I don't think there's much to be learned from SA in this context. It existed during a different time of the internet, when cultural capital and honestly just raw power were allocated differently.
It existed into the "modern" era of rage engagement, influencers, clickbait etc, but I would consider its "flourishing" to have ended well before that.
It's also very very funny to me the general tone of self-congratulatory nonparticipation all over this comment section about how superior we all are for not using social media or twitter or whatever.
HN is social media too! I've heard the arguments why it's not but they aren't compelling to me; it is one. The main difference between here and twitter is the tone.
On here there is a cultural expectation that you will perform dispassionate erudition but if you read beyond that at all very few comments are any more intellectually stimulating than an average tweet. Less, honestly, at least people on twitter still seem to value joy and humor and whimsy.
HN has an interesting business model relative to other social sites. Instead of serving targeted ads, the site itself is essentially one giant ad for Y Combinator. That creates better incentives to promote high quality discussion because low quality discussion more directly harms the YC brand. But it's still gotten a lot worse over the years.
HN's business model does not rely on "engagement", which means they encourage interesting and in-depth discussions instead of flame-wars and low-quality clickbait content.
Furthermore the "algorithm" is well-understood and is driven by users as opposed to a black-box algorithm designed to optimize "engagement".
Finally human moderation here is competent and keeps things in check, as opposed to treating it like a cost center and outsourcing it to underpaid people working in terrible conditions who most likely don't speak our language natively and might misunderstand the context or meaning of things (which becomes a problem when you're supposed to draw the line between what's offensive/snarky and not).
counterpoint:
1) the difference is on hn, shitposting, trolling and straight up being offensive is strongly discouraged.
2) I have experienced joy, whimsicality and humor in here. We are people not machines.
3) i have learned about more new things than in any other place. I have frequently changed my mind because of the quality of the arguments
4) no matter what the subject is people with deep expertise seem to show up and it’s a joy to actually hear from them
> You can pretty much be as cruel as you want on HN as long as you don't swear or call people names too much.
That is deeply not the case, and if you or anyone finds examples of it, you should let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. If people are being cruel and not getting moderated, the likeliest explanation is that we haven't seen it, because we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. Oh and we don't give a fuck about swearing.
The generalization you're making is so false and so mean that I would call it a slur, both of this community and of the people who work on it.
I've just deleted the longer part of this comment because we've had this discussion in private mail several times, but for the record: I think you're focussing too much on naked words, and ignore evil behaviour (like intentional misrepresentations of the other one's position) too much.
I'll concede that your job is hard and you're doing a mostly good job. I just think it could be better.
The cruelty I'm talking about is not individual posters hurting each other. It's how we talk about people who are not here, who can't be here. How we judge the poor and dispossessed, uneducated, addicted and marginalized. People pushed aside and hurt by inequality that WE build in our work and then come here to virtuously discuss.
Can you honestly go look through the comments of any post touching any of those issues and call them kind? It's one thing to say it's out of scope for moderation because they keep it civil and calm. But to say the cruelty isn't there is to choose not to see it.
It took 15 seconds. I just typed "poor" into the search bar, sorted comments by dates, and the first comment that used "poor" in the sense that you did easily qualified:
It is wildly not the case that the median HN commenter who writes on stories related to economic inequality is biased against marginalized people.
This is a pretty clear instance of what Dan refers to as the "notice-dislike fallacy"; you've noticed people writing callous comments, because they rub you the wrong way (as they do me), but haven't noticed the countervailing comments, because they're boring (to you).
i think we may be moving the goalposts a little here.
we were talking about joy, humor, whimsical and we shifted to a straight-up utopia where everyone is kind to everyone and no bad comment is ever made.
Philosophically, I would say HM is like a wealthy suburb. You don't see trash in the street. People mostly follow the law and are good neighbors. Everyone wants their neighborhood to be okay and are okay sharing/learning about gardening and home improvement from each other. Now: are some people disconnected from the what other people experience as the harsh reality somewhere else? Absolutely. This is the case everywhere. What you do when you see or hear someone with a completely different perspective is listen and try to understand what they are talking about. We all need to get better at this no matter where we are (work, store, hn, twitter, etc)
You do a great job, dang. Frankly I'm baffled at how you do it, and I can see why this comment would upset you.
