I have to say I'm a little perplexed by HN's perpetual willingness to use grok like it's a normal product made by a normal company.
There's often frustration that every thread related to a Musk company includes a discussion about Musk, but Musk himself caused that by being the only tech founder to actively campaign for Trump. (Zuck, the runner up, didn't do anything even close to this). Every product at every company he owns is hopelessly tethered to his decision to do that, and deserves to be judged on those terms.
Another popular story today is about US rollback of climate regulation [1] under Trump. Some fraction of every cent you spend on Grok goes to support stuff you hate, and yet people get genuinely annoyed when you point it out. Musk and his companies really _are_ special and should be treated as special.
Every thread about a Musk company or product needs a comment like this one. If we had the right values, every comment would look like this one.
Thank you for your perspective and I agree as repetitive as it is, I hope hn can continue to surface disagreement/substantial views on a topic.
These comments don't stay up much anymore and I can't tell if it's structural to the forum (flag weight + statistical mechanics of votes + guidelines) or if it's the userbase sentiment.
Except for now HN doesn't do that. Every single comment that points the issue with Grok being built by a pro-fascist team is being "locked" so that they can't be upvoted
For what it's worth, I've watched the vote fight on my comment swing back and fourth over the last hour. It got flagged, unflagged, and flagged again. It appears to now be locked and dead.
But I think it represents real malaise in the community. It's not a moderator plot, people here really just don't care and might even support this.
We really are in the minority of opinion for giving a damn about liberal democracy.
I think I was trying to bring up the mechanics of the forum as another reason.
Between the guidelines + user thoughts (e.g. repetition, low novelty/new info), there's other reasons these types of replies might end up dead.
I am worried that it leads to people self selecting to other forums biasing the remaining userbase vote distributions. In an exit vs voice situation, the voice kinda dies out.
eleventen · · focus · HN ↗
There's often frustration that every thread related to a Musk company includes a discussion about Musk, but Musk himself caused that by being the only tech founder to actively campaign for Trump. (Zuck, the runner up, didn't do anything even close to this). Every product at every company he owns is hopelessly tethered to his decision to do that, and deserves to be judged on those terms.
Another popular story today is about US rollback of climate regulation [1] under Trump. Some fraction of every cent you spend on Grok goes to support stuff you hate, and yet people get genuinely annoyed when you point it out. Musk and his companies really _are_ special and should be treated as special.
Every thread about a Musk company or product needs a comment like this one. If we had the right values, every comment would look like this one.
[1] <a href="https://text.hrw.org/news/2026/09/17/us-revokes-limits-on-power-plants-climate-pollution" rel="nofollow">https://text.hrw.org/news/2026/09/17/us-revokes-limits-on-po...
big_toast · · focus · HN ↗
These comments don't stay up much anymore and I can't tell if it's structural to the forum (flag weight + statistical mechanics of votes + guidelines) or if it's the userbase sentiment.
oulipo · · focus · HN ↗
eleventen · · focus · HN ↗
But I think it represents real malaise in the community. It's not a moderator plot, people here really just don't care and might even support this.
We really are in the minority of opinion for giving a damn about liberal democracy.
big_toast · · focus · HN ↗
Between the guidelines + user thoughts (e.g. repetition, low novelty/new info), there's other reasons these types of replies might end up dead.
I am worried that it leads to people self selecting to other forums biasing the remaining userbase vote distributions. In an exit vs voice situation, the voice kinda dies out.
hdhdjdif · · focus · HN ↗