Can we please ban Political Conversations on HN?

Question

I understand that HN has a strong free speech ethos, but Political conversations are inherently divisive in our modern world.I've said this a couple times, but toxicity and divisive conversations are increasingly common on HN.Inevitably, there will be a conversation on HN that is so divisive and virulent, it will have a reputational impact on YCombinator as a whole.Please, please can we finally ban these kinds of divisive conversations and return to the collaborative tech, innovation, and business ethos that existed in this forum?@Dang

josephcsible · Accepted Answer

How do you define political? Does net neutrality count? What about laws mandating backdoors in encryption?

codingdave · Answer

They already are: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pndy · Answer

I hope that mandatory tags for submissions, filters based upon these and profile blocking will be eventually implemented.

mtmail · Answer

Yesterday you submitted the story "Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel over Several Weeks" plus the comment "This is on-topic for HN. 6 of my direct reports are SWEs and HN commentators, but have been drafted and mobilized by the Israeli army due to this crisis."That's very much political. You can't have it both ways.

steven_noble · Answer

I'm pretty sure that advocating censorship, as you are doing, is starting a political conversation on HN

jruohonen · Answer

So, are we allowed to have a divisive political discussion about how algorithms are creating divisive political discussions, say?

Quinzel · Answer

Hmm if done respectfully, public deliberation on important social issues can be an important part of coming up with actual solutions that consider more elements of a problem rather than being totally polarised and taking only one view. Perhaps this is difficult to achieve because people&rsquo;s political views are strongly tied to their identity, but I personally think being open-minded is a strength and being able to understand something from someone else&rsquo;s perspective is a good skill (in my opinion)