7 ms·

When I was 11, on 17th Nov 1989, in Czechoslovakia, my father was watching the evening news on our (black and white) TV, as usual. There was a protest and the

by js8 9mo ago

When I was 11, on 17th Nov 1989, in Czechoslovakia, my father was watching the evening news on our (black and white) TV, as usual. There was a protest and the state media was reporting on it. When the reporter said, "our camera broke down and we can only show black and white pictures", my father IMMEDIATELY jumped up and angrily said, "that's bs, you don't want to show how they [the protesting students] got beaten up [by the police]!" This was an interesting life lesson. So yeah, sure, technical difficulties..

culi 9mo ago
I think history has shown that this is a fruitful intuition to have
- stronglikedan 9mo ago
  As always, it depends. More often than not, the opposite is true, hence the existence of Occam's razor.
  - bigbadfeline 9mo ago
    > More often than not, the opposite is true, Interestingly enough, it doesn't matter in the slightest if some times the excuse is actually true. The intuition is good to have at all times, as Intel's founder Andy Grove used to say - "Only the paranoid survive". > hence the existence of Occam's razor. Occam's razor has nothing to do with the topic at hand, you're probably thinking of Hanlon's razor which is a dumb idea 99% of the time, regardless of what actually produced it - stupidity or malice.
    - xerox13ster 9mo ago
      I find more and more that those who wave around Hanlon’s razor are doing so to keep something from being looked upon too closely. As if to say, “look any closer and you’ll be cut”. Be it flying monkeys, boot lickers, or the abuser themselves. It’s a thought terminating cliche that's designed to stop to critical thinking and minimize the act and reduce the response, making it seem though it were a forgivable mistake instead of a deliberate action. Because as you said: regardless of malice or stupidity, the harm is real.
  - culi 9mo ago
    There is no way to know if you are applying Occam's razor correctly because we always have invisible cultural assumptions that are hard to escape. Relevant story: my mother grew up in the Soviet Block where they taught her about American Segregation in elementary school. She said she and all her friends immediately dismissed it as made-up propaganda In that case she was wrong. But I think the intuition is the correct "rule of thumb" to take. By your application of Occam's razor, you would end up believing most propaganda the Soviet education system pushed as long as it offered a simpler explanation. I don't think that's a good intuition to have either.
  - dymk 9mo ago
    Okay, apply the razor: the simplest explanation is the state is censoring coverage of fascism
lbrito 9mo ago
You don't understand. Its different: _they_ were doing it. The Bad Guys. Now _we_, the Good Guys, are doing it. Therefore, the thing itself is no longer Bad - it is Good. The comment above was ironic. I have to specify because supposedly intelligent people really think that way: https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955 https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955
- jmyeet 9mo ago
  What you're describing here (ironically) is unironically the basis for Western political thought. What I'm referring to here is idealism [1]. Whether it's European colonial powers or the US, the basis for foreign intervention is, quite simply, that we are the Good Guys. Why? Because we're the Good Guys. Even slavery was justified in Christianity by converting the heathen and saving their immortal souls, a fundamentally idealistic argument. What's the alternative? Materialism [2], the premise of which is that there is not anything metaphysical that defines "goodness". Rather, you are the product of your material circumstances. There is a constant feedback loop if you affecting your material surroundsina and those surroundings affect you. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
  - epistasis 9mo ago
    It's one thing to analyze the world with this lens, which is perfectly fine, as long as it's part of a bigger analysis. But materialist views have never stopped the boot. Materialist political ideology has produced some of the finest jack boots history has seen.
    - j16sdiz 9mo ago
      Hey, that's because _their_ materialistic view is faulty . _Our_ materialistic is perfect. Now, if only i have the power... /s
  - saubeidl 9mo ago
    Marxism, a materialist ideology, is western political thought as well.
IIAOPSW 9mo ago
Dare I say, the Revolution will not be Televised.
- mothballed 9mo ago
  Sometimes it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRWiz1PhKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRWiz1PhKU https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/12/13/11/ceausecu-execution.jpg https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag...
- Almad 9mo ago
  That's from the good old days where truth mattered. Like how many action movies are about "getting the truth out" where that act in itself brings consequences, cut, happy ending? Compare with now: revolution may be televised, but its spread not amplified and its authenticity denied. And if you have sufficient tribalism, it will not make a dent.
- animal_spirits 9mo ago
  I do love this song and I find it resonates to read the lyrics as though revolutions are censored by media (which is true). Though I found an interview with Gil Scott-Heron about the meaning of the lyrics and I find it more interesting; The revolution will not be televised because the revolution starts in your mind, at the dinner table, or reading books in the library. It won't be captured on TV because the revolution occurs when you question your own beliefs and understand something bigger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZvWt29OG0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZvWt29OG0s
  - JKCalhoun 9mo ago
    That's clever.
  - olelele 9mo ago
    Yes man you got it.
  - toyg 9mo ago
    One of the joys of poetry is that it can contain multiple hard-to-describe facets of the same concept. * The revolution won't be televised because they won't show it to you. * The revolution won't be televised because it's not a passive, external experience that you just consume. * The revolution won't be televised because it starts inside yourself.
AIorNot 9mo ago
Lets remember that tech bros have been explicitly funding the oppression 25 Million donation to MAGA from Brockman alone! I suspect he is a single issue donor (AI infra above all) https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/867947/openai-president-greg-brockman-trump-super-pac https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/867947/o... Its insane how immoral people can be - anyone can see Trump is a conman
