I don't think I've ever seen a thread this bad on Hacker News*. The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get. I feel ashamed of this community.
* Edit: It would have been clearer to say "I've never seen a mob dynamic this bad on Hacker News", since that is the type of bad thread I was talking about. (Obviously there are lots of other kinds of bad thread.) Alas, that didn't occur to me in the moment, and it led to various misunderstandings.
If you're wondering why I called this a "mob dynamic" it's because comments like the following were dominating the thread when I originally ran across it (but in order to read these, you'll need to have 'showdead' turned on in your profile.):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727099
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726427
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725722
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717
I'm pretty calloused after years of doing this job, but seeing so many comments openly exulting in, and egging on, violence against a specific person on Hacker News was deeply shocking to me.
I imagine you knew Sam personally when he was President of YC. Most people don't, instead going off what they read in the press. Recent press is often less than flattering, given how contentious AI in general is as of late.
Consider for some it's already hit home in the form of job loss, which for most people can easily be catastrophic. Or maybe they've a giant datacenter in their back yard suddenly, and now their air and/or water isn't viable.
That of course isn't justification, but it does partly inform why some people are that mad, and it's much easier for angry people to be callously indifferent.
If you were to break down HN's zeitgeist, it's some percentage site-local, some percentage larger tech scene, and some percentage general public.
Although you have outsized influence on the former, the latter items factor in heavily—sometimes overwhelmingly so. You can't really control that, and I don't feel it represents some sort of failure on behalf of the community nor moderation team.
I see it not as mob mentality so much as as multiple sides personally involved for different reasons. Things tend to get pretty heated when that happens; not a good recipe.
I'm sorry you had to deal with the aftermath. Your flurry of disappointed, exhausted-sounding comments reminded me of a service industry worker getting hit with a huge rush. There's a kind of PTSD that hangs around once the dust settles.
So, thank you for your efforts in trying to keep the site civil. It clearly ain't easy sometimes.
You're being nice about it but I think you're inadvertently expressing literally the sentiment Dan was referring to.
I am not speaking for the parent, but my personal interpretation is that they are trying to add perspectives/thoughts, not denying what Dan said (i.e. it's not "inadvertent" in as few words).
By that I meant it didn't read like they were trying to push back on him.
On the contrary, not justifying nor condoning anything of the sort.
The main point I was trying to make was in highlighting the perceptual and emotional disconnect between knowing and working with someone personally, versus those who haven't (myself included).
Most people's perception of Sam was shaped in recent years, by press coverage that tends to treat him as the face of AI, with sentiment that usually goes something like: "hey, this guy's stealing all your water so he can take your job too, and by the way he lies a lot."
A couple follow-on points there were:
a) Dan shouldn't take it personally for not being able to control a tidal wave of negative sentiment stemming from that dynamic playing out.
b) I don't think it does anyone any good to dismiss the negative sentiment driving that as mere mob mentality. Even Sam appears to understand this quite well, in the very blog post the submission links to.
To echo another comment[0]:
>... while the vast majority of us think "holy crap, that's horrible" but aren't adding it because of course that's already been said and there just isn't any more nuance needed.
I agree; explicit condemnation just felt performative and hollow.
For what it's worth, I'm actually rooting for Sam assuming his words ultimately line up with his actions, and my opinion of him is neutral or slightly positive. I don't think it's widely appreciated just how crazy a position the guy is in; there's no way he can make everybody happy.
To touch on the hollow part: this is someone pg once described in so few words as more than capable of handling himself. [1]
I recall reading that years ago he insisted offices be swept for bugs after a visit by Musk, and he hangs out with similarly powerful people.
In other words, you don't operate in that world without your security already being excellent, and it's probably going to get even better now. Give it a couple years and he'll probably have a humanoid robot perimeter that'll smoke anyone on sight with a level of efficiency that is comical.
So, in that context taking a thoughts and prayers tone felt a little unnnecessary.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47732594
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7280124
I disagree with almost all of this but I'm not here to single you out.
Appreciated, but I would hope that it at least changes your initial read.
It shouldn't matter how many lies a guy tells, or how he runs his business. People shouldn't throw molotov cocktails at his house, and people shouldn't act like his behavior is potentially justification for people throwing molotov cocktails at his house.
Anybody whose perception of Sam Altman was "he deserves for me to throw a molotov cocktail at his house" is a horrible person. I don't care if Paul Graham says he's a tough guy.
Explicit condemnation is only hollow if you don't mean it.
To be clear I'm not saying any of it is justified and generally agree with everything you wrote. The fact that happened to Sam and his family is indeed horrible.
That said, please don't twist my words. I think there's utility in understanding why people feel and act the way they do.
Otherwise, everybody just takes the de facto stance of "those people are intrinsically bad people, and not good people like us!" which is pretty useless and typically just leads to more escalation.
You could also spare me the one-line zinger at the end.
I didn't mean it as a zinger; I meant it as a rebuttal of the line from your comment. If you felt zinged by it, maybe it's worth considering why.
You keep writing comments where you try to wiggle between it being really important to think about the context in which people commit crimes and the context in which people are OK with crimes being committed based on not liking the victim, but also you keep clarifying that you don't condone what they're doing or saying.
What is your actual point? The best I can try to pluck out, the summation of the above is that the people throwing molotov cocktails, and the people saying it's justified, are bad people but they're bad for understandable reasons?
>I didn't mean it as a zinger; I meant it as a rebuttal of the line from your comment.
Fair enough.
>If you felt zinged by it, maybe it's worth considering why.
Conditioned response from years of defending comments against immediate pedantry, of which I'm probably guilty of myself. Not saying that you were being pedantic.
>What is your actual point?
Originally dang seemed pretty burnt out from moderating this thread, so I just wanted to pitch in with my two cents saying that he's dealing with a tidal wave of larger negative public sentiment that's perhaps beyond his control.
I think there's an important distinction to be had between whoever threw the cocktail (fuck them), and the folks expressing what I termed callous indifference.
People are allowed to not give a shit and say as much, and while that might be bannable I don't think it's particularly productive to take that route.
Moreover, I thought it was important to note that some people here (like dang presumably) actually know Sam personally, so it might not be appreciated that it comes off as extra ghoulish to them when they're reading said callous comments.
At the same time, if your only source of information about the guy is recent press, it's easy to understand how someone arrives at that position; anti-AI sentiment is gaining popularity rapidly.
