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Why is Hacker News like that? (drewdevault.com)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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Hacker News is a case study in what inevitably happens to “apolitical” spaces. Politics and society are bifurcating, and Hacker News is taking the fork on the right. “Apolitical” is an excuse to favor the status quo, a resistance to change, and therefore a re-enforcement of the existing biases and power structures of society. It’s no surprise that Hacker News favors capitalism, opposes labor, and objects to questioning the privileges of its largely white, male, middle-class audience. It’s “political” and “ideological” for it to do anything else.

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[–] 8 points 14 hours ago

HN is for boot lickers, it's extremely obvious in just 1 visit

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    [–] 11 points 1 day ago

    Y combinator is deeply rooted in fascism, I'm trying to find the hacker-news post that shocked me about "going back to silicon-valley root: the military industry". The "liberal-progressive" tone that can be read from commenters can soften the overall vibe but in the end the tone is definitely not great : last example for me was how the "stopomarchy" news was treated (flagged, and the comments smells very bad) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49661901

    It's been 2 years now that on top of this the vast majority of "news" are LLM related. And if you're not into that this make the website not worth anything any more.

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    [–] 16 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Hacker News feels more like a site for Apple enthusiasts than hackers. And the time I've spent away from it has made me realize how not great the community there is.

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    • [–] 28 points 2 days ago

    It's mentioned at the end of the blog post, but reading “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy”, by Gil Durán is a great book if anyone wants to understand the fucked up minds of these tech billionaires.

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    [–] 22 points 2 days ago

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    [–] 17 points 2 days ago (6 children)

    Pulling forward the first paragraph of the article, as we are far from universally reading articles these days.

    Hacker News (aka HN) is a link aggregator where “hackers” gather to discuss technology, politics, and anything which “good hackers would find interesting”. HN is a means by which its host, prominent startup incubator Y Combinator, projects soft power, promotes startups it funds, and feeds people with ideas into its incubation program. Hacker News is one of the most popular forums for discussing technology online today – perhaps the biggest.

    Does any know of a pro-union or pro-cooperative startup incubator?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 day ago*

    Does any know of a pro-union or pro-cooperative startup incubator?

    I don't know that Mozilla actually does this in a values-aligned way, but they do have their own seed funding venture arm. I know Mozilla gets a lot of guff, 99% of it unfair imo, but I think it's one of the smartest things they're doing for long term viability.

    Part of what they value and are looking to fund are "healthy communities" but for their purposes that might mean something like FOSS principles and privacy rather than healthy ownership/governance structures for orgs.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

    startup cooperatives incubators are a thing.

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    • [–] 11 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I feel icky every time I visit.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago

    Like all your dad’s friends you don’t like are hanging with him in the garage and you have to pass through and get hazed if you want a soda from the fridge. “Just here for the content, thanks.”

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    • [–] 5 points 2 days ago

    The rare occasions when I visit Hacker News I do it because IT information all other themes there don't bother me, apart in this themes there are better publications out there. For general and policy news there are other not biased sources.

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    [–] -4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Drew Devault is a loser and pretty much nothing he says should be taken seriously.

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    • [+] -6 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    The purity testing will continue until everyone follows only one exact way of thinking.

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