Sorry, but I don't feel like hunting specific threads.
I just remember back in the days (before I quit HN and then later rejoined) people would get down-voted to heck for speaking against Apple, people would get slow-banned and people would get stern emails from PG if they spoke too crossly against Apple when Apple did all the questionable things Apple constantly does.
You take my word for it or not. I think it qualifies as "cult of Apple's totalitarian grip on HN-discussion".
Ah anecdotes, the facts of the internet. I'm only 1135 days here, this must have happened before my time on HN. Wished I'd experienced the "stern emails from PG".
"You take my word for it or not."
Well, not. Sorry, too much science education to think anecdotes are relevant in any way.
There are other options. Remembering incorrectly. Being delusional. Etc. There's a difference. While he could be spouting lies, I think calling him a liar adds the idea that he has the intent to deceive, whereas he might not, but still inadverdantly spout lies.
You may think my definition of liar is improper, but I think the nuanced difference is very important in everyday conversation.
This is much too simple. E.g. he could be wrong but thinks he is right. Or he might be right and thinks he's right but for the wrong reasons. etc. He could be an Android fanboy paid by Samsung or Google. Who knows? Who cares?
I'm only interested in facts for his argument as I thought to myself 'In 3yrs HN looked like a very anti-Apple site to me. But there are obviously people here who came to the conclusion that this was a very pro-Apple site.' And I'm interested why this is the case and we got very different feelings from HN.
That isn't what I asked. Either you think he's lying and need to call it out directly and state your reasons why, or you don't.
Difficulty: "Because he didn't provide evidence" is not proof of deception. Either what he's saying did happen, or it did not. Dismissing something as anecdotal only matters in scientific discussions about statistics, notsomuch real life. If we followed such rigorous rules for everyday discussion, nothing would ever be talked about.
>>Either you think he's lying and need to call it out directly and state your reasons why, or you don't.
False dichotomy. Lying implies the intent to deceive, which he may not have. He may simply be remembering things incorrectly, or viewing past events through a reality distortion field. This is why anecdotal evidence is utterly meaningless in discussions like this: when you are making statements about "the way things used to be" you need to provide actual evidence supporting those statements.
OP (what is the correct description here?) is perhaps exaggerating a bit, but to be fair I also noticed a general "Apple cannot do any wrong" culture on HN. I can't point off hand to specific threads but is just a feeling I got from checking comments and seeing what was down voted or up voted.
It is somewhat frustrating when a community like HN does this but on the other hand the upsides of the HN community by far out-weigh the downsides.
It's true. This is not a community where people are expected to objective and fair, some of them have very strong biases towards Apple and some of those people happen to be more equal than others around here.
For instance I had myself banned once because I said something irreverent about his holiness Steve Jobs. It's ok, I don't need the karma since at any given time I only happen to find an average of 2 interesting articles on the HN front page, the rest being more or less the same recycled crappy themes ("why you should(n't) do <<insert latest hype/cliche/truism>>", "<<insert generic statement>>... and that's ok", "why I <<insert action at past tense>> <<insert retarded product name>>", "... javascript framework ... " and so on). Only leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
I'm a bit late to the party and I can't get on my old account anymore, but the sheer number of Apple related threads was one of the reasons I left when I did.
I can't say when it started, but there frequently stood on the top the "questionable app store rejection for a seemingly minor detail" (and the releated "Apple morally objected to this content"). Other favorites were "Steve Jobs ate a leaf of lettuce" and "Steve Jobs swore this one time" and other nonsense.
The defining moments were when the iPhone 4(?) was released, and the words AntennaGate plastered the first page like there were shining details in the news every 15 minutes, when the whole thing played out like (1) Discovery (2) Accusation (3) Denial (4) Excuse (5) Patch to display accuracy. It was all drama from start to finish.
The other moment, while I will freely admit was significant news, was Steve Jobs' death. Praises were sung for him for a solid two weeks, followed by excerpts from the Biography for the next month.
Apple is an important company to the community here, and that's fine, but the karma system and the knowledge that people liked Apple lead users posting every Apple related story.
This isn't perfect, but there's a twitter account that marks stories which hit the front page named @HNFrontPage. Using an external search engine (Topsy) which has records dating back to May 2008 (~1590 days) we can find 7,847[1] stories about Apple have hit the front page, making for around 4.9 Apple stories on the front page per day.
Here are a small selection of stories voted to the front page about Steve Job's death, with points and comment count.
It's already a few years past due.