That's it. That's my point or stance if you will, I don't think it's that unreasonable; just trying to highlight what I see as a disconnect.
This is the waffling again. You made the pitch earlier that explicit condemnation felt hollow. Your comments here (and the many from other people saying similar things) are what look hollow to me.
When you say things like "it's easy to understand how someone arrives at that position", you're laying the groundwork to justify why what you class as "callous indifference" is just a logical and natural state that we should accept.
We shouldn't. The people who are celebrating or ok with molotov cocktails being thrown are also bad people. To borrow your language: fuck them, too.
>When you say things like "it's easy to understand how someone arrives at that position", you're laying the groundwork to justify why what you class as "callous indifference" is just a logical and natural state that we should accept.
I didn't say it should be accepted nor was I laying groundwork for justification, be it implicit or explicit.
Rather, only stating that such indifference does logically follow in those circumstances.
Quoting my prior comment:
>>Most people's perception of Sam was shaped in recent years, by press coverage that tends to treat him as the face of AI, with sentiment that usually goes something like: "hey, this guy's stealing all your water so he can take your job too, and by the way he lies a lot."
People's reaction here isn't exactly shocking when taken in that context.
>To borrow your language: fuck them, too.
Yeah, agreed.
> Rather, only stating that such indifference does logically follow in those circumstances.
This is exactly what I’m talking about.
This feels like a pointless semantic trap. Everything is "waffling" or "wiggling". I don't see the parent saying anything in a disguised manner. It's just that reality is complicated. In the immediate wake of violence, it's exceedingly easy to paint any sentiment aside from "this is horrible" as disrespectful or weasel-worded. That's cheap (as I mentioned elsewhere, it's like the way conservatives refuse to talk about guns in the wake of gun violence).
>>Rather, only stating that such indifference does logically follow in those circumstances.
>This is exactly what I’m talking about.
In other words: There's a lot of people angry about AI right now, and it isn't much of a surprise that indifference and insensitivity follows.
There were a lot of people angry about secret pedophilia rings run out of the basements of pizza parlors, and violence unspooled from that too.
That was my attempt at rephrasing a sentence to be more clear in response to an accusation of waffling, I think.
Suffice it to say, point-by-point rebuttal exchanges/slap fights tend to not lead anywhere good, let alone in a comment section that's emotionally charged and personal from the outset.
In retrospect, I should've just left my original comment stand by itself rather than panic and dive into a detailed follow-on explanation which snowballed from there.
I was genuinely trying to post in good faith for positive effect while taking a middle tack that still condemned violence while perhaps humanizing some of the anger.
It didn't quite work out, but I do very much understand where the opposing positions were coming from now.
And, my apologies for swearing.
---
You brought up a dynamic in the second incident's discussion touching on essentially redundant condemnation, where normal people don't bother because it's universally assumed that violence is bad.
Having closely watched the comment section unfold there, I see what you meant by that: it ends up being negative space for what you termed countervailing sentiment to expand within.
I think that was actually the first time I was happy to see a thread taken off the main page early, for everyone's sake.
When violence is considered as an acceptable solution to systemic issues, it is an early sign that things are taking a very bad turn.
I typically take jabs at the community here, but not this time. What you are seeing is a reflection of a wider, much more insidious problem. Trust in society is failing, and people are not seeing a civilized solution through the usual channels - such as politics.
I think things will get a lot worse before they get better. Hopefully I'll be okay in my little corner of the world.
> Trust in society is failing
Something that I've observed happening throughout history is that in some sense "too much civilisation" can be a bad thing long-term.
I knew someone in the army talk about how some officers wouldn't survive the first week of a real war. Not because of enemy fire, but because given the opportunity, the men under their command would almost certainly take advantage of the "less civilised nature" of the battlefield to take out someone they despise enough to murder, but not quite enough to risk it in a civilian setting where the tolerance for unsanctioned lethal force is essentially zero.
Something similar happens outside of militaries too, where truly horrible human beings[1] can cynically utilise the enforced peace of civilized countries to do incredibly evil but legal things. The Sacklers come to mind as a prime example. They knowingly and deliberately sold highly addictive drugs marketed with brazen lies and killed about a hundred thousand Americans by some estimates. They are above the law and totally immune to all consequence, personal or otherwise. No violence will ever be done to them! Anyone that tries will be severely punished, because that upsets the "order" of civilised society where the rich and powerful can massacre millions, but the plebs can't ever lift a finger against even one of their cartoonishly evil oppressors without severe personal consequence.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." -- Francis M. Wilhoit [2]
Sociopaths loooove civilised societies! They can mercilessly exploit people while basking in the protection of the law. As long as what they're doing is technically legal, they can get away with almost any amount of evil acts. This does take a while to build up! Norms, expectations, and the like keep the worst of the worst initially at bay, but these things slowly erode as more and more sociopaths take greater and greater advantage. (Cough-Trump-Cough)
This, taken far enough, where the common people are stepped on hard enough by those they can't ever bring to justice can result in entire societies just... snapping in their rage. They just need the opportunity, a "push", or some enabling event. In the case of the "friendly fire incidents" taking out bad officers, its a war. In most societies it is starvation or total economic hopelessness. We all know what this leads to: the French revolution is the prime example, but many others exist throughout history.
The failure of the United States is that its reigns of power have been completely and utterly captured by the increasingly corrupt elite, and there is nothing the common people can do about it. Frustration is growing, slowly, but surely.
It's not quite at the boiling over point, not yet, and may take a century to get there, but given the direction things have been heading, it's just a matter of time until the people take their anger out in some direct manner.
Trump might have started the first pebble rolling by causing an oil shock. And gas shock. And fertilizer shock. I'm sure a lot of hungry, cold people who can't even get a job because the AIs have replaced them -- and used their cooking gas for energy -- will be perfectly fine with this and won't ever do anything about it! That would be uncivilized!
[1] Disclaimer: Sam Altman is no saint, but I don't think he's anywhere near the level that he'd deserve mob violence.
[2] At some level the people commenting here that it's shocking and horrifying that anything violent ever happens to a billionaire CEO are betraying their right-wing leanings. Conversely, the people arguing that the elite shouldn't be above personal repercussions for their actions are strongly left leaning.
> and people are not seeing a civilized solution through the usual channels - such as politics.
