16 ms·

Dust in the Light

278 points by zwieback 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
- vincentmarle 6y ago
  Agreed, it’s impossible to have adult conversations about anything other than tech on HN.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Yeah. I just deleted it. I shouldn’t have. But it was a bit snarky. Yet and still when I responded to another comment about HN’s hypocrisy about criticizing big tech’s monopolist ability to - not saying they have - censor information that is critical about the government, they still want the same government to “regulate tech”. Of course that got flagged. This is the same government that threatened to “shut down Twitter”. Too many people here show more concern about side loading apps on their phone than the treatment that minorities get by the police and justice system.
    - dang 6y ago
      Users probably flagged your comment because it was unsubstantive, and a supercilious generalization of the community you're participating in ("HN users are the first..."). The HN community is divided because society at large is divided, but the bulk of the participants here don't match your description. You might be running afoul of the cognitive biases that shape most of these perceptions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=demons%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
  - dang 6y ago
    By posting that, you make it more so, and actually it is far from true. We should do things to help develop the discourse here, not kick it. The container is fragile. I believe that when the community gets this sort of inaccurate reflection of itself, it encourages a "why bother" sentiment and, downstream from that, a "fuck you" sentiment, since if no one is communicating anyhow, what else does it make sense to say? In reality, is there any other non-siloed community of HN's size, where divisive topics routinely arise, that manages to do better at "adult conversations"? I don't know of one. I know it feels like HN is the worst [1], but actually, in relative terms, this place has managed to plant at least one or two toes outside the inner circle of hell. Our task is to move another toe in that direction. I wrote about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. Short version: it's because HN is less divisive that it feels more divisive, because this is the rare case of a large(ish) community that keeps itself in one piece instead of factoring into shards, silos, or social graphs. If that's true, then although we haven't realized it yet, the HN community is on the leading edge of the opportunity to learn to be different with one another, at least on the internet. This opportunity is precious and we need to become more conscious of it as a community, so we have a chance to do something with it other than collapse back into the moat. [1] I do not mean to pick on you personally—it sucks to get singled out and I have zero intention of shaming. The truth is that most of us have this emotional perception of HN, including me. If you read the post I linked to above, there's a theory there of why that is.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > I believe when the community gets this sort of deeply inaccurate reflection of itself, it encourages a "why bother" sentiment Tbh though, on some topics, "why bother" is accurate. You can write a comment that is controversial, but it will be heavily downvoted and flagged, so indeed: why bother? The Overton Window on HN isn't as large as it appears, but it's generally accepted that you can say what you want as long as it's within these narrow limits. What you're saying about the shock value of encountering different opinions for the first time is probably true (for some more so than others, I believe), but it doesn't change the issue that, on controversial topics, actually engaging the outraged and offering a different point of view does not seem useful. After a bunch of unspoken "fuck you" flags, "why bother" is what's keeping the site civil. If people are emotional and cannot be reached by words, don't try to talk to them unless you want to fight them. "Why bother" is deescalation.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better. I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at work. The centralization of the Internet makes it a much easier task. If you get Google, Facebook, and Twitter on board, you basically control the flow of information to most of the West. In the West it probably won’t be overt coercion but more likely via monetary and legal incentives. Immunity or liability from lawsuits for user posted content will be the big carrot and stick that will be used to get these companies to do the governments’ bidding. I fear that the George Floyd video equivalent 10 years from now will get immediately deleted by ML algorithms as too disturbing and the uploaders automatically banned
- scarface74 6y ago
  Yes and HN users are the first to want more government regulation over tech. The current administration is already trying to “shut down Twitter”. Edit Citation: https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/trump-twitter-fact-check-mail-voting-scarborough-coronavirus-deaths-fauci-cuomo-spacex-1.45004835 https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/trump-twitter-f...
