If you genuinely don't understand what's happening - it's the same reason that political discussion on Reddit became completely detached from reality. On these sort of topics you have a relatively small number of hyper partisans that aim to censor discussion through the abuse of flagging, and they're mostly successful. So all that's left is a circle jerk which has no meaningful connection to views in the actual world, or even on e.g. Hacker News. I'm not really sure why anybody would want this outcome; I suppose that in their mind it's some sort of attempt at manufacturing consent.

Anyhow, there's plenty of rich discussion to be had, but you increasingly need to do it in the real world, or on smaller forums/channels. This will likely be an even bigger issue in the future as LLMs will enable full automation of this sort of abuse that will ultimately probably be impossible to stop. In the grand scheme of things we're likely at the tail end of the era where having genuine political discussion online was possible, if not already slightly beyond it.

Everything you're saying can be true and co-exist with the reality, which is the current administration has been so vindictive, short-sighted, and nakedly serving the billionaire class, that its own supporters have had to completely disengage with everything The Executive Branch is doing.

If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on. They have to be. It's embarrassing. Instead, they are still talking about trans people and wokeness, because that is evergreen territory that can forever be raged about but never "solved," because it never affected them in the first place.

You accuse HN of being in an echo chamber that you've disregarded an even simpler explanation: The cognitive dissonance of voting for someone who immediately backed out of everything he promised (no wars, releasing Epstein files, serving the middle class) that it has broken some people's perception of their own judgement, and they can't engage with it anymore.

There's really no other reason to be suddenly quiet. This isn't 2021, just after Jan 6th. This is almost two years into Republicans having total control of the government. It's just been such a disaster people don't want to publicly root for them anymore.

There are currently 20 root level comments. 8 have been flagged. Which is again starting to look a lot like Reddit.

Some of those flags are quite reasonable, but some are not. And this happens every single time you have a thread that brings out the partisan flaggers, which will discourage future conversation from those that did bother to try to discuss and got hit by them. Absent the flaggers existence, you'd have a ratio of discussion that is probably at least approximately comparable to what we see in things like support polls or more broadly - voting.

But with it, you end up with an echo chamber that is not only uninformative, but malinformative because you now have absolutely no clue what people are thinking, why they're thinking that, what their relative numbers may be, or any opportunity to try to change their mind. So you just end up with polarization and both sides radicalizing themselves as they end up in echo chambers where a partisan view is taken as the baseline for normal.

If the quality comments that have been flagged are like what you see on /r/conservative , it might be that you subjectively see quality where others see something else.

Can you point at the well thought out rebuttal that have been victim of flagging?

You don't get it, or are not following through. The thread started with why a Conservative wouldn't post here. It's simple, it's not worth getting comments downvoted or flagged for having an unpopular opinion [not nationally but here].

You will say it's not a reasonable opinion, it's hate or fear and should be downvoted/flagged, but that is incorrect and exactly what leads to echo chambers. Which is ironic because HN is usually very pro-speech/thought... or used to be.

I can assure you plenty of conservative views get shared on HN, all the time. Saying otherwise means you must not be on here much.

It's just that defending the current administration, at this state, does take a level of bad faith that people on all sides of the political spectrum are sick of hearing. To imply it's only hardcore liberals flagging these comments is wishful thinking

"defending the current administration, at this state, does take a level of bad faith"

So every topic regarding current administration is a bad faith argument on the proponent side? Or just this one?

I think GP is right: this place has become an echo chamber. Even if someone posted a thoughtful rebuttal, it would not be seriously considered, or worse, flagged. And why would anyone waste their time when they know their efforts will be immediately dismissed and memory holed?

> Even if someone posted a thoughtful rebuttal

You could easily test this by posting a thoughtful rebuttal.

I've been posting actively on this thread and I haven't yet seen a thoughtful rebuttal, although there have been several comments in favor of the current administration's approach to voter enforcement via the USPS. Unfortunately, literally all of those comments were based on misinformation or make sweeping assertions, unsupported by evidence, about voter fraud in the US.

The thread is about general echo chamber / liberal bias though, not specifically on USPS/voter fraud.

Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too, Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.

