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Hacker News is the one place I've consistently found good information related to this extremely important case (that and Greenwald's twitter account itself). It

by pvnick 13y ago

Hacker News is the one place I've consistently found good information related to this extremely important case (that and Greenwald's twitter account itself). It's important to the HN community because we're typically technology-minded and libertarian-leaning, and these topics strike at the core of the privacy debate and "big data" issues. Therefore it seems to me to be a great place for Snowden-related news. Of course if you want to use this plugin go right ahead. But don't start grandstanding with philosophical statements about how "HN is only for startups" and "this site must stay away from politics" because 1) that's false and 2) you're probably not a moderator.

bpodgursky 13y ago
I'm not trying to make any philosophical statements. My problem is the HN coverage right now is not insightful, it's a paparazzi-level tracking of everything he says and does. In a couple months when the details have been filtered from the blogspam, maybe we can have an insightful discussion. Right now it is nothing of the sort.
- clubhi 13y ago
  I can't wait until the NSA releases all the details on it. I'm curios to see if they discover they themselves did anything wrong.
untog 13y ago
I took this screenshot earlier (posted it earlier, apologies to anyone that's seen it before): http://i.imgur.com/sjNd5Z7.png http://i.imgur.com/sjNd5Z7.png Out of 24 stories, only two are about something other than Snowden and/or the NSA. I absolutely do think that Snowden coverage should be on HN. But that much? At a certain level you're just duplicating the same information, and repeating all the same talking points in different threads. If we could just stick to one or two articles at once it would be fine.
tptacek 13y ago
Respectfully, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. The people who are saying that HN "isn't for politics" aren't making that up; it's right there in the site guidelines. The cognitive dissonance you have here comes from three things, I think: * The moderators on HN take an extremely light touch with moderation; most of the stories that get "dead'd" on HN are killed by user flags, not directly by moderators. I think this is even more the case now that the "flamewar detector" is in place; stories that might have earned a moderator intervention 3 years ago are now left to be auto-buried by the flamewar detector. Buried != dead. * The "no politics" guideline on HN takes a back seat to the politics of the people who run HN. All signs point to Paul Graham being on your side of the Snowden and Manning cases; for instance, if you follow him on Twitter, he has posted supportive links. Similarly, Graham chimed in on a gun control thread in (IIRC) favor of gun control. * Many of the NSA stories that have appeared in the last few weeks have also been highly technical. There's a "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" game that gets played to try to connect the dots from any political story to hacking and startups, such that Ron Paul supporters have ready arguments for why their stories are germane to HN, but those stories tend to get flagged off anyways. Here, we're talking in large part about the internal retention policies of Google, and it's hard to make an argument that those stories aren't at least somewhat germane to HN. I've given up on the idea of flagging political NSA stories, but I would have a big problem with anyone drawing the conclusion that HN now encourages political stories. It doesn't, and it shouldn't, and it won't if it expects to maintain a civil community. Political discussions on HN spark enmity; people who could discuss eloquently and at length the details of programming languages or linguistics or literature instead follow each other around from threat to thread downvoting out of spite.
- pvnick 13y ago
  I agree with your sentiment for the most part, except to nit-pick and say that the guidelines prohibit "Most stories about politics," but, like you said and what I think I stated pretty well in my post is that this topic is particularly important to the HN crowd. In fact, I would even go so far as to say the whole thing is NOT political, insofar as the whole democrats-vs-republicans dichotomy is irrelevant to the discussion.
- goldfeld 13y ago
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
That's what makes this userscript a great contribution. People who are tired of the Snowden coverage can now ignore it, instead of HN attempting to moderate the content.
- krapp 13y ago
  They could ignore it anyway.
austenallred 13y ago
"Edward Snowden has landed in Russia" should not be important enough to the HN community to warrant first-page placement for the better part of 12 hours. If there's meaningful debate as to the ramifications of the NSA and big data, sure, but most of the content hasn't been political or insightful so much as breaking.
- LoganCale 13y ago
  Thanks for telling us what should be important to us.
tzs 13y ago
Most of the HN discussion I've seen on this has been a showcase for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
- danielweber 13y ago
  No, no, other people have the D-K effect. Not us. We are smrt.
brown9-2 13y ago
Hacker News is the one place I've consistently found good information related to this extremely important case (that and Greenwald's twitter account itself). I think this advice will more likely than not fall on deaf ears but I would caution anyone getting all or most of their news on this subject from just HN and/or Greenwald. I've found that most of the coverage on HN has been extremely one-sided, and of course it is the most sensationalist articles (like when the NSA supposedly admitted in a Congressional hearing that any analyst could start listening to any US Person's phone calls) that get the most upvoted, and the articles either refuting or casting serious doubts on those initial stories (Rep Nadler: "nope that wasn't what was said") get a fraction of the votes. There are more sides to this story than just what is receiving the most upvotes and I think a lot of people are allowing the story to confirm whatever prior beliefs they had (which for most is that the US is a police state). When you think about it, this story is still only a few weeks and old and it's way too early to think we even know enough to draw any concrete conclusions, yet alone get drawn into the "hero vs traitor" waste of time.

