Ask HN: This is not the place for political discourse..so where is?

5 asim 6 8/1/2025, 1:53:14 PM
I've been on HN since 2008. As an engineer is a goto resource for me but I've also come to respect the fact that we are focused on certain topics and that's what makes it great. I guess my question is, where does one go to discuss political and world issues with similar respect and tolerance? I do not think X or other platforms promote that in the right way. It's more like shouting and slander as opposed to respect and understanding. Thoughts?

Comments (6)

Bender · 15h ago
- where does one go to discuss political and world issues

- with similar respect and tolerance

This is just my pessimistic view but I have never seen a site able to do those two things simultaneously. Human psychology gets in the way every time. In my opinion there would have to be an in depth entrance exam administered in person to screen out people unable to have truly unbiased discussions that did not have ulterior motives, uncontrolled emotions and agendas and even then the site admin would have to be ready to fling the ban hammer without hesitation. Short of that, every site that attempts to allow discussing politics devolves into the negative aspects of Tweeter, Reddit, 4chan, 8chan, etc... Or perhaps such a site exists and I did not pass the exam.

2close4comfort · 21h ago
It is harder to separate technology and political discourse as they seem to becoming more and more intertwined. This is probably the most respectful open forum that I know on the internet. My problem is much like yours if not here where? If we cannot discuss this here, then the people driving these technologies will not be able to reconcile technology's place in our political landscape and how our contributions ultimately are actively shaping the world around us. Unfortunately, Hacker News has the most literate and well thought out responses to extremely technical issues on the internet, seems like this would be the ideal place. You don't have conversations on X and Reddit etc. like you can find here on HN. The whole reason I love it here is getting to sift through all these comments here is for the knowledge people share here and I have seen highly charged ideologies discussed here in detail and it is still standing. But is that because the community has been actively avoided certain divisive topics?
rgreekguy · 19h ago
As it looks, you just stay here. No need to go anywhere. I took a small break from this place and the feed is unbearable with politics now. (Yes, the very few, comparatively, political posts are too many.)
chistev · 21h ago
The political subreddits?

Or if you want something exactly like HN but for politics, you could build it and promote it. But good luck getting it active with users.

I already have a clone of HN ready.

_wire_ · 21h ago
Techno nerds discussing tradecraft is not inherently about engineering. According to a standard of a discipline, where is the engineering discussion here? Examples? I'd estimate that fewer than 1:1000 topics here deal directly with anything that can be considered genuine engineering. There's almost no vocabulary of engineering presented here. When it appears it's treated like lore from old magicians.

Moreover, this forum is fundamentally political because capital is political and this site is maintained as a heater in an incubator used by venture capital. This can't be a controversial observation; it's a simple reading of the masthead.

Correspondingly, there's a high degree of censorship exercised on these forums, ostensibly in the service of a purity of a generally non-existent engineering orientation.

So trying to pretend that plain nerding out is engineering, while priding and promoting censorship of your own politics in deference to "jobs" offered by venture capitalists is servile. And trying to avoid the contradiction is juvenile.

But then look at the leadership of the industry: Cultists and demagogs, some fairer, many fouler, all political, because that's the nature of capital.

Of course last thing house slaves are permitted is talk about their situation, and the best know to censor themselves.

So yes, where else can one go to discuss one's own interests? Certainly not on the plantation.

incomingpain · 21h ago
>I guess my question is, where does one go to discuss political and world issues with similar respect and tolerance?

X is the only online social media that has healthy(and unhealthy) political discussions; with both sides available for discussion. Reddit, bluesky, mastodon, etc banned conservatives off the site. Gab, truth social, etc banned liberals. You cant have political discussions if you are an echo chamber of only 1 viewpoint.

> It's more like shouting and slander as opposed to respect and understanding. Thoughts?

That's something newer to politics in general. I call it the jon stewart consequence.

He was aiming for a laugh; he's not engaged in healthy political discussions but his popularity spilled into political discussions; he'd take a video out of context, make a jab, make funny face, force the audience to laugh, and then bring on a guest that agrees with him to confirm everything he thinks.

Now liberals are essentially mimicking him. It's about dunking on the dumbest conservatives. Those who arent dumb, they are nazis.

But then conservatives do it as well; we're all humans and sometimes we say or think dumb things.