> Any/Every discussion that makes the top page on HN about politics will flood out most of the conservative discussion, further most of the comments are echo chamber 'me too,

I keep waiting for all these well-thought-out, factually-based, good-faith arguments offered by conservatives but for some reason they never appear. It seems that the only comments written by conservatives are knee-jerk, xenophobic, semi-literate arguments based in half-truths and GOP talking points. Maybe we scared off all the "good" conservatives?

> Trump fascist' that adds very little to the conversation.

I agree that it adds little to the conversation, but it's not clear to me what else you'd like to hear. If you think that a federal takeover of state elections in absence of any real election crisis is not fascist behavior, feel free to make that argument here and I will respond in a temperate and measured tone.

Are you talking about this particular topic, or all of them? Are you able to say one positive change current administration has purposefully done?

"I agree that it adds little to the conversation"

Do you think those comments should be flagged and [deleted] or they add value here and should be kept around?

> Are you able to say one positive change current administration has purposefully done?

Not sure what kind of test this is supposed to be, but okay, I'll bite. He's done some things that could be good, but because of his unique pathology, he makes even good things bad. Look at the Trump Accounts. Creating a savings account for children is potentially a good thing. Here are the problems with it: during his presidency, he has single-handedly doubled the national debt, so this isn't a great opportunity to give away money; the move is ideological incoherent, coming from a guy who thinks that wealth redistribution is un-American; and of course he's a narcissist, so he's incapable of doing anything with stamping his name on it. It's hilarious that MAGAs decry "partisanship" but for some reason love obviously partisan, and likely Hatch Act-violating, nonense like this.

> Do you think those comments should be flagged and [deleted] or they add value here and should be kept around?

Some of those comments are flagged because they express non-constructive, hyper-partisan, anti-immigrant sentiment. They deserve to be flagged. Some are flagged because they are just unpopular on HN; those should not be flagged. I'd never claim that HN doesn't lean left, and it's always hard to be a minority in a community. The appropriate response from conservatives like you, in order to prevent your comments from being flagged, is to comment better: use factual evidence, logical arguments, and non-partisan language. Unfortunately, the few HN conservatives around here aren't doing that.

In this thread you said "...they are doing this to inject chaos into the election results, giving them cover to claim any result they want or even to just throw out the results entirely. Catastrophic problems are the means to that end." Try to imagine how that would read to somebody who wasn't already sharply biased in the same direction as yourself. What would you assume?

It reads as the exact sort of evidence free, misinformation driven, conspiratorial and sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about. The reality is that most political discussion online has been trending towards sewer level content, and I think a huge part of it is the echo chamber issue. You don't get any pushback from stuff like this online when the only people engaging with you are themselves already heavily biased in a similar direction. Oh sorry, you actually did get several people pushing back, including one merely asking for evidence. Perhaps you didn't see that because those comments were all flagged and buried.

> It reads as the exact sort of evidence free misinformation driven conspiratorial sweeping assertion that you're now complaining about.

It reads that way only if you are intentionally ignoring evidence.

We're talking about an Executive Branch in the hands of a man who has shown historic contempt for election outcomes and little moral qualms with altering them to suit his agenda.

* Conspiracy after the 2020 election to float fake electors

* Massive and ongoing campaign of lies about the illegitimacy of the 2020 election, in absence of any evidence

* Demanding states perform mid-decade redistricting, in contravention of longstanding custom

* Repeated calls to "cancel" upcoming election

* Repeated allusions to running for a third presidential term, in violation of the Constitution

Needless to say, these kind of actions and pronouncements are unprecedented in this country. When a person tells you they don't care about accurate elections, believe them.

It's incredibly hard to think that this person is deeply concerned about election integrity when he has shown such little regard for existing election laws and customs. Your willingness to overlook this evidence speaks of your own partisan bias. Oh wait, are going to say he's "joking" and I don't have a sense of humor?

EDIT: formatting

You certainly already know what you're doing or you wouldn't have added your joke disclaimer. Here [1] is a clip of Trump "alluding to a third presidential term." You 'not knowing' he's joking has nothing to do with not having a sense of humor, as any human alive would know he's joking. So your rather wild conspiracies are based on jokes and a very broad extrapolation from 2020.

