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If you feel that way then you better ban me because I know I'll continue to "primarily" advocate digital privacy, and condemn those who seek(/contribute) to tur

If you feel that way then you better ban me because I know I'll continue to "primarily" advocate digital privacy, and condemn those who seek(/contribute) to turn the world into a surveillance dystopia.

dang 8y ago
Those are fine goals, but fine goals aren't enough to prevent HN from burning itself down. Indeed, they're potent fuel for that, if people don't care about the purpose of this site or take care to protect it from becoming like the rest of the flaming internet. It's my job to prevent the latter from happening, even though I'm sure I agree with your goals. The loss of a community on the internet where people gather for intellectual curiosity would make the world a little more dystopian too. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site to heart?
- abc-xyz 8y ago
  I think you've been doing a great job, the best of any networking site I've ever encountered (only Tildes appear to come even close in terms of purpose and leadership), and I truly wouldn't feel any resentment if you banned me because you felt the community would be better off without my comments. I think the place where we hold strong disagreement is in how to deal with evil. For instance I feel very confident that you (and almost every HN reader) agree that it's wrong and shameful that Apple would make it impossible for Macs brought in China to display Taiwan's national flag. I want to mention it whenever the context allows, even if it means repeating myself a thousand times, whereas you appear to prefer it being mentioned once and then never again. I feel my approach is necessary to achieve what I assume you agree is the morally right thing to do (that Apple will revert its decision and once again display their national flag). I of course also realize that it's you and not me who has to deal with moderating thousands of new comments every day, and that my comments likely make it much more tiresome for you to do your job. I can't stop making these comments, but I can agree to stop using nicknames such as Xitler. As for today's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554466), I feel what's happening here is the scariest thing I've read this year, and it deserves much more focus and not to be dismissed as unsubstantial because of guesswork. China does not deserve benefit of the doubt at this point, they've proven over and over again that they have little to no regard for human rights, that they want to censor everything that put them in a bad light, and that they'll take every opportunity to rewrite history for their benefit. This is a fact and only to what degree can be argued. Right now China can make UC Browser default on all Huawei, Lenovo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and many more devices. They've demonstrated countless times that they'll behave like a spoilt child to get it their way (e.g. fire an employee for liking a tweet thanking their company or we'll kick you out of the country).. they've just demonstrated they'll gladly censor a SSL protected page (before today I didn't even consider it was possible, did you?).. how can you not be scared? How can you not feel extremely confident that they'll end up modifying Google search results and abuse this in so many other ways? If they're willing to do it with a GitHub repo, why wouldn't they do the exact same thing with Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, etc? They're already forcing companies to censor and manipulate content, rewrite history.. if they could do it by themselves on a massive scale then why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they sell devices at a loss if it meant they could control these people to influence foreign policies? Honestly, I'd accuse you of being willfully naive if you saw a less evil outcome.

dang 8y ago

Those are fine goals, but fine goals aren't enough to prevent HN from burning itself down. Indeed, they're potent fuel for that, if people don't care about the purpose of this site or take care to protect it from becoming like the rest of the flaming internet. It's my job to prevent the latter from happening, even though I'm sure I agree with your goals. The loss of a community on the internet where people gather for intellectual curiosity would make the world a little more dystopian too. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site to heart?

abc-xyz 8y ago
I think you've been doing a great job, the best of any networking site I've ever encountered (only Tildes appear to come even close in terms of purpose and leadership), and I truly wouldn't feel any resentment if you banned me because you felt the community would be better off without my comments. I think the place where we hold strong disagreement is in how to deal with evil. For instance I feel very confident that you (and almost every HN reader) agree that it's wrong and shameful that Apple would make it impossible for Macs brought in China to display Taiwan's national flag. I want to mention it whenever the context allows, even if it means repeating myself a thousand times, whereas you appear to prefer it being mentioned once and then never again. I feel my approach is necessary to achieve what I assume you agree is the morally right thing to do (that Apple will revert its decision and once again display their national flag). I of course also realize that it's you and not me who has to deal with moderating thousands of new comments every day, and that my comments likely make it much more tiresome for you to do your job. I can't stop making these comments, but I can agree to stop using nicknames such as Xitler. As for today's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554466), I feel what's happening here is the scariest thing I've read this year, and it deserves much more focus and not to be dismissed as unsubstantial because of guesswork. China does not deserve benefit of the doubt at this point, they've proven over and over again that they have little to no regard for human rights, that they want to censor everything that put them in a bad light, and that they'll take every opportunity to rewrite history for their benefit. This is a fact and only to what degree can be argued. Right now China can make UC Browser default on all Huawei, Lenovo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and many more devices. They've demonstrated countless times that they'll behave like a spoilt child to get it their way (e.g. fire an employee for liking a tweet thanking their company or we'll kick you out of the country).. they've just demonstrated they'll gladly censor a SSL protected page (before today I didn't even consider it was possible, did you?).. how can you not be scared? How can you not feel extremely confident that they'll end up modifying Google search results and abuse this in so many other ways? If they're willing to do it with a GitHub repo, why wouldn't they do the exact same thing with Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, etc? They're already forcing companies to censor and manipulate content, rewrite history.. if they could do it by themselves on a massive scale then why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they sell devices at a loss if it meant they could control these people to influence foreign policies? Honestly, I'd accuse you of being willfully naive if you saw a less evil outcome.