration talk, they are talking about transgender people.

Hell, Ted Cruz ran an ad depicting transgender children as big burly men who want to hurt YOUR daughters on the soccer field. He's a senator. He's got bigger fish to fry than that.

Even if you truly believe conservatives aren't making a boogeyman out of nothing, which is very hard to believe, but even if you do - if you look at the legislation being proposed it doesn't target the narrow cases you think it does. It harms all trans people. A lot of it targets gender-affirming care for adults.

And then immigration. How many people have illegally been detained now? Are we in the few hundreds? Where's their due process? I won't mince words. If you think the Trump administration is only targeting "illegal" immigrants, you are stupid.

Not that we didn't see any of this coming. For months leading up to this administration, the left warned about Project 2025 and it's radical ideals. We reminded you that this has nothing to do with children. With illegal immigrants. This has to do with every American. But you, evidently, continue to fall for obvious lies. After a certain point, we must deduce that you have subscribed to some religion, and it is out of our hands.

Abortion, LGBTQ rights, and immigration are inherently deeply emotional issues, but that doesn't in itself make them partisan. It increases the risk that they will become partisan, but often enough and in enough places they have not been. Politicians—not just on one side or even on just two sides—generate support for themselves personally and for the political class as a whole by converting them into partisan issues. Venkatesh Rao has written a very thought-provoking analysis of the current dynamics of the situation in https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/.

Unfortunately, it also seems to be true that the guidelines aren't enforced on discussions about the Trump administration. We used to have informative, curious discussions about politics here, but it seems like Hacker News is no longer capable of that, so I think these flamewars are best left to one of the many willing political battlegrounds like reddit or X.

> They added, "The only nonpartisan issues are the most basic of things that all societies have like "don't murder people" (but even then the minutia become debatable)." Although the comment has been deleted, I think this merits a little further exploration, because there is some truth to it, though I disagree more than I agree.

For example, that time when English people in England didn't count: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englishry

I don't think there is anything to be gained from enumerating the cases when one or another society has condoned killing people, which are so numerous and diverse that they may have accounted for the majority of all of the people who have died. Everyone is aware that such cases exist, I think.

> While I agree with you, it is observably true that many people take different positions on the issue and then demonize those who disagree with them, converting it into a partisan issue.

Sure, but you have to draw a line somewhere. Even on HN, there are opinions that you can't express (repeatedly) without being banned, even though there are clearly people with such opinions. Otherwise it's the Nazi bar problem - everyone who's not a Nazi will eventually leave.

Where exactly to draw the line is left as an exercise to the reader, but I suspect that some people just don't like where the line is currently being drawn.

I am not sure what opinion you thought I was trying to express. Evidently some sort of anti-censorship argument? To the contrary, my comment was explaining that the issue of US immigration has become highly polarized, and discussing highly polarized issues on HN is generally destructive, so probably we shouldn't attempt to discuss the issue here. This is closer to being a pro-censorship argument than an anti-censorship argument. (Later I added an illustration of how well a discussion can go without polarization, and how radically that differs from the current comment thread, but you may not have seen that.)

Your comment begins by signaling partial disagreement ("Sure, but") but then makes no argument tending to show that the issue is not highly polarized or that HN is a good place to discuss highly polarized issues. Instead, it discusses other topics relating to social group dynamics, but not in a way that is relevant to the comment you were replying to.

You're advocating for avoiding polarised discussions because they degenerate quickly. I'm only pointing out that that's not the only option: you could allow these discussions while ruthlessly silencing bad faith actors (for whatever definition of "bad faith" you want to adopt). Those are both "pro-censorship" stances (although I prefer the word "moderation" to "censorship"), but they're going about it in different ways.

That's what I mean by the Nazi bar problem[0]: you can't solve it by just not allowing certain topics to be discussed, because eventually in some completely tangential situation, a nasty flamewar is going to erupt and people who are not Nazis will be appalled that there are Nazis here.

