[HN Gopher] Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
___________________________________________________________________
Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election
Author : fosefx
Score : 150 points
Date : 2021-01-12 16:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| slowhand09 wrote:
| "US was a a great role model this year. We aspire to silence more
| dissent and ensure our elections and democracy follow the
| American Way."
| xref wrote:
| "US was a great role model this year. We aspire to feed our
| citizens a steady stream of disinformation so they are ready to
| storm the government and overturn the election if it doesn't go
| our way"
|
| Everyone keeps making these same points in every thread, and no
| minds are changed.
| citilife wrote:
| You assume the steady stream of disinformation is only coming
| from facebook, and not the news corporations.
|
| The reality is that CNN, MSNBC, Huffington post, New York
| Times, FOX, etc. all are shoving fluffed up pieces with an
| extreme bias. Every media outlet is doing this.
|
| > Everyone keeps making these same points in every thread,
| and no minds are changed.
|
| I agree with this. This is why we have always defaulted to
| "free speech" in America, while saying calls for violence are
| illegal. Currently, however, only one side's ideas are being
| banned; even if they don't call for violence, only if they
| "make people angry".
|
| With and estimated ~200 protestors entering the building,
| we've effectively silenced tens of millions in response.
| nawgz wrote:
| Why do I see this claim that private companies refusing
| Parler service somehow has "silenced Conservative voices"?
| It's pretty facile on the face of it. No conservatives have
| been banned from social media for being conservative...
| xref wrote:
| > we've effectively silenced tens of millions in response.
|
| Let's be honest, exactly 0 people have been "silenced" on
| either the left or right. The fact both Stormfront and
| Daily Stormer are still online attests to the fact that in
| the modern world it is not possible to "silence" anyone at
| all.
|
| And while a violent fringe may complain about how loud
| their megaphone is now, everyone still has their soapbox.
| We're here on HN using one right now.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed a couple days ago
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25704433
|
| with an informative top comment from a Ugandan HNer.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| The post discussed a few days ago was about shutting off the
| app stores and YouTube, whereas this new post is about an
| escalation to block off WhatsApp and other social media and
| messaging platforms. I think even VPNs have been blocked, as my
| Ugandan friends with VPN can't even access these platforms.
|
| It seems significantly different to me to not be a dupe, and
| yet I really appreciate how you moderate HN so I leave that
| decision up to you. Thanks for your work!
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I totally missed that nuance--sorry, and thanks for the
| clarification. I'll take the [dupe] marker off the top and
| remove the downweight.
|
| Do you know if what
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711941 says is true,
| that they do this every election? That seems relevant if so,
| and the comment sounds credible.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| It's ok :-) I figure you have a lot to read and might miss
| things here and there.
|
| > Do you know if what
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711941 says is true,
| that they do this every election? That seems relevant if
| so, and the comment sounds credible.
|
| I don't know if they do it every election, but I'm guessing
| they may have started to do it in the 2016 election and
| this one in 2021 (they have elections every 5 years), and I
| could see it being a trend that may continue if the
| leadership remains the same.
| linksen wrote:
| You might enjoy a song from Bobi Wine
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shTrm5uPDuE
| exabrial wrote:
| The predictable [and unfortunate] side effect of censorship on
| private platforms is it creates the illusion that the truth is
| being covered up.
|
| I have no doubts the next surveillance and encryption backdoor
| bills will be based upon the incidents happening right now. It's
| far better for society to keep discussions in plain sight, even
| if they are woefully misguided.
| kiba wrote:
| And allow actors to spread disinformation anytime they wanted
| even though the megaphone was given and then amplified(on
| engagement metric) by these megacorporations in the first
| place?
| belorn wrote:
| If it was the megaphone that was the main problem then simply
| removing the engagement metric aspect should solve it. Reddit
| tried that when they stopped listing controversial subreddits
| from the main page and stopped giving new members
| recommendations to go there.
| fangpenlin wrote:
| Please define disinformation, and who gets the right to
| decide what's correct? And what if they are wrong? I still
| remember when experts/ CDC / WHO claimed wearing a face mask
| is useless. I still remember there was once a time claiming
| earth not flat is disinformation and could be burned to death
| alive.
| capableweb wrote:
| Indeed. It's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation
| completely, no matter what we do. Instead, what we need, is
| better education on how to parse and digest information we
| receive from others. To stop taking everything we hear as
| automatic truth and instead consider all opinions, even if
| they sounds wrong at first. We need another Age of Reason
| instead of what we're executing on now.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It 's impossible to stop the spread of disinformation
| completely, no matter what we do_
|
| So we shouldn't try at all? It's similarly impossibleto in
| the near term reduce cancer, Covid or drunk driving deaths
| to zero. Should stop fighting them?
|
| We have evidence, from de-platforming ISIL, that this
| method _works_ in reducing radicalization. (A
| marginalization strategy [1] was found to be more
| effective.)
|
| I want to embrace arguments promoting the most people
| having access to the megaphone as possible. But we need to
| start from a position of facts, not feeling.
|
| [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/marginalizing-violent-
| extremism-...
| kiba wrote:
| _Instead, what we need, is better education on how to parse
| and digest information we receive from others_
|
| The way it works is that you and I reject information based
| on reflex.
|
| If someone tells you to drink bleach to cure covid-19,
| would you do it? No, of course not. it wouldn't take a
| second for you and I to even consider it. No rooms for
| critical thinking there.
|
| What you want people to do, is based on a slow thought
| process and careful consideration, but nobody have such
| time.
|
| Disinformation agents can just keep spamming us with even
| more facts to consider since they can make up anything they
| want. Gish gallop as it were. Verification is slow, even
| just surface level check to make sure the facts match up.
|
| So how did we not become fooled? Because we trust certain
| authorities and reject other out of hand.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| I'm all for beating the "more education" drum, but at some
| point we're going to need to reckon with the fact that
| there are some very intelligent people out there who should
| know better and don't or, worse, exploit it to take
| advantage of others.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Indeed. It's impossible to stop the spread of
| disinformation completely, no matter what we do. Instead,
| what we need, is better education on how to parse and
| digest information we receive from others.
|
| True, but you're being too black and white. While it may
| not be possible to stop disinformation completely, it is
| possible to _reduce_ it significantly. What you 're
| advocating for is akin to admitting that lead will never be
| completely eliminated from drinking water, so instead of
| doing anything to reduce it from toxic levels, we should
| (unrealistically) work on making people who are immune to
| lead poisoning.
|
| Your solution is a chimera. It is not possible (or at least
| wildly impractical given current constraints) to teach most
| people to be so knowledgeable and wise that they can find
| the truth in a haystack of seductive lies. And even if that
| wasn't true, the people who've bought into the lies would
| label your education program as biased and fight it.
| kortex wrote:
| Seconded. Establishing what is disinformation is hard;
| establishing truth is even harder. Restricting speech is
| fraught with trouble, but there is much precedent in the
| USA for compelling speech: see drug warnings and nutrition
| facts.
|
| Censoring and banning should be reserved for actual hazards
| such as provoking violence. But I think the automatic
| tagging of social media with "Here is another perspective",
| while being seen by some as chilling, is the best way to
| go.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| You have nostalgia for an age that never existed, and you
| are pushing for a solution that has no chance of success.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think that "responsible news" and "responsible
| government" are two things that are achieved by societies
| by pure luck and cannot simply be willed into existence.
| Given what's happened in the US with the emergence of the
| alt right I've been wracking my brain over ways we could
| safely accomplish free expression of ideas and I don't
| think it's possible.
|
| Either you allow for hate speech to be empowered and gain a
| megaphone or _someone_ needs to be the decider on what is
| false. You don 't actually need to kill off misinformed
| reporting or slanted reporting - you just need to censor
| reporting that is knowingly false and presenting non-facts
| as if they are facts - if you can kill that sort of
| information dead then I think society is able to sort out
| and prevent bubbles from forming around publications that
| choose to focus on certain stories - or that consistently
| frame stories to suit their agenda.
|
| I think that the stars aligned from about 95-2010 where all
| the news outlets were still afraid enough of the government
| that they mostly kept in line but the government didn't
| really have the resources to actually police things.
|
| Oh also, the Age of Reason was pretty darn irrational
| compared to today - don't let a fancy name and rose tinted
| glasses blind you to the faults of yesterday.
| Moodles wrote:
| Yes, because the trade off is worth it, and we should treat
| people like grownups who can think for themselves. Why not
| encourage critical thinking and wider reading, instead of
| being the police of literally all the information on your
| giant social media platform?
| kiba wrote:
| Critical thinking? The vast majority of useful information
| in the world is based on trust and authority, not on
| critical verification and people examining the evidence
| directly.
|
| Do you have any idea just how much work it is to verify
| that just the facts cited actually match up? That doesn't
| include verifying if the facts are accurate in and in
| itself.
|
| I did a surface level verification to a virology professor,
| and I found a few details wrong, and some which I couldn't
| figure out which fact was likely correct. It took me
| forever to do, and that was just one part of a very long
| lecture series.
|
| How about the fact that whenever someone offer me a cure
| for covid-19 in term of injecting bleach, I basically
| dismissed it out of hand. Was it because I think long and
| hard about injecting bleach into my body is a good idea?
| No. There was certainly no critical thinking happening.
| It's a reflexive rejection.
|
| _instead of being the police of literally all the
| information on your giant social media platform?_
|
| These platforms are not in any way unbiased free for all
| discussion forums. They are already making editorial
| choices by choosing to promote viral posts to drive up
| engagement metric and pushing down any less inflammatory
| posts.
|
| At the very least they can do is slow down any angry
| promoting posts.