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Government regulation in terms of how they selectively police their platforms, not in the sense of "don't disparage the government".
    - scarface74 6y ago
      So let’s say a platform censored “Focus on the Family” and “Black Lives Matter”, which one do you think the current government would fight for? But the current administration claimed the reason to get rid of Network Neutrality was to “reduce regulation”. If they don’t like the current platforms they should create their own. Isn’t that the entire mantra of conservatives to let the free market address such problems?
WhatIsDukkha 6y ago
As usual, overlong and is another apologia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia for large tech monopolies. These essays are fueled by throwing some facts and nuance around so that we appear to be a thoughtful person but then roughly sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"
- recursive 6y ago
  > sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?" Well, isn't it? I mean yes, that's not the only conclusion to be drawn here. But without their ubiquity, this would never have become a story in the first place.
- clairity 6y ago
  yeah, i've read a few of these analyses, and while they're mildly interesting, they're not nearly as earth-shatteringly insightful and counter-intuitive as many seem to think they are. it's mostly bog-standard strategic analysis you learn during MBA school, but to ben's credit, well laid out, organized, and appropriately cited. this particular post seems to marvel at how big tech provides otherwise-sheltered people a lens on the wider world, and by extension, a (rather tiny) mechanism of change. it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets, because that's the vantage point of the author and it's relative importance to him. edit: i just listened to Funmilola Fagbamila on yesterday's take two [0], and she was incredibly articulate and insightful about the protests and organizing for change: https://www.funmilola.com/ https://www.funmilola.com/ [0] https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/01/20889/ https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/01/20889/
  - zamfi 6y ago
    > it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets, because that's the vantage point of the author and it's relative importance to him I mean, the masses of people marching on the streets would very likely not be there but for the widespread sharing of the video.
Terretta 6y ago
"The crescent" is another way of saying "land SE of a big lake". An alternative plausible explanation is it's a half circle because the town center is on the southern end of the lake. Way too much being made of multiple sets of data points and pins on a map around a lake, without mentioning density, with a lake.
- mcguire 6y ago
  "While red-lining helped shape segregation in many cities, Minneapolis was pre-emptive about its discrimination; beginning in the 1910s Minneapolis real estate deeds started to include “Covenants” that explicitly excluded African Americans. A team from the University of Minnesota has been researching real estate deeds to uncover these covenants, and created this striking time-lapse of their spread:... "Racial covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948, but the effect remains; compare the racial covenant map to the racial dot map Blank referenced above — the blue (which is white people) adheres to the blue of racial covenants:... "A map of racial covenants closely matches a map of Minneapolis' population "That red cross, meanwhile, is the location of the homicide of George Floyd, in the decidedly non-blue portion of the map." I have downvoted your comment, not because there's anything specifically wrong in it, but because I cannot believe focusing on the word "crescent" and disregarding any context could be anything other than an attempt to diminish the discussion.
  - sanj 6y ago
    I'm downvoting it because it is willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets. There is. Constructing a convoluted worldview in which there isn't, and promulgating it, is racism.
    - Terretta 6y ago
      > willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets. On the contrary.... I grew up in Africa. My sister is professor of African studies with degree from UW Madison. I'm familiar with the area and the issues. The "crescent" seen in the data is geography, not some sort of compelling argument for correlation. Exactly contrary to your interpretation of my comment, my point is that the same data sets are correlated everywhere there's density, but I guess "the blob" doesn't seem as persuasive as "the crescent". It's not that it's a crescent, it's just urban America. And it's a problem. PS. See also, "centuries worth of negative compounding at work": https://ofdollarsanddata.com/racial-wealth-gap/ https://ofdollarsanddata.com/racial-wealth-gap/
toiletfuneral 6y ago
It’s weird hearing Ben act like he’s gives a shit about what’s happening when he spent years drumming up support for trump & Facebook. Yeah he couches it in “they’re not great” but at the end up the day he’s kind of a bootlicker
samirillian 6y ago
> Both peaceful protests and wanton destruction and looting were likely organized on social media. Interesting that in his mind the looting is the dark side of this uprising. How about the drones the riot cops use to watch the protesters' every move? Wasn't it Microsoft and AWS fighting over the facial recognition AI contract that Google finally dropped?
- scarface74 6y ago
  The peaceful protest with Kaepernick kneeling and “can we all just get along” was part I. People should have listened then instead of excusing the President for calling him a “son of a bitch”. This is part II.
- gilbetron 6y ago
  Were the cops organizing by social media? He's making the point that social media can be used for good or bad, what the cops use is a rather orthogonal point. (To be clear: the things you mention are bad)
  - samirillian 6y ago
    What do you think this facial-recognition AI is trained on? To me it's just amazingly pedestrian to consider "I saw a blog post" an actual political analysis of social media.
- Kiro 6y ago
  Interesting that in your mind drones are the dark side of the uprising. Really says something about the tech bubble and priorities. I can assure you that drones are the least of protestors' problems right now.
dmode 6y ago
I love Ben Thompson's writing and I like how he accurately connects the history of institutional racism to the events of today. I have seen a few articles of this kind, and it seems like in today's America vast majority of people (except a few Trump holdouts) have acknowledged that the historical arc of slavery to segregation to white flight to real estate discrimination has led to where we are. However, what I don't hear is radical solution to this problem. Even in Obama's medium essay, the solution is deep police and criminal justice reform. Which, while important, is incremental. What we need here is a step change to course correct 400 years of history. And incremental changes do not cut it. Here are some step change suggestions 1)Trillions of dollars of reparations 2) A generous UBI 3) Free healthcare 4) Trillions of investment in schools in poorer neighborhoods 5) A dramatic rise in minimum wage In pre-COVID world, I would accept a reasonable pushback against this suggestion was "deficit" "debt" etc. But COVID has exposed these pushbacks was hypocritical (puts a stark spotlight on the hypocritical Tea Party movement). We printed trillions of dollars overnight to save small and big businesses, and employees. Why can't we move at that scale ? If we can suddenly print that much money, what is stopping us from massive investments in our most disadvantaged communities to undo 400 years of history ?
- kennxfl 6y ago
  Covid had definitely exposed flaws in pure free market capitalism. We are modern human beings who can control Darwinism for the sake of greater good if need be.
- disease 6y ago
  Economic parity would go a long way towards solving these problems, I don't think they can happen before white racial resentment is solved. It's interesting that so many working class whites are so willing to vote against their own economic self interest - particular where the possibility of raising the levels of working class blacks is concerned. Last Place Aversion is a very real thing it seems.
  - dmode 6y ago
    Can you expand a little bit on the white racial resentment and what you mean by it ?
nogenerix 6y ago
When someone presents all these negative outcomes for minority groups (education, poverty, incarceration, etc.) it's difficult to not see that in a racial light. "Madison is one of the greatest places to live, just stay out of the black neighborhoods." - how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?
- pietroglyph 6y ago
  > how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that? They aren’t necessarily to be blamed for that. This blog post isn’t really assigning blame to white homeowners.
- jasonv 6y ago
  I found this opinion piece to be worth considering, and relevant to the context of your question: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/coronavirus-race-obesity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/coronavirus-race-...
- in_cahoots 6y ago
  The lenders for white neighborhoods formed explicit covenants to keep blacks out. White people chose to live in those neighborhoods and voted for lawmakers who supported redlining and other segregationist measures. They didn’t speak up for their black neighbors with less opportunity. For decades they have been silent and complicit as they live in their white neighborhoods and build generational wealth that has been denied to blacks. They may not have explicitly shunned blacks from their neighborhoods, but they certainly turned a blind eye.
  - nogenerix 6y ago
    Sounds racist to say that black communities need access to white communities in order to create positive outcomes. Why can't the black communities stand on their own?
