We've asked you several times to stop breaking the site guidelines. You've continued to do it anyway. That's not cool.
Moreover, your account has been using HN primarily for political/nationalistic battle, which is also a line at which we ban accounts, quite separately from individual violations.
Please stop pretending that antisemitism is the only reason anyone is criticising a military that is in the middle of committing a genocide.
A week after the hideous October 7th attack, I started sharing my (European) home with an Israeli family I had never met before who wanted to get away from the fear of Hamas rockets, mainly for the sake of the 3 kids' mental health, and let them live with me (rent free) for months. They're a Jewish family, which didn't make me any more or less likely to like them, or to be willing to help them, than if they'd been Christian, or Muslim, or (like me) atheists.
I've also been on many protests against my government's continued support of Israel. Because I care about human life, not because I care about the religions involved.
I respect your judgment, so I've edited out the first bit, but honestly I feel it's not an unreasonable thing to say in response to genocide denial - it was said about the claim, not about the person, and in my opinion it's an accurate description of that claim. /my two cents
From a moderation point of view, it's a question of the effect that these bits have on other people in the community, and therefore the quality of the discussion. It's obviously near-impossible to have a thoughtful conversation about a topic like this across the vast differences (ideological, national, emotional) that separate people. In such a context, even provocations that feel small and justified can set the neighborhood on fire.
If the discussion devolves into just another internet screaming match where people hurl pre-existing talking points and just get even more riled up in rage, then the HN thread is a failure. Maybe it's too much to hope for anything better on this topic, which is probably the most divisive and emotional one we've ever seen, but I think we have to try. That's we allow the topic to appear on the HN front page from time to time. Not to allow it would be easier, at least in the short term, but inconsistent with the intended spirit of the site.
The bulk of your post wasn't doing anything like flamewar at all, so the swipey bits were particularly unfortunate.
p.s. I don't mean to pile on, but "please stop pretending" is also a swipe. You can't know whether someone else is pretending, and there's no reason to suppose that people aren't sincere in their convictions about a highly-charged topic (separately from whether their beliefs are true or false). If you lead by denying that, the rest of what you have to say will have little chance of being heard.
If you try to define that in a way that detaches from larger human concerns, you make it smaller. Curiosity doesn't benefit from that.
I agree with you that there are many reasons to be unhappy with threads like this and how the topic lands on HN generally. I am by no means happy with it—I just don't think that the alternative is better. Curiosity ultimately has to do with relating to what's real and what's true. You can't impose a narrow view of on- and off-topcicness on that.
The problem of how to run a site like HN in accordance with a value like that is subject to a thousand constraints, some obvious, many not. That makes the problem interesting, but also means that it can never be solved—not to everyone's satisfaction, nor even to anyone's satisfaction. Therefore we all have a certain amount of dissatisfaction to tolerate.
Have you seen any comments on this submission that demonstrate intellectual curiosity? It's just flamewarring and complaints as far as I can see, at this point.
I agree that the wrong call was made. I'm also curious why this particular post is the one which was chosen as the poster child on which to set aside the rules and allow "thoughtful" discussion.
It's very relevant, the hacker ethos is not just about technology and VC funding, it's also about curiosity, honesty, skepticism, and in a way, also about distrust of the powerful. This revelation is perfectly on topic.
The comments are actually better than expected given the sensitivity of the topic at hand.
We must be reading different comments. What do you reckon is the ratio of thoughtful comments expressing curiosity, honesty, etc. to the mindless bleatings of the uninformed?
I have no idea which side you think we're favoring, but I can tell you two things for sure: (1) it's whichever side you personally disagree with; and (2) they think we're favoring you. Of everything I've learned about how HN functions (and internet dynamics generally), this is by far the most invariant.
With the risk of being moderated myself, why is it the case that is always the not pro-israel comments that get moderated? The original comment seems quite reasonable but the guy even kind of apologized, for no reason! That's pure coercion to conform, if I may be allowed (lol) to have an opinion.
> why is it the case that is always the not pro-israel comments that get moderated
That is far from the case, as you can see for yourself if you look more closely.
People (I don't mean you personally, but all of us—it seems to be basic human bias) are far too quick to jump to "always". I call this the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), which is a terrible name I'm hoping someone can improve on.
That's about frequency per se, whereas I'm talking about experiences with negative emotional valence.
Thanks for the reply though—I hope someday someone will come up with a good name for it; or better, still, point out that it's a known bias in the standard repertoire and tell me what it's called.
