25 ms·

> For fear of losing a job, or of losing an admission to school, or of losing the right to live in the country of your birth, or merely of social ostracism, man

> For fear of losing a job, or of losing an admission to school, or of losing the right to live in the country of your birth, or merely of social ostracism, many of today's best minds in so-called free, democratic states have stopped trying to say what they think and feel and have fallen silent. There are a lot of topics I won’t touch any more, more every year. Accounts - can’t stay anonymous, ml systems working around the clock to identify posters. My social justice focused friends have it worse, their online “friends” attack them publicly over every single little thing. They go quiet or form a tiny invite only groups to hide after an attempt to do something good that backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans. They have panic attacks over the guilt and stress

ben_w 5y ago
Likewise. A few weeks ago someone took enough of an exception to me writing here that (COVID) masks are trivial that they went to my blog and vented quite unpleasantly. I know others who have had it much worse than me.
- rebelos 5y ago
  Masks are not yet "trivial" and it's stupid to argue otherwise. You don't need anything other than logic to see why: a great number of people in the US and elsewhere remain unvaccinated. And relying on the honor system to identify them (given the mentality one would expect of much of this group) is patently insane. So it's best, for now, to keep the masks on. This isn't about your freedom and it isn't even really about the direct mortality rate associated with COVID. It's about not flooding hospitals. You don't need to worry about being canceled. In this case, it's sufficient to apply just a tad of critical thinking.
  - TeeMassive 5y ago
    > Masks are not yet "trivial" and it's stupid to argue otherwise. Fauci disagrees with you.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    You misunderstand me: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2021/06/14/why-do-some-people-hate-masks/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2021/06/14/why-do-some...
    - rebelos 5y ago
      Understood. Just so you know: > someone took enough of an exception to me writing here that (COVID) masks are trivial trivial: "of little value or importance"
      - ben_w 5y ago
        Also: ignorable, commonplace, ordinary
  - draw_down 5y ago
    Come on
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Similar thing happened to me. Last week I compared ignoring COVID guidance to reckless/drunk driving, and someone actually took time out of their day to look up my personal E-mail address and send me some unhinged rant, rather than just reply here. I don't know what it is about COVID but it's got some people totally off their rockers.
throwaway6734 5y ago
>They have panic attacks over the guilt and stress They should get off of twitter
- jimbokun 5y ago
  And there you have self censorship at work!
  - emsy 5y ago
    It’s not self censorship, it’s mental hygiene.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      It can be both, depending on the why. Leaving Twitter has been great for me, but I didn’t leave it because someone was threatening me. I do know someone who left Twitter for that reason.
      - kbelder 5y ago
        Soon, nobody will be left on twitter but lunatics and journalists. But I repeat myself.
        jjgreen 5y ago
        Soon?
  - throwaway6734 5y ago
    Does avoiding 4chan also count as self censorship?
    - malwrar 5y ago
      Politicians, journalists, academics, every celebrity ever, etc aren’t on 4chan (or at least trying to have serious conversations there). This isn’t a good comparison.
devenblake 5y ago
> They go quiet or form a tiny invite only groups to hide after an attempt to do something good that backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans. It really sounds like they accidentally offended someone, the person who was offended was so much so that they couldn't communicate why they were offended, and then your friends misinterpreted the issue.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  That's an odd reading of what they described. It sounds more like there friends did something good in the world but were told to sit-down and shut-up because they were the wrong race/gender/x.
  - devenblake 5y ago
    Yes, it sounds that way, but the event you (and they) describe has never happened.
    - mdoms 5y ago
      There's a good example of just this thing happening right here[0]. A group of young climate activists disbanded because despite the good work they were doing they decided their group was too top-loaded with white people and should be led by POC. [0] https://www.facebook.com/schoolstrike4climateauckland/posts/839239820347080 https://www.facebook.com/schoolstrike4climateauckland/posts/...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
      That seems like a pretty ignorant thing to say, that in the sum of all human interactions online, the event OP described has never happened (or is even supposedly that rare). I would like to know why you think that would be true.
    - malwrar 5y ago
deregulateMed 5y ago
Yeah I think anonymous accounts get a bad reputation and it's unfortunate. Fake bought accounts have a good rep.
throwkeep 5y ago
When I worked at a FAANG, anti-censorship and pro free speech was normative. What happened? Why have we let a small number of intolerant activists scare us into silence?
- slver 5y ago
  The flip side is what exactly do you need to say that you're silenced from saying. Our natural instinct to enter debates and "win" them really leads otherwise smart people astray as well. Let the activists yap. And you do what you want to do. We've evolved to speak not to win arguments, but to coordinate our actions better. And actions still speak loudest.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Siira 5y ago
    > We've evolved to speak not to win arguments, but to coordinate Extraordinary generalizations require extraordinary evidence.
  - slindz 5y ago
    For me, it's less about having things I need to say and more about endlessly analyzing what I'm about to say. There is little, if any, forgiveness for the well-intentioned mistakes.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  College's changed; It used to be free speech focused with debates and exposure to a wide set of ideas being seen as critical to a well rounded education. Now you can't even get vaguely controversial speakers on campus. Tech workers tend to be younger so the more recent changes to the political views of colleges effect them first. Hell famous comedians won't even preform at college campuses anymore: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/jerry-seinfeld-reveals-why-he-cant-perform-stand-up-comedy-on-college-campuses-they-dont-know-what-the-hell-theyre-talking-about.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/jerry-seinfeld-reve...
nebula8804 5y ago
>Accounts - can’t stay anonymous, ml systems working around the clock to identify posters. Really? Thats fascinating! Anything you can provide that gives more insight into this? Has anyone written about this practice?
- f1refly 5y ago
  There was a post here a few days ago that would analyze your hn comments and output the most identical looking other accounts. Lots of people wrote it output their alts and throwaways.
  - floxy 5y ago
    It looks like this was that article: Show HN: Find Your Hacker News Doppelgänger https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568709
eeZah7Ux 5y ago
> backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans Are cis/white people are often discriminated against?
- leetcrew 5y ago
  yes? isn't this why racism is defined as "power + prejudice"? anyone can be prejudiced for or against a particular race, but only some people are in a position to do something about it.
  - tdfx 5y ago
    There's a non-trivial number of people who will tell you with a straight face that white people can't experience racism. People have redefined the word to mean what they want it to mean, which may have very little in common with the definition of the word.
    - leetcrew 5y ago