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
KerrickStaley 6y ago
Zooming in on the commentary on Facebook/Twitter's approaches to Trump's post, I just want to say that in my opinion, Twitter did the right thing in this case and also in the previous case of misinformation about mail-in voting. We need to innovate in terms of how we keep democracies healthy, given the dramatic change to the flow of information caused by social media and the internet. Adding a "get the truth" notice to posts that contain misinformation is a great way to strike a balance between censoring misinformation and letting it spread unchecked, and this approach is an interesting new tool in the toolkit we have for keeping conversations healthy on the internet. I applaud Twitter for their work in developing and experimenting with this tool. Likewise, limiting the viral spread of posts that threaten violence (by preventing likes and retweets) is also a useful tool. It's interesting to note that the reason this post wasn't removed entirely is because public figures like Trump get a "newsworthiness" exception in Twitter's Code of Conduct that allows them to essentially say whatever they want, even if it violates the CoC.
nogenerix 6y ago
Is it possible with the negative outcomes in the black communities, that maybe the preemptive real estate segregation was a logical action?
rockmeamedee 6y ago
This is pretty weak. It mentions redlining, quotes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but then mostly argues that Twitter's filter on Trump's tweet made it spread wider, the reverse of the action they wanted, implying they did the wrong action, or that it would not work in the future, which is pretty bad logic. The tweet became more notable because Twitter has never done this before. It got reproduced because it was the first time Twitter did it, not because people wanted to read the "shocking tweet". If twitter were to do this often, or dump Trump, we'd stop talking about it again. Cf Milo. And then it ends with this whole "The internet is the new industrial revolution, and that is both good and bad" thing. Kind of like, Ben couldn't stop himself from Internet Thoughtleadership for a minute. After 4 minutes of commenting on Race in America he had to go back to musing about Platforms. I get it, you want to (and can!) tie it in to your expertise. But you just kind of failed at that. You could talk about the huge tech titans making it worse: Amazon's Ring doorbell, the $10B JEDI contract with the DoD, Facebook's extremist groups/lack of moderation, Twitter not banning Trump the first time around, the Adtech industry in general pushing surveillance everywhere it can, to gather datapoints. Or the way tech has made income inequality worse. The homogenous makeup of the tech industry. The social construction of "nerdiness" as whiteness. The tech industry (and everyone on the Internet)'s unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist approach, and only being accessible to people with money and app solutionism. But instead it ends with "I am hopeful there are fewer gatekeepers, and can therefore see racism more clearly now". Like, that's it? At least put a couple links to non-profits in the footer. Doesn't this guy make a few million $ a year from his newsletter? Donate it!
temptemptemp111 6y ago
Poor people are not more violent. Black people are more violent. Christian Ethiopians are not more violent... Lefties are too scared to use their beloved scientific reductionism, which they praise elsewhere, for even a moment on this topic. Because they're not interested in science or truth - just adherence to their religion of scientific atheism.
gigatexal 6y ago
Ben’s writing on this is so powerful. It should be at the top of HN with a million points. I’m glad to be a supporter of his. As a subscriber I got to hear him read this and it was moving.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  The free weekly articles are also available as free podcast episodes.
throwaway43852 6y ago
You lunatics actually think you're going to get MORE INTEGRATION, after all of this? Good luck with that. And if you really believed whites were evil and oppressive towards blacks and were responsible for all of blacks' dysfunction, you would be the staunchest supporters of segregation. That you unwaveringly oppose it proves you don't believe your own BS narrative.
- ponker 6y ago
  Of course all of the problems in the black community stem from whites. If whites hadn’t been too lazy to pick their own cotton there wouldn’t be a black underclass in America, just the educated African immigrants like every other immigrant group. Whites don’t get to drag a whole population here against their will and then just say “figure your own shit out.”
  - throwaway43852 6y ago
    > Whites don’t get to drag a whole population here against their will and then just say “figure your own shit out.” Whites (and Hispanics, Asians, and other non-blacks) have every right to peacefully separate themselves from this population.

Dust in the Light

278 points by zwieback 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vincentmarle 6y ago
Agreed, it’s impossible to have adult conversations about anything other than tech on HN.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Yeah. I just deleted it. I shouldn’t have. But it was a bit snarky. Yet and still when I responded to another comment about HN’s hypocrisy about criticizing big tech’s monopolist ability to - not saying they have - censor information that is critical about the government, they still want the same government to “regulate tech”. Of course that got flagged. This is the same government that threatened to “shut down Twitter”. Too many people here show more concern about side loading apps on their phone than the treatment that minorities get by the police and justice system.
  - dang 6y ago
    Users probably flagged your comment because it was unsubstantive, and a supercilious generalization of the community you're participating in ("HN users are the first..."). The HN community is divided because society at large is divided, but the bulk of the participants here don't match your description. You might be running afoul of the cognitive biases that shape most of these perceptions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=demons%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- dang 6y ago
  By posting that, you make it more so, and actually it is far from true. We should do things to help develop the discourse here, not kick it. The container is fragile. I believe that when the community gets this sort of inaccurate reflection of itself, it encourages a "why bother" sentiment and, downstream from that, a "fuck you" sentiment, since if no one is communicating anyhow, what else does it make sense to say? In reality, is there any other non-siloed community of HN's size, where divisive topics routinely arise, that manages to do better at "adult conversations"? I don't know of one. I know it feels like HN is the worst [1], but actually, in relative terms, this place has managed to plant at least one or two toes outside the inner circle of hell. Our task is to move another toe in that direction. I wrote about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. Short version: it's because HN is less divisive that it feels more divisive, because this is the rare case of a large(ish) community that keeps itself in one piece instead of factoring into shards, silos, or social graphs. If that's true, then although we haven't realized it yet, the HN community is on the leading edge of the opportunity to learn to be different with one another, at least on the internet. This opportunity is precious and we need to become more conscious of it as a community, so we have a chance to do something with it other than collapse back into the moat. [1] I do not mean to pick on you personally—it sucks to get singled out and I have zero intention of shaming. The truth is that most of us have this emotional perception of HN, including me. If you read the post I linked to above, there's a theory there of why that is.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > I believe when the community gets this sort of deeply inaccurate reflection of itself, it encourages a "why bother" sentiment Tbh though, on some topics, "why bother" is accurate. You can write a comment that is controversial, but it will be heavily downvoted and flagged, so indeed: why bother? The Overton Window on HN isn't as large as it appears, but it's generally accepted that you can say what you want as long as it's within these narrow limits. What you're saying about the shock value of encountering different opinions for the first time is probably true (for some more so than others, I believe), but it doesn't change the issue that, on controversial topics, actually engaging the outraged and offering a different point of view does not seem useful. After a bunch of unspoken "fuck you" flags, "why bother" is what's keeping the site civil. If people are emotional and cannot be reached by words, don't try to talk to them unless you want to fight them. "Why bother" is deescalation.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better. I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at work. The centralization of the Internet makes it a much easier task. If you get Google, Facebook, and Twitter on board, you basically control the flow of information to most of the West. In the West it probably won’t be overt coercion but more likely via monetary and legal incentives. Immunity or liability from lawsuits for user posted content will be the big carrot and stick that will be used to get these companies to do the governments’ bidding. I fear that the George Floyd video equivalent 10 years from now will get immediately deleted by ML algorithms as too disturbing and the uploaders automatically banned

scarface74 6y ago
Yes and HN users are the first to want more government regulation over tech. The current administration is already trying to “shut down Twitter”. Edit Citation: https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/trump-twitter-fact-check-mail-voting-scarborough-coronavirus-deaths-fauci-cuomo-spacex-1.45004835 https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/trump-twitter-f...
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Government regulation in terms of how they selectively police their platforms, not in the sense of "don't disparage the government".
  - scarface74 6y ago
    So let’s say a platform censored “Focus on the Family” and “Black Lives Matter”, which one do you think the current government would fight for? But the current administration claimed the reason to get rid of Network Neutrality was to “reduce regulation”. If they don’t like the current platforms they should create their own. Isn’t that the entire mantra of conservatives to let the free market address such problems?