- babypuncher 9mo ago
  These "single issue donors" are the most morally corrupt. I can understand someone who genuinely believes in the cause, even if that cause is disgusting. But this guy...this guy knows that the things happening are wrong, and he doesn't care as long as he gets what he wants from this administration. These people should be made social pariahs.
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    You can pretty much lump all of the billionaire bootlickers in the same category. Almost none of them have any ethics, whilst of course proclaiming the opposite.
    - joquarky 9mo ago
      It's like the old Sim City game where you can cheat in unlimited funds. This causes you to get bored and suddenly the disaster menu starts to become interesting.
      - Fischgericht 9mo ago
        Thank you. You just blew my mind. This might be the best (compressed) analogy / short-cut when trying to educate others about WTF is going on here. I will totally steal and use that. Again, thank you.
      - _carbyau_ 9mo ago
        That sounds like a classroom experiment. Let kids play the game. Tell them they now have to cheat with unlimited funds. Track at what time each kid launches a disaster. End of class, discuss billionaires.
like_any_other 9mo ago
They used to not even bother to hide behind technical difficulties, so this is an improvement: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/tiktok-pledges-to-do-more-to-fight-hateful-content/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/tiktok-pledges-to-do-more-t...
layman51 9mo ago
Something similar happened in the 1988 President Election in Mexico which is widely considered to have been stolen. There was a very memeable phrase, “se cayó el sistema” which was used to describe how the computing system to count votes was glitching out or failing.
- trhway 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - jamwil 9mo ago
    Most of which had, in fact, no basis in truth. So no that’s nothing like the Mexican election.
    - trhway 9mo ago
      So censoring falsehoods is good, and censoring truth is bad, and you're the one who decides which is which, and you like such censorship working your way. And when censorship you'd just liked so much starts to be used against you, you start to whine. Millenia old story of a deal with devil. And by the way the covid "fact checking" wasn't based on "truth", it was at political request of White House as Zuck later said, and he did later called the FB fact checking a censorship when disbanding it.
      - jamwil 9mo ago
        On matters of science the scientists decide which is which.
        trhway 9mo ago
        and you are the one to decide that this science we should ignore, and instead we declare as the truth the lies that these lying through their teeth bastards are telling. You do like the "gold standard of science", RFK Junior and Trump edition, don't you? The same censorship as you like. Btw, how many top world infectious diseases scientists were among FB “fact checkers”?
TheAlchemist 9mo ago
As a fellow Eastern European of similar age, I suddenly feel quite nostalgic. I really wonder how my life would be different if someone told be that the US, which for me was as close to a paradise as it gets, will go down the same road in the future - I think it would shatter quite a lot of my dreams of a better life. US is nowhere near as bad as it was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, but it's on a fast track to it for sure.
- palmotea 9mo ago
  > I really wonder how my life would be different if someone told be that the US, which for me was as close to a paradise as it gets, will go down the same road in the future - I think it would shatter quite a lot of my dreams of a better life. That reminds me of one of the things that stuck with me from The Man in the High Castle (the book). The main story is an alternate timeline where the Nazis/Japanese won WWII and conquered America. Then there's an alternate-timeline-within-the-alternate-timeline where America/Britain won WWII, but it's not our timeline (and it's hinted there that the liberal US was eventually defeated by a British Empire gone full authoritarian). Everything passes away. The good guys sometimes win, but eventually they lose too.
  - sam1r 9mo ago
    Wow, thank you for the effort in typing out that this synopsis! Seems like quite the compelling read. I have already retrieved the book & will start it tonight.
    - Gud 9mo ago
      It's a great book. Phillip K Dick, there is no author like him.
    - TheAlchemist 9mo ago
      It's a fantastic book, highly recommend to read. There is also a TV series based on it (on Amazon Prime I think), but as usually, it's not as good as the book.
    - 9mo ago
ValveFan6969 9mo ago
[flagged]
- refulgentis 9mo ago
  Interesting reaction to that story, I'm fascinated: why do you think it's fake? (my guess: Soviet-style repression differences b/t USSR and satellites; reads as fake to you because non-USSR was more lax, i.e. you'll be fine speaking honestly in private, just not in public)
RegW 9mo ago
It is sad. It's now happening west of us. In Europe we have been trying to protect ourselves by not saying too much and attracting the attention/wrath of the bosses. I don't think it will work. If you are in Iran - keep your head down.
silisili 9mo ago
The rise of AI is going to make this even worse. Think Running Man instead of 'technical difficulties.'
giancarlostoro 9mo ago
Yeah I can't fathom what sort of technical issues would produce this result. I'd love to read a detailed article about it. Your move ByteDance or whatever org owns you now. The only thing that would make sense to me is a partial outage of some sort, but that would not be permanent and very rare for Tik Tok. As an aside, if you check in on r/tiktok every time something major like this is happening with Tik Tok you can see how users feel about it. I've seen different waves of users flat out deleting their Tik Tok accounts in protest.
1potatonagger 9mo ago
"Technical" difficulties, indeed... https://xcancel.com/DillyHussain88/status/2015712587309064667#m https://xcancel.com/DillyHussain88/status/201571258730906466...
selcuka 9mo ago
CNN Turk famously aired a documentary on penguins during the Gezi Park protests [1] that happened in 2013. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/09/turkey-mainstream-media-penguins-protests https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/09/turkey...
heresie-dabord 9mo ago
> This was an interesting life lesson. They thought they were free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free
yesitcan 9mo ago
"But in this case, it's a private corporation. It can censor what it wants" - average HN reply

