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What Big Tech really does should be a principal focus of a tech discussion forum. What they really do is to use their unprecedented power to hide and censor inf

by SiVal 5y ago

What Big Tech really does should be a principal focus of a tech discussion forum. What they really do is to use their unprecedented power to hide and censor information and silence people in order to influence opinion on a mass scale. They admit they do it every time they explain why they do it. But they hide the specifics of what they are trying to get people to think and how they do it. They hide the internal discussions of their agenda and the methods they employ to hide and censor and silence. What they intend to get people to think, the means they employ, and the extent to which they do it are fundamental to understanding tech in society. How ironic is it then that every time a report of details and extent of their censorship and hiding is submitted to HN, the same people doing the censoring are allowed to flag the article out of existence on HN, censoring and hiding information about their censoring and hiding of information? And if the argument is that reports of what Big Tech is doing to bias discussion will "ignite flamewars", well they know that means they can further bias discussion by threatening to rage until potential critics submit and self-censor. Certainly trillion-dollar tech corporations working to control society don't impose upon themselves any need to provide "new information". On the contrary, they repeat claims over and over that would not stand up to evidence, confident that any reports of the evidence can be severely limited and quickly swept from view. Big Tech has vast power to limit what people find out about in almost every venue. I would love for HN to be an exception where the details that they try to hide are always in full view.

babesh 5y ago
It isn't just big tech. It is that big tech decided to join fully with the rest of the power structure of the country: government, military, military industrial complex, media, law, health, education, etc... Those are the groups that actually run the country. Now you have censorship by tech instead of just by government, propaganda by tech in addition to media, mandates by corporations and by government. Before, tech just told government to compel them via law. Now, government works with tech and corporations to achieve governmental aims without writing laws. It is extrajudicial. I don't think the USA is a democracy or it is less and less of a democracy.
- cinquemb 5y ago
  Centralized organizational structures (governments, corps and ngos) in the US and abroad must be treated with extreme prejudice and avoided for decentralized/federated and open alternatives if available. For those orgs above (or those who work apart of them) who will actively fight those from pursing decentralized/federated and open alternatives for all aspects of ones life: there is subversion, exfiltration, exploitation and demolition. The best of those orgs will help people bridge the gap to future where power isn't nearly as centralized to the degree it is now.
dang 5y ago
This is not accurate: > every time a report of details and extent of their censorship and hiding is submitted to HN, the same people doing the censoring are allowed to flag the article out of existence You're pushing the door in the wrong direction! We're open to these topics being discussed on HN. They've been discussed a lot and they can, should, and will be discussed more, as significant new information arises. But the underlying submission needs to be substantive enough to support a substantive HN discussion. The initial conditions of a thread are the article and the title. If those are flamebait, we're guaranteed to get a flamewar, and that's not what this site is for. In this case I tried several times and didn't see a way to salvage either the title or the article in a way that would clear that bar. That's a quite different problem than the one you describe. If you want to see this topic discussed on HN, you should understand and work with the goals of the site, not assume that the people running it (or the community at large) are somehow against you.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  >> every time a report of details and extent of their censorship and hiding is submitted to HN, the same people doing the censoring are allowed to flag the article out of existence > You're pushing the door in the wrong direction! We're open to these topics being discussed on HN. They've been discussed a lot and they can, should, and will be discussed more, as significant new information arises. I'm not a native speaker but I wonder if you are talking past each other: SiVal - as far as I can read - describes ordinary users flagging stories before the rest of us can see them. You describe that HN mods doesn't do that and quite the opposite: you reopen discussions like this one. Both of you are correct in my opinion and I think the point that I and possibly also SiVal feel is that moderation is good but some users are abusing the flag feature and it is too easy to do that.
- SiVal 5y ago
  I don't for a minute think the people running HN are against me. And there is no "community at large". There are what you describe as people with a variety of opinions, among whom are probably thousands of Big Tech employees. Many of them and people like them are using the powers of trillion-dollar corporations, Hollywood, mainstream media, agencies like the CIA, universities that are gatekeepers of employment, etc. to aggressively employ the unprecedented powers at their disposal to suppress information that they want to keep hidden. Every time they justify why they do so, "Surely you can't expect us to allow opinions that people like us label as 'misinformation'", they admit that they do so. And the ultimate irony is that they insist that this biasing of information is necessary because they speak for the voiceless who don't have power. If they are correct, it is the critics of the most powerful organizations in history whose voices actually need to be amplified. If they are incorrect, all voices should be allowed with none allowed to be silenced. They, not you, will flag any attempt to report on the things they want to hide until your algorithm silences it for them. And they will flame as much as necessary until you learn to treat anything they want to silence as "flamebait". They have endless techniques for limiting the distribution of information that doesn't support them. I'm just hoping that your policies will not be such that they can silence criticism here, as everywhere else, by flagging and flaming as necessary until your reasonable-sounding "substantive" and "new information" and "no flamebait" and so on are properly trained to self-censor what they don't want people to hear.

