I've seen the phrase 'threat to democracy' thrown around this week to justify silencing voices. If you're afraid of what someone who thinks differently will vote for, then maybe democracy itself is the problem.
I respectfully disagree. When a politician and party are inciting violence, encouraging a coup, and undermining the foundations of democracy then I think we’ve crossed over the line from needing to be accepting of different views.
Facebook, Twitter and Google are monopolies. They carry different weight than simply private corporations, and with great power comes great responsibility.
Was it fascism when Wikipedia banned the Church of Scientology from their website?
Or is it recognition that in discussion-based platforms, the only move you have is banning and de-platforming to various extents (from shadow-banning, to individual moderation of comments, to deletion of spam accounts). Literally the only actions you can do as an administrator to moderate discussions is cutting out speech in some way.
That's a tough job to be a mod, for sure, but there is also a thing called free speech which grants even lunatics like the scientologists, freedom of, you know, speech. And it doesn't mean 'free speech you agree with'.
What happens now is that Capitol protest is used as an excuse to exclude half of the country in the conversation before the inauguration (and most likely after), silence their voice, the voice of opposition.
And that doesn't smell kosher to me, to 75M people who voted with me, and thankfully many on the left, the classic liberals.
I don't think it's good for the country to derail to this level of totalitarian censorship, even temporary, no matter what yours or mine political beliefs are.
You've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that because it destroys what this site is for (intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation).
Just because everywhere else is bursting into flames and descending into the hell realms is no reason to destroy this place. Every community member here should be protecting HN for its intended purpose, and we'll ban as many accounts as we have to to get it back on course.
I'm reading HN for quite some time now and there is no a day go by that I would not see a political post.
I'm not American so I don't really follow facts of your political leaders or your racial/gender problems that your government is trying to address. I consider myself neutral and I would love to see no political posts on HN. They tend to spread into flame wars and as far as I can see bring no real value apart from people venting here..
And I think for that reason you should ban everyone who does politics, either if they hate or love one side or another. Strictly no politics. I love HN for its tech stuff, not political.
If anyone truly has a better idea, I'd love to hear it. But first make sure that you've familiarized yourself with the previous explanations and understand the constraints we're subject to. If it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've already answered many times why that won't work.
Given that stories with political overlap are inevitably going to appear here, that the site has rules for discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and that the rules don't stop applying just because a topic is politicized, if users break the rules repeatedly and ignore our requests to stop, we ban them. What else would we do?
I humbly don't agree with the statement that technology is politics - it does not make me a better software developer if somebody or somebody else will be a president.
Even though there is an overlap (i.e. taxation, regulations and policies) and we could talk about this since these are the things that impact revenue. But discussion about politics outside of those things that affect us directly is leading to flame wars and unnecessary arguments that bring us nowhere.
Personally I feel even talking about taxes/regulations brings us nowhere as we have no way to influence them.
If you run a social network, you need to decide what posts to allow on your platform. Every platform needs some moderation, lest they be overrun with spam and porn and scams.
If you develop artificial intelligence, you need to determine what applications of the technology are ethical. Is it okay to sell to authoritarian governments? What about the US military? What about individual police departments?
If you develop hardware, or run servers, you need to consider your impact on the planet.
> If you run a social network, you need to decide what posts to allow on your platform. Every platform needs some moderation, lest they be overrun with spam and porn and scams.
Agree, spam/porn/scams are problem on this kind of platforms. But social media is only tiny part of tech in general, and also spam/porn/scams is not really political. And I guess, if in example somebody posted hateful content or content that is bringing damage then this is what our juridical system should handle?
> If you develop artificial intelligence, you need to determine what applications of the technology are ethical. Is it okay to sell to authoritarian governments? What about the US military? What about individual police departments?
Most of the times I - as an engineer - have no say when it comes to those issues - from my experience these are business issues, not technical. And I guess these issues are probably influenced by politics, to some degree.
> If you develop hardware, or run servers, you need to consider your impact on the planet.
I'd say same as above - it's business to decide what to do about those issues. We as engineers think about efficiency - and had been thinking for decades, as far as my experience goes. I was always taught to build things that consume least amount of electricity, things that get from A to B with least effort. And Mr X or Mr Y being a president had no influence at those principles.
You can't outsource your ethics to 'business'. Is it ethical to build UAVs for the military? If you feel the answer is yes, no problem. But if for your the answer is no, but the company you work for is selling just that, then you have a problem - you can try to address it by lobbying your company, by ignoring it, or by quitting. But it is your problem.