| Moodles wrote:
| I understand (and agree) that the majority of knowledge
| we have is based on authority. I'm not suggesting
| everyone should do their own climate change research to
| believe climate change. I'm just suggesting they don't
| have to believe all the headlines they read, they can
| read multiple news sources with different political
| views, etc. Basically, you want people to decentralize
| their trust in authority. I think that'll quell fake news
| more than getting Facebook to try to moderate it all a
| like giant, impossible game of whack-o-mole. It doesn't
| have to be that complicated. We (try to) teach school
| children this in history class. I think it's a lot more
| complicated, and risky, to overly moderate your tech
| platform for "misleading" news, particularly related to
| politics.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| "Discussions" sounds very nice. Sure, let's keep those in plain
| sight. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking
| about calls for organized violence from highly visible people
| who have massive, massive audiences.
| meekmockmook wrote:
| I'm already seeing people who I otherwise politically agree
| with demand that Telegram be decrypted. Madness.
| jancsika wrote:
| The central problem is this:
|
| Social media in its current form is essentially an enormous,
| unregulated casino that now encompasses the entirety of the
| U.S.
|
| This unregulated casino essentially monopolizes people's time
| and expression through addictive patterns, tested and re-
| deployed with realtime feedback, pushing people more and more
| toward destructive ends.
|
| If we're not talking about regulation-- and again, casinos are
| heavily regulated and most people I've met do not object to the
| idea of casinos being regulated-- then we're not talking about
| the core problem.
|
| As for speech:
|
| If there were suddenly an enormous uptick in larger and larger
| groups of people doing 3-day coke benders, I think it goes
| without saying that I would defend their right to free speech.
| But _why_ would I be talking about their free speech in the
| first place? More to the point-- if the dealers _fueling_ those
| benders _only_ ever wanted to talk about free speech-- while at
| the same time doing piecemeal censorship of the most shocking
| things their addicts say-- shouldn 't I surmise it was a
| cynical, last ditch effort of drug dealers only looking to cash
| in and avoid responsibility?
|
| Edit: clarification
| tehjoker wrote:
| The crazy thing is that the Q-Anon people will inevitably see
| the spate of arrests and censorship as "The Storm" prophecy
| coming true but in reverse, an "Anti-Storm". I have a feeling
| this will only make many of them even more committed and
| possibly now that they can point to something real, could even
| grow the movement. Crazy stuff.
| djtriptych wrote:
| Whenever I hear these comments I wonder what the
| recommendation is to shrink the movement. Obviously open
| conversations did not stop the movement from growing.
| idrios wrote:
| I don't know a solution but lately I've been struggling
| with the concept of freedom of speech. With absolute free
| speech, taken to the extreme, you get the mess the US has
| right now. Without, also taken to the extreme, you get
| state-controlled media like what's in China.
|
| Recently I read a comment that free speech only works if
| the speech is honest, and that resonated with me. So
| whatever the solution is, possibly start from there?
| belorn wrote:
| There are research on the topic of how to deescalate
| conflict among groups, along lines of race, religion and
| nationality.
|
| Minimize the displaying of symbols, especially those that
| symbolize difference in values.
|
| Treat people equally. Same laws, same rules, same methods
| of handling people.
|
| When there is an absolute need for borders, make the border
| distinct and obvious.
|
| Symbolic actions of understanding can often be more
| important than practical actions.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Personally I think these movements are the natural result
| of pivoting our epistemological institutions from truth-
| seeking to progressive political advocacy. The right in
| particular has less reason to recognize these institutions
| as "truth authorities" as even when the right has a good
| point (e.g., when the right asks, "how do we know that
| racism and not crime rates belies police shooting
| disparities?") , they can rely on these institutions to
| ignore or misrepresent them. So some of them decide to go
| shopping around for their own epistemological institutions
| which will support _them_ in a similar (albeit cruder and
| more overt) way to how universities, media, etc back
| progressives and progressive viewpoints.
|
| The way out of this, IMHO, is to reverse course--to restore
| integrity to the media and generally to show the right that
| there is a good faith process through which their
| _legitimate_ ideas can succeed and be rewarded. Trying to
| force an ideological hegemony isn't going very well,
| however cathartic it may be or however right we are about
| our points and policy issues.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Ashley Babbitt, the woman who was shot by capitol police,
| was in a polyamorous relationship. So the notion that
| people are turning to these tactics to free themselves
| from a perceived left-wing cultural hegemony doesn't seem
| likely.
| NortySpock wrote:
| This is literally the first time I have heard any claim
| about Ashley Babbitt's relationship status. Where was
| this reported?
|
| (I don't actually care what her relationship status was,
| but the assertion that it is widely reported (and would
| change people's opinion of her) seems dubious.)
| spamizbad wrote:
| From https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/who-dies-
| for-trump-t...
|
| > "I actually saw it first on video when I was on the
| phone with multiple hospitals trying to find her," said
| Kayla Joyce, 29, who said she is the mutual live-in
| girlfriend of Babbitt and her husband, Aaron. "We found
| out through the news. Through live television.
| kodah wrote:
| I don't really understand this point other than that you
| think only left-wing people are polyamorous?
|
| The first poly person I ever met in tech was
| conservative.
| spamizbad wrote:
| My point is I don't find it plausible the mob that
| attacked the capitol was motivated by liberal college
| professors or race crime statistics, or various
| progressive cultural victories. I think it's reasonable
| to assume a bisexual poly woman would not be concerned
| with those specific matters to the point where they'd be
| willing to participate in mob violence to overthrow the
| government.
| kodah wrote:
| Maybe not motivated by, but this is certainly an
| escalating culture war. Part of it has its roots in
| academia, yes. These professors, and former academics,
| some of which now hold high profile jobs at big tech
| companies like Google, definitely play a role in
| inflaming tensions between these people.
|
| You're assuming that people fit molds a lot more than
| they actually do. The reality is that there's a fair
| number of people who buy into race statistics, want to do
| something about racism, but also don't buy into the
| narrative books like White Fragility have proposed. That
| book is especially steeped in academia and it's
| proponents have large Twitter accounts where they feel
| emboldened to say detestfully broad things about large
| groups of people. Some of those posts end up on here, so
| how you've missed them is beyond me.
| spamizbad wrote:
| I can assure you Peter Norvig had nothing to do with
| anyone's radicalization.
| kodah wrote:
| I have no idea who that person is. There's a number of
| posts on here about NeurIPS with some links to
| archive.org that features a Twitter feed where a number
| of people were encouraging harassment of each other.
| Watching how they postulate against each other using
| their various ideologies is shocking to say the least.
| spamizbad wrote:
| This is such a fascinating take to me.
|
| I feel like the problem here is the modern right has an
| untenable political coalition. And it needs to moderate
| in certain issues to regain majority support. One way
| would be by eschewing hard-line right wing economics. Tax
| cuts for corporations and wealthy elites arent going to
| make a dent in the left's cultural hegemony. Why not tax
| the wealthy elite and pour that tax money into the hands
| of every day Americans through better infrastructure,
| schooling, and healthcare? Then use that as political
| leverage to stop things you don't like.
|
| It sounds a lot like one side is too attached to
| corporate hegemony.
| kodah wrote:
| You might be right about that. To be honest, there's
| enough people beating on the right that I'm sure they
| will end up abandoning what's made them unpopular. They
| may even split, who knows.
|
| I end up focusing on the left because right now, no one
| is paying attention to the fact that there's a back and
| forth war going on here between _extremists_ that is
| cultural in nature. I happen to be closer to the left in
| politics, though I don 't ascribe to the culture. Who
| fights this war online is the idealogues, who fights it
| in the streets are normal people. It's disconcerting.
|
| It's tiring to see, hence I even bother to say anything
| about it. That said, my energy is just about up. If this
| country wants to tear each other apart, have at it.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > when the right asks, "how do we know that racism and
| not crime rates belies police shooting disparities?"
|
| This question isn't asked in good faith.
|
| Besides, it's actually irrelevant; those deaths are
| statistics. What was demanded was prosecutions of
| specific police for specific shootings of specific, named
| people such as Breonna Taylor.
|
| It's up to the white community to decide if police
| shootings of white people are too frequent, not frequent
| enough, or whatever. That is irrelevant to the BLM
| question.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| Prosecutions aren't something that should be done by mob
| demand. In the case of Breona Taylor the police were
| returning fire. You can question whether they should have
| served that warrant, but you will never in a million
| years convict someone of murder when they were returning
| fire.
| andybak wrote:
| > but you will never in a million years convict someone
| of murder when they were returning fire.
|
| The USA seems to have got itself in a very peculiar place
| with regards to discharge of firearms by representatives
| of authority. Certainly in the UK and I think on most
| other western countries, you don't just shoot wildly into
| a property because someone inside has discharged a
| firearm.
|
| It just wouldn't have happened in anything like this way
| in most other developed countries.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Agreed, but excessive use of force is an altogether
| different problem than the cited 'race' issues. Indeed,
| something like 90% of Americans support some kind of
| policing reform according to a Gallup survey last year.
| Unfortunately, in America, we have only a ~30% chance of
| passing a reform that 90% of Americans want passed unless
| the corporations also want it passed.
| MereInterest wrote:
| > you will never in a million years convict someone of
| murder when they were returning fire
|
| Sure you would, if somebody was returning fire after
| having been the initial aggressor. Suppose I were to
| break down your door. In many states, you would be
| justified in defending yourself (Castle doctrine). If I
| return fire and kill you, I would be guilty of murder.
| You had a right to defend yourself, and I did not have a
| right to return fire.
|
| That's the a huge point of the outrage, that whether or
| not the police announced themselves is in question, and
| witness reports vary. If the police didn't announce
| themselves, then there is no way for somebody in the
| house to determine whether it is a valid warrant being
| served or a violent home invasion. (Or both.)
