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I read regular stories on HN about employee activism on certain types of popular issues around gender and race, involving petitions and publicity. Spotify, App
by mancerayder 5y ago
I read regular stories on HN about employee activism on certain types of popular issues around gender and race, involving petitions and publicity. Spotify, Apple, Google. Yet nothing about the march towards totalitarianism and information control - always with good intentions and to our benefit - promulgated with stories such as this.
Not a peep from our young Silicon Valley activists. Do we still teach history at school? I'm talking about history of many countries. No fear whatsoever of information control and government censorship. I'm baffled and saddened.
- zpeti 5y agoWhat’s sad to me is that someone who really should be a hero to everyone in Silicon Valley, the journalist who decided to publish Edward Snowden’s stuff, at insane risk to himself, has been warning about censorship forever. (Glen greenwald) Yet now he’s apparently a right wing trump apologist to most people on the left. That doesn’t change the truth of what a person who’s put a lot on the table is saying. Censorship always becomes about power. Once you create the tools, the powerful will take them over. You may think that’s a good thing when your side is in power, but that will NEVER be forever.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaways885 5y agoSnowden (and countless others) are hero's. This new breed of authoritarian leftists do not represent Silicon Valley and tech at large, but rather silence those of us who do still believe in free speech. I'm petrified about speaking out because I don't want to be labeled as a far-right trump apologist. No, believing gigantic megacorporations shouldn't censor information is not "right-wing".
- JasonFruit 5y agoPlease, please do speak out! Otherwise, the only people speaking are the authoritarian leftists and their worst possible opponents, the Trump apologists. People speaking in favor of speech they do not agree with are the most compelling free-speech advocates of all.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- guelo 5y agoWe don’t think lies about the vaccine or who won the election are noble causes worth making sacrifices for.
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- LegitShady 5y agoOnce you put the structures in place you don’t get to choose what gets censored. You’re arming a terrible weapon that will already be used against you on the pretext that it will only be used for these two things - and it won’t be only used for those things. Terrible short sightedness.
- s3r3nity 5y agoGlowing example of "tossing the baby out with the bath water."
- s3r3nity 5y agoThis ain't it, chief. We shouldn't be trusting (and giving power to) central governing bodies to dictate what counts as a "lie," and scrubbing away inconvenient information. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Voltaire
- BitwiseFool 5y agoFull agreement. "Slippery Slope" may be a fallacy, but establishing a precedent is a real thing and there's no way this stops here.
- imwillofficial 5y agoI think whoever popularized “slippery slope” being a fallacy was an evil mastermind. It’s empowered countless midwits the ability to blithely dismiss valid sloppy slopes with “nuh uh! It’s a fallacy!”
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- sixothree 5y agoJust because you didn’t hear anything doesn’t mean they aren’t saying it. That’s just weak sauce argument and insults on your part. Lose the agenda.
- creddit 5y agoJoin one of these companies and what you will find is that: > Not a peep from our young Silicon Valley activists. are the ones pushing FOR these changes.
- s3r3nity 5y ago> are the ones pushing FOR these changes. Because the goal isn't to deconstruct those systems of power (as it probably _should_), but rather to put someone else in the center. I once heard a Silicon Valley VC say on a podcast: "If you hear someone utter the term 'equity,' then run for the hills. Because it's really a power grab." (Not obviously talking about stock compensation, of course...)
- AgentME 5y agoIs totalitarianism when you don't let your servers be open relays for antivaxxer propaganda during a pandemic?
- zpeti 5y agoSoooo… The Who said the virus isn’t airborne initially. They said masks don’t work initially. What’s your plan of action there? Google censors what the status quo asks them to and then flips and censors the other side the second they change their mind? Does that sound like a good world to you? How exactly does long term discussion happen in that cases? Since basically by about April 2020 you’ve banned all pro mask discussion and anti mask discussion…
- umvi 5y agoWell we could create a new government organization that determines what the current best known truth is ("Department of Truth" say) and Google censors just remove anything that goes against the Department of Truth
- AgentME 5y agoDoes Google need a government agency to determine what emails are or aren't spam? Why would it need that in this case instead, and do you really think that would be an improvement? This is a bad strawman.
- zpeti 5y agoDamn, what a great idea! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this yet?
- _-david-_ 5y agoCan you clarify if you are being sarcastic or not?
- AgentME 5y agoIf they're bad at identifying misinformation, then I'll fault them for that. Has Google had a tendency to censor things on the basis of information that later turned out to be true? Your examples are the judgments of groups that aren't Google and judgments that I don't think the groups responsible for pushed for others to ever get censored for.
- slg 5y ago>Do we still teach history at school? I'm talking about history of many countries. No fear whatsoever of information control and government censorship. I'm baffled and saddened. I agree. We don't spend enough time teaching about the history of free speech in other countries like Germany. And no, I don't only mean in 1930s and 1940s Germany. I also mean the Germany of today. They, along with much of Europe, have laws outlawing some misinformation such as Holocaust denial and their societies haven't collapsed into totalitarianism. Some restrictions on speech are truly dangerous. Some aren't. It is important to have the historical context to help know which one we are discussing.
- zpeti 5y agoIt is also slowly becoming illegal to criticise Islam. Taking Islam out of the equation do you think it’s a good idea for any religion to actually be off the table in terms of discussion?
- bigthymer 5y ago> It is also slowly becoming illegal to criticise Islam Really? Literally "Illegal" as in laws against it, or figuratively as in no longer socially acceptable?
- cm2187 5y agohttps://eclj.org/free-speech/echr/blasphemy-crime-the-echr-is-not-charlie https://eclj.org/free-speech/echr/blasphemy-crime-the-echr-i...
- vimy 5y agoBecause the activists want tech companies to censor and control information.
- notquitehuman 5y agoNot all or even most. Tech platform censorship is just ranked lower on their list of issues/grievances. How do you think activists should be spending their time?
- drstewart 5y ago>Tech platform censorship is just ranked lower on their list of issues/grievances. Yeah, I doubt that. https://alphabetworkersunion.org/principles/mission-statement/ https://alphabetworkersunion.org/principles/mission-statemen... >Social and economic justice are paramount to achieving just outcomes. We will prioritize the needs of the worst off. Neutrality never helps the victim. That doesn't scream "end platform censorship" to me.
- ceilingcorner 5y agoThe ideology of young activists basically boils down to power. You either have it, or you don't. Foucault in a nutshell. Abstract principles that should apply equally to everyone are just a colonialist legacy, or something.