[0]: I'm explicitly not saying that certain opinions expressed on HN are literal Nazi opinions, the Nazi bar problem is just a convenient analogy for the situation when one group of people holds opinions that are utterly appalling to many other people that frequent the same space.

I see. Thank you for clarifying. I indeed had not understood you.

It sounds like you think the problem is the wrong sort of people. But almost everybody retreats into ego defense and partisan struggle under sufficiently threatening circumstances, even though some people are habitually more prone to that kind of thing than others. It's more about minimizing the frequency of the wrong sort of circumstances.

Additionally, though I think everyone is happy that I'm not the one running the site, I have observed elsewhere that your favored "ruthless silencing" approach has some side effects you may not be anticipating.

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for anything specific because I understand that the problem is hard. But I feel like some people want to have their cake and eat it too. If you don't silence certain types of discourse, you alienate certain participants (and HN understands this to a degree - you can't use racial slurs here, for example). Maybe that's acceptable - but you just have to be honest about it.

Just the fact that it's posted now makes it partisan.

Rightly or wrongly, this kinda shit happens all the time and has happened under all previous administrations.

There is no context to the story and the reason for the detention seems to be obfuscated intentionally. And there is no attempt to understand this versus border behavior over the years.

It's only posted here at this time for this one story as some sort of implication that 'things have gotten really scary at the border' under Trump.

>Shouldn't be a partisan issue.

That's just saying "everyone should believe what I do" but in the lexicon of people who look down their nose at the general public.

The only nonpartisan issues are the most basic of things that all societies have like "don't murder people" (but even then the minutia become debatable) or things that are very clearly "government and its buddies vs everyone else" type issues, hatred for government surveillance being a good example (but once again the minutia are debatable).

And of course there's tons of people trying to subtly sail their partisan take on something that's controversial under the flag of "non-partisan".

It's a race issue. We only know about this story at all because the woman is a milk-white Canadian. It's not supposed to happen to people like her, which is makes it extra outrageous.

This is ironic. I thought there was a big push from the right for less censorship and less moderation in social media. Now we’re flagging posts because the comment section may get heated.

This has been HN policy since the beginning, and while HN is usually still quite unpleasant, policies like this one are largely responsible for preventing it from being worse. There are social contexts where discussions of topics like US immigration policy can do good rather than harm, but HN is not one of them.

>This has been HN policy since the beginning,

This is not true, at least according to dang if I recall correctly. There was a change in moderation strategy since the pg days. The way I remember dang's own explanation was that pg was more hands off in his moderation of political topics. Sure, you can say that it wasn't the same community back then, less flamewars etc, but the fact of the matter is the creator of this site moderated things slightly differently.

Maybe you won't find it ironic, but the creator of HN is often sharing posts on twitter that would be flagged to oblivion if someone other than him posted it on here. Regardless of all the reasonable explanations (this is a tech site, journalists/politicians are on twitter), it's still an interesting datapoint that the creator of this forum in this day and age thinks it's more important spending his own time talking politics on twitter more than talking tech on this forum.

I think people who say "do it on twitter like pg, instead of HN" forget that pg's twitter positive experience is largely due to the fact that he has a million plus followers on twitter and people in other fields know who he is so he is able to get high value engagement that counteracts the trolls. Your average HN user is not going to have pg's twitter experience, and so they'd rather try their luck posting in the best forum that's hospitable to them, HN.

You're right; the guideline to not submit most stories about politics was not present from the beginning, but rather newly added in May 02008: https://web.archive.org/web/20080527112502/http://ycombinato...

But that greatly predates the changes in moderation strategies or hiring dang and sctb.

Surely the understanding of the site's social dynamics has evolved over time, though, and so the reasons for the same guideline are different now.

>But that greatly predates the changes in moderation strategies or hiring dang

dang explicitly states they do it differently than pg it:

when a thread turns into a political flamewar, we moderate it more than pg used to. There were many past submissions that neither users nor moderators would allow today [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869

Thank you!

Are you kidding? There are so many VCs here who have the resources to push for fair treatment of immigrants and foreign visitors! HN is the perfect place to discuss this.