      > There's a non-trivial number of people who will tell you with a straight face that white people can't experience racism. I'm not a big fan of the word games that people play these days, but I would otherwise mostly agree with those people. the status of the person/people discriminating against you makes a big difference. the worst example I can think of from my own life was when a DMV employee went out of her way to fail me on my driver's license test. another employee told me she only lets black kids pass. that sucked, but I went back the next day and passed with a different employee. anyways, all I'm saying is people discriminate on the basis of race/gender/sexuality all the time. cis-hetero-rich-white dudes are not spared entirely, but the consequences tend to be minor in comparison.
      - tdfx 5y ago
        Low-impact racism is nonetheless racism. Saying that white people cannot experience racism is logically and demonstrably incorrect based on the universal definition of the word. There's no magnitude threshold that has to be met, only that the behavior is based on the color of your skin.
tomjen3 5y ago
The trick to avoid getting found out online is to change small, irrelevant details. Then, when they try to dox you, they will be chasing a phantasm. The NSA already knows, but they don't care about that.
- swader999 5y ago
  Sooner or later an AI through linguistical analysis will link everything everyone has ever posted anywhere to their real name and photo from Facebook.
  - panny 5y ago
    >Sooner or later an AI One of the key takeaways from Mr. Andrew Ng's course on AI was that AI is not some kind of magic. There's always someone who attributes magical abilities to "lie detectors" and such wonders of technology. I think he was cautioning against such thinking. AI cannot do things a human expert is not capable of, for example predicting the stock market with 100% accuracy. It can only make predictions approximately as good as human experts. In other words, if someone wanted to match your writings with linguistic analysis, and that were possible with AI, then they can do that today with human experts. The fact that you don't see it happen, and if anyone even tried they'd be met with great skepticism, means what you imagine probably isn't possible.
    - learn_more 5y ago
      Perhaps it's doable with humans, but not scalable. And AI makes it scalable.
    - c1ccccc1 5y ago
      Strongly agree that AI isn't magic, but I think you're making too broad a statement here. AI can certainly be superhuman in some areas, eg. chess and go. Whether or not human-level is the maximum depends on how the training data is created. If you have to rely on human experts to produce the labels (this is a dog, this is a cat, etc.), then it's going to be hard to design a system that can beat human performance. But for chess and go, you can get around that by using self-play. In the case of matching writings, you can get around it by having a bunch of people create several pieces of writing each. Even if no human expert could tell whether two pieces were from the same person, it's still possible to give the network the correct labels when training because we know the ground truth of who wrote what. Of course, a model can only work with information that actually exists. My gut says that writing leaks plenty of information about identity, so it should at least be possible to identify the author of large chunks of text (over 1000 words, say). But I could be wrong about that.
nine_k 5y ago
Theocracy may be bad, but an aggressively religious society is worse. Religious here means that certain things are articles of faith, and any attempt to discuss them in any way, let alone disagree with them, gets you marked as an enemy who needs to be driven away and stripped of any respect or role in society. I won't even say it's the majority that's so aggressive. But the majority of people who are somehow active in the society and thus visible outside the circle of their family and coworkers, either actively or passively agree. Either they share the faith (many do), or they don't want trouble. What good is the First Amendment if citizens themselves see free speech as a dangerous transgression?
- Zababa 5y ago
  The big difference is that religion usually believes in some kind of forgiveness and repentance. I can't say I see the same things in the current society.
  - unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
    The structure of a revolution-- it usually begins when the rabble acts up and no authority is willing or able to stop them. So, 1 out of 1,000 users seek quasi-religious vengeance on Twitter and the mechanisms that used to inform the other 999 don't work. The NYT picks up toxic views of the rabble and reports them as mainstream, which the rabble have converted to a weapon in itself. Most revolutions I've read about, large and small consist of an authentic breakdown in or reorganization of, society. Here and now, seems like we're actually discussing an antifeature of manufactured social technologies combined with capture or weakening of traditional media.
    - nine_k 5y ago
      I think you mischaracterize these people as "rabble". Many of the vocal "woke" figures are highly educated, highly intellectual, and well-off. Professors, top business officers, high-achieving scientists, writers, engineers. They do it not because they are stupid, for they are not. They truly believe that what they do is right, that it's the shining path to the better future.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Something is asymmetrical here. Those who cancel are also communicating things. Why don't they face pushback from what they say? Why don't they face consequences?
- js8 5y ago
  Power perpetuates itself through incomplete information; that's the asymmetry you're looking for. Those who cancel often mindlessly repeat emotional lies, in anger. It takes lot more effort to engage somebody on cool, rational level.
- RIMR 5y ago
  They do face consequences. Turn on Fox News for 5 minutes and you're bound to hear some talking head spreading alarmist narratives about cancel culture. Social Justice minded people get doxxed and dragged through the mud for their speech every day. You seem to be complaining that "those who cancel" aren't being stripped of their voices. That's not a valid complaint if you care about free speech. Free speech means you can say whatever you want about anything you like. It also means, that after hearing what you have to say, I can say whatever I like about you and your opinions. I can disagree with you just as much as you can disagree with me. Disagreement isn't censorship, it's free speech. Social consequences are a natural counterpart to speaking your mind. People are allowed to draw lines, judge you, and cut you out of their lives for what you say. Free speech applies to everyone with a voice, not just you. Censorship is when you aren't allowed to speak, not just simply facing consequences for what you choose to say.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Let's say I post something online. And let's say that 100 people decide, not just that they disagree, but that they want to destroy me. They send anonymous rants and threats to my employer, my family, my neighbors, and my friends. They dox me, so that I have to worry about physical harm from any random nutcase who agrees with them and decides to bother. What consequences do they face? Does anyone go to their boss (times 100) and say, what this person is doing isn't right, and is making your company look bad? Does anyone dox the doxxers? I'm not saying it doesn't happen to Social Justice types. I'm saying, whoever it's done to, do the people doing it face consequences of their own? (If the Social Justice types are doing this themselves, then in their case the answer is yes.) It's easy for a group of 100 angry people to cover one person they decide to destroy. It's less easy for the one person to return the favor to all 100 of them. You say (paraphrased) that free speech still has the consequences of the feedback. That's fine. But the feedback has to also have the consequences of feedback.
RIMR 5y ago