So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence. Of course this is the contemporary state of political discourse and so I'm not at all implying there's anything particularly egregious about you in particular. This sort of stuff is ubiquitous, and I think echo chambers are a big part of the reason why. Who cares about making viable or relevant comments when it's largely just a mixture of a signaling circle jerk paired alongside bias confirmation.

[1] - https://youtu.be/iGDTiTfovwI?t=136

> disclaimer

No idea what disclaimer you are referring to.

> as any human alive would know he's joking.

On the contrary, I know that he's not joking. He doesn't think he's joking. This isn't a one-off comment: he's selling hats about running in 2028. He wasn't joking about "building the wall," about mass deportations, about tear-gassing peaceful protesters [1], or about trying to steal the 2020 election. Every time his supporters downplay his ridiculous rhetoric as "trolling," he doubles down. Trump's followers certainly think he's serious about running again, including Steve Bannon. When has he ever admitted to joking?

> So you have, in your own post - misinformation, sweeping assertations, and claims unsupported by evidence.

I've given you evidence of Trump being utterly serious in his utterly ridiculous claims and plenty of historical evidence of contempt for elections in my previous comment, which you have failed to address. So I don't take your accusation of "claimed unsupported by evidence" to be accurate.

When has he ever admitted to joking? More or less always if we speak of implicitness, but quite often explicitly as well. He knows that part will get snipped out by partisans which makes them look even more absurd. In the context I linked above he says, "I'm only kidding" literally immediately following his joke about a third term.

You haven't given any evidence. You've instead spread misinformation, relied heavily on broad sweeping assertions based primarily on such, and then combined that all into elaborate conspiracy theories. And then you complain about the quality of others' posts.

Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.

> Partisanship just blinds people, and is something that should be avoided like the plague.

Well, we agree on that much.

> as any human alive would know he's joking

You are perfectly demonstrating the lack of engagement I was referring to. You would have to ignore the entire history of his political career to think he is doing anything other than testing the waters here.

Furthermore, he has done more than a single joke about this. Over multiple interviews, he has laid out specific methods he could use to functionally seek a third term, including running as a VP to Vance and forcing him aside. Is it really a joke if you're talking about it over dozens of rallies and interviews, and how you would seriously do it?

Will it materialize in anything? He is so fickle and unfocused that he will float every possibility under the sun and then go with his gut. It depends more on how his base reacts

I think he genuinely believes that the 2020 election was likely stolen and that his extreme actions were a response to that. I also think he enjoys trolling the media, probably in part because its his personality but also probably because it's the best way to take on yellow journalism. By overtly feeding the media stuff that he knows will be taken out of context, he lets them destroy themselves. When the media run sensationalist stories framing jokes as legitimate positions, they make partisans rejoice, but they make everybody else look at the lot of the partisans and media alike and mostly just laugh. There's a reason confidence in the media is now in the 20s. 'Why aren't you taking these jokes seriously!?' isn't the most compelling call to action.

You're also, probably unintentionally, spreading misinformation here. Trump never laid out the idea of running as Vance's VP and forcing him aside. Rather, a journalist proposed that scenario (though it was "passing the baton" rather than forcing him out) and he said 'yeah that's one way [to have a third term]'. You can see the media tiptoe around this slightly inconvenient fact when running their stories. For instance here's [1] AP recently talking about third term stuff where they state "[Trump] acknowledged that one method was to be the running mate to Vice President JD Vance in 2028 — then have Vance step aside if the pair won."

That's accurate, but the implication to somebody who only relies on the media, instead of first party sources, is that Trump proposed it. Exactly like you're doing here. They feed you misinformation, you repeat it, and then believe other people who don't believe the same are themselves misinformed, because why would 'your' media lie to you. And that's a good question actually - it's not like there aren't endless completely genuine problems with Trump. The war with Iran is about as popular as AIDS, but for some reason the media didn't milk it anywhere near as much as they could have. How odd.

In any case, none of this would be news to you if you posted this in a place with more open discussion. Once again echo chambers are just so dumb, for everybody.

[1] - https://apnews.com/article/trump-third-term-postpresidency-f...

