That doesn't necessarily matter. It's well established by now that communities tend to upvote things they "like", not specifically things that belong. We know there's a large overlap between users of HN and Libertarians, which in itself is fine, but it doesn't mean this type of discussion should be occurring here.

If you don't give any merit to a majority vote, why should relevance be given to your singular opinion? Seems like a double standard honestly.

I think you're missing the point entirely. I'm not saying my opinion matters, I'm just pointing out that this thread is definitely not supposed to be on HN, as is defined by the rules of the website. I'm not positing an opinion, I'm arguing for a fact.

> I'm just pointing out that this thread is definitely not supposed to be on HN, as is defined by the rules of the website.

The applicable "rules" (actually, they are labeled "guidelines" [0] for good reason) can be viewed as either supporting or opposing it.

Specifically, one could view it as on-topic as falling within "anything that good hackers would find interesting." (Section 215 surveillance clearly has a special interest within the "hacker" culture, which is more plugged into it than the general population), or as probably off-topic because "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

> I'm not positing an opinion, I'm arguing for a fact.

You are positing your interpretation of the application of rules which are fuzzy and inherently subjective as "fact", and where the only things in the rules that would support your conclusion are hedged with "most" or "probably". Your suggestion that the HN guidelines can reasonably be read in a way in which the topic here would be unequivocally, factually off-topic is an untenable argument.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html -- under "What to Submit".

The only fact here is that this is on the front page. However your opinion is that it shouldn't be. By the majority vote, you are wrong.

No, the rules state that this post should not be here.

You're conflating opinion and fact. Please stop. Majority vote does not dictate fact. HN is not a "anything and everything can be on the front page of the community votes it as such" site like Reddit is.

What rule is this violating? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html says "anything that good hackers would find interesting" is on-topic, which clearly enough "good hackers" do given the upvotes. The "most stories about politics" clearly doesn't say "all stories about politics", and this one has a lot of relevance to the tech world.

Meanwhile, you're definitely breaking the "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site." rule.

> Meanwhile, you're definitely breaking the "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site." rule.

I'm actually replying to a discussion started about flagging.

By complaining that the submission is inappropriate:

GlickWick: I'm unclear as to how this thread is legitimate, personally. Doesn't seem to really fit with HN. I'm no fan of the Patriot Act either, but this belongs somewhere like Reddit.

Which was in reply to a question about why the thread was being flagged. This was not an unprompted complaint about an inappropriate submission, this was a reply to a question.

You were still breaking the rules.

That is not true. If a user asks a question about the rules or the validity of a post/flagging, it's fine to discuss.

You don't like the fact that I'm criticizing this thread, which is fine, but stop trying to cherry-pick silly reasons to discredit what I'm saying. It's having the opposite effect of what you intended anyways.

Yes it is.

That is just your opinion. Rules are clear on this:

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.

As you can see, no additional caveats are listed. Therefore you, by responding to a comment which was about incorrect flagging, complained about inappropriate submissions, directly violated the rules.

Your last paragraph is basically just ad-hominem.

I'm ending this "discussion" here and will not be reading your inevitable further comments.

Weasel your way around the point all you like. Again, "What rule is this violating?" Specifically, please.

> Weasel your way around the point all you like

Please don't be personally rude on HN.

You're right that the rules do not exclude all politics, only most. GlickWick is right that upvotes alone do not determine HN's front page and about the weakness of the voting mechanism in general.