Violence is politics. It's the oldest and most universal form of politics, even found in other species, and even inanimate objects (types of rock subducting each other, we see the rock that floated to the top, that's practically Darwinism).
But humans don't like being killed so they developed systems to avoid violence. Speeches, voting, money, etcetera. It's all ways for people to arrive at a reasonable solution peacefully. It's always been backed by "if we don't do this, people start dying." But people have forgotten this and they're allowing those alternatives to fail. We stopped exposing the new generations to the suffering child of Omelas and they forgot what is necessary for society to exist. People think there is food on the table by magic and there are no wars by magic. And it is magic, these complex intertwined systems. They are amazing. But you must respect them, you cannot destroy them on a whim and still expect civilization to survive.
> Trust in society is failing, and people are not seeing a civilized solution through the usual channels - such as politics.
I agree. I think the lack of seeing a way out is a big component of this turn. You bring up politics and that's a good example. Who do I vote for, campaign for, etc. that actually wants me (an American citizen making around the median wage for my area) to be able to buy a home? To have affordable, accessible healthcare? I'm aging out of my childbearing years and am wrangling with the sorrow of not being able to afford a child. There are some promising local candidates and I do vote for them, but so many of these issues need to be tackled at a higher level due to their complex, interdependent nature.
There's nobody. There's red and blue with different culture war paint. I can choose whether trans women play in sports or if we pray at work, but I have no choice in the fundamental material reality of my life.
We're seeing this chaotic violence in part because there's no alternative. We know the old world is dying, but our leaders won't let anything else be born.
I was talking to my father a few days ago. He's a 67 year old man who's voted Republican my entire life - we'd have political sparring matches in the car when he forced me to listen to Rush Limbaugh as a teenager. Of his own accord, he started talking about the necessary end/change of our economic system. A man who'd banged on about the free market and considered himself a Libertarian for decades, and who still, when he does engage with the news, does so with right wing sources.
He's brighter than average, but not to an extreme amount. The understanding of the situation has trickled down to the point where every workplace has at least 1 or 2 people who understand how fucked everyday people are. My team at work is 6 people doing basic white collar work and we talk openly about how things are going to get worse, and there are nods to it cross-functionally all the way up to the top when our execs talk in an all hands. This is at a very apolitical giant mega corp.
None of these discussions would have happened 20 years ago. We still shy away from the specifics (candidates, policies, etc.) due to professionalism, but the broader picture (things will get worse for the average person and our troubling trends aren't going to be reversed anytime soon due to inaction at the top) is agreed upon regardless of voting record.
It kind of reminds me of being in an abusive household as a child. There is no escape and, once you've exhausted the 'official' channels, you start contemplating other options. I reported my mother to CPS once when I was about 7 and they didn't do anything (except piss her off obviously). On the other hand, the first time I smacked her back, the physical abuse stopped, and I've heard similar stories from men with abusive fathers - that there's a moment they realize they can actually go toe to toe and don't have to put up with it.
If all your abusers will listen to is violence and you're not allowed to escape/get out, it's reasonable to come to the conclusion that in this case violence is the answer. I see a similar dynamic/thought process emerging in the American public.
For what it’s worth Dan, you’re probably the best moderator I’ve ever encountered, and without you HN likely wouldn’t be worth visiting. As it is it’s one of the best places for online discourse. That’s directly because of you and your efforts.
It’s not easy to be a cop, and that’s basically what you are around here, but thank you for doing it.
I have to believe that what we're seeing is a minority opinion that feels like their uniquely backwards logic justifying this is somehow worth sharing as if its new and insightful, while the vast majority of us think "holy crap, that's horrible" but aren't adding it because of course that's already been said and there just isn't any more nuance needed.
Yes, and that generalizes to how comment sections function, er, generally.
Unfortunately, political violence seems to be en-vogue these days. I even hear people in "real life" casually discussing their support for it. What can we do? I think the only thing we can do is push back on it, even though it doesn't seem fair. What's a favourable alternative? You do a great job here giving individual feedback, which I know some people listen to and take in. I hope it's some kind of comfort to know that you can change people's minds, or at least give them some pause. In today's algorithm-driven world, pushing back seems more important now than any time I can think of. We need cool, level-heads running things.
The event itself is really bad and condemnable, but when threads like this show up they are usually a good thing because people rapidly demonstrate high coupling of tribal affiliation with viewpoint. This causes a lot of them to advertise through unhinged posts which is a good raw test for what they are like to communicate with. I usually go through and killfile a bunch of these commenters. Essentially, you want your bad participants to be easily visible to be so. I don't want them to be subtly sneaking their stuff in normal threads. I want to go look at one place and see all of the people I don't want to listen to.
Therefore, here's a feature request: allow per-user killfiles. I currently have this through a Chrome extension but I'd love it to be native so that I don't have to use my own iOS app and so on.
What's a killfile?
Like a personal blocklist, so you don't see certain commenters/threads/etc.
Personally I don't see the value, but some people are less resilient (or more weak-willed) at seeing words they disagree with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file a mechanism to increase signal to noise so that you don't have to waste time on low-value text
Here are a few things I find boring: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Overmod#My_Stuff
One of the things I really like is to have a high-ratio of good content to slop content and I think manually curating out slop authors is the way to go for that. You'll see that my lists include things that other people seem to really enjoy.
> Therefore, here's a feature request: allow per-user killfiles.
That would be lovely. It's also an obvious feature which has existed in other contexts for a very long time, and it would be easy to implement. That means its omission was a deliberate design choice. It'd be interesting to understand why.
It's a BYO Filterbubble. Filterbubbles are bad.
Wouldn't it maybe be a great idea to just ban anything that's not actually about science and technology from this board? This will have the indirect effect of people leaving it who are here for political trench fights? Plus the good old flame wars about technology x versus y are pretty harmless in comparison.
(And no, just because Sam Altman is CEO of tech company doesn't make this news tech news.)
I think a proper OpenAI vs Anthropic flame war might actually do this community some good. Let's just have it out. Avoiding violation of the x vs y technology rule seems to have resulted in a lot of pent up energy. I don't see the harm at this point if dang is saying it's over.
forgot that there is even such a policy. the differentiating feature of hn always was that comments and discussions are relatively thoughtful and civil. that's quickly getting lost.