by js8 9mo ago

culi 9mo ago

I think history has shown that this is a fruitful intuition to have

stronglikedan 9mo ago
As always, it depends. More often than not, the opposite is true, hence the existence of Occam's razor.
- bigbadfeline 9mo ago
  > More often than not, the opposite is true, Interestingly enough, it doesn't matter in the slightest if some times the excuse is actually true. The intuition is good to have at all times, as Intel's founder Andy Grove used to say - "Only the paranoid survive". > hence the existence of Occam's razor. Occam's razor has nothing to do with the topic at hand, you're probably thinking of Hanlon's razor which is a dumb idea 99% of the time, regardless of what actually produced it - stupidity or malice.
  - xerox13ster 9mo ago
    I find more and more that those who wave around Hanlon’s razor are doing so to keep something from being looked upon too closely. As if to say, “look any closer and you’ll be cut”. Be it flying monkeys, boot lickers, or the abuser themselves. It’s a thought terminating cliche that's designed to stop to critical thinking and minimize the act and reduce the response, making it seem though it were a forgivable mistake instead of a deliberate action. Because as you said: regardless of malice or stupidity, the harm is real.
- culi 9mo ago
  There is no way to know if you are applying Occam's razor correctly because we always have invisible cultural assumptions that are hard to escape. Relevant story: my mother grew up in the Soviet Block where they taught her about American Segregation in elementary school. She said she and all her friends immediately dismissed it as made-up propaganda In that case she was wrong. But I think the intuition is the correct "rule of thumb" to take. By your application of Occam's razor, you would end up believing most propaganda the Soviet education system pushed as long as it offered a simpler explanation. I don't think that's a good intuition to have either.
- dymk 9mo ago
  Okay, apply the razor: the simplest explanation is the state is censoring coverage of fascism