> I think he genuinely believes that the 2020 election was likely stolen

There are more-or-less two possibilities: either he believes that the election was stolen despite the total absence of evidence to that effect, in which case he is a fool; or he cynically pretends to believe that for the purpose of personal gain, in which case he is a liar and a con-man. Based on what we've all seen of his psychology, though, I think the more likely case is that he's simply unconnected to reality: he's spent his whole life in a billionaire bubble where everyone tells him what he wants to hear, and he's able to to convince himself that he won in 2020 because he wants to believe that.

> because it's the best way to take on yellow journalism.

What part of the reporting the fact that Biden won the 2020 election is "yellow journalism"?

> 'Why aren't you taking these jokes seriously!?' isn't the most compelling call to action.

Except, as I've already pointed out, people have been excusing behavior as a "joke" since 2016, and at every opportunity he proves that it's not a joke. People thought "Mexico will pay for a wall" was a joke; it wasn't, it was just a lie.

> Trump never laid out the idea of running as Vance's VP and forcing him aside.

I never he said he did. I did say that he said that he's "looking into ways that he can run," an idea supported by other people in Trump's orbit, such as Steven Bannon. It's not misinformation to say that Trump is considering running again, it's plainly stated in the record.

So your position is that: Trump said he's looking into running (but it's a joke), he's selling 2028 hats (but he's trolling), close advisers say he's running again (but that doesn't count). Do you understand why people think MAGA denies reality? Is there any possible evidence that would make you think he's thinking of running again? (For the record, I don't think he'll run again, because I think he will die or become gravely ill: were it not for that, he definitely would try.)

> That's accurate, but the implication to somebody who only relies on the media, instead of first party sources,

Oh, you have first party sources? Great, please tell me what Donald Trump has personally told you, that has not been publicly revealed.

> In any case, none of this would be news to you if you posted this in a place with more open discussion.

Nothing you've told me is new. I've heard all this before. The entire country has spent a decade hearing people like spout nonsense like "Trump isn't a politiician, he tells it like it is" and "Trump is already rich so he has no need to make money from the presidency" and "Trump may lack expertise, but he'll hire great advisers" and other provably incorrect statements. You mistakenly believe that we disagree because we haven't heard your side. The truth is that we've all heard your side incessantly and we just think you are dumb and/or crazy.

It's unclear to me whether you are incapable of following a thread, or are having trouble keeping your sock puppets in order. I'm not talking to you, or at least this account here - and you responded multiple times to another post under the same account, all while referring to yourself as we.

In any case, I'm not going to respond to poorly constructed straw men. If you want to speak like an adult I'll happily continue the discussion, if you want to keep ranting like a partisan - then perhaps it's genuinely impossible for you to discuss things outside of echo chambers.

> It's unclear to me whether you are incapable of following a thread, or are having trouble keeping your sock puppets in order.

I don't use sock puppets. Believe it or not, the structure of HN comments allows conversations between > 2 people. If you prefer a private conversation, use email. You've already responded to my comment [1]; I can respond to whatever comment I want. If you don't like what I say, you can write back appropriately or ignore it. Accusing me of not following the rules, however, is a very weird response.

> In any case, I'm not going to respond to poorly constructed straw men.

Please be specific: what straw man?

> if you want to keep ranting like a partisan -

Oh, the irony.

> then perhaps it's genuinely impossible for you to discuss things outside of echo chambers.

Let me get this straight: we have differing views, we're in an environment where we can freely discuss them, and yet you call it an "echo chamber" in the same breath that you refuse to continue a conversation. No one here is being censored, the only obstacle to communication is your attitude. Maybe you would feel more comfortable in /r/conservative (i.e. an actual echo chamber that aggressively censors opposing views)?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49560830

"If you talk to Trump supporters in real life, they are not having nuanced discussions about the state of our country, they are completely tuned out to what is going on."

Really, where exactly? I'd say 100% polar opposite. I live in a county that has voted for a R president almost every election, and the conversations are very different. There is a lot of disagreement, but it's usually the disagreement on the HOW not the WHAT.

