More importantly, I'm someone deeply involved with the kinds of people that would have been able to perform this kind of hack and would do so for political reasons. I am directly calling their behavior awful.
I'm explicitly condemning the doxxing of ordinary people for their political activity and frankly am shocked that you would even suggest that to be against the rules or even controversial.
(That said, it's still rhetorically in the flamewar style and that's the wrong style for HN. We want curious conversation here.)
Fair. It can be an unfortunate component of my writing style. Too many decades in front of computers and all.
Just want to say I respect and appreciate the humility here. It's easy for a moderator to just shut down disagreement.
Nevertheless we need to try to prevent this place from being engulfed in flames, since that's (a) the default internet outcome and (b) everything HN is not supposed to be for.
One of many ways everyone can contribute to this effort is by resisting the reflex to assume that the moderators are secretly privileging the side you don't like. That's a common illusion (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) but it makes things worse.
All this has zero to do with "SV ideological purity tests". If you follow the moderation here, you should know that we have no such "tests" and couldn't care less about "purity". Unfortunately, one consequence of that is that everyone with strong ideological passions ends up accusing us of being enforcers for the side they don't like. It's clearly a cognitive bias and probably hard-wired in all of us: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
While I do think a certain one or two users have gotten a pass before, honestly it was a couple of years ago at this point and probably not worth considering today.
I wouldn't say that I have a particular side here, but I do see one unfortunate (to me) point of view dominating all conversations and that's not even something that's localized to HN. People bring their tendencies to bully online and drown out and attack their peers (i mean, just look at this thread) and in professional life this is also very real and the consequences are nasty. You can't moderate everything at the end of the day though, so no fault to you.
What does worry me is that there seems to be a growing sentiment on this board (as in life) that doxxing of ordinary people is okay even though this is a crowd that not only should know better but needs to be held to a higher standard because of our access to and skill with such data. It's simply not challenged enough, but that's also not your job either.
Even if you were to concede that, you'd probably counter that you can't read all the comments. And, of course, that is so. But that is beside the point that I have made many times before: the community's bias allows such users (and those who espouse certain views) to break the guidelines without penalty, while heavily penalizing others and those with contrary views.
Every time I see you tell someone that moderator bias is an illusion, I can't help but think that you are talking past each other, because the elephant in the room (which I have rarely seen you even acknowledge) is the extreme bias in the community's downvoting and flagging behavior, which naturally results in the official moderation actions being biased toward what is flagged, which amounts to a de facto official moderation bias. (If a community only calls the police when certain groups of people break the law, the police's actions will naturally be biased toward enforcing against those groups of people, because they aren't omniscient.)
There are certain topics and certain people that do not get moderated fairly and HN itself has certain biases that are encouraged or have opposition to them discouraged. If you know what they are, you know what they are.
Bringing up HN's (often subtle but often not-so) bias against average poor people gets heavily moderated here.
I give dang credit versus other moderators elsewhere who are explicitly biased and don't give a fuck how you feel about it.
I don't know what they are! Perhaps you could clue me in at [email protected]?
In the same threads, "conservatives" and "conservatism" and Republicans and "liberty" are freely condemned, mocked, and accused of all sorts of evil behaviors and intent, without even being downvoted, much less flagged.
This happens regularly, any time these topics come up in a popular thread. So it's hard for me to understand how you could be unaware of this de facto community bias.
The active ingredient here is the phrase "I see". What you're seeing feels obvious to you because you feel strongly on the topic. People who feel differently have very different "obvious" perceptions. (Edit: like here, which was just posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30351063.) These perceptions are entirely predictable from the passions of the perceiver, and I do mean entirely—it is probably the single most consistent phenomenon I've observed on HN.
Because these perceptions are predictable from the passions of the perceiver, it follows that they don't tell us anything about the community. They only tell us something about you—namely, which position you personally favor or disfavor, and how strongly. That's why other users perceive the opposite bias to what you perceive. Their passions are producing their perception the same way that yours are—they just happen to have opposite passions. Consider these gems:
zero left wing chatter. instant ban by this fash site https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30302617
a community full of some pretty extreme opinions, generally right-wing and regressive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439442
most of people on HN are ancap or fascists https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28958681
There are reams of this stuff, coming from all ideological tribes. Same community, incompatible perceptions—why? Because they're not actually incompatible. They only appear so if you take them as objective claims about the community. As expressions of the preferences of the perceiver, they're not only compatible, they're isomorphic. Whatever mechanism is producing these nearly-identical comments, it can't be "political skew on Hacker News", because the claims are coming from all factions.
Usually at this point someone objects, "so you're just claiming that HN is perfectly neutral in every way? the community has no biases of any kind?" No, that doesn't follow. I'm only saying that comments like yours and the 3 I just linked to don't contain any signal about this, because the feeling of bias tells us nothing about the actual statistical and demographic situation. (Well, it tells us that HN produces enough data points for everybody to run across some that rub them the wrong way. But that's not enough information to conclude anything about HN as a whole.)
