4 ms·

So we can't talk on here about how we have a President now that sees fit to strip away people's citizenship? https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/uscis-starting-d

So we can't talk on here about how we have a President now that sees fit to strip away people's citizenship? https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/uscis-starting-denaturalization-task-force/ https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/uscis-starting-denaturaliz... We can't talk about how he's rolling back promises to soldiers to score political points? https://apnews.com/amp/38334c4d061e493fb108bd975b5a1a5d https://apnews.com/amp/38334c4d061e493fb108bd975b5a1a5d How his DHS is conveniently losing documentation on children they've forcibly separated from their parents? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/us/migrant-children-chaos-family-separation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/us/migrant-children-chaos... Why do we see ourselves as separate from this conversation? Are we not people living with this? Seeing this happen to our neighbors? The people that serve and make our food?

umanwizard 8y ago
All of this stuff is important, it's just not the topic of this forum.
- omegaworks 8y ago
  It's absolutely the topic of this forum. We created the infrastructure that allowed precise micro-targeting of individuals in districts and states that enabled this person to ascend to the highest office with a 3 million vote popular margin against him. His supporters specifically targeted people who might have voted against them with completely bogus information, to deactivate them and demotivate them from participating in our system. We need to be able to talk about this; how 200 year old electoral systems fare when they're pitted against brand new forms of machine-trained targeted advertising, dark user interface design, and disenfranchisement aided by technologically-enabled over-policing.
lainga 8y ago
I'm a Canadian, so no to your 5th question.
- omegaworks 8y ago
  If it can happen to us, it can happen to you. Please keep abreast of what's happening in Ontario. https://ricochet.media/en/2217/why-canadas-white-supremacists-want-doug-ford-to-win https://ricochet.media/en/2217/why-canadas-white-supremacist...
dang 8y ago
It isn't that we "can't talk on here", it's that threads are flameprone and vulnerable to initial conditions. If the initial condition is, say, a cheap swipe with 'fascist', the discussion is likely to flare into ideological battle. That gets the blood pumping but otherwise benefits no one. Overheated political rhetoric, such as your comment contains, isn't much better. All it generates is more of the same, from people who either share your feelings or don't. None of that is in keeping with either the spirit of this site or its rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), so it's off topic here. What initial conditions make for good discussion? Two things: first, a substantive article that contains information rather than just rhetoric. Flamey rhetoric is a sugar high and our minds need something to chew on. Second, initial comments that earnestly engage with the information in the article (as opposed to potshots or pre-existing talking points). When those things are present, politicized topics can be ok for Hacker News. They can still degenerate into flamewars, though, in which case they become off topic again. Edit: dismayingly, it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, which violates the site guidelines, and gotten nasty in the process, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17323529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17323529 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17323169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17323169, which I probably would have banned you for had I seen it. We ban accounts that do these things, for the same reason: it degrades the site well below the level needed for not going up in flames. Would you please stop using HN this way?
- omegaworks 8y ago
  The initial conditions for this discussion were poor, granted, but these are real, tangible concerns. It's not something ideological or abstract for me when people fail to critique systems that can literally drag my friends away from their promising careers in science and technology. The links I provided were substantiative evidence regarding the present administration's actions. I'll try to attach my substantiative responses to less flame-prone initial conditions in the future. The tone I struck in the examples you cited was short, granted. I will do better. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

umanwizard 8y ago

All of this stuff is important, it's just not the topic of this forum.

omegaworks 8y ago
It's absolutely the topic of this forum. We created the infrastructure that allowed precise micro-targeting of individuals in districts and states that enabled this person to ascend to the highest office with a 3 million vote popular margin against him. His supporters specifically targeted people who might have voted against them with completely bogus information, to deactivate them and demotivate them from participating in our system. We need to be able to talk about this; how 200 year old electoral systems fare when they're pitted against brand new forms of machine-trained targeted advertising, dark user interface design, and disenfranchisement aided by technologically-enabled over-policing.

lainga 8y ago

I'm a Canadian, so no to your 5th question.

omegaworks 8y ago
If it can happen to us, it can happen to you. Please keep abreast of what's happening in Ontario. https://ricochet.media/en/2217/why-canadas-white-supremacists-want-doug-ford-to-win https://ricochet.media/en/2217/why-canadas-white-supremacist...

dang 8y ago

It isn't that we "can't talk on here", it's that threads are flameprone and vulnerable to initial conditions. If the initial condition is, say, a cheap swipe with 'fascist', the discussion is likely to flare into ideological battle. That gets the blood pumping but otherwise benefits no one. Overheated political rhetoric, such as your comment contains, isn't much better. All it generates is more of the same, from people who either share your feelings or don't. None of that is in keeping with either the spirit of this site or its rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), so it's off topic here. What initial conditions make for good discussion? Two things: first, a substantive article that contains information rather than just rhetoric. Flamey rhetoric is a sugar high and our minds need something to chew on. Second, initial comments that earnestly engage with the information in the article (as opposed to potshots or pre-existing talking points). When those things are present, politicized topics can be ok for Hacker News. They can still degenerate into flamewars, though, in which case they become off topic again. Edit: dismayingly, it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, which violates the site guidelines, and gotten nasty in the process, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17323529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17323529 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17323169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17323169, which I probably would have banned you for had I seen it. We ban accounts that do these things, for the same reason: it degrades the site well below the level needed for not going up in flames. Would you please stop using HN this way?

omegaworks 8y ago
The initial conditions for this discussion were poor, granted, but these are real, tangible concerns. It's not something ideological or abstract for me when people fail to critique systems that can literally drag my friends away from their promising careers in science and technology. The links I provided were substantiative evidence regarding the present administration's actions. I'll try to attach my substantiative responses to less flame-prone initial conditions in the future. The tone I struck in the examples you cited was short, granted. I will do better. Thank you for taking the time to respond.