I am not kidding. The problem is that the discussion collapses into an unpersuasive and uninformative partisan flamewar, so it does not improve the choices that those VCs will make. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413819 for a more in-depth discussion.

Sometimes things get messy discussing important topics, we should err on the side of sunshine rather than darkness for these discussions. HN has a lot of powerful and wealthy people who have a responsibility to protect the system they relied on to become rich and powerful, but instead these people ignore the discussion because it doesn’t mesh with their ideas that America is the greatest.

See my connect from a few comments ago where I mention how interesting it is we can discuss authoritarian slides everywhere else except when it happens in America. It’s almost a conspiracy, IMO.

Also, I can understand demonizing the current admin, they’re flaunting the most important laws that protect us, and for some here the USA is poised to upend their lives or worse.

In any case, this discussion isn’t interesting, and constant complaints of bad behavior are stifling the actual discussion more than those flagged, dead comments that started shit.

I deeply regret that you are providing such a perfect illustration of my point.

I regret that you think that, but I’m not explaining to you why you’re wrong, it’s as pointless as you trying to convince me that I’m demonizing anyone with that comment.

> the comment section may get heated

Have you read this discussion? It was already heated, although the comments posted recently have been better.

Before greggyb asked why it was flagged, the top comments were about "the dumbest bully from their grade school" and "team grade school bullies". Does that not sound like flag-worthy discussion to you?

Name calling like that buries legitimate discussion, like the claim that she was not in fact eligible for a TN visa because she "worked for" a startup she co-founded (Holy! Water).

"NAFTA specifically prohibits self-employment for TN visa holders. This restriction poses challenges for entrepreneurs who wish to start a business in the United States."

https://www.visapro.com/resources/article/tn-visa-to-green-c...

When the people in charge are acting like the dumbest bully from my grade school, then yes, it does sound like valid critism and a legitimate point of discussion.

That seems like a reason to flag the comments, not the article.

It's amazing how many people don't know how hypocritical and self-serving each side is when it comes to speech and censorship.

this sort of comment is exactly why i flag this sort of content, to put it kindly, you're sort of missing the point and using a strawman argument

Musk, Trump and DOGE topics are all being flagged, even if they are relevant… The tech world has blessed this regime.

I don't think 51% of the readers here need to flag something for it to get flagged - maybe more like 5% or 15%?

I guess you can conclude that a few percent here likes Trump etc, but far from a majority

As someone on neither side of that aisle I can tell you it is the smothering effect of attempting any logical discussion in those topics. The smothering effect comes from one side more often than not.

The best part of it all is that you can post like the above with no clear side chosen and the people whom it applies to will react to it negatively as well.

It is a good point, and I've long been a proponent of this, that everyone needs to flag the excessive elements of "their side" more in the current climate.

Humans are humans. Some humans are dumb and emotion-prone. Some humans who are dumb and emotion-prone think their bad behavior is justified because they're on the side of justice/righteousness.

It's not enough, in our current climate, to look the other way because someone is on a similar team...

Reinvigorating honest, fair discussion requires everyone interact more positively.

In my experience during this last Trump campaign, the most effective way to rile conservatives is not to lie, but rather to tell the truth. Meaning, taking Trump at his word and repeating the words he said, in direct quotes.

I think what's happening is that a lot of his constituents like him due to his personality, but they don't necessarily believe he is honest. So, they're betting on his dishonesty and using that as a justification for their support. Meaning, supporting Trump is really not so bad if you assume Trump isn't going to do half the things he says he is. Then, it's like you're supporting an almost normal candidate.

Well, in that case Trummp has done a fantastic job proving those people wrong. But that still confuses me: who can like this personality when it's on the world platform, and not just a TV stereotype?

Could we at least elect someone likeable like Bill Nye if we're voting based on "personality"?

Most Americans don’t care for someone put together. That’s interpreted as pretentious.

They want someone a bit stupid, who says stupid things. They want someone who’s an asshole because asshole is basically synonymous with badass protagonist.

