The moderators at Hacker News, one of the world’s most popular sites amongst developers and entrepreneurs, recently banned political discussions for a week.
I’m currently #51 on the Hacker News leaderboard, started my professional career in political organizing, graduated from Y Combinator (the organization that runs Hacker News), and now run a VC fund focused on funding companies solving systemic societal problems. Which is all to say, I care deeply about both Hacker News itself and the relationship between Silicon Valley, the world of politics, and society as a whole.
I understand why the moderators made the decision they did. Typically Hacker News is an oasis of rational, informed discussion on topics ranging from quantum computing, the design of cities, the future or artificial intelligence, advancements in synthetic biology, or the newest coolest programming language. It’s for exactly this reason that I and so many others spend more time on Hacker News than any other website.
Like the moderators, I’ve noticed how discussion about politics (and particularly those about the recent election) spark people’s passions in a way that leads to less rational debate, more emotional arguments, and more ad hominem attacks. It’s hard to read through and participate in those comment threads — everyone feels that.
The solution isn’t to ban political debate. We must not turn away from important things because they’re uncomfortable.
Every choice made in the world of startups and technology is inherently a moral act (Nick Hanauer recently spoke eloquently about this) and there’s often no way to fully explore that without talking about politics. How can one have an informed and comprehensive discussion on the coming driverless car revolution without talking about its effect on reducing emissions, its effect on eliminating one of the most common professions, and what this means for our policy and our politics? How can one have a comprehensive discussion about the best place to found or scale a company without talking about the incoming president’s H1B policy?
Banning the discussion of politics prevents a full discussion of the technology and innovation itself. Innovation is most interesting in the context of its effect on society at large.
This year, across the globe, we’ve seen a massive blowback against the “global elite.” Meanwhile, many inside and outside of the community are arguing that Silicon Valley has an empathy problem. Whatever your take on this, it’s critically important that we have this discussion. It’s more important than ever for us to talk about these things, not turn away from them because they’re difficult and uncomfortable.
Banning political discourse doesn’t make discussions about technology and innovation more robust or interesting. Banning political discourse makes comprehensive discussions about technology and innovation impossible. We as a community must not wall ourselves off from the world. Now more than ever it’s important to consider the societal ramifications of what we build.
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