Oh I'm sure they're having conversations. Those conversations are about how evil immigrants are, how tariffs are not taxes, what color MAGA hat to buy, and why Trump is the most honest billionaire in history. Conversations not tethered to reality.

Because Trump support is an identity, not a belief system.

I'm currently immersed in MAGA world (eldercare, siblings). Their daily media diet is 1984's Two Minutes of Hate all day long on repeat.

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

I'm still unsure about the cultish aspects.

Habitual hate and anger are akin to addiction. Which may be sufficient to explain the behavior I'm seeing. (They really hate their perceived enemies.)

In favor of the cult theory, MAGA et al do check a lot of the boxes.

Nope not embarrassed, it's a waste of time being a conservative on HN or Reddit. There is no room for discourse or nuance.

If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.

I've said this before and the replies are usually about the topic or opinion but it's not. Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.

> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.

Interestingly there's been a few party shifts. It's not just one direction.

For example, Reagan was pretty pro immigration and pro vaccination. Before 9/11 Republicans were the party of immigration. Even Trump in 2016 was the pro-LGBT candidate, that's certainly shifted dramatically. "Donald Trump said I could take a pee anywhere in the Trump facility, so I am going to go take a pee in the ladies' room."

One thing I'd give republicans is they are far more responsive to their base vs the democrats.

> it's a waste of time being a conservative on HN or Reddit.

But yet here you are.

> There is no room for discourse or nuance.

Try me!

> If you voted for Trump you are a fascist and a pedo and nobody wants to hear your thoughts.

On the contrary, there have been endless articles and discussion about Trump supporters' opinions, to the extent that "New York Times Interviews Twelve Trump Supporters" [1] [2] is a bit of a cliche. I think that your (collective) thoughts have been well expressed and understood by the other side, it's just that most people find those opinions unimpressive, mostly couched in a sort of hero-worship credulity or open hostility to people who are different from you.

> Some opinions that would have been demonstrably in the Clinton/Obama administration would be considered MAGA now.

Sure, public opinion shifts. For example, Republicans used to be the party of limited government and law-and-order. Then they elected a felon who flagrantly violates the Constitution (14th amendment, separation of powers, emoluments clause, etc) and has worked tirelessly to extend the power of the federal government, in the present case to intervene in the Constitutionally-mandated state right of operating elections. Of course "people used to feel differently" is not, on its own, an argument in support for the administration's policies, so I hope you can do better.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/series/voters-voices-trump-administr...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/series/voters-voices-trump-2025

You should have seen how it was after most Americans could no longer deny the Nixon Malfeasance.

People started getting embarrassed real fast and even before he rode off into the sunset it was not easy to find somebody who would admit to voting for him.

And he got elected twice himself.

Basically it was so disgraceful that in less than a year you couldn't find anybody who ever admitted to voting for Nixon at all. Most voting Republicans actually had, at least the first time, but if anybody even indicated their tendency after that they were ridiculed by other Republicans like "how could you ever support such a crook?", not just from the Democrats. It was just too uncomfortable for a nation of overwhelmingly honest-to-the-bone Americans regardless of which party, nature took its course almost immediately and it was swept under the rug as completely as could be. Not everybody is honest to the bone of course, what you would sometimes hear instead of crickets was "No, I actually didn't vote that time" from some Republicans who still had the bumper sticker that said "Nixon's the One."

It was very much like a mass "suspension of disbelief" for at least a decade after which people acted something like "it was only the very elderly and uninformed who voted for Nixon and they're all dead now so no wonder you can't find someone who was proud to vote for him either time."

The primary motivation for Rupert Murdoch's creation of Fox News was to prevent the Republican party from ever suffering an embarrassing resignation like Nixon again.

Present the Republican base with an alternate reality where every accusation against a Republican is a witch hunt, no matter its veracity, and the base no longer has to feel ashamed supporting a crook. Instead, they can stand proud, knowing they support someone the "libs" hate.

Unlike the times Republican presidents have said it, this is truly a case of Mission Accomplished.

IIRC, Fox News accounts for +5 R nationally.

Plus the +5 R advantage due to misapportion...

It's a wonder that Democrats ever attain a majority.

And why most criticisms of Democrats (campaigns, messaging, policy, whatever) aren't even wrong.