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Why criticizing Apple or Tesla is punished by fans on HN?

5 points by iostream25 ↗ HN
One apparently cannot criticize Apple or Tesla products on HN without a vociferous contingent downvoting ones comment and invalidating any criticism a-priori, aka "being a fan" of a corporate product means that one must defend them, including silencing critics.

I can already see the gray color this post will appear in after the first downvote.

I notice that HN culture likes to call Reddit a cesspool of bad, however the voting dynamics here are arguably worse, and the passive aggression reminds me of the anonymity of Reddit filtered through LinkedIn-level "self-awareness" that only extends to defending group-think and not embracing actually rigorous technical standards where certain invisible power lines cross.

I get that it's a startup-focused forum, particularly as it's produced by ycombinator, however I don't understand or accept the manner in which certain corporate products are "praise-only" mode. What gives?

5 comments

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tlb
There is plenty of criticism of these companies on HN. Thoughtful criticism is usually upvoted. But much of it has no more substance than yelling "Booo!", which gets appropriately downvoted or flagged.
rvz
Very good question.

From what I keep seeing in here, you are free to criticise certain topics but some of them which are about Linux (Desktop), Rust or Tesla, you will see that you're going to be met with a storm of downvotes and a fury of aggressive defenders or fans on a crusade to defend their companies or projects to the death.

HN is still a cess-pool. Mention anything about supporting cryptocurrencies (coins not tokens) and you will see for yourself the beating up on anyone who 'defends' a certain few of these projects, even the ones that do work or have a use case and the vengeance that they will bring to stamp out and punish anyone who doesn't agree with the herd.

dusted
I don't recognize your observation.

It might be that the validity of the particular criticisms vary..

Tesla and Apple do bad stuff (lots of companies do) and they also do great stuff..

beardyw
It's down to emotional connection. We all do it on all sorts of things. Our online grocery shop yesterday had more than half with "no substitution". In many cases that is just because that's what we alway have. Something else wouldn't be the same even if it might better.

https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions