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Oh? You know what? I'm glad that all these political stories are making the front page. You may not care about privacy on the internet but I do. I care about i

Oh? You know what? I'm glad that all these political stories are making the front page. You may not care about privacy on the internet but I do. I care about it _a lot_. Though I am a flawed being in many ways I would love to leave this world in better shape than when I got a hold of it. That's not going to happen if we bury our head in the sand when the shit gets real. And it's getting real. I have spent years being a free and open-source software evangelist. That means I care deeply about the freedoms surrounding computing platforms. Turns out governments were doing an end run round all that. Big deal, so I can connect my shiny new freedom-loving Linux box to the very non-free internet. The internet is _the_ computing platform that binds us all together. The spooks are destroying the internet. This is not just any old politics. This is all about privacy on the internet. It's about wiretapping the internet pipes. It's about snooping on everybody's conversations. It's about mass surveillance. We've almost got our very own panopticon. And you want to yack on about yet another web framework or javascript library or css library or whatever. That kind of stuff excites me too but right now maybe we got more pressing business? We are the people who actually understand the capabilities and implications of these political news stories. Your average Joe on the street doesn't know his RAM from his hard-drive. These recent political stories are at the intersection of a lot of stuff that I care very passionately about. Code + philosophy. HN has not been "holed below the waterline". Provocative and poetic and all as that image may be. And what do you advocate? Political (self)censorship. Really? If HN gets censored I suspect many will leave.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
northwest 13y ago
> I'm glad that all these political stories are making the front page. You may not care about privacy on the internet but I do. So to you "story about privacy on the Internet" == "political post". Perfectly fine, but I suspect tons of people define "political post" differently. Which is exactly why I was asking for a definition for "political post", before the discussion even started. Sadly, almost nobody seems to care about finding some sort of common definition. And this won't help to get a tangible result.
- igravious 13y ago
  We're talking about the political stories that have been hitting the front page. That is what the griping is about. These stories have been mainly about internet surveillance, censorship and filtering in the US, Europe, India, China, Russia and beyond (shout out to my peeps elsewhere, you know who you are.) It's funny cuz I used to follow Greenwald for quite some time in Google Reader (Reader used to be this really cool RSS feed reader back when Google cared more about open standards, you may have heard of it) when he was at Salon. Then he moved to the Guardian and I thought, "good for him. Bigger audience". Then along comes Mr. Snowden and now it appears Greenwald has followed me to HN. Funny old world. Just goes to show. What exactly, I'm not sure.
  - gyardley 13y ago
    No, most of 'these stories' have been about the minutiae associated with Snowden's asylum requests. Reading one of these stories or the associated discussion is like watching an old episode of Three's Company - the details might be slightly different from episode to episode, but you already know the general plot. These stories take the place of articles that are more interesting, degrading the site as a whole, and do absolutely nothing to help any sort of political cause - in fact, because most of the stories are so content-free, they probably cause people to skip over the rarer more-meaningful ones. It's all really rather tiresome.
jallmann 13y ago
It'd be nice if the "political" stories were confined to discussing the code+philosophy of privacy and Internet freedom. But the majority are puff pieces or knee-jerk outrage articles that contribute very little to the overall discourse, except to fan the flames. There are tons and tons of ways to discuss privacy and security in ways that are topical to Hacker News. Tools, methods, counter-measures, threat models, secure protocols, best practices, crypto, anonymization, companies and startups engaging in such, etc etc etc. These are topics that HN's core audience can engage with, while still being relevant to current events. Even the legal stuff (FISA and warrant compliance, legality of wiretapping, etc) is interesting, especially as it relates to our startups and the companies we deal with. There is an argument to be made that surveillance/wiretapping programs require a political/legislative fix, not a technical one. But on the whole, I'd prefer that discussions involving the minutiae of such (and the events which propagated them) not be conducted here, at least not in recent quantities.
- igravious 13y ago
  I hear what you're saying and I agree with you to an extent. Sometimes the flames need fanning to get people thinking and engaged. This is one of those times I would submit. > There is an argument to be made that surveillance/wiretapping programs require a political/legislative fix, not a technical one. Remember when Stallman couldn't fix his printer? Do we have an analogy with what is currently happening? Our fellow techies have enabled a system of mass surveillance over us all - just like techies churning out proprietary code for corporations. Look how long it has taken for free and open-source software to make a comeback. Thirty years one could argue. That social ill never got a political/legislative fix. The GPL was a hack. Perhaps we need some kind of Stallman-like hack to act as a catalyst/seed to start pushing back against the erosion of privacy and internet freedom. Until we know for sure that the fix has to be a political/technical one then maybe we should keep the ideas and discussions flowing here. But at the same time I agree, maybe you are right, maybe this is not the right forum. But then, where is?
davidw 13y ago
> You may not care about privacy on the internet but I do. Did you read what I wrote? > If HN gets censored I suspect many will leave. HN is already censored. By a 1%'er, nonetheless.
- igravious 13y ago
  If you care deeply about privacy on the internet why don't you want to follow and participate in the discussions here concerning the unfolding drama about the erosion of privacy on the internet? I want to do a bit more than just read about this topic. I want to discuss it with my hacker/geek/nerd/techie peers and that sure ain't gonna happen in the comment section of the Guardian website. I also want to do more than discuss though, I also want to change things. I'd like to help out a bit maybe. Donate to the EFF or something, anything. Witness the news about Tox - I'm not gonna hear about that on the Guardian. I suppose I could go back to /. ^shudder^ In what way is HN censored?
  - whiddershins 13y ago
    PG (and others) moderate it, which is a polite word for censoring. He is a member of the .1%
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
      This kind of censorship is not bad. It's needed. That's why we have a word "moderation", to distinguish that process from a similar one (but stronger), with negative connotations.
    - igravious 13y ago
      I understand that. In what way, is what I'm asking.
      - davidw 13y ago
        He/they sometimes kill stories that they don't feel belong on the site, or don't add anything to it.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

