16 ms·

Half Blamed the EU for Their Problems, Blame Facebook for Yours

SixSigma 10y ago
My friends certainly saw an OUT person. Despite my efforts, no-one debated any issues, no-one tried to convert me. This is a bit "iamveryclever" but my belief is that they were unable to debate me because I was aware and confident of the issues of the economy, the social space and business world - rightly or wrongly - I feel confident and can speak at length on such subjects. No-one put forward any real arguments except "but Boris is a bufoon" and "no to xenophobes and racists". I wanted someone to debate with, I got very little. Now the voting is over there are suddenly an endless stream of economists and social scientists posting exchange rates and share indexes and bad news.
- alexwoodcreates 10y ago
  Hi SixSigma, I wish I had seen more OUT people. We all need to take stock and look at how solid facts on the economy and society are shared properly. Hopefully we can move on from this.
  - lmm 10y ago
    The tone of a lot of Facebook conversation was such that it would have been very intimidating to admit to being out, at least in my circles.
- sjclemmy 10y ago
  To be fair, there was a consistent universal message saying it would be bad for business.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    And yet, the post you replied to was confident this wasn't a problem. Nobel prize winning economists didn't sway him, why did he expect his facebook friends to do so?
    - mistermann 10y ago
      FWIW, for some people maximizing economic return isn't the only issue in life.
      - TillE 10y ago
        "Not maximizing economic return" is quite a euphemism for plunging the country into a likely recession, with effects that will be felt basically forever. We're talking about large parts of the economy that will be destroyed.
        SixSigma 10y ago
        Recessions come and go. Destruction is a positive force. "Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz". 2009
        pessimizer 10y ago
        The UK is long overdue for a recession due to continued austerity (which has only made it's deficits rise faster), and has only been preserved through fluffing up house prices with direct subsidy, and escalating money laundering through property rising from sanctions on Russia justified by the conflict in Ukraine and the latest corruption crackdown in China. Without direct access to the EU market and the exceptions that the EU allowed the UK to keep them in, the UK may become a less attractive place to launder money or tax shelter in general, which may actually do real damage to the economy. I've even heard a bit of fear from Irish commentators that their profits from allowing companies to avoid tax all over the world may be affected, because it partially depended on a special relationship with the UK, which had a special relationship with the EU. I find it hard to see this as a bad thing for the world. Thus far, all permanent damage is very hypothetical, except that hysterical Remainers seem determined to bash the majority who voted Leave enough to guarantee Britain the most right-wing government in its history. Their first reaction seems to have been to take the farthest-left prominent person who had the ability to relate to Leavers out as leader of Labour, and try to replace him with one of the army of Blairs that have been openly attacking him ever since he was fairly elected. The UK will be lucky if it only ends up with Boris; if the Guardian and the PLP scream enough, they may end up with Farage in opposition...
- arethuza 10y ago
  There seemed to be a lot of reports in the media from businesses and economists that Brexit would impact the economy. The reply that the Leave camp came up with seemed to be "you can't make economic predictions", while I see their point, that one cuts both ways.
  - sjclemmy 10y ago
    Gove's response was even better than that; “I think people in this country have had enough of experts."
    - elthran 10y ago
      I think this was my favorite quote of the entire campaign - definitely the one that made me despair for both the political and common classes
      - mike_hearn 10y ago
        Yes that's interesting isn't it. I wrote an analysis of what's going on with that: https://medium.com/@octskyward/how-is-the-remain-campaign-losing-e0784209fe65#.6ew94nlgt https://medium.com/@octskyward/how-is-the-remain-campaign-lo...
        jerf 10y ago
        Nice article. I know a lot of people are despairing at the commoners ignoring "expert advice". Personally, I'm despairing at so many of the "educateds" ignoring the fact that the track record for "expert advice" has been awful, and failing to take the appropriate actions based on that. You don't hear much about the hazards of education, but in my opinion, education can implicitly teach the primacy of words over facts. Education teaches some things that are unintuitive and superficially contradict observed reality, yet are true. For instance, chemistry is based on atoms, or Newtonian physics. These concepts took centuries because they are not intuitive, but they are true. But trusting words over reality can easily go too far. As you say in that article, you can see "experts" who utterly shocked by what should have been predictable. I've been reading "Debunking Economics", (by an econ professor, not just "a guy"), and he shows (mathematically!) the dominant economic model does not include the Great Recession in its possible state space. The mathematically inclined should be gasping in horror. But that's not even the real problem; the real problem is that the "experts" cling to it even so. Because they like the words. The "common man" is much better at sniffing these mismatches out than the "educated man". Whether this is an intrinsic hazard of education, or a defect in our system, I'm not sure. Observed reality can still mislead them, it is absolutely true. (I can argue either way.) But unfortunately, the educated masses are not generally justified in their belief of superiority. It is at best a very situational superiority, and one that carries its own unique hazards, not a universal superiority. (And I do truly mean that "unfortunately". It should not be. We are leaving so much "on the table" because our educated class is not all that "educated". But it is what it is.)
- tluyben2 10y ago
  Shame we didn't meet then as all Leavers I know are mumbling things like 'coz we look like Islamabad these days here', 'EU takes just our money and gives nothing' and ofcourse the classic 'they took our jubbsss!'. I only heard good arguments (that is, not underbelly, racist, nationalist or just misinformed) on Remain, non on Leave. Edit: (not from the UK but I do a lot of business there and most my income is GBP so I am very interested)
- khattam 10y ago
  >an endless stream of economists and social scientists posting exchange rates and share indexes and bad news Except they are not representative of the truth. The elites are on damage control when they found out that their brainwashing didn't work. Share indexes are going up and will continue to rise for the UK and continue to fall for the rest of Europe. You did well. Don't let them tell you otherwise.
sievebrain 10y ago
I don't think this is to do with algorithmic filtering. I really doubt Facebook is so good at sentiment analysis it can tell pro vs anti-Brexit posts and separate them out (well, maybe they can, modern neural networks seem capable of anything). I think there's a much more obvious cause: the pro-EU side has become incredibly, incredibly nasty and vicious. By posting a constant stream of tirades against people they disagreed with not just attacking arguments but the people themselves, they practically guaranteed their friends would not speak up in case it damaged pre-existing relationships. The echo chamber isn't made of algorithms. It's made of hatred and pseudo-intellectual contempt. And it's been a problem of the left wing for a long, long time. Corbyn leaving Parliament to speak to hard-left protesters with t-shirts like "eliminate the right wing Blairite scum" on them shows just how the supposedly caring left treats anyone who disagrees. edit: seems some people are voting this down, thus rather ironically enacting the problem the article is about ...
- pyre 10y ago
  At the same time, you're scooping up everyone "on the left" and placing them into the same bucket (a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals filled with hatred).
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    I didn't say all left wing people were like that, I said it's been a problem of that part of the political spectrum, with the problem getting more extreme the further left you go. That said, I think left/right wing politics have faded into the background for now. The EU splits people outside of party lines. Lots of Labour supporters voted out, hence the self destruction of the Labour party itself right now. Lots of Tories voted in. The new ideological divide is between globalists and those who value the nation state.
    - thrusong 10y ago
      I would say it's the same either way you go on the spectrum. Look at the people on the far right supporting Trump.
VeejayRampay 10y ago
The internet was supposed to connect the whole world and help foster dialogue, exchange and collective creation. In the end it's a bunch of interconnected like-minded cliques stuck in confirmation bias limbo, posturing and pictures of cats. I feel cheated.
- jabbernotty 10y ago
  > I feel cheated. You were cheated by yourself then, surely. The only thing stopping one's ability to connect on the internet is a failure to actively branch out. I am ignoring language barriers for a moment. Nothing stops you from using different search engines, blogs or news venues.
  - pyrale 10y ago
    > Nothing stops you from using different search engines, blogs or news venues. As of recently, Google has been cornering me into a subset of the results I used to get, based on my language : while I used to have a pretty balanced and well-optimized experience with results being either in english or my language depending on what I looked for. However, as of recently, even asking question in english, or asking question on a topic where most sources are in english yields subpar results in my home language. This transition has been very fast - and very brutal, as if Google trapped me in a subset of my former experience. I have been using google for some time now, and keep using it, because its competition focuses on US market optimization (bing), doesn't achieve the same level of relevance (ddg) or simply sucks. This won't change for one reason : Google's competitors don't get enough data to become relevant. The consequence for me right now is that I have no efficient tool to search, and that Google's move forces me more and more to find alternatives to searching in order to access some of the data I need.
    - mitchty 10y ago
      Have to agree, I remember in the past getting tons of links in German, French, etc... but now it seems to think I only speak (or care about English). And I'm an american, safe bet probably, but while my ability to butcher spoken french is legion, reading it isn't too bad. German I find much better and for tech sometimes the only link I have found fixing something has been in German. If you find something that searches all languages again let me know, google is shit now for search.
FeepingCreature 10y ago
Everybody has the social right to shape their environment. Given how huge an influence the environment has on us, this is vital. At the same time, people have to take and carry responsibility for their environment. I think we need to become more aware of the huge biases we are exposed to by living in media bubbles. A huge part of that is that both sides need to tone down the us-vs-them rhetoric, because it makes it very hard for somebody in the other camp to listen to opposing voices. I do think there's an instituional lack of options today for people who want bipartisan news, partially because bipartisan reporting would get flak from both "sides", but also because partisan outrage sells. We share responsibility for our environment. As long as we buy partisan outrage, that is what will surround us. You aren't a victim of the market, you are the market.
- crusso 10y ago
  we need to become more aware of the huge biases we are exposed to by living in media bubbles Before the Internet, we lived in media bubbles manufactured by relatively few voices in the media and political power structure. Now we still have influences, but they're less centralized.
return0 10y ago
Given that it was the older generations who voted Leave, this article seems out of touch with reality.
- arethuza 10y ago
  It wasn't just older generations who voted to leave - the older you are the more likely you were to vote for leave but plenty (although a minority for their age group) young people voted to leave and plenty older people (again a minority) voted to stay. NB I voted Remain.
- sveme 10y ago
  There are plenty of "old", >50, people on Facebook. Sometimes they actually are the most vocal in the comments section of the newspapers, especially when it comes to topics such as the EU and immigration. I do believe that the article is correct in that social media is creating self-reinforcing subsocieties with little to no exchanges between different opinions. There are plenty of people in Germany getting all their information from hate websites like epochtimes, compact and kopp via their Facebook feeds. Disagreeing or critical comments are deleted from the comments section, creating the impression that one's own opinion is supported by the majority. You can't believe how many racists believe that their opinion is shared by the silent majority, a believe supported by the support their views experience in the social media echo chamber.
Jyaif 10y ago
This article is making a very important point. A lot of people thought that the internet would allow people to be confronted to different point of views, and as a result people would grow more tolerant and open minded. The opposite seems to happen: people are using the internet to be with people with the same beliefs, and this results in people being more certain about their beliefs. </rant> <entrepreneur> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.
