6 ms·

I’m not familiar with A/I, but this sounds pretty damning – the ideological vetting of users in particular seems to discount any sort of neutral utility defense

I’m not familiar with A/I, but this sounds pretty damning – the ideological vetting of users in particular seems to discount any sort of neutral utility defense.

catlover76 25d ago
[dead]
kennywinker 25d ago
Ideologically vetting can mean a lot of things. Like, a sign on the door that says "NO TERFS" is a form of ideological vetting. By this logic any right wing message board would be designated terrorists the moment one person who has posted there commits a violent act. This is meant to chill domestic left-wing activism. Just like the person who got 30 years for delivering some zines (https://freedom.press/issues/texas-man-sentenced-to-30-years-for-transporting-pamphlets/ https://freedom.press/issues/texas-man-sentenced-to-30-years... https://portside.org/2026-06-25/injustice-how-leftist-zines-were-used-sentence-anti-ice-protesters-decades-prison https://portside.org/2026-06-25/injustice-how-leftist-zines-...)
- gobacktoreddi 25d ago
  [flagged]
  - stanleykm 25d ago
    alright buddy take it outside
- deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
- grumple 25d ago
  [dead]
- deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
notesinthefield 25d ago
The use of the word “ideological” in text with a US Gov-anything byline is tantamount to a fart. Its whining “I dont like this thing but I cant cry like a child about it.”
- lokar 25d ago
  Stop trusting the US government.
dragonwriter 25d ago
Sure, sounding damning is kind of the point of this kind of statement. But its also cheap and easy since there is no requirement that any of the claims are justified by any facts.
megous 25d ago
I'm not familiar with A/I, but I'm familiar with americans, and they look completely ridiculous talking smack about others doing allegedly "bad things". And they have no defense about supporting war criminals or genocidaires.
- mapontosevenths 25d ago
  Define genocide so we can all be sure we're talking about the same thing.
  - 13415 25d ago
    It's defined in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Long title but the document is like two pages, easy reading for even the intellectually laziest persons.
    - deleted 25d ago
      [deleted]
    - mapontosevenths 25d ago
      That definition is less than ideal from several perspectives. It serves neither side. The worst reason to hate it is that it relies on proving intent (dolus specialis), which essentially makes it unenforceable unless the perpetrator is a group of simpletons. It really hit me when I realized that there are only two ways to prove intent: The criminal admits it, or the prosecution proves that there are literally zero other possible explanations that could possibly fit the actions. So - Back to the point. Did the USA assist people guilty of genocide by your own chosen definition? Not if there could be literally any other intention. Keep in mind that Hamas's own convention (1988) clearly declares that they partly exist as a group for the purpose of wiping Israel out, and they did actually perpetrate October 7th. It would be very difficult for even the best lawyer in the world to argue that self-defense couldn't be at least one possible intention, and given that the nation of Israel probably has one or two decent lawyers, they'd likely be able to come up with a few other possible intentions as well, but they only need one to completely avoid prosecution. A second reason to hate it is that it doesn't carve out exceptions for mutual combat situations, even the ones that that have been dragging on for thousands of years. When two religious groups or ethnicities from neighboring regions fight each other in open combat few reasonable people would refer to that as a genocide, but it might be considered genocide against both sides if we interpret the UN Convention as it was actually ratified. > even the intellectually laziest persons Yo mama. To be more serious, this wasn't necessary and was rude. What was your goal? To convince me? To convince others? Neither are best accomplished with this sort of behavior.
a2ff6eeb0 25d ago
Hacker news engages in ideological vetting against users. For example, try posting content encouraging violence.
- sublinear 25d ago
  HN only (lazily) filters content. It doesn't engage in ideological vetting, and doesn't need to either. A good amount of the commenters on this story probably would encourage violence, or at least agree with the sentiment on a different platform, yet here they are. I'm not even sure if they're real people or bots. We are having a discussion right now that would not be allowed if there was vetting.
  - a2ff6eeb0 25d ago
    What exactly do you think vetting means? Why do you think it's only allowed to happen up front?
    - deleted 25d ago
      [deleted]
  - mitxela 25d ago
    [dead]
  - mitxela 25d ago
    HN's filtering is anything but lazy. Do you have showdead enabled in the settings? If not, enable it and refresh this comments page. A bunch of my comments were mysteriously deadened and I have no idea why - they aren't flagged. This was among them. Maybe it was a retaliation for talking about HN's filtering?
    - supriyo-biswas 25d ago
      When a post receive a number of flags and downvotes higher than some configured threshold, they're marked as "[dead]".
WindyTree 25d ago
It really doesn’t, unless they are screening for terrorism. For instance, a company that provides some free tech for low income Catholics, which ends up used in some crime, maybe bombed family planning clinic, can be charged for the terrorism they didn’t do. In fact, this can be leveraged by anti-Catholic terrorists to take out the Catholic tech service.
- deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
mdp2021 25d ago
What if "ideological vetting of users" means "discarding those who you believe would use the services for purposes you loathe".
bradly 25d ago
From my reading of their policy they do not claim to be neutral: > To be hosted on our servers you have to share our principles of anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, and anti-militarism It is the first line of https://www.inventati.org/who/policy https://www.inventati.org/who/policy
mitxela 25d ago
[dead]

