HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is HN Pro-Fascist?

67 points by sundaeofshock ↗ HN
It sure seems like many articles that are critical of the Trump Administration or of certain people in the tech world (eg Musk) are flagged in under an hour. It does not matter if it a tech focused article or pure politics, it will just be flagged.

What do people think: is HN pro-fascist?

35 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 61.6 ms ] thread
d00mB0t
I've noticed this too, not only on HN but the media in general.
techpineapple
If we didn’t flag a bunch of them, that’s all there would be. I like my HN with a side of politics, not the other way around.
mikece
You think HN is pro-Trump? Quite the opposite from what I can tell! But I have also noticed that any story mentioning Trump gets flagged. I don't see this as fascist so much as it seems like there less than zero desire to see the name of Trump regardless of whether the story is positive or negative about him.

And yes, there are some things that are coming out of legislation which would usually be of big interest to HN (or at least I would think so) but I don't bother submitting stories if one or two particular people have their names prominent in the story. It is what it is.

EDIT: That said, the one I posted today didn't get flagged (yet): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44594622

EDIT 2: Something else that will get a story flagged seems to be anything about XLibre (for or against). I'm guessing that has to do with who is running that project which is kind of a shame since I'm curious why there's so much reflexive and visceral animosity for those suggesting we slow the roll on forcing all distros and desktop environments to move to Wayland.

queenkjuul
XLibre gets voted down because all of the project lead's freedesktop PRs were reverted for being crap, and nobody has any faith in the project, especially when Wayback now exists

I mean, him being a notorious crackpot doesn't help, obviously. But it's a project with absolutely minimal promise.

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p_ing
The issue is that they're often purely political in a way that doesn't relate to what some of us that use HN believe political posts should be.

I.e., Trump & deportations. Very political and would flag immediately. Trump & NASA, perhaps not flagged at all. Trump and his cankles? Flagged immediately. Trump & science grants? Perhaps not flagged at all.

This isn't reddit. Or at least, I'd hope it shouldn't be.

PaulHoule
Outrage and anger are part of the problem not part of the solution.

Anti-fascists are jealous somebody has better footwear than them. Woke right NPCs who blog endlessly about "cancel culture" wish Karl Marx was banned 150 years ago.

If you read The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post you'd think Zohran Mamdani has the opposite policies of Trump but he's twice as angry. He's dangerous to system not because he's angry but because he listens to people, something you'll see him do on YouTube or TikTok but that mainstream TV channels won't show you.

mindcrime
No, people just don't want to talk about Trump in general. I mean, what's the point of criticizing him, it would just be like "running up the score". Kind of pointless and resulting in no real glory or anything.
moomoo11
The VC and other capital allocator class stands to gain a LOT from the current administration.

I think after like 100M+ levels of wealth, "morals" and "ethics" go out the window.

smitty1e
Noticing fascism and flatus are often associated with the source thereof.

When making an accusation, failure to include substantive facts is counter-productive.

ykonstant
...really?? He who smelt it dealt it level of discourse?
al_borland
I have trouble taking people seriously when they use “fascist” as a blanket term to discredit people they don’t like.
ironmagma
When I first moved to the Bay Area, San Francisco was described by one person to me as "quite conservative actually." At the time, that seemed unlikely. However after a while, I can now see why this is the case.
yencabulator
Rich people tend toward whatever helps them get richer. Whether they agree with the ideology or not.

See also: Why US presidents present as happily married and religious, no matter what the reality is.

jmclnx
I noticed that too, so I used this as a test case:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44588392

it hours to get it flagged where a Trump/Musk criticism gets flagged in a few minutes.

But it was flagged. I really really doubt HN is "pro-fascist", but I think it leans to the right because it is the rich that funds their projects.

tjansen
It depends on the time of day. I have noticed that certain posts of mine are getting downvotes earlier in the day (when there are more Europeans) and upvotes later (when the Americans are in the majority). Other posts are getting upvotes early and downvotes later.