But all you can do is push the nastiness below a certain threshold of passive aggression. It's literally impossible to do more than that.
I've found it just a bit more unpleasant to post here with every few months which pass. Insults still get moderated and downvoted, sure, but bad-faith dismissals and pugnacious pedantry become incrementally more common, not to mention drive-by downvotes on neutral and factual posts which maybe signal some kind of tribal affiliation, no matter how weakly.
> I don't think this can be solved, but it's real.
Of course it can be solved, just not on a public pseudonymous forum. As long as people exist that are entertained by trolling, derailing or just in general making the internet a little worse every day you cannot win. Filtering content or accounts is a fools errand, filtering people allowed to comment and post on the other hand would trivially solve this, especially when their real reputation is on the line with every comment but then you don´t get the network effects that low effort account creation and pseudonymity give you.
> Of course it can be solved, just not on a public pseudonymous forum.
Here is an important observation I think I've made over the years:
All else being equal, the HN model (full names voluntary, IRL connection voluntary i.e only username and password, long lived profiles encouraged) has been better for interesting civil discussions.
Why?
Full name policies only encourage this explosive mix:
- People who don't realize the foolishness of commenting publicly using their full name on a controversial case.
- People with fake but real-looking accounts.
- People who realize it is stupid but does it anyway sometimes because even newspaper comments sections deserve some adult voices.
Very many of the people you'd want to hear from are silent because they don't want your name mixed in with the regulars in the comments there.
I don't know about that, I'll occasionally post lightly trolling comments out of whimsy and not malice and they generally don't get downvoted into oblivion.
I also really disagree that tone is a minor and unimportant factor, keeping the discussion civil manages to open up the door to a lot more discussion between people who disagree strongly. One of the users I recognize on here I recognize not because we agree - but because usually when we're talking in a thread it's an interesting conversation despite a really deep philosophical disagreement.
right, HN only cares about conforming to protocols. If you conform to the social protocol, you can advocate for the most horrible of positions on this site.
Just to clarify - why would we ever not want that to be the case? If someone is making a well reasoned argument that's clearly wrong then I'm happy to read it - I have faith in myself and those on this forum that they'll be able to comprehend the statement and read out the same conclusion - if it's hidden or using underhanded conversation techniques those will generally be called out but there might be a few interesting nuggets in an otherwise incorrect argument.
because if you have one party that is nice and polite and uses proper decorum and they are actively doing harm to another party, and that other party is upset because harm was done to them, and your response is "I will listen to the person that is behaving according to decorum", you are taking the wrong side. Bad actors -love- decorum, especially when access to understanding the rules of that decorum is itself a marker of class, tribe, or belonging in some way.
It's really pretty simple: Being polite is better than not being polite. This doesn't mean you should never listen to someone who is angry, but it makes perfect sense to make it a site-wide policy to disallow this sort of behavior when the goal is to have productive discussions.
The problem is not politeness vs. impoliteness, but rather acting in good faith vs. pretending to do so. As readers, it's our responsibility (now more than ever) to tell good faith from trollish decorum.
This place allows angry response in technical discussion, but not to following guy: I had seen on HN a guy literally advocating forced marriage and forced sex - all politely. He also advocate for strong punishmemts of women who have sex out of wedlock.
Oh and forcing them to marry a guy they had sex with, regardless of whether it was rape or not. As social engineering to force good behavior on others.
He was all polite and serious. And I still perceive him as the biggest threat to my safety and well being. And the most uncomfortable thing that was tolerated here.
No, being polite is not better and does not make it better. If I am expected to be perfectly nice to him in response, well this place sux sometimes.
I think it's also our responsibility as commentors to provide civil counter arguments so that other readers are able to see both sides of whatever topic is being discussed while not being pre-disposed to either angle. If you're an expert on a topic and see an error being stated you should clarify the discrepancy so that other folks less versed on the topic can see the error as well.
HN does have an assumption built into the guidelines that we should assume all arguments are being made in good faith - I don't actually have an issue with reading arguments made in bad faith in good faith myself - if someone makes a baseless claim that is refuted soundly and sanely in a comment then readers will be able to parse the two comments and will generally favor the one more clearly made in good faith. Ad hominem attacks actually hurt your argument here while on twitter they can bolster it - most of hackernews has no respect for "sick burns".
> I think it's also our responsibility as commentors to provide civil counter arguments so that other readers are able to see both sides of whatever topic is being discussed while not being pre-disposed to either angle.
it literally is not. The idea that all topics have equal both sides is not founded in any actual reality, it is a device used by those who would push falsehoods to demand an audience. Falsehoods do not deserve equal footing to truth.
I disagree - the truth should never be harmed because lies are dressed in fancy clothes and the truth is a madman running through the streets in rags.
I am totally fine with bad faith actors making ad hominem attacks since it weakens their argument, but responses made in good faith should keep it civil to not erode their own argument. By the way, I can sympathize with you somewhat as this can essentially lead to sealioning[1] and that is extremely common elsewhere on the internet. But with strong moderation and flagging mechanics that actually work quickly on HN obvious sealioning can be quickly called out and quashed. I understand that some folks get their jollies by making low effort arguments and forcing others to put thought and time into crafting a well formulated counter argument - this will happen on the internet and it can be depressing to realize it after the fact but I think it's still worth it to try and craft well structured[2] responses when you can.
I don't actually disagree with this statement:
> Falsehoods do not deserve equal footing to truth.
and if I were running a talk-show called Hacker News then I wouldn't invite on folks with obviously racist viewpoints, but this is an internet forum where we can't pre-emptively screen participants. So I'd argue it's less about putting falsehoods on equal footing to the truth and more about making sure the truth of the truth isn't eroded by it coming out of a poor mouthpiece that biases opinions against it.
If someone wrote a comment that's obviously in error to you please do write a response highlighting what you think the problem was in a calm voice so that other people who might not notice the error can see it clearly spelled out. And do that because you're options are:
1. Respond in a sane tone
2. Respond with personal attacks or a poorly formed argument
3. Decline to respond
On that list is not the option to delete the comment you think it incorrect so, of the choices, I think #1 is by far the best option.
it's really pretty simple: caring more about politeness than about the core of people's arguments is both intellectually dishonest and endemic on this site.
Like stated in another comment, it's not about politeness, it's about constructive discussion, you present rational arguments and that only. If someone's position is abhorrent, no matter how they sugarcoat it, people should be able to tell
except that's not at all the case for two key reasons, and possibly more: for one thing, the core of your argument relies on the assumption that participants should be able to tell, but the only way to separate information from disinformation on a topic is if you're already educated about that topic. The alleged purpose of this discussion board is for people to become more educated about the topics we're discussing. If we assume that everyone is coming to the table already educated on the topics, what we're saying is that this is a space where beginners do not belong, and that this space is not an entry point for the industry. A space that is not welcoming to the uninformed is not a welcoming or friendly space, it is a hostile space.
The second major way in which this concept collapses is that HN has a dangerous addiction to labeling things ad-hominem attacks. If someone makes a horrific argument, and you say "that argument is horrific and leads to harm being done to others", you are in every case met with responses along the lines of "that's an ad-hominem attack" or "that's politics this space isn't about politics". HN posters time and time again fail to separate the argument being made from the person making them.
It's not about being educated on a topic, it's about being good at reasoning (and as a consequence being able to spot bad reasoning). It's also about being curious and doing your own research when you see people talk (and disagree) about something that interests you. This is a much more general set of skills that anyone should have and it takes a lifetime to develop. There's no way around that.
> this is a space where beginners do not belong
Not true at all. There's a lot of introductory material hitting the front page every single day here. If you ask a technical question there's usually someone VERY knowledgeable who will be more than happy to teach you some things and point you to further guidance. I often see two people disagreeing about a topic they both know WAY more about the topic than me. What am I supposed to do? Tell them their knowledge is unwelcoming to me? No way! A level-headed dialogue between them is about the most productive form of teaching I could hope for.
You don't just talk over people who know their shit as if you knew more about it. You present your knowledge (and lack thereof) and ask questions, maybe build an argument. If they're interested in continuing, they will engage in a similar way. I don't see what's so "hostile" about that.
> "that argument is horrific and leads to harm being done to others"
If you just say that and leave it at that, that doesn't mean anything. It's not an ad hominem, but it's not an argument either. If you provide an argument and evidence, you should be taken more seriously. I can tell you I've seen A LOT more ad hominem attacks being labeled as such than actual arguments. What commonly happens, though, is a commenter mixes both a good argument with an ad hominem (or some other fallacy), and then others focus on the fallacy and not the argument. Of course that's bad, but it's all the more reason to not be fallacious.
I don't think that's the case on HN, which is what is being discussed on this comment chain. If you're indeed referring to HN, I'd be glad to read an expanded argument.
I agree that on Twitter this is a much more complicated matter.
Considering that downvoting and flagging have karma thresholds - coupled with the vouching mechanic for dead comments. I honestly think HN has a pretty good setup for this. We've also got something miles better than Reddit - a limit on how much Karma you can lose on a given comment. I think that works wonders against echo chambers by allowing objections and clarifications to be raised without any real fear of being karma bombed for it.
I'm not sure that it is true that there is even such thing as decorum on social media, or if there was, if you could reasonably define it. The Internet is a global communications system linking hundreds of countries, thousands of cultures, and perhaps millions of sub-cultures, class affiliations, and tribes. Even the fact that we are here, on HN, speaking English puts us squarely in the minority of people who use the Internet.
For me, that's exactly what I want: any opinion is okay to be expressed, as long as it's expressed respectfully. My problem with Twitter is exactly its "social protocol", which is often leaving out all nuance, taking things out of context, and provoking on purpose (in anything vaguely related to politics).
> If you conform to the social protocol, you can advocate for the most horrible of positions on this site.
You shouldn’t assume that every argument made against a particular solution to social injustice is an argument advocating for social injustice.
While there are some people who are just plain racist or bigoted or have certain religious views; and therefore believe that racial/gender/etc injustice is inevitable, many others are just arguing against a particular solution.
For example, not everyone agues against dialectical materialism because they want people to be poor. They just don’t think communism can work.
People have been talking about how "superior" the conversation on HN is compared to other fora for as long as I've been participating (over a decade). I don't find it much different.
It certainly has its share of silliness, especially around the subjects of VC and Silicon Valley culture generally. And economics...
If Twitter is multiple echo chambers HN is one echo chamber.
It's no surprise within the echo chamber things seem harmonious, but there's something really funny about seeing people from here thumb their noses down at Twitter.
If you follow the right people in tech on Twitter, their replies are pretty similar to HN, and it's a lot of the same people.
Crapping on Twitter while acting like HN is above it all is kind of like saying your favorite coffee shop is so much better than the entire City of New York.
> the difference is on hn, shitposting, trolling and straight up being offensive is strongly discouraged.
you can be deeply offensive on hn if who you are offending is people outside of what hn considers to be its own audience. hn posters will defend the harm their software does to society all over town. people on this site care only about decorum; the syntax of kindness without the semantics.
The site guidelines say "Be kind" for deep reason, and we attempt to encourage that in every way we know how. I don't know who you think "hn considers to be its audience" but the answer is: anyone with intellectual curiosity. That's basically everyone.
I'm biased of course, but I also see more of this place than anyone else does (at least I hope I am, since I get paid for it), and comments like yours do not reflect the community at all accurately. "People on this site care only about decorum" is a cheap shot, and—speaking of syntax without semantics—is a cliché at this point too. People in this community care about considerably more than that. ("Syntax without semantics" is a great phrase, though. Did you come up with that? I like it.)
The denunciatory generalization you're making seems to me an example of unkindness, and so a little ironic whilst denouncing others for unkindness. I don't like seeing anyone unjustly accused.
If you, or anyone, has a good idea about what we can do to make this place more kind, I'd love to hear it (as long as it doesn't reduce to "ban my ideological enemies", which turns out to be what a lot of people would prefer, but is not viable given the mandate of this site).
> I don't know who you think "hn considers to be its audience" but the correct answer is: anyone with intellectual curiosity.
That's what the HN organizers think it is and want it to be, but I don't think it's an accurate reflection of how HN users actually behave. It's prescriptive, not descriptive.
> People in this community care about considerably more than that.
I've been here many years and that has not been my experience. I come here to look for updates on libraries and tools I use and to hear about new libraries and tools. In the years I have been here, I have found this to be the most nihilistic, false-equivocating social media site I have ever encountered. What I have witnessed all too often is that admissible HN opinion talk stops at "what makes a computer program well-constructed", and very rarely considers "how might computer programs cause harm to their users and to society". Often times when people say "hey maybe that use of technology is harmful to [group of people not well-repesented on HN]", that discussion is immediately downvoted into oblivion. When it comes to software criticism, that is, the well-reasoned consideration of how software affects society, HN gets an F. HN doesn't care. HN would look at a Java program for a police torture system and would say "it should be written in Haskell" instead of "maybe we shouldn't be building instruments of torture". Maybe a given individual user wouldn't, but that's how the votes would land.
> If you, or anyone, has a good idea about what we can do to make this place more kind, I'd love to hear it
Sure. Here's a few.
Remove all visible scores from the site entirely. The idea that a person is aware of points given to them for saying the correct thing incentivizes saying things that get points, not saying things that improve the discussion. I'm not saying that no system of tracking the success of comments should exist. I'm saying that currently, the mechanics of HN allow people to see their own karma and are rewarded for saying things within the HN zeitgeist with more karma. The karma system precludes the Overton window from shifting.
It's a discussion board. There should be no point reward for comments posted. The reward is the replies you get from others.
Experts and beginners are given an entirely equal footing, but beginners outnumber experts in every topic; that's what makes them experts. If all of the experts in a topic think one thing, and all the beginners think another thing, should the beginners always win because they are more numerous? Hmm.
One solution might be to implement something akin to pagerank, but on a topic level. E.g., if a thread is posted about Ants, a user that had participated in a lot of past discussions about Ants should have their upvotes/downvotes weighed more heavily. There are doubtless other solutions, and since I'm not in your codebase I'm not sure what solution is actually reasonable.
Separately, make posts a limited resource. The mechanics of this are, I imagine, proper difficult to get right. Very very difficult. Some ideas that would have to be tested: You can only post if you have a post token. You're awarded a post token every six hours, even when you're gone. You can hold a maximum of four post tokens. Add in some mechanic where users can cause other users to gain post tokens. Some concepts along that line: When you reply to someone, they are awarded a post token (or a portion of a post token). Upvotes grant either post tokens or portions of post tokens. If a user really loves a comment, they can give one of their own post tokens to the person that made that comment. Users in their first week are given only 1 post token a day.
"What I have witnessed all too often is that admissible HN opinion talk stops at "what makes a computer program well-constructed", and very rarely considers "how might computer programs cause harm to their users and to society". Often times when people say "hey maybe that use of technology is harmful to [group of people not well-repesented on HN]", that discussion is immediately downvoted into oblivion."
Could you cite some specific HN submissions where you've observed this behavior? I honestly cannot recall a single one.
> defend the harm their software does to society all over town
I accept there are people who feel that an argument in defence of certain types of software is in bad faith, and an argument made deliberately to hurt and exclude others.
It’s not much of a leap, given that harm obviously exists to many in society, and software isn’t helping, or at least that some people get much more benefit from it than others.
However, not everyone believes that software harms people. Not everyone believes that that harm is deliberate. Not everyone believes that anything can be done, and even if they do it’s probable that they have differing ideas on what is to be done.
I get that when people see problems, and they see others ignoring those problems, or arguing with them, that they feel that those other are being callous, cruel and disrespectful. As the saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
I sympathise, but I can’t agree. There are so many solutions to the world’s problems and so few who agree on any of them. I can’t just assume that everyone who adopts a contrary position is deliberately being cruel, deliberately acting out of selfishness or deliberately acting to exclude and suppress other views.
A good concrete example of this are MBAs, one of HN’s favorite punching bags. With any article about something bad or stupid happening in a tech company, eventually someone will prop up an anonymous MBA straw man to blame and start beating on it. You’ll see vitriol targeted at MBAs that will get you a cooling-off ban if directed towards Rust programmers or entrepreneurs.
when you see a strawman point it out. people may not like it, you may get downvoted but... something about being the change you want to see.
for example: I routinely get down-voted every time I say something positive about cryptocurrencies. Should I stop telling people my opinion when the overall sentiment on HN is pretty negative when it comes to the likes of bitcoin and ETH?
nope. I disagree. I make a living from writing software and I will not defend the harm software does to society. I will go even a step further and say that I will not work in any place where it's clear that net result of the software produces does more harm than good.
people on this site care more than just decorum. sweeping generalizations like this rarely hold water.
honestly 1 3 and 4 used to be true, but I haven't felt that here in a while. Nowadays there are way more crackpots and conspiracy theorists here than I'm comfortable with
No not really. If you put them in a list of features and compare them it seems pretty close, they have most of the same stuff. But if you actually learn and use both the android one is much worse.
