[HN Gopher] What Is Social Cooling?
___________________________________________________________________
What Is Social Cooling?
Author : dev_by_day
Score : 315 points
Date : 2021-01-12 12:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (reasonandmeaning.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reasonandmeaning.com)
| jsight wrote:
| I am curious, since this comes from being a good critical
| thinker, is it provably true for each of these news sources?
|
| "(Example - I have an advanced degree. This simple piece of data
| predicts that: I despise and fear Donald Trump and the
| Republicans; I am a good critical thinker who understands the
| difference between the high journalistic standards of the New
| York Times or the Washington Post and the non-existent ones of
| Fox "News," Breitbart, etc.;"
| musingsole wrote:
| Are subjective professional standards ever provably true?
|
| But to focus on that part of the statement misses the point of
| this example from the article: it's about what the individual
| is likely to believe predicted from a single datum. The
| objective truth of those beliefs isn't relevant.
| jsight wrote:
| But is that true? I've known plenty of well educated folks
| that do not "despise and fear" republicans. It seems that
| details are not so easy to discern from a single data point
| as he implies.
| musingsole wrote:
| If it's not specifically true, it's proverbial. Stories
| such as this[1] abound.
|
| Since I first read the post, it's been updated, but an
| earlier version in that same example called out unlikely to
| be Mormon. This similarly seems unlikely to me (of my
| acquaintances, being Mormon would dramatically increase
| your odds of having an advanced degree).
|
| 1: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2878394/mit-
| researchers...
| touchpadder wrote:
| I became interested in economics just because I was searching for
| some boring stuff to post in my Facebook feed to lower my
| insurance quote on a Camaro SS.
| anovikov wrote:
| I hope this is true. If that happens, the tragic events of last
| week will not repeat.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Yeah. I see my friends sharing less and less content on FB these
| days. But then again, most stuff you see on a typical FB feed
| today is ads, groups, fanpages, Marketplace and whatnot.
| Definitely way less content related to friends (other than their
| fanpage comments). Can we just go ten years back where everything
| was more spontaneous and candid? Where the thing to raise your
| pressure was your crush's hot beach photos, not people making
| themselves idiots in politically charged flamewars.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The worst part is that FB is a really shitty platform for any
| kind of group.
|
| There's no way to collect all discussion of, say, a new product
| the company the group is about released. You'll get dozens of
| threads of the same thing for weeks and weeks without any way
| of directing everyone to the same one.
|
| You can pin posts with instructions - no one sees that shit,
| because no one actually visits the groups "front page" after
| they've joined.
| cmdshiftf4 wrote:
| > Can we just go ten years back where everything was more
| spontaneous and candid?
|
| No. That life is sadly dead and gone, the damage of politics /
| identity politics as most dominant identity, bias enforcing
| algorithms and creepy behavioural psychology manipulation as
| "user experience" has not just corrupted the internet
| permanently but likely how we see and deal with one another
| online also.
| xpe wrote:
| Please keep in mind that even the term _identity politics_ is
| fraught with misunderstanding. Even a quick skimming of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics shows how
| complex even the term can be.
|
| Here are only three examples of how _identity politics_ might
| be used. It can be used to describe:
|
| 1. how minority groups fight oppression based on skin color
|
| 2. how a majority group, perceiving a threat, joins together
| (often based on baser instincts)
|
| 3. a tendency for political parties to connect primarily on
| surface-level attributes of people, rather than substantive
| root causes
|
| Which of these (if any) do you mean when you talk about
| _identity politics_?
|
| Caveat: I am no expert on the term.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of push
| back against identity politics, and that we will go back to
| more of a "live and let live" kind of attitude. Maybe people
| will get sick of outrage culture and the narrative will
| eventually shift. Social dynamics are complex, but what you
| need to change the attitude of the public is essentially a
| number of thought leaders praising a different attitude.
| xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote:
| >I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of
| push back against identity politics
|
| There is some, but it's tiny. /r/stupidpol subreddit is an
| example of that.
| xpe wrote:
| What effects do you anticipate from this subreddit?
|
| I wonder if such a subreddit is mostly for amusement
| purposes; i.e. blowing off steam, laughing at the
| spectacle.
|
| Do you think it can help play a part in forming broader
| coalitions (which I think is a hallmark of non-identity
| politics)?
| Noos wrote:
| Why? It works spectacularly well. It's funny to watch all
| these people who use it suddenly get up and bashful about
| it now and then; the democrats won house, senate, and
| presidency very much focusing on identity politics.
|
| I think if anything, the scary thing is that it works
| better than caring about the poor at all. It wasn't
| democratic ideas about poverty that made them such a
| force...just accuse people of homophobia and you've already
| put them on the defensive if not won. "Alt-right" is such a
| wonderful tool-just hint someone is it, and a person's mind
| does all the rest even though they may have no idea what it
| even means. Just say it long enough and loud enough in the
| right tone of disapproval and you have magic.
|
| I'm not sure how much of this is /s.
|
| When I was against gay marriage, I sat down and tried to
| think a lot about how marriage related to procreation or
| was a special institution. How religion related to it, and
| whether or not it needed protection. I did feel eventually
| civil unions were the strongest compromise, because there
| were legal aspects to recognizing couples that were
| important but the special nature of heterosexual marriage
| and its relation to tradition and religion mattered to. You
| can disagree about gay marriage but realize that there are
| definitely things gay couples should have in a legal sense
| too; hospital visitation rights as one. A lot really was
| uncertainty about metaphysical and philosophical ideas I
| think.
|
| But all you had to do to shut all that down was to accuse
| me of homophobia and bigotry. It's insanely effective
| because a person has to now defend that whatever he is
| proposing isn't because of deep-seated irrational phobia or
| anger. It really worked.
|
| Now i pretty much just shrug and say "What are you going to
| do, you're conquered." Pay the Dane the Danegeld when he
| asks.
|
| Gay marriage as an actual act is not really a success. In
| my state last year all of 700 people got married in same
| sex couples out of a population of 4 million, and even with
| the low straight marriage rate here thats 700 out of 20,000
| a year I believe, not even .05 percent. Ever since mid 2015
| we have never seen even 1000 people a year use it. That's
| the huge irony of all those identity politics...they were a
| club to beat people with more than a vital need it seemed.
|
| It's easier and more effective to use identity politics.
| They aren't going away. I mean lord, "live and let live"-be
| honest, you think you're going to allow us to do that with
| climate change an issue? When you want us to learn to love
| the veggie burger and electric bike everywhere instead of
| using cars?
|
| I mean it doesn't work well on the receiving end but hey,
| like the simpsons treehouse of horror episode, sometimes
| the dolphins just want it more. Luckily it seems people get
| embarassed of conquering after a bit so it fades.
| dutchCourage wrote:
| > the democrats won house, senate, and presidency very
| much focusing on identity politics.
|
| I'd say the republicans did that. And even after the 4
| years of gaslighting and bigotry, they almost did it
| again. I wouldn't say it's the democrats who make topics
| like wearing a mask or the destruction of the environment
| political.
|
| Now you have democrats who play that game too, but since
| they have the facts "in their favor" it's to their
| detriment (I'm putting quotes here because covid and
| global warming being real isn't to anyone's favor, but
| it's facts). Mud fights benefit those without good
| arguments.
|
| That said, I agree with your post, antagonizing people
| doesn't help changing minds.
| Noos wrote:
| See, its easier to accuse people of bigotry than look at
| their actual problems. Trump didn't win because the
| modern left sucked hard at actually helping the poor,
| they did because they were gaslighted by bigots.
| concordDance wrote:
| Not sure "live and let live" applies to things with
| direct externalities like burning fossil fuels, for that
| you need an emissions tax.
| eulenteufel wrote:
| Not allowing homosexual people the right to marry is very
| much not "live and let live". There is a whole lot of
| married heterosexual people who do not and will not have
| kids, for all kinds of reason. If the US would like to
| encourage/support people getting kids they could
| legislate support for that.
|
| What remains is not allowing homosexual couples the same
| treatment as heterosexual couples, because heterosexual
| couples are "special" for religious and traditionalist
| reasons. This is very strong identity politics, but from
| conservative side and very much contrary to the spirit of
| "live and let live". It strikes me how many conservatives
| do not realize that they very much support identity
| politics and then go raging against it the next moment.
|
| Treating people equally should be the default and is the
| result of not caring about identity in the first place.
| There are some good arguments that can be made for
| identity politics after that, but the case against equal
| treatment should have to be a really strong one.
| Traditions and religious feelings do not suffice for that
| in my opinions.
|
| Even when the absolute numbers of homosexual marriages is
| very small that doesn't justify not caring about unequal
| treatment. Imagine if we would tax all identical twins 5%
| more than everybody else. This nonsensical unequal
| treatment would clearly be unacceptable injustice while
| the percentage of people that are affected is still very
| small.
|
| On top of that there are social explanations why
| homosexual people would be less likely to marry. Marriage
| has long been a religious and traditionalist institution
| and has been used to discriminate against them. It can be
| hard to identify with such an institution and I know
| queer people who would not like get married because of
| that. If marriage had been available to everybody since
| as long as they can remember considering marriage would
| perhaps come more natural.
| Noos wrote:
| the "childless" het couple was a good argument that
| caused no end of trouble. To be honest it was a darker
| sign I think, that heterosexual couples themselves had
| internalized cultural norms and the institution itself
| was no longer special so much to be worth protecting.
|
| I think there were conservatives who realized this, and
| this was the reason why "the state should get out of
| marriage entirely" was pushed as a solution. That too was
| shot down harshly. At that point I personally gave up I
| think. It's like abortion...the issue is not "should a
| woman have a right to it," the issue is that now we live
| in a society where premarital sex is the norm and
| abortion is just restoring equity to the new norm.
|
| The real numbers..look, it was literally hilarious to me
| that the same people who were arguing "marriage was only
| a piece of paper" in their own lives suddenly turned
| around and became strict advocates of it in the lives of
| a small minority of people. If religious people had said
| "okay, we accept gay people, but they need to follow the
| same teachings we do-be the husband of one husband, no
| premarital sex, and no sex outside marriage" everyone
| here would have railed against marriage as a tool of
| straight fascism or something.
|
| I'm not meaning the low numbers means its should be
| revoked though. If anything it's the reverse. We did all
| that trouble, all that hate and strife...can you all
| please use it at least? When you fight desperately for
| the right for something, and in reality barely anyone
| seems to use it, what was the fighting done for?
| xpe wrote:
| > Now i pretty much just shrug and say "What are you
| going to do, you're conquered."
|
| Why do you use the 'conquered' language?
|
| Very few things are static under a long enough time
| horizon. In politics and public opinion, things can
| change quite quickly. So, if you want to prioritize an
| issue, go for it.
| Noos wrote:
| I use it because I feel people are fundamentally
| dishonest sometimes about the implications of their
| ideas.
|
| Some political ideas are not "we must both give up
| something to exist together." Some are "My idea is
| morally right, and by necessity it must conquer yours." I
| use SSM more because it's a pure example of this; what
| exactly did marriage advocates "give up" in the bargain?
| It was the opponents who more or less had to capitulate
| near totally.
|
| This is what culture war is. It is the use of politics to
| establish ideas and defeat or subjugate those who
| disagree with it. This does not mean it is inherently
| immoral; one of the frustrating things about this is the
| realization that no, the conquerors are not the rapacious
| Mongols we think they are. But i think people often don't
| get how much a political idea can be subjugation more
| than compromise.
|
| As for changing, nah. Can you imagine a world where it
| has changed so much divorce becomes illegal again? What
| would it take for people to cast it off? If we were
| possible of this kind of change as a group I think we'd
| have far less to worry about climate change for example.
| xpe wrote:
| > I use SSM more because it's a pure example of this;
| what exactly did marriage advocates "give up" in the
| bargain? It was the opponents who more or less had to
| capitulate near totally.
|
| I am fascinated by your language use of "capitulate"
| here. You are framing this discussion very much with the
| language of "subjugation".
|
| Here is how I frame one category of public policy
| involving allocation of scarce resources. In the case of
| legislation that adjusts spending from general revenue,
| each taxpayer shares the responsibility. Individuals who
| attempt to withhold that portion of the tax will face
| penalties. This is one way a government can wield power.
