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That's self evident but Facebook could afford not incentivizing political engagement. It's only fairly recently that this threat vector was exploited. Facebook
by nkozyra 6y ago
That's self evident but Facebook could afford not incentivizing political engagement.
It's only fairly recently that this threat vector was exploited. Facebook grew for years without being a disinformation channel.
- pjc50 6y agoAs we found out when HN tried to ban politics, everything is political.
- nkozyra 6y agoI think there's an argument you can never fully ban it and there are ways to subtly inject and influence politics. But my point was that Facebook could survive and thrive in a hypothetical situation wherein engagement over political content/disinformation was removed.
- foldr 6y agoI don't want to start a meta flamewar, but I don't think HN has ever officially banned political discussion tout court. There's always been a fair amount of it on the site for the past decade, as far as I remember.
- arethuza 6y agoThe guidelines says the following are off-topic: "Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." So I'd say HN explicitly allows some political content as long as it is "interesting". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- foldr 6y agoYes indeed. That's the policy on stories, though. I think the policy on political discussion in comments (which often occurs in threads for "non-political" stories) has always been fairly unrestrictive.
- pjc50 6y agoThere was a period a few years ago where a total ban was attempted, then rolled back after a couple of weeks - users protested by flagging everything and writing a comment saying how X was in fact political.
- dredmorbius 6y agoThere was a political detox week for years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 It ended early: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13133823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13133823 Numerous references: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20experiment%20politics&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- waihtis 6y agoPolitics is not the root value of all things and so this cannot be true.
- salawat 6y agoValue measures bereft of an encompassing political framework tend to very quickly degrade in terms of who can enact more existential violence on the other, and even that, given enough time for adaptation can stabilize into an equilibrium indistinguishable from a polity. This is the driving force behind symbiosis, family rearing, community building, business, justice systems (and the necessity of blind spots with regards to Law Enforcement to universally apply) and the "taming" of the criminal element as a much needed escape valve for development away from dysfunctional political dead ends. Quite to the contrary, all life tends toward the political, and politik as it happens makes all other value measures besides existence possible. So quite to the contrary, from the system-centric point of view, in which a eukaryotic organism can be considered a policy of living tissues, extant fauna, and set of evolvedmechanisms for keeping everyone alive and in check, the stable political equilibrium from which all other activity inherent to prolonged existence can take place, the political is life.
- 542354234235 6y agoWhen you are struggling to meet the word count on your essay.
- cam_l 6y agoNot all things, just people.
- pjc50 6y agoThe question "what has value, and to whom" is extremely political.
- waihtis 6y agoThat is a philosophical question, of which politics is just a derivative.
- raxxorrax 6y agoThat it is hard to ban politics doesn't mean everything is political. If everything were political, we would have much less fun.
- daniellarusso 6y agoI mean, this year, car tires became political at one point. I am continuously surprised at how things I thought were ‘above the fray’, can become a political issue.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoIt's only because people can make anything political, despite doing so being a monumentally stupid idea.
- 542354234235 6y agoI think what people mean when they say everything is political is that the actions of our politics shapes just about every aspect our lives. You might think that driving to a restaurant to buy a meal isn’t political, but everything about is the result of decisions of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. How smooth the drive is dependent on how much money your city allocated tax money for road maintenance and how city planners decided to lay out your area. The laws and regulations, and the competence of the enforcement, on safety effect your chance of getting sick. The laws on tax burdens, labor laws, minimum wage laws, trade agreements, etc. factor into the price of your meal. Your level of disposable income to go buy meals is effected by those labor laws, wage laws, cost or rent or a mortgage (which itself is effected by city planning of what types of space can be built where), and on and on. The point of “everything is political” is to snap people out of the mistaken idea that politics is just abortion, voting, gun rights, and tax loopholes.
- raxxorrax 6y agoPartly true. On the other hand I think it is a common mistake to attribute economic success to politics. Sure, they lay the framework, but that doesn't mean they are responsible for success or failure. Of course politicians like to claim it anyway. > The point of “everything is political” is to snap people out [...] Oh, wow. That can make sense, but I had a complete different interpretation. I understood it as prompt to reflect on everything you do with an examination if it furthers partisan goals.