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > but you will never in a million years convict someone
| of murder when they were returning fire.
|
| If you break into my home with a gun, I shoot at you and
| miss, and you shoot me and kill me, you would absolutely
| be convicted of murder or manslaughter.
|
| The defense, in this case, relies on two claims:
|
| 1. The intruders were police officers (this doesn't, or
| shouldn't, give them carte blanche to shoot people)
|
| 2. The police announced themselves as police before
| entering, which is in dispute.
|
| Further, the opportunity to bring manslaughter charges
| was never provided. The prosecutor declined to present
| murder or manslaughter to the Grand Jury.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > This question isn't asked in good faith.
|
| Why not? It seems like a perfectly reasonable question.
| You have a lot of people who are protesting and some who
| are even rioting on the pretense that racism is driving
| police to kill blacks in greater proportion than other
| races--surely they must have a good reason to think that
| it's racism and not crime rates or some other factor that
| _correlates_ with race? It doesn 't seem unreasonable to
| want some assurance that there's a good reason our cities
| are being burned and looted.
|
| > Besides, it's actually irrelevant; those deaths are
| statistics. What was demanded was prosecutions of
| specific police for specific shootings of specific, named
| people such as Breonna Taylor.
|
| Nope, "racial disparities in police killings" was
| frequently and ubiquitously cited as a motivation for the
| protests and riots. There was some back pedaling from
| some people that this isn't actually about race, but
| _Black_ lives matter is actually just a generic movement
| against police brutality; however, that 's plainly a
| farce.
|
| > It's up to the white community to decide if police
| shootings of white people are too frequent, not frequent
| enough, or whatever. That is irrelevant to the BLM
| question.
|
| What "white community"? Why should other people who have
| nothing but pigmentation in common with me decide the
| likelihood of me being killed by police? Why should we
| want 'race' to be a factor (as opposed to a correlation)
| in police killings at all? What is "the BLM question" if
| not "why are blacks killed disproportionately than
| whites"?
| majormajor wrote:
| The "but what about these stats" question has been asked
| a million times. Any population-level stats for crime
| rate, income, education, etc, are affected by unequal
| starting positions, and in the US those unequal starting
| positions were enforced by racism in leadership for
| decades. And in some places still are.
|
| You can't punch someone constantly until they're covered
| in bruises and then say "look, they aren't in pain
| because of anything bad anyone did, they just have more
| bruises."
| djtriptych wrote:
| racial comments from throwaway accounts really ought to
| be disallowed. I recommend well-meaning people just flag
| and move on.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It's just a username. I'm probably every bit as active on
| this forum as you are. Is there something in this thread
| that makes you think I'm posting in bad faith?
| andybak wrote:
| Well. Your username didn't help for a start!
|
| EDIT - in hindsight would you like to change your
| username (leaving aside whether that's even possible or
| allowed)?
|
| Genuinely curious.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I don't feel super strongly, but I kind of like that
| people don't know which "throwaway" I am. They don't
| recognize my username from prior conversations, so
| they're less likely to think, "Oh that guy agreed with me
| last time, I'll give him an upvote or an agreeable
| comment" or the inverse. People are more likely to
| consider my arguments on merit, the GP notwithstanding.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Despite the account name, that particular user has been
| here for over three years, and has 3900 karma. They're
| not just some drive-by troller.
|
| Also, you should judge their comments by the comments,
| not by the username. Those were some fairly thoughtful
| comments, even if you don't agree with them.
| andybak wrote:
| > Also, you should judge their comments by the comments,
| not by the username.
|
| Partly yes and partly no. I spotted what appeared to be a
| throwaway. That led me to believe the poster had less
| "skin in the game" and that influenced me to some degree.
| Was that unreasonable?
| philh wrote:
| "To some degree"? Surely. It could have influenced you to
| spend a few seconds checking whether the account was a
| throwaway. I think that would have been entirely
| reasonable.
|
| But it didn't influence you "to some degree". We can be
| more specific than that. It influenced you to accuse the
| account of being a throwaway without spending a few
| seconds to check.
|
| I do think that was mildly unreasonable. Not super
| unreasonable, but mildly.
| philh wrote:
| Welp, on a second look it turns out it wasn't you who
| made that accusation. I, uh, could probably have spent a
| few seconds checking that.
| djtriptych wrote:
| No, of course it wasn't. If you can't put your internet
| handle behind your thoughts, it doesn't say much for your
| argument. Period.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > The "but what about these stats" question has been
| asked a million times. Any population-level stats for
| crime rate, income, education, etc, are affected by
| unequal starting positions, and in the US those unequal
| starting positions were enforced by racism in leadership
| for decades. And in some places still are.
|
| Agreed, but frontend disparities are an entirely
| different cause than the "police are racist thus more
| black people are killed by police" argument that
| conservatives (and others) are pushing back against.
| Notably, a hypothetical police force that is perfectly
| unbiased and which never ever uses force inappropriately
| would still kill more blacks than whites for the simple
| fact that, provided that blacks commit more crimes (even
| though the reason blacks commit more crimes is a history
| of systemic racism).
| slg wrote:
| >Personally I think these movements are the natural
| result of pivoting our epistemological institutions from
| truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy.
|
| What institutions are you claiming have shifted from
| "truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy"? It
| seems to me that the reason these institutions appear
| more progressive is that American conservatism is
| becoming less and less in touch with the truth. There are
| countless examples, but the two most obvious ones are
| climate change and the politicization of basic COVID
| precautions like mask wearing. When you stake out the
| claim that acknowledging climate change is a progressive
| viewpoint, the National Weather Service is going to start
| looking progressive when it reports facts.
|
| >when the right asks, "how do we know that racism and not
| crime rates belies police shooting disparities?"
|
| The problem is that when these questions are answered
| "the right" just dismisses the answers as biased. There
| is little to no way to satisfactorily answer that
| question in a way that will change people's minds if they
| already believe that police are justifiably harsher
| against Black people because Black people commit more
| crime.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > What institutions are you claiming have shifted from
| "truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy"? It
| seems to me that the reason these institutions appear
| more progressive is that American conservatism is
| becoming less and less in touch with the truth.
|
| I think it's a feedback loop at this point, but as for
| "which institutions", the media and the academy are
| pretty prominent institutions that have largely come to
| _describe themselves_ as activist institutions, including
| making arguments like "objectivity props up the status
| quo". Obviously these aren't monolithic institutions, and
| you still have a lot of variety within (especially the
| academy) with respect to the degree to which they've
| become progressive orthodoxies.
|
| > The problem is that when these questions are answered
| "the right" just dismisses the answers as biased.
|
| Again, I posit that's because the media and the social
| sciences have a track record of progressive bias. If they
| made a concerted effort over time to demonstrate good
| faith and a commitment to the truth wherever it leads (as
| opposed to outright identifying themselves as activists,
| although their honesty is worth something), I think far
| fewer on the right would reject a given claim as
| 'biased'. Even if I'm wrong, it must be something. There
| are a lot of people arguing that it's hopeless to
| interact with the right because they're fundamentally
| worse people or something, but clearly we haven't always
| had such a large contingent of "the right" who have
| completely divorced themselves from mainstream
| epistemology, so something is driving this change, and
| there's no reason to believe we can't stall or even
| reverse the phenomenon.
| slg wrote:
| I don't know how to counter this argument because it just
| reverts back to the original question that djtriptych
| asked for which I don't have an answer. Open discussion
| failed. Many conservatives distanced themselves from the
| truth. That inherently leaves any truth seeking
| institution with a progressive bias because reality has a
| progressive bias. I agree that can turn into a feedback
| loop like you suggest, but what is the way out of that
| for these institutions? Is the National Weather Service
| supposed to distance itself from reality and introduce
| conservative bias into its coverage in order for
| conservatives to trust it more?
|
| I'm also not sure what specifically you are referring to
| with the "objectivity props up the status quo" line. Do
| you have examples of institutions using that as an
| example to lie? Do you have an example of when an
| organization was able to "demonstrate good faith and a
| commitment to the truth wherever it leads" that was truly
| about to change falsely held beliefs of people on the
| right?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I think the answer is pretty simple: restore neutrality
| and objectivity to epistemological institutions. This
| doesn't mean that empirically false right-wing viewpoints
| need to be presented on equal footing with empirically
| true left-wing viewpoints, but rather that subjective
| issues should be described objectively rather than in the
| left-wing narrative. Similarly, when popular left-wing
| mistruths arise, these institutions should call them out
| as they would right-wing mistruths, however infrequently
| this may happen. In a word, "honesty".
|
| Conservatives (like everyone) need to specifically
| believe there is a path forward for their legitimate
| viewpoints, rather than the current system which more-or-
| less equally discredits legitimate and illegitimate
| conservative viewpoints. In addition to restoring
| objectivity and neutrality to epistemological
| institutions, we could also actively encourage more
| conservatives to participate in these institutions (and
| of course, treat them fairly and respectfully as they
| accept the invitation) to reverse decades of driving them
| out of these institutions. Yes, this is basically
| affirmative action for conservatives, and I appreciate
| the irony.
|
| Again, this phenomenon is decades in the making; expect
| it to take roughly just as long to repair.
| slg wrote:
| >I think the answer is pretty simple: restore neutrality
| and objectivity to epistemological institutions. This
| doesn't mean that empirically false right-wing viewpoints
| need to be presented on equal footing with empirically
| true left-wing viewpoints, but rather that subjective
| issues should be described objectively rather than in the
| left-wing narrative.
|
| How does this actually work in practice? What does this
| look like in terms of the coverage of climate change?
|
| >Similarly, when popular left-wing mistruths arise, these
| institutions should call them out as they would right-
| wing mistruths, however infrequently this may happen. In
| a word, "honesty".
|
| This already happens. Look at the NYT repealing of the
| Caliphate stories. How often do we get a retraction as
| big and public as that from the right?
|
| >Conservatives (like everyone) need to specifically
| believe there is a path forward for their legitimate
| viewpoints, rather than the current system which more-or-
| less equally discredits legitimate and illegitimate
| conservative viewpoints. In addition to restoring
| objectivity and neutrality to epistemological
| institutions, we could also actively encourage more
| conservatives to participate in these institutions (and
| of course, treat them fairly and respectfully as they
| accept the invitation) to reverse decades of driving them
| out of these institutions. Yes, this is basically
| affirmative action for conservatives, and I appreciate
| the irony.