I'm not trying to say that you should believe one way or another, I just take issue with the idea that, as an engineer, one should feel no responsibility even in principle for the way the product they create will be used.
The way this site works is that you (not you personally, but all of us) need to follow the rules regardless of what other people are doing. Right now you're flagrantly breaking them.
> That's a tough job to be a mod, for sure, but there is also a thing called free speech which grants even lunatics like the scientologists, freedom of, you know, speech. And it doesn't mean 'free speech you agree with'.
And yet, Wikipedia was allowed to ban them when they started to wreak havoc on the site in 2009. And I don't believe it was very controversial, but my memory may be a bit foggy from the years. (Also, being caught up as part of the Anon-mob at the time probably warps my understanding of the events).
> I don't think it's good for the country to derail to this level of totalitarian censorship, even temporary, no matter what yours or mine political beliefs are.
Hollywood in the 1930s conspired to censor movies that didn't follow the code. Today, we're seeing that websites that don't follow a code (ie: don't insight violent rhetoric) are open to censorship.
Now I love myself a good pre-code Hollywood flick, and even may find myself oogling at a bit of pornography every now and then. And obviously, the rule against interracial marriage was not very kosher. So I'm certainly happy to be living today rather than in the code-days. But I think you're over-exaggerating for how bad things will be if we go down this path.
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Up till now, we lived in the glorious "pre code" days of the Internet. Alas, as we move forward, we understand the power that this new medium holds. And like Hay's of the 1927, we're realizing that we must hold websites accountable.
I think the best plan of action is creating a new decentralized free speech platform, as resilient as a cockroach, blockchain or scihub.
I’ve sent a message to sama & pg asking to add this to the YC list of ‘requests for startups’. I hope they hear.
For those lurking, this is a tremendous opportunity and real need as you have half the country desperate to let their voice be heard while being aggressively silenced and de-platformed for political reasons.
You can have a monopoly on free speech.. just kidding , purely decentralized. Hit me up with your hot ideas and Go chops.
I disagree with this. This might be a solution, but it is not "the" solution.
I really, truly believe that any startup idea has to pass the child pornography test. Most B2C companies have to deal with this at some point if they allow user to user interaction.
A decentralized platform as advocated for could not survive if it's not capable of censuring things. You have to censure for child pornography--it's illegal to host it. Court actions around torrents have held that the sites hosting them are not decentralized--The Pirate Bay is at fault for hosting illegally obtained content. Same thing with this--as long as hosting child pornography is illegal (and it should be, not debating that) you won't have a mainstream "decentralized" social media site[0].
This follows for all the other stuff that's going on. Inciting violence is illegal. That, plain and simple, is why Trump was removed from Twitter. Twitter even waited until his violence actually killed people. Even Parler recognizes this[1] and has started censuring, because it could be sued into the ground for inciting violence. If you think that there's a technological solution for this problem--you're missing the bigger picture. Big social media tech _loves_ this stuff--people talk about it all day--they even donate to the groups that help organize it[2].
We're not missing a technological solution--we're missing a legislative one.
You make some good points. I want to reply to a couple of them.
I like the idea of a decentralized platform, but I agree that the solution has to be a legislative one. What's being lost is the "national conversation" on the subject and now private companies are deciding for everyone. Billions of people are now being told they don't get to decide how they interact with society; instead, literally a few people are deciding on behalf of billions. There is very little way to spin that as a positive result. This is what democracy is literally for - "we all decide together what we want the rules to be". I'm... honestly so saddened to see that people can't see that.
If "the people" decide, and what's happening now is what everyone votes for? Great! I may not like it but at least we know that we used good means since the means determine the ends. Right now, the means we are using is literally corporations acting as governments - making decisions for billions.
Re: idea has to pass the child porn test: agree. There's a few others too like illegal incitement etc. A platform needs a meaningful way to detect and remove this (not only because the law requires it, but this is a protective measure to ensure everyone gets to interact on that platform instead of it just disappearing).
This comment does not deserve to be downvoted. A decentralized platform ensuring people can communicate with who they want is a net positive for society.
If this is something you're interested in, I am as well.
'In common parlance, randomness is the apparent lack of pattern or predictability in events' [1].
It doesn't mean there is no cause, but we can't predict the outcome of the random process [2].
In some case we can't predict it because we don't understand it, in others it is inherently unpredictable according to our model of the world.
As for radioactive decay, specifically: 'According to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a particular atom will decay, regardless of how long the atom has existed'[3].
That only means quantum theory can't predict it, it doesn't mean other theory won't be able to.