| The power is often implied, but if necessary, it can be
| backed up with various enforcement mechanisms. These
| mechanisms may be coercive, but they are subject to the
| rule of law.
|
| Now, with regards to granting privileges to same-sex
| couples, I do not see this as an issue involving scarce
| resources. A person who opposes same-sex marriage is not
| directly harmed by someone else's partnership receiving
| the right for hospital visitation, for example.
|
| In fact, I think the opponent of SSM, in practice,
| benefits in ways they don't even recognize. Happier, more
| fulfilled people tend to lead to a more vibrant culture,
| stronger economy, and overall better quality of life --
| for everyone. One of the classic ironic Hollywood
| storylines is about a homophobic man who grows up to be a
| father of a gay son. Over time, he realizes he was wrong.
|
| At the same time, I can understand how this opponent of
| SSM may _feel_ worse off. Unfortunately, this person
| wants their _private morality_ to be imposed on
| _everyone_.
|
| For background on how I am using _public morality_ and
| _private morality_ , see the writings of Robert Kaine. He
| argues _against_ moral relativism while supporting the
| importance of value systems that are compatible with
| democratic ideals. In short, not all private moralities
| are equal in this sense: not all are compatible with a
| pluralistic public morality.
|
| To be clear, Kaine's reasoning does _not_ demand a total
| ordering of private moralities. Indeed, it steers clear
| of that issue.
|
| So, in conclusion, while I can _sympathize_ with people
| who don 't get their way (which I frame as "having their
| private beliefs codified into law"), I don't think they
| have been treated unjustly. Not all private beliefs are
| compatible with pluralistic democratic values. Sometimes
| society has to choose.
| xpe wrote:
| > what exactly did marriage advocates "give up" in the
| bargain?
|
| This is poorly framed. This is not about "bargaining".
|
| This is a case of _people_ demanding and advocating for
| their rights. There is no principled reason to ask while
| doing so they should "bargain away" those rights.
|
| Sure, opponents of same-sex marriage may disagree.
|
| There are some schools of thought that try to separate,
| shame, or exclude others based on some criteria, whether
| it be sexual orientation, educational background, or
| socioeconomic status.
|
| I see a pattern around intolerance. People that have
| exclusionary beliefs don't have a good track record --
| here's what I mean -- these belief systems do not survive
| contact with reality, unless the person with that belief
| system digs in their feet and refuses to engage with real
| people. For example, it may be "easy" for someone to be
| homophobic if that is how they were raised, but this
| belief system is unlikely to survive if the person has a
| gay son _and_ they are open to talking with their son and
| learning about the issue.
| xpe wrote:
| > Some political ideas are not "we must both give up
| something to exist together." Some are "My idea is
| morally right, and by necessity it must conquer yours."
|
| I think I see what you mean, as a general concept,
| although I think using "conquer" is a poor word choice.
| The word "conquer" tends to imply force.
|
| There are many tensions between ideas in law, life, and
| philosophy that are resolved by economics, thinking,
| compromise, persuasion, voting, organizing, and group
| behavior rather than force.
| xpe wrote:
| > But I think people often don't get how much a political
| idea can be subjugation more than compromise.
|
| Based on your comment so far, I will say that I don't get
| what you are trying to say.
|
| Do you mean this: those who define the terms of a debate
| shape how it is perceived, what options are considered,
| and (to some degree) how it is evaluated?
| xpe wrote:
| Are you arguing that granting a particular kind of same-
| sex union involves "subjugating" people who opposed it?
|
| I (and most people I think) use the word subjugation to
| mean "bring under domination or control, especially by
| conquest: the invaders had soon subjugated most of the
| native population." Traditional examples of subjugation
| include occupations and forced religion.
| xpe wrote:
| > Pay the Dane the Danegeld when he asks.
|
| For context, from Wikipedia:
|
| > "Dane-geld" is a poem by British writer Rudyard Kipling
| (1865-1936). It relates to the unwisdom of paying
| "Danegeld", or what is nowadays called blackmail and
| protection money. The most famous lines are "once you
| have paid him the Danegeld/ You never get rid of the
| Dane."
|
| I don't follow why you reference blackmail or protection
| money. Can you explain?
| Noos wrote:
| I guess I misused it some. I felt it more was "pay the
| conqueror his due when he asks, and get on with the
| business of living." The Dane is already here, and we
| aren't getting rid of him.
| [deleted]
| xpe wrote:
| > When I was against gay marriage, I sat down and tried
| to think a lot about... [many details] ... You can
| disagree about gay marriage but realize that there are
| definitely things gay couples should have in a legal
| sense too; hospital visitation rights as one. A lot
| really was uncertainty about metaphysical and
| philosophical ideas I think.
|
| Good points. I am glad you thought about it, even if you
| came to different conclusions than I would have.
|
| > But all you had to do to shut all that down was to
| accuse me of homophobia and bigotry.
|
| To state the obvious: I never accused you of that.
|
| I'm not stating the obvious to be confrontational; I'm
| saying it because I've heard this argument frequently
| from people I know that disagree with my politically.
|
| For example, I've met thoughtful people that feel
| attacked because they want to think through issues rather
| than jump on a bandwagon. I am very glad they are being
| thoughtful and see nuance in the issues.
|
| So here is what I hope to learn: I'd like to know why
| _you_ feel this way. Do you _personally_ think that
| someone like _me_ , perhaps from a different political
| philosophy, is judging you (as opposed to the underlying
| ideas)?
|
| (I have some guesses, but I would rather not speculate.)
| Noos wrote:
| I'm saying it because the left learned very quickly that
| you can bypass the hard work of arguing positions by
| instead arguing the holder of them is irrational and or
| evil in a sense. It's much more effective to call someone
| else evil than to put forwards your ideas of good.
|
| By calling me irrational, I do not need to be compromised
| with or taken seriously; compromise and dialogue is based
| on the fact that people are both making good faith
| efforts to engage. Part of what is chilling about the
| whole social media thing recently is that it's arguing
| that it causes people to be in an irrational state and
| not to be taken seriously. Go home trump voters; you are
| drunk on social media.
|
| So yeah, there is a lot of judging going on, because that
| kind of judging is more effective than compromise. You
| yourself sound like you are open minded more because
| people will need time to come to the undeniable truth
| than anything.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| A big part of the confusion is that you seem to treat
| this like an abstract matter of philosophical debate,
| because frankly, you don't really have a personal stake
| in it. That's not meant as an insult, just a statement of
| fact. As a straight, white male, neither do I. But it's
| not reasonable to expect someone to engage in
| dispassionate discourse about their own safety and their
| right to be treated like a human being. It's easy to
| forget because of how rapid and sweeping the change in
| public opinion was in the US, but in many other countries
| (and quite a few places in this one) LGBTQ rights are
| still a matter of life and death.
|
| And this is the problem with so many debates - the people
| who are largely comfortable with the status quo are
| confused because people in marginalized groups are
| screaming at them, when they didn't really do anything to
| those people. In fact they may, in some abstract way, be
| supportive of their struggle. But the people are
| screaming because a third party has a gun (literally or
| figuratively) to their heads. So in order for there to be
| a real conversation, first we need to get that guy to put
| the gun down. Nothing else can happen until then.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Gay marriage as an actual act is not really a success.
|
| I have friends who are able to enjoy the benefits of a
| legal contract and existing case law and precedents that
| was previously restricted to man/woman couples. Seems
| like a success to me.
|
| >live and let live"-be honest, you think you're going to
| allow us to do that with climate change an issue? When
| you want us to learn to love the veggie burger and
| electric bike everywhere instead of using cars?
|
| You can live and let live with gay marriage, it doesn't
| affect you in any way. Neither does a veggie burger, and
| no one has ever wanted you to love a veggie burger. I do
| want it as an option for my kid in school, however.
|
| Climate change, and cars are not live and let live
| issues, since they have massive externalities that affect
| everyone.
| Noos wrote:
| I don't think you understand how tiny the numbers are for
| the war people fought.
|
| Like let's assume in my state we take the fairly average
| assumption of LGBT population at 5%. Now let's also take
| a marriage rate of 5 per 1000, which is pretty low given
| that this is a historic opportunity. Even granting this,
| the actual numbers indicate a rate close to 3 per 1000.
| This is close to half of the current rates, which are
| widely seen as historic lows:
|
| https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2
| 020...
|
| This is in a new england state. So it's not something you
| accuse due to being in the Bible belt. In actual numbers,
| the impact of gay marriage is fairly tiny. Your friends
| are outliers. It's actually tiny enough to hurt a lot of
| compelling reasons for it; state-sanctioned marriage as a
| tool to help combat gay male promiscuity for one, or any
| form of economic benefit to it. Ironically SSM wasn't
| something to worry about because the people who want or
| need it are small enough a population not to impact
| anything in practice; it was more of an ideological issue
| it seems.
|
| As for climate change, yeah my point is if we do identity
| politics now, over things which are let or let live, what
| is going to happen when there are things that we cannot
| do so? I think it will ramp up more even.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >It's actually tiny enough to hurt a lot of compelling
| reasons for it; state-sanctioned marriage as a tool to
| help combat gay male promiscuity for one, or any form of
| economic benefit to it.
|
| I'm not sure what this statement means. Are you claiming
| combating gay male promiscuity is beneficial for society?
|
| >Ironically SSM wasn't something to worry about because
| the people who want or need it are small enough a
| population not to impact anything in practice; it was
| more of an ideological issue it seems.
|
| I disagree. Freedom, for populations small or big, for
| actions that have no effect on anyone else is very
| important to worry about it. And I don't see what can be
| wrong with that ideological issue, unless you're anti
| freedom.
|
| >As for climate change, yeah my point is if we do
| identity politics now, over things which are let or let
| live, what is going to happen when there are things that
| we cannot do so? I think it will ramp up more even.
|
| With any limited resource (such as the global environment
| and natural resources like clean water and air), the ones
| with power will end up with most of it, and the people
| alive have more power than the people that have yet to be
| born.
|
| The only identity politics that matter in the climate
| change situation is those who will consume today or those
| who will sacrifice today. But I predict this will be an
| unsolvable problem due to lack of buy in from the global
| population, for variety of reasons.
| XorNot wrote:
| 700 out of 20000 is 3.5%.
|
| The gay population is estimated at roughly 10% but we're
| talking couples so 3.5% would imply a surprisingly high
| rate of marriages amongst gay people within the year over
| year married population.
| Noos wrote:
| The marriage rate is at 6 per 1000 in the states, and its
| a historic low; it used to be high as 15 per 1000 maybe
| 20-30 years ago? I posted a link upthread.
|
| Actually what's ironic is that my state's capitol is
| heralded as "one of the gayest cities in america" for
| having a percentage of 4.6%. San fransico seems to be
| 6.2%. This link is dated 6 years ago, though:
|
| https://www.ctpost.com/living/article/Which-are-the-
| gayest-c...
| XorNot wrote:
| And so what? If the % of gay people is lower then that
| makes the proportion of gay couples getting married by
| your own offered statistics even higher.
|
| I have no idea what offering them marriage rate in
| isolation is contributing otherwise.
|
| To loop this back around to the topic at hand though, it
| is bizzare to use the rate of utilisation of one's rights
| as an argument as to whether or not people should have
| them.
