Classifying TSA stories as "political" is just one way of looking at them, and I think it's a bit myopic. I suspect the reason we've seen a lot of TSA stories here is because they have to do with personal liberty to most folks, and this is a legit theme on a forum like HN-- there is a thematic overlap between stories like these and stories about Open Source, &c.
"Personal liberty" is a huge, and very political topic, because it's very connected with where one's freedom stops, what the rights and responsabilities of communities are, who should exercise power, and a whole host of other very political subjects that, while they may be fascinating, are generally toxic for internet forums, and are certainly not about tech or startups.
Open source is open source. It is not gun rights/free speech/right to privacy/any number of other things that are important, but are not open source.
Also, "myopic" presumes that I am not interested in politics. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, I dearly wish to keep it out of this site.
Shall we then ban stories on HN about the latest vim plugin, or that cool Emacs macro someone wrote? Those are fiery political topics, you know--maybe even "religious" topics for some users. I agree that all this is hugely political, but to me that only strengthens the point I was making. You can't avoid politics on forums like HN (in the broad, generalised sense in which we are discussing it here).
I believe they are being filtered. I'm not sure how dead auto-killed articles appear from the submitter's point of view, but I submitted an article yesterday that included the TSA acronym and it appeared to me without a comment box. This, and the absence articles on the front page, makes me think that filtering is in place.
I'm not complaining --- this is probably a fine policy. But it does complicate how one reads Matt's post. I think that HN actually does a lot behind the scenes to promote a better community, which is what keeps it as good as it is.
The TSA isn't. The TSA articles are. They have almost nothing to do with startups, and even less to do with tech. They are the antithesis of intellectually interesting.
The site is currently called Hacker News, not Startup or Tech news. Even though the site is heavily associated with the ycombinator brand, for a lot of people, the hacker identity has a lot to do with personal freedom, even more so than technology. So if this site is really only about startups and tech then it is poorly named.
Startups can be very hacker-oriented, however forming a startup to sell out to a large corp. in the end is very anti-hacker in my opinion. But you don't see people complaining about every startup article on the site. The reality seems to be that the site attracts a cross section of visitors.
Resisting unjust searches and ridiculous security theatre procedures is hacking. The fact that it is also political is irrelevant. I have a hard time understanding a mentality where these issues are not considered interesting or important as they affect our most basic rights. Is your startup or your tech really worth anything without freedom?
If you feel a need to discuss it, perhaps that would be a more appropriate forum?
Not to mention featuring on sites like cnn.com. It's a pretty big issue that is certainly not "startups" or "tech". Yeah, there's tech involved, but the issue is how does society believe it should be used: politics.
Whether you like them or not, you really can't tell? To me it's pretty obvious what goes where, with a few things that are on the edge, like politics that are really important for tech and startups, like net neutrality. The TSA articles aren't tech or startups at all. I think the "pro-politics" people would still vote them up if there were no scanners and it was only about being groped by the goons.
Because the erosion of the constitutional protection against unreasonable search & seizure is implicit in every article about the TSA, and some people would rather we trade essential liberties for an immeasurably small increase in safety in silence. And, thank you sir, may I have another[1]. This makes it political.
