Facebook is acting on behalf of the US's long-term, bipartisan effort to undermine any Latin American government that doesn't grant its corporations access to that nation's resources. More specifically, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations have undermined the Venezuelan government in many ways, including supporting coup attempts.[1]
I'm not arguing that I support what Maduro said. He has an awful record as a leader. I'm arguing that this is the natural result of social media censorship. It's censorship by the US government by proxy.
Here is a simple test to see if the above statement is true: would Facebook censor a world leader as swiftly and as severely if this were a leader of an allied state, or even a leader within our own government?
There's a very weird "let them eat cake" attitude in this thread which I find distressing. The study reports on the millions of working age men in the US who are essentially too depressed and face too many obstacles to search for work. Instead, they're spending their days staying inside, getting high, and playing video games. They essentially have little to no chance to pursue romantic relationships. Many of them eventually take their own lives.
Perhaps some are enjoying their "hedonistic" lifestyles, but likely most have totally given up on life, much like the Japanese hikikomori. It's not healthy mentally or physically. But it seems like as long as people treat these men as "losers" who deserve their fate, the more this problem will grow.
As far as I can tell, men have always been treated this way, in all societies: accomplish or disappear. The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable.
>The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable.
I would say "the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable." Automation is just tools. Reasonably able people can learn to use tools. But they need the means to do so affordably and effectively. Our system of education, however, is largely stuck two generations back and not up to the task of preparing people for the fast-moving world we're now in.
And this isn't even the fact that textbooks are out-of-date before they see print, or that greedy publishers keep educational materials locked behind arbitrarily high paywalls. The problem is deeper: people are not taught how to learn, and are in fact taught to fear learning because learning means judgement. They are not taught the joy of self-motivated learning which gives them the drive to keep actively learning on their own, which I believe is becoming an increasingly crucial trait to succeed at work.
the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable.
As an aspiring educator, it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that society expects teachers to be miracle-workers, to motivate children so they study really hard and get into a good college. Yet we don't expect the same from parents. Parents are spending less and less time with their kids, while the demands for education are growing more and more intensive.
My grandfather got his first job after finishing the eighth grade. He worked for over five decades and raised six kids together with my grandmother, who was a homemaker her entire life. Both he and grandma grew up on farms with two-digit numbers of children in the family. Everyone worked from a young age and learned to provide for the household, boys and girls alike.
Nowadays, we expect kids to spend a quarter of their lives or more in school. We expect them to work extremely hard and compete for a spot in a top rated school. We give them no real responsibilities apart from academics. No, cleaning your bedroom or mowing the lawn are not real responsibilities the way milking the cows or making preserves from the garden produce were for my grandparents. If you don't clean your room, nobody will go hungry.
Life was much harder, physically speaking, for most people from my grandparents' generation and earlier, stretching back into antiquity. It was not harder to find purpose in life, however. Nature and the struggle to survive together with your family and community was enough for most people to feel fulfilled.
Today it's the complete opposite on both accounts. Extremely easy to survive with all of the benefits, cheap food and clean water, electricity and heating available. Finding meaning amid so much plenty, on the other hand, is a monumental task.
The vast majority of that increase looks to be caring for young children (under 6) and for physical needs [1]. Look at how little time is spent reading to kids or helping them with school. A lot of parents don't even know how to help their teens with math and science homework, unless they're highly educated in those subjects themselves.
A bit more reasonable expectation of teachers is that they should be able to motivate both boys and girls equally.
A lot of things were different when your grandfather were in school. Most teachers were male, and boys had better grades than girls. The teaching profession was high status profession, highly respected in communities, and well paid. The post world war 1 and 2 era put a lot of focus on practical skills with practical applications in both home and work. In addition the life path of men had very little free choice, in large part to male only military drafts.
From my own reading of education research and reports, making the teacher profession more gender equal and higher status would likely improve the situation for boys without putting higher expectations on the teachers themselves. Beyond that, the lack of male only military drafts means that both boys and girls have now equal freedom to choose what they want to do, and just as some women do not want to enter the work market so do now some men.
You're right that abdication of responsibility by parents is the root cause of all of this. There's no criminal punishment for destroying your child's life as long as you don't use outright violence.
But if parents took responsibility, the first thing that'd go is 80%+ of college enrollments and all one-size-fits-all schooling beyond elementary school.
Education is not a panacea. It never has been, and it's a myth from the 20th century that has, unfortunately, bled over into the 21st. The idea that as automation happens - and barring government intervention and regulation it will - that all we have to do is build a more robust and responsive education system these people would find fulfilling employment as technical managers or researchers themselves ... is just not true. I wish it was, but it isn't.
This may be an unpopular opinion but the real issue (biologically) is that we don't need all the men. We only need a tiny percentage of men.
So how societies sometimes dealt with this excess of men was to send a good number of them off to war. Also occupations used to be much more hazardous so many more die working.