I didn't catch if she said she was completely blind or not. She may be able to make out some shape or color distinctions and is using that as a navigational aid.
I have a friend who is blind but keeps their phone on max brightness for this reason. Very little comes through but they still find it helpful.
People are sometimes kind of down on that approach in software, considering it sloppy. Especially in comparison to other engineering disciplines it just looks kinda bad sure.
But really I'm pretty sure if for example civil engineers could build a bridge in an hour and load it up consequence-free they'd do it too.
The fact that we do it isn't bad at all, but yeah it's easy to not realize when you've exited the realm of consequence-free testing.
I mean, the novel of 3d printing is that it's just additive construction, don't we already build dams and almost all other structures that way already?
No dude they are not the same. PUA stuff came out of a deeply misogynist internet subculture with close ties and many overlaps with far right activists, "red pill" violence, and ethnonationalism.
Plus it's just inherently manipulative and gross. I know no one on HN likes to hear a value judgement but seriously go take a look. And I'm sure someone will jump in with like "but it's not manipulation just acknowledging reality/it's empowering for shy nerds/whatever" and ok sure sure sure but no.
> I know no one on HN likes to hear a value judgement
I get it. When identity, sex and romance are concerned then emotions in oneself can run high. I definitely see it in my own comments. I feel closely to 3 groups which are: pick up artists, hackers and feminists. I am not alone in this, though definitely not a "majority". Whenever any of them are blanket statement attacked without any nuance, I offer a different perspective. I mostly have this with feminism since the idea of a pick up artist isn't used that often in Europe.
> Go take a look.
I did:
* Double Your Dating (the page on humor is cool, "attraction is not a choice", don't remember anything else)
* Juggler Method (learned about disqualification -- aka not taking things too seriously but then more methodically -- and statement of intent -- aka answering "why are you talking to me?" <-- and answering that truthfully and respectfully)
* Mystery Method (high level overview, peacocking and getting yourself in a sociable mood, discarded the rest -- no negging, no routines, Mystery Method is tricky, I had to read this very critically since he seems a bit deluded and IMO most people that read this book read it in the wrong way and start to become negging routine people. IMO, not a good thing. When I read this book I followed a course on ethics because being sharp on that subject is required.)
* Pickup 101 (lots of playfulness and improv)
* RSD (mostly Tim's stuff, which is high energy optimistic positivity, didn't connect with the rest, Tyler seems too "Cartman-like" to me)
Communities I've been part of:
* Almost all Dutch communities (had friendships with some of the members, mostly spiritual or super down to earth types)
* I've been to the 21 Convention in Stockholm (in 2008, which was the time where this was an active thing in my life)
That's the stuff I connected with. I read much more stuff that I didn't connect with. Some companies are deeply misogynist, but the participants aren't (well some are). The participants are the majority of the whole culture, a culture that's mostly silent (and a few loud people that then goes on to have all the media portrayals).
I've seen a few things happen in people their development path:
* Some people become misogynistic while they weren't at first
* Some people came in misogynistic and "sharpen their ways"
* Some people become spiritual (a subset even celibate), because they realize it's not about finding love and so on
* Some people develop a lot of hobbies and start to learn how to enjoy life (I love this group, you can tell they get a lot out of it)
* Some people find a relationship
* And finally there are some people that are still stuck with their old problem after years
I have no numbers, but to insinuate that most pick up artists are misogynistic requires that you've been in the seduction community and spoke to all kinds of people from all walks of life that did not take the center stage and did not appear in the media. Because it's those people that make up the 99% of the culture.
> many overlaps with far right activists, "red pill" violence, and ethnonationalism.