It's incredible how deeply these feelings go and how convincing they are, so the mechanism is probably hard-wired into all of us. My hypothesis, which I call the notice-dislike bias (a terrible name), goes like this: because painful experiences make a deeper impression than pleasurable ones, we're all more likely to notice the data points that bring up dislike/disagree reactions in us (i.e. give us pain) than we are to notice the kind that we like/agree with (i.e. give us pleasure). Not only that but we weight the painful ones much more heavily. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
This leads to false feelings of generality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), in which people are convinced that the community (and usually the moderators too) are overwhelmingly stacked against their particular views (for example, your view that communism is bad). It's easy to see that these generalities are false, because the opposite side has exactly the same feeling—they just perceive the bias the other way around, like the other 3 I linked to.
Usually at this point someone objects, "You haven't proven anything—just because somebody else has a wrong perception, it doesn't follow that mine is". Yes, a perception of this type may happen to correspond to the real situation, but only by accident—like a wrong solution to a math exercise that ends up at the right answer, but is still incorrect. What matters is how the answer is derived. The perceptions we're talking about are derived from the perceiver's internal pleasure/pain experience, and that mechanism is not capable of assessing reality accurately. Essentially, we are all projecting the inverse of our own preferences onto the outside world, and then feeling surrounded by hostility.
Normally I don't offer a verdict on particular claims about this, but I feel pretty confident in saying that there is no pro-communist bias on HN. The comments that you see getting downvoted are, in many cases, downvoted because they're breaking the HN guidelines. Any comment that makes grandiose, repetitive ideological claims is already breaking the site guidelines, and when people go after each other about communism (or any other $classic-ideological-flavor) they're nearly always doing that. I have to ask commenters to stop doing this all the time on HN—not because I'm a secret communist or secret-anything-else, but because these discussions are not interesting in HN's sense of the word. We want curious conversation here, and people bashing their $other-side with well-worn talking points (be it "communism killed x-hundred-million people!" or anything else of that nature), they're not having curious conversation.
Multiple organizers have openly made those exact statements. You are misinformed.
> conveniently fully masked agitators
I shouldn't even bother responding to this kind of disingenuous bait. Of course it's all a massive psyop false flag conspiracy to smear the good names of working class Canadians in it for the good fight, right.
I've seen it posited that it's due to the pseudo-anonymity of the internet, but that doesn't seem to fully explain it. Something has fundamentally changed to allow this level of dehumanization towards the "others".
Nothing has changed in the level of dehumanization. It's clearly a very human failing that has played out in history time and again. The only reason it feels more prevalent, is because we've turned it inward toward what used to be a more cohesive group. So we can ask why we're breaking apart, but there's no mystery about why we dehumanize the "others" -- we always have.
At the same time, we may ask why American society seems to be more ideologically polarized now than at various times in recent decades. If the root cause is natural human failing, what is the second-level cause? Could it be that American society has been under a form of ideological siege and sabotage for many years, that is now coming to fruition?
For example, it's documented that, as far back as the early 20th century, the USSR funded programs to demoralize American society through means as seemingly innocuous as making public art and architecture uglier. As well, Marcuse's "long march through the institutions" has now had 50 years to take effect, and polls have shown that American academia is much less ideologically diverse than in past decades, now being nearly entirely formed of those who vote for one party.
There are elements of history that seem like weather, coming and going in cycles, but there are also parties taking active roles to effect certain ends, and we would be wise to be aware of their influence.
we used to be able to say "you're wrong about $X, but we can still work together on $Y in agreement." That's unfashionable now. We demand inhuman purity from our idols, de-idolizing them or de-historizing their imperfections as necessary to the dictates of the moment. We expect ideological harmony from our peers, or at the very least meek acceptance of our views without any backtalk. You can think differently, as long as you're quiet about it. and don't let anyone see evidence of your deviance.
HN is mad that the working class is advocating for themselves and not busy delivering our Amazon packages and making us lattes.
Perhaps all the development into algorithms that make people click on things, when people click on things they are outraged about is a contributing factor to this if there is a link between perceived moral division and support for authoritarianism.
[1] - https://www.psypost.org/2022/02/study-provides-first-evidenc...
I mean you have 61% of donors not even being Canadians. They're funding a movement that shut down a major commerce corridor into the US, directly affecting the US economy.
To say this is about the 'working class' is naive. I mean you think Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, was tweeting support of it because he loves the working class?
- 90 percent of Canada's truckers are vaccinated, so why are you using working class as a substitute for protestor, then using that to call this class warfare?
- Don't you think working class people will care most about this list? The people with the most time to scour lists and make angry tweets probably most likely aren't UHNW individuals...
- Don't you see the irony is claiming authoritarianism has landed under the guise of morality, then assigning morality based on party orientation? Somehow painting the right as working class victims, and the left as upper class aggressors?
Actually you read that into that based on your own biases. I was deliberate _not_ to do this specifically. The establishment media and government mouthpieces, both left and right, have demonized the shit out of this protest and painted them as nazis, terrorists or any other fear word they can get away with.
Truly independent journalists have been painting a very different picture by doing the things that traditional media won't do: long form interviews with protestors and ordinary Ottawans.
You're saying it's my bias that the protestors are right leaning, and therefore the attackers are left?
