Politics on Hacker News

Users strongly object to political discussions and articles appearing on Hacker News, citing site guidelines that discourage politics in favor of tech-focused content and urging flagging or removal.

➡️ Stable 1.4x Politics & Society
7,455
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#8271
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

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Keywords

AFAIK news.yc HN identity.html paulgraham.com newsguidelines.html ycombinator.com TV political hn politics news hacker discussions guidelines hacker news site stories

Sample Comments

jeswin Feb 9, 2020 View on HN

It's probably best to keep politics outside of HN; there are many other forums to discuss such matters.. Especially when articles have a tilt to the left or the right.

swat535 Nov 18, 2020 View on HN

Because political discussions (except a few narrow events) are not encourage on HN, it goes against the spirit of the site AFAIK.

krschultz Sep 12, 2012 View on HN

Politics like this has no place on HN. Some politics can get through, but it has to have at least some point to it.

saintamh Mar 9, 2025 View on HN

Politics is explicitly marked as off-topic for HN in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

smspence Dec 20, 2011 View on HN

Please keep these kinds of things off of Hacker News. We don't need HN turning into /r/politics. This isn't news. We don't need it here.

aclsid Jan 29, 2017 View on HN

I thought HN was not about politics according to the guidelines.

melling Jun 6, 2010 View on HN

Isn't this a bit political for Hacker News? We could be here all day.

richardknop Nov 1, 2017 View on HN

This is hacker news, not a political debate bulletin board. If you want to discuss politics there are forums and online communities for that. For example political crossfire.

Grishnakh Apr 18, 2016 View on HN

I really have to question why this article is on HN; this site seems to normally highly discourage political discussion, and I really don't see what this has to do with tech. If you mods want to have political discussions, go ahead, but don't be surprised if they turn nasty, as they usually do in online forums.

AnimalMuppet Aug 22, 2021 View on HN

It's political, or at least bordering on it, and therefore not a good candidate for an HN article.