7 ms·

Good news, now if we can just get rid of all the domestic spying and police overreach, we might resemble a semblance of a free society rather than an analog of

• mschuster91 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • tremon 3y ago
    There have been plenty of free platforms that have not turned out like that. HN, for example.
    • WithinReason 3y ago
      Only thanks to heavy moderation.
      • shitlord 3y ago
        Yes, but the key difference is that White House staffers aren't personally pressuring dang.
        • unethical_ban 3y ago
          They don't feel the need to, because HN mods do their job and there aren't millions of people spreading verifiable misinformation here unchecked.
          • shitlord 3y ago
            It has nothing to do with the amount of time Dang spends working. It's because the HN userbase is tiny compared to the social media giants. There are many small forums that spread misinformation because they enjoy trolling. The moderators even encourage it. The DOJ and White House do not care about these forums because they collectively have less than 0.1% of Facebook's DAU.
          • artificialLimbs 3y ago
            [citation needed]
            • unethical_ban 3y ago
              You want me to verify that dang hasn't gotten a message from executive agencies? Don't attack me for that assertion, attack the person I responded to. You want me to verify that there aren't coordinated disinformation campaigns festering all over this site? Well, I can read, so I'm fairly confident.
        • RobotToaster 3y ago
          Do we know that for sure?
    • FeteCommuniste 3y ago
      Is HN “free?” How heavy of a hand do the mods have here? (I genuinely don’t know the answer to that question.)
      • giraffe_lady 3y ago
        It's very heavy in terms of tone, less in content. Definitely workable for nazis if they're careful. You can advocate eugenics and genocide-lite if you're polite and abstract enough. You're more likely to get in trouble for calling someone a nazi than you are for promoting nazi policies, as long as you don't use any slurs.
        • atlantic 3y ago
          Could you clarify the term "nazis"? Presumably, you don't mean a member of the German National Socialist party, which was dissolved in 1945. But if you mean "people whose views I disagree with", then perhaps you could be a little more specific.
          • giraffe_lady 3y ago
            You notice there how I was specific about "nazi policies" right? It's to avoid a discussion like this one. I don't care about party affiliation per se, I am talking about advocating specific policies and worldviews. Things like ethnonationism, eugenics, categorizing certain minorities as inherently criminal, white natalism: things that, if you could present them to a 1945-style straw nazi they'd say "yup that's us." And all that aside, you know that people still self identify as nazis right? It's not preposterous that they show up here. They have jobs and kids and hobbies and professional aspirations, and if a chance to talk about the degeneracy of society re: immigration comes on the tech forum, hey, they know also how to slide into that conversation without saying anything too crass. And yes, you could elide all that as "people I disagree with" if you're devoted to being particularly sloppy. Because I do disagree with them, and don't want them here? Is that not the case for you?
            • atlantic 3y ago
    • onion2k 3y ago
      HN, for example. HN isn't really a 'platform'. The reach for a post on HN is tiny. There needs to be a critical mass of people before something can really be called a platform. And HN posts are moderated, both by the mod team using their tools, and by the users using flagging and votes. It's quite far from being 'free'. You can say anything you want in theory by it won't remain visible for very long.
    • Pxtl 3y ago
      Dang works very hard to censor this site quite heavily and maintain the kind of discourse he and his team want. As is his right. HN is not a example of libertarian social media.
      • tremon 3y ago
        The GP didn't ask for examples of libertarian social media. The GP asked for examples of forums/platforms from a "free society" that had not turned into a cesspool.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • plagiarist 3y ago
      Every politicized topic gathers dozens of comments from lunatics who are deliberately ignoring reality. This very week someone on HN told me black people are disproportionately not accepted to colleges because of "genetics." Perhaps HN is on its way.
  • throwbadubadu 3y ago
    Elaborate conclusion and consequence please? (:
  • rvz 3y ago
    How exactly? That's quite an unfounded overreaction and exaggeration as typically found here on HN. Close to conspiracy level. Surely you meant Meta who actually profited from an actual genocide [0]. But other than that, finally there is a real alternative to Twitter but again owned by Meta. It just means the town-hall and outrage will move to on large social network linked to Instagram and Meta. It will degrade into a Nazi hellscape anyway. Just like Facebook once did. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-...
  • tpush 3y ago
    Twitter is not a Nazi hellscape.
    • giraffe_lady 3y ago
      It really kind of is though.
    • retrac 3y ago
      Maybe your slice of Twitter isn't. My take is that we can't actually say whether Twitter is, or isn't, a Nazi hellscape, because of the darn algorithm. It's in the way. Since everyone gets a personalized view, there's no coherent "Twitter" to analyze as to how much fascist content is on it. There's a billion bot posts, but who actually sees them? It's certainly possible to get stuck in a recommendation-algorithm Nazi hellscape, where it's a very weird far-right bubble. (I got some interesting recommendations on both Twitter and Youtube after a few posts and videos about that guy making the UFO claims. Quite suddenly the feed became dark, conspiratorial, and with lots references to "globalists".) It's also, of course, possible to get stuck by the recommendation algorithm in some weird far-left universe, also quite out of step with the mainstream. Nothing wrong with being out of step with the mainstream in itself; the problem is when you don't know that you are. Some of the people in these social media bubbles don't know they're in those bubbles. As far as they're concerned, everyone else agrees with them and they're getting more and more re-enforcement. I think that a growing general ineptitude and inexperience with dealing with the fact that some people have radically different worldviews, social beliefs, and political attitudes, probably explains some of the contemporary derangement. If they're literally the only example of disagreement you run into, then obviously they're insane and/or stupid and/or evil, (Surely they know what you know?! We tend to assume that even when it can't be true.) Maybe related to why we seem to be particularly prone to portraying the political opposition as evil, insane, or stupid these days. The viciousness of the in-group towards the dissenters makes all the sense in the world if they're just evil, insane and stupid. And since we can't comprehend their worldview since we never see the world as they see it, (thanks to the algorithm), it just becomes re-enforcing.