WhatIsDukkha 6y ago

As usual, overlong and is another apologia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia for large tech monopolies. These essays are fueled by throwing some facts and nuance around so that we appear to be a thoughtful person but then roughly sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"

recursive 6y ago
> sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?" Well, isn't it? I mean yes, that's not the only conclusion to be drawn here. But without their ubiquity, this would never have become a story in the first place.
clairity 6y ago
yeah, i've read a few of these analyses, and while they're mildly interesting, they're not nearly as earth-shatteringly insightful and counter-intuitive as many seem to think they are. it's mostly bog-standard strategic analysis you learn during MBA school, but to ben's credit, well laid out, organized, and appropriately cited. this particular post seems to marvel at how big tech provides otherwise-sheltered people a lens on the wider world, and by extension, a (rather tiny) mechanism of change. it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets, because that's the vantage point of the author and it's relative importance to him. edit: i just listened to Funmilola Fagbamila on yesterday's take two [0], and she was incredibly articulate and insightful about the protests and organizing for change: https://www.funmilola.com/ https://www.funmilola.com/ [0] https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/01/20889/ https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/01/20889/
- zamfi 6y ago
  > it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets, because that's the vantage point of the author and it's relative importance to him I mean, the masses of people marching on the streets would very likely not be there but for the widespread sharing of the video.

Terretta 6y ago

"The crescent" is another way of saying "land SE of a big lake". An alternative plausible explanation is it's a half circle because the town center is on the southern end of the lake. Way too much being made of multiple sets of data points and pins on a map around a lake, without mentioning density, with a lake.

mcguire 6y ago
"While red-lining helped shape segregation in many cities, Minneapolis was pre-emptive about its discrimination; beginning in the 1910s Minneapolis real estate deeds started to include “Covenants” that explicitly excluded African Americans. A team from the University of Minnesota has been researching real estate deeds to uncover these covenants, and created this striking time-lapse of their spread:... "Racial covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948, but the effect remains; compare the racial covenant map to the racial dot map Blank referenced above — the blue (which is white people) adheres to the blue of racial covenants:... "A map of racial covenants closely matches a map of Minneapolis' population "That red cross, meanwhile, is the location of the homicide of George Floyd, in the decidedly non-blue portion of the map." I have downvoted your comment, not because there's anything specifically wrong in it, but because I cannot believe focusing on the word "crescent" and disregarding any context could be anything other than an attempt to diminish the discussion.
- sanj 6y ago
  I'm downvoting it because it is willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets. There is. Constructing a convoluted worldview in which there isn't, and promulgating it, is racism.
  - Terretta 6y ago
    > willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets. On the contrary.... I grew up in Africa. My sister is professor of African studies with degree from UW Madison. I'm familiar with the area and the issues. The "crescent" seen in the data is geography, not some sort of compelling argument for correlation. Exactly contrary to your interpretation of my comment, my point is that the same data sets are correlated everywhere there's density, but I guess "the blob" doesn't seem as persuasive as "the crescent". It's not that it's a crescent, it's just urban America. And it's a problem. PS. See also, "centuries worth of negative compounding at work": https://ofdollarsanddata.com/racial-wealth-gap/ https://ofdollarsanddata.com/racial-wealth-gap/

toiletfuneral 6y ago

It’s weird hearing Ben act like he’s gives a shit about what’s happening when he spent years drumming up support for trump & Facebook. Yeah he couches it in “they’re not great” but at the end up the day he’s kind of a bootlicker

samirillian 6y ago

> Both peaceful protests and wanton destruction and looting were likely organized on social media. Interesting that in his mind the looting is the dark side of this uprising. How about the drones the riot cops use to watch the protesters' every move? Wasn't it Microsoft and AWS fighting over the facial recognition AI contract that Google finally dropped?