|
| I will repeat my question from my last comment. Is there
| an example of this actually working? Is there an example
| of an institution that has lost the right's trust that
| was able to get it back through catering to their
| viewpoints while also remaining loyal to the truth? I am
| genuinely asking and not trying to be a jerk by just
| presenting rhetorical questions.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > How does this actually work in practice? What does this
| look like in terms of the coverage of climate change?
|
| I think the climate science, reporting, and advocacy
| seems pretty good (at least with respect to bias). Maybe
| we could be a bit more aggressive about policing climate
| alarmism and other kinds of misinformation (the notion
| that banning plastic straws is going to have a measurable
| impact on wildlife such that it's worthy of our political
| will) or the pseudo-religious ideological takes like the
| arguments that climate change and "white supremacy" are
| inextricably linked or whatever. But in general, I don't
| see climate professionals behaving as badly as the media
| en masse or social scientists or other institutions--they
| seem to be genuinely open to bipartisan solutions and
| note that this openness doesn't require them to deny
| science (contrary to the dichotomous arguments that some
| make when people suggest cooperation or neutrality or
| objectivity).
|
| > This already happens. Look at the NYT repealing of the
| Caliphate stories. How often do we get a retraction as
| big and public as that from the right?
|
| Consistency, consistency, consistency. It's not enough to
| be honest or well-behaved once, it has to be a protracted
| effort over time. On the basis of this one event, a
| reasonable person wouldn't conclude that NYT is genuinely
| aspiring toward honesty and neutrality, much less someone
| who tends toward paranoia.
|
| > I will repeat my question from my last comment. Is
| there an example of this actually working?
|
| Sorry, if you asked this question, I missed it. I don't
| know of any examples because I don't know of other
| instances where people were divided epistemologically
| like this. Case studies would be interesting.
|
| > Is there an example of an institution that has lost the
| right's trust that was able to get it back through
| catering to their viewpoints while also remaining loyal
| to the truth?
|
| I don't think that "the right" has ever been this
| detached from mainstream epistemology in the first place
| --I don't think our institutions have ever been as
| compromised as they are now, at least not on a left-right
| axis. But there's probably no reason to limit our case
| studies to corruption of a left-right nature; we could
| equally look for any institution that lost the trust of a
| group of people and then gained it back (in part or in
| full).
|
| > I am genuinely asking and not trying to be a jerk by
| just presenting rhetorical questions.
|
| I didn't perceive you being a jerk. :)
| slg wrote:
| >I think the climate science, reporting, and advocacy
| seems pretty good (at least with respect to bias)
|
| Doesn't this blow a hole in your whole argument? If there
| is little bias in this climate change coverage and
| conservatives still object to it, what makes you think
| they will accept any form of objective truth?
|
| >Consistency, consistency, consistency. It's not enough
| to be honest or well-behaved once, it has to be a
| protracted effort over time. On the basis of this one
| event, a reasonable person wouldn't conclude that NYT is
| genuinely aspiring toward honesty and neutrality, much
| less someone who tends toward paranoia.
|
| You aren't going to get an argument from me that the
| mainstream media is perfect on this. However I think it
| is clear that centrist and left leaning media is much
| much better about this than right leaning media.
|
| >I don't think that "the right" has ever been this
| detached from mainstream epistemology in the first place
| --I don't think our institutions have ever been as
| compromised as they are now, at least not on a left-right
| axis. But there's probably no reason to limit our case
| studies to corruption of a left-right nature; we could
| equally look for any institution that lost the trust of a
| group of people and then gained it back (in part or in
| full).
|
| Fair enough, but the loss of trust needs to be linked
| primarily to a _perceived_ lack of truthfulness and I can
| 't think of any examples of that either that aren't
| linked with an _overt_ lack of truthfulness. Right now
| any bias in reporting, no matter how small, is magnified
| and even truthful and completely objective reporting is
| seen as biased. I simply don 't know how you regain trust
| after that when the problem is more exaggerated in
| people's perception than in reality.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Doesn't this blow a hole in your whole argument? If
| there is little bias in this climate change coverage and
| conservatives still object to it, what makes you think
| they will accept any form of objective truth?
|
| I don't think so. I think the bias in other fields
| poisons the well of good faith. Specifically the
| conservative interface to these fields is probably angry
| people on the Internet who are as likely to bash them for
| their climate politics as for their opinions on BLM
| protests. If they were better plugged-in to the sciences,
| I think they would see that climate science is less
| problematic than critical studies.
|
| > You aren't going to get an argument from me that the
| mainstream media is perfect on this. However I think it
| is clear that centrist and left leaning media is much
| much better about this than right leaning media.
|
| I agree. I think even when things were good in these
| institutions, their relationship with the right was
| already strained.
|
| > Fair enough, but the loss of trust needs to be linked
| primarily to a perceived lack of truthfulness and I can't
| think of any examples of that either that aren't linked
| with an overt lack of truthfulness.
|
| I'm having a hard time thinking of examples too. I think
| that the 'perceived vs overt' consideration is just a
| reflection on how bad things have gotten--if you abuse
| the trust of someone for a long time, eventually their
| perception of affairs will become exaggerated. That's
| basically the whole thesis. Note that it's possible that
| we _can 't_ regain the trust of some people who have such
| a distorted view, but even still it's worth being honest
| if only to keep more people from crossing the threshold
| (and insodoing, those who have already crossed will
| become more marginalized and constitute a decreasing
| percentage of the population).
| slg wrote:
| I think the well that is poisoned is not individual
| fields or institutions but the idea of institutions in
| general. It isn't that conservatives have any reason to
| distrust the National Weather Service or the Center for
| Disease Control specifically, it is that they distrust
| all institutions. I don't think there is much the NWS or
| CDC can do to change that while still remaining objective
| and truthful.
|
| Like you said, some people may already be gone for good.
| My main concern is not necessarily bringing those people
| back. It is preventing them from corrupting the
| perception of more people who are still open to
| discussion. That brings us back to the original topic of
| social media censorship. Sometimes it isn't enough to
| constantly argue down these dangerous ideas. We likely
| need to start banning people who are actively doing harm.
| scarmig wrote:
| > What institutions are you claiming have shifted from
| "truth-seeking to progressive political advocacy"? ...the
| politicization of basic COVID precautions like mask
| wearing
|
| The most glaring example of this was public health
| authorities pushing for shut downs of pretty much all
| public spaces (including of red-coded protests), but then
| turning around and giving the greenlight to BLM protests
| as critical to public health.
|
| Another example is the imbroglio about vaccine
| prioritization, though that's more about values (is it
| worth saving more lives if the saved lives are
| disproportionately white?) than it is about factual
| claims.
| slg wrote:
| >The most glaring example of this was public health
| authorities pushing for hard shut downs of pretty much
| all public spaces, but then turning around and giving the
| greenlight to densely packed BLM protests as critical to
| public health.
|
| The BLM protests weren't the first protests since the
| pandemic started. There were anti-lockdown protests going
| on before that which were just as if not even more
| "greenlit" than the BLM protests. I will also note that
| the BLM protesters were much more likely to follow basic
| precautions like mask wearing and only holding events
| outside when compared with the lockdown protesters. In
| the end multiple organizations reported that there were
| no noticeable COVID spikes related to the BLM protests.
|
| >Another example is the imbroglio about vaccine
| prioritization, though that's more about values (is it
| worth saving more lives if the saved lives are
| disproportionately white?) than it is about factual
| claims.
|
| I don't know what you are talking about here. Care to
| share a link to a mainstream institution arguing that we
| should prioritize diversity in vaccine recipients over
| saving lives?
| scarmig wrote:
| > There were anti-lockdown protests going on before that
| which were just as if not even more "greenlit" than the
| BLM protests
|
| No. Public health authorities did not greenlight anti-
| lockdown protests, as they rightly shouldn't have.
|
| > In the end multiple organizations reported that there
| were no noticeable COVID spikes related to the BLM
| protests.
|
| Even if this were the case (I'm skeptical, so I'd be
| curious to see cites of actual papers), that indicates a
| failure on the part of public health authorities: they
| should have been greenlighting the anti-lockdown protests
| as consistent with public health, so long as participants
| masked appropriately.
|
| > Care to share a link to a mainstream institution
| arguing that we should prioritize diversity in vaccine
| recipients over saving lives?
|
| See e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-
| vaccine-firs... (non-paywall
| https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/the-elderly-
| vs-e...). To jump to the bit in question, ctrl-f
| "Ultimately, the choice comes down to whether preventing
| death"
| slg wrote:
| >No. Public health authorities did not "greenlight" anti-
| lockdown protests, as they rightly shouldn't have.
|
| At this point, I'm not sure what you even mean about
| public health official greenlighting protests. Both
| protests were allowed to happen. Both had parts of
| protests that were preplanned and parts that weren't. Are
| you just talking about the comments Fauci made in an
| unofficial capacity?
|
| >Even if this were the case (I'd be curious to see cites
| of actual papers), that indicates a failure on the part
| of public health authorities: they should have been
| greenlighting the anti-lockdown protests as consistent
| with public health, so long participants masked
| appropriately.
|
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27408/w
| 274...
|
| >See e.g.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-vaccine-
| firs... (non-paywall
| https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/the-elderly-
| vs-e...). To jump to the bit in question, ctrl-f
| "Ultimately, the choice comes down to whether preventing
| death"
|
| That appears to be an argument about saving lives versus
| returning to normal. They aren't arguing that the vaccine
| should be given to people from diverse backgrounds just
| because. They are arguing that essential workers getting
| vaccinated is more important than getting the elderly
| vaccinated. They are simply noting the essential workers
| have a "high proportion of minority, low-income and low-
| education workers" which means they often aren't valued
| politically as much as other groups. Either way, they
| were only talking about recommendations that have no real
| power in deciding what happens with prioritization.
| scarmig wrote:
| > I'm not sure what you even mean about public health
| official greenlighting protests.
|
| I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this topic if you
| think public health authorities had similar stances on
| earlier protests and BLM protests.
|
| > https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27408
| /w274...
|
| Interesting. If corroborated, it indicates that as much
| as cases rose among protest participants, the non-
| participant population strongly decreased their
| willingness to engage in other, non-protest activities.
