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I believe 1984 was about the government rewriting reality and not private industry.
by jf22 6y ago
I believe 1984 was about the government rewriting reality and not private industry.
- fsflover 6y agoWhat's the difference for the people?
- jf22 6y agoWhich people and what scenario? At a base level comparing a government telling you which fictional truths to believe to a private company providing a technology service is difficult.
- fsflover 6y ago> private company providing a technology service You mean "private company deciding what is right and wrong"?
- jf22 6y agoYes, a private company can decide people who wear orange shirts are wrong and ban access from people wearing orange shirts.
- fsflover 6y agoCan a private water company decide that people in orange shirts should not get water? Same here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25835408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25835408.
- gagege 6y agoWhichever one of the two is the biggest bully doesn't matter, in reality they can both act like Big Brother. I think CS Lewis' N.I.C.E from That Hideous Strength is more true to life than 1984.
- stickyricky 6y agoPrivate industry is clearly operating in the interests of "public" power.
- takenpilot 6y agoWhat about private industry acting as a government, with similar power.
- jf22 6y agoSure, but a 1984 comparison is not appropriate here.
- fsflover 6y agoWhy not? Will you care who oppresses you?
- jf22 6y agoThis reply cannot possibly be a good faith addition to the discussion.
- tarboreus 6y agoAccusing people of bad faith is against HN policy.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y agoWhile true, fsflover has not made any statements and is only posting questions. He's "JAQing off" [0], so to speak. It's a hallmark of bad faith arguing. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
- fsflover 6y agoI honestly don't understand why the 1984 comparison is not appropriate here, because the book is about the oppression. I don't know how it's for you guys (that's why I asked), but for me it does not matter who oppresses me, government or corporations.
- 6y ago
- bassman9000 6y agoI think we're now there, given how close Big Tech and Democrats are, and have been, for a long time.
- edbob 6y agoI don't care whether it's a corporate or government logo on the boot stamping on my face.
- dalu 6y agoMaybe we need a new book called 2084 then
- hackerbee 6y agoThat won't be written for another 27 years.
- mansion7 6y agoWhen the private industry can censor the government, or outright purchase them, the difference is blurred The 1984 comparisons are apt. We already see them unpersoning people and employing memory holes.
- akhilcacharya 6y agoNobody is censoring the government.
- mansion7 6y agoWhy, sure they are. They censored the president under phony pretenses. They've censored Senator Hawley's book. They censored other government officials from even uttering the name "Eric Ciaramella", even though he was certainly not a whistleblower and even if so, not legally entitled to such a level of privacy. But to be more accurate, they're censoring non-liberals. This is evidenced by the fact that actual dictatorial regimes with many many violent deaths on their hands are allowed access to those avenues of communication without a fraction of the editorial control than was the President of the USA. Other politicians, who have the "D" by their name (the government equivalent of a blue checkmark apparently) are allowed to spread hoaxes and lies for years and call for harassment and violence towards their political enemies, and big tech allows it to stand. Because they agree with it. One only need to see the Googlers crying in the hallways after Hillary's defeat in 2016 to know why. They got their feelings hurt and vowed to never let it happen again, by any means necessary. And they are people with significant means to control what you may or may not say in the digital public square, if they don't simply decide to unperson you entirely.
- lasagnaphil 6y agoThe neoliberal Democrats and Silicon Valley seem to be in kind of in a lovers-gone-haters relationship though, it’s more complicated than what you’re suggesting. They were really loving each other in the Obama years, remember when social media was hailed in liberal media as a positive force for democracy (alluding to the various Spring revolutions)? I mean, Obama’s campaign used private Facebook data no less than Trump did, and liberal media even spun that as a good thing at that time! The problem is once that same technology was soon to be used against the neoliberals from both left/right wing populism (Occupy Wall Street and Bernie for the left, Trumpism for the right), that’s when their relationship got shakened quite a bit and now we’re up to the point where the Dems are filing antitrust regulations against Google. The neoliberals got a bit afraid that the new technocrats (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc) would accumulate enough power to do whatever they want (against their interests, although so far big tech's interests just seemed to be about making as much money as possible with disregard for anything else), so liberal media began spewing out one of the most blatantly aggressive narratives that social media was the sole fault in the rise of Trumpism (well, only partially so, the more substantial reason has to do with US neoliberal policies leading to deindustrialization, along with the greater urban/rural inequality divide). I mean, SV companies have their faults, but it’s not just them responsible for this whole mess. Anyways, the mainstream Dems finally got the big social media companies to censor as they please, but that’s only after the populist left/right started to look for decentralized or encrypted alternatives, albeit slowly (Telegram/Signal/Mastodon/Pleroma/Lemmy/etc).
- jerrya 6y ago"The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic- books survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals."
- RoyTyrell 6y agoWhile that's a nice quote and all, you are responding to someone talking about the story 1984 by George Orwell. Whereas your quote is from Farenheiht 451 by Ray Bradbury. I'm not sure if you've actually ready the story or you just like the quote, but it's actually not about government censorship, it's about TV replacing books. Even a short Google search will help you out there.
- jerrya 6y agoHi Roy, Um, that was my point slowhand09 spoke of this being Orwellian, but as you point and jf22 point out, these actions are done by private actors, not government So read that Bradbury quote again, in the context of private companies burning books or deplatforming private citizen speech "It didn't come from the Government down... Technology, mass exploitation and minority [referring to interests not races] pressure carried the trick"
- Darmody 6y agoThe private industry made Biden president.