If you try to speak for the Black community, and you aren't black, you don't have the "wrong color of skin", you are speaking for others without their permission, and they have the right to correct the record if they consider your take to be inaccurate. If you try to speak for the trans community, and you aren't trans, you aren't being censored, you are being rebutted. Trans people have the right to correct the record when someone speaks on their behalf in a disagreeable way. Anyone who sees disagreement as a form of censorship needs to take a step back and recognize that the right to disagree is an important facet of free speech, and attempting to defeat things like "cancel culture" and other vocal forms of public disagreement is a demonstrably larger threat to free speech than anything the social justice community could ever dish out. Censorship is largely being redefined as experiencing consequences for what one says. This is an extraordinarily cowardly misrepresentation of censorship, that tries to redefine free speech as your speech, and tries to force the narrative that disagreement with your speech is actually stripping you of the right to speak. Sure, public shaming and doxxing may have a chilling effect on many people's willingness to speak freely, but a lack individual willingness is not equivalent to a lack of permission. Free speech requires bravery. If you are too much of a coward to speak freely, you aren't being censored, you're just a coward afraid of others' free speech.
- AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
  > If you try to speak for the Black community, and you aren't black, you don't have the "wrong color of skin", you are speaking for others without their permission So... wait... are you saying all these white people in BLM marches... You're on a very slippery slope, my friend.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    You are misunderstanding. Folks marching in BLM Marches aren't speaking for the Black community. The poster is talking about things more akin to, say, a non-trans person speaking about the experience of being trans or someone who has never went to college speaking for college graduates - when really, they shouldn't try to speak for groups they aren't a party to. In other words, I can talk about prejudice and racism I've experienced and witnessed, but this doesn't mean that I have the credentials to talk about what it is like to, say, have dark skin in the US and experience that sort of racism. It just isn't the same, and I don't have that experience. After all, I can (in the US) basically just be a face in the crown in a small town.
dangus 5y ago
> They go quiet or form a tiny invite only groups to hide after an attempt to do something good that backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans. They have panic attacks over the guilt and stress This right here is your indicator that this comment is an entirely made up story about hypothetical friends, with the sole intention of ragging on “liberals.” Basically, it’s contrarian conservatism that criticizes not-very-controversial values (e.g., general equality) for incredibly vague reasons. It’s even more ignorant than plain old bigotry because it’s so devoid of ideology. It’s just contrarianism for the sake of not doing what the “liberals” do. The anti-masking movement of 2020 is the perfect demonstration of that contrarian ideology. Conservatives don’t even know why they oppose masks except that the liberals were putting them on. It’s pretty sad considering that the first two sentences about ML and online identity were relatively productive conversation that could have gone somewhere thought provoking.
- lasagnaphil 5y ago
  > This right here is your indicator that this comment is an entirely made up story about hypothetical friends, with the sole intention of ragging on “liberals.” Nah, I’ve been inside some of the fandoms on the Internet before and I know exactly what the commenter’s talking about (and whenever a similar thing happens I do another facepalm.) /r/HobbyDrama has a fuckton of similar stories as this, you don’t need to adhere to a specific ideology to admit that these things happen. (And even the left has criticized idpol for a long time, don’t just assume the commenter is conservative because of this) As to why people participate in these tribal fights in the Internet… well one of the problems I see in modern society is a severe lack of agency among the people. Fighting on the Internet for a cause (whether stupid or not) gives one a sense of agency that they are alive in this world and changing things. The problem is that most of the agency that the Internet provides is inconsequential for actually changing the real world and is detrimental to one’s mental health in the long term.
weeblewobble 5y ago
I believe you (and Snowden) are catastrophizing, or in other words self-cancelling. You have chosen to dramatically curtail your self-expression out of fear of social consequences. It seems that what you fear is being "attack[ed] publicly." If that's the case, what you fear is that others will express themselves in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Wouldn't the cause of free speech be better advanced by defending to the death their right to express themselves, rather than by casting that expression as the death knell of modern society? If your side were to "win" this culture war, a whole lot of speech would be suppressed by new social norms. Free speech for me but not for thee. If you walk into a bar and start mouthing off, there's a decent chance you'll get punched in the face. This is bad and a crime, but I never hear anyone talk about how it's a sign of the deterioration of free speech norms. Why is that? This is what I mean by catastrophizing. In response to speech that makes you uncomfortable you have chosen to give up on self-expression on controversial topics (except this one apparently) and martyr yourself. But no one is forcing you to do that. The arena of public discourse is still open to all comers. To the extent that I see any coherent position in the free-speech-substack cinematic universe, it's rather anodyne: "people should be nicer to each other." True enough as far as it goes.
- adt2bt 5y ago
  Not OP, but there's a difference between having a legitimate and interesting discussion involving unpopular opinions and simply mouthing off at a bar. However, the reaction on the internet today tends to be one and the same for both cases: the online equivalent of being punched in the face. Being attacked publicly can go beyond uncomfortable in many cases (complaints to your work, family, death threats, etc). The written word used to involve significant barriers that made one consider everything they said. It was also taken as a more formal medium, as it tended to be more permanent. Today, instead, you can express yourself online with next to no effort, and the majority of people write down thoughts as if they were in a verbal conversation, which has a far different permanence to it. I occasionally scroll back through comments I've even made myself on this site and have no recollection of what I was thinking or the comment when I said it. Yet there it is as a permanent record of who I am/was. Given that, I'd rather keep my controversial opinions to myself on social media, as I may not even hold those opinions in the future. I'll use meatspace discussions with friends, colleagues and others I respect to refine them, rather than the 'arena' of public opinion.
abstractbarista 5y ago
Same here. Better to go covert. I've shifted over the years to maintaining a few close friends, with which you can candidly exchange.
andrepd 5y ago
> They go quiet or form a tiny invite only groups to hide after an attempt to do something good that backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans. I don't mean to be snarky since I don't know the specifics of situation your friends find yourselves in, but... is it possible that they should just grow thicker skin? I mean twitter is a cesspool of hate, bitterness, and anger. But you can simply not open it and ignore it, no?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kaliali 5y ago
Its the same insecure fags that make ML programs to identify you and put a box around you that also create the problems and drama. If you think America is toxically racist, go to China where they regularly segregate the black population from shopping/living in apartments and they also go as far as to filter out Black people in Star Wars movies. You live in a shit bubble boy.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
This chilling effect will be the downfall of western civilizations.
Layke1123 5y ago
Ha ha the persecution complex is real. XD I am a white male and I have never once been silenced or criticized for supporting climate change, BLM, or transgender, only supported by those people and appreciative of my support. Scared the way you view the world isn't correct little boy? Boo hoo.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ben_w 5y ago

