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Still i prefer a place like 4chan where there is true freedom of speech and not a place like reddit ruled by facistic mods. On HN you also can't really say many

by jsf666 11y ago

Still i prefer a place like 4chan where there is true freedom of speech and not a place like reddit ruled by facistic mods. On HN you also can't really say many things cause it is moderated, I've experienced it many times that people will just try to ban/downvote you into oblivion instead of discussing anything.

gbanfalvi 11y ago
Yet somehow the quality of the discussion/information is better in reddit and even moreso in heavily moderated subreddits such as r/askhistory or you know... simply on here. Even on 4chan, amusingly, the best boards are the ones ruled most strictly.
- nxttuesday 11y ago
  Example? /tv/ sucks Yet all the content is seen, including the good stuff - I think a filter reduces good stuff and shit stuff and you get a crappy middle
- Loughla 11y ago
  It depends on what you're looking for, really. If you want mindless brain candy, to giggle at absurdity, or revel in the filth that is humanity - then the larger boards on reddit, and /b/, and /r9k/ are the place to be, and in that context, are better. If you want curated debate and discussion, then more moderated boards and places like hn are where to go, and would be called better in this case. I would say that the discussion quality is better on more heavily moderated boards, but the exposure to varied topics is definitely stifled. The flip side of heavier moderation is that it is much easier for dissenting opinions to be stifled. And even if it's not intentional, or not even occurring, knowing that there is heavy moderation will always lead a very vocal minority of users to claim discrimination and censorship. It's harder to avoid being just an echo chamber, too.
morganvachon 11y ago
"Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest or censor you for it. If someone invites you into their home and you start calling their family names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is well within her rights to throw you out and shut the door on you. Similarly, if you go onto an Internet forum that is owned by someone who is not you, they can moderate you into oblivion because it's their forum. > On HN you also can't really say many things cause it is moderated, I've experienced it many times that people will just try to ban/downvote you into oblivion instead of discussing anything. That is the community doing that, not the owners of HN, so I don't understand why you'd have a problem with it. You are free to post what you want here, and other users are free to up/down vote you, or reply to you, as they see fit. That is the very freedom you're crying for here, right? I get it though: You want a fully unmoderated soap box to say whatever you want and don't want anyone to censor or moderate you. You're never going to get that using someone else's forum, so the solution is simple: Build your own! Buy a domain, learn to code or use a premade platform, launch a VPS or CoLo box, and post to your heart's content. If you are able to build an audience and get people to listen to you, great. If you choose not to censor or moderate your users, great. But I think your eyes will then be opened to exactly how difficult it is to maintain an Internet forum without some sort of rules and moderation.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  I'm glad you've made this post because all too often there's an odd streak of this good-whatever-you-want-even-if-it-harms-someone mentality on the Internet. It's like some people think the use of an electronic broadcast medium some how mitigates or eliminates the actual harm that comes from their actions. But if we remove the notion of "it's only the Internet" from the equation the same behavior comes under harassment and anti-stalking laws in the US. So, how it is any different if you stalked a person online from that doing it in person? How it is less of a threat because the Internet makes it easier to do? The possession of a firearm makes murder easier to do but it doesn't make murder less of a crime either. I just think some people are looking for an excuse to break the core values of civil society for the sake of some sadistic pleasure of harming another human being. /rant
- wtbob 11y ago
  > "Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest or censor you for it. No, it's the First Amendment which means that the government may not arrest your for what you say or censor your speech. 'Freedom of speech' means exactly what it says on the tin: that you may speak freely. In the United States, the government must respect your freedom of speech, and private entities have no such restriction. > If someone invites you into their home and you start calling their family names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is well within her rights to throw you out and shut the door on you. Note that this is the same argument used by a monarch to justify restrictions on speech: it's his home, and you're welcome to leave. I think that it's fine and proper that private entities are free to regulate speech on their properties, but I also think that it's often inadvisable and unfortunate that they do so.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Agreed. Freedom of speech doesn't begin and end in the Constitution. Its an American ideal, embodied in the Constitution to show we mean business. But at every level, we mean that everyone is born with the right to speak their mind. Opposing that is un-American at core. To say "I suppressed their speech but it wasn't unconstitutional" is a very poor defense - that what you did can't be punished by the supreme court. I'm supposed to respect you for that? Its not just inadvisable and unfortunate; its wrong. At least here in America.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
"True freedom of speech" is an awful thing. It puts those who words cannot hurt in a place of immense power over those who words can hurt.
- jordan0day 11y ago
