It matters when you see it being used in its original context, which immediately shows it to be false. That neo-nazi believes that we're ruled by ethnic minorities and (to his mind) moral degenerates, with his proof being that he's not allowed to speak his mind about them.
I kind of don't care about baggage of the original context; not about who said it, nor under what circumstances it was said. Just evaluate the words on their own.
> to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize
As someone who lives in a country where you can't criticize certain people, because the full force of the government can come at you, it's certainly true.
yes, a software company releasing a software tool for Linux must surely be their first step in the grand plan to extinguish the entire marketplace! Devious, Microsoft, very devious!
it was more a reference to OP's phrasing than anything else. I don't think Microsoft is interested in extinguishing the Linux ecosystem at this point in time. Co-opting it, yes, but not extinguishing.
Bit of an awkward moment for a searing indictment, as we'd just turned off flags on the OP. With suppression like that, who needs promotion?
It's a common misconception, but Hacker News really isn't identified with or immersed in Silicon Valley. Those of us moderating it are largely on the margins of SV and always have been, and the community by no means has its center of gravity there. It's globally distributed and on the whole rather anti-SV in orientation.
Lots of people outside SV are interested in those things—many more than are in it, actually. And a topic list doesn't say whether readers identify with or against SV, "tech culture", and so on. The HN users who dislike all of that are just as active in discussing it. More active in fact.
If you're actually asserting HN doesn't censor, and wouldn't censor even more if people actually felt free to express their true opinions here, I question you're intellectual honesty.
People use the word 'censor' to mean so many different things, it's not possible to assert anything coherent in general. We do some of those things, there are others we don't do, and it's not as if any of it is secret. Some people like to ask questions about this stuff and get answers, others prefer to rage against the machine. To each their own.
You turned off flags, but now you’re doing something else yourself. You’re being honest, but not really telling the whole story.
Your thumb is very much on the scale however, where existing community sentiment doesn’t do the job.
Edit: I didn’t intend to be cryptic or confuse you. I mean just that proclaiming you’ve put one of many tools on the shelf for this thread in no way implies what you tried to imply.
