With all due respect, and as someone who has repeatedly over some years now attempted to engage with the HN community on social justice issues, as well as watched many others attempt same, without the benefit of what little local fame you can call claim to Mr. Ptacek, that is horseshit.

I have consistently watched this community, derail, degrade, brigade, dogpile, flag, and downvote any perspective that is anything critical of the state of tech culture, tech libertarianism, fascism, and especially the startup scene and YC itself. I have watched, repeatedly, the moderation of this site anchor and bury stories that dared turn a lens to this community's very real political failings, over and over. I can literally tell when the Americans have awakened on this site, because any time I make such commentary of my own, I can shortly expect a sudden decline in my karma score the moment San Francisco wakes up.

Meanwhile, however, those comments you claim all get automatically downvoted and deleted ... don't. The amount of times I've clicked on a thread to find some cryptofascist/-sexist/-racist bullshit front and center right at the top of the discussion, is so numerous as to defy all attempts at hope. Hell, the amount of such material I have routinely seen right on the front page, including this site's ongoing love for fascist creeps like Moldbug, routinely makes me wonder why I come here at all.

And on top of all of this, with all this history and back story, after a year in which this site's parent company has come under due and fair criticism for its business partnerships with an open sexist and supporter of an incoming fascist, a fascist who has since been elected and which this very week is holding an off-the-record meeting with tech leaders, this site of all places bans all discussion of politics entirely.

Isn't that just fucking convenient?

I would love to be able to "just talk tech" somewhere. Basically the only reason I even come to this site anymore is that I have not yet found a replacement that provides me with the kinds of links and news of quirky new tech projects and programming languages that I find on the front page here, and even those are beginning to become scarce.

But this is not that site, and never has been, as is most transparently plain. And when I routinely witness this site's community upvote and support defences of discrimination, racism, sexism, libertarian and fascist extremism, and even just the other day, irresponsible and harmful theories about fucking mental illness of all goddamn things, I don't get that luxury of "ignoring politics", and frankly, neither should any of you.

What I have found, over and over through the years, it is that "no politics!" is nothing more than a rallying cry for regressives and establishment defenders affronted by the audacity that anyone dare criticise or question their sense of control on society.

And I will never cow to that, or respect that. Tech is here, and so is its impact on the world. The time for pretending that politics can be safely ignored as off-topic is long since past. When Google search results and Facebook sharing are shaping the political discourse of entire nations, even the world, we don't get to sit back and pretend that what we do is mere harmless tinkering.