It's just we're stuck with quantum theory for now, because it has been verified by all experiments done so far, and not yet disproven by new experiments.
Every theory has a lifetime as long as it is not proven wrong by experiment. And cause and predictive capability are directly tied to particular theory/model you're using.
so 'random' might mean:
1) we have a good coherent model, consistent with empirical results, and a particular process/phenomenon is unpredictable according to our model.
or alternatively
2) we don't have a good model/don't understand the cause and therefore can't predict the outcome a particular process/phenomenon
both 1 and 2 leave space for a new theory to come in, and be able to explain the cause/make the prediction and eliminate 'randomness'
Funny, I get the same impression when I go to Twitter, it’s full of far left loonies and communist sympathizers, not to mention raging cancel culture mobs, so brainwashed they disown their families for supporting Trump.
And the worst thing is that Twitter is based in Silicon Valley, with many of its key employees belonging to the same herd.
1. What would make someone “disown their families for supporting Trump”? What are their motivations? How are they arriving at the conclusion they need to do this? Does the disowned family member supporting trump play any responsibility in this engagement? What values do you hold dear to yourself that might make you disown another family member if violated?
2. When you call someone a “moronic sheep…” Do you think that person feels like a sheep? Do you think they might see you as a sheep for being apart of a different “herd”? I would encourage you to explain why they are moronic sheep rather than taking the mental shortcut of calling them a moronic sheep and therefore unworthy of having valid opinions.
3. You summarize behavior as: “‘orange man baaad’ chants.” Why do you think they see him as bad? Why do you think they “chant” it? Is there anything you say, that they might characterize as a chant?
Your post pretty much says “I want a place that doesn’t have people that think differently,” “I want a place where I won’t be challenged,” “I want a place without sheep,” “I want a place with people that think the same as me.”
Do you think what you’re actually looking for is an echo chamber?
1. 4 years on non-stop propaganda by left wing owned mainstream media, amplified by online echo-chambers, will do that to you. Especially if the other side is labeled all shades of evil, like ‘racists’ and ‘fascists’ indiscriminately and without evidence. Slander is a powerful political weapon.
2. "Moronic sheep" is a poetic way to describe people who tend to trust lies they've been force-fed, without questioning. I blame the lack of critical thinking, groupthink, and deep internalized 'herd following' attitude nurtured from schools to colleges. Which, btw, a possible reason for larger Trump support among people who haven't passed through the brainwashing machine of the US college/academia.
I guess anti-individualism is the best way to call it. I always refer to excellent "Excellent Sheep" book by William Deresiewicz who succinctly described just what I experienced first hand during years of Ivy League un-education.
3. see 1.
if we can't get free speech on BigTech platforms then we shall part our ways, each stuck in its own 'safe space'. As for me personally I prefer swimming against the current.
I don't think you answered the questions in good faith, and I think I responded to you in good faith.
If a sheep is someone who: "tends to trust lies they've been force-fed, without questioning." Then what is a good measure of who is a sheep or not? I questioned your beliefs, and you gave me back lines from your echo chamber verbatim.
Here's some good questions for you:
"What are some of the weak points of my belief system?"
"What might I be wrong about?"
"What is a good faith summary of the other person's argument?"
If you're acting in good faith, those shouldn't be even remotely hard questions. If those are hard questions and can't be answered directly, you should re-examine who is a sheep.
Nah, I think I answered it alright , why don’t you go after leftist media and their propaganda , ask WaPo to provide a “good faith summary of other person argument” when they accuse ALL Trump supporters of being racist ‘white supremacists’ indiscriminately and without evidence on daily basis for years, inciting witch hunts and riots.
What you’re doing is called demagogy, or worse, sealioning.
But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, just apply your high standards of good faith argument to left wing media and their culture of political ‘discourse’, lmao. I’m just a lowly Trumper.
Your clear lack of desire of ability to engage with some very reasonable and intelligent points is exactly why Trump supporters are frequently characterized this way.
You're a sheep if you blindly follow a small number of news outlets that lean very far to one side and spend most of your time surrounded by people with similar views. (This goes either way, of course)
Not all Trump supporters are white supremacists, but I haven't seen any examples of people demonstrating that sort of behaviour and ideology who aren't Trump supporters. That should be food for thought.
I’m surrounded by liberals and their bs, just like you. My only source of disinformation is liberal/mainstream media, just like yours. And I haven’t seen as many lies as I’ve seen last year, and this one, oh God.
I’m ‘radicalized’ by you, dear liberal people, and I’m one of the 75M.