I never said that, I meant tech leaders and founders, not the user base…

It looks like Twitter is running hate and love bots and using them to support/attack posts according to what presumably is Elon's agenda.

https://bsky.app/profile/willhaycardiff.bsky.social/post/3lk...

Given this, we can reasonably expect hostile bots here, flagging according to agenda.

I think there's also a reasonable proportion of readers who want "political" topics removed from HN, even if the topic intersects with HN-relevant topics.

(I'm not one of them, but I believe many are. I appreciate where they are coming from.)

This would be more easily believed if political posts unrelated to contemporary American politics were also being flagged, but they're not.

I hadn't noticed that, but I believe it. Many Americans I know are in "blinders on" mode because the intensity and frequency of American political angst is overwhelming them.

I flag some stuff like that because I don't want to read the same political flamewars on HN over and over again, not because I like Trump.

I doubt it's even percentages. It may be as low as a dozen users lurking on /new (or automating the process) to flag based on keywords from the title or article.

HN has never been unbiased. It is funded by a tech VC company and targeted at tech entrepreneurs. It has always promoted crypto and AI scams to an eager audience and pumped up one useless company that added nothing of value to the world after another.

Despite that there has been a general interest in "tech" and clever things and intelligent discussion here that appeals to a reasonably broad community so the place works.

The massive wealth concentration and power amongst a very few, the Paypal mafia, Andreeson etc has led them down a path that puts them at odds with the rest of us. Regardless of our diverse politics regular engineers aren't going to have more individual or economic freedom in a world controlled by a small group of oligarchs. They care about us about as much as we care about ants.

I wouldn't say the tech world has blessed the regime but many unquestionably revere the financiers of the tech world. We (techies) for all our talk of individual liberties have a problem with cult like thinking. Most of us aren't stupid and we can justify our positions, any position. And while some flagging of discussions might be sock puppets or bots, the truth is a lot of people still thoroughly believe the hype.

I don't feel

>always promoted crypto and AI scams

is very accurate. In my experience it is pretty cynical about those

Not sure it's that HN has blessed the regime so much as it's flagging them so it can get back to tech etc rather than 527 trump/musk stories. There's always reddit etc.

Can you provide a source for the illegal drug claim? I'm having a seriously hard time finding any articles on this subject mentioning drugs at all.

The startup employing her was selling products containing hemp, which used to be illegal but was legalized at the federal level several years ago.

In that case, a link to the real story would be much appreciated.

Given your concern for accuracy why don’t you provide specifics about what the issues with her side of the story are, or at least a link to an article that does? Because so far you’ve only made vague accusations. What illegal drugs was she selling? The article mentions the company she worked for made a drink with hemp. Is that what you’re referring to?

> The article skips she was selling illegal drugs.

You are the only one that comes close to even make that claim. I even bothered to Google results involving Jasmine Mooney and drugs. Zero hits.

Do you have a source or are you just making up stuff?

This is an article about immigration which is highly relevant to US tech

Would they cover it on TV news?

There's little-to-no discussion about the implications on tech, based on my reading of the comments.

Just general politics and nationalism.

There is a lot of discussion in this thread on the implications to tech - you see people actively changing their travel plans as a result. We are going to lose tech workers because of how dangerous it is becoming to make the slightest misstep while traveling in the US.

Hackernews has those monthly official posts from that immigration lawyer proberts, immigration stuff is highly important to HN and the users here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=proberts

Okay, so what's your answer? Why's it getting flagged? I just tried to answer guy's question.

>Would they cover it on TV news?

Yes

> There's little-to-no discussion about the implications on tech, based on my reading of the comments.

You commented 3 hours in on a topic that was flagged for hours. How much discussion did you expect period?

