Sufficiently controversial opinions are flagged, downvoted til dead/hidden, or associated users shadow banned. HN's policies and voting system, both de facto and de jure, discourage controversial opinions and reward popular, conformist opinions.
That's not to pick on HN, since this is a common problem. Neither do I have a silver bullet solution, but the issue remains, and it's a huge issue. Evolution of norms, for better or worse, is suppressed to the extent that big communication platforms suppress controversy. The whole concept of post and comment votes does this by definition.
There are a few sacred cows here (I won't mention them by name, though the do exist), but I have earned my rep by posting mostly contrarian opinions, and I almost always have quite a few net upvotes - sometimes dozens. It's not too difficult: First, I cite facts that back up my claims from sources whose narratives would typically go against my argument. I cite the New York Times, Washington Post, the Atlantic, NPR, CNN, etc.; I only rarely cite Fox News, and never cite anything to the right of Fox. Second, I really internalize the rules about good faith, not attacking the weakest form of an argument, not cross-examining, etc. Sometimes I have a draft that has my emotions, and I'll edit it to make it more rational before posting. Third, I ask open-ended questions to allow myself to be wrong in the mind of other commenters. Instead of just asserting that some of my ultra-contrarian opinions are the only way anyone can see an issue, I may propose a question. By doing that, I have at times seen some excluded middle I hadn't considered, and my opinion becomes more nuanced. Fourth, I often will begin replying and then delete my reply because I know it won't add anything. This is the hardest one to do, but sometimes it's just the way you have to go. Some differences are merely tastes and preferences, and I'm not going to change the dominant tastes and preferences of the Valley on HN. I can only point out some of the consequences.
The content moderation rules and system here have encouraged me to write better and more clearly about my contrarian opinions, and have made me more persuasive. HN can be a crap-show at times, but in my experience, it's often some of the best commentary on the Internet.
Completely disagree about HN. Controversial topics that are thought out, well formed, and argued with good intent are generally good sources of discussion.
Most of the time though, people arguing controversial topics phrase them so poorly or include heavy handed emotions so that their arguments have no shot of being fairly interpreted by anyone else.
That's true to an extent (and so is what ativzzz says, so you're both right). But the reasons for what you're talking about are much misunderstood. Yishan does a good job of going into some of them in the OP, by the way.
People always reach immediately for the conclusion that their controversial comments are getting moderated because people dislike their opinion—either because of groupthink in the community or because the admins are hostile to their views. Most of the time, though, they've larded their comments pre-emptively with some sort of hostility, snark, name-calling, or other aggression—no doubt because they expect to be opposed and want to make it clear they already know that, don't care what the sheeple think, and so on.
The way the group and/or the admins respond to those comments is often a product of those secondary mixins. Forgive the gross analogy, but it's as if someone serves a shit milkshake and when it's rejected, say, "you just hate dairy products" or "this community is so biased against milkshakes".
If you start instead from the principle that the value of a comment is the expected value of the subthread it forms the root of [1], then a commenter is responsible for the effects of their comments [2] – at least the predictable ones. From that it follows that there's a greater burden on the commenter who's expressing a contrarian view [3]. The more contrarian the view—the further it falls outside the community's tolerance—the more responsibility that commenter has for not triggering degenerative effects like flamewars.
This may be counterintuitive, because we're used to thinking in terms of atomic individual responsibility, but it's a model that actually works. Threads are molecules, not atoms—they're a cocreation, like one of those drawing games where each person fills in part of a shared picture [4], or like a dance—people respond to the other's movements. A good dancer takes the others into account.
It may be unfair that the one with a contrarian view is more responsible for what happens—especially because they're already under greater pressure than the one whose views agree with the surround. But fair or not, it's the way communication works. If you're trying to deliver challenging information to someone, you have to take that person into account—you have to regulate what you say by what the listener is capable to hear and to tolerate. Otherwise you're predictably going to dysregulate them and ruin the conversation.
Contrarian commenters usually do the opposite of this—they express their contrarian opinion in a deliberately aggressive and uncompromising way, probably because (I'm repeating myself sorry) they expect to be rejected anyhow, and it's safer to be inside the armor of "you people can't handle the truth!" than it is to really communicate, i.e. to connect and relate.
This model is the last thing that most contrarian-opinion commenters want to adopt, because it's hard and risky, and because usually they have pre-existing hurt feelings from being battered repeatedly with majoritarian opinions already (especially the case when identity is at issue, such as being from a minority population along some axis). But it's the one that actually has a hope of working, and is by far the best solution I know of to the problem of unconventional opinions in groups.
Are there some views which are so far beyond the community's tolerance that any mention in any form will immediately blow up the thread, making the above model impossible? Yes, but they're rare and extreme and not usually the thing people have in mind. I think it's better to stick to the 95% or 99% case when having this discussion.
Just wanted to say that it's great to have you posting your thoughts/experience on this topic. I've run a forum for almost 19 years as a near-lone moderator and so have a lot of thoughts, experience and interest in the topic. It's been frustrating when Yishan's posted (IMO, solid) thoughts on social networks and moderation and the bulk of HN's discussion can be too simple to be useful ("Reddit is trash", etc).
I particularly liked his tweet about how site/network owners just wish everyone would be friendly and have great discussions.
> The more contrarian the view—the further it falls outside the community's tolerance—the more responsibility that commenter has for not triggering degenerative effects like flamewars.
This sounds similar to the “yelling fire” censorship test
it’s not that we censor discussing combustion methods,
there would be no effect if everyone else was also yelling fire
But people were watching a movie and now the community’s experience has been ruined (with potential for harm), in exchange for nothing of value
That's not to pick on HN, since this is a common problem. Neither do I have a silver bullet solution, but the issue remains, and it's a huge issue. Evolution of norms, for better or worse, is suppressed to the extent that big communication platforms suppress controversy. The whole concept of post and comment votes does this by definition.