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| The problem I see is that the US has some very serious and
| widespread flaws. The live and let live attitude doesn't
| push for resolution to these issues.
|
| If we say for example the police system is not working as
| it should and many people are dying or being locked away
| unnecessarily, how do you fix this when the leaders of your
| country are unwilling to do anything. The only options you
| have make you one of those 'identity politics people'.
| concordDance wrote:
| Just don't tie police reform to identity politics
| narratives.
| xpe wrote:
| > how do you fix this when the leaders of your country
| are unwilling to do anything
|
| We have to find and grow new leaders! :)
|
| My general comment is: please, pick one issue you care
| about, study it, find the leverage points, and make time
| to get involved. This might mean joining an organization,
| volunteering, making a tech project to share what you've
| learned -- even running for office.
|
| Based on your username, I would guess perhaps you are
| already involved to some degree around pollution or
| environmental issues [1]. Let me know if you want someone
| to bounce ideas off of. I also can offer this
| perspective: ongoing dissatisfaction, properly harnessed,
| can be a great motivator for change.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0576.html
| scythe wrote:
| >be some kind of push back against identity politics
|
| It's funny that this is expressed in a culture war kind of
| way: the identity politics crowd versus the "against
| identity politics" crowd.
|
| Sometimes social phenomena don't dissipate because of push-
| back, but because they simply fizzle out, like a fire that
| consumed all of the underbrush. I think that's a more apt
| analogy for how we can expect the current era of identity
| politics to end, if it does. You can't shoot guns in the
| name of peace, and you can't "push back" against too much
| shoving.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I agree that some things fizzle out. It seems to me
| people collectively get bored with some ideas and move to
| something else. There's also infighting within the
| radical left.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "because they simply fizzle out, like a fire that
| consumed all of the underbrush"
|
| That depends on consequences.
|
| For example, if there are jobs that depend on
| continuation of social phenomena, their holders will
| fight tooth and nail not to let this happen.
|
| Universities now have special administrators dedicated to
| diversity, equity and inclusion. These are someone's
| livelihoods and also sources of power. Will the
| incumbents simply say "there is no more interest in
| identity politics, our task is done, we made ourselves
| redundant"?
|
| No. As long as they are paid to promote, say, inclusion,
| they will always push the idea that more must be done.
| vkou wrote:
| You need to think bigger.
|
| Consider that _all_ jobs depend on the continuation of
| social phenomena.
|
| Think, for a moment, about the sentiment of 'They took
| our jobs'. (With 'They' being Jews, immigrants, Mexicans,
| China, or some other boogieman of the week.)
|
| As long as there are jobs, people with them will always
| push the idea that some 'Other' is coming to take away
| their livelihood.
|
| It's all identity politics - it's just that when its
| practiced by the political right, they don't call it
| that. It wouldn't be part of their identity to engage in
| them, after all.
|
| But, of course, if you call out and challenge this, _you_
| will be accused of engaging in identity politics.
| vkou wrote:
| > I keep hoping that eventually there will be some kind of
| push back against identity politics, and that we will go
| back to more of a "live and let live" kind of attitude.
|
| "Live and let live" only ever worked for acceptable
| identities. You did not have that luxury if you were, say,
| gay prior to the early oughts.
|
| I think you're looking at the past through rose-tinted
| glasses. It was less 'live and let live' and more 'sit down
| and shut up if you are different'.
|
| Now those people have a voice, and a lot of folks are
| finding it quite upsetting.
| xpe wrote:
| I feel the frustration of your post. I agree with what
| you are saying.
|
| Perhaps it can help to remember this: some of us here may
| not realize that even the term _identity politics_ has a
| complex history. From Wikipedia:
|
| > The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in
| 1977. The collective group of women saw identity politics
| as an analysis that introduced opportunity for Black
| women to be actively involved in politics, while
| simultaneously acting as a tool to authenticate Black
| women's personal experiences. It took on widespread usage
| in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been
| employed in myriad cases with radically different
| connotations dependent upon the term's context.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| Depends. Not every part of the world has the same
| culture, and it didn't suddenly become OK to be gay
| everywhere on some specific date. In the 1960s, it was
| probably much more OK to be gay in say, San Francisco
| than in Detroit.
|
| In the 1960s, I believe SF did have much more of a live
| and let live attitude than much of the rest of the world,
| but IMO, SF is now a not really tolerant place anymore.
| There's very much a dominant narrative being imposed by
| the big silicon valley players, but culture does change
| over time. If you try to enforce certain political ideas
| and suppress others, you inevitably give rise to some
| kind of counter-culture, it seems.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >If you try to enforce certain political ideas and
| suppress others, you inevitably give rise to some kind of
| counter-culture, it seems.
|
| Is intolerance of intolerance intolerance?
| xpe wrote:
| I recommend thinking about this question in the context
| of _public morality_ versus _private morality_.
|
| I recommend this book by Robert Kane: "Through the Moral
| Maze: Searching for Absolute Values in a Pluralistic
| World"
|
| GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1654373.Th
| rough_the_Mora...
|
| A book review by Bruce Ballard:
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/490166
| yaster wrote:
| I just made this decision today. I'm out. I'm done with all
| of it. If everyone wants to hate each other and spend each
| minute of their short lives pointing fingers, fighting, and
| stressing out, go ahead. I'm going to try to find whatever
| peace I can and find people I can respect and whose company
| I can enjoy. The rest of this is poison.
| Karunamon wrote:
| This is my take on it. I've blocked all political-related
| terms on my social media, and will actively mute/unfollow
| people who constantly bring the subject up.
|
| 99% of this junk amounts to fear/outrage porn that is
| non-actionable for me. There's no reason to devote even
| an iota of mental energy to it.
| cmdshiftf4 wrote:
| My only hope is that the rest of the Western world takes
| note from observing the dissolution and atomization of US
| society at the hands of identity politics and makes a firm
| choice to not let their own societies traverse the same
| path.
|
| I, sadly, do not see how America comes out of this
| together, embracing a "live and let live" type attitude, in
| a world where identity politics does not continue to
| dominate the narrative, when a large bulk of the mainstream
| has stoked, embraced and celebrated a loosely constructed
| contextually and historically ignorant hierarchy and
| narrative of the "oppressed" and of the "oppressors". Where
| one half of the populace believes the nation itself to be
| fundamentally good , worthwhile or indeed "the best", and
| the other believes it to be rotten to the core not just now
| but since its very beginning. Where one half believes that
| the 2020 election was genuinely stolen from them by
| socialists and communists, and the other genuinely believes
| they've just defeated something in line with Adolf Hitler,
| who himself stole the 2016 election thanks to Russians with
| a couple million of FB ad spend.
|
| I hope to be wrong.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Pushback is absolutely crushed. It's impossible to really
| be an active user of most of these platforms without
| representing the desired view.
| xpe wrote:
| Can you think of examples of online platforms that combat
| this tendency?
|
| One that comes to mind for me is Lobsters. I'm interested
| in other examples as well as mechanisms for striking a
| balance between civility and diversity of opinion.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Lobsters is invite only and I don't know anyone to give
| me an invite, but it seems like discussions there are
| pretty good from what I've seen.
|
| The only other places I've seen that aren't this way are
| various chan style sites and oldschool internet forums,
| but those places have their own obvious problems.
| xpe wrote:
| What does _identity politics_ mean to you?
|
| Do you see it as an opposite of "live and let live"
| attitude?
|
| (I don't quite follow)
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| The way I encounter it, identity politics is a divisive
| ideology, or a political tool, used to make judgements
| about groups of people based on external characteristics
| such as skin color, gender and sexual orientation, with
| little to no regard for the actual circumstances these
| people came from or currently live in.
|
| For example, cis-white-males are often demonized, binned
| as oppressors. If you take a step back and think about
| it, a lot of cis-white-males were born in US states with
| huge meth and fentanyl addiction problems. Raised in
| trailer parks, in poverty, with maybe one or both parents
| missing and no access to education. If you paint poverty
| and access to education as being purely a race problem,
| and white males as always being oppressors, you are
| leaving people behind. We can't afford to do that. We
| collectively pay the price, as a society, somewhere down
| the road.
|
| With regards to "live and let live", many prominent
| advocates of identity politics are very hostile people.
| They do not welcome discussion, they do not want your
| input. Either you have the same opinion as them, or you
| are an alt-right, a bad person. The correct opinion has
| been decided once and for all by social justice
| academics, and either you're onboard, or you're
| necessarily ignorant and wrong. Kind of like George W
| Bush said "you're either with us, or against us".
| potta_coffee wrote:
| 10 years ago, social media platforms hadn't gamed their
| algorithms to oblivion. Platforms are the problem, this is the
| formula that maximizes engagement that benefits them and ad
| revenue. The real answer is probably just to ditch social
| media. I can't see any for-profit social media product ever not
| turning into a toxic cesspool.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > the formula that maximizes engagement that benefits them
| and ad revenue
|
| The algorithms have only settled down on the extremes which
| we've already known sell: sex, violence, fear, outrage.
|
| Fox News was selling fear and outrage long before Facebook's
| algorithms discovered that fear and outrage sells. Every
| grocery store had tabloids right there at the checkout,
| already optimized for engagement from those with obvious
| self-control and critical thinking issues. In fact, the
| grocery store is an excellent example of a place that has
| been heavily optimized based on human psychology. They want
| you to buy the cereal and other high margin items. They put
| the basics on the periphery, etc.
|
| Social media is _a_ problem, but I don 't think it's _the_
| problem. We have deeper issues we need to dig to.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Many of post as much as before, you just don't see it because
| we migrated to places were we feel safe. (And the use of
| "feel" is very intentional, I'm fully aware that Telegram
| groups and ordinary chats _might_ be backdoored or whatever )
|
| My journey was something like
|
| -Facebook,
|
| - private blog with logins so my parents and siblings could
| read, post and comment
|
| - Started using Hangouts(or so I think, there's been so many
| Google messaging apps) with my wife because it was convenient
| to not have to dig out the phone everytime we worked at a
| computer and needed to send som messages.
|
| - Started using WhatsApp. Fell in love. "Sold it" to my
| family and my wife's family.
|
| - All our close friends picked it up too at around the same
| time.
|
| - Facebook announced it would buy WhatsApp. I felt
| uncomfortable, but waited.
|
| - Telegram showed up and was better but I didn't want to
| switch as they were free and WhatsApp was still paid so
| WhatsApp felt safer.
|
| - Facebook made WhatsApp free and took away all guarantees.
|
| - I started using Telegram. Soon after everyone around me
| switched too.
|
| I won't say I started the move to WhatsApp and later Telegram
| among my friends but I have wholeheartedly supported it.
|
| (Say what you want about the encryption in early WhatsApp and
| later in Telegram, but there's more to security than
| encryption and most of the stuff we post would otherwise have
| gone on Facebook so it is a huge step forward anyways and it
| is so liberating to know I can talk to anyone and know that
| it doesn't automatically get pumped into Facebooks data
| lake.)
|
| Edit, FWIW, two more observations:
|
| - Google Hangouts could have been the place we went to
| instead of WhatsApp, but lacked polish especially on group
| chats.
|
| - Google+ could have been an alternative but didn't feel
| private enough.
|
| - After Google+ I gave up Google.[1]
|
| - There's a number of interesting options at any time, but I
| haven't found what we (my family and close friends) need:
| hubzilla seems promising but lacks community it seems.
| Mastodon is public by default so more like Twitter, while we
| want 1-1 or group messaging. MeWe is focused on being a 1-to-
| many network, and they lack pseudonym accounts so they still
| don't come close to Google+. Ideas are welcome.
|
| [1]: Maybe I won't work there even if I'm offered a job as it
| feels like a minefield for anyone with a different background
| like me and they also haven't managed to get a single service
| to improve since 10 years ago as far as I remember.
|
| Most services are even going backwards it seems, reducing
| quotas, killing products, even search has been failing badly
| for years and ad targeting is so bad it would have been funny
| if it wasn't so insulting. (I always complain about this so I
| should probably say the _last few months_ I 've seen ads from
| stores I'd actually want to buy from instead of just the "hot
| singles near you" scam etc.)
| Swizec wrote:
| > Yeah. I see my friends sharing less and less content on FB
| these days.
|
| How much of this is that we're getting older? I find that
| outside thoughtfluencing and reputation building, I've simply
| become tired of sharing. Just kinda don't care anymore.
|
| Part of it is that there's less and less novelty. What was new
| and exciting 5 years ago is mundane and boring now. Done it a
| million times. What felt like a huge insight, became a normal
| part of my worldview. Etc
|
| To top it off I realized I simply don't care as much about
| keeping in touch with people who aren't actually part of my
| life.
|
| Ultimately my time is limited and I can publish to build
| leads/branding or to drive vanity metrics like a monkey acting
| out in a cage. One of those is a good use of time.