Respectably my opinion is different. As I am reading through these comments the differences seem to be like neighboring Canadian farmers that each think next door is getting more rain than they are.
Tech and science are political .. they don't exist in some sort of vacuum.
Further being "apolotical" means supporting the current status quo.
I consider your stance highly toxic.
Politics is indeed toxic to pure curiosity about pure things. I feel that too, viscerally.
However. Culture war tropes get posted in even the most abstract discussion, so banning top-level posts won't keep it out.
Furthermore, technology is inherently political to the degree that it is transformative. The Facebook algorithm was always political, it just took time for that to become apparent. I'm trying to illustrate another kind of toxicity, that of engineering archetypes refusing to consider the political impact of their engineering decisions. Technologists in transformative fields should not be putting their heads in the sand. I don't want HN to devolve to red/green political rage, but there are political discussions that belong here.
Lastly, social sciences may well be dismal, but they can still illuminate, and politics is a valid subject of study. This site is predicated on curiosity, and areas of politics are on topic for that. Humanity is a system that bears analysis and can even be engineered.
No, ignoring the political consequences of science and technology is what is extremely toxic and psychopathic.
The very American trend to avoid anything political is self-defeating anyway, as it contributes to the social rot and the worsening of politics even further. Do you think the garden will become cleaner if you stop tending it? That your child will become nicer if you stop taking care of it? That your projects will sort themselves out if you don't track them?
You are well on your way to becoming like Russians: more and more detached from political matters because it is not safe or pleasant... until they are sent to the frontlines.
HN isn't a "science and technology" site.
Don't leave dang -- we need you now more than ever. :(
It would be a huge loss and a real shame if you left permanently.
I don't know how often you get to take a real vacation, somewhere away from the Internet and the USA, but this might be a good time to consider taking one?
You make this corner of the world better dang!
The comments you've linked are gross, but I take exception with what you wrote here.
> or saying they "don't condone violence" as a pretext to do exactly that
Maybe I just don't know what comments you're referring to, but you seem to be lumping every other post critical of Sam in with the worst comments, saying they are condoning violence, and that is disingenuous. I mostly see people expressing they aren't surprised this happened given how Sam openly markets his tech as a dangerous and unpredictable product that only he can steward, and maybe even finding his response to be a bit opportunistic in a tone deaf way, which hardly rises to the level of condoning violence.
I am willing to hear you out on this, but you're going to have to explain how this is different from any other thread on HN that you've moderated. Political violence, on a much bigger scale than this I may add, hits front page news, and you have more than normalized that as a discussion topic. Whether it's drone strikes, wars, or people being openly executed in the street, it seems the tragedy of human life is an open debate on HN, and you can bet a good 50% of this site will be writing comments exactly like the ones in this thread. And hell, I can't say one way or the other if threads like this are even worth allowing.
But now a tech CEO with lots of security gets a Molotov thrown at his metal gate, and people make the same comments, and suddenly a line has been crossed? How are the comments in this thread any different than comments like this, which involved people who were actually killed [1][2]. I have seen hundreds of comments on this site dictate to me how I should feel about the lives of others. I am often sickened by them. That's before we talk about Sam's actual role in how he shapes our society. It's not "sickening" to feel the need to footnote a condemnation of what happened, it's completely expected.
Again, maybe you're talking about worse comments than I'm seeing, but I feel frustrated as people have regularly brought you examples of escalating violent rhetoric on this site and been dismissed. Outside of people explicitly saying Sam deserved it, which I don't agree with, every other comment here reads like regular HN to me. If that saddens you, maybe there needs to be a different approach to moderation altogether.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551716 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47688076
The difference is that the victim is one of ours. When we kill millions of poor innocent babies in the Middle East, that's not violence, that's not political, that's just technology helping improve society. But when one single member of our political elite is physically threatened (not even killed, like those millions of children, not even suffering any injury himself, just some minor property damage with an implied threat), now that's something we have to rally against or we're violent uncivilized monkeys deserving of life in a jail cell.
>The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get.
There are like 20 rules for commenting on this site. Pretty much all of them are versions of “have decorum”, and none of them are “do not advocate for violence”. It is not just tolerated but encouraged to post insane stuff here so long as it sounds highbrow enough (eg the “most charitable interpretation” rule. It is against the rules to call out stuff like advocating for violence if it’s written like Niles Crane wrote it).
As far as I can tell this thread is not really exceptional in any way other than some of the ire is directed at somebody that used to work for YC.
I don't recognize what we actually do, or feel, in anything you've written here, and agree that it would all be pretty disgusting if it were true.
"Be kind" isn't about decorum and certainly excludes violence. If you ignore the most important one, of course you'll end up with a distorted view.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> this thread is not really exceptional in any way
It was different when I first saw it last night - it was, as I've explained in other comments, very much a mob. But I did a bunch of the usual moderation things that we do to try to dampen such dynamics. (The part where I also expressed feelings about it was different, and not so usual. I've done that a few times over the years, but mostly try to process it offline.)
As for the implication that we only cared about how bad that thread was because of the specific individual involved, yes, that would also be pretty disgusting—but the fact is that I've done, and do, the same moderation on countless occasions, large and small, and it doesn't depend on who the target is. In fact it isn't about the target at all—it's about the commnuity, and the poisoning effect that such threads have on us ourselves.
>"Be kind" isn't about decorum and certainly excludes violence.
The guideline in full (at least as it’s presented on the page)
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Is meant to be read: “Do not advocate for violence. (decorum). (decorum); (decorum). (decorum)” ?
I would be surprised to find out that I am the one user on this website to have read “be kind” in that context to be an ambiguous suggestion about conversation quality or whatever rather than a rule about what topics of discussion are flat-out banned.
Given that virtually every other platform that facilitates user interactions has clearly-delineated guidelines about what is and is not ok to post about, eschewing that in favor of “be kind” sort of gives the impression that such guidelines here are unnecessary because people will… conduct themselves here… with, for lack of a better word, decorum.
Seeing as kindness is left entirely up to each user to interpret and decorum is described in detail, it is unsurprising to me that this site gets a lot of polite or analytical-sounding reprehensible rhetoric.
It is like if you made a rule that everybody has to have a prominent horn section, walking bass line, and off-beat rhythms with a calypso influence and then wondered why your second rule of “don’t be rude“ didn’t stop everybody from playing ska.