  I'm kind of uncomfortable with this line of reasoning, and definitely uncomfortable with this statement: > '"True freedom of speech" is an awful thing.' That is, a good use of freedom of speech is to "speak truth to power". Yes, it's awful when freedom of speech is used to kick someone when they're down, but we need to preserve that freedom so that we can kick someone when they're (wrongly) up.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    That's tyrannical. Freedom of speech must have limits. Those limits protect the vulnerable.
    - foiboitoi 11y ago
      You don't make sense. And empowerment > infantilization
      - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        Why doesn't what I'm saying make sense? Absolute freedom of speech is tyrannical. It gives the privileged enormous power to do harm. Freedom of speech must be limited so it is a power against the powerful, not the powerless. Protecting people from hate speech and incited violence is not "infantilisation". It's basic human rights. Are you not familiar with the Intolerance Paradox?
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        All true. But FoS is also a normal behavior used by people everwhere, to make themselves clear. The guy standing on a stump in the park, complaining about his sister-in-law has the same right, for the same reason. Its not just a political-action-tool. Its supposed to be a human right, like life and liberty.
mratzloff 11y ago
If you've experienced down voting here many times, maybe you're just not contributing anything of value.
- jsf666 11y ago
  More like i don't bend myself to fit the hivemind/status quo. Maybe Copernicus also didn't contribute nothing of value cause the comunnity thought so? As I said most times there is no sensible rebuttal to the facts/thesis given, it's only "i don't like your opinion so go away". After some time the board/comunnity degenerates to a echo chamber where the nails that stand out are quickly hammered in
  - morganvachon 11y ago
    That can happen here and in other forums, but it still doesn't mean your rights are being trampled. You go into a polarized community and start speaking against the status quo; what did you expect to happen? I'm not saying it's right, but it's the way of society. But being modded down or +gasp+ having to hear someone's opposing position does not equal your rights being trampled. You make it sound as if you only want your opinion heard, and anyone who doesn't agree with you is "trampling your rights". There's a ton of irony there.
    - roblfrieburg 11y ago
      > but it still doesn't mean your rights are being trampled. Where did jsf666 say their rights are being trampled, you've just invented that unless they've edited their post. This is like strawman the post. On topic it's hilarious that he/she's complaining about downvotes for airing opinions against the hivemind then gets downvoted for that opinion. Way to prove them wrong. (jsf666 comment is currently greyed out)
      - mratzloff 11y ago
        > On topic it's hilarious that he/she's complaining about downvotes for airing opinions against the hivemind then gets downvoted for that opinion. Not really. > Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
t2015_08_25 11y ago
Just the mere fact of people downvoting you for what you wrote validates what you've said: I agree with you 100%. After reading so much social media which is designed to increase one's professional reputation, ego and social status like facebook and HN (as well as main stream news about celebrities and politicians), it's grounding and humanizing to go to a place like /b/ where you can't maintain a reputation. You can actually be honest and get an honest human response. This was one of moot's main reasons for keeping it going. I chat there with suicidal people, people afraid to go to doctors, people abused and neglected by their parents, people trying drugs, people seeking spirituality, homosexuals from small towns, all afraid to speak up in public, their doctors, their schools. I hate the racism there. The sexism is not great. I especially the deplore the animal torture. But even real-life socializing isn't as intimate and bold as anonymous socializing. And what people need to remember is that a .gif of a scumbag who rigged a clothesline to drown a dog every time it moves is just a picture. The disgusting act has already been done. Moreover, these images are evidence that bad things happen and we can feel justified in doing something about them in real-life instead of only acting on fear. I need to look past all of that crap in order to have actual human connections I can't get in real life or online. And so do the people on the other end of my connections. Because mainstream social life has failed us. When I said you can't maintain a reputation on /b/, though, there are some workarounds: People create labels for their groups like gamergate and anonymous that leak out into the rest of the world. There are plenty of those people who obviously aren't satisfied to have intimate, anonymous conversation and have bigger axes to grind. They wreck the environment and as the saying goes, "This is why we can't have nice things." I could see all of that being too damn much of a toll to take on moot, and I don't require of him that he maintain any particular ideals. I also heard other things, but who knows. > people will just try to ban/downvote you into oblivion instead of discussing anything Yes, especially on HN and reddit, voting is not used to eliminate spam and off-topic, but to indicate consensus values and idols. So even if you're right, if you don't validate the hivemind, you get downvoted. You could tell the world the Earth is round during the dark ages and get downvoted. If you're a recognizable name on HN, you instantly get upvoted. It's the same chickenshit conformity that creates the capitalistic hierarchy in mainstream social life.
- Retra 11y ago

by jsf666 11y ago

gbanfalvi 11y ago

Yet somehow the quality of the discussion/information is better in reddit and even moreso in heavily moderated subreddits such as r/askhistory or you know... simply on here. Even on 4chan, amusingly, the best boards are the ones ruled most strictly.

