Hacker News does not censor criticism. Even when these comments get flagged and the accounts making them have a history of bad behavior, I’ve yet to see one of them get banned.
When people complain about this it’s because they think Hacker News is just orange Reddit and that removing off-topic political posts is part of some conspiracy to censor their inane opinions when they were never supposed to be posting them here to begin with.
Thanks for the effort, I appreciate it, but neither of those are actually calling for anyone to be guillotined. The first is a prediction of what could happen long in the future if certain behaviours continue to worsen and the latter is asking why guillotines aren't valid solutions. Both seem to have been delivered with tongues in cheek.
Have there been any comments suggesting CEOs "should be" guillotined as you claimed above?
> Have there been any comments suggesting CEOs "should be" guillotined as you claimed above?
Fundamentally this is not a question of whether or not I can pull up specific comments that meet your interpretation of my original comment, it’s a question of whether or not Hacker News is permissive of narratives contrary to the interests of Bay Area technology executives. Here’s a few comments (some of them qualified: “I would never advocate for violence BUT…”) celebrating the murder of the United Healthcare CEO:
The moderation of this forum is incredibly permissive; the people who feel they are being censored are more often than not just getting flagged by the community for posting off-topic political rants that were never permitted here to begin with.
> Fundamentally this is not a question of whether or not I can pull up specific comments that meet your interpretation of my original comment,
If your claim is that HN is demonstrably permissive because there have been multiple calls for people to be executed then it really is a question of being able to back that up with examples, otherwise the "because" aspect of your assertion falls apart. I also find it bizarre that you're framing my reading of "should be guillotined" as an "interpretation" just because it doesn't include jokes. Is that the point we're at with the doublespeak now?
If "x is true because of y" then you should be able to demonstrate y and not change the definition of y after the fact.
> The moderation of this forum is incredibly permissive; the people who feel they are being censored are more often than not just getting flagged by the community for posting off-topic political rants
In terms of viewpoints that can be shared the wider site moderation is relatively permissive. But the people who are feeling censored are explicitly noting three things:
1. Things on one specific topic are being flagged (by "the community," not HN)
2. Even when they relate to technology or startup matters
3. While other political stories unrelated to 1 are still being shared.
> If your claim is that HN is demonstrably permissive because there have been multiple calls for people to be executed then it really is a question of being able to back that up with examples
Let’s accept that no such comments have ever been made on the site (or if they have, they’ve been removed). How do you account for all the comments I linked to which were in favor of killing the CEO?
> 1. Things on one specific topic are being flagged (by "the community," not HN) 2. Even when they relate to technology or startup matters 3. While other political stories unrelated to 1 are still being shared.
> How do you account for all the comments I linked to which were in favor of killing the CEO?
Why would I account for that at all? It's neither relevant to the claim I responded to (members are calling for guillotines) nor to the broader topic at hand (anything that could be seen as remotely critical of the US administration is being hushed).
All of these threads were posted to the front page in the last month. None of them were flagged, none of them were removed, and similar threads have been getting posted since November of last year. You do not have to look far to find comments and threads critical of the Trump administration on this website. Note that all of these threads were just the ones I happened to see in the last month; if you browse New, posts about the Trump administration (and more specifically Elon Musk) make up somewhere around 10% of all submitted threads. I actually went and checked as I was writing this, and 3 out of 30 threads were related to DOGE or Elon Musk; so exactly 10%.