I’m not familiar with A/I, but this sounds pretty damning – the ideological vetting of users in particular seems to discount any sort of neutral utility defense.

catlover76 25d ago

[dead]

kennywinker 25d ago

Ideologically vetting can mean a lot of things. Like, a sign on the door that says "NO TERFS" is a form of ideological vetting. By this logic any right wing message board would be designated terrorists the moment one person who has posted there commits a violent act. This is meant to chill domestic left-wing activism. Just like the person who got 30 years for delivering some zines (https://freedom.press/issues/texas-man-sentenced-to-30-years-for-transporting-pamphlets/ https://freedom.press/issues/texas-man-sentenced-to-30-years... https://portside.org/2026-06-25/injustice-how-leftist-zines-were-used-sentence-anti-ice-protesters-decades-prison https://portside.org/2026-06-25/injustice-how-leftist-zines-...)

gobacktoreddi 25d ago
[flagged]
- stanleykm 25d ago
  alright buddy take it outside
deleted 25d ago
[deleted]
grumple 25d ago
[dead]
deleted 25d ago
[deleted]

notesinthefield 25d ago

The use of the word “ideological” in text with a US Gov-anything byline is tantamount to a fart. Its whining “I dont like this thing but I cant cry like a child about it.”

lokar 25d ago
Stop trusting the US government.

dragonwriter 25d ago

Sure, sounding damning is kind of the point of this kind of statement. But its also cheap and easy since there is no requirement that any of the claims are justified by any facts.

megous 25d ago

I'm not familiar with A/I, but I'm familiar with americans, and they look completely ridiculous talking smack about others doing allegedly "bad things". And they have no defense about supporting war criminals or genocidaires.

mapontosevenths 25d ago
Define genocide so we can all be sure we're talking about the same thing.
- 13415 25d ago
  It's defined in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Long title but the document is like two pages, easy reading for even the intellectually laziest persons.
  - deleted 25d ago
    [deleted]
  - mapontosevenths 25d ago
    That definition is less than ideal from several perspectives. It serves neither side. The worst reason to hate it is that it relies on proving intent (dolus specialis), which essentially makes it unenforceable unless the perpetrator is a group of simpletons. It really hit me when I realized that there are only two ways to prove intent: The criminal admits it, or the prosecution proves that there are literally zero other possible explanations that could possibly fit the actions. So - Back to the point. Did the USA assist people guilty of genocide by your own chosen definition? Not if there could be literally any other intention. Keep in mind that Hamas's own convention (1988) clearly declares that they partly exist as a group for the purpose of wiping Israel out, and they did actually perpetrate October 7th. It would be very difficult for even the best lawyer in the world to argue that self-defense couldn't be at least one possible intention, and given that the nation of Israel probably has one or two decent lawyers, they'd likely be able to come up with a few other possible intentions as well, but they only need one to completely avoid prosecution. A second reason to hate it is that it doesn't carve out exceptions for mutual combat situations, even the ones that that have been dragging on for thousands of years. When two religious groups or ethnicities from neighboring regions fight each other in open combat few reasonable people would refer to that as a genocide, but it might be considered genocide against both sides if we interpret the UN Convention as it was actually ratified. > even the intellectually laziest persons Yo mama. To be more serious, this wasn't necessary and was rude. What was your goal? To convince me? To convince others? Neither are best accomplished with this sort of behavior.

a2ff6eeb0 25d ago

Hacker news engages in ideological vetting against users. For example, try posting content encouraging violence.

sublinear 25d ago
HN only (lazily) filters content. It doesn't engage in ideological vetting, and doesn't need to either. A good amount of the commenters on this story probably would encourage violence, or at least agree with the sentiment on a different platform, yet here they are. I'm not even sure if they're real people or bots. We are having a discussion right now that would not be allowed if there was vetting.
- a2ff6eeb0 25d ago
  What exactly do you think vetting means? Why do you think it's only allowed to happen up front?
  - deleted 25d ago
    [deleted]
- mitxela 25d ago
  [dead]
- mitxela 25d ago
  HN's filtering is anything but lazy. Do you have showdead enabled in the settings? If not, enable it and refresh this comments page. A bunch of my comments were mysteriously deadened and I have no idea why - they aren't flagged. This was among them. Maybe it was a retaliation for talking about HN's filtering?
  - supriyo-biswas 25d ago
    When a post receive a number of flags and downvotes higher than some configured threshold, they're marked as "[dead]".

WindyTree 25d ago

It really doesn’t, unless they are screening for terrorism. For instance, a company that provides some free tech for low income Catholics, which ends up used in some crime, maybe bombed family planning clinic, can be charged for the terrorism they didn’t do. In fact, this can be leveraged by anti-Catholic terrorists to take out the Catholic tech service.

deleted 25d ago
[deleted]

mdp2021 25d ago

What if "ideological vetting of users" means "discarding those who you believe would use the services for purposes you loathe".

bradly 25d ago

From my reading of their policy they do not claim to be neutral: > To be hosted on our servers you have to share our principles of anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, and anti-militarism It is the first line of https://www.inventati.org/who/policy https://www.inventati.org/who/policy

mitxela 25d ago

[dead]