| Though presumably that would also apply to the non-BLM
| protests, which raises the question of why public health
| authorities said that the non-BLM protests would raise
| COVID rates among participants without also noting that
| they would decrease COVID rates among non-participants.
|
| > That appears to be an argument about saving lives
| versus returning to normal.
|
| Not really:
|
| > Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy
| at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is
| reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older
| adults, given their risks and that they are
| disproportionately minorities. "Older populations are
| whiter, " Schmidt said. "Society is structured in a way
| that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving
| additional health benefits to those who already had more
| of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit."
| slg wrote:
| You are taking that quote from Schmidt out of context
| which removes the nuance. He isn't simply saying, "let's
| give the vaccine to brown people". But if you are going
| to use the excuse to stop explaining yourself because
| we'll never see eye to eye than I might as well stop
| putting any effort into this conversation too.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It's not out of context, and a great many people have
| observed the same. Here's Yglesias, not exactly known for
| right-wing takes:
|
| > You're opting for a strategy that leads to more Black
| deaths and more white deaths than the "vaccinate seniors
| first" strategy, but deciding that it's better for equity
| and this is what ethics requires.
|
| https://www.slowboring.com/p/vaccinate-elderly
| slg wrote:
| But this is once again removing context from the initial
| argument. The goal isn't to minimize Black deaths or even
| overall deaths. This has never been the goal at any step
| of the way otherwise we would have been in massive and
| prolonged lockdowns from day 1. The goal is to weigh the
| need to save lives with the need to let society continue
| functioning. That is where the essential worker argument
| comes into play. "Mitigating inequities" is listed as one
| of three bullet points in one of three categories in the
| decision making process that favors essential workers.
| You can't remove that context and pretend it is the
| overriding factor guiding these decisions.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > This has never been the goal at any step of the way
| otherwise we would have been in massive and prolonged
| lockdowns from day 1. The goal is to weigh the need to
| save lives with the need to let society continue
| functioning.
|
| I agree with you so far...
|
| > That is where the essential worker argument comes into
| play.
|
| This is where you lose me. As I understand it, essential
| workers can continue working whether or not they're
| vaccinated (yes, some will get seriously sick, but it
| won't significantly impact the economy). Rather, we want
| to vaccinate them earlier than non-essential workers
| _because they 're more vulnerable_ by the riskier nature
| of their work. However, they're not more vulnerable than
| the elderly and yet the CDC recommends prioritizing them
| over the elderly because the elderly are
| disproportionately white while essential workers are
| disproportionately non-white. At least, this is how I
| understand the argument.
| slg wrote:
| >This is where you lose me. As I understand it, essential
| workers can continue working whether or not they're
| vaccinated (yes, some will get seriously sick, but it
| won't significantly impact the economy). Rather, we want
| to vaccinate them earlier than non-essential workers
| because they're more vulnerable by the riskier nature of
| their work. However, they're not more vulnerable than the
| elderly
|
| The key point here is that essential workers have a much
| greater exposure to COVID and much less control over the
| degree to which they are exposed to COVID. Most elderly
| people don't work. Those that do (and don't qualify as
| essential workers) can work from home. It is much easier
| for these people to minimize exposure. None of this logic
| has anything to do with race or any other form of
| diversity. None of this logic is questioning the fact
| that COVID is more dangerous to the elderly if they
| contract it. It is simply recognizing that from an
| ethical perspective it is likely fairer to prioritize the
| vaccine for people who are least able to minimize their
| own risk of exposure.
|
| >and yet the CDC recommends prioritizing them over the
| elderly because the elderly are disproportionately white
| while essential workers are disproportionately non-white.
| At least, this is how I understand the argument.
|
| Diversity factored into 1 of 3 subcategories in 1 of 3
| top level categories. It isn't fair to say the "CDC
| recommends prioritizing [essential workers] over the
| elderly because the elderly are disproportionately white"
| when it is just one piece of a much larger and more
| nuanced discussion.
| scarmig wrote:
| > Diversity factored into 1 of 3 subcategories in 1 of 3
| top level categories. It isn't fair to say the "CDC
| recommends prioritizing [essential workers] over the
| elderly because the elderly are disproportionately white"
| when it is just one piece of a much larger and more
| nuanced discussion.
|
| For the two top level categories in the rubric, Science
| and Implementation, the elderly-first approach had
| achieved a score of 6/6, while the essential workers-
| first approach had achieved a score of 5/6. Elderly-first
| was favored at that point.
|
| For the third top level category, Ethics, elderly-first
| was given a score of 1/3, while essential workers-first
| was given a score of 3/3, which brought essential
| workers-first to 8/9 as opposed to the elderly-first
| score of 7/9, driving the decision.
|
| As part of the subcategories of Ethics, essential
| workers-first netted 2 points from the subcategory
| "Mitigate Health inequities," the first a positive point
| for it because "Racial and ethnic minority groups
| disproportionately represented in many essential
| industries" and the second against the elderly-first
| because "Racial and ethnic minority groups under-
| represented among adults >65." That is what drove the
| outsize result in Ethics.
|
| Here's a direct question for you: diversity
| considerations netted the essential workers-first
| approach 2 points. Would you say that "significantly
| greater number of lives saved" should be worth the same
| as diversity (2 points), a bit less (1), or a bit more
| (3)? Or do you go with the rubric and say the number of
| lives saved merits no consideration at all, because it's
| not an ethical concern on par with diversity?
| slg wrote:
| You can remove the "Mitigate health inequities"
| subcategory and the essential workers approach still
| comes out ahead in the ethics category due to the
| "Promote Justice" category which is the fairness of
| controlling exposure reason I detailed in my last
| comment.
|
| Minimizing deaths isn't being ignored, it plays a factor
| in every single one of the top level categories. It
| simply isn't a line item itself. It also needs to be
| weighed with other health considerations. For example,
| the essential worker approach reduces the number of
| infections and we should all know by now that COVID
| shouldn't be judged in a purely binary way with deaths
| versus recoveries.
|
| Also I am not putting a value judgement on these
| approaches. I am explaining the way I interpret the
| judging criteria.
| scarmig wrote:
| You can view the rubric here:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slid
| es-...
|
| Key slides:
|
| 23, Population-Wide Averted Deaths: Targetting the
| elderly over essential workers averts up to 6.5%
| additional deaths (~12% compared to ~5%). This accounts
| for network effects. That's hundreds of deaths per day.
|
| 31, ethics scoring rubric: diversity concerns net the
| essential worker approach two additional points over the
| elderly approach, not one as you claimed.
|
| 33, overall rubric: the elderly approach was favored
| until ethics was considered, where, driven by diversity
| concerns, the essential worker approach was granted 3
| overall points as opposed to 1 for the elderly approach.
|
| And the craziest thing is, at no point in the rubric is
| "fewer people will die" considered a pro on the part of
| the elderly-first approach.
|
| Preventing deaths has been the goal from the very
| beginning. This abrupt switch from "we have to save as
| many lives as possible" to "who cares about total
| deaths?" is exactly the kind of "progressive" political
| advocacy that you denied existed at the very beginning of
| this thread.
|
| For the record, I'm on the side of "save as many lives as
| possible" and have been since the very beginning.
| scarmig wrote:
| As a compromise, even "minority elderly first, then non-
| minority elderly, then the general minority population,
| then the general non-minority population" would be better
| than choosing to focus on essential workers just because
| they're disproportionately minority (which is valuing
| abstract signalling for support for racial justice over,
| you know, actual black lives).
| scarmig wrote:
| I encourage anyone who doubts it to just read the
| article. The quote is not out of context and is
| representative. Ctrl-f for "Schmidt."
|
| ETA:
|
| https://twitter.com/harald_tweets/status/1339212048471908
| 352
|
| Harald Schmidt: "Vaccine campaign managers have typically
| paid more attention to the number of lives they can save
| than the demographic details of those lives. But Covid's
| outsized effect on people of color is injecting an
| element of social justice."
| tehjoker wrote:
| Well, having the government actually help people, work
| transparently, and prosecute corruption would do wonders
| for quelling conspiracies.
| benjohnson wrote:
| Prosecuting Epstine would have helped. Auditing the voting
| system would have helped.
|
| Just _show_ the movement that there nothing to hide rather
| than yell at them and appear to cover up.
| dag11 wrote:
| But it's never enough proof, the goal posts never stop
| moving. We can't keep playing the game forever, or we'd
| be paralyzed as a society.
|
| For example, there were two months of audits, recounts,
| and countless court cases. The skeptics wanted an
| additional "ten day audit" on top of this, which would
| have consequences for the transition. After that audit,
| how do we know they'd have been satisfied? Nothing in the
| past has demonstrated their ability to be satisfied.
| pjc50 wrote:
| There have been audits of the voting system. They didn't
| believe them, and they were reported falsely in the media
| they follow.
|
| It's a cult. It's like trying to convince them that
| aliens don't exist.
|
| (Epstein would have been prosecuted .. if he hadn't died
| in extremely mysterious circumstances. Now that's a
| situation where absence of evidence where evidence should
| be expected - the security cameras - drives paranoia.)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| The "cult" (if you insist) was once much smaller, so
| _something_ must be driving this phenomenon, which means
| there is hope that we can stop or even reverse it. What
| makes people go from believing the media, science, etc to
| unwarranted skepticism? Specifically, what changed in the
| last couple of decades that might've yielded this result?
| My pet theory is that our institutions increasingly
| pivoted from truth-seeking to left-wing activism, so the
| right lost considerable incentive to play the game, and
| indeed some of the right is breaking away and finding
| their own institutions (and less savory than those that
| we've built up over decades and centuries).
| glial wrote:
| > something must be driving this phenomenon
|
| I'm going to go with a repeated exposure to propaganda
| designed to convince people that the election "WAS
| RIGGED" and sow distrust in our system of government. The
| left certainly has some questionable positions, but the
| "stop the steal" movement is not rooted in fact.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I've been thinking about Bayesian reasoning and
| propaganda. If you reason at least somewhat in a Bayesian
| way, and you're exposed to a repeated stream of the same
| lie, then if you update your priors _at all_ with each
| exposure, you will eventually regard the lie as being
| probably true. And the main point of propaganda is to
| repeat the lie as often and in as many places as
| possible.
|
| But it isn't inevitable that people update their priors.
| Many people don't when exposed to advertising, for
| example. If we recognize propaganda, then maybe we can do
| the same.
|
| The problem with that is what throwaway894345 is talking
| about, that people decide that you're propaganda and
| won't listen, even if _they_ are the ones who have
| believed the propaganda lie.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| The phenomenon in question is a sharp increase in the
| number of "post-truth" right-wingers--those people who
| can't be convinced by evidence alone that their position
| is wrong. This largely predates the most recent election
| and I would argue the rise began even in advance of Trump
| (although I think he was a coalescing figure which
| accelerated the phenomenon).