The implications are obvious: other countries's businesses will be terrified reading this and refuse to enter the country. No one wants their liasons arrested by a foreign country. I can imagine many businesses in he EU marking the US as a no-fly zone over this story

I've noticed this a ton lately. So, so many posts completely brigaded. Regardless of if the flag is removed, it can easily stop discussion and visibility of the thread. I emailed Dang about it when I first noticed it happening, and the response...

```

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you—it's been a crazy last few days!

Users flagged that one. We can only guess why users flag things, but there have been so many posts about the current political goings-on that I think there's a lot of fatigue about it. In this case the article was more of an opinion piece than a factual report, so it's probably not one that we'd override the flags on.

Daniel (dang)

```

So the system is setup to allow this abuse. It's weaponizing the flag system. I'm sure this type of flagging is already automated by how fast some posts disappear on /new.

What's to stop someone from buying enough old accounts and mass flagging other topics to chill discussion / dissent? This could easily be done for a few grand. Rotate accounts doing the flagging and make sure they engage in some "high quality" discussion from time to time to avoid detection. Make sure the same groups of accounts aren't flagging the same posts, etc.

E.g. "I never want to see a freaking post about Rust again"...

Note: I had to wait hours to post this comment because my account was rate limited. I'm assuming because I'm involved in this discussion at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35157524 Now by the time I can actually post, this thread is well off the front page. This site is really good at effectively silencing people.

Dang, I'd like to know the specific comments where I am going over the line, or are too "low-quality". I have been called out once or twice over the last decade by you, and have agreed that I could have conducted myself better in those instances and tried not to fall back into those patterns.

there's no need to buy old accounts (lol?), there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have extremely strong anti-immigration beliefs, who continue to cheer on the Republican-backed express cruelty for whatever reasons, and some of these people are active on HN

receipts:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413634

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43413955

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43411269

> there's no need to buy old accounts

There is if you want to do this systematically rather than adhoc.

> there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have extremely strong anti-immigration beliefs

Totally understood, and know they are here and will flag things they disagree with while still being a real human.

I wasn't saying that is specifically what's happening with this post. I assume that's more what's happening when posts in /newest are flagged within a few min.

That part was just saying "this really wouldn't be hard to do if anyone put in just a little bit of effort, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was happening".

I’ve emailed Dan and received the same response. My suspicions completely mirror yours.

I find this line particularly weak:

> We can only guess why users flag things

It’s not that hard to do some clustering analysis to see if bad-faith actors are repeatedly flagging posts in a coordinated manner. Maybe he’s trying to avoid giving away anti-spam secret sauce, but that doesn’t seem likely given the language of the copypasta. Speaking for myself, I would like any sort of assurance that anything other than a 100% laissez-faire approach to flag abuse is happening.

I've become skeptical of Dang's ability to remain impartial in this kind of stuff given that this organisation works with Elon Musk:

https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus

Sure, you can take anything to the extreme and then they'll have to mop that up.

Until that's reality, the system mostly works. Let us know if you ever figure out the perfect flagging system where someone can't "buy old accounts en masse" or something

About an hour ago you posted (about politics in America today): "You think it's 'reflexive hysteria' to be worried about fascism? Let me ask: when exactly would you recognize it? When would you 'step in'? ... By the time it's obvious enough to satisfy skeptics like you, it's usually too late."

Given the guidelines here, does that sound appropriate for Hacker News to you?

I do hope Dang will respond because I'd like to know if that's officially the level of discussion Hacker News is now accepting. If so, they should remove guidelines like:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.

I'm sorry, is there a contradiction to guidelines? What wrong do you see in that post? I'm genuinely curious.

I was responding to someone dismissing concerns as "reflexive hysteria." Historical parallels aren't uncivil, they help examine patterns. The HN guidelines discourage flamewars and personal attacks, neither of which I did. I challenged a characterization, not the person. If discussing historical parallels to current events is now considered inappropriate for HN, that would significantly narrow meaningful conversation beyond what the guidelines actually state.

I'd love some clarification here.

This is just tone policing, the comment doesn't contradict those guidelines. I should know them, I do break them all the time!