by SiVal 5y ago

babesh 5y ago

It isn't just big tech. It is that big tech decided to join fully with the rest of the power structure of the country: government, military, military industrial complex, media, law, health, education, etc... Those are the groups that actually run the country. Now you have censorship by tech instead of just by government, propaganda by tech in addition to media, mandates by corporations and by government. Before, tech just told government to compel them via law. Now, government works with tech and corporations to achieve governmental aims without writing laws. It is extrajudicial. I don't think the USA is a democracy or it is less and less of a democracy.

cinquemb 5y ago
Centralized organizational structures (governments, corps and ngos) in the US and abroad must be treated with extreme prejudice and avoided for decentralized/federated and open alternatives if available. For those orgs above (or those who work apart of them) who will actively fight those from pursing decentralized/federated and open alternatives for all aspects of ones life: there is subversion, exfiltration, exploitation and demolition. The best of those orgs will help people bridge the gap to future where power isn't nearly as centralized to the degree it is now.

dang 5y ago

This is not accurate: > every time a report of details and extent of their censorship and hiding is submitted to HN, the same people doing the censoring are allowed to flag the article out of existence You're pushing the door in the wrong direction! We're open to these topics being discussed on HN. They've been discussed a lot and they can, should, and will be discussed more, as significant new information arises. But the underlying submission needs to be substantive enough to support a substantive HN discussion. The initial conditions of a thread are the article and the title. If those are flamebait, we're guaranteed to get a flamewar, and that's not what this site is for. In this case I tried several times and didn't see a way to salvage either the title or the article in a way that would clear that bar. That's a quite different problem than the one you describe. If you want to see this topic discussed on HN, you should understand and work with the goals of the site, not assume that the people running it (or the community at large) are somehow against you.

skinkestek 5y ago
>> every time a report of details and extent of their censorship and hiding is submitted to HN, the same people doing the censoring are allowed to flag the article out of existence > You're pushing the door in the wrong direction! We're open to these topics being discussed on HN. They've been discussed a lot and they can, should, and will be discussed more, as significant new information arises. I'm not a native speaker but I wonder if you are talking past each other: SiVal - as far as I can read - describes ordinary users flagging stories before the rest of us can see them. You describe that HN mods doesn't do that and quite the opposite: you reopen discussions like this one. Both of you are correct in my opinion and I think the point that I and possibly also SiVal feel is that moderation is good but some users are abusing the flag feature and it is too easy to do that.
SiVal 5y ago
I don't for a minute think the people running HN are against me. And there is no "community at large". There are what you describe as people with a variety of opinions, among whom are probably thousands of Big Tech employees. Many of them and people like them are using the powers of trillion-dollar corporations, Hollywood, mainstream media, agencies like the CIA, universities that are gatekeepers of employment, etc. to aggressively employ the unprecedented powers at their disposal to suppress information that they want to keep hidden. Every time they justify why they do so, "Surely you can't expect us to allow opinions that people like us label as 'misinformation'", they admit that they do so. And the ultimate irony is that they insist that this biasing of information is necessary because they speak for the voiceless who don't have power. If they are correct, it is the critics of the most powerful organizations in history whose voices actually need to be amplified. If they are incorrect, all voices should be allowed with none allowed to be silenced. They, not you, will flag any attempt to report on the things they want to hide until your algorithm silences it for them. And they will flame as much as necessary until you learn to treat anything they want to silence as "flamebait". They have endless techniques for limiting the distribution of information that doesn't support them. I'm just hoping that your policies will not be such that they can silence criticism here, as everywhere else, by flagging and flaming as necessary until your reasonable-sounding "substantive" and "new information" and "no flamebait" and so on are properly trained to self-censor what they don't want people to hear.