nxttuesday 11y ago
Example? /tv/ sucks Yet all the content is seen, including the good stuff - I think a filter reduces good stuff and shit stuff and you get a crappy middle
Loughla 11y ago
It depends on what you're looking for, really. If you want mindless brain candy, to giggle at absurdity, or revel in the filth that is humanity - then the larger boards on reddit, and /b/, and /r9k/ are the place to be, and in that context, are better. If you want curated debate and discussion, then more moderated boards and places like hn are where to go, and would be called better in this case. I would say that the discussion quality is better on more heavily moderated boards, but the exposure to varied topics is definitely stifled. The flip side of heavier moderation is that it is much easier for dissenting opinions to be stifled. And even if it's not intentional, or not even occurring, knowing that there is heavy moderation will always lead a very vocal minority of users to claim discrimination and censorship. It's harder to avoid being just an echo chamber, too.

morganvachon 11y ago

"Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest or censor you for it. If someone invites you into their home and you start calling their family names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is well within her rights to throw you out and shut the door on you. Similarly, if you go onto an Internet forum that is owned by someone who is not you, they can moderate you into oblivion because it's their forum. > On HN you also can't really say many things cause it is moderated, I've experienced it many times that people will just try to ban/downvote you into oblivion instead of discussing anything. That is the community doing that, not the owners of HN, so I don't understand why you'd have a problem with it. You are free to post what you want here, and other users are free to up/down vote you, or reply to you, as they see fit. That is the very freedom you're crying for here, right? I get it though: You want a fully unmoderated soap box to say whatever you want and don't want anyone to censor or moderate you. You're never going to get that using someone else's forum, so the solution is simple: Build your own! Buy a domain, learn to code or use a premade platform, launch a VPS or CoLo box, and post to your heart's content. If you are able to build an audience and get people to listen to you, great. If you choose not to censor or moderate your users, great. But I think your eyes will then be opened to exactly how difficult it is to maintain an Internet forum without some sort of rules and moderation.

norea-armozel 11y ago
I'm glad you've made this post because all too often there's an odd streak of this good-whatever-you-want-even-if-it-harms-someone mentality on the Internet. It's like some people think the use of an electronic broadcast medium some how mitigates or eliminates the actual harm that comes from their actions. But if we remove the notion of "it's only the Internet" from the equation the same behavior comes under harassment and anti-stalking laws in the US. So, how it is any different if you stalked a person online from that doing it in person? How it is less of a threat because the Internet makes it easier to do? The possession of a firearm makes murder easier to do but it doesn't make murder less of a crime either. I just think some people are looking for an excuse to break the core values of civil society for the sake of some sadistic pleasure of harming another human being. /rant
wtbob 11y ago
> "Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest or censor you for it. No, it's the First Amendment which means that the government may not arrest your for what you say or censor your speech. 'Freedom of speech' means exactly what it says on the tin: that you may speak freely. In the United States, the government must respect your freedom of speech, and private entities have no such restriction. > If someone invites you into their home and you start calling their family names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is well within her rights to throw you out and shut the door on you. Note that this is the same argument used by a monarch to justify restrictions on speech: it's his home, and you're welcome to leave. I think that it's fine and proper that private entities are free to regulate speech on their properties, but I also think that it's often inadvisable and unfortunate that they do so.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Agreed. Freedom of speech doesn't begin and end in the Constitution. Its an American ideal, embodied in the Constitution to show we mean business. But at every level, we mean that everyone is born with the right to speak their mind. Opposing that is un-American at core. To say "I suppressed their speech but it wasn't unconstitutional" is a very poor defense - that what you did can't be punished by the supreme court. I'm supposed to respect you for that? Its not just inadvisable and unfortunate; its wrong. At least here in America.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

"True freedom of speech" is an awful thing. It puts those who words cannot hurt in a place of immense power over those who words can hurt.