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's not just the right wing. The intellectual view that
| "all speech is about power, not truth" is much more
| prevalent among the left.
|
| Now, that wasn't a view that was largely held on the
| right. In fact, I suspect it still isn't. The "post
| truth" on the right are people who still believe in
| truth, believe that they have it, and won't listen to any
| evidence to the contrary. In fact, maybe this is the
| consequence of the "post truth" left - if the right
| believes that the left believes what the left says about
| speech, then the right has no reason to trust any truth
| claim coming from the left.
|
| But the _change_ may in fact be as you say, that the
| post-truth people grew on the right. Now you can 't sway
| chunks of either side with facts.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| You're absolutely right that there is also a post-truth
| left, but this thread is focusing on the post-truth right
| wing. Incidentally, the fix--restoring integrity to
| epistemological institutions--solves for both the post-
| truth right and the post-truth left.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'm not sure it does. The post-truth left is post-truth
| not because of lack of faith in epstemological
| institutions, but because of a different epistemology.
| You can't fix that by a more honest press.
|
| The right... if you had a more honest (or less biased)
| press, it might fix the post-truth right... eventually.
| Like, a decade or three later. You have to be trustworthy
| for a _while_ before people will trust you.
|
| And yet, I wonder if that paragraph is true. Maybe I'm
| kidding myself, but I think I can tell when someone's
| presenting an ideologically varnished version of reality
| vs. when they're telling it straight. If reporters
| stopped being cheerleaders and started reporting, maybe
| people would figure it out faster than I expect.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I'm not sure it does. The post-truth left is post-truth
| not because of lack of faith in epstemological
| institutions, but because of a different epistemology.
| You can't fix that by a more honest press.
|
| No, I think a more honest press (and other institutions)
| ceases to reward illegitimate left-wing viewpoints. They
| have to play the game to get the credibility (and
| credibility is power) which is exactly what we want. If
| you want credibility for your tech-gender-parity
| position, it no longer suffices to make blank slatist
| arguments because an honest epistemological institution
| will expose that as anti-science.
|
| > Like, a decade or three later. You have to be
| trustworthy for a while before people will trust you.
|
| I think this might be true. I think it's a lot harder to
| earn trust than it is to break it. On the other hand, I
| think we can stop the bleeding (i.e., stop creating new
| post-truth people) rather quickly and in time those
| others will slowly become more moderate and/or more
| marginal and eventually (like all of us) die out such
| that our society moderates with time.
| idrios wrote:
| There was a really cool article a few months ago that
| tried to model polarization on the political spectrum [1]
| -- on the premise that most people will start off
| moderate on issues and then update their weakly-held
| views to align with people they like, and against people
| they hate, until they converge.
|
| Through this lens, my own theory of what's happened is
| that a few conservative news outlets -- conservative talk
| radio, Fox News, etc -- made themselves into an anchor on
| the political spectrum by strongly holding opinions that
| would capture a large audience. Christian/pro-life, pro-
| freedom, pro-free-market, and all the other stances
| ossociated with conservatives. The left is much less
| organized because it's trying to capture all voters who
| don't fit the mold of what is conservative, and there is
| a ton of diversity outside of conservativism a la LGBT
| rights, the role of police, the role of unions, how to
| help minorities, how to help foreigners, the state of US
| jobs, the importance of the environment, etc.
| Conserviatives are probably much more unified in their
| views on these issues than liberals are.
|
| However, as time moves forward the conservative values
| haven't changed while liberal values have been updating
| much more quickly, and there's no path for conservatives
| to come back to the center. If you're pro-life but
| sympathetic to minorities, you have to choose between the
| side you see as murdering babies, vs the side you see as
| not offering help to minorities. You probably side with
| anti-abortion, then after a while convince yourself that
| not helping minorities is the right thing to do anyway.
|
| I think a way out is to have more than 2 anchors, e.g. a
| way to vote pro-gun but also pro-environmental
| regulation. And I think a way to achieve that is to
| switch to ranked voting -- it makes 3rd parties more
| viable so you can vote for the candidate that most aligns
| with all of your views, which gives people more
| flexibility for changing their views.
|
| [1]https://phys.org/news/2020-06-theory-political-
| polarization....
| yakcyll wrote:
| > What makes people go from believing the media, science,
| etc to unwarranted skepticism?
|
| It's the phenomenon of illusory truth. Wiki has some
| sources [0][1][2]. It seems inherent to discussions on
| the Internet as it becomes more and more accessible and
| popular. The only obvious way out seems to be educating
| people, but not enough entities seem interested in doing
| so right now. Maybe pessimistically, I don't think people
| en masse can learn on their own about the dangers of
| misinformation unless crises occur that directly impact
| their lives.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160515062305/http://www
| .psych....
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160514233138/https://ww
| w.apa.o...
| munk-a wrote:
| > _something_ must be driving this phenomenon
|
| I think that thing is the shift from being anti-science
| from being uninformed and ignorant to being anti-science
| being praise worthy since "You can like see through all
| the BS man". There was once a time when facts and the act
| of gaining knowledge were really highly praised by
| Americans but that has shifted. IMO, one of the highest
| praised virtues today is that of grifting, if you're a
| scientist and smart then whatever - but if you're an
| idiot and manage to trick people into thinking you're a
| smart dude then all praise to you. You beat the system,
| you're playing 4D chess!
|
| I _think_ (again heavily into my opinion) that this shift
| occurred because politics shifted to a point where
| politicians were incentivized to support policies that
| were actively harming their constituents - discovering
| that lead was unhealthy and all of the other side effects
| of pollutants - put a lot of money into the anti-science
| campaign and let the demonization of intellect flourish.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| That's naive nonsense.
|
| Epstein was in the process of being prosecuted when he
| died. The state has no credible mechanism to continue
| prosecution (along with a vigorous defense) once he's
| dead. There was no way to do what you wanted.
|
| Voting systems were audited, and all that happened was
| that Q people made up bullshit and moved the goalposts.
| None of the conspiratorial-minded right-wingers looked at
| the 60 lawsuits or the many recounts and took them as
| evidence that their cause was incorrect. They took it as
| proof that the truth was just even more oppressed.
|
| Facts don't work against bullshit. This is an important
| lesson that people like you need to learn. Wake the fuck
| up, you dumb son of a bitch.
| geofft wrote:
| Epstein was a thing for them to latch onto. If he were
| prosecuted, it would be something or someone else.
| (Soros? Gates? Hillary Clinton? Jeremiah Wright? etc.)
| Or, alternatively, there's no convincing argument that
| had Epstein never been born, the Qanon movement would
| have been noticeably smaller or weaker.
|
| If your claim is that it would have helped to deliver
| justice in every single case of injustice, promptly and
| transparently, then yes, that certainly makes for a
| better society and certainly everyone agrees with that
| goal but it's also never going to be 100% completed.
|
| And if you remember 2004, there were serious allegations
| of unaudited changes to the voting system as well as
| coverups and hiding of important information (like what
| we knew about Iraq's weapons program or lack thereof),
| but the movement of people who objected to both of them
| _did not_ storm anything. So there 's something else
| different here.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| Part of the problem is that people _feel_ things are true
| and you can 't debate or logicise that away. You can't
| argue against a feeling because it's deeply personal and
| you can't invalidate feelings. The most you can offer is
| another perspective and hope they're willing to consider
| it. Short of having them convince themselves, you can't
| really change people's minds when they feel something is
| true.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It has to start with admitting the systems are imperfect
| and unchecked misconduct is _possible_ even if it 's not
| actually happening.
|
| The insistence that our systems infallible is not at all
| helpful because anyone can see that's not true.
|
| Once we get to admitting unchecked misconduct is possible
| in the current systems, we can make some progress to
| reducing those possibilities. Right now we're resisting
| that path, and that's just not sustainable.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Those voting systems were audited and that made
| absolutely no difference. Once the conspiracy theories
| were being debunked in court, they just kept coming with
| new ones.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Prosecuting Epstine would have helped. Auditing the
| voting system would have helped.
|
| Both of those things happened. The prosecutors indicted
| Epstein, but he killed himself before the trial could
| proceed. The voting system has been audited _many_ times
| this cycle.
|
| > Just show the movement that there nothing to hide
| rather than yell at them and appear to cover up.
|
| The real issue is "the movement" doesn't like the true
| result. It doesn't matter to them how fair the process
| is, they'll reject it unless they get what they want.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Also don't change the rules right before the election.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| The rules were changed months in advance. Due to this,
| suing only after a loss was heavily disfavored by the
| courts.
| nawgz wrote:
| No rules were changed right before the election, except
| perhaps by Trump who tried to rail against mail-in voting
| and destroyed the USPS in the process.
|
| This talking point - that mail-in votes were somehow less
| secure than previously - is such a post-hoc
| rationalization it makes me sick
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| The voting system _was_ audited, repeatedly. Biden even
| _gained_ votes because the auditing system discovered
| that some votes weren 't being counted. It was brought to
| multiple courts repeatedly and the only thing done was
| that elector witnesses were allowed to be slightly closer
| to the people counting.