lbrito 9mo ago

You don't understand. Its different: _they_ were doing it. The Bad Guys. Now _we_, the Good Guys, are doing it. Therefore, the thing itself is no longer Bad - it is Good. The comment above was ironic. I have to specify because supposedly intelligent people really think that way: https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955 https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955

jmyeet 9mo ago
What you're describing here (ironically) is unironically the basis for Western political thought. What I'm referring to here is idealism [1]. Whether it's European colonial powers or the US, the basis for foreign intervention is, quite simply, that we are the Good Guys. Why? Because we're the Good Guys. Even slavery was justified in Christianity by converting the heathen and saving their immortal souls, a fundamentally idealistic argument. What's the alternative? Materialism [2], the premise of which is that there is not anything metaphysical that defines "goodness". Rather, you are the product of your material circumstances. There is a constant feedback loop if you affecting your material surroundsina and those surroundings affect you. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
- epistasis 9mo ago
  It's one thing to analyze the world with this lens, which is perfectly fine, as long as it's part of a bigger analysis. But materialist views have never stopped the boot. Materialist political ideology has produced some of the finest jack boots history has seen.
  - j16sdiz 9mo ago
    Hey, that's because _their_ materialistic view is faulty . _Our_ materialistic is perfect. Now, if only i have the power... /s
- saubeidl 9mo ago
  Marxism, a materialist ideology, is western political thought as well.

IIAOPSW 9mo ago

Dare I say, the Revolution will not be Televised.

mothballed 9mo ago
Sometimes it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRWiz1PhKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRWiz1PhKU https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/12/13/11/ceausecu-execution.jpg https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag...
Almad 9mo ago
That's from the good old days where truth mattered. Like how many action movies are about "getting the truth out" where that act in itself brings consequences, cut, happy ending? Compare with now: revolution may be televised, but its spread not amplified and its authenticity denied. And if you have sufficient tribalism, it will not make a dent.
animal_spirits 9mo ago
I do love this song and I find it resonates to read the lyrics as though revolutions are censored by media (which is true). Though I found an interview with Gil Scott-Heron about the meaning of the lyrics and I find it more interesting; The revolution will not be televised because the revolution starts in your mind, at the dinner table, or reading books in the library. It won't be captured on TV because the revolution occurs when you question your own beliefs and understand something bigger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZvWt29OG0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZvWt29OG0s
- JKCalhoun 9mo ago
  That's clever.
- olelele 9mo ago
  Yes man you got it.
- toyg 9mo ago
  One of the joys of poetry is that it can contain multiple hard-to-describe facets of the same concept. * The revolution won't be televised because they won't show it to you. * The revolution won't be televised because it's not a passive, external experience that you just consume. * The revolution won't be televised because it starts inside yourself.

AIorNot 9mo ago

Lets remember that tech bros have been explicitly funding the oppression 25 Million donation to MAGA from Brockman alone! I suspect he is a single issue donor (AI infra above all) https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/867947/openai-president-greg-brockman-trump-super-pac https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/867947/o... Its insane how immoral people can be - anyone can see Trump is a conman

babypuncher 9mo ago
These "single issue donors" are the most morally corrupt. I can understand someone who genuinely believes in the cause, even if that cause is disgusting. But this guy...this guy knows that the things happening are wrong, and he doesn't care as long as he gets what he wants from this administration. These people should be made social pariahs.
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  You can pretty much lump all of the billionaire bootlickers in the same category. Almost none of them have any ethics, whilst of course proclaiming the opposite.
  - joquarky 9mo ago
    It's like the old Sim City game where you can cheat in unlimited funds. This causes you to get bored and suddenly the disaster menu starts to become interesting.
    - Fischgericht 9mo ago
      Thank you. You just blew my mind. This might be the best (compressed) analogy / short-cut when trying to educate others about WTF is going on here. I will totally steal and use that. Again, thank you.
    - _carbyau_ 9mo ago
      That sounds like a classroom experiment. Let kids play the game. Tell them they now have to cheat with unlimited funds. Track at what time each kid launches a disaster. End of class, discuss billionaires.

like_any_other 9mo ago

They used to not even bother to hide behind technical difficulties, so this is an improvement: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/tiktok-pledges-to-do-more-to-fight-hateful-content/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/tiktok-pledges-to-do-more-t...

