What a thread. Guy randomly claiming “the racism” with literally no evidence gets upvoted, while you who know what you’re talking about try pointing out that it’s nonsense and get downvoted and flagged.
I know it’s an old guideline to not claim HN is turning into Reddit, and I used to agree with it, but at least since Reddit killed Apollo etc and drove people away a lot of them seem to have come here, so it may really be happening this time. HN was pretty good while it lasted I guess.
There was no claim of racism, there was speculation that was reasonably on topic and at least somewhat credible given the history of racial disparities in sentencing rules. Downvoting this speculation as low value is also fine since it doesn't really add any constructive value to the conversation.
The only thing here that is close to "deeply inappropriate" was the response asserting that this speculation constitutes a "flamewar" (which is not what that term means at all) rather than bothering to try to refute the speculation with any real information or data that would contribute to creating a constructive discussion.
I know it’s an old guideline to not claim HN is turning into Reddit, and I used to agree with it, but at least since Reddit killed Apollo etc and drove people away a lot of them seem to have come here, so it may really be happening this time. HN was pretty good while it lasted I guess.