Likewise. A few weeks ago someone took enough of an exception to me writing here that (COVID) masks are trivial that they went to my blog and vented quite unpleasantly. I know others who have had it much worse than me.

rebelos 5y ago
Masks are not yet "trivial" and it's stupid to argue otherwise. You don't need anything other than logic to see why: a great number of people in the US and elsewhere remain unvaccinated. And relying on the honor system to identify them (given the mentality one would expect of much of this group) is patently insane. So it's best, for now, to keep the masks on. This isn't about your freedom and it isn't even really about the direct mortality rate associated with COVID. It's about not flooding hospitals. You don't need to worry about being canceled. In this case, it's sufficient to apply just a tad of critical thinking.
- TeeMassive 5y ago
  > Masks are not yet "trivial" and it's stupid to argue otherwise. Fauci disagrees with you.
- ben_w 5y ago
  You misunderstand me: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2021/06/14/why-do-some-people-hate-masks/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2021/06/14/why-do-some...
  - rebelos 5y ago
    Understood. Just so you know: > someone took enough of an exception to me writing here that (COVID) masks are trivial trivial: "of little value or importance"
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Also: ignorable, commonplace, ordinary
- draw_down 5y ago
  Come on
ryandrake 5y ago
Similar thing happened to me. Last week I compared ignoring COVID guidance to reckless/drunk driving, and someone actually took time out of their day to look up my personal E-mail address and send me some unhinged rant, rather than just reply here. I don't know what it is about COVID but it's got some people totally off their rockers.

throwaway6734 5y ago

>They have panic attacks over the guilt and stress They should get off of twitter

jimbokun 5y ago
And there you have self censorship at work!
- emsy 5y ago
  It’s not self censorship, it’s mental hygiene.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    It can be both, depending on the why. Leaving Twitter has been great for me, but I didn’t leave it because someone was threatening me. I do know someone who left Twitter for that reason.
    - kbelder 5y ago
      Soon, nobody will be left on twitter but lunatics and journalists. But I repeat myself.
      - jjgreen 5y ago
        Soon?
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  Does avoiding 4chan also count as self censorship?
  - malwrar 5y ago
    Politicians, journalists, academics, every celebrity ever, etc aren’t on 4chan (or at least trying to have serious conversations there). This isn’t a good comparison.

devenblake 5y ago

> They go quiet or form a tiny invite only groups to hide after an attempt to do something good that backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans. It really sounds like they accidentally offended someone, the person who was offended was so much so that they couldn't communicate why they were offended, and then your friends misinterpreted the issue.

tick_tock_tick 5y ago
That's an odd reading of what they described. It sounds more like there friends did something good in the world but were told to sit-down and shut-up because they were the wrong race/gender/x.
- devenblake 5y ago
  Yes, it sounds that way, but the event you (and they) describe has never happened.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    There's a good example of just this thing happening right here[0]. A group of young climate activists disbanded because despite the good work they were doing they decided their group was too top-loaded with white people and should be led by POC. [0] https://www.facebook.com/schoolstrike4climateauckland/posts/839239820347080 https://www.facebook.com/schoolstrike4climateauckland/posts/...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - CapmCrackaWaka 5y ago
    That seems like a pretty ignorant thing to say, that in the sum of all human interactions online, the event OP described has never happened (or is even supposedly that rare). I would like to know why you think that would be true.
  - malwrar 5y ago

deregulateMed 5y ago

Yeah I think anonymous accounts get a bad reputation and it's unfortunate. Fake bought accounts have a good rep.

throwkeep 5y ago

When I worked at a FAANG, anti-censorship and pro free speech was normative. What happened? Why have we let a small number of intolerant activists scare us into silence?

slver 5y ago
The flip side is what exactly do you need to say that you're silenced from saying. Our natural instinct to enter debates and "win" them really leads otherwise smart people astray as well. Let the activists yap. And you do what you want to do. We've evolved to speak not to win arguments, but to coordinate our actions better. And actions still speak loudest.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Siira 5y ago
  > We've evolved to speak not to win arguments, but to coordinate Extraordinary generalizations require extraordinary evidence.
- slindz 5y ago
  For me, it's less about having things I need to say and more about endlessly analyzing what I'm about to say. There is little, if any, forgiveness for the well-intentioned mistakes.
tick_tock_tick 5y ago
College's changed; It used to be free speech focused with debates and exposure to a wide set of ideas being seen as critical to a well rounded education. Now you can't even get vaguely controversial speakers on campus. Tech workers tend to be younger so the more recent changes to the political views of colleges effect them first. Hell famous comedians won't even preform at college campuses anymore: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/jerry-seinfeld-reveals-why-he-cant-perform-stand-up-comedy-on-college-campuses-they-dont-know-what-the-hell-theyre-talking-about.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/jerry-seinfeld-reve...

nebula8804 5y ago

>Accounts - can’t stay anonymous, ml systems working around the clock to identify posters. Really? Thats fascinating! Anything you can provide that gives more insight into this? Has anyone written about this practice?

f1refly 5y ago
There was a post here a few days ago that would analyze your hn comments and output the most identical looking other accounts. Lots of people wrote it output their alts and throwaways.
- floxy 5y ago
  It looks like this was that article: Show HN: Find Your Hacker News Doppelgänger https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568709

eeZah7Ux 5y ago

> backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans Are cis/white people are often discriminated against?

leetcrew 5y ago
yes? isn't this why racism is defined as "power + prejudice"? anyone can be prejudiced for or against a particular race, but only some people are in a position to do something about it.
- tdfx 5y ago
  There's a non-trivial number of people who will tell you with a straight face that white people can't experience racism. People have redefined the word to mean what they want it to mean, which may have very little in common with the definition of the word.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    > There's a non-trivial number of people who will tell you with a straight face that white people can't experience racism. I'm not a big fan of the word games that people play these days, but I would otherwise mostly agree with those people. the status of the person/people discriminating against you makes a big difference. the worst example I can think of from my own life was when a DMV employee went out of her way to fail me on my driver's license test. another employee told me she only lets black kids pass. that sucked, but I went back the next day and passed with a different employee. anyways, all I'm saying is people discriminate on the basis of race/gender/sexuality all the time. cis-hetero-rich-white dudes are not spared entirely, but the consequences tend to be minor in comparison.
    - tdfx 5y ago
      Low-impact racism is nonetheless racism. Saying that white people cannot experience racism is logically and demonstrably incorrect based on the universal definition of the word. There's no magnitude threshold that has to be met, only that the behavior is based on the color of your skin.

tomjen3 5y ago

The trick to avoid getting found out online is to change small, irrelevant details. Then, when they try to dox you, they will be chasing a phantasm. The NSA already knows, but they don't care about that.

swader999 5y ago
Sooner or later an AI through linguistical analysis will link everything everyone has ever posted anywhere to their real name and photo from Facebook.
- panny 5y ago
  >Sooner or later an AI One of the key takeaways from Mr. Andrew Ng's course on AI was that AI is not some kind of magic. There's always someone who attributes magical abilities to "lie detectors" and such wonders of technology. I think he was cautioning against such thinking. AI cannot do things a human expert is not capable of, for example predicting the stock market with 100% accuracy. It can only make predictions approximately as good as human experts. In other words, if someone wanted to match your writings with linguistic analysis, and that were possible with AI, then they can do that today with human experts. The fact that you don't see it happen, and if anyone even tried they'd be met with great skepticism, means what you imagine probably isn't possible.
  - learn_more 5y ago
    Perhaps it's doable with humans, but not scalable. And AI makes it scalable.
  - c1ccccc1 5y ago
    Strongly agree that AI isn't magic, but I think you're making too broad a statement here. AI can certainly be superhuman in some areas, eg. chess and go. Whether or not human-level is the maximum depends on how the training data is created. If you have to rely on human experts to produce the labels (this is a dog, this is a cat, etc.), then it's going to be hard to design a system that can beat human performance. But for chess and go, you can get around that by using self-play. In the case of matching writings, you can get around it by having a bunch of people create several pieces of writing each. Even if no human expert could tell whether two pieces were from the same person, it's still possible to give the network the correct labels when training because we know the ground truth of who wrote what. Of course, a model can only work with information that actually exists. My gut says that writing leaks plenty of information about identity, so it should at least be possible to identify the author of large chunks of text (over 1000 words, say). But I could be wrong about that.

nine_k 5y ago

Theocracy may be bad, but an aggressively religious society is worse. Religious here means that certain things are articles of faith, and any attempt to discuss them in any way, let alone disagree with them, gets you marked as an enemy who needs to be driven away and stripped of any respect or role in society. I won't even say it's the majority that's so aggressive. But the majority of people who are somehow active in the society and thus visible outside the circle of their family and coworkers, either actively or passively agree. Either they share the faith (many do), or they don't want trouble. What good is the First Amendment if citizens themselves see free speech as a dangerous transgression?

Zababa 5y ago
The big difference is that religion usually believes in some kind of forgiveness and repentance. I can't say I see the same things in the current society.
- unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
  The structure of a revolution-- it usually begins when the rabble acts up and no authority is willing or able to stop them. So, 1 out of 1,000 users seek quasi-religious vengeance on Twitter and the mechanisms that used to inform the other 999 don't work. The NYT picks up toxic views of the rabble and reports them as mainstream, which the rabble have converted to a weapon in itself. Most revolutions I've read about, large and small consist of an authentic breakdown in or reorganization of, society. Here and now, seems like we're actually discussing an antifeature of manufactured social technologies combined with capture or weakening of traditional media.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    I think you mischaracterize these people as "rabble". Many of the vocal "woke" figures are highly educated, highly intellectual, and well-off. Professors, top business officers, high-achieving scientists, writers, engineers. They do it not because they are stupid, for they are not. They truly believe that what they do is right, that it's the shining path to the better future.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Something is asymmetrical here. Those who cancel are also communicating things. Why don't they face pushback from what they say? Why don't they face consequences?

js8 5y ago
Power perpetuates itself through incomplete information; that's the asymmetry you're looking for. Those who cancel often mindlessly repeat emotional lies, in anger. It takes lot more effort to engage somebody on cool, rational level.
RIMR 5y ago
They do face consequences. Turn on Fox News for 5 minutes and you're bound to hear some talking head spreading alarmist narratives about cancel culture. Social Justice minded people get doxxed and dragged through the mud for their speech every day. You seem to be complaining that "those who cancel" aren't being stripped of their voices. That's not a valid complaint if you care about free speech. Free speech means you can say whatever you want about anything you like. It also means, that after hearing what you have to say, I can say whatever I like about you and your opinions. I can disagree with you just as much as you can disagree with me. Disagreement isn't censorship, it's free speech. Social consequences are a natural counterpart to speaking your mind. People are allowed to draw lines, judge you, and cut you out of their lives for what you say. Free speech applies to everyone with a voice, not just you. Censorship is when you aren't allowed to speak, not just simply facing consequences for what you choose to say.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Let's say I post something online. And let's say that 100 people decide, not just that they disagree, but that they want to destroy me. They send anonymous rants and threats to my employer, my family, my neighbors, and my friends. They dox me, so that I have to worry about physical harm from any random nutcase who agrees with them and decides to bother. What consequences do they face? Does anyone go to their boss (times 100) and say, what this person is doing isn't right, and is making your company look bad? Does anyone dox the doxxers? I'm not saying it doesn't happen to Social Justice types. I'm saying, whoever it's done to, do the people doing it face consequences of their own? (If the Social Justice types are doing this themselves, then in their case the answer is yes.) It's easy for a group of 100 angry people to cover one person they decide to destroy. It's less easy for the one person to return the favor to all 100 of them. You say (paraphrased) that free speech still has the consequences of the feedback. That's fine. But the feedback has to also have the consequences of feedback.

RIMR 5y ago

If you try to speak for the Black community, and you aren't black, you don't have the "wrong color of skin", you are speaking for others without their permission, and they have the right to correct the record if they consider your take to be inaccurate. If you try to speak for the trans community, and you aren't trans, you aren't being censored, you are being rebutted. Trans people have the right to correct the record when someone speaks on their behalf in a disagreeable way. Anyone who sees disagreement as a form of censorship needs to take a step back and recognize that the right to disagree is an important facet of free speech, and attempting to defeat things like "cancel culture" and other vocal forms of public disagreement is a demonstrably larger threat to free speech than anything the social justice community could ever dish out. Censorship is largely being redefined as experiencing consequences for what one says. This is an extraordinarily cowardly misrepresentation of censorship, that tries to redefine free speech as your speech, and tries to force the narrative that disagreement with your speech is actually stripping you of the right to speak. Sure, public shaming and doxxing may have a chilling effect on many people's willingness to speak freely, but a lack individual willingness is not equivalent to a lack of permission. Free speech requires bravery. If you are too much of a coward to speak freely, you aren't being censored, you're just a coward afraid of others' free speech.

AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
> If you try to speak for the Black community, and you aren't black, you don't have the "wrong color of skin", you are speaking for others without their permission So... wait... are you saying all these white people in BLM marches... You're on a very slippery slope, my friend.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  You are misunderstanding. Folks marching in BLM Marches aren't speaking for the Black community. The poster is talking about things more akin to, say, a non-trans person speaking about the experience of being trans or someone who has never went to college speaking for college graduates - when really, they shouldn't try to speak for groups they aren't a party to. In other words, I can talk about prejudice and racism I've experienced and witnessed, but this doesn't mean that I have the credentials to talk about what it is like to, say, have dark skin in the US and experience that sort of racism. It just isn't the same, and I don't have that experience. After all, I can (in the US) basically just be a face in the crown in a small town.