It's meant to be read as "Be kind."
We've never tried to fully specify what these rules mean because (1) that's impossible, (2) it would give the misleading impression that whatever isn't listed in the specification must be ok, and (3) we don't want to be bureaucrats. HN is a spirit-of-the-law place, not a letter-of-the-law place, and always has been. I don't think it's any kind of stretch to say that advocating for violence is against the intended spirit of this site.
>HN is a spirit-of-the-law place, not a letter-of-the-law place
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That is exactly the point that I made. This is a website where the pretty much the only hard and fast unambiguous rules are about style and decorum. It is not hard to draw a line from “it doesn’t matter what you say so long as you say it nicely enough” to “people are nicely saying terrible things on that website.”
I’ve seen the “You can post anything on hn if you phrase it right” joke in group chats for years now, so this thread isn’t surprising to me in the least.
I’m not really sure how you and I could disagree on this. You are the admin here, this has been the worst thread you’ve ever seen, and you say that changes that would prevent this would be impossible and in major conflict with the “spirit-of-the-law” culture here. It does not seem possible to simultaneously claim “this is not the culture here” and “we would have to sacrifice the culture here to prevent this”
Sorry but dang's rationale is just nonsensical at this point. Spirit of law does not mean having no articulable laws, or principles, or ethics whatsoever. This moderator seems very philosophically confused, and would benefit from further education in philosophy, social studies, political-economic theory, and related subjects. Especially if this incident is bothering them so much, it is an opportunity for reflection and learning. It is tempting to think up one's own theories, about "bad mobs", etc., but a lot of these issues are well-trodden by incredible writings of intellectuals and thinkers, so why attempt to reinvent the wheel and commit all these pitfalls in the process.
Do you realize you're attempting to tell a moderator of the site how the guideline for the site is meant to be read?
Well no, I asked a mod how the guidelines are meant to be read, and shared how a user could see a particular one as somewhat ambiguous.
If mods categorically had the ability to make every user fully and equally understand the nuance and meaning of all of the rules then being a mod would probably be a much easier and rewarding job.
Trying to help your perspective: It might be Gell-Mann? or something similar that you sometimes mention. We assume that users who have proficiencies in one area should have proficiencies in another, or we notice more when something we know and care about is deeply wrong. The reaction we feel to deep untruths is a sign of our care and passion in Truth.
As you encourage, I would also like to be a little bit charitable and say that some users might be clever at programming or know about certain technology subjects but when it comes to real life and morality they are stuck in early edgy teenager mode, so we can still work and communicate with them on other topics. I try to flag these submissions because I know that many users are completely unable to discuss them in fruitful ways. Many of us are immature.
At a societal level, the simplistic and edgy teenager morality is mostly expressed online so we being terminally online tend to notice it more. The morality might be most publicly seen in "silence is violence" which is a thought terminating cliche. Thinking is hard and changing one's mind is hard too, especially when people have these thoughts which literally stop them thinking.
Psychologically, for many, expressing these juvenile, half baked, sloppy thoughts do not require much thought. They are cheap psychologically. It's like how being in a herd is actually comfortable and saves energy. It costs brain effort and potential hurt to ones self identity to change one's brain patterns. Most people choose to avoid even the thoughts that change is possible and not only wish to remain in Platos cave but to then keep their eyes closed to the shadows on the wall.
Another charitable thought: these worrying ideas are not actually ideas but emotions. For some users they try to argue with these people with logic but they should really connect emotionally - try to help the people feel for others, the good and the moral. Easiest to do with personal first hand real stories and not abstract ideas. To break down otherness through charity.
All communities eventually become a reflection of the society they are a part of. Even a willingly insular and sometimes wilfully ignorant one. Did you think this corner of the internet - your beautiful little garden - could survive unscathed while the rest of the world and the rest of your country slowly/quickly goes mad? The visitors to this little garden may spend a lot of time here trying not to let the outside world in - but the reality is we all live in that slowly rotting society, so don’t be surprised when the infection seeps in even here.
Yes indeed: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
I said I was ashamed, not surprised. It isn't surprising, and the feeling comes with the job every day. The difference is that I said something about it this time; I occasionally do, as long as it isn't often. Maybe once a year or so.
Fair enough. You’re human too. Thank you for the job you do. As quixotic as t sometimes appears I value the effort and it’s a big part of why this forum has stayed cleaner than others. Please don’t be disheartened. Discussions like these prove the point of difference of HN to other fora. Vitriol is a relative rarity here. We should all keep striving to preserve that.
Appreciated!
As I see it the underlying issue for many ITT is the hypocrisy of condemning violence against Altman while while looking the other way from his role as an oligarch and as a Defense contractor. This is a human being with an awful destructive effect on the world he shares with us. Such people don't deserve violence but expropriation.
I’m looking right at his role. What am I supposed to be seeing? Is he breaking the law?
Or do you just think he deserves whatever’s coming and more because you don’t agree with his views or actions?
Following or breaking the law isn't a good metric anymore. It never was really, a lot of genocides were “legal”. Sometimes it turns into a question of which law too. The US regularly breaks international law, so why should we respect its rule of of law if it doesn't respect international rule of law? Kissinger died peacefully and free of consequence for his warcrimes. The US threatens to invade the Hague if it tries to prosecute Americans for their warcrimes. How could anyone possibly see US law as having any legitimacy anymore?
I one billion percent prefer a flawed democracy with the rule of law, however imperfect, to a world where some random HN user thinks they their personal beliefs give them the moral authority to burn a family alive. Only an utter fool would wish for that world.
How do you reconcile violence between democracies then?
What happens when two democracies go to war?
If it were WWII, I'd support the military violence of my government against the democratically-elected Hitler.
Similarly, I think violence against the genocide-supporting US government and elite is permissible today even if it was “democratically-elected” (not that I think a choice between two Zionists counts as a real choice).
I clearly said he deserves expropriation not violence. Reread my comment.
The US defense industry profits off the mass murder of civilians including literally burning families alive as we bomb their homes. That’s mass murder at scale, not a single Molotov cocktail bouncing ineffectually off someone’s house. This is precisely the double standard I’m talking about.
The oligarchs control our political process and our laws. They bend it to their will for profit. What’s legal is not moral - they own the lawmakers and have endless budgets for the courts.
