I totally empathize with what it's like to try to defend HN as a worthy place to participate when you're talking with someone who has extremely strong feelings about how awful it is, and the fact that you're willing to do that makes me feel much more sympathy and common ground with you than any disagreement we may have on other points.
But I think your explanation of why this is is much too simplistic. The difference seems to be that you aren't being bombarded every day with utterly contradictory extremely strong feelings about how awful it is. If you were, you wouldn't be able to write what you just posted. Your judgment that the perception "isn't symmetric" is wildly out of line with what I encounter here, so one of us must be dealing with an extremely skewed sample. Perhaps you read more HN posts and talk to a wider variety of people about HN than I do. From my perspective, the links below are typical—and there are countless more where these came from. Of course, there are also countless links claiming exactly the opposite, but since you already believe that, they aren't the medicine in this case. I sample that list when responding to commenters who see things this way:
A sample email, for a change of pace: "It's clear ycombinator is
clearly culling right-wing opinions and thoughts. The only opinions
allowed to remain on the site are left wing [...] What a fucking joke
your site has become."
But I think your explanation of why this is is much too simplistic. The difference seems to be that you aren't being bombarded every day with utterly contradictory extremely strong feelings about how awful it is. If you were, you wouldn't be able to write what you just posted. Your judgment that the perception "isn't symmetric" is wildly out of line with what I encounter here, so one of us must be dealing with an extremely skewed sample. Perhaps you read more HN posts and talk to a wider variety of people about HN than I do. From my perspective, the links below are typical—and there are countless more where these came from. Of course, there are also countless links claiming exactly the opposite, but since you already believe that, they aren't the medicine in this case. I sample that list when responding to commenters who see things this way:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729568
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17197581
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23429442
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937781
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21627676
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15388778
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956287
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BetterThanSlave
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=slamdance
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915
A sample email, for a change of pace: "It's clear ycombinator is clearly culling right-wing opinions and thoughts. The only opinions allowed to remain on the site are left wing [...] What a fucking joke your site has become."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202305
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664482
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15546533
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645202
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325122
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23719343