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Complaining somebody "godwinned" a thread (which is a total misrepresentation of godwins law, and even the person that coined it said this kind of interpretation of it is stupid) is an unbelievably lazy dismissal of a situation that is quite literally directly comparable to some of the worst actions the nazis took.

If we aren't allowed to talk about and compare what the nazis did, how will we learn from it?

If this comparison is not permitted in this situation, when will it ever be?

Really quite disappointed in your stance on this one.

And please, spare us the condescending attitude that we don't actually care about this stuff. If we are going to veer off into "unstated positions and assumptions" territory there is a white hot glaringly obvious apparent conflict of interest with HN moderation shutting down discussion of human rights abuses right as YC china launches, dont you think?




On the internet, basically no one is "talking about and comparing what the Nazis did" for the purpose of learning. It's a rhetorical device, the cheapest, most sensational, lowest-information one around.

We actually moderate HN threads less, not more, when YC is the topic—this is a longstanding principle on HN. But that doesn't mean we don't moderate them at all. You only need to read a small sample of the moderation comments we post to this site to see how consistent we are on these questions.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...




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