Another thing: US and EU differ. My perspective is EU, I make no claims about the US since I only know the "media side" from there. And yea, that's not a great side to see.
> Plus it's just inherently manipulative and gross.
No it's not. Before I did this, I was too serious with people. I still am. Now I am aware of it and can account for that. This means that people have more positive experiences with me. Moreover, it taught me more about empathy from an emotional point of view (through meditation, the most life changing thing I've experienced). Being optimistic, being positive, empathetic and doing meditation all came because I took a few pages from the pick up artist playbook. There's a lot in their playbook, these were the most important things that I took from it. I do agree that there are gross/manipulative ideas in there. I did my best to filter those out. I see a lot of men do that (and unfortunately also a sizeable group that didn't and straight up got culted into some pickup company's philosophy).
In other words: it depends, it's more nuanced, it's not inherently anything because reality is more complex than that.
Regardless of all that, the allegations (a rape trial, getting a hitchhiker to perform sex acts on him for $6 under the threat of being left in the middle of nowhere, among so many others) are pretty horrendous, no?
Yes they are. I wish no one would have to experience that. It scars people for life.
Slightly off topic, but this is even more so the case when children have to watch the abuse (due to living in a small house). Some kids will never be able to develop normally.
Source: I knew a lot of broken kids when I was their age.
This apparent contradiction is just a moderately clever way of using an ambiguity in the word.
If "deplatforming" is taken to mean "depriving people of an easy means to find and communicate to an audience" it can be an effective technique depending on context, alternative communication channels, etc.
If "deplatforming" is taken to mean "a novel social ill based on depriving people of their right to communicate" then yeah it's a myth.
That's basically the same thing. The purpose of doing the former is the latter, since everyone does it.
Free speech is like encryption at this point. Sure, it's not technically illegal, but if you actually try to do something for the public to use then the system will find some way to make it impossible and shut you down.
No the second embeds two important differences from the first: that this is new (it's as old as writing at least) and that it's bad (a value judgement you can fall on either side of).
Well the first two at least. I'm describing my beliefs. They are also shared by a lot of people; y'all wouldn't have to yell about free speech so much if this view was unpopular.
I admit that I also enjoy riling up first amendment fundamentalists but it isn't my main goal and these are my sincerely held beliefs so I don't think really qualifies as trolling.
Fair enough, I already knew all of that, I just wanted to make sure you're not trolling me by saying things you don't actually believe.
Putting the potential straw man aside, wouldn't you say that your definition of a 'myth', whatever it might be, is ambiguous to the point where you can accuse anyone of spreading myths and disinformation, even if they're factually correct? For example, let's get everyone offended and say that someone could say that George Floyd getting killed by police is a myth, because he was killed for resisting and being a criminal, and it wasn't a bad thing at all. People cast a moral judgement on this event, so in a way it is a myth, is it not? Or is it when it's something that contradicts your own moral judgement?
Yes, you can talk about whether "deplatforming" users is good or bad without introducing politics into it. When someone turns it into an "us vs them" issue, it distracts and devolves the conversation.
No, you're embedding a bunch of viewpoints in this comment as facts when there is absolutely room for disagreement.
For example I think "rural people's best hope of finally not being an afterthought" is massive government infrastructure projects that don't factor in profitability. Note that I am not trying to _have_ this discussion here, just pointing out that it's a valid disagreement.
And the author of that tweet it seems considers this a loss of an ancient and fundamental shared planetary resource. I think anger is an understandable, even appropriate reaction to that perception!
The point is to get people to talk about it and maybe also not just accept the neoliberal consensus about the role of technology and infrastructure and their externalities. Seems to have succeeded by that measure.
There is plenty of substance here but you're using the author's anger and profanity as an excuse to not engage with it.
How is a massive government infrastructure program that doesn't exist an alternative to a satellite system that does exist? If I'm out in a rural location I can either use satellites for internet or the non-existent government program?
It's also clearly not a loss of an ancient planetary resource. The satellites can't be seen with the naked eye so the vast majority won't notice. Astral photographers and astronomers may have to do slightly more post-processing on certain types of images, but that hardly seems like a big deal.
It existed into the "modern" era of rage engagement, influencers, clickbait etc, but I would consider its "flourishing" to have ended well before that.