- crusso 10y ago
  There are definitely vacuum chambers that form, but I'd be hesitant to generalize the overall effect. Does the increased access to points of view override the insular effect of seeking out like-minded thinkers? Additionally, is it all bad that some people find support on the Internet that allows them to become firmer in their beliefs? If a homosexual boy finds support on the Internet for his feelings that he otherwise doesn't get in his real-life social environment - is that a bad thing?
- Klockan3 10y ago
  > I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views. Debates tend to polarize people so it wont do much good.
  - tremon 10y ago
    Good debates don't. Shouting matches, to which many unmoderated "debates" devolve, do.
- hobs 10y ago
  This would be the social media equivalent to eating your vegetables, while many people know they should, they probably wont, confronting your users is a simple way to get them to leave for more comfortable surroundings.
- jerf 10y ago
  The concept of "wisdom" is generally considered passe in the modern world, but it is becoming increasingly evident to me that we are going to have to develop some wisdom around a lot of our technology, and that a lot of our usage of it can be described as nothing less than "unwise". Unfortunately, I don't know what "wise use" of social media looks like. Personally, I don't use it at all, but freely acknowledge this may be overkill. It's just my current adaptation. Another example of what I mean is all the articles that pop up on HN about how the modern internet is destroying attention spans. How do we address that best? I'm not sure. I'm not sure anyone really knows. There's some people with some ideas, but I don't think we have enough people experimenting with pushing back against this to really know.
crusso 10y ago
Blame yourself if you're getting more than relative updates and cat videos from Facebook.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  At this point I'm happy to have that besides anything else, even views in which side I'm on It's too much of a "competition"
cel1ne 10y ago
Facebook just rebuilt the little villages, their gossiping and their moronic decision-making online. Suddenly everybody pays attention to the shouting town-drunk again.
gambiting 10y ago
For me personally, liking some of the pro-remain posts on facebook and making it show me what I want to see was one of the ways to deal with the stress of the situation. Seeing positive messages on my feed really made the situation more bearable. I'm really worried about the future and if shaping social media feeds helps with that, what's wrong?
mdesq 10y ago
"I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him."
- SyneRyder 10y ago
  In Australia, this was "I can't believe Tony Abbott won." Or right now in the US, there's Buzzfeed's handy equivalent: How To Delete Your Facebook Friends Who Like Donald Trump https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevinsmith/get-rid-of-those-pesky-facebook-friends https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevinsmith/get-rid-of-those-pesky-f...
golemotron 10y ago
These bubbles might be the new regionalism. In the past, communities were physical - the people you saw walking down the street. Through conversation got a sense of each other's views. Many political views could coexist in the same town but they were still somewhat regional bubbles. Social media (really just an extension of widespread internet/telecom connectivity) breaks the connection almost entirely. You can walk though a sea of people each day that may have completely different views than yours, while you are virtually connected with people across the world who share your viewpoints. Should we be surprised that this increases disharmony in regional politics?
HannibalLecter 10y ago
Facebook does enable bias in their filtering methods. Note that the average person equates strength of political position by the majority. Therefore when browsing Facebook to gather their position from friends and family, if Facebook buries politicized comments that a particular user would not normally agree with, then the user only sees posts supporting their position. Considering that Facebook was caught deliberately experimenting on users to change their moods and personality over time, they could therefore use that knowledge and research to engineer massive political shifts and perhaps it could be explored to what extent Facebook was responsible for the whole Brexit mess. Maybe they caused it and hedged heavily on that result? That's exactly the kind of thing I would expect from Zuck.
pipio21 10y ago
Why people believe that they could outsource the responsibility of living their own life? Internet is an amazing thing, but also is a terrible thing. You can use it to improve yourself and your life or you can use it to foster addictions like watching porn all day or gamble or gossiping. Internet did not invented cognitive bubbles. When I was a child I was member of a Church, it was a bubble. Then I met atheists in Reddit, another bubble. A country is a bubble, with their media only giving people one view. I have traveled a lot around the world and every country is a bubble. For example, how many Americans have a strong opinion on Putin without understanding Russian or Ukranian, having traveled to Ukraine or talked to the people there. Their opinion is not their own, it has been implanted by the media from people with strong economic interest in the region but they believe their opinion is valid because everybody(there) agrees with each other. I have Ukrainian friends on both sides, traveled the country, and what is told in Western media is totally deceiving. But in Europe lots of people speak those languages, know people and understand the region. It is way harder to deceive them. It is like North Korea media telling the people that West society is poor(like they say) or Florida is a desert with no water. Koreans will believe it, but a lot of Americans will not. It is your personal decision to cultivate yourself and use the tools you have at your disposal for good and not for bad. If you don't like the tools at your disposal, as a programmer lots of people here could do something about it. HN itself it such a tool, or example, when reddit diluted his great content in order to gain popularity-money.
- yomism 10y ago
  Implying Hackernews us not a bubble... Ok
  - dang 10y ago
    When people say this, they usually mean that HN is all in favor of X where X is something they personally disagree with. In fact, though, the community is divided on most issues. There are a few exceptions (anti-Snowden doesn't do well here, pro-CFAA worse) but not as many as it seems. I think this impression of 'the community lined up against my view' happens because when you read HN threads on any divisive topic you're inevitably confronted with comments you dislike and disagree with. That follows simply from the community being divided while the threads are all in common (i.e. no subreddits into which people silo themselves). Such comments are unpleasant—indeed painful—to read, and therefore more memorable, so we notice them more. These impressions accrete into a mental model of the community all being on the opposite side. But this is actually a side effect of the community not being homogeneous—of the fact that for most X, everyone who feels strongly about X has anti-X comments in their face, and vice versa.
yardie 10y ago
I don't unfriend anyone on my FB list unless the account is fake or they are openly hostile. I've been able to debate childhood friends through their posts about racism, politics, gun rights, abortion, etc. If your only friends are the people that agree with you you're going to be disappointed to find out how the real world operates. I'm black caribbean, my neighbour is a white, southern boy. He believes in the 2nd amendment, a Trump presidency, and the Iraq War. Just about every weekend we BBQ, drink a few beers, and talk shop. Talking with him I've learned a lot. I knew that Trump was going to win the nomination months ago. He says a lot of things that don't get mentioned in the news, everyone would do well to get a transcript and not rely on CNN. Obamacare was more popular than politicians will lead you to believe, but it could be better we both agreed. And the both of us were surprised by how successful the Brexit campaign was. We both thought it was about the money.
- rconti 10y ago
  I'm about at that point on trump. I've never even CONSIDERED not listening to someone's political views, but this is not about politics. Everyone's got their breaking point, and I'm simply not willing to be friends with someone who believes an adult behaving in such a way is acceptable. It's not about politics, it's about being a human being. I'm okay with saying I won't tolerate support of a despicable human being.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    I don't like Trump either but there is a wide gap between not liking Trump and not being able to be friends with someone you think are wrong. Hey, I personally believe the majority of my fellow citizens are terribly wrong in what I think are important cases but it doesn't prevent me from being polite and decent. Edit: I might have missed your /s, did I?
  - khattam 10y ago
    >someone who believes an adult behaving in such a way is acceptable How is he behaving that is unacceptable and to whom is it unacceptable?
cel1ne 10y ago
Once upon a time there was something of an educated, intelligent middle-class who put some hand into managing and editing information for the masses who didn't have that much time or capacity of questioning and learning everything themselves. Call that education, call it manipulation, call it journalism. It doesn't matter. Fact is: that management is gone. Anybody can spread anything now and most people aren't getting any smarter amidst that hurricane of information, most of it charged in a highly negative way. They get scared, angry and numb.
- mobiuscog 10y ago
  Once upon a time, journalism sought to equally represent all angles of a story.
  - cel1ne 10y ago
    Medium.com was originally founded for their publication "Matter", a journal for long well researched articles.
m-i-l 10y ago
Firstly, if you don't like Facebook, don't use it. I know I don't. Secondly, you can still find alternative views on the internet if you look. I know I looked prior to the referendum. Unfortunately, relatively speaking, I found little evidence of reasoned argument from the Leave camp. Events after the referendum, such as their lack of a plan and leadership, confirms that was probably an accurate reflection of their position rather than any "bias" of the internet.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Reasoned argument from the Leave camp definitely existed, but was drowned out by other voices. I'm not a Conservative voter, and I don't agree with his position on the NHS, but I thought Daniel Hannan was one of the more reasonable voices in the public debates. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tzNj-hH8LkY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tzNj-hH8LkY
dang 10y ago
This is one of those cases where the HN discussion turned out to be better than the rather lightweight and topical article, so as an experiment we'll try turning off the user flags and software penalties it was otherwise getting.
Animats 10y ago
Or you could blame Bezos. See the online front page of the Washington Post.[1] For decades, the criterion for the front page seemed to be "What does a member of Congress or a cabinet member need to know today". So everybody at the senior levels of government read the Post, and so did their subordinates and everyone who had to deal with them, and everybody involved with the government who needed to know what the top people were doing. Then Bezos bought the Post. Now it looks like the top stories are picked by click-through rates. The print edition of the Washington Post, which you can see online, has better story selection.[2] It's hard to find any decent daily news outlet today. Reuters comes the closest on what's important. Their lead stories are on Brexit and the latest South China Sea troubles. Those are events which will have worldwide impact if things go bad. I miss the San Jose Mercury News from the days before it was bought by the Contra Costa Times. The Economist remains good, but it's a weekly. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/ [2] http://thewashingtonpost.pressreader.com/the-washington-post http://thewashingtonpost.pressreader.com/the-washington-post
- rottyguy 10y ago
  bloomberg?
  - Animats 10y ago
    Good point, although their dynamic layout is irritating. Reading their site gives you the feeling you should be holding a game controller.
- waylandsmithers 10y ago
  Wow. I don't think I've ever been on the front page of the washington post. Here's a headline up there now: 'Her shocking murder became the stuff of legend. But everyone got the story wrong.'
  - tinalumfoil 10y ago
    On the front page of mine: "Amazon offers Prime users deep discounts on Android smartphones — with a catch" They disclose Amazon's relationship to WP in the middle sentence of the second paragraph.
urbanxs 10y ago
What you idiots dont get is that freedom of movement is at the core of th eu. get out if you want less freedoms.
- dang 10y ago
  We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.
Terr_ 10y ago
I remember this from "Earth" by David Brin, published some 26 years ago: > People bought personalized filter programs to skim a few droplets from that sea and keep the rest out. For some, subjective reality became the selected entertainments and special-interest zines passed through by those tailored shells. > Here a man watches nothing but detective films from the days of cops and robbers–a limitless supply of formula fiction. Next door a woman hears and reads only opinions that match her own, because other points of view are culled by her loyal guardian software.
rayiner 10y ago
Blame yourself, not Facebook. If you don't have any friends with opposite points of view that's not Facebook's fault.
shiftoutbox 10y ago
I liked the article ; fucking hate the shit link bait at the bottom . Can't beat them join 'em!

My friends certainly saw an OUT person. Despite my efforts, no-one debated any issues, no-one tried to convert me. This is a bit "iamveryclever" but my belief is that they were unable to debate me because I was aware and confident of the issues of the economy, the social space and business world - rightly or wrongly - I feel confident and can speak at length on such subjects. No-one put forward any real arguments except "but Boris is a bufoon" and "no to xenophobes and racists". I wanted someone to debate with, I got very little. Now the voting is over there are suddenly an endless stream of economists and social scientists posting exchange rates and share indexes and bad news.

alexwoodcreates 10y ago
Hi SixSigma, I wish I had seen more OUT people. We all need to take stock and look at how solid facts on the economy and society are shared properly. Hopefully we can move on from this.
- lmm 10y ago
  The tone of a lot of Facebook conversation was such that it would have been very intimidating to admit to being out, at least in my circles.
sjclemmy 10y ago
To be fair, there was a consistent universal message saying it would be bad for business.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  And yet, the post you replied to was confident this wasn't a problem. Nobel prize winning economists didn't sway him, why did he expect his facebook friends to do so?
  - mistermann 10y ago
    FWIW, for some people maximizing economic return isn't the only issue in life.
    - TillE 10y ago
      "Not maximizing economic return" is quite a euphemism for plunging the country into a likely recession, with effects that will be felt basically forever. We're talking about large parts of the economy that will be destroyed.
      - SixSigma 10y ago
        Recessions come and go. Destruction is a positive force. "Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz". 2009
      - pessimizer 10y ago
        The UK is long overdue for a recession due to continued austerity (which has only made it's deficits rise faster), and has only been preserved through fluffing up house prices with direct subsidy, and escalating money laundering through property rising from sanctions on Russia justified by the conflict in Ukraine and the latest corruption crackdown in China. Without direct access to the EU market and the exceptions that the EU allowed the UK to keep them in, the UK may become a less attractive place to launder money or tax shelter in general, which may actually do real damage to the economy. I've even heard a bit of fear from Irish commentators that their profits from allowing companies to avoid tax all over the world may be affected, because it partially depended on a special relationship with the UK, which had a special relationship with the EU. I find it hard to see this as a bad thing for the world. Thus far, all permanent damage is very hypothetical, except that hysterical Remainers seem determined to bash the majority who voted Leave enough to guarantee Britain the most right-wing government in its history. Their first reaction seems to have been to take the farthest-left prominent person who had the ability to relate to Leavers out as leader of Labour, and try to replace him with one of the army of Blairs that have been openly attacking him ever since he was fairly elected. The UK will be lucky if it only ends up with Boris; if the Guardian and the PLP scream enough, they may end up with Farage in opposition...
arethuza 10y ago
There seemed to be a lot of reports in the media from businesses and economists that Brexit would impact the economy. The reply that the Leave camp came up with seemed to be "you can't make economic predictions", while I see their point, that one cuts both ways.
- sjclemmy 10y ago
  Gove's response was even better than that; “I think people in this country have had enough of experts."
  - elthran 10y ago
    I think this was my favorite quote of the entire campaign - definitely the one that made me despair for both the political and common classes
    - mike_hearn 10y ago
      Yes that's interesting isn't it. I wrote an analysis of what's going on with that: https://medium.com/@octskyward/how-is-the-remain-campaign-losing-e0784209fe65#.6ew94nlgt https://medium.com/@octskyward/how-is-the-remain-campaign-lo...
      - jerf 10y ago
        Nice article. I know a lot of people are despairing at the commoners ignoring "expert advice". Personally, I'm despairing at so many of the "educateds" ignoring the fact that the track record for "expert advice" has been awful, and failing to take the appropriate actions based on that. You don't hear much about the hazards of education, but in my opinion, education can implicitly teach the primacy of words over facts. Education teaches some things that are unintuitive and superficially contradict observed reality, yet are true. For instance, chemistry is based on atoms, or Newtonian physics. These concepts took centuries because they are not intuitive, but they are true. But trusting words over reality can easily go too far. As you say in that article, you can see "experts" who utterly shocked by what should have been predictable. I've been reading "Debunking Economics", (by an econ professor, not just "a guy"), and he shows (mathematically!) the dominant economic model does not include the Great Recession in its possible state space. The mathematically inclined should be gasping in horror. But that's not even the real problem; the real problem is that the "experts" cling to it even so. Because they like the words. The "common man" is much better at sniffing these mismatches out than the "educated man". Whether this is an intrinsic hazard of education, or a defect in our system, I'm not sure. Observed reality can still mislead them, it is absolutely true. (I can argue either way.) But unfortunately, the educated masses are not generally justified in their belief of superiority. It is at best a very situational superiority, and one that carries its own unique hazards, not a universal superiority. (And I do truly mean that "unfortunately". It should not be. We are leaving so much "on the table" because our educated class is not all that "educated". But it is what it is.)
tluyben2 10y ago
Shame we didn't meet then as all Leavers I know are mumbling things like 'coz we look like Islamabad these days here', 'EU takes just our money and gives nothing' and ofcourse the classic 'they took our jubbsss!'. I only heard good arguments (that is, not underbelly, racist, nationalist or just misinformed) on Remain, non on Leave. Edit: (not from the UK but I do a lot of business there and most my income is GBP so I am very interested)
khattam 10y ago
>an endless stream of economists and social scientists posting exchange rates and share indexes and bad news Except they are not representative of the truth. The elites are on damage control when they found out that their brainwashing didn't work. Share indexes are going up and will continue to rise for the UK and continue to fall for the rest of Europe. You did well. Don't let them tell you otherwise.

sievebrain 10y ago

I don't think this is to do with algorithmic filtering. I really doubt Facebook is so good at sentiment analysis it can tell pro vs anti-Brexit posts and separate them out (well, maybe they can, modern neural networks seem capable of anything). I think there's a much more obvious cause: the pro-EU side has become incredibly, incredibly nasty and vicious. By posting a constant stream of tirades against people they disagreed with not just attacking arguments but the people themselves, they practically guaranteed their friends would not speak up in case it damaged pre-existing relationships. The echo chamber isn't made of algorithms. It's made of hatred and pseudo-intellectual contempt. And it's been a problem of the left wing for a long, long time. Corbyn leaving Parliament to speak to hard-left protesters with t-shirts like "eliminate the right wing Blairite scum" on them shows just how the supposedly caring left treats anyone who disagrees. edit: seems some people are voting this down, thus rather ironically enacting the problem the article is about ...

pyre 10y ago
At the same time, you're scooping up everyone "on the left" and placing them into the same bucket (a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals filled with hatred).
- sievebrain 10y ago
  I didn't say all left wing people were like that, I said it's been a problem of that part of the political spectrum, with the problem getting more extreme the further left you go. That said, I think left/right wing politics have faded into the background for now. The EU splits people outside of party lines. Lots of Labour supporters voted out, hence the self destruction of the Labour party itself right now. Lots of Tories voted in. The new ideological divide is between globalists and those who value the nation state.
  - thrusong 10y ago
    I would say it's the same either way you go on the spectrum. Look at the people on the far right supporting Trump.

VeejayRampay 10y ago

The internet was supposed to connect the whole world and help foster dialogue, exchange and collective creation. In the end it's a bunch of interconnected like-minded cliques stuck in confirmation bias limbo, posturing and pictures of cats. I feel cheated.

jabbernotty 10y ago
> I feel cheated. You were cheated by yourself then, surely. The only thing stopping one's ability to connect on the internet is a failure to actively branch out. I am ignoring language barriers for a moment. Nothing stops you from using different search engines, blogs or news venues.
- pyrale 10y ago
  > Nothing stops you from using different search engines, blogs or news venues. As of recently, Google has been cornering me into a subset of the results I used to get, based on my language : while I used to have a pretty balanced and well-optimized experience with results being either in english or my language depending on what I looked for. However, as of recently, even asking question in english, or asking question on a topic where most sources are in english yields subpar results in my home language. This transition has been very fast - and very brutal, as if Google trapped me in a subset of my former experience. I have been using google for some time now, and keep using it, because its competition focuses on US market optimization (bing), doesn't achieve the same level of relevance (ddg) or simply sucks. This won't change for one reason : Google's competitors don't get enough data to become relevant. The consequence for me right now is that I have no efficient tool to search, and that Google's move forces me more and more to find alternatives to searching in order to access some of the data I need.
  - mitchty 10y ago
    Have to agree, I remember in the past getting tons of links in German, French, etc... but now it seems to think I only speak (or care about English). And I'm an american, safe bet probably, but while my ability to butcher spoken french is legion, reading it isn't too bad. German I find much better and for tech sometimes the only link I have found fixing something has been in German. If you find something that searches all languages again let me know, google is shit now for search.

FeepingCreature 10y ago

Everybody has the social right to shape their environment. Given how huge an influence the environment has on us, this is vital. At the same time, people have to take and carry responsibility for their environment. I think we need to become more aware of the huge biases we are exposed to by living in media bubbles. A huge part of that is that both sides need to tone down the us-vs-them rhetoric, because it makes it very hard for somebody in the other camp to listen to opposing voices. I do think there's an instituional lack of options today for people who want bipartisan news, partially because bipartisan reporting would get flak from both "sides", but also because partisan outrage sells. We share responsibility for our environment. As long as we buy partisan outrage, that is what will surround us. You aren't a victim of the market, you are the market.

crusso 10y ago
we need to become more aware of the huge biases we are exposed to by living in media bubbles Before the Internet, we lived in media bubbles manufactured by relatively few voices in the media and political power structure. Now we still have influences, but they're less centralized.

return0 10y ago

Given that it was the older generations who voted Leave, this article seems out of touch with reality.

arethuza 10y ago
It wasn't just older generations who voted to leave - the older you are the more likely you were to vote for leave but plenty (although a minority for their age group) young people voted to leave and plenty older people (again a minority) voted to stay. NB I voted Remain.
sveme 10y ago
There are plenty of "old", >50, people on Facebook. Sometimes they actually are the most vocal in the comments section of the newspapers, especially when it comes to topics such as the EU and immigration. I do believe that the article is correct in that social media is creating self-reinforcing subsocieties with little to no exchanges between different opinions. There are plenty of people in Germany getting all their information from hate websites like epochtimes, compact and kopp via their Facebook feeds. Disagreeing or critical comments are deleted from the comments section, creating the impression that one's own opinion is supported by the majority. You can't believe how many racists believe that their opinion is shared by the silent majority, a believe supported by the support their views experience in the social media echo chamber.

Jyaif 10y ago

This article is making a very important point. A lot of people thought that the internet would allow people to be confronted to different point of views, and as a result people would grow more tolerant and open minded. The opposite seems to happen: people are using the internet to be with people with the same beliefs, and this results in people being more certain about their beliefs. </rant> <entrepreneur> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views.

crusso 10y ago
There are definitely vacuum chambers that form, but I'd be hesitant to generalize the overall effect. Does the increased access to points of view override the insular effect of seeking out like-minded thinkers? Additionally, is it all bad that some people find support on the Internet that allows them to become firmer in their beliefs? If a homosexual boy finds support on the Internet for his feelings that he otherwise doesn't get in his real-life social environment - is that a bad thing?
Klockan3 10y ago
> I'd love to see a product/social network that confront their users with opposite point of views. Debates tend to polarize people so it wont do much good.
- tremon 10y ago
  Good debates don't. Shouting matches, to which many unmoderated "debates" devolve, do.
hobs 10y ago
This would be the social media equivalent to eating your vegetables, while many people know they should, they probably wont, confronting your users is a simple way to get them to leave for more comfortable surroundings.
jerf 10y ago
The concept of "wisdom" is generally considered passe in the modern world, but it is becoming increasingly evident to me that we are going to have to develop some wisdom around a lot of our technology, and that a lot of our usage of it can be described as nothing less than "unwise". Unfortunately, I don't know what "wise use" of social media looks like. Personally, I don't use it at all, but freely acknowledge this may be overkill. It's just my current adaptation. Another example of what I mean is all the articles that pop up on HN about how the modern internet is destroying attention spans. How do we address that best? I'm not sure. I'm not sure anyone really knows. There's some people with some ideas, but I don't think we have enough people experimenting with pushing back against this to really know.

crusso 10y ago

Blame yourself if you're getting more than relative updates and cat videos from Facebook.

raverbashing 10y ago
At this point I'm happy to have that besides anything else, even views in which side I'm on It's too much of a "competition"

cel1ne 10y ago

Facebook just rebuilt the little villages, their gossiping and their moronic decision-making online. Suddenly everybody pays attention to the shouting town-drunk again.

gambiting 10y ago

For me personally, liking some of the pro-remain posts on facebook and making it show me what I want to see was one of the ways to deal with the stress of the situation. Seeing positive messages on my feed really made the situation more bearable. I'm really worried about the future and if shaping social media feeds helps with that, what's wrong?

mdesq 10y ago

"I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him."

SyneRyder 10y ago
In Australia, this was "I can't believe Tony Abbott won." Or right now in the US, there's Buzzfeed's handy equivalent: How To Delete Your Facebook Friends Who Like Donald Trump https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevinsmith/get-rid-of-those-pesky-facebook-friends https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevinsmith/get-rid-of-those-pesky-f...

golemotron 10y ago

These bubbles might be the new regionalism. In the past, communities were physical - the people you saw walking down the street. Through conversation got a sense of each other's views. Many political views could coexist in the same town but they were still somewhat regional bubbles. Social media (really just an extension of widespread internet/telecom connectivity) breaks the connection almost entirely. You can walk though a sea of people each day that may have completely different views than yours, while you are virtually connected with people across the world who share your viewpoints. Should we be surprised that this increases disharmony in regional politics?

HannibalLecter 10y ago

Facebook does enable bias in their filtering methods. Note that the average person equates strength of political position by the majority. Therefore when browsing Facebook to gather their position from friends and family, if Facebook buries politicized comments that a particular user would not normally agree with, then the user only sees posts supporting their position. Considering that Facebook was caught deliberately experimenting on users to change their moods and personality over time, they could therefore use that knowledge and research to engineer massive political shifts and perhaps it could be explored to what extent Facebook was responsible for the whole Brexit mess. Maybe they caused it and hedged heavily on that result? That's exactly the kind of thing I would expect from Zuck.

pipio21 10y ago

Why people believe that they could outsource the responsibility of living their own life? Internet is an amazing thing, but also is a terrible thing. You can use it to improve yourself and your life or you can use it to foster addictions like watching porn all day or gamble or gossiping. Internet did not invented cognitive bubbles. When I was a child I was member of a Church, it was a bubble. Then I met atheists in Reddit, another bubble. A country is a bubble, with their media only giving people one view. I have traveled a lot around the world and every country is a bubble. For example, how many Americans have a strong opinion on Putin without understanding Russian or Ukranian, having traveled to Ukraine or talked to the people there. Their opinion is not their own, it has been implanted by the media from people with strong economic interest in the region but they believe their opinion is valid because everybody(there) agrees with each other. I have Ukrainian friends on both sides, traveled the country, and what is told in Western media is totally deceiving. But in Europe lots of people speak those languages, know people and understand the region. It is way harder to deceive them. It is like North Korea media telling the people that West society is poor(like they say) or Florida is a desert with no water. Koreans will believe it, but a lot of Americans will not. It is your personal decision to cultivate yourself and use the tools you have at your disposal for good and not for bad. If you don't like the tools at your disposal, as a programmer lots of people here could do something about it. HN itself it such a tool, or example, when reddit diluted his great content in order to gain popularity-money.

yomism 10y ago
Implying Hackernews us not a bubble... Ok
- dang 10y ago
  When people say this, they usually mean that HN is all in favor of X where X is something they personally disagree with. In fact, though, the community is divided on most issues. There are a few exceptions (anti-Snowden doesn't do well here, pro-CFAA worse) but not as many as it seems. I think this impression of 'the community lined up against my view' happens because when you read HN threads on any divisive topic you're inevitably confronted with comments you dislike and disagree with. That follows simply from the community being divided while the threads are all in common (i.e. no subreddits into which people silo themselves). Such comments are unpleasant—indeed painful—to read, and therefore more memorable, so we notice them more. These impressions accrete into a mental model of the community all being on the opposite side. But this is actually a side effect of the community not being homogeneous—of the fact that for most X, everyone who feels strongly about X has anti-X comments in their face, and vice versa.

yardie 10y ago

I don't unfriend anyone on my FB list unless the account is fake or they are openly hostile. I've been able to debate childhood friends through their posts about racism, politics, gun rights, abortion, etc. If your only friends are the people that agree with you you're going to be disappointed to find out how the real world operates. I'm black caribbean, my neighbour is a white, southern boy. He believes in the 2nd amendment, a Trump presidency, and the Iraq War. Just about every weekend we BBQ, drink a few beers, and talk shop. Talking with him I've learned a lot. I knew that Trump was going to win the nomination months ago. He says a lot of things that don't get mentioned in the news, everyone would do well to get a transcript and not rely on CNN. Obamacare was more popular than politicians will lead you to believe, but it could be better we both agreed. And the both of us were surprised by how successful the Brexit campaign was. We both thought it was about the money.

rconti 10y ago
I'm about at that point on trump. I've never even CONSIDERED not listening to someone's political views, but this is not about politics. Everyone's got their breaking point, and I'm simply not willing to be friends with someone who believes an adult behaving in such a way is acceptable. It's not about politics, it's about being a human being. I'm okay with saying I won't tolerate support of a despicable human being.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  I don't like Trump either but there is a wide gap between not liking Trump and not being able to be friends with someone you think are wrong. Hey, I personally believe the majority of my fellow citizens are terribly wrong in what I think are important cases but it doesn't prevent me from being polite and decent. Edit: I might have missed your /s, did I?
- khattam 10y ago
  >someone who believes an adult behaving in such a way is acceptable How is he behaving that is unacceptable and to whom is it unacceptable?

cel1ne 10y ago

Once upon a time there was something of an educated, intelligent middle-class who put some hand into managing and editing information for the masses who didn't have that much time or capacity of questioning and learning everything themselves. Call that education, call it manipulation, call it journalism. It doesn't matter. Fact is: that management is gone. Anybody can spread anything now and most people aren't getting any smarter amidst that hurricane of information, most of it charged in a highly negative way. They get scared, angry and numb.

mobiuscog 10y ago
Once upon a time, journalism sought to equally represent all angles of a story.
- cel1ne 10y ago
  Medium.com was originally founded for their publication "Matter", a journal for long well researched articles.

m-i-l 10y ago

Firstly, if you don't like Facebook, don't use it. I know I don't. Secondly, you can still find alternative views on the internet if you look. I know I looked prior to the referendum. Unfortunately, relatively speaking, I found little evidence of reasoned argument from the Leave camp. Events after the referendum, such as their lack of a plan and leadership, confirms that was probably an accurate reflection of their position rather than any "bias" of the internet.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
Reasoned argument from the Leave camp definitely existed, but was drowned out by other voices. I'm not a Conservative voter, and I don't agree with his position on the NHS, but I thought Daniel Hannan was one of the more reasonable voices in the public debates. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tzNj-hH8LkY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tzNj-hH8LkY

dang 10y ago

This is one of those cases where the HN discussion turned out to be better than the rather lightweight and topical article, so as an experiment we'll try turning off the user flags and software penalties it was otherwise getting.

Animats 10y ago

Or you could blame Bezos. See the online front page of the Washington Post.[1] For decades, the criterion for the front page seemed to be "What does a member of Congress or a cabinet member need to know today". So everybody at the senior levels of government read the Post, and so did their subordinates and everyone who had to deal with them, and everybody involved with the government who needed to know what the top people were doing. Then Bezos bought the Post. Now it looks like the top stories are picked by click-through rates. The print edition of the Washington Post, which you can see online, has better story selection.[2] It's hard to find any decent daily news outlet today. Reuters comes the closest on what's important. Their lead stories are on Brexit and the latest South China Sea troubles. Those are events which will have worldwide impact if things go bad. I miss the San Jose Mercury News from the days before it was bought by the Contra Costa Times. The Economist remains good, but it's a weekly. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/ [2] http://thewashingtonpost.pressreader.com/the-washington-post http://thewashingtonpost.pressreader.com/the-washington-post

rottyguy 10y ago
bloomberg?
- Animats 10y ago
  Good point, although their dynamic layout is irritating. Reading their site gives you the feeling you should be holding a game controller.
waylandsmithers 10y ago
Wow. I don't think I've ever been on the front page of the washington post. Here's a headline up there now: 'Her shocking murder became the stuff of legend. But everyone got the story wrong.'
- tinalumfoil 10y ago
  On the front page of mine: "Amazon offers Prime users deep discounts on Android smartphones — with a catch" They disclose Amazon's relationship to WP in the middle sentence of the second paragraph.

urbanxs 10y ago

What you idiots dont get is that freedom of movement is at the core of th eu. get out if you want less freedoms.

dang 10y ago
We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.

Terr_ 10y ago

I remember this from "Earth" by David Brin, published some 26 years ago: > People bought personalized filter programs to skim a few droplets from that sea and keep the rest out. For some, subjective reality became the selected entertainments and special-interest zines passed through by those tailored shells. > Here a man watches nothing but detective films from the days of cops and robbers–a limitless supply of formula fiction. Next door a woman hears and reads only opinions that match her own, because other points of view are culled by her loyal guardian software.

rayiner 10y ago

Blame yourself, not Facebook. If you don't have any friends with opposite points of view that's not Facebook's fault.

shiftoutbox 10y ago

I liked the article ; fucking hate the shit link bait at the bottom . Can't beat them join 'em!