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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :/
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.
Censorship is often used by the strong to advance their personal interests. For instance two people "on the same side" have a lovers quarrel. One of them deplatforms the other. Another example: some official takes a bribe, and when the press realizes they are censored. Third: Some company has a competitor, and gets them censored for purely monetary reasons.
Another aspect where censorship creates issues is that every idea starts as fringe before growing mainstream. If they are censored it creates ideological stagnation.
A third is that true but "dangeroues" ideas, can have important implications. And those implications may be ideas beneficial to everyone. But since the dangerous idea is censored, no one will figure the implications out, and the benefits are not realized. For instance, let's say there was election fraud, but the censors "bet on the wrong horse" (nothing is certain, at some point you have to say it's >95% certain so we will treat it as true) and censor such claims. Then they may miss opportunities to make elections fairer in the future.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.)
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"?
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."
> 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).
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.
> 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?
"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.
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?
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.
>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.
> 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.
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?
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.
>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.
> 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 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.
> 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).
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.
> 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.
>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?
> 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?
>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.
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.
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.”
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
> 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?
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.
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).
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.
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.)
> “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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
As a conservative, this post is the first thing I have read on this subject, ever, that neither confirms any of my pre-existing biases nor is blatant 'the right just hates facts' garbage. Thank you for some genuine insight.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
> 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?
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 ?
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
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.
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".
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.
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?
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.
“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.
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.
> 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.
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...
> 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.
Last time I checked, right-wing ideas haven't been banned from social media. Unless you're conflating those who hold extremist views and mainstream views under one category, which is a dangerous and counterproductive classification.
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.
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!'
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".
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.
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.
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.
Sure, HN moderation comments only apply to the very narrow confines of HN. It's hard enough to make a dent within these narrow confines—why would we waste energy trying to affect anything else? Someone trying to plug their roof in a rainstorm can't keep the whole neighborhood dry.
I'm afraid I don't understand your point about YC portfolio companies but obviously they all do what they want and have nothing to do with the operation of HN. At least I think that should be obvious?
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...
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 :)
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?
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”.
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.
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?
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.
"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"?)
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.
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...
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.
I don't think the power will return to the People, because the power never belonged to the People in the first place. But I think with social media, outsiders can get a more complete image from a social event other than the official one from the traditional media.
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.
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.
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.
with an informative top comment from a Ugandan HNer.