| exabrial wrote:
| I'll throw one in: requirement that all electronic voting
| systems have 100% of source code available to review by
| anyone, with the exception of private keys or symmetric
| keys, which would only be available in extremely limited
| circumstances.
|
| To be clear, I'm in the "the 2020 election was fine" camp.
| I just think this is something a government "by the people"
| should be doing anyway.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| These people need to see with their own two eyes that the
| things they think are true are not true.
|
| There is probably no bringing back some of the people who
| have gone really far down that road if corporations and
| government act with transparency and consistency going
| forward I think it will bring many people back and prevent
| more from doing down that road.
| beckingz wrote:
| These people can stay crazy longer than the country can
| last.
|
| For instance, if some people reevaluate their beliefs and
| come to a more generally accepted understanding of truth
| in the near future, the capital will still have been
| rioted.
| djtriptych wrote:
| I agree. The idea that we can quell this mob with truth,
| evidence, and reason should have been long ago abandoned.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| That would be difficult.
|
| I personally believe Q is an organization of trolls. They
| exploit/prey upon people's desire to be a part of something
| larger than themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if there's
| merely a couple handfuls of people all trying to outdo each
| other developing these conspiracies that keep to the Q
| lore/universe while spreading like fire. I don't think
| these people actually believe any of these conspiracies.
| They simply want to come up with ways to make _other_
| people believe what they want them to and act out on those
| beliefs.
| thakoppno wrote:
| Is it surprising to anyone that Q hasn't been unmasked at
| this point?
|
| Presumably there's an FBI investigation into it and it
| seems unfathomable to me that intelligence agencies can't
| figure out who is behind it.
| djtriptych wrote:
| What makes you think a single person or organized group
| is behind it? It's just a loose collection of
| unsubstantiated conspiracies.
| Dig1t wrote:
| People seem not to realize that every action spawns a
| reaction by the other side, especially extreme ones. All this
| censoring will almost undoubtably cause some people on the
| other side to double down, unfortunately. :/
| chalst wrote:
| What kind of a follow-up to insurrection constitutes
| doubling down? Launching a nuclear missile?
| spoonjim wrote:
| You can't think of a terrorist attack with more than four
| deaths?
| [deleted]
| amalcon wrote:
| People also don't seem to realize that the action does not
| need to be _real_ to cause a reaction by the other side. I
| 'd provide an example, but to do so would just inject my
| own biases.
|
| I'm sure anyone reading this can think of at least 5-6
| "reactions" by the other side which had no precipitating
| action -- regardless of which side they're on. It starts to
| seem a little silly to worry about the reaction on the
| other side, when that reaction is likely to happen anyway.
|
| There are good, principled reasons to avoid censorship.
| Concern about what irrational actors will do in response is
| not one of them.
| mental1896 wrote:
| I actually can't think of any. Could you give just 1
| example?
| amalcon wrote:
| I'm trying to avoid my own bias here, so I'm going to
| come up with two examples that should be familiar to US
| audiences, one from each side. Take your pick:
|
| - Impeaching Trump and attempting to remove him from
| office after the Ukraine call (which Trump supporters
| believe to be perfectly normal presidential behavior, and
| Trump opponents believe was naked corruption tantamount
| to solicitation of a bribe)
|
| - The recent insurrection in the American capitol to
| prevent the certification of Biden as the next President
| (which Trump opponents believe to be the result of a
| legitimate process, and Trump supporters believe to be an
| entirely fabricated victory)
|
| I happen think the former was a fully warranted reaction
| to a real (if ineffective) attempt to undermine American
| democracy, and the latter a reckless and contemptible
| reaction to nothing. It's irrelevant to my point, though:
| if you can look at either of those and say there's
| nothing there, then the other side is completely capable
| of reacting to nothing.
| seppin wrote:
| > All this censoring will almost undoubtably cause some
| people on the other side to double down, unfortunately.
|
| QAnon needs deprograming and therapy. Anything short of
| that will "cause them to double down".
| willis936 wrote:
| Retaliating against the behavior of an unrelated
| authoritarian regime is irrational.
| mikestew wrote:
| _People seem not to realize that every action spawns a
| reaction by the other side_
|
| A change in wind direction would cause a reaction by this
| "other side". I would argue that the most recent actions
| are not those of completely mentally well folks who are
| going to respond well to rational discourse. And I don't
| think we should take marching orders from the mental
| delusions of insurrectionists. "I'm not going to do the
| right thing because the nutters on 'the other side' might
| take it wrong." Umm, no, I don't think so. We can just
| arrest the nutters later.
| geofft wrote:
| Inaction also spawns a reaction by the other side, as most
| infamously Chamberlain learned. I don't really buy a policy
| proposal of "ignore it and it will go away" absent some
| more concrete reason to believe it.
|
| And, in fact, the policy we've been taking re QAnon over
| the last few years was precisely "ignore it and it will go
| away," and it didn't work out so well.
| kibwen wrote:
| It goes to show the naivete of the "sunlight is the best
| disinfectant" crowd. Sure, sunlight is the best
| disinfectant... and oxygen is the best accelerant.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| You say this as if there aren't millions of people who are
| willing and eager to assume the truth is being covered up
| already.
|
| Come now, that withstands zero investigation. Even with zero
| censorship, millions upon millions would fall into terrible
| rabbit holes already. The sad fact is some people love
| conspiracies and love thinking they're the real informed ones
| amidst the sheeple.
|
| The real effect of censorship on FB and other insanely wealthy
| and powerful social media would be forcing the platforms to
| reckon with the garbage collection they've never solved. If
| Zuckerberg can donate 99% of his wealth to charity, maybe he
| can apply that to his own company and use those resources to
| stop problems at their inception.
| loufe wrote:
| Let's make sure we use the right terminology, especially on a
| site like HN. People love conspiracy THEORIES. There are huge
| conspiracies going on right now, doubtless. There are also
| THEORIES of conspiracies which are downright ridiculous,
| mixed in with those acurately predicting some real ones.
| Conflating conspiracies with conspiracy theories is a great
| way to minimize efforts to uncover actual conspiracies on the
| go.
| genericone wrote:
| This is how Zuckerberg's dream of connecting the entire
| population of the world comes to an end. Countries that don't
| want foreign influence (of both good and bad varieties) injected
| directly through their citizens eyeballs will ban social media
| first. Then a "nextdoor" style social media company will appear
| and allow individual countries to control how their social media
| is used. That or a Docker image with a Generic Social Media App
| can be bought and loaded onto a regional datacenter controlled by
| said country, because "cloud" will get a well justified bad label
| of being associated with foreign influence.
|
| Does a multi-country-specific social media company already exist?
| In any case, the 2020's will be an interesting decade for this
| space.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| Facebook allows region specific control. Who do you believe
| does "content moderation" for groups talking in Swahili? Or
| Arabian? Or Chinese? To be honest i do not know, all i can tell
| is who does it in german and it is not south dakota. Sure many
| people in uganda speak english and can probably move
| discussions to other regions, but that would also be possible
| with more "regional social networks".
| [deleted]
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| This is totalitarianism disguised as "combating disinformation".
|
| "I'm from the government, I'm here to help" -- run, run for your
| fucking life.
| antiman0 wrote:
| > A source in Uganda's telecom sector said the government had
| made clear to executives at telecoms companies that the social
| media ban was in retaliation for Facebook blocking some pro-
| government accounts.
|
| This is probably the interesting bit - a retaliatory move by a
| regime trying to silence the opposition. I don't think this has
| too many parallels (except for blocking of accounts) with the
| current US events, which is why this is probably being upvoted?
| slim wrote:
| It is related to US elections. because dictators in Africa can
| point to USA when they get criticized. Why should Facebook have
| the power to police speech during elections in Uganda and not
| the state of Uganda ?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| They don't have to point to the U.S., they've been doing this
| for a while now:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711941
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| Why should the state have power to police speech during
| elections? (FB shouldn't either)
| slim wrote:
| to ensure election is fair. one candidate could be a media
| mogul, other candidates won't have a chance against him.
| it's the same reason why tv debates are timed and have to
| be balanced
| ejanus wrote:
| Don't use such words here dictators_ and why Africa?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Escalating retaliation between corporations and centers of
| political power is something that could happen in the US.
| secondcoming wrote:
| It could be argued that FAANG-type corporations are now the
| centres of political power.
| baybal2 wrote:
| It's really inconsequential to the man in charger.
|
| He is, after all, running for like his 10th term now.
| mainstreem wrote:
| >a retaliatory move by a regime trying to silence the
| opposition. I don't think this has too many parallels with the
| current US events
|
| You're right, in the US the government doesn't have the right
| to shut down private businesses because of the political
| beliefs of the users, so the hard left gets Big Tech to operate
| as a cartel to do it for them.
| [deleted]
| eznzt wrote:
| Better than doing what we do in the "civilised" world: only
| banning one side.
| vlunkr wrote:
| That's a huge exaggeration, I'm sure you'll still find millions
| of Trump supporters on twitter and facebook.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm pretty apathetic about these bannings (so hopefully this
| comment doesn't read as support or opposition), but "not all
| conservatives were banned" does not refute "only
| conservatives were banned".
| root_axis wrote:
| The latter is an obvious lie.
|
| https://twitter.com/blm
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Oooh, that's interesting. I hadn't heard about that one.
| Thanks for sharing.
| mrec wrote:
| Official account is https://twitter.com/blklivesmatter so
| I suspect this was a fake or parody.
| eznzt wrote:
| Was that twitter account official in any capacity?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Yes it does, as it highlights their conservatism is not
| what got them banned.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| "their conservatism is not what got them banned" _also_
| does not refute "only conservatives were banned".
|
| (FWIW, I'm at least as strongly opposed to _both_ sides
| as they are to each other, although that doesn 't really
| have any bearing on "You are committing the logical
| fallacy of conflating "only X" versus "all X".". Edit,
| aside: "existential" qualifier would be "some X", not
| "only X"; is there a term for "not any non-X"?)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| No, it doesn't. A rather obvious disproof: Twitter could
| ban 15% of conservative accounts expressly for being
| conservative.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The fact that you associate these viewpoints with
| conservatives is an indictment on conservatism, not an
| indictment on Twitter.
|
| Twitter has and will ban _zero_ people for conservative
| viewpoints. Twitter has and will ban _as many people as
| necessary_ for content that has the potential to lead to
| offline harm.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Was it not obvious that my example was contrived and
| hypothetical? How could I have been more clear that I was
| merely commenting on the logic and not speaking in
| support or opposition to the bans?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It was obvious, however it was not specific whether or
| not your statement was regarding the determinant for the
| ban or an attribute of the banned, which is relevant in
| this case.
|
| "A property of those banned was that they were all
| conservative." is not the same as "The people who were
| banned were treated so as a result of their
| conservatism."
|
| For people who _aren 't_ ignoring the specific situation,
| we're aware that there's a general accusation of,
| "Conservatism is getting banned from Twitter!" so in this
| context your ambiguity is resolved by applying context,
| which then makes what you tried to point out wrong.
|
| So in this context, saying "only conservatives were
| banned" can be interpreted to mean, "conservatives were
| the target of the ban", which is then false, and what I
| responded to as such.
| vlunkr wrote:
| They said "only banning one side" which reads to me as "all
| conservatives were banned"
| dmingod666 wrote:
| Unthinkable, how could someone support a sitting president.
| Are you telling me that some people will also start
| supporting Biden in the future? what has the world come to..