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| I'm under 25 and I can say that I don't think people are
| publishing much publicly outside of the political nutcases.
| Everything is inside private IM groups / discord voice chats
| these days.
| XorNot wrote:
| Facebook lost its interest pretty rapidly once I was out of
| University, concurrent with it rapidly morphing into brand
| building exercises for those in high school year who went
| into advertising.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > How much of this is that we're getting older
|
| Especially if your social media is facebook, i think the
| original users just got bored of it and adult life isn't that
| interesting. Mine is slowly filling up with baby pictures now
| and weddings now after what i think was a lull. Younger
| people seem to be going strong on sharing stupid things on
| snap chat and tiktok.
| [deleted]
| jessehattabaugh wrote:
| Experiencing negative consequences and adjusting your behavior to
| avoid them is also called becoming a better person.
| [deleted]
| hnaccy wrote:
| It's pretty easy to post online pseudonymously so I don't feel
| like it's a big issue.
|
| I post online a lot and the vast majority is pseudonymous or
| anonymous.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| My policy is always to be considerate to other people, never to
| try to hurt someone's feelings on purpose, but beyond that, I
| feel like I'm generally being somewhat guarded even when it's
| anonymous.
|
| It's not impossible that there could be some kind of leak, or
| that an algorithm could look at what you wrote, and compute
| some kind of signature based on what you wrote (eg: n-gram
| probabilities), and match it up with your other online
| identities. In general, you kind of have to assume that
| anything you write online could eventually be tied back to your
| public identity.
|
| That being said, I tend to assume that if you said something
| your employer might disapprove of, it wouldn't be a problem
| unless what you said somehow gathered _a lot_ of attention
| online. For that you 'd have to be famous, or stir some serious
| shit on twitter. Even if the identities of everyone on HN were
| outed, I'm guessing mostly nobody would care, except if they
| found out Jeff Bezos was secretly posting hateful messages.
| gwright wrote:
| While I understand the value of anonymous public communication,
| I think it comes with a huge "bad-actor" problem that we
| haven't figured out how to offset.
|
| Anonymity is a problem when it is used to commit crimes and law
| enforcement seems inadequately staffed to police cyber crimes
| even when the perpetrator isn't even anonymous or pseudo
| anonymous.
|
| Do we need something like an Internet "drivers" license for
| anyone who wants to post content to the public? Analogous to
| needing a license to drive on public roads? Maybe that idea can
| be tied into Section 230 concerns? I'm sure there are obvious
| difficulties, just spitballing. Balancing liberty and safety
| isn't easy.
| rriepe wrote:
| There should be several classes of license. One to read, one
| to comment, one to create content, and of course one for
| interactions like voting up or down, or liking.
|
| Any violation in any of the categories would be cause for
| revoking the license. We can't have people creating content,
| for example, who have read illegal content. That's the
| mechanic at work behind disinformation.
| cmdshiftf4 wrote:
| Oi! You got a licence for that post?!
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I thought it was called a "loicense"
| [deleted]
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| Your content isn't anonymous: who you are is distilled from
| what you say, creating a unique fingerprint. Doesn't matter if
| you your name is hnaccy or SoSoRoCoCo.
|
| I change details, times, various things, just a little.
| Whenever I need to make a reference as a citiation, 20% of the
| facts change just slightly. Sometimes I'm a woman, sometimes
| I'm from a different state, sometimes it is a different company
| I worked for. These details don't matter to the content, but
| there is so much contradiction in my history that I hope to
| defeat the algorithms. I got the idea from how Firefox defeats
| browser fingerprinting (or tries to).
|
| I also create new accounts routinely.
|
| However, even HN knows who I am because I occasionally forget
| to use my randomized VPN, and HN keeps track of you.
|
| I know this because I was banned from an IP address once and
| had to renew it from my ISP to come back to HN.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Employers get sued and sometimes they demand social media
| accounts during discovery. I decided a while ago that I'm not
| prepared to quietly defy a court order by trying to conceal an
| anonymous account, so instead I stifle a lot of what I really
| think because moral fashions always change:
| http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
| anfilt wrote:
| Yet, I am seeing more sites require phone numbers to send an
| activation code before you can even use or make an account.
| smichel17 wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's very hard to keep a pseudonymous identify
| separate from your actual identify for a long period of time.
|
| For example, in general my accounts related to video games go
| by one identify, while my other personal/professional accounts
| use my real name-ish. Problem happens when I have a discussion
| on a game account and want to reference something that I know
| because of activity in the other sphere. By linking to my real
| identify, the pseudonymous one has been identified. So, now I
| am careful what I say on those accounts, too, and I save my
| controversial opinions for in-person, offline discussions.
| wincy wrote:
| My friend texted me the other day. He figured out my HN
| account just while casually browsing. He just knew it was me.
| I'm pretty easily identifiable based on tying up some of my
| comments together here on Hacker News, as how many people
| live in Kansas that are software engineers and have a kid
| with a rare disability.
|
| My wife on the other hand is an active member of the
| Libertarian party and is much more likely to express opinions
| than I am, but liberals think she's a conservative and
| conservatives think she's some crazy liberal. She doesn't
| work so unless they "came for me" for her stated opinions,
| she's pretty safe.
| rubatuga wrote:
| That will probably still cause social cooling, because you have
| to manage and be conscious what you are able to say on
| different identities. You are essentially training to be less
| spontaneous and more cautious about what you say in real life.
| mastazi wrote:
| Many aspects of data collection, however, are not related to
| posting your thoughts online. As an example, think about
| ordering food with Uber Eats and the like. What if health
| insurers find a way to get their hands on that data, and start
| changing your rates based on what you eat? There are so many
| services that can't be used anonymously. Personally, I am using
| online services less and less because of this.
|
| (edit: grammar)
| Buckaroo9 wrote:
| Old site that I first saw on HN bringing up this issue:
| https://www.socialcooling.com/
| cwyers wrote:
| A bunch of people just stormed the Capitol less than a week ago
| on account of being Terminally Online, I don't think there's a
| lot of evidence for this hypothesis.
| watwut wrote:
| I was always doing that, both online and offline. It is not like
| I would be saying everything that I think everywhere.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I have noticed I avoid watching "inappropriate" things on netflix
| because I am afraid of the suggestions they will generate, which
| inevitably everyone will see when I bring it up on the TV. The
| few times I did, I thumbs-downed it to avoid that.
|
| I wonder how much unconventional content is being harmed by this.
| It's really annoying.
| conception wrote:
| You can remove items from your Netflix watched history on their
| website. :)
| ohazi wrote:
| Now that storage is infinite and cheap, it's become trendy
| for engineers to never actually remove anything, but to just
| set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere. This makes a
| lot of tricky things easier, but there are pitfalls.
|
| Years later, in the fifteenth re-implementation of some part
| of some service, somebody is going to forget to read that
| bit. Or an errant database migration isn't going to transfer
| it properly. Or the database will be leaked, and all of the
| "deleted" content will still be there (e.g. the Parler dump).
| Or a race condition will cause the check to occasionally be
| ignored every other Sunday.
|
| Discovering that this is happening can be next to impossible.
| An application might read the deleted bit correctly when
| generating the ordered list of stuff you've looked at, but
| might not read it correctly (or might deliberately ignore it)
| when generating your advertising profile or when making
| content recommendations. I swear I've seen this on Amazon,
| though of course, I'll never be able to prove it.
|
| Chilling effects / social cooling includes stuff like this.
| "I'm not even going to click on that, because I don't trust
| the platform to clear my history properly."
| globular-toast wrote:
| It's not trendy, it's how I've been doing databases my
| whole life. You don't let users actually delete stuff from
| your database. That's crazy.
| Lio wrote:
| How would you handle a user ceasing their account and
| asking you to remove data you no longer need to provide
| them with service?
|
| Under GDPR you'd be required to really delete that.
| Obviously GDPR laws don't hold everywhere but are you
| saying you'd just hold the user's data forever or that
| you'd have a later clean up process or something?
| globular-toast wrote:
| You wouldn't. GDPR didn't exist. That was my point. We've
| been doing this for ages and only recently had to worry
| about actually deleting stuff.
|
| This is why I've never advocated "deleting" Facebook
| accounts etc. If you "delete" it you're just giving them
| another piece of information about you. Namely that you
| want your account to be deleted.
|
| The GDPR has not yet been shown to have any teeth, so I
| assume nothing has really changed in this respect.
|
| And, yes, holding users' data forever is normal. Storage
| cost has only decreased relative to the size of these
| databases. I've worked in places with customer data going
| back decades.
| parliament32 wrote:
| This is exactly what happened with the AshleyMadison hack.
| In fact, users _explicitly paid_ for a "delete my account
| permanently" action.. yet it was just that, a "deleted"
| flag added to the DB which eventually got leaked.
| debaserab2 wrote:
| Soft deletes have been popular since the internet became
| accessible to the average person. When I was younger I was
| a huge advocate for soft deleting pretty much everything.
| It felt like the obvious, easy choice - why not retain the
| data incase you need to use it for something else down the
| road? It took years to understand the ramifications of
| storing that data in a secure way really means, and that
| often times the reason it gets used later isn't something
| you intended it to be used for when you designed the data
| structure.
|
| I don't think that way anymore and I truly believe hard
| deletes should be the default unless you have a very
| compelling reason to soft delete (and you should usually
| only soft delete with some guarantee of future deletion via
| a publicly accessible data retention/erasure policy)
| 05 wrote:
| It's not rocket science - encrypt with a one time
| symmetric key, encrypt the key with a public key, store
| blob and key marked as deleted. Store the corresponding
| private asymmetric key on a hardware token to be used
| when you decide you need the deleted data. That way no db
| hack exposes any usable data.
| debaserab2 wrote:
| DB hacks aren't even close to being the only (or worst)
| threat. Encryption means nothing in a company or
| bankruptcy buyout where the purchaser may have a
| completely different set of ethics than yours.
| WJW wrote:
| That is all good and well against simple actors, but does
| not defend against the company being bought out and the
| new owner(s) deciding to decrypt and sell the entire
| database to some shady data broker. Or against the
| FBI/your local equivalent coming over for a friendly
| visit and confiscating both the hardware token and the
| database.
| dexen wrote:
| _> This makes a lot of tricky things easier, but there are
| pitfalls._
|
| Some people are calling excessive data "toxic asset", due
| to the future risks of it causing unexpected breaches of
| privacy, damage to reputation, or other losses.
|
| We'll certainly develop standard technical means of
| handling that in due time, quite possibly ones based on
| cryptography. A common scenario at present: instead of
| trawling all backups & distributed stores to laboriously
| expunge every bit of deleted data, you could delete the
| relevant _encryption keys_ - a small piece of data, a known
| quantity - rendering the encrypted data _inert_. This is
| particularly suited for systems that use WORM approach to
| backing up & distributing data.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > just set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere
|
| this has been a thing since the 1980s, at least. It's not
| new, and it's often important for auditing purposes and
| because mistakes happen.
|
| What's new is the ease with which databases can be accessed
| and hacked over a global public network.
|
| > Or an errant database migration isn't going to transfer
| it properly. Or the database will be leaked, and all of the
| "deleted" content will still be there
|
| Backups are a thing, you know. When you issue a delete
| command to your database it's not reaching back to time
| immemorial through the archives and ripping out those
| records. If we're playing what-ifs, then backup databases
| can just as easily be leaked.
| genghizkhan wrote:
| Just look at Parler. That's the same thing which happened
| there.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| > Now that storage is infinite and cheap, it's become
| trendy for engineers to never actually remove anything, but
| to just set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere. This
| makes a lot of tricky things easier, but there are
| pitfalls.
|
| Also deleting stuff for real for real immediately is really
| hard.
|
| You need to delete it from the database, the one that's
| replicating to, caches, online backups AND offline backups.
| And that's after you've confirmed and reconfirmed from the
| user that they actually want to delete the data, not just
| store it in the recycle bin or something idiotic like that.
|
| The easiest way is just to flag as deleted and prune on
| some kind of schedule. Backups will be overwritten at some
| point and the data will go away eventually.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Or, though a more technically complex, encrypt every
| "deletable" unit of data with its own key, have a
| different backup policy for encrypted data and for keys
| to it - one which, upon user request, would allow you to
| quickly purge every trace of relevant keys.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This doesn't work well in practice at any kind of scale
| -- these types of databases have existed for many years.
