4 ms·

There's nothing new about this. Some people stopped associating with you because they didn't like your opinions, a story as old as humanity itself.

• donatj 11y ago
  No. The new part is that even people I didn't offend with my sensibilities are not associating with me on an automated basis.
  • MaysonL 11y ago
    In Bruce Sterling's novel Distraction, there's a bot trawling the net for opponents of a particular politician, and posting the names of the leading ones on a blog, where fans (in the original sense of fanatic followers) of the politician would note them, and they would end up assassinated. The novel seems to be coming a lot truer than I expected when I first read it (1998 or '99).
  • dragonwriter 11y ago
    People choosing to delegate association decisions to others is not new; the mechanism might be novel, but seems to be hardly relevant to the basic effect.
    • derefr 11y ago
      Sure, but the scale and the lack of oversight in the new methods is a lot scarier. Everything you can think of that works like this—DNSBLs, the TSA watchlist, etc.—creates a Kafka-esque hell for a non-negligible set of people. Whereas what these replaced was just lists maintained by people, somewhere—where those people could be reached and pleaded with.
  • typon 11y ago
    Did people have to interact with every single Nazi to have a blanket hatred against them? Not really. I don't see why you think this is a new phenomenon.
  • tangled_zans 11y ago
    What is your political affiliation that you shared? I am curious to know if I would empathise with someone wanting to delegate blocking people with your affiliation by a communal block list.
    • donatj 11y ago
      Libertarian. Apparently detesting violence is unpopular.
      • tangled_zans 11y ago
        Huh. Well, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that it's probably some other aspect of libertarianism that offended them. Just saying. Unless they're actually offended by non-violence, in which case they probably did you a favor.
        • zo1 11y ago
          >"Unless they're actually offended by non-violence, in which case they probably did you a favor." Most would not say they are offended by non-violence, and most would actually advocate non-violence. The problem comes in when you start pointing out that logical and consistent definitions of violence/aggression preclude a lot of the things people value and think noble. To some, mentioning you are Libertarian inherently means you are saying all of their "noble" and "good" ideas should be scrapped because they rely on aggression. Hence the cliched "you want poor people to starve" criticism of Libertarian-like beliefs. Violence is also a bit of a misleading word, in that it paints a very physical picture. Threat of violence can be seen as aggression, and is on-par with actual violence because the implication is that if compliance is not achieved, the aggressor will exercise violence. Had to clarify a bit, as I did switch the discussion from violence to aggression, which is what libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is mainly about.
          • donatj 11y ago
            That's the problem in a nutshell, and quite elegantly stated.