northwest 13y ago

> I'm glad that all these political stories are making the front page. You may not care about privacy on the internet but I do. So to you "story about privacy on the Internet" == "political post". Perfectly fine, but I suspect tons of people define "political post" differently. Which is exactly why I was asking for a definition for "political post", before the discussion even started. Sadly, almost nobody seems to care about finding some sort of common definition. And this won't help to get a tangible result.

igravious 13y ago
We're talking about the political stories that have been hitting the front page. That is what the griping is about. These stories have been mainly about internet surveillance, censorship and filtering in the US, Europe, India, China, Russia and beyond (shout out to my peeps elsewhere, you know who you are.) It's funny cuz I used to follow Greenwald for quite some time in Google Reader (Reader used to be this really cool RSS feed reader back when Google cared more about open standards, you may have heard of it) when he was at Salon. Then he moved to the Guardian and I thought, "good for him. Bigger audience". Then along comes Mr. Snowden and now it appears Greenwald has followed me to HN. Funny old world. Just goes to show. What exactly, I'm not sure.
- gyardley 13y ago
  No, most of 'these stories' have been about the minutiae associated with Snowden's asylum requests. Reading one of these stories or the associated discussion is like watching an old episode of Three's Company - the details might be slightly different from episode to episode, but you already know the general plot. These stories take the place of articles that are more interesting, degrading the site as a whole, and do absolutely nothing to help any sort of political cause - in fact, because most of the stories are so content-free, they probably cause people to skip over the rarer more-meaningful ones. It's all really rather tiresome.

jallmann 13y ago

It'd be nice if the "political" stories were confined to discussing the code+philosophy of privacy and Internet freedom. But the majority are puff pieces or knee-jerk outrage articles that contribute very little to the overall discourse, except to fan the flames. There are tons and tons of ways to discuss privacy and security in ways that are topical to Hacker News. Tools, methods, counter-measures, threat models, secure protocols, best practices, crypto, anonymization, companies and startups engaging in such, etc etc etc. These are topics that HN's core audience can engage with, while still being relevant to current events. Even the legal stuff (FISA and warrant compliance, legality of wiretapping, etc) is interesting, especially as it relates to our startups and the companies we deal with. There is an argument to be made that surveillance/wiretapping programs require a political/legislative fix, not a technical one. But on the whole, I'd prefer that discussions involving the minutiae of such (and the events which propagated them) not be conducted here, at least not in recent quantities.

igravious 13y ago
I hear what you're saying and I agree with you to an extent. Sometimes the flames need fanning to get people thinking and engaged. This is one of those times I would submit. > There is an argument to be made that surveillance/wiretapping programs require a political/legislative fix, not a technical one. Remember when Stallman couldn't fix his printer? Do we have an analogy with what is currently happening? Our fellow techies have enabled a system of mass surveillance over us all - just like techies churning out proprietary code for corporations. Look how long it has taken for free and open-source software to make a comeback. Thirty years one could argue. That social ill never got a political/legislative fix. The GPL was a hack. Perhaps we need some kind of Stallman-like hack to act as a catalyst/seed to start pushing back against the erosion of privacy and internet freedom. Until we know for sure that the fix has to be a political/technical one then maybe we should keep the ideas and discussions flowing here. But at the same time I agree, maybe you are right, maybe this is not the right forum. But then, where is?

davidw 13y ago

> You may not care about privacy on the internet but I do. Did you read what I wrote? > If HN gets censored I suspect many will leave. HN is already censored. By a 1%'er, nonetheless.

igravious 13y ago
If you care deeply about privacy on the internet why don't you want to follow and participate in the discussions here concerning the unfolding drama about the erosion of privacy on the internet? I want to do a bit more than just read about this topic. I want to discuss it with my hacker/geek/nerd/techie peers and that sure ain't gonna happen in the comment section of the Guardian website. I also want to do more than discuss though, I also want to change things. I'd like to help out a bit maybe. Donate to the EFF or something, anything. Witness the news about Tox - I'm not gonna hear about that on the Guardian. I suppose I could go back to /. ^shudder^ In what way is HN censored?
- whiddershins 13y ago
  PG (and others) moderate it, which is a polite word for censoring. He is a member of the .1%
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    This kind of censorship is not bad. It's needed. That's why we have a word "moderation", to distinguish that process from a similar one (but stronger), with negative connotations.
  - igravious 13y ago
    I understand that. In what way, is what I'm asking.
    - davidw 13y ago
      He/they sometimes kill stories that they don't feel belong on the site, or don't add anything to it.