Simple: it's off-topic here. Generic "world news" stuff is generally considered off-topic. Although they seem to have relaxed that a bit over the years, I still don't see any reason to have the Manafort stuff on here. It's not like there aren't thousands of places on the 'net to read about / discuss that topic.
They seem to be much more lenient with "positive" off-topic news. Meaning news that doesn't cause arguments or controversy.
US Politics by its very nature always causes a flame war, and definitely could overwhelm the front page if allowed to.
I for one am happy with the status quo, I come to HK to read HK relevant articles and discussions. If I want to read US Politics then Reddit, Twitter, and many other social media platforms/forums would suffice.
It doesn't seem like that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, more an indictment based on shady personal business dealings rather than some serious political conspiracy.
In addition to what others have said: Many of us are tired of the endless micro-events in the current political scene. Give us the TL;DR. That is, wake us up when something big happens. This wasn't it. Something that the probe found, involving some of the players, but not directly related to the election? Yeah, I don't care enough to pay much attention. I sure don't need an HN discussion about it. (I know, I can just skip the HN discussion, and let those who care participate. But the point is, I suspect that many people here feel this way.)
To make it on topic (going fictional here) it would have to have a hacker angle like: Manafort funded Russian hackers to flood FaceBook with ads denouncing Clinton and fostering opinions that support Trump. They used a cluster of ... something technical ...
This is hacker news, not a political debate bulletin board. If you want to discuss politics there are forums and online communities for that. For example political crossfire.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 16.6 ms ] thread1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
US Politics by its very nature always causes a flame war, and definitely could overwhelm the front page if allowed to.
I for one am happy with the status quo, I come to HK to read HK relevant articles and discussions. If I want to read US Politics then Reddit, Twitter, and many other social media platforms/forums would suffice.
To make it on topic (going fictional here) it would have to have a hacker angle like: Manafort funded Russian hackers to flood FaceBook with ads denouncing Clinton and fostering opinions that support Trump. They used a cluster of ... something technical ...