There is a science fiction book "The inhabited island" ("Prisoners of power"?) by A. and B. Strugatsky. In one of episodes they try to describe the feeling of being in a very human-looking but also completely alien culture (a different planet with humanoid inhabitants). So they describe how a group of people works out a credentials/paperwork situation (they need to move a prisoner from one place to another) but literally, as these actions are seen by the prisoner who does not understand the meaning. "This one gave that one a yellow rectangle but that one refused to take it and said something in a raised voice."
I always remember that episode as I see headlines like that.
Prediction: it won't. HN is very touchy about things that make the president look bad, as well as about bold statements, as well as about politics (except when it's good for VC money, then it's apolitical).
We don’t “remove” anything, and what we “like” doesn’t come into it; our job is to keep discussions healthy and curious and maintain the trust of the community.
Stories that are primarily about political controversy will generally get downweighted by:
- community flags
- flamewar penalties
- software penalties that are applied by default to publications and topics that are primarily focused on daily politics controversy.
But even with these penalties the stories can easily be found on /active, and everything that’s ever posted can be found on /newest (with ‘showdead’ turned on).
When a story contains “significant new information” we turn off these penalties to ensure it gets exposure on the front page, which we’ve done here and which we’ve done for every major breaking story over the many years that this approach has been in place.
Yes, I agree, it's very traditional for businesses to use the behaviour of their software as an accountability sink, as if they didn't create that behaviour to begin with, don't have the ability to change it, and don't have the ability to override it.
I try to stay humble when predicting the future. But there is just no way there will be a literal military invasion. Trump would never risk a bunch of american dying on the ground, it would be terrible optics.