      • jl6 3y ago
  • robertlagrant 3y ago
    Twitter is not a Nazi hellscape. It's a Nazi-accusation hellscape, but anywhere where "Nazi" is a bad word is not going to be a Nazi hellscape. It's like saying Salem was a witchcraft hellscape. If you were the one saying that, then you were one of the ones creating the actual hellscape.
  • AlchemistCamp 3y ago
    On the contrary, Nazis were very aggressive about suppression of speech they didn’t like. Furthermore, it was one of, possibly the very most, free-speaking societies in the world that played a key role—first economically, then militarily—in stopping them.
    • chasd00 3y ago
      Yes, the censor and safethink crowd at Twitter have more in common with fascist regimes than anyone else.
      • stainablesteel 3y ago
        they have an evolved use of irony where they project with their accusations, luckily more people seem to have become savvy to noticing this the incompatible logical extremes of safety vs freedom is starting to line up with historical precedent again
  • safety1st 3y ago
    The thing is, Nazis are really unpopular, so if we have a free market, Nazi hellscapes will be unpopular, too. This is a case where the free market is good at solving a problem, we know this because Nazis have been writing books for nearly a century, yet you probably haven't heard of any of them other than Mein Kampf. Whether we have a free market in social media is up for debate, certainly the dominant platforms enjoy network effects and go to great lengths to keep their users locked in, even when they have Nazis running around on them and the users don't want to see Nazis. We even have evidence that some platforms will show more Nazis to you if Nazis trigger you and make you want to fight with them! But I think a landscape with more platforms is a good way to try and deal with this. If anything in the Mastodon world you have the exact opposite problem, platforms defederate each other for very small offenses, being a full blown Nazi is definitely not required. And whether people use the Nazi hellscape argument genuinely or as a straw man/proxy for "things I don't like" is an open question as well.
    • JKCalhoun 3y ago
      > Nazis have been writing books for nearly a century Small, basement-run printing press? Sort of like nazi zines? I remember seeing copies of "Soldier of Fortune" in the 1970's (US) but it was relegated to the one weird military-collectible-store-that-also-sold-Avalon-Hill-games. Extreme ideologies need buy-in from a printer, publisher, and distribution network — combined they create quite a series of hurdles, act as gatekeepers of a sort. I suspect that was enough to keep The John Birch Society and others in relative obscurity. Letters to the editor in the local newspaper were of course heavily moderated. The free internet with near zero-cost to print/publish/distribute due to social networks, site comments sections make the fringe voices just as loud as the mainstream ones. Add bots into the equation and possibly determined state actors and it only gets worse.
      • jwells89 3y ago
        > Add in bots [snip] Also algorithms that signal boost controversial/inflammatory content as well as unearth more of whatever the user has signaled what they believe in/enjoy/etc, not to mention artificial signal boosts via things like Twitter Blue… with all of this, with social media the extreme fringe can be made to appear popular. It’s like viewing the world through a funhouse mirror.
• hospitalJail 3y ago
  Given Apple and Google have the ability to record every word you say(maybe not store it for 300M people, but they can certainly filter it for specific words that could begin recording once triggered... "Hey Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana"), the issue is that we don't want the US government doing it, but private companies can? Heck if you buy any IOT device with a mic, you should give up any idea you have privacy. I'm over this illusion of privacy. If you are asking if we should spend less on spying, sure, but that could be my ignorant teens when I was an anarchist talking.
  • beachwood23 3y ago
    This comparison doesn't seem up to snuff. The government has the ability to prosecute crimes, and has a monopoly and the use of force. Private companies have neither. One of the two is clearly more dangerous if they have the ability to control your speech.
  • Clubber 3y ago
    >Given Apple and Google have the ability to record every word you say(maybe not store it for 300M people, but they can certainly filter it for specific words that could begin recording once triggered... "Hey Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana"), the issue is that we don't want the US government doing it, but private companies can? Heck if you buy any IOT device with a mic, you should give up any idea you have privacy. Isn't all that optional though? If I don't use gmail or apple's services, I'm essentially opting out. Also to this sibling reply, when was the last time Apple broke down someone's door, threatened to kill them, threw them on the ground, beat them up and tased them? >If you are asking if we should spend less on spying, sure, but that could be my ignorant teens when I was an anarchist talking. You're deeming the desire for privacy as anarchism? What a warped sense of perspective that is. When I was in my teens, we actually had privacy, because that time period was before 9/11. Perhaps you're just accustomed to being spied on and you're experiencing Stockholm syndrome.