There is a strong bias, and the amazing thing is that its very difficult for the people who have this bias to realize it. As far as they can tell it is fact, and this is in large part because they live in a filter bubble where they only see things that confirm their bias.
For example: Articles bashing Steve Jobs get upvoted a lot more than ones praising him. Exactly the opposite for bill Gates.
Now if you look at Slashdot a decade before Hacker news the results for bill gates would have been the opposite of what you see here.
Effectively, Bill Gates' millions in spending to improve his PR have changed people's perceptions (they will argue that its because he's such a generous benefactor, because that's politically correct, alas, they won't look too close at the activities of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation lest they notice he isn't.)
Google Good, Apple Bad, Leftism Good, Socialism Good, Basic Income! Global Warming is FACT, and anything you post that goes against this narrative risks getting you slow banned or hellbanned.
Hell, I was once banned from here for relating how I met Grace Hopper as a kid (in a comment on an article about Grace Hopper.)
I have no clue why that was hell ban worthy, after all she was the original "GRrrl in tech!!11!"
Welcome to hacker news where there are no hackers.
> Hell, I was once banned from here for relating how I met Grace Hopper as a kid (in a comment on an article about Grace Hopper.)
I don't believe anyone was ever banned from HN for that. How about let's see a link?
There's a cottage industry of HN users who go on about why they were banned ("because I supported Bradley Manning!" "because of my unpopular opinions!"). Pay attention and you'll notice that these complaints are always linkless. They never supply links to their allegedly innocent and suppressed contributions. Why not? Because then people could see what they really did do, and make up their own minds.
We make mistakes, and we're happy to correct them. But no way do we ban people for "relating how I met Grace Hopper as a kid".
For me, the real question is where have all the hackers gone? Years ago, there were high quality contributors here. They all had to go somewhere. When slashdot was dying, it was clear where everyone went (HN and Digg). This time around, it's not clear at all.
Tech now mostly attracts (post)collegiate millennials chasing the startup wave (don't blame them, it's where there's chance of an actual job). You only have to look at the dwindling state of open-source right now to see proof of this. Add to that the post-Snowden cynicism that killed off what was left of cyber-utopianism and the free web, and it's that pretty clear that the hackers of yore grew up and weren't replaced by the next generation.
For example: Articles bashing Steve Jobs get upvoted a lot more than ones praising him. Exactly the opposite for bill Gates.
Now if you look at Slashdot a decade before Hacker news the results for bill gates would have been the opposite of what you see here.
Effectively, Bill Gates' millions in spending to improve his PR have changed people's perceptions (they will argue that its because he's such a generous benefactor, because that's politically correct, alas, they won't look too close at the activities of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation lest they notice he isn't.)
Google Good, Apple Bad, Leftism Good, Socialism Good, Basic Income! Global Warming is FACT, and anything you post that goes against this narrative risks getting you slow banned or hellbanned.
Hell, I was once banned from here for relating how I met Grace Hopper as a kid (in a comment on an article about Grace Hopper.)
I have no clue why that was hell ban worthy, after all she was the original "GRrrl in tech!!11!"
Welcome to hacker news where there are no hackers.