Isn't that just an open fact? You omitting it doesn't make it not true...
No, it isn't. Not in their own words. If you've only been watching CBC/CNN, well, that's a big part of the problem then.
I mean it's easy enough to see the political aspect here isn't tied to the political leanings of news source:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/freedom-convoy-trucker-canadas...
I got the impression you were browbeating me for not intentionally ignoring very plain context as you did, and you seem to be confirming that.
I stated from the beginning that this is a class issue and not a left/right one. You in your very first reply said "being objective here" and then went on some screed about how this is obviously left wing vs right wing politics.
Then I stated that if you look at the only actual interviews being done with these people and hear them in their own words they say that this is not a left wing vs right wing thing here and you say that I'm commenting in bad faith.
Not anywhere did I tell you to refer to Fox News as a source for content. You picked that source entirely on your own to suit your argument. As myself and others have mentioned in the thread, the only long form interviews being done with these people are being done by independent journalists on youtube.
And you are blatantly wrong. You omitted mentioning left/right when talking about a conservative protest, that does not change the fact it's a conservative protest.
You're certainly free to keep floundering about this but it won't change the simple reality:
Freedom Convoy is a largely conservative protest, as it is largely speaking to conservative talking points.
-
That doesn't mean every person there is a conservative, it does not mean being against vaccine mandates makes you a conservative, it simply means the people most represented by the tenants of the convoy are conservatives.
You are commenting in bad faith because either you don't know enough about this subject to realize it's a right-oriented movement... or you're aware of this but intentionally trying to bury that fact to force a pretty unrelated diatribe.
> Not anywhere did I tell you to refer to Fox News as a source for content
You tried to blame my source of news for a take not at all tied to news articles, which was ridiculous.
To humor you I chose one that was opposite of the ones you mentioned, the source of news does not change the reality that this is a conservative movement.
Or am I getting browbeaten for making the connection the specific working class are in fact right leaning...
OP didn't write their comment in a vacuum. Can we not pretend that we're unable to apply context, like a massive conservative movement sparked by conservative anti vaxx sentiment.
This same group of truckers who repeatedly say that they are not anti vaxx but anti mandate and are more than 95% vaccinated anyway.
Okay, buddy.
As are showing off facts that are completely baseless.
For example, sounds like you confused the numbers for vaccination from the CTA about all truckers? Since the certainly no rigorous numbers specific to the protestors...
The CTA is the largest organization of truckers and yet...
“CTA believes such actions — especially those that interfere with public safety — are not how disagreements with government policies should be expressed.”
-
Kudos though, you totally pulled a fast one on dang acting like this was "about both sides"
Unfortunately you've slowly started to leak out the vitriol very closely associated with one side of these protests...
is this actually true, or is this just an extrapolation of "90% of Canadians are vaccinated"?
regardless, it's not as though only 10% of truckers are involved in this protest...
Also your wording is very confusing
"only 10% of truckers".
You realize it's not anywhere near 10% of truckers actively involved right? That it's a much lower number, with estimates putting them at most hundreds to a few thousand out of hundreds of thousands of truckers total
Or it only distasteful when your speech and opinion is public? I support very robust free speech perspectives and freedom of speech rights, but there are also consequences for our speech (and the protections, in the US at least, are from your government only).
Don’t speak or support what you’d be embarrassed to see successfully attributed to you on the front page of a newspaper. Everyone’s opsec streak runs out eventually, and anonymity should have bounds once you’re influencing the public sphere (politics, in this case).
(all of my political donations are public in FEC filings, even those I’m not required to disclose)
People have a right to privacy. Stealing private information is the opposite of freedom.
You’re Average Joe or Jane? Of course not, not under any circumstances. Their bedroom is their business only. I can’t stress this enough.
> People have a right to privacy. Stealing private information is the opposite of freedom.
Higher level, to demand anonymity when pushing resourced ($$$) speech in a democracy is attempting to subvert the political system while avoiding recourse for bad faith intent and/or actions (my observations from a systems analyst perspective).
Nuance and absolutism are incompatible.
Perhaps its not embarrassment that makes people want privacy, but fear of retribution. Consider someone living during the McCarthy era in the US. Speaking up could be career ending, and in the long run, if things had progressed to a more authoritarian regime, life threatening.
As one of the earlier posters said, I think many people see a slide into authoritarianism on both sides of the political spectrum. And it strikes me, that not being able to have secrets or privacy supports authoritarianism more than furthering democracy.
"GoFundMe allowed support for CHAZ/CHOP zone in Seattle even after murders"
Black Lives Matter - Los Angeles https://www.gofundme.com/f/h2tqv-black-lives-matter-los-ange...
ANTIFA Takes Donations (for NAACP) https://www.gofundme.com/f/antifa-takes-donations
edit: fascinating, this comment received positive votes and then went straight to -3 within seconds.
It's nice to see the left and right's true colors here and how easily they pulled back the veil of opposition to reveal their true contempt for the lower classes and the real class war underpinning everything.
These last two years, I have seen so much scary authoritarianism from well-meaning people using their own moral righteousness as all the justification they need for oppression. I fear things will get worse before they get better.