scarface74 6y ago
The peaceful protest with Kaepernick kneeling and “can we all just get along” was part I. People should have listened then instead of excusing the President for calling him a “son of a bitch”. This is part II.
gilbetron 6y ago
Were the cops organizing by social media? He's making the point that social media can be used for good or bad, what the cops use is a rather orthogonal point. (To be clear: the things you mention are bad)
- samirillian 6y ago
  What do you think this facial-recognition AI is trained on? To me it's just amazingly pedestrian to consider "I saw a blog post" an actual political analysis of social media.
Kiro 6y ago
Interesting that in your mind drones are the dark side of the uprising. Really says something about the tech bubble and priorities. I can assure you that drones are the least of protestors' problems right now.

dmode 6y ago

I love Ben Thompson's writing and I like how he accurately connects the history of institutional racism to the events of today. I have seen a few articles of this kind, and it seems like in today's America vast majority of people (except a few Trump holdouts) have acknowledged that the historical arc of slavery to segregation to white flight to real estate discrimination has led to where we are. However, what I don't hear is radical solution to this problem. Even in Obama's medium essay, the solution is deep police and criminal justice reform. Which, while important, is incremental. What we need here is a step change to course correct 400 years of history. And incremental changes do not cut it. Here are some step change suggestions 1)Trillions of dollars of reparations 2) A generous UBI 3) Free healthcare 4) Trillions of investment in schools in poorer neighborhoods 5) A dramatic rise in minimum wage In pre-COVID world, I would accept a reasonable pushback against this suggestion was "deficit" "debt" etc. But COVID has exposed these pushbacks was hypocritical (puts a stark spotlight on the hypocritical Tea Party movement). We printed trillions of dollars overnight to save small and big businesses, and employees. Why can't we move at that scale ? If we can suddenly print that much money, what is stopping us from massive investments in our most disadvantaged communities to undo 400 years of history ?

kennxfl 6y ago
Covid had definitely exposed flaws in pure free market capitalism. We are modern human beings who can control Darwinism for the sake of greater good if need be.
disease 6y ago
Economic parity would go a long way towards solving these problems, I don't think they can happen before white racial resentment is solved. It's interesting that so many working class whites are so willing to vote against their own economic self interest - particular where the possibility of raising the levels of working class blacks is concerned. Last Place Aversion is a very real thing it seems.
- dmode 6y ago
  Can you expand a little bit on the white racial resentment and what you mean by it ?

nogenerix 6y ago

When someone presents all these negative outcomes for minority groups (education, poverty, incarceration, etc.) it's difficult to not see that in a racial light. "Madison is one of the greatest places to live, just stay out of the black neighborhoods." - how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?

pietroglyph 6y ago
> how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that? They aren’t necessarily to be blamed for that. This blog post isn’t really assigning blame to white homeowners.
jasonv 6y ago
I found this opinion piece to be worth considering, and relevant to the context of your question: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/coronavirus-race-obesity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/coronavirus-race-...
in_cahoots 6y ago
The lenders for white neighborhoods formed explicit covenants to keep blacks out. White people chose to live in those neighborhoods and voted for lawmakers who supported redlining and other segregationist measures. They didn’t speak up for their black neighbors with less opportunity. For decades they have been silent and complicit as they live in their white neighborhoods and build generational wealth that has been denied to blacks. They may not have explicitly shunned blacks from their neighborhoods, but they certainly turned a blind eye.
- nogenerix 6y ago
  Sounds racist to say that black communities need access to white communities in order to create positive outcomes. Why can't the black communities stand on their own?
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago

KerrickStaley 6y ago

Zooming in on the commentary on Facebook/Twitter's approaches to Trump's post, I just want to say that in my opinion, Twitter did the right thing in this case and also in the previous case of misinformation about mail-in voting. We need to innovate in terms of how we keep democracies healthy, given the dramatic change to the flow of information caused by social media and the internet. Adding a "get the truth" notice to posts that contain misinformation is a great way to strike a balance between censoring misinformation and letting it spread unchecked, and this approach is an interesting new tool in the toolkit we have for keeping conversations healthy on the internet. I applaud Twitter for their work in developing and experimenting with this tool. Likewise, limiting the viral spread of posts that threaten violence (by preventing likes and retweets) is also a useful tool. It's interesting to note that the reason this post wasn't removed entirely is because public figures like Trump get a "newsworthiness" exception in Twitter's Code of Conduct that allows them to essentially say whatever they want, even if it violates the CoC.

nogenerix 6y ago

Is it possible with the negative outcomes in the black communities, that maybe the preemptive real estate segregation was a logical action?

rockmeamedee 6y ago

This is pretty weak. It mentions redlining, quotes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but then mostly argues that Twitter's filter on Trump's tweet made it spread wider, the reverse of the action they wanted, implying they did the wrong action, or that it would not work in the future, which is pretty bad logic. The tweet became more notable because Twitter has never done this before. It got reproduced because it was the first time Twitter did it, not because people wanted to read the "shocking tweet". If twitter were to do this often, or dump Trump, we'd stop talking about it again. Cf Milo. And then it ends with this whole "The internet is the new industrial revolution, and that is both good and bad" thing. Kind of like, Ben couldn't stop himself from Internet Thoughtleadership for a minute. After 4 minutes of commenting on Race in America he had to go back to musing about Platforms. I get it, you want to (and can!) tie it in to your expertise. But you just kind of failed at that. You could talk about the huge tech titans making it worse: Amazon's Ring doorbell, the $10B JEDI contract with the DoD, Facebook's extremist groups/lack of moderation, Twitter not banning Trump the first time around, the Adtech industry in general pushing surveillance everywhere it can, to gather datapoints. Or the way tech has made income inequality worse. The homogenous makeup of the tech industry. The social construction of "nerdiness" as whiteness. The tech industry (and everyone on the Internet)'s unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist approach, and only being accessible to people with money and app solutionism. But instead it ends with "I am hopeful there are fewer gatekeepers, and can therefore see racism more clearly now". Like, that's it? At least put a couple links to non-profits in the footer. Doesn't this guy make a few million $ a year from his newsletter? Donate it!

temptemptemp111 6y ago

Poor people are not more violent. Black people are more violent. Christian Ethiopians are not more violent... Lefties are too scared to use their beloved scientific reductionism, which they praise elsewhere, for even a moment on this topic. Because they're not interested in science or truth - just adherence to their religion of scientific atheism.

gigatexal 6y ago

Ben’s writing on this is so powerful. It should be at the top of HN with a million points. I’m glad to be a supporter of his. As a subscriber I got to hear him read this and it was moving.

1123581321 6y ago
The free weekly articles are also available as free podcast episodes.

throwaway43852 6y ago

You lunatics actually think you're going to get MORE INTEGRATION, after all of this? Good luck with that. And if you really believed whites were evil and oppressive towards blacks and were responsible for all of blacks' dysfunction, you would be the staunchest supporters of segregation. That you unwaveringly oppose it proves you don't believe your own BS narrative.

ponker 6y ago
Of course all of the problems in the black community stem from whites. If whites hadn’t been too lazy to pick their own cotton there wouldn’t be a black underclass in America, just the educated African immigrants like every other immigrant group. Whites don’t get to drag a whole population here against their will and then just say “figure your own shit out.”
- throwaway43852 6y ago
  > Whites don’t get to drag a whole population here against their will and then just say “figure your own shit out.” Whites (and Hispanics, Asians, and other non-blacks) have every right to peacefully separate themselves from this population.