layman51 9mo ago

Something similar happened in the 1988 President Election in Mexico which is widely considered to have been stolen. There was a very memeable phrase, “se cayó el sistema” which was used to describe how the computing system to count votes was glitching out or failing.

trhway 9mo ago
[flagged]
- jamwil 9mo ago
  Most of which had, in fact, no basis in truth. So no that’s nothing like the Mexican election.
  - trhway 9mo ago
    So censoring falsehoods is good, and censoring truth is bad, and you're the one who decides which is which, and you like such censorship working your way. And when censorship you'd just liked so much starts to be used against you, you start to whine. Millenia old story of a deal with devil. And by the way the covid "fact checking" wasn't based on "truth", it was at political request of White House as Zuck later said, and he did later called the FB fact checking a censorship when disbanding it.
    - jamwil 9mo ago
      On matters of science the scientists decide which is which.
      - trhway 9mo ago
        and you are the one to decide that this science we should ignore, and instead we declare as the truth the lies that these lying through their teeth bastards are telling. You do like the "gold standard of science", RFK Junior and Trump edition, don't you? The same censorship as you like. Btw, how many top world infectious diseases scientists were among FB “fact checkers”?

TheAlchemist 9mo ago

As a fellow Eastern European of similar age, I suddenly feel quite nostalgic. I really wonder how my life would be different if someone told be that the US, which for me was as close to a paradise as it gets, will go down the same road in the future - I think it would shatter quite a lot of my dreams of a better life. US is nowhere near as bad as it was on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, but it's on a fast track to it for sure.

palmotea 9mo ago
> I really wonder how my life would be different if someone told be that the US, which for me was as close to a paradise as it gets, will go down the same road in the future - I think it would shatter quite a lot of my dreams of a better life. That reminds me of one of the things that stuck with me from The Man in the High Castle (the book). The main story is an alternate timeline where the Nazis/Japanese won WWII and conquered America. Then there's an alternate-timeline-within-the-alternate-timeline where America/Britain won WWII, but it's not our timeline (and it's hinted there that the liberal US was eventually defeated by a British Empire gone full authoritarian). Everything passes away. The good guys sometimes win, but eventually they lose too.
- sam1r 9mo ago
  Wow, thank you for the effort in typing out that this synopsis! Seems like quite the compelling read. I have already retrieved the book & will start it tonight.
  - Gud 9mo ago
    It's a great book. Phillip K Dick, there is no author like him.
  - TheAlchemist 9mo ago
    It's a fantastic book, highly recommend to read. There is also a TV series based on it (on Amazon Prime I think), but as usually, it's not as good as the book.
  - 9mo ago

ValveFan6969 9mo ago

[flagged]

refulgentis 9mo ago
Interesting reaction to that story, I'm fascinated: why do you think it's fake? (my guess: Soviet-style repression differences b/t USSR and satellites; reads as fake to you because non-USSR was more lax, i.e. you'll be fine speaking honestly in private, just not in public)

RegW 9mo ago

It is sad. It's now happening west of us. In Europe we have been trying to protect ourselves by not saying too much and attracting the attention/wrath of the bosses. I don't think it will work. If you are in Iran - keep your head down.

silisili 9mo ago

The rise of AI is going to make this even worse. Think Running Man instead of 'technical difficulties.'

giancarlostoro 9mo ago

Yeah I can't fathom what sort of technical issues would produce this result. I'd love to read a detailed article about it. Your move ByteDance or whatever org owns you now. The only thing that would make sense to me is a partial outage of some sort, but that would not be permanent and very rare for Tik Tok. As an aside, if you check in on r/tiktok every time something major like this is happening with Tik Tok you can see how users feel about it. I've seen different waves of users flat out deleting their Tik Tok accounts in protest.

1potatonagger 9mo ago

"Technical" difficulties, indeed... https://xcancel.com/DillyHussain88/status/2015712587309064667#m https://xcancel.com/DillyHussain88/status/201571258730906466...

selcuka 9mo ago

CNN Turk famously aired a documentary on penguins during the Gezi Park protests [1] that happened in 2013. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/09/turkey-mainstream-media-penguins-protests https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/09/turkey...

heresie-dabord 9mo ago

> This was an interesting life lesson. They thought they were free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free

yesitcan 9mo ago

"But in this case, it's a private corporation. It can censor what it wants" - average HN reply