The only way to put an end to this is to expropriate them. Their extreme and disproportionate wealth gives them extreme and disproportionate power. Oligarchy is not some alternate/flawed form of democracy; these two systems are antithetical.
Expropriation would be ideal.
Why the hell are you downvoted? It's an undeniable fact that the US defense industry profits off the mass murder of civilians including literally burning families alive as we bomb their homes.
I wish we all felt so sickened by this.
It's been getting pretty bad around here lately. I had someone reply to a post I made in that Idiocracy thread a few days ago advocating for eugenics. Really really gross all around.
People here think that they're much smarter than they actually are.
Maybe its opportune to talk about editorial consistency, because your statement here is a fascinating case study in selective moral clarity.
When posts surface about Gaza, documented by the UN, by Médecins Sans Frontières, by the Lancet, by journalists who were subsequently killed while reporting or now in Lebanon, they vanish from the front page with remarkable efficiency...
The reasons, which I have collected like trading cards at this point, include: "too political," "not related to tech," "flamebait," "this isn't the forum for this," "not intellectually curious," and my personal favorite, "this will only generate heat, not light."
Entire hospital systems destroyed, aid workers killed in marked vehicles, tens of thousands of documented child casualties, and the curated editorial position is: not HN material.
A Molotov cocktail lands on a billionaire CEO's porch. No injuries. Likely a disturbed individual, and according to some well researched reporting in the New Yorker, Altman's personal life has generated no shortage of intense grievances that have nothing to do with AI or tech.
But here we are: front page, moderator editorial, existential crisis about the community's soul...!?
So help me understand the framework. Is violence HN worthy when it is directed upward on the org chart? Is a zero casualty arson attempt on a mansion more deserving of community reflection than systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, because one involves someone in YC Rolodex?
You write that you've "never seen a thread this bad." I'd invite you to read the comments that appear in the eleven minutes before Gaza threads get flagged. They're remarkably similar in tone, just aimed at people who don't have Sam publicist.
You say you want to "find something else to do with your life." Maybe that instinct is worth listening to. Since the AI boom, HN moderation has drifted from "intellectually curious forum" toward something closer to "curated narrative for the industry it covers."
When a platform consistently decides that violence against tech executives is a moral emergency but violence enabled by tech companies' contracts is "off-topic," the person setting that editorial line is not a neutral steward, they're an editor with a viewpoint.
And that's fine, but let's not dress it up as community values. So...In the spirit of consistency:
I'd like to this post be flagged. It involves no technology. It's a criminal matter best left to law enforcement. The comment section is, by the moderator's own assessment, irredeemably toxic. It is generating heat, not light. It is too political. It is not intellectually curious. It will attract flamebait.
In other words...it meets every single criterion routinely applied to kill discussions about violence that does not happen on somebody porch in Pacific Heights.
> Is violence HN worthy when it is directed upward on the org chart?
Generally, world news and politics are not supposed to be submitted unless there's a tech industry connection. The exception seems to be world-changing news, and there's a light touch on YC-affiliated news for conflict of interest reasons.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That's not really accurate in terms of how we moderate stories with political charge on HN. I've written about this many times: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... If you or anyone want to understand how we actually approach this, all the information is accessible through those links.
You seem to be making quite a few false assumptions about HN moderation—for example, that we left the current thread on the frontpage. In fact we downweighted it the same way we downweight other flamewars.
HN has had many major frontpage threads about Israel/Gaza. We haven't been suppressing the topic. I gather that you feel it should have more representation than it does, but that is a different issue; everyone feels that way about the topic they feel strongest about. Incidentally, the people on the opposite side from you believe that we're nefariously suppressing things in exactly the opposite direction, and direct their ire at us in much the same way that you have. (To put it crudely, we get hammered for antisemitism from one angle and genocide from another.)
You seem to be assuming that I'm not aware of what awful things people post in those threads. On the contrary, I'm sickeningly familiar with them and have banned many accounts for breaking the site guidelines there. If you know of a case that we missed—entirely possible, since we don't see everything—I'd like to see links. But you shouldn't assume that the moderators must be on the opposite side of an issue from you, or have no human feelings about it, when you happen to see something bad on HN. The likeliest explanation is simply that we haven't seen it yet.
There are many ways for a thread to be bad. You're right that people hurling tribal abuse at each other is one of those. However, even in the worst of those threads I don't usually see people justifying or celebrating specific violence against specific persons, and if I did see that, I would intervene. I think what shocked me in the current case was how the thread quickly turned into a mob dynamic with commenters vying to outdo each other, no doubt feeling that it is just fine to do that—indeed, righteous—because the object of the rage was $rich-ceo.
What I was saying is that a mob dynamic like that is not ok on HN even if the target is $rich-ceo. It's not "you can't do this on HN because the target is rich and powerful". It's "you can't do this on HN to anyone, even if they happen to be rich and powerful".
I gather that you won't believe me, since you've built an entire case on assuming the opposite. All I can tell you that it is a deep misunderstanding. I've intervened in many such threads many times, regardless of who it was that the commenters were celebrating harm to, or attempted harm.
As for the notion of treating one incident of failed violence as more important than mass slaughter of children, I agree with you that that would be grotesque.
The community may very well feel ashamed of here, dang. I've been here in the good times, and to be frank, even before I made an account in 2017, I'd lurked for a long time. Recently, I've personally come to recognize an ethos nurtured here that it may very well be has overstayed it's welcome in a polite society. People aren't dumb. People see where the money flows. People see whose decisions things revolve around. People see the trajectory that seems to be set, and people are starting to realize that talking & reason aren't working for them any more. Reason, is by virtue of rationalization, in it's own way it's own worst enemy. With enough practice, anything can be intellectually justified. So where the little box of rationality ceases to be effective, life shifts to the irrational. Suddenly things start hitting different. You might be ashamed of all those here feeling the squeeze, but the squeezed don't even register the pinch thereof compared to what life is already throwing at them, in no small part because of your fellow Sam A. What you should note, and take away from all of this, is someone you know is building themselves into a Wickerman doused in gasoline through their actions. If you want something to change; you can try applying pressure to your first degree connection. Sometimes people just need a helping hand back onto the right path from someone unexpected.
Or... You can keep telling a bunch of people with much bigger problems how ashamed you are that they are having an absolutely human response to the suffering of a man at the forefront of building a reasonably foreseeable suffering amplification machine within the context of a society that is organized around a social contract of exchanging capital for labor. I'm sure that shame you cast won't get "lost in the softmax" as the AI folks might say.
