I really appreciate your reasonable argument, but if the past few weeks have been any indication, there isn't any room for that here. HN has gone from interesting tech discussions to extremist, us-vs-them political rhetoric, and anyone who takes a different stance is jumped on and downvoted — as you can tell from your post having more replies than the entire rest of the thread.
Of course, you won't see the story about a federal judge ruling NYPD's stop-and-frisk was illegal[0], despite it being a much graver offense to individual rights, because it doesn't affect rich, white techies. But an email service you never used shut down and cited "NSA did it!" as its reason? Put that shit all over the front page!
I am black and not rich, and I think that NSA/Lavabit stories are more relevant to HN than stop-and-frisk stories, because they are about techies and technology. Call me crazy.
For what it's worth, I agree from the perspective that HN is (I thought) primarily concerned with tech and innovation, etc.
The stop-and-frisk program doesn't really have anything to do with technology and is a social issue about race and expectation. Technology can't even begin to fix that one - it comes from some other place inside us.
It worries me that HN seems to be turning into more of a sub-reddit than anything.
Of course, you won't see the story about a federal judge ruling NYPD's stop-and-frisk was illegal[0], despite it being a much graver offense to individual rights, because it doesn't affect rich, white techies. But an email service you never used shut down and cited "NSA did it!" as its reason? Put that shit all over the front page!
[0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-pr...