Comment by leadingthenet

Comment by leadingthenet 4 days ago

If the last couple of weeks are anything to go by, I'd strongly argue the quality of discourse on any ICE/Trump/Tariffs-related topics have been at exactly Reddit-level, along with the most upvoted opinions mirroring those on Reddit almost to a tee.

I vaguely remember checking one of those ICE posts out the other day, and there was not a single comment going against the grain that was neither flagged nor heavily downvoted, out of over a hundred. Nuance/dissent wasn't even vaguely on the cards.

I don't know what your definition of Reddit-like is, but that's mine.

watwut 4 days ago

Nuanced understanding of a thing does not necessary ends up with opinion in the middle. Sometimes, understanding the nuance will make you walk away with "yep, this is bad and dangerous" conclusion.

Overwhelming majority of people concluding that shooting protesters to back or head is a bad thing does not imply lack of nuance or low quality of the discussion. Overwhelming majority of people concluding that political repressions and fear based government are bad thing does not not imply lack of nuance or low quality of the discussion either.

The both sides and truth in the middle knee jerk is does not represent nuance or meaningful discussion. It frequently muddles nuances, creates false equivalences and makes the discussion loose the substance.

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gosub100 3 days ago

On reddit they used to say "the down vote is not a disagree button" but that's not the case here. I've been specifically corrected when I assumed that.

So if the prevailing opinion is that ice is committing murder, it makes sense a contrary comment would be heavily down voted.

I agree that hn is heavily liberal and holds a lot of the toxic leftist anti-thought patterns that are prevalent on reddit. But I think it's more of a symptom of the country and perhaps the West being wound-up over "things".

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JKCalhoun 4 days ago

Reddit comments would focus on the headline—essentially confirming they never read the article. And of course add a sprinkling of "Cheeto Emperor" or whatever. I've not seen that (that wasn't also then heavily "disappeared" on HN).

Regarding the past couple of weeks, I think it's rather difficult to find nuance when we all saw the videos of protesters being killed by a federal police force. Anyone trying to take the Administration's side is, I imagine, going to come across as shrill.

On the more nuanced political issues though I have been happy to see opposing viewpoints well reasoned—even when I disagreed with them. There was a time when reddit was young that you might have found the same level of discussions.

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bigstrat2003 4 days ago

Agreed. HN has proven time and time again that it is incapable of having a good discussion on politics, or at least American politics. The threads are always chock full of flamebait, outgroup-bashing, and unwillingness to consider other points of view. I flag every single post I see about American politics at this point because they are always, without fail, extremely low quality threads.

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addaon 3 days ago

> Nuance/dissent wasn't even vaguely on the cards.

Not all topics are nuanced when discussed by an educated, well-intended audience. Is the world flat? Does evolution lead to speciation? Dissent is for the sake of dissent, and nothing else.

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Karrot_Kream 3 days ago

I've largely stopped commenting here because I feel the community is broken. There's definitely truth to what you say, that an educated audience can have a consensus. But one thing makes the HN community (and many Reddit communities) particularly bad: A lot of these threads have repetitive comments with insults or silly name calling get upvoted. Even if consensus is around the earth being round, there's no need to pettily insult flat earthers. We just ignore them and move on leaving their content to languish at the bottom. On the other hand these threads bring a lot of childish insults that get upvoted just because they hit the right buttons.
This to me is one (of many) sign that the community here cannot healthily discuss these topics. IMO the community here isn't healthy at all. That's why I don't post here much anymore. It's a sign to me that too many discussions in this community are about seeking emotional catharsis. And I'm sorry but for my own mental health, I'm not going to listen to someone else's panic attack resulting from political uncertainty.
I feel for dang and tomhow. It seems that most of their work is doing emotional labor. And emotional labor can grind a person down quickly.

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- matthewdgreen 3 days ago
  
  Some topics can't be ignored. Vaccine effectiveness, for example, require a consensus from a large fraction of the population. That larger societal consensus begins with discussion in smaller subsets, of which HN is one.
  
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