No more skin off my nose either way. Though I'd feel much better seeing some genuine humanity injected into cutting edge tech circles, I'm aware of the incentives, and also cognizant that sometimes, you have to leave the incentivized path to stay on the Right one. That's a lesson it isn't in any one person's capacity to teach though. Sometimes... it takes a community to get the point across. Even then though, you can lead a horse to water...
HN has literally turned into a political cesspool lately
The world has literally turned into a political cesspool lately. Possibly related.
Not sure what world you have lived in for the past at least 10 years...
HN (and ycombinator) has implicitly enabled, dogwhistled, or pretended to ignore all sorts of hateful and violent rhetoric. Sometimes it hides behind a veneer of "curious conversation" but other times its disgustingly blatant - last article I saw about sama was filled with horrific racism.
I come here because there are sometimes good posts, but this stuff has been here the entire time. Now its your guy getting the hate you are acting like its the worst thing in the world?
Frankly people calling out a post from a billionaire is a good thing. You would have to be terminally detached from reality to not see how all these festering issues - wealth inequality, injustice, cost of living, future employment etc etc - are starting to come to a head which would cause people to feel something - frustrated, angry, wrathful.
> Not sure what world you have lived in for the past at least 10 years
The world I have lived in for longer than 10 years is HN. I'm gut-wrenchingly familiar with the worst things that people post here—probably more than anyone, simply because it's my job.
If you can dig up a single example of a thread this bad that we knew about and didn't do anything about, I'd be shocked, because it would go against everything I believe and feel. Perhaps you can, nonetheless? If so, let's see it.
Here's what I mean by "this bad", if you want to calibrate:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727099
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725722
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726427
The number of people who feel that anything at all is justified if it reinforces their feelings—particularly their angriest and most vicious feelings—is so large that it's clear that it is human nature in action, and that makes me yearn for a cool and heavy rock to crawl under, with moist earth to sink into.
Well I'm not saying they don't get moderated eventually .. but the thread in reference
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659135
There was horrific racism on display right here. Perhaps it just seems part of the background noise to you .. but at the time, some of those posts felt just as bad as calls to violence or worse.
But to compose something more substantial .. its probably all to much to neatly tie up in a single reply to a thread.
> Well I'm not saying they don't get moderated eventually
I'm going to interpret that as meaning that we do our job ok, just not instantenously—which would make sense, given that we're human and that would be humanly impossible.
> There was horrific racism on display right here
If there were any cases of that which we didn't do anything about, it would be because we didn't see them. I can't read everything that gets posted to Hacker News any more than you can; see "humanly impossible" above. But I'd like to see specific links.
> Perhaps it just seems part of the background noise to you
It does not "seem like part of the background noise" to me. What it "seems like" is wrenching my intenstines into an agonizing state on a regular basis and then driving a spike through them.
Consider some more examples: trump or that other conservative figure getting shot. Or the ceo of the health company getting shot.
Both of those people condone(d), support, amplify and drive horrific violence.
A common liberal reaction to those incidents - "oh no violence isn't okay!!" - well where were you for all the other horrific things they did and said? Yes in some ideal world there perhaps wouldn't be violence - but I can understand people feeling like they had it coming. It's the boy who cried wolf. It's the bully getting their comeuppance. It can be hard to feel bad.
Sama also talks about wanting ai to be the future, its pushed everywhere and the feeling is its going to take peoples jobs and disrupt everything. But there's no discussion about how we are going to look after everyone in that future. Current capitalistic (american) society doesn't seem built for that ... that lack of care already exists for a lot of people too who are homeless, poor etc.
Being upset about samas front gate getting firebombed while they probably also had plenty of security .. well idk.
> Both of those people condone(d), support, amplify and drive horrific violence.
This seems to be the point of contention. What constitutes "violence"?
A lot of people seem to define violence as a purely physical act: a missile strike during a war, a fist hitting a face, a molotov cocktail thrown over a property line.
What has become clear to me, especially when I saw the discourse around Luigi Mangione and the public opinion polling on it, is that a lot – a lot – of people define it much more broadly: a health insurance denial, a job lost as a result of some CEO's careless ambition, or mere words.
The problem with a very broad definition of violence is that it permits a pretty barbaric worldview. If I cut someone off in traffic, or if a careless administrative action on my part costs someone money that then puts them in a financial pickle that month, is that violence? Do I then deserve to be tracked and assaulted? What about the doctor who is complicit in the refused treatment because the insurance company won't pay a bill?
"I understand the insurance company isn't paying the bill but you are still going to treat me, and to not do so is a violent act."
The list goes on. Can society function if the default action at real or perceived injustice is to just kill?
Of course there are different levels of violence. One person inciting hate online is different to bombing a country back to the stone age, but they are both violent. No a traffic offense shouldn't get you assaulted.
But big ceo or president shouldn't necessarily be surprised about consequences to say it bluntly, and to tie it back to our original point, its funny its such an issue now to dang and others here.
Its like suddenly an issue when that violence is directed at someone who does have a lot of power rather than the other way around.
I feel you could argue denying health claims is violent, its intending to cause harm - there is a choice there.
> The problem with a very broad definition of violence is that it permits a pretty barbaric worldview. If I cut someone off in traffic, or if a careless administrative action on my part costs someone money that then puts them in a financial pickle that month, is that violence? Do I then deserve to be tracked and assaulted? What about the doctor who is complicit in the refused treatment because the insurance company won't pay a bill?
That's resolved with proportionality.
Cut me off in traffic? No biggy
Cut me off from my healthcare when I have a terminal illness? Biggy
My point is that proportionality and fault seem to be entirely subjective.
In an insurance denial, the insurance company does not treat you. The people who refuse to treat you are actually the doctors and nurses and hospital. They have the ability to treat you, but refuse to do so without economic compensation from the insurance company. Within the insurance company, there exists underwriters and individuals who work directly on the denial. Above that are layers of management, above that is a CEO, above that is a board of directors. Above that is an industry and regulatory environment and government.
If you can justify violence against an insurance company CEO, do you also justify violence against the board of directors, employees of the insurance company, the hospital, doctors and nurses who refuse to treat?