| The key management overhead is considerable, causing
| integer factor loss of performance for database-y
| systems. Additionally, it very significantly increases
| the storage footprint since most techniques for
| minimizing storage utilization no longer work given this
| requirement.
|
| It isn't just "technically complex", the limiting factor
| is your system may be 10x slower and use 10x more
| storage. The economics of operating these systems is so
| poor that they are only used in extremely niche
| environments where the requirements justify the extreme
| cost and performance limitations.
| watwut wrote:
| I did pirated some shows I had legal access to for exactly that
| reason.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| Same with YouTube. I'm kind of curious to watch a QAnon
| conspiracy video but don't want the suggestions. I guess that's
| what incognito mode is for, but I don't trust them to not match
| based on IP address...
| godshatter wrote:
| I stay logged out of YT, and clear my cookies every so often
| when I start getting too many of the same kinds of
| recommendations. They do match based on IP, since that's all
| they really have from me. When I delete cookies, though,
| things start over, basically. Then I get recommendations
| based on what I've searched for in YT and what I've watched
| since I last deleted them. It's nice, really. For a little
| while, YT doesn't know enough about me not to show me both
| sides of an issue I'm searching for. It's really touchy,
| though. Two or three videos covering one particular side of
| an issue in a row and the other recommendations disappear.
|
| Of course, I can't subscribe, like, ring the damn bell, or
| whatever it is they want me to do in every video. I do use
| patreon for those content creators I really like.
| ymarketing wrote:
| https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
|
| Public instances available - YouTube minus the tracking
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Invidious (https://github.com/iv-org/invidious) is how I've
| been using YouTube for the past few months. It takes care of
| this problem in addition to providing a faster, nicer UI
| without dark patterns.
| dexen wrote:
| Tor Browser is a good option to avoid generating
| "inappropriate" suggestions - decouples tracking from both
| your login cookies (permanent incognito mode) and also from
| your IP address.
|
| Even better, restarting the browser clears the cookies &
| other stored data, making tracking across session highly
| unlikely.
|
| YouTube videos take fractionally longer to load, but it's
| manageable.
| agiroth wrote:
| Incognito won't help unfortunately. I've tried this on a few
| occasions and it still pollutes my suggestions. I've noticed
| that using Brave seems to blunt it -- I have to watch alot
| more to notice the pollution.
|
| Can't say more than that, I stopped experimenting and
| basically stopped using Youtube except for the same music I
| listen to over and over now. Nothing new.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Wait are you sure opening in an incognito window does work?
| How would it not?
| hkon wrote:
| What kind of person uses Brave? What are you hiding?
|
| /s (for now)
| godmode2019 wrote:
| YouTube algo is pretty quick to respond. You just click
| 'Don't show me videos like this' a few times and they won't
| show you videos like this.
|
| Make sure you don't comment, that shows strong engagement
| which they like.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I'm assuming that a downvote with a negative sentiment
| comment is the most severe signal you can send.
| drdeca wrote:
| I have been marking "not interested" in every "vtuber"
| related video it has recommended to me, and I don't
| remember clicking on a single one, but it still hasn't
| stopped recommending them to me.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Your graph of interests merges with "people who watch
| vtubers" too strongly, so the recommendation engine keeps
| pushing that stuff to you.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| lol, I do the same with my browser, going to anonymous browser
| if I'm looking up shit on youtube or google I don't want to
| show up in my suggestions or history.
| bitwize wrote:
| Weird Al:
|
| "But I only watched Will and Grace one time, one day!
|
| Wish I hadn't, 'cause TiVo now thinks I'm gay!"
| nickt wrote:
| WEIRD AL or WEIRD AI
|
| either way works...
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Create a profile to share and a profile for what you want to
| watch. This helps get better targeted recommendations in
| general, because even aside from stuff you don't want to tell
| people you watch, IME there's stuff you like that don't suit
| the people you watch with.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Create a profile to share and a profile for what you want
| to watch. This helps get better targeted recommendations
|
| Or you know we could just have a proper advanced search
| within Netflix rather than me going through hoops with
| flixable etc or trying to play 4d chess to second guess how
| Netflix ML might give me the content I actually want to
| watch.
|
| Perhaps I am a minority contrarian (In fairness I was pretty
| much coerced to get Netflix by my family) but it just feels
| like there is so much accidental complexity in this Netflix
| paradigm of 'we non-negotiably must cleverly guess what you
| want to watch'.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| You do you, but I like having a list of stuff I want to
| watch separated from a list of stuff to watch with the
| family. I'm not planning to memorize those lists and search
| every time, that would be insane.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| You're free to like or dislike Netflix's recommendation
| algorithms, of course, but does creating two profiles
| really feel like playing 4d chess to you... or do you
| simply refuse to countenance a solution out of annoyance
| and spite? :-)
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Arguably you could make the same argument to Netflix
| Product Managers with regards to an advanced search
| feature with some added basic filters. :-)
| baxtr wrote:
| How is this different from having "inappropriate" books in your
| book shelf?
| watwut wrote:
| You just put them on the back or inside cupboard so that
| people dont see.
| vixen99 wrote:
| I'm curious to know what apart from pornography (volumes of
| which have been part of comprehensive book collections for
| eons as in https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/oxford-
| university-obsc...) is included in the term 'inappropriate'?
| watwut wrote:
| For example, if you like to watch romance and don't want to
| be judged for it.
| concordDance wrote:
| Well if your family are all white Republicans, having White
| Fragility on your bookshelf is a sure-fire way to start an
| argument (due to the title!).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Or not. If your family is reasonable people they'll
| probably just keep their mouths shut an ignore it even if
| they don't agree with it.
|
| People are pretty good at ignoring quackery in their own
| family. I think most people have a few relatives who are
| very much outside whatever the family norms are that are
| still treated with respect.
| xpe wrote:
| _Who_ benefits and _who_ is hurt when reasonable people
| don 't find ways to speak their minds and advocate for
| their values?
|
| This question is particularly apropos in modern times --
| take the last week for example.
|
| To ask the question in a different way: There may be a
| tradeoff between maintaining the _status quo_ versus
| speaking about our _values_.
|
| To me, it is really important to strive to speak and act
| according to our values _and_ to reflect on who (and what
| ideas) benefit from the status quo. It is entirely
| reasonable to be strategic about what you say, but I
| don't pretend to think the status quo is _correct_ just
| because it exists.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| If the person in question only owns a dozen books, all are
| pro-Nazi stuff and they're prominently displayed for
| example?
|
| We're not talking about people who have a thousand books
| from all genres and walks of life having Mein Kampf in
| there.
| Veen wrote:
| Last year's media scrutiny of politicians' bookshelves
| undermines your point a little.
|
| https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/michael-
| gove-an...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Interesting that they consider Ayn Rand alarming enough
| to name her right next to David Irving, a notorious
| Holocaust denier, or, more precisely, diminisher.
|
| Edit: I, too, have one book by David Irving in my
| bookcase - among 900 others. I read it, I found his way
| of twisting of the sources disturbing, but I am not going
| to burn it in the name of Love and Peace. But
| unfortunately I can see this being used against me in a
| court of Twitter.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The Holy and Unerring Court of Twitter is the reason I've
| got a cron job deleting my old tweets automatically.
|
| I've seen people in more prominent positions than me
| being badly burned by a 10 year old tweet. I see no point
| in saving stuff I've said 6 months or a year ago. If it's
| something worthwhile, I'll make a blog post out of it and
| store the markdown file in git.
| alexilliamson wrote:
| Then why tweet at all in the first place?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Because your bookshelf doesn't automatically rearrange
| itself, then send the data to a corporation optimized for
| making you read as many books as possible?
| griffoa wrote:
| Yet...
| drdeadringer wrote:
| ... I need you to finish because I can't read your mind.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That wasn't a "yet" like "and yet, [something]", but a
| "yet" like "[something isn't happening]... yet".
| drdeadringer wrote:
| Ah.
|
| Thank you.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Don't give Amazon ideas.
| musingsole wrote:
| This year from IKEA, introducing the subscription powered
| AutoShelf! Tired of curating your own collection? This
| bookshelf keeps track of what and how long you read using
| ultrasonic pulses to determine spine-crackage. Once a
| month, a crate of new books will arrive. Simply attach
| the crate to the AutoShelf to restock your collection.
| Once its done, leave the crate (now filled with your old,
| dusty books) on the curb for our gig-service to pick up!
| Simulacra wrote:
| Anyone read the book Daemon by Daniel Suarez? Sometimes it feels
| like we're heading in that direction, where each person has a
| reputation score, and everyone can see it.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| See also this _Black Mirror_ episode:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)
| coldtea wrote:
| When one side or another wants/gets to control the totality of
| life, including morality in the abstract (aside concrete
| actions) and what are "good ideas", that's the endgame.
|
| That's regardless of whether this control falls under direct
| state power (as in China) or is shared between state and
| private corporations (as in the US).
|
| That's also regardless of whether the control is total and
| absolute or not. It's enough that it exists as a presense to
| stiffle thinking freedom and social expression.
| [deleted]
| cainxinth wrote:
| Literally for decades I have been explaining to people that email
| is like a postcard, i.e. always assume your message is visible
| publicly.
|
| When social media became popular, I extended the analogy to it,
| and yet people continue to be shocked and amazed when their
| online conversations spread further than they realized.
|
| Wanna keep a secret? Don't tell anyone!
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This is a great way to explain it. I was told as a child,
| "Don't write anything in an email you wouldnt want forwarded to
| someone else" which has stopped me from sending several emails
| I would have probably regretted.
| dionidium wrote:
| At risk of missing your point (which I think is generally a
| good one), the problem with the postcard analogy is that nobody
| cares about what you wrote on your postcard! And even if a
| couple postal workers snicker at what you wrote, then that's
| where it ends. There is no conceivable scenario in which
| hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of people will spend
| tomorrow talking about your postcard, sharing your postcard,
| contacting your boss about your postcard, photographing your
| postcard and critiquing it in the NY Times, and so on.
|
| One of the weird things about social media for me is that my
| intuitions about the postcard -- nobody cares, nobody will read
| it, what do I care if the postal workers laugh at what I said?
| -- don't actually work all that well on social media.
| musingsole wrote:
| Nobody cared about what's on the postcard because you
| couldn't easily scan every postcard sent and mine its
| contents. The average social media post has even less content
| (especially sensitive content) than a postcard, but the ease
| of collection and analysis means that if there is smallest
| iota of useful information on the card, it can be mined and
| exploited.
| science4sail wrote:
| Previous HN discussions (about the source website that this
| article cites).