jordan0day 11y ago
I'm kind of uncomfortable with this line of reasoning, and definitely uncomfortable with this statement: > '"True freedom of speech" is an awful thing.' That is, a good use of freedom of speech is to "speak truth to power". Yes, it's awful when freedom of speech is used to kick someone when they're down, but we need to preserve that freedom so that we can kick someone when they're (wrongly) up.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  That's tyrannical. Freedom of speech must have limits. Those limits protect the vulnerable.
  - foiboitoi 11y ago
    You don't make sense. And empowerment > infantilization
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      Why doesn't what I'm saying make sense? Absolute freedom of speech is tyrannical. It gives the privileged enormous power to do harm. Freedom of speech must be limited so it is a power against the powerful, not the powerless. Protecting people from hate speech and incited violence is not "infantilisation". It's basic human rights. Are you not familiar with the Intolerance Paradox?
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        All true. But FoS is also a normal behavior used by people everwhere, to make themselves clear. The guy standing on a stump in the park, complaining about his sister-in-law has the same right, for the same reason. Its not just a political-action-tool. Its supposed to be a human right, like life and liberty.

mratzloff 11y ago

If you've experienced down voting here many times, maybe you're just not contributing anything of value.

jsf666 11y ago
More like i don't bend myself to fit the hivemind/status quo. Maybe Copernicus also didn't contribute nothing of value cause the comunnity thought so? As I said most times there is no sensible rebuttal to the facts/thesis given, it's only "i don't like your opinion so go away". After some time the board/comunnity degenerates to a echo chamber where the nails that stand out are quickly hammered in
- morganvachon 11y ago
  That can happen here and in other forums, but it still doesn't mean your rights are being trampled. You go into a polarized community and start speaking against the status quo; what did you expect to happen? I'm not saying it's right, but it's the way of society. But being modded down or +gasp+ having to hear someone's opposing position does not equal your rights being trampled. You make it sound as if you only want your opinion heard, and anyone who doesn't agree with you is "trampling your rights". There's a ton of irony there.
  - roblfrieburg 11y ago
    > but it still doesn't mean your rights are being trampled. Where did jsf666 say their rights are being trampled, you've just invented that unless they've edited their post. This is like strawman the post. On topic it's hilarious that he/she's complaining about downvotes for airing opinions against the hivemind then gets downvoted for that opinion. Way to prove them wrong. (jsf666 comment is currently greyed out)
    - mratzloff 11y ago
      > On topic it's hilarious that he/she's complaining about downvotes for airing opinions against the hivemind then gets downvoted for that opinion. Not really. > Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

t2015_08_25 11y ago

Just the mere fact of people downvoting you for what you wrote validates what you've said: I agree with you 100%. After reading so much social media which is designed to increase one's professional reputation, ego and social status like facebook and HN (as well as main stream news about celebrities and politicians), it's grounding and humanizing to go to a place like /b/ where you can't maintain a reputation. You can actually be honest and get an honest human response. This was one of moot's main reasons for keeping it going. I chat there with suicidal people, people afraid to go to doctors, people abused and neglected by their parents, people trying drugs, people seeking spirituality, homosexuals from small towns, all afraid to speak up in public, their doctors, their schools. I hate the racism there. The sexism is not great. I especially the deplore the animal torture. But even real-life socializing isn't as intimate and bold as anonymous socializing. And what people need to remember is that a .gif of a scumbag who rigged a clothesline to drown a dog every time it moves is just a picture. The disgusting act has already been done. Moreover, these images are evidence that bad things happen and we can feel justified in doing something about them in real-life instead of only acting on fear. I need to look past all of that crap in order to have actual human connections I can't get in real life or online. And so do the people on the other end of my connections. Because mainstream social life has failed us. When I said you can't maintain a reputation on /b/, though, there are some workarounds: People create labels for their groups like gamergate and anonymous that leak out into the rest of the world. There are plenty of those people who obviously aren't satisfied to have intimate, anonymous conversation and have bigger axes to grind. They wreck the environment and as the saying goes, "This is why we can't have nice things." I could see all of that being too damn much of a toll to take on moot, and I don't require of him that he maintain any particular ideals. I also heard other things, but who knows. > people will just try to ban/downvote you into oblivion instead of discussing anything Yes, especially on HN and reddit, voting is not used to eliminate spam and off-topic, but to indicate consensus values and idols. So even if you're right, if you don't validate the hivemind, you get downvoted. You could tell the world the Earth is round during the dark ages and get downvoted. If you're a recognizable name on HN, you instantly get upvoted. It's the same chickenshit conformity that creates the capitalistic hierarchy in mainstream social life.

Retra 11y ago