Similarly, Sam Altman is just one small component of the AI industry. He is nothing without the team of people he is leading and who have endorsed him (don't forget, Sam himself was fired and reinstated with part of the stated basis being that OpenAI employees were planning an exodus if he was not brought back), not to mention the board of directors he serves under and investors he is working for.
A lot of people will look at this argument and say that just because responsibility for harm is diffused throughout a system of people does not mean that no one is responsible and that accountability is impossible. I would tend to agree. But I would also suggest that just because no one in particular is fully responsible does not mean that one person should be singled out and targeted as arbitrarily responsibility for all harms.
I missed this last night:
> Being upset about samas front gate
To write that, you must have missed what I was upset about. What upset me was the community response to the violence (which in physical terms was inconsequential, and certainly doesn't compare to the worst things going on in this world): piling on and egging each other into escalating rage towards the target of the violence, while obviously feeling good about it. In other words, a mob. I don't like mobs.
The mob dynamic is the same whether the target is a rich person who many people happen to dislike, or a much weaker person. The idea that "it's ok if the target is $so-and-so" is abhorrent—a self-deception that allows us to deny, excuse, and enjoy our share of the violence we all partake in as human beings, while projecting it onto (and into) other people whom we call bad and evil.
Even though I know that this is human nature it upsets me when it shows up in a community that I'm responsible for, and it was showing up badly in this thread when I first saw it last night.
But you are doing things about the bad comments in this thread too.
Why is "well we removed that stuff" a defense in other contexts but not here? In both cases the issue is this community writing stuff you deem objectionable.
I wouldn't hold it against anyone wishing my great grandfather shouldn't have existed for playing a minor role in Nazi Germany. Altman is in cahoots with a government that just a few days ago threatened to end a whole civilization. So no, I don't understand where you are coming from or why you're disgusted at the comments you linked.
It's kinda wild - It's now only publicly objectionable when its against an extremely privileged and powerful person??
Oh no !! /s
Meanwhile that same person implicitly condones violence - for example getting in bed with the US gov.
They don't need defending on HN.
Have you not seen similar troll comments outright celebrating the actual deaths of ICE's victims, Iranians, Oct 7th victims, etc? I certainly have.
Hell, at the last protest I went to there were people driving by cavalierly playing "Bomb Iran" (written in 1980, and trotted back out every time the topic is back in the zeitgeist). It seems like the only real difference there is abstraction. Supporting violence is [unfortunately] deeply embedded in our culture.
Perhaps the popularity of this thread is causing you to preemptively seek out more terrible comments, rather than letting flagging do its thing?
Maybe try looping over popular divisive threads, and reading the flagged short comments that didn't get many upvotes. There is a lot of fucking hate in the world.
(and certainly a hat tip to you for making it your job to sort through it so we don't have to see much of it. But if this is hitting you differently (personally) than the usual flood does, perhaps you need to take a step back?)
You're being completely melodramatic and hypocritical here likely because you have some sort of personal or business relationship with Altman.
Be honest with yourself -- underneath your admonishments against people here is a personal policy that promotes and enables far worse things than a molotov cocktail or more against Sam Altman.
People talk about war and advocate for war all the time here. Y Combinator itself funds arms companies, and surveillance companies. Altman himself is a defense contractor! How many climate change deaths is Sam Altman personally responsible for?
I live in a country that America has threatened to annex. I live in a part of that country where America money is pouring in to fund a separatist movement to facilitate that annexation. My country is allied with another country that America has threatened to invade.
I'm content to live my life and do my own thing with no intent to cause harm to others, and the goal of minimizing the harm I do cause but apparently that is a luxury I am not afforded in life. So what do I do? I just keep living my life the best I can and hoping something changes in the national dynamic in America.
If that means Americans start squabbling and attacking their oligarchs instead of attacking me so be it. It's not the world I want to live in either, but it's better than a world where Americans are focused and united on attacking me.
Have you ever shed a single tear for a Russian oligarch who 'falls out a window onto a pile of bullets?' I doubt it. That's how I feel about Altman.
Just be honest Dang. We're all living in sin here. We're all entwined into an economic system that is built off of slavery and theft.
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
It's almost like all the work you've put into silencing any criticism of the current regime and associated oligarchs was for nothing!
Maybe it's time to pack it in? I don't just mean you, I mean that maybe this site has kinda run its course.
The tech scene isn't the small, tight-knit thing it used to be. This site is now enormous. Discussion quality seems to have sort of "regressed to the mean"... the larger HN gets and the more people join the discussion, it starts to resemble the median social media site more and more. At some point it sorta loses its purpose.
I'm still addicted to HN, but I've gone through times where I've set my password to a UUID and time-lock encrypted it to lock myself out, because posting here has gotten worse and worse and worse for my mental health (and there's no way to delete your account here... I've emailed you about it in the past and never got a response.) On some level I hate HN now. TBH if this site was gone tomorrow, I'd most definitely be better off for it in the long run, and I'm sure I'm not alone here.
Thanks for all the work you've put in over the years though. This site has held out longer than most, and for a time, was one of the best places on the internet for discussion of any kind, let alone tech. It deserves a place in history for that alone.
If you want to delete your account you can just set your noprocrast to some absurdly large number like 99999999.
I don't think the "tech scene" was ever the small, tight-knit thing it used to be.
I'm not sure whether HN comments have gotten worse in general - these things fluctuate a lot, over long stretches, and the fundamentals are more or less the same over time.
Despite my emotional statement, I'm not really thinking of packing it in. HN obviously does more good than harm, even though it's popular for people to say the opposite (and even part of the game to say it).
So, OpenAI, Brockman, not sure about Altman directly, donated millions to Trump&Co, support and let use their technology to kill/harm millions of people, and now we are supposed to pretend to feel sorry for them?
None of those news items, comments, news made you want to get away from this, but now that your YC buddy is the target and whatever else fuck is used to justify it? When ICE killed american citizens, school girls killed it was all 'we flagged this as flamewar and what now' but now because he is part of the cadre, NOW it is disgusting? I would laugh if this wasn't the fucking future we are at, just sucking to these assholes
You've misunderstood what I wrote and what I felt. I wasn't talking about the underlying story or the linked article, but about the community's response to it. Perhaps this explanation will help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47734894.
I deeply hate Sam Altman, but after reading the flagged comments. Jesus. You do a tough job. Thank you.