Whole HN down? I don't even see all these off topic political flame wars you guys are having except when I feel particularly lazy and browse extra pages. Other than that my only interaction with them is to flag them. And I'm really grateful for other people flagging so I see less. The actual on topic hn content is not affected.
Read my bio and look at timestamps. I lurk for tech news and discussions. Once every couple weeks I read, get sucked into, and comment on a political discussion.
If I could wave a magic wand and ban posters of off topic political discussions off the internet forever so it doesn't happen, I would absolutely do it
Man it was really hard to not contradict you in detail and start discussing politics! Some people don't think it's so dramatic, let's leave it at that.
Also there are tons of places online to discuss politics. Maybe too many! there's no need to make everything about politics. One way to turn people against your opinion is to shove it in their face when they don't want it.
> there's no need to make everything about politics
I agree except this is a 'News' site where we discuss news. Occasionally there will be a lot of politics in the news that people want to discuss. Bannning that will diminish the value of this site.
The rules that define what kind of site this is say if it belongs on news sites it doesn't belong here. This is about as much of a news site as facebook is a book site.
Let's be exact here: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."
I'd say USA becoming a fascist dictatorship does qualify as an interesting new phenomenon, but YMMV of course.
Regardless of its merits it's a fringe opinion that most people disagree with. Every other news story (and a few more besides - microchipping! Pizzagate!) would be on topic by that standard, so we could discuss whether they have merit. The spirit of the rules is clearly against that.
I have my own hobby horses that most people disagree with, even though as far as I am concerned they stand on much more solid definitional ground than "fascist dictatorship" - for example, wage taxation is forced labor, so any new policy could be discussed as an interesting new phenomenon of "govt forces people to do X, at gunpoint". But if I'd want to discuss the finer points of whether it's ok to force people to do X at gunpoint I'd go to reddit.