Sorry, I strongly disagree. Comparing detaining someone for 10 days (for, apparently, a genuine violation of immigration law - self-employment on a TN visa) to killing twenty million people is in no way reasonable, and it's certainly not informative or curious. It's just a snarky ideological barb and a violation of those guidelines.

That ellipsis that you put in my comment really is doing some heavy lifting here. Seems like you ignored everything else I said between those statements. It wasn't about one person being in jail for 10 days at all. I actually didn't mention that because I don't think it's one of the most pressing issues even if it is another example on the pile.

The plainly explained point is that democratic backsliding is gradual. The road to 20 million dead isn't someone suddenly declaring "we are the baddies", then a week later they start digging the mass graves.

If someone appears with invalid paperwork to a border crossing you simply turn them away, or in the case of international flights you keep them in a room for a couple of hours and send them back next flight home. You ban her for X years.

She was in some kind of kafkaesque simulacrum of a legal system with "constitutional free zones" and for-profit "detention" centers. Nobody knew anything inside or outside, only with a considerable amount of resources and luck they we are able to find her in the system. This is closer to the stories of my family during a dictatorship, moving earth and heaven to find close ones in jail when initially the police "didn't know anything about that". They were lucky, a lot of people never found their loved ones.

Sure, the US is not there (yet), but even then she could've been there 10 months or more there if she wasn't Canadian or wealthy.

So no, it's not a "snarky ideological barb" it's a good point that doesn't meet your aesthetic standards, at most the "skeptics like you" part makes it a bit too personal. Your strawman about his point seems worse imo.

> The plainly explained point is that democratic backsliding is gradual. The road to 20 million dead isn't someone suddenly declaring "we are the baddies", then a week later they start digging the mass graves.

This is so important and so often overlooked. The Nazis took power in 1933, but the persecution of e.g. Jews ramped up very gradually. At first, it was mostly boycotts and prohibiting Jews from working in government jobs. In 1935, they were stripped of citizen rights. In 1938, Jews had to change their names and carry a mark in their passport and Jewish children couldn't attend school anymore, and later that year Jewish shops were systematically destroyed and many Jews rounded up and imprisoned. But it wasn't until the start of WWII in 1939 that mass killings actually started taking place, and only in 1942 at the Wannsee conference was the holocaust as we know it today actually planned.

Many Jews stayed in Germany until it was too late because they didn't think that it could get worse.

It's about someone with an denied visa trying to work around due immigration process (going to a consulate) by attempting instead to get to a far away border crossing and attempting a crossing there because, in her own recollection of the events, she knew/assumed the office was less strict.

And while it's a non story it's framed as a scandal because it resonate with the current political climate and the character is sympathetic to the narrative (productive and upstanding character compared to the ones dominating the previous news cycle on the topic)

I take it you have never applied for a work visa? You may get denied several times over things outside your control.

She is one of many, many people who have had a success visa after prior failed attempts.

A significant portion of HN readers, right now, are working and living in the United States on the visa that the author was trying to (re)apply for.

That is a profound distortion of what happened.

I would advise readers to read the article.

it's not a non-story because even if she was trying to get around something she didn't deserve to be _detained_ instead of simply being turned around.

1) It violates the HN guideline that if it's covered by mainstream news it's likely off-topic.

2) It's too political in nature, and violates the HN guideline that political topics are likely off-topic.

3) It violates the HN guideline that the content should be things that good hackers would find intellectually satisfying. Raging partisan hate at each other about the latest political/social snafu is not intellectually satisfying. It has nothing to do with engineering, science, technology, etc., it's purely a social/political issue.

4) Such a submission only draws a mass amount of hate and partisan flamebait which, once again, does not belong on HN. You have every other site on the internet available to discuss political issues.

5) Your appeal to popularity, saying it has lots of engagement and therefore belongs here, has zero connection to the HN guidelines for what belongs here. I don't care if 1 person or 1 billion people engage with it. It doesn't change the fact that it's off-topic and decreases the quality of the site.

If you post stuff that is negative to top-tier tech bros, like Musk. Then the fan base comes out and flags it.