And it's the main reason why I rarely write comments on HN. Everything is so political. If people don't agree with you, they downvote you. Your karma only reflects the popularity of your views. If you're writing something that is controversial, it's likely to lower your karma, if one side can downvote it before the other side sees it.

OutOfHere
YES. Practically all posts to articles that -- legitimately expose the fascism AND gain sufficient attention -- are quickly flagged and deleted.
happytoexplain
There is a lot of fascist or fascist-adjacent behavior/opinions in the Trump/Musk crowd. Despite this, flagging Trump/Musk-critical articles doesn't make you fascist, and implying it does is an unnecessary provocation that only makes things worse and more bitter. A vicious cycle.
Yizahi
Opinion answer - no, judging by the votes and contents of the majority of the comments about politically charged topics, I'm pretty sure that most of the people here are approximately center-left leaning, and more libertarian than authoritarian leaning. Some examples, without judging them - HN on average seems to support European worker protections than USA free for all stance, at the same time EU bureaucracy and red tape is mostly universally frowned upon as a factor slowing down economical innovation. Ukraine and Taiwan are supported more than Russia and China. Palestine/Israel opinion seems to be a split, but subjectively it seems majority leans pro-Palestine. Trump is universally reviled, I haven't seen any pro-Trump comments here (at least above 0 votes). Musk is a split opinion, but also majority seems to be against him this year. Megacorps are widely disliked, with a new anti-Google topic popping up very regularly, same with Facebook and Amazon, unless they are strictly about new good IT stuff. Creepto is mocked by majority, anarcho-capitalism too. Aaron Swarz is universally liked as are others with the same leaning.

All in all these are definitely not right wing opinions.

aaronbaugher
What's funny is that OP thinks anti-Trump posts being flagged suggests HN is pro-Trump, while not noticing that pro-Trump posts don't exist here at all. Unless they're deleted immediately (seems unlikely), people with that opinion have just learned to keep it to themselves (or go away) because it'll only destroy their karma here.

That suggests that HN leans heavily anti-Trump, but also doesn't want to talk about him all the time, so flags posts that drag the forum in that direction. Ditto Musk and "fascism," whatever that's supposed to mean nowadays when everyone to the right of Mao gets called a fascist sooner or later.

krapp
As a whole? No. But only because Hacker News is not a monolith, and there are many groups with various viewpoints here.

Are there pro-fascist posters here? Absolutely. I've seen full throated advocacy for some vile things here. The worst of it usually gets flagged.

Is there a strong correlation between flagging political posts and support for fascism? Not necessarily. Although some of that is definitely the HN Trumpist/right-wing contingent, this forum harbors a particular distate for anything not explicitly tech related (often beyond what the actual site guidelines state to be on topic) which includes politics of any kind.

And HN is designed so that flagging and downvoting has a much greater weight than upvoting, so it really doesn't even take much to tank a thread.

cadamsdotcom
It's a fallacy to argue that a community can be any specific thing. No community is a monolith. There are factions here, just like everywhere else.

There are multiple factions. There's the people fearful of AI, the people who post everything anyone posts if it vaguely relates to AI, the people who love to complain about AI posts, and the people who left because they got sick of all the AI stuff.

If you want a description of the politics related factions, just apply `sed -e s/AI/politics/g`.

__d
Fascism implies (paraphrasing Wikipedia):

* a dictatorial leader

* an authoritarian government

* nationalism and/or racism

* militarism

* promotion of a "natural order"

I don't think any of those accurately characterize a dominant ideology on HN. If anything, in my observation, HN is somewhat libertarian-leaning, rather than fascist.

queenkjuul
Is HN, the entity? Yes. Is the community? Enough of it to matter.

But like, you wanna see the most unhinged antisocial takes? Well, go to Twitter, then when you're bored, come here.

It's not really HN in particular though. It's a silicon valley thing.

Emergency5606
You have no idea what fascism is. If you ever encountered a real fascist, you'd shit your pants.