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363
| ja3k wrote:
| >Social cooling refers to the idea that if "you feel you are
| being watched, you change your behavior." And the massive amounts
| of data being collected, especially online, is exxagerating this
| effect.
|
| This is a strange perspective to me. I feel like I'm much more
| aware of being watched by the other users of a social media site
| when I post than of the inscrutable algorithms.
| realjohng wrote:
| It's interesting. I definitely find myself censoring myself
| online at times. But I also find myself self-censoring offline:
| at work, with my girlfriend, family.. you name it. Filtering
| oneself is an important trait.
|
| On the other hand, self-censoring oneself to not criticize the
| current government or make an off-color political joke feels like
| oppression.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Self-censorship _is_ important. But so is integrity (literally
| being "integral", that is, there being only one of you). You
| need to not have to hide who you are or fake being who your
| not. You need that for your mental health.
| rory wrote:
| I know a lot of people are bringing this discussion back to
| social media which certainly has a dramatic effect, but it's
| interesting that there's a concurrent flame war over here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25761017 with a lot of
| people coming out against Apple's "Racial Equity and Justice
| Initiative".
|
| Working at multiple tech companies and hanging out with people
| from others, I've never heard any techy people voice those kind
| of opinions in person. Are the people speaking up in that thread
| simply different people, or is there an afk social cooling
| happening too?
| charlysisto wrote:
| Makes me wonder if you have the corollary concept : Social
| Heating... my feeling is social media has a multiplicative effect
| on both sides of the thermometer
| deltron3030 wrote:
| Good catch. There's a huge discrepancy in social media between
| people who are employed/professionals, use it to climb the
| corporate ladders and people who are just hanging out there,
| like in a pub. These two worlds often collide, especially on
| Twitter.
|
| In the real world it's not a problem because there are much
| more specialized locations. You'd expect rough language and
| jokes in a pub.
| chrischapman wrote:
| That's a great idea. It probably is a continuum and makes me
| wonder what the mean point is. Are there behavioral
| characteristics that fit some acceptable norm? Or will the
| acceptable norm just become the new thing to manipulate with
| big data.
| tayo42 wrote:
| This just sounds like being a polite human in public spaces?
| Common advice was always to avoid talking about politics and
| religion or anything else controversial in places you need to get
| along.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| If that's what we are talking about I embrace and look forward
| to it!
|
| I've been to enough museums, galleries, exhibits with people
| live streaming or FaceTiming that the pendulum swinging the
| other way would be a welcome change.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Common advice was always to avoid talking about politics and
| religion or anything else controversial in places you need to
| get along."
|
| This is much more restrictive. For example, in meatspace, you
| can avoid talking about religion and politics at your
| workplace, but talk religion in your church meeting and talk
| politics with other supporters of the same party.
|
| Social media tear down the distance and compress the entire
| world into one single space. Unless you want to avoid any
| religious and political discussions completely, your comments
| on those topics, even in specific discussion groups, can be
| viewed by, say, your coworkers.
|
| I would say that this is quite a problem.
| XorNot wrote:
| Social media is the equivalent of publishing a newsletter
| about those things with an audience of millions and database
| search access.
|
| It has never been a "private" conversation or even vaguely
| similar to say, a discussion at a cafe.
|
| People have not treated it that way though.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yes, because this is an unfamiliar and hard to grasp form
| of communication. Social media feels intimate like a home
| chat by the fireplace - at least sometimes. But in fact it
| is wide open, including to people who want to harm you.
| aluket wrote:
| This reminds me of the Hawthorne effect
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
| wiz21c wrote:
| Panopticon is a very old idea about this issue
|
| https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-panopticon-what-is-th...
| d--b wrote:
| I think this is merely an adjustment to how people use social
| media.
|
| Regular people expressing their opinion on public media is only a
| 10-year old phenomenon. But people have been self-censoring in
| real life forever.
|
| There are things you say at work and things you say at home.
| There are the subjects you avoid at family gatherings not to
| spoil the weekend, and you usually don't want all your neighbors
| to know what you've been up to over your vacations.
|
| Social media being new, people didn't realize the consequences
| and started expressing stuff they wouldn't have otherwise.
|
| Yes, people adapt, and share less. Perhaps it's social cooling,
| but maybe it needs cooling a little bit.
| SulfurHexaFluri wrote:
| I think facebook and twitter pushed too hard for people to post
| everything publicly under their real name. Now we are seeing a
| shift back to made up usernames and private publishing. I don't
| know many people who share anything publicly but we all share
| constantly in private IM groups.
|
| For most sites I don't bother remembering a password. I just
| sign up every time I need to log in which keeps my accounts
| young enough that there isn't a significant backlog to trawl
| through and identify me.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| > all share constantly in private IM groups.
|
| Are you certain these groups are private? E2E and no meta
| data leak?
|
| > isn't a significant backlog to trawl through and identify
| me.
|
| Are you that confident in your OpSec? No browser
| fingerprinting, GUID, IP address, location data?
|
| Surely the alphabet soup agencies profile HN users.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It all depends on your threat model, like always.
|
| If your threat modelling includes Mossad, FSB and CIA, by
| all means do take E2E encryption and metadata into
| consideration every time you communicate with someone in
| any way.
|
| For most of us it's just selecting a group of people who
| know what is a joke or hyperbole in the current context.
| I've typed out some weird stuff in Telegram and Discord
| chats I wouldn't want my family or employer to see out of
| context.
|
| But my threat model doesn't include my employer or my suing
| Telegram or Discord for my chat logs, so I don't worry
| about it.
| iso1210 wrote:
| Back in the 90s it was fairly normal to use your real name on
| usenet - some even included real phone numbers and contact
| details in their .sigs
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think you focus only on the social media impact. The bigger
| issue is that social cooling is not limited to social media.
| The larger issue, for me, appears to be that it affects person
| to person interactions and makes it harder and harder to have
| an 'adult' conversation with people without adding niceties (
| would you kindly consider the possibility of helping me if you
| are not too busy vs get over here ) or current set of society
| mandates ( for example, finding 'preferred' pronouns ).
|
| "you feel you are being watched, you change your behavior."
|
| Social cooling is bad. It makes things hidden, where they
| simmer and build up. It is not good for the individual and it
| tends to not to be good for society in general, because it is
| channeled and not always in healthy ways.
|
| In a sense, I agree with you. It is an adaptation, but I am not
| convinced it is a good one.
| catawbasam wrote:
| I think what is needed must run much deeper than self-
| suppression. It is time for us to look within and cool off
| within ourselves so that we can speak and act without hate.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am hesitant to respond since I am not absolutely certain
| what you mean, but I will attempt to dig deeper.
|
| How would you define hate? I do not want to put words in
| your mouth. Just please elaborate a little more.
| mastazi wrote:
| I don't think the problem is just related to social media, that
| is a pretty narrow way of looking at it. We use online services
| for everything, from buying stuff to ordering food or hailing a
| cab. I suggest reading the source cited by OP
| https://www.socialcooling.com/index.html there are many
| examples such as
|
| > If you return goods to the store often this will be used
| against you.
|
| and
|
| > Your health insurer may collect intimate data about your
| lifestyle, race and more.
|
| Anecdotical: if I have a night out, I tend to pay cash rather
| than card. Even though I don't think I'm doing anything wrong,
| just having a few drinks with friends. The bar where we usually
| go has slot machines ("pokies" as they're called here in
| Australia) who knows if having many transactions at that bar
| lowers whatever rating somewhere...
|
| I'm 40 and if you told 20-year-old me that people would have
| this kind of issues in 20 years, I would have dismissed it as
| yet another dystopian prediction that's never going to come
| true.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If you return goods to the store often this will be used
| against you.
|
| What is often? I have a hard time believing retail
| establishments with razor thin profit margins are rejecting
| profit unless the customer is likely causing them to lose
| money.
|
| > Even though I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, just
| having a few drinks with friends.
|
| What if the data shows having a few drinks increases the
| likelihood of healthcare costs? Otherwise, people who don't
| have a few drinks are subsidizing people who do have a few
| drinks.
|
| There's nothing "wrong" with driving more distance than
| someone else, but auto insurers have to charge more to
| someone that drives more, since that increases their risk of
| loss.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I'd rather not pay for someone else social care than have
| my card transactions tracked so that someone can build a
| statistical model on my likelihood to need medical care.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > unless the customer is likely causing them to lose money
|
| The problem is that this fact is (or will be) determined by
| some obscure black box algorithm that might even take into
| account other unrelated data from social media or data
| brokers.
|
| Your activity elsewhere shouldn't affect your ability to
| return an item, regardless of whether it's profitable for
| the store or not (of course if it was up to the store they
| would rather not deal with the bad, terrible monsters that
| dare to... _return items_ ).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The problem is that this fact is (or will be)
| determined by some obscure black box algorithm that might
| even take into account other unrelated data from social
| media or data brokers.
|
| I think this data should be public. Much like a credit
| report is in the US and can be checked for accuracy.
|
| >of course if it was up to the store they would rather
| not deal with the bad, terrible monsters that dare to...
| return items).
|
| I know from experience there are people that abuse return
| policies (basically stealing by using the item and then
| returning it), and unless the store increases prices to
| make everyone else subsidize the people that abuse it, I
| don't know what the other option is.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > basically stealing by using the item and then returning
| it
|
| If the item is in a condition where it can be resold at
| full price (aka you can't even tell whether it's been
| used), does it matter? If anything, it reduces waste.
|
| If it's not in a resellable condition, then the store
| should discount the refund by a reasonable amount to make
| up for it. We don't need yet more scummy entities like
| credit bureaus which you can't opt out of.
|
| I'm also not confident that improving the retailers'
| margins is going to trickle down to lower prices for
| consumers as opposed to go into some executive's pocket
| or get pissed away in marketing/advertising spend.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If the item is in a condition where it can be resold at
| full price (aka you can't even tell whether it's been
| used), does it matter? If anything, it reduces waste. If
| it's not in a resellable condition, then the store should
| discount the refund by a reasonable amount to make up for
| it.
|
| How is all of this supposed to be determined at a return
| counter in the 2 min interaction between a retail
| employee and customer?
|
| As a customer, I would only like to buy an item that came
| from the factory. Especially anything electronic, there's
| almost no way for me to discern if someone has damaged it
| otherwise. I also don't see how manufacturers could be
| held liable for warranties if they aren't sure one the
| chain of custody.
|
| > I'm also not confident that improving the retailers'
| margins is going to trickle down to lower prices for
| consumers as opposed to go into some executive's pocket
| or get pissed away in marketing/advertising spend.
|
| If retail businesses had pricing power, they would be
| asking for more than razor thin profit margins. Retail
| executives aren't currently turning away dollars from
| their pocket, they don't have access to them in the first
| place since competing retailers will take their business
| if they try to.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > How is all of this supposed to be determined at a
| return counter in the 2 min interaction between a retail
| employee and customer?
|
| That's not a valid reason for introducing yet another
| data collection scheme that's likely to have hidden
| biases and false positives, not to mention the potential
| of this data being leaked or exploited for other
| nefarious purposes (do you really trust a retailer _not_
| to secretly use this data for other purposes like
| marketing).
|
| > As a customer, I would not like to buy an item that did
| not come from the factory. Especially anything
| electronic, there's almost no way for me to discern if
| someone has damaged it otherwise. I also don't see how
| manufacturers could be held liable for warranties if they
| aren't sure one the chain of custody.
|
| Is this currently a major problem at big box stores
| (excluding Amazon because they intentionally ignore the
| issue)? I personally can't remember a single occurrence
| of me buying goods in a supermarket that ended up being
| used/damaged in a way I could tell.
|
| > If retail businesses had pricing power, they would be
| asking for more than razor thin profit margins. Retail
| executives aren't currently turning away dollars from
| their pocket, they don't have access to them in the first
| place since competing retailers will take their business
| if they try to.
|
| And yet money is still being pissed away in marketing,
| which means they do have money to spare. Why do you think
| the savings would trickle down to the consumers instead
| of just being "invested" into either marketing or
| something else?
|
| Starting a supermarket isn't an easy task; the barrier of
| entry and the upfront costs (for the retail location
| alone) is insane, so I find it hard that competition
| would prevent this. Possibly over several decades it
| _could_ translate to your goods being a few dozen cents
| cheaper, but I 'd rather not live in a world where you
| need to "Login with Facebook" to be able to return an
| item.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >That's not a valid reason for introducing yet another
| data collection scheme that's likely to have hidden
| biases and false positives, not to mention the potential
| of this data being leaked or exploited for other
| nefarious purposes (do you really trust a retailer not to
| secretly use this data for other purposes like
| marketing).
|
| I didn't claim it was. There are various reasons for the
| data collection. One is obviously marketing, but another
| may also be identifying bad actors.
|
| Also, almost all stores have rewards programs of sorts
| that amount to a few percentage points of discount in
| exchange for tracking your purchases. People will, by and
| large, willingly give their identifying information in
| exchange for this, so I think it's inevitable (unless
| this type of discount was outlawed).
|
| >Is this currently a major problem at big box stores
| (excluding Amazon because they intentionally ignore the
| issue)? I personally can't remember a single occurrence
| of me buying goods in a supermarket that ended up being
| used/damaged in a way I could tell.
|
| I don't know, I just know I would rather have something
| new. I assume electronics or stuff that can be invisibly
| damaged gets sent back to the manufacturer or sold as
| refurbished after it is returned.
|
| >And yet money is still being pissed away in marketing,
| which means they do have money to spare. Why do you think
| the savings would trickle down to the consumers instead
| of just being "invested" into either marketing or
| something else?