The days of bundling laggers up in a red coat and sending them off with a musket to make the queens empire a bit larger appear to be coming to a close. But in my opinion, we still haven't addressed the underlying problem evolution has left us with. I don't have a good answer either.
While I would agree that this is an unpopular opinion, it's one I've come to terms with myself as I've grown older. There's a book I read that's popular in men's rights advocate circles called "The Myth of Male Power" that explores the idea of males being the "disposable" sex. Unfortunately, we live in a time where you're branded a misogynist for even mentioning the possibility that men face some serious disadvantages in modern American society.
Anyone with an ounce of empathy can see how men and women face unique challenges in society. The discussion to be avoided is "who has it worse". The more effective discussion is to see the problems for what they are, and come up with solutions.
>we live in a time where you're branded a misogynist for even mentioning the possibility that men face some serious disadvantages in modern American society.
Feel free to restate it as "you're branded a misogynist for not conceding from the get go that women experience an order of magnitude more suffering than men and need more rectification of gender injustice than men do."
> Also occupations used to be much more hazardous so many more die working.
Right. Females are precious (in the eyes of genetics) because they are wombs for the next generation. Because maturation takes time, total reproduction throughput is mostly limited by number of females.
This raises the natural question then, why don't most species simply produce way more females than males? Some do, but most don't and the reason is fascinating [0]. There's almost an iterated prisoner's dilemma thing going on where producing fewer of one sex opens up potential genetic exploitation by producing more of the rare sex and over time, that leads to a stable roughly 1:1 equilibrium.
So, species tend to produce lots of males but don't really need them. What to do? It seems like the evolutionary answer is to treat them as expendable wildcards. Make them bigger, stronger, more aggressive, and more willing to take risks. Some of them will stumble on to new discoveries that benefit the herd, or die protecting the tribe. Many will simply die from misfortune, but no matter, they weren't needed anyway. There's plenty of sperm to go around.
Through most of human history, this kinda sorta worked out OK because there were enough competing warlike tribes, deadly predators, unexplored territories, and risky occupations to soak up all of these genetically extraneous dudes. But we keep making the world safer and safer and now we are finding out that our culture no longer effectively knows what to do.
It seems like, for many men, the answer is to escape into a simulated world that gives them the challenge, risk, and potential (virtual) reward that they crave. Notice how almost all of the widely played videogames by young men are violent and war-like, or at least sports, itself a ritualized simulation of combat.
And, from that light, the incredible backlash of Gamergate where some men attacked women for daring to criticize or even participate in their videogame world makes a little more sense. They felt they had no place left on Earth where they could be a man and not feel like a failure.
> The days of bundling laggers up in a red coat and sending them off with a musket to make the queens empire a bit larger appear to be coming to a close.
Actually, it was just last year that the US ended the longest continuous war it has been in for its entire history. I've noticed that almost every US President seems to become more hawkish once elected. When I feel like putting on my tin-foil hat, I sometimes imagine the newly elected candidate getting a briefing from security officials. "We've run the simulations over and over, and if we don't have some kind of military conflict to act as a pressure release valve for this surplus of angry, disillusioned men, the end result will be revolution in the US."
I don't really believe that, of course, but sometimes...
>But we keep making the world safer and safer and now we are finding out that our culture no longer effectively knows what to do.
I can't say I agree with everything in your post, but this assertion is reasonable. I'd say civilization has already discovered a partial solution to this problem: monogamy where men satisfy their evolutionary urges for usefulness through breadwinning. It isn't perfect for everyone but it's probably the most optimal overall solution, especially when you consider that once basic needs are met, the average person is content to live the life prescribed to them by society. What I'm saying is that maybe we don't need to indoctrinate our youth with the notion that historic gender roles are totally evil and oppressive - we're seeing a lot of the fallout from that practice in contemporary Western society.
No, not every woman wants to be constrained to a life of housework and childrearing, and not every man has the ambition to make a name for himself; but on average humans have innate desires/drives which have specialized, over tens of thousands of generations such that average life satisfaction is strongly predicated upon traditional gender roles.
> I'd say civilization has already discovered a partial solution to this problem: monogamy where men satisfy their evolutionary urges for usefulness through breadwinning.
Yes, I agree. Strangely enough, I think outlawing polygamy is probably one of the most profoundly powerful cultural technologies humans have ever invented.
So putting this back together with the article, the author is showing how unskilled men are dropping out of the social contract. Because, for them, the opportunities for breadwinning are harder to find.
My own anecdotal experience says that not all the dropouts are, by typical definitions, unskilled. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and I believe it is closely connected to psychological factors such as susceptibility to anxiety and depression.
The question isn't how many we need, because need is relative. The question is how many we can employ profitably, and how profitably. (Hedonic adaptation will make us "need" them soon enough).