by pvnick 13y ago

bpodgursky 13y ago

I'm not trying to make any philosophical statements. My problem is the HN coverage right now is not insightful, it's a paparazzi-level tracking of everything he says and does. In a couple months when the details have been filtered from the blogspam, maybe we can have an insightful discussion. Right now it is nothing of the sort.

clubhi 13y ago
I can't wait until the NSA releases all the details on it. I'm curios to see if they discover they themselves did anything wrong.

untog 13y ago

I took this screenshot earlier (posted it earlier, apologies to anyone that's seen it before): http://i.imgur.com/sjNd5Z7.png http://i.imgur.com/sjNd5Z7.png Out of 24 stories, only two are about something other than Snowden and/or the NSA. I absolutely do think that Snowden coverage should be on HN. But that much? At a certain level you're just duplicating the same information, and repeating all the same talking points in different threads. If we could just stick to one or two articles at once it would be fine.

tptacek 13y ago

Respectfully, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. The people who are saying that HN "isn't for politics" aren't making that up; it's right there in the site guidelines. The cognitive dissonance you have here comes from three things, I think: * The moderators on HN take an extremely light touch with moderation; most of the stories that get "dead'd" on HN are killed by user flags, not directly by moderators. I think this is even more the case now that the "flamewar detector" is in place; stories that might have earned a moderator intervention 3 years ago are now left to be auto-buried by the flamewar detector. Buried != dead. * The "no politics" guideline on HN takes a back seat to the politics of the people who run HN. All signs point to Paul Graham being on your side of the Snowden and Manning cases; for instance, if you follow him on Twitter, he has posted supportive links. Similarly, Graham chimed in on a gun control thread in (IIRC) favor of gun control. * Many of the NSA stories that have appeared in the last few weeks have also been highly technical. There's a "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" game that gets played to try to connect the dots from any political story to hacking and startups, such that Ron Paul supporters have ready arguments for why their stories are germane to HN, but those stories tend to get flagged off anyways. Here, we're talking in large part about the internal retention policies of Google, and it's hard to make an argument that those stories aren't at least somewhat germane to HN. I've given up on the idea of flagging political NSA stories, but I would have a big problem with anyone drawing the conclusion that HN now encourages political stories. It doesn't, and it shouldn't, and it won't if it expects to maintain a civil community. Political discussions on HN spark enmity; people who could discuss eloquently and at length the details of programming languages or linguistics or literature instead follow each other around from threat to thread downvoting out of spite.

pvnick 13y ago
I agree with your sentiment for the most part, except to nit-pick and say that the guidelines prohibit "Most stories about politics," but, like you said and what I think I stated pretty well in my post is that this topic is particularly important to the HN crowd. In fact, I would even go so far as to say the whole thing is NOT political, insofar as the whole democrats-vs-republicans dichotomy is irrelevant to the discussion.
goldfeld 13y ago

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

That's what makes this userscript a great contribution. People who are tired of the Snowden coverage can now ignore it, instead of HN attempting to moderate the content.

krapp 13y ago
They could ignore it anyway.

austenallred 13y ago

"Edward Snowden has landed in Russia" should not be important enough to the HN community to warrant first-page placement for the better part of 12 hours. If there's meaningful debate as to the ramifications of the NSA and big data, sure, but most of the content hasn't been political or insightful so much as breaking.

LoganCale 13y ago
Thanks for telling us what should be important to us.

tzs 13y ago

Most of the HN discussion I've seen on this has been a showcase for the Dunning-Kruger effect.

danielweber 13y ago
No, no, other people have the D-K effect. Not us. We are smrt.

brown9-2 13y ago

Hacker News is the one place I've consistently found good information related to this extremely important case (that and Greenwald's twitter account itself). I think this advice will more likely than not fall on deaf ears but I would caution anyone getting all or most of their news on this subject from just HN and/or Greenwald. I've found that most of the coverage on HN has been extremely one-sided, and of course it is the most sensationalist articles (like when the NSA supposedly admitted in a Congressional hearing that any analyst could start listening to any US Person's phone calls) that get the most upvoted, and the articles either refuting or casting serious doubts on those initial stories (Rep Nadler: "nope that wasn't what was said") get a fraction of the votes. There are more sides to this story than just what is receiving the most upvotes and I think a lot of people are allowing the story to confirm whatever prior beliefs they had (which for most is that the US is a police state). When you think about it, this story is still only a few weeks and old and it's way too early to think we even know enough to draw any concrete conclusions, yet alone get drawn into the "hero vs traitor" waste of time.