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| How has a "side" been banned? Who has done this?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| klmadfejno wrote:
| civilised actors don't smear poop in their nation's capitol.
| 45t3424rgf wrote:
| civilised actors also dont riot for 7 months and burn down
| mulitple cities
| cambalache wrote:
| Neither destroy restaurants, neighborhoods and police hq.
| anothermoron wrote:
| They burn it to the ground instead ?
| dheera wrote:
| Yeah seriously. Also why are they so overly concerned with US
| elections but not concerned with the elections of 100 other
| democracies in the world?
| chrismeller wrote:
| Well you have to admit that the US is the 800lb gorilla in
| the room, at least as far as countries that actually even
| pretend to hold elections that mean anything.
| uniqueid wrote:
| civilized
|
| I have trouble relating that word to the fresh memory of
| watching drooling, bearded gun-monkeys clambering on tables in
| the Capitol chanting 'hang Mike Pence!'
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Both spellings of that word are acceptable. Get off of your
| high horse, especially if you can't even ride it yourself.
|
| Your depictions of the very disturbed, impoverished and
| desperate people involved in the DC/Capitol building fiasco
| are heartless, cruel, and completely uncivilized. You clearly
| have no idea what is going on in their lives, just as so many
| of them were unaware of what the BLM marches were all about.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the site guidelines by flaming other
| users like this, regardless of how right you are or feel
| you are. We ban accounts that do that--we have to, because
| it destroys what HN is supposed to be for: curious,
| thoughtful conversation.
|
| The GP already stepped in the wrong direction with name-
| calling rhetoric, but the thing to do in that case is to
| improve the thread by stepping back in the right direction.
| You can make your substantive points that way, so there's
| no loss. They'll be more persuasive actually.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| I find this an interesting comment, coming a day before
| the best company in your employer's portfolio does this
| [0].
|
| It looks like your "curious, thoughtful conversation,"
| idea only applies to the very narrow confines of HN - and
| only, of course, when you choose to employ your moderator
| authority by bumping your message to the top of the
| thread.
|
| Perhaps the problem is your guys' rules. I cannot think
| of a community that shows a more wanton disregard for
| community guidelines, than this one. Your portfolio
| companies all exist in stark contrast to these ideas.
|
| [0] https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-to-block-and-cancel-d-
| c-reser...
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm with you, but I will say I'm currently dealing with a
| codebase that spells "organization" half the time, and
| "organisation" the other half of the time. Yes, variable
| names, and since it's JavaScript, it doesn't actually error
| out until the code is executed...
|
| Not super related, but it's caused me a number of
| problems...
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Sounds like TypeScript could be a solution for you :)
| pjc50 wrote:
| They definitely weren't all impoverished. Certainly not the
| retired USAF colonel. https://www.military.com/daily-
| news/2021/01/10/retired-air-f...
| uniqueid wrote:
| Both spellings of that word are acceptable
|
| Because I was quoting a single word, I just typed it into
| my phone, which 'autocorrected' it.
|
| There's nobody, and I mean 'nobody' literally, whose
| actions I cannot empathize with, if I take into account
| their limitations and life experiences. It's impractical to
| do that in everyday life. One would never be able to pass
| judgement on anybody. And I pass judgement on these
| dangerous idiots.
|
| A reminder, by the way, that my feelings here aren't
| particularly directed toward you, personally :)
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| You've had an entire year to understand that people's
| lives are being wrecked senselessly and needlessly by
| unprecedented, totally illegal government mandates.
|
| The lockdowns caused the madness of the BLM summer, and
| it caused this thing that happened last Wednesday. People
| are at their buckling points, and that is a thing ripe
| for malicious actors to take advantage of. Even you:
|
| > drooling, bearded gun-monkeys clambering on tables
|
| Seriously? This is bigotry. How much do you need to tweak
| this sentence before it is _very conventionally_ racist?
| uniqueid wrote:
| Even that short reply suggests we have very different
| views on about five big issues. Let's just agree to
| disagree.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Yeah, what a shocker. The guy who labels their enemies as
| drooling monkeys has severe disagreements with me.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I won't bicker with people online, and neither should
| you. Life is too short! Enjoy your afternoon :)
| eznzt wrote:
| I think you misunderstood my tone. What I meant to say is
| that we often look at these things (Uganda banning social
| media) as "things that only happen in banana republics".
| eranima wrote:
| Disappointed yet again with upvoted comments on hacker news
| defending murderers and terrorists. There's defending free speech
| then there's defending terrorism. This is not ok.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Opposition candidate Bobi Wine had his home raided by the Ugandan
| military in the middle of a podcast:
|
| https://citizentv.co.ke/news/bobi-wine-cuts-short-interview-...
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/uganda-presidential-candidate-bobi-win...
| jermeh wrote:
| I haven't listened to it yet, so I can't speak on the quality
| of it, but Spotify is currently running a podcast series titled
| "The Messenger" about Bobi's efforts here. The two most recent
| episodes were uploaded yesterday, so the information should be
| relatively current.
| glenneroo wrote:
| Your second link has a wonderful 45 minute documentary about
| Bobi Wine which got me up to speed with what's going on over
| there. Highly recommended!
| baybal2 wrote:
| I'm puzzled how that an increase Museveni's "odds" at winning
| his n-th term, when it's already a foregone conclusion.
| chrismeller wrote:
| Am I the only one that's starting to think the US should do this
| too? I don't care about censoring any ideas I'm just sick of all
| the obnoxious people screaming at each other and not changing a
| single mind in the process.
| chopin24 wrote:
| I'm with you. I care about free speech. I care about the
| implications of censorship. But I'm also just tired of it all.
| If (for example) banning Trump from Twitter means we stop
| having entire articles and public radio pieces devoted to
| talking about them... it's hard for me to fight that.
| DenisM wrote:
| So what is your proposal? A blanket ban on all social media as
| a public health hazard? I'm on board with that. Maybe just add
| them to the Schedule 2 drug list?
| stale2002 wrote:
| If you are sick if it, then just log off. No one is forcing you
| to stay on social media.
| trident5000 wrote:
| They dont want Facebook to overthrow their election. Makes sense.
| secondcoming wrote:
| It would be an interesting social experiment to see what happens
| if twitter turned itself off worldwide for a week.
| chopin24 wrote:
| Perhaps there's a middle way, something I've been experimenting
| with myself personally when it comes to digital devices: A
| digital Sabbath. Don't call it that of course, since it has
| religious connotation, but instead just... Turn Twitter off 1
| day a week. Doesn't even have to be the weekend. Just close up
| shop on Tuesdays, give everyone a break.
|
| We long ago learned that you can't be 'on' 24/7, yet we let
| ourselves fall into it with digital media/social networks.
| rvz wrote:
| Then the world's media companies would have to report actual
| "news".
|
| Which is boring to them and essentially doesn't attract the
| extra eyeballs they need to make enough revenue.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| The tiny fraction of the populous who spend hours a day on
| Twitter might have panic attacks, the rest of us who realize
| that Twitter (and social media in general) is a cesspool of
| toxicity and who never use it would carry on like normal.
| jsonne wrote:
| The bigger effect is that many journalists get their scoops
| from Twitter. The legacy media would have a difficult time.
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Good, they can go back to more traditional methods, of
| paying professional reporters to be in their local areas
| for those scoops. Rather than scrape what some person
| tweeted.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Id like that to be true but Twitter has 400 million users
| which is a large chunk of the developed world.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| The VAST majority of twitter posts are created by a tiny
| percentage of people.
| andai wrote:
| A sad week for the nsfw art community.
| Reedx wrote:
| It's a tiny fraction, but they punch far above their weight.
| The discourse from there bubbles up to the news media and the
| entire culture.
| pelasaco wrote:
| bad with social media, worse without it. Our new dilemma.
| chopin24 wrote:
| >worse without it
|
| Why do you think so?
| pelasaco wrote:
| if in one hand social media can be used for bad - as we saw
| with Cambridge analytics and etc, in another hand without
| social media, the Government or the most powerful party, can
| as usual - in Africa and South America - with a megaphone,
| money, medicament and old school propaganda, manipulate the
| opinion and consequentially win the elections.
|
| Let's say that without social media, you constrain who is
| able to manipulate the opinion to the dominant groups in the
| Country: The rich family that owns the favorite TV/Radio
| channels, the Army general supported by the riches, the man
| from the working classes that never worked, and so on...
| chopin24 wrote:
| Have we really seen the power return to the people because
| of social media? That was the theory during, e.g., The Arab
| Spring. But, it doesn't seem like it's held. It feels like
| the old guard has taken over social media and used it to
| their ends, putting us back where we started.
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