|
| How are you determining that money is being pissed away?
| Are you suggesting all these retail business owners and
| operators are wasting money that they could be pocketing?
|
| >Starting a supermarket isn't an easy task; the barrier
| of entry and the upfront costs (for the retail location
| alone) is insane, so I find it hard that competition
| would prevent this.
|
| It's very easy to start a retail business. That's why the
| profit margins are so low, it's all very textbook
| microeconomics. In fact, with the internet, the retail
| location matters even less, so the barriers to entry got
| even lower and now Chinese manufacturers can directly
| sell to buyers. It's exactly in this situation that
| marketing and brand awareness (presumably to advertise
| quality control) is valuable.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > There are various reasons for the data collection. One
| is obviously marketing, but another may also be
| identifying bad actors.
|
| And my point is that since companies can't be trusted to
| not use this data for marketing purposes (and the
| legal/regulatory environment is ineffective at deterring
| that) then they should not have that data.
|
| > almost all stores have rewards programs [...]. People
| will, by and large, willingly give their identifying
| information in exchange for this, so I think it's
| inevitable
|
| I don't have a problem with it being optional and
| voluntary (though I still think more regulation and
| transparency around what is done with that data is badly
| needed), but the problem begins when you need a loyalty
| card or providing identifying data to return an item for
| example, since as per the previous point they can't be
| trusted with not misusing this data. I don't want to live
| in a world where you have to "Login with Facebook" to
| purchase or return something.
|
| > I just know I would rather have something new
|
| I agree, but I mean whether it's worth proposing and
| normalizing a large-scale data collection scheme and all
| the problems this entails (especially around bias - what
| if your algorithm start declining returns from black
| people because blacks were under-represented in the data
| and a single individual making a bad return was enough to
| sway the balance) to weed out maybe 1% of bad returns?
|
| > How are you determining that money is being pissed
| away?
|
| Because paying companies to waste people's time and annoy
| them with ads does not improve the quality of the
| products that I am buying, and yet part of the price I
| pay for most goods goes to this useless and counter-
| productive endeavour.
|
| > It's very easy to start a retail business.
|
| I am talking about starting a business that can compete
| with the big-box stores, since your original argument was
| that screening returns would translate to savings and
| that would give the businesses who do pass on those
| savings to the customer a competitive advantage, but the
| average 2-4% saving (or less) isn't enough for a brand
| new competitor to emerge, thus the established retailers
| don't actually have pressure to pass on those savings
| onto the customer instead of making them disappear into a
| black hole.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have no idea of the precise savings that screening
| returns would result in, but I know the following from
| years of reading financial reports of large retailers:
|
| 1) The profit margins are tiny, literally in the sub 5%
| range.
|
| 2) This means the operations of the businesses that do
| exist have been extremely streamlined, and there's not
| too much juice left to squeeze
|
| 3) If they're doing something, it means it is a necessity
| to stay in business, and a business wasting money in the
| single digit percent profit margins will not be in
| business for long.
|
| 4) If a competitor starts screening returns, and sees
| their profitability rise as a result, then they can price
| their products more competitively and win business.
| Retail businesses are competing for volume, and customers
| only care about price.
|
| You can see from the public reports that no one is
| getting rich off of these companies. They're probably
| just doing what they have to do to survive, including the
| marketing and the screening of returns.
| dirkc wrote:
| > What if the data shows having a few drinks increases the
| likelihood of healthcare costs? Otherwise, people who don't
| have a few drinks are subsidizing people who do have a few
| drinks.
|
| The whole idea behind health care is that some people
| subsidize other people - ie. most people are healthy and
| use less health care services than they pay for, while a
| few people get sick and require health care services that
| they would never have been able to afford.
|
| I'm fine with subsidizing other people, the alternative is
| to be okay with people that have problems to be thrown out
| of the system and not receive the care they need.
|
| In any case, it's not okay for insurers to have fine
| grained access to what people buy, eat, drink, do. I
| struggle playing it out in my mind in a way that doesn't
| end horribly.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I'm fine with subsidizing other people, the alternative
| is to be okay with people that have problems to be thrown
| out of the system and not receive the care they need.
|
| So the discussion is about when use of data is identify
| losses and remove them from the system versus not using
| data and spreading the cost out between all participants.
|
| Healthcare is a sufficiently broad benefit that much of
| society can agree on subsidizing each other (except in
| certain countries), but even in countries with taxpayer
| funded healthcare, I don't know if there would be a
| consensus on whether or not retailers should be able to
| track individuals to identify those causing losses and
| boot them from the system.
|
| Certainly, no one would argue against the right of a
| small business owner to refuse to do business with a
| customer that is causing them a loss. At what point does
| a business become large enough that it can no longer do
| this?
| iso1210 wrote:
| > Certainly, no one would argue against the right of a
| small business owner to refuse to do business with a
| customer that is causing them a loss.
|
| When the profit from occasionally serving one person in a
| wheelchair is less than the cost of providing the
| wheelchair access, yet we still demand it, indeed that's
| why we have to demand it - if you still made money from
| the person in a wheelchair, you'd put the ramp in anyway.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I guess there is an exception for people with
| disabilities, but in the context of this discussion, I
| mean someone who returning items excessively. Clearly a
| return policy is infeasible if every person returned
| every item from every person. There must be an assumption
| that a return policy won't be abused to keep the return
| policy feasible for everyone.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| In the past decade I've anecdotally noted that some
| places with famously liberal return policies have
| tightened up. Outdoor equipment retailer REI is my
| favorite example.
|
| They have switched from unlimited returns forever for any
| reason to 1 year.
|
| My theory is it's a combo of two things. 1. People
| abusing return policies. 2. More and more items that used
| to be durable becoming consumable. In a lot of industries
| the drive for lightweight and high tech has led to things
| that simply can't last. I have a backpack that weighs
| less than a pair of jeans, but it certainly won't last
| the way my dads old backpack lasted. Same thing with my
| battery powered drill, I really doubt that I'll be able
| to find a battery for it in 30 years.
|
| The backpack and the battery powered drill are two things
| that have shifted from buy it for life, to consumable
| good.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| > What if the data shows having a few drinks increases the
| likelihood of healthcare costs? Otherwise, people who don't
| have a few drinks are subsidizing people who do have a few
| drinks.
|
| Many countries levy special taxes on alcohol. If at least a
| portion of that money is used towards healthcare, the
| subsidy by teetotallers either grows smaller or disappears
| entirely.
|
| But, of course, that requires correct use of said tax
| money.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| phs318u wrote:
| > people have been set-censoring in real life forever
|
| Agreed. But what they haven't done is "over shared" as much as
| they have in the last decade. So perhaps part of the self-
| censoring being described is a return to mean?
|
| EDIT: it seems I've repeated (and agree with) your last point -
| "perhaps it needs cooling a bit".
| wreath wrote:
| The thing I find problematic is the line of what things to say
| at home, office and social media is pretty much non-existing
| (at least in my tech "bubble"). I rarely find anyone agreeing
| with me that politics should stay out of the workplace for
| example, or family gatherings etc.
| ck425 wrote:
| Maybe you're in a bubble but regardless I don't think it
| should be a black and white rule.
|
| Whether I discuss politics or similar contentious issues
| (religion, ethics etc) all depend on the individual
| relationships. I don't blanket refuse to discuss these things
| with colleagues, but I do self censor depending on individual
| relationships. Obviously in work I prioritise my ability to
| work with the individual and due to that often self censor
| more, but it's not a blanket rule.
| mjfl wrote:
| I would argue there hasn't been enough cooling. My mother has
| been having a vicious political argument with my aunts for the
| better part of a year. Created familial rifts that probably
| wouldn't have happened without social media.
| divbzero wrote:
| Sadly, I suspect this is not an isolated phenomenon. I've
| increasingly encountered anecdotes of political division
| souring personal relationships. I wonder if there are
| systematic surveys or studies of whether this perceived trend
| is real.
| Dig1t wrote:
| An interesting corollary of this, I think, is that it
| creates bubbles of people who all think the same and agree
| with each other. Since it causes many people to cut people
| with whom they disagree with out of their life.
|
| These people see the people outside their bubble (their
| neighbors, friends and family) as "other". It's so
| divisive, it's causing everyone to hate each other as
| nobody sees common cause with their own countrymen. It's
| very sad, I hope we figure it out.
| concordDance wrote:
| They also end up with a very different view on reality
| due to being exposed to different facts and the same
| facts with different framing. Filter bubbles be strong.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the current climate, there is clearly one portion of
| the population rejecting reality, even though there's
| plenty of available information.
|
| It has nothing to do with bubbles, it's people actively
| deciding to delude themselves.
| concordDance wrote:
| Just one portion?
|
| Many portions I expect. And which portion depends on
| which bits of reality you look at it. If you think the
| current canon set of facts of the dominant ideology is
| 100% correct now when it wasn't any time in the past 2000
| years, well... it's just not very likely.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Just because we don't have perfect knowledge at any one
| point in time doesn't mean every single idea throughout
| history is valid. Overtime, discoveries are made, models
| are refined, textbooks are updated, and as the evidence
| presents itself, you keep marching forward with the best
| available information you have.
| tomp wrote:
| You mean the side that claims US elections are 100% safe?
|
| I think that Trump definitively lost, but from the point
| of view of a European (from a former socialist country no
| less!) the idea that you can have "secure" voting without
| seeing a person _and_ checking their ID card is ...
| laughable to say the least.
|
| Yet claiming that as fact is in line with the current
| propaganda, so ...
| Veen wrote:
| > there is clearly one portion of the population
| rejecting reality, even though there's plenty of
| available information
|
| That's exactly what the world looks like to a person
| living in a filter bubble.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I know. The useful distinction for a filter bubble would
| be for when a person is exposed only to a small set of
| ideas, such as "big government, subsidized everything" is
| the best way, or "small government, privatized
| everything" is the best way". Or "so and so method of
| education is the best way", things that don't have
| relatively definitive answers, based on reasonable logic
| and standards of evidence.
|
| Using filter bubbles to talk about people that think the
| earth is 6,000 years old, it's flat, the US government is
| run by a cabal pedophiles, vaccines are harmful, the US
| election results are false, etc is not a fruitful
| endeavor.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If you only encounter "other" ideas in a context where
| they are derided, mocked and otherwise not taken
| seriously that's still a pretty damn airtight filter
| bubble.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The information to which I am referring is easily
| accessible in encyclopedias, university physics
| departments, CDC/FDA website, wikipedia, state government
| websites, etc.
|
| The people deluding themselves are choosing to discredit
| those sources in favor of their favorite celebrity or
| social group. Or they're pretending for other nefarious
| reasons. Either way, referring to this as a filter bubble
| is inaccurate in my opinion.
|
| These people were educated in the US, know English, know
| how to use the internet, grew up in a diverse country,
| some are accomplished business people, years long members
| of the military with lots of international travel. Few
| people around the world have as much opportunity to be
| out of their "filter bubble".
| concordDance wrote:
| The importance of genes for determining intelligence in
| humans is also available in Nature, etc. But a large
| proportion of the population still delusionally believe
| everyone is the same. Mostly due to filter bubbles.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't know anyone, prominent or not, that thinks
| everyone is the SAME. It's trivial for anyone to see
| identical twins aren't even the same, so unless there is
| evidence that a "large proportion" of people think this,
| I assume it's a made up scenario.
|
| I'm also familiar with quite a few cultures around the
| world, and they all seem to have concepts of being born
| "gifted" or some version of being naturally talented.
| watwut wrote:
| There should be however space for saying that a group of
| people or ideology is simply wrong on some points. We
| should not be force to pretend that all ideologies,
| values systems and theories are equal or right. Or
| honest.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Agreed you shouldn't have to agree with anyone you don't
| actually agree with, but also tolerance (for _all_
| people) is important. We should make an honest attempt to
| understand WHY these people feel the way they do, and try
| to address the underlying concerns and fears that
| motivate them. And if it's not possible to do that, at
| least talking about them like they're not all patently
| evil would be helpful in building better relationships
| with our neighbors.
| reillyse wrote:
| People have been falling out with their families since the
| dawn of time.