dangus 5y ago

> They go quiet or form a tiny invite only groups to hide after an attempt to do something good that backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans. They have panic attacks over the guilt and stress This right here is your indicator that this comment is an entirely made up story about hypothetical friends, with the sole intention of ragging on “liberals.” Basically, it’s contrarian conservatism that criticizes not-very-controversial values (e.g., general equality) for incredibly vague reasons. It’s even more ignorant than plain old bigotry because it’s so devoid of ideology. It’s just contrarianism for the sake of not doing what the “liberals” do. The anti-masking movement of 2020 is the perfect demonstration of that contrarian ideology. Conservatives don’t even know why they oppose masks except that the liberals were putting them on. It’s pretty sad considering that the first two sentences about ML and online identity were relatively productive conversation that could have gone somewhere thought provoking.

lasagnaphil 5y ago
> This right here is your indicator that this comment is an entirely made up story about hypothetical friends, with the sole intention of ragging on “liberals.” Nah, I’ve been inside some of the fandoms on the Internet before and I know exactly what the commenter’s talking about (and whenever a similar thing happens I do another facepalm.) /r/HobbyDrama has a fuckton of similar stories as this, you don’t need to adhere to a specific ideology to admit that these things happen. (And even the left has criticized idpol for a long time, don’t just assume the commenter is conservative because of this) As to why people participate in these tribal fights in the Internet… well one of the problems I see in modern society is a severe lack of agency among the people. Fighting on the Internet for a cause (whether stupid or not) gives one a sense of agency that they are alive in this world and changing things. The problem is that most of the agency that the Internet provides is inconsequential for actually changing the real world and is detrimental to one’s mental health in the long term.

weeblewobble 5y ago

I believe you (and Snowden) are catastrophizing, or in other words self-cancelling. You have chosen to dramatically curtail your self-expression out of fear of social consequences. It seems that what you fear is being "attack[ed] publicly." If that's the case, what you fear is that others will express themselves in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Wouldn't the cause of free speech be better advanced by defending to the death their right to express themselves, rather than by casting that expression as the death knell of modern society? If your side were to "win" this culture war, a whole lot of speech would be suppressed by new social norms. Free speech for me but not for thee. If you walk into a bar and start mouthing off, there's a decent chance you'll get punched in the face. This is bad and a crime, but I never hear anyone talk about how it's a sign of the deterioration of free speech norms. Why is that? This is what I mean by catastrophizing. In response to speech that makes you uncomfortable you have chosen to give up on self-expression on controversial topics (except this one apparently) and martyr yourself. But no one is forcing you to do that. The arena of public discourse is still open to all comers. To the extent that I see any coherent position in the free-speech-substack cinematic universe, it's rather anodyne: "people should be nicer to each other." True enough as far as it goes.

adt2bt 5y ago
Not OP, but there's a difference between having a legitimate and interesting discussion involving unpopular opinions and simply mouthing off at a bar. However, the reaction on the internet today tends to be one and the same for both cases: the online equivalent of being punched in the face. Being attacked publicly can go beyond uncomfortable in many cases (complaints to your work, family, death threats, etc). The written word used to involve significant barriers that made one consider everything they said. It was also taken as a more formal medium, as it tended to be more permanent. Today, instead, you can express yourself online with next to no effort, and the majority of people write down thoughts as if they were in a verbal conversation, which has a far different permanence to it. I occasionally scroll back through comments I've even made myself on this site and have no recollection of what I was thinking or the comment when I said it. Yet there it is as a permanent record of who I am/was. Given that, I'd rather keep my controversial opinions to myself on social media, as I may not even hold those opinions in the future. I'll use meatspace discussions with friends, colleagues and others I respect to refine them, rather than the 'arena' of public opinion.

abstractbarista 5y ago

Same here. Better to go covert. I've shifted over the years to maintaining a few close friends, with which you can candidly exchange.

andrepd 5y ago

> They go quiet or form a tiny invite only groups to hide after an attempt to do something good that backfired because their skin is the wrong colour or they aren’t trans. I don't mean to be snarky since I don't know the specifics of situation your friends find yourselves in, but... is it possible that they should just grow thicker skin? I mean twitter is a cesspool of hate, bitterness, and anger. But you can simply not open it and ignore it, no?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kaliali 5y ago

Its the same insecure fags that make ML programs to identify you and put a box around you that also create the problems and drama. If you think America is toxically racist, go to China where they regularly segregate the black population from shopping/living in apartments and they also go as far as to filter out Black people in Star Wars movies. You live in a shit bubble boy.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

This chilling effect will be the downfall of western civilizations.

Layke1123 5y ago

Ha ha the persecution complex is real. XD I am a white male and I have never once been silenced or criticized for supporting climate change, BLM, or transgender, only supported by those people and appreciative of my support. Scared the way you view the world isn't correct little boy? Boo hoo.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]