The person I responded to asked an honest question, and I gave an honest answer. You can feed the entirety of HN into AI, and it would come to the same conclusion: it's not a secret.
But I wasn't aware that ideological battle is off-limits. It seems like every thread is full of it, so it's hard to walk away with that impression.
The reason for a separate account is because proposing ideas that don't fit the HN mainstream can result in people trying to track you down and "punish" you for having opposing views. Unfortunate, but that's where the world is.
That's far from the case, and keeping things that way is critical to HN's future. Even now, when we're at a high-water mark because of the political externalities, it's far from the case.
It may be the case that people inclined to do ideological battle on the internet are more likely to overestimate its presence, simply because that's where their attention goes.
But I wasn't aware that ideological battle is off-limits. It seems like every thread is full of it, so it's hard to walk away with that impression.
The reason for a separate account is because proposing ideas that don't fit the HN mainstream can result in people trying to track you down and "punish" you for having opposing views. Unfortunate, but that's where the world is.