| matwood wrote:
| > Created familial rifts that probably wouldn't have happened
| without social media.
|
| It's definitely part of it, but not the only reason. I know
| my family had plenty of familial rifts pre-social media.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Let me guess, two-party system? It tends to polarise people
| into an us-vs them mentality.
|
| In actual democracies with a half-dozen actual viable options
| or more, we don't tend to get that heated with politics in
| general.
| cafard wrote:
| Really? I have a hard time coming up with important
| examples. Germany 1870-1932 had many parties with
| substantial representation, but how civil was it,
| particularly after 1918? Mark Twain's essay "Stirring Times
| in Austria" gives a picture of a multi-party parliament in
| a nervous breakdown. George Dangerfield's _The Strange
| Death of Liberal England_ shows the UK ca. 1910 with two
| large parties, Liberal and Conservative, and two
| unignorable smaller ones, Labor and the Irish caucus; it
| was not pretty.
|
| At this point, does any major European country have more
| than two viable parties or coalitions? Will the German
| Greens ever get a Cabinet seat outside a coalition with the
| Social Democrats? Will the UK Liberal Democrats ever get a
| Cabinet seat except in coalition?
| yatac42 wrote:
| > At this point, does any major European country have
| more than two viable parties or coalitions?
|
| If we look at the coalitions that have happened at the
| national level in this century, we have:
|
| * Social Democrats + Greens
|
| * Conservatives + Social Democrats (like, a lot)
|
| * Conservatives + Liberals
|
| So that's three different coalitions that have actually
| happened in the last 20 years. Admittedly three is not a
| lot more than two, but it is more (and we're talking
| about a time frame that only includes 5 national
| elections and only about actual coalitions, not
| potentially viable ones).
|
| And if you look at state governments as well, there are
| actually a lot more combinations that seem to work.
|
| > Will the German Greens ever get a Cabinet seat outside
| a coalition with the Social Democrats?
|
| Almost certainly.
|
| At the state level they already have. In one case they're
| even the majority with the conservatives being the
| minority partner in the coalition.
|
| At the national level they almost did in 2017.
| Negotiations between the conservatives, the greens and
| the liberals failed because the liberals backed out and
| the greens + conservatives didn't have a majority on
| their own - they would have been ready to go otherwise.
| It is entirely possible, even likely, that we will see a
| conservative-green coalition after this year's elections.
| watwut wrote:
| Germany 1870 was not democracy. Germany was democracy in
| between 1918-1932 and it was forced to become one by
| their own enemies.
|
| The incivility after 1918 was result of loosing war,
| result of anti-monarchy revolution, result of communist
| attempt for revolution and so on. It also had to do with
| rejection of democracy on principle. It had less to do
| with multiple parties existing or lack of two party
| system.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I disagree, even with multiple parties there is always a
| Right vs Left battle - or better "If you don't think like
| me then you're the enemy".
|
| If you're outside of those boxes you'll be attacked by both
| left and right wing people, to varying degrees.
|
| I think it's an education problem, people don't understand
| the basics of politics or economics. They don't understand
| that Stalin and Hitler were both crazy authoritarians and
| not political opposites.
|
| The political compass is quite biased in its questioning,
| but people are often surprised to hear there are more
| dimensions https://www.politicalcompass.org/
| theshrike79 wrote:
| > even with multiple parties there is always a Right vs
| Left battle - or better "If you don't think like me then
| you're the enemy".
|
| It's harder to blame someone of being "the enemy" when
| there is a half-dozen other parties on the other side.
|
| Yes, there still are rivalries between left/right and
| authoritarian/liberal parties, but having options takes
| some of the edge off.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I've seen this happens several times, people just group
| all other parties as right or left and team up with
| parties on their side
| LdSGSgvupDV wrote:
| In physics, when we connect all environments, it would end up
| in equilibrium.
| liquidify wrote:
| I love this article. It hits home as well. I stopped posting a
| long time ago on sites that tie my posts to my identity (thank
| you HN for at least not being overt).
|
| I hope that we as a society can adopt to this understanding. It
| may mean normalizing things that are now considered to be
| deviant. The question is where we draw boundaries. And the
| reality is that the second we start drawing any boundaries, is
| the second we fall back into the social cooling trap.
|
| It is like a giant compressor operating on the entire planet's
| behavior.
| rutthenut wrote:
| Interesting article, and from 2017 so we are all more aware of
| how the tracking measures have continued to grow continuously
| since then.
|
| Nice example of how one fact can be used to deduce/guess/assume
| the following traits, which of course won't all necessarily be
| correct or accurate. >> (Example - I have an advanced degree.
| This simple piece of data predicts that: I despise and fear
| Donald Trump and the Republicans; I am a good critical thinker
| who understands the difference between the high journalistic
| standards of the New York Times or the Washington Post and the
| non-existent ones of Fox "News," Breitbart, etc.; I don't believe
| in alien abductions or faked moon landings; I know that evolution
| and climate change are true beyond any reasonable doubt; I'm not
| a theist, much less a Christian, Mormon, or Islamic
| fundamentalist; etc. All that from just one bit of data. Imagine
| what else others know about you and me?) >>
| echlebek wrote:
| It's an interesting theory, and it may well be true, but I'm
| going to need to see studies before taking this idea seriously.
| fatjokes wrote:
| My personal bigger fear which leads to cooling isn't that big
| corps extract data about me and try to sell me things, but rather
| small, dedicated Twitter mobs (I'll say it, wokes).
| jakub_g wrote:
| Related: an illustrated guide
|
| https://www.socialcooling.com/
| eivarv wrote:
| This is also known as a "chilling effect"; A prime example of
| this is the self-censorship [0] of Wikipedia-readers after
| Snowden revealed that the US government was collecting data on
| people reading Wikipedia articles.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect#Chilling_effec...
| j0ba wrote:
| I want to read that link, but not sure if I should...
|
| I'll ddg "snowden wikipedia" instead.
| novaRom wrote:
| Even search engines cannot be trusted blindly. Browser
| fingerprinting is reality and nothing can be done to prevent
| it for sure. Duckduckgo is known to use Microsoft services
| and collecting user browsing data without consent. Once you
| share browser fingerprint with others services, it is trivial
| to identify your person in global database.
| woleium wrote:
| I know this post is only an hour old, but (in light of the
| article content) I found it amusing that there are no comments.
| liquidify wrote:
| Just didn't see it. It is such an obvious idea when you read
| the authors take on it. It is presented perfectly for such a
| short article.
| closeparen wrote:
| Facebook is conspiring with The Man to ruin your life over
| thoughtcrimes, so you... use it to livestream yourself
| participating in an insurrection? What exactly are people self-
| censoring, if not conspiracies to overthrow the United States?
|
| I thought this was a cool theory the first time I read it, but
| it's aged poorly. If anything we might have the opposite
| problem... social media freeing people from the norms of polite
| society, which turned out to be load-bearing.
| ben509 wrote:
| > ... social media freeing people from the norms of polite
| society, which turned out to be load-bearing.
|
| I'm the first to acknowledge human nature has a dark side to
| it, but I think this phenomenon is heavily tech driven.
|
| These problems weren't so bad back when mailing lists and
| forums were the predominant modes of communication.
|
| We did still have issues back then, due to the flat-comment
| systems. In them, every man is an island, so you're routinely
| staking your reputation on everything you say, which is nuts.
| And commentary doesn't scale; comment sections are either dead,
| or overwhelmed. Once they're overwhelmed, people aren't getting
| their ideas noticed. We have a natural impulse to raise our
| voices to be heard, so we do that rhetorically.
|
| Social media makes it far, far worse, because beyond the
| problems of the flat-comment system, it has an incentives
| problem. They get paid for more user engagement. That leads
| them to prioritize content that drives user engagement, which
| means everyone is being rewarded for amping things up. And this
| is feedback loop is fully automated by AI.
| mastazi wrote:
| Sure, but the remaining 99.9999% of people are not
| participating in an insurrection. Their data is being collected
| too.
| closeparen wrote:
| Their data is being collected, but if not even the wackiest
| conspiracy theorists care to practice the slightest bit of
| OPSEC, do you think regular people are changing their
| behavior over it?
| mastazi wrote:
| No but that's precisely the thesis of OP. 20 years ago no
| one cared about global warming, just like not many care
| about data security right now. This is going to change in
| the future.
| throwaway13337 wrote:
| What's missed in that analysis is grouping.
|
| People are now more likely to be performative in a way that is
| encouraged by identity group.
|
| That would mean some people will say less and some will say
| more. Overall, though, you'll see more normalized groups
| wherein being different from that group has a higher cost.
|
| In this way, both the extremism and the self-censorship we see
| can be explained.
| closeparen wrote:
| If I understand the thesis here, people are allegedly afraid
| of Facebook the corporation and whomever it might share data
| with, not the groups of like-minded people they intentionally
| communicate with.
| AI_WAIFU wrote:
| This only applies to people smart enough to _not_ storm the
| capital.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Using social media at all, feels very risky. No matter what you
| say it can be taken out of context, or the context will change
| within the next decade and you can be made out to be a monster.
|
| I was actually able to find tons of friends and partners back in
| 2019 when I disconnected from social media. Even though there's a
| slight temptation to go back being trapped in the house, it's
| like the temptation to take another drink when you've already had
| too many.
|
| In fact during the pandemic I decided to delete my Reddit
| account, I found it was making me very angry for naught.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I wonder if the lack of a social media profile hurts me in some
| cases. I don't look like a member of the Consumer/Business
| Party in good standing.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| TL;DR: data about us being collected, saved and published by
| social media makes us all more risk-averse when it comes to
| expressing our opinions online.
|
| I tend to agree. I have a twitter account and I try to never get
| into political discussions there, because I know that expressing
| the "wrong" opinion could cost me my job, as it has others. Even
| expressing something that I view as positive and encouraging
| could be misinterpreted. I feel like around 2000-2005, there
| wasn't so much pressure to be politically correct. People could
| discuss ideas more freely. That being said, I was younger too,
| and less risk-averse.
|
| That being said, I also remember that in the early YouTube days,
| comment threads were completely filled with hate. There were
| people posting messages like "you're ugly, you should kill
| yourself" constantly. You'd look at these people's accounts and
| you saw all the comments they posted. There were trolls who would
| just run around and post hate comments, particularly on LGBT
| videos. I really wished that someone would delete these accounts
| and all their associated comments, but YouTube did absolutely
| nothing about it for years. It was pretty depressing.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| We also don't, in general, shout our political opinions on
| street corners or in farmer's markets.
|
| What seems to be changing is the online space looks more like
| those spaces, only our voices online are very loud.
| tasogare wrote:
| It depends on the place. In Japan it is very common for cars,
| especially before elections, to roam the streets while
| shouting political stances. Politicians do the same at a road
| corners using a megaphone.
| coldtea wrote:
| Many people are OK with it mostly because "the bad people" are
| targeted (they think, that is, those they disagree with).
|
| If the pendulum swinged conservative in the future and you
| could get fired for excess "wokeness", the same people would be
| fuming with rage at the censorship.
|
| Of course the conservative side (which is now all about free
| speech) did censor others amply when it had the upper hand
| (from McCarthy to the "parental advisory" stickers and album
| boycott campaigns from Mrs. Gore - funnily a Democrat, how
| times change).
|
| Double standards as usual. If you want a free society, defend
| free speech for those you disagree with and consider "a
| danger".
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| The way I see it, the people in power try to suppress ideas
| they disagree with. It's just more problematic now because
| with technology, we're going to get to a point where
| suppressing ideas and the people who hold said ideas can be
| automated.
| free_rms wrote:
| The thing about building cages and whips is they're
| inevitably used against the vulnerable.
|
| It sounds good when you're building them..
| p410n3 wrote:
| That just sounds like proper opsec
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| I think many out there that are a victim of social cooling.
| Probably way more than we realize due to their silence.
|
| You have to think twice about posting or messaging anything
| because you have to assume that the service will later be
| breached and your privacy exposed. Similarly, you have to weigh
| the consequences of simply signing up for a service in the first
| place due to the risk of the service or company being breached
| later.
|
| I also think the archiving sites that want to download and
| archive everything add more to social cooling than anything else.
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