How many we can use profitably, and how profitably, is not fixed.
> This may be an unpopular opinion but the real issue (biologically) is that we don't need all the men. We only need a tiny percentage of men.
Biologically a baby may be male or female at similar probability. I think your argument is flawed, as it implies that the only goal of males is to impregnate as many females as possible and nothing else.
That is the "goal" of dna as far as a non thinking entity can have a goal. It's deeper even then males and females. Dna that reproduces more frequently and consistently ends up dominating it's environment. How the dna accomplishes that is what changes, whether it's by reproducing in higher quantities, or making adaptations to have the organic payload carrying the dna get more opportunities to reproduce, or some other solution
I don't think people will care until the issue has become large enough that it will start impacting others in society indirectly. Eg not enough tax revenue being generated or not enough men willing to fight in a war.
I find this very unlikely. Maybe most of the shock and awe part will be done by robots, but I doubt that there won't be boots on the ground. Nor do I think that we will do away with sailors on destroyers.
I would wager that a lot of the people wasting time playing video games all day are precisely the ones who would benefit most from serving in the armed forces. Traditionally that is probably where a lot of them would have ended up.
15 years ago I failed out of computer science at UIUC because I skipped class, got high and played video games all day. Once my parents cut me off, the depression of working dead-end jobs after having such high prospects before led me to enlist in the Navy to try and start over.
Today I’m married with a child, I support my family as the primary breadwinner, I have a BS and MBA and am pursuing a PhD in computer science. All of that education was paid for by the GI Bill.
Sample size of one, but I can confirm your hypothesis.
You're right, they would be the ones that would benefit the most. Unfortunately, since many of them are already on disability and have prescriptions for certain drugs they'd likely be disqualified from service. Barring an actual WWIII scenario and a draft that would waive these restrictions, "join the Army" isn't an option.
To give my perspective: I'm a cake-eater. I have a dayjob, but I don't really care about it beyond basic professionalism, and I spend a fair amount of my spare time with cannabis and video games rather than with people.
Who cares if my male peers think I'm a loser? Most of them are incompetent mooching pieces of shit, and I don't have to believe in their crab mentality. They can say "loser" all they like.
Who cares if my female peers think I'm a loser? I've gotten laid enough in life, and it's not like job sites are dating sites. I already dodged the bullet of having to raise somebody else's kid or having to be stuck in a loveless marriage, which makes me not-a-loser in my book.
Youre right you have dodged a bullet in not having to raise another mans child or being in a loveless marriage. However, societally speaking, there is an alternative.. Good enough marriages where men raise their own children.
The problem, I think, is that the article seems to believe that the solution is "return to the 1950s". The world has changed. The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed.
The article seems predicated on the notion that this number (male participation in the labor force) is the metric that matters, rather than anything about their mental health -- harder to measure, and therefore outside the purview of an economist (especially a right-wing economist). It doesn't even really try to look at what's in their minds, much less how we could go about creating a more healthy world for them to live in -- with everybody else.
I felt as if what the article kept trying hard not to say was, "Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed.
Many men have adjusted to a new kind of masculinity for that world. Many haven't, and we'll need to discover some new things. And I don't think that's well-served by the article's tacit notion that what's really needed are more of the old things.
>The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed.
>Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed
Worth noting that the current changes are explicitly counter to traditional roles which have existed for thousands of years. Yes, appeal solely to tradition is a fallacy, but it's also unreasonable to conclude that all past civilizations were bumbling barbarians with totally dysfunctional societies.
>Many men have adjusted to a new kind of masculinity for that world. Many haven't, and we'll need to discover some new things
The trouble is that most of these modern changes to the definition and role of masculinity (and femininity) are engineered by a particularly loud subset of the population. They run counter to what could be considered human nature (as evidenced by virtually all past and most contemporary societies) and although the ideals are ostensibly about freedom and equality, they fail to be self critical and account for the potential that gender roles have specialized over millions of years of evolution and there are associated costs to such an apparently egalitarian society.
Consider, first and foremost, that by shaming two or so Western generations into believing that the life of a housewife is menial and subservient, we have virtually doubled the workforce, without necessarily increasing the number of jobs required for a functioning society. Results include the modern necessity for a dual household income and negative wage pressure. And there are studies that life satisfaction of women relative to men has been steadily decreasing for 2-5 decades (can't remember exactly).
Maybe that ship shouldn't have sailed. Maybe it's folly to decide to turn thousands of years of wisdom on its head. Men have intrinsic, biological drives to compete, which are far stronger and more critical for life satisfaction than those of women, and the current Western push for "equality" may be leading to worse outcomes for society, especially for men who feel they've been outcompeted not because of lack of skill but because of forced social norms. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of people live their lives according to the norms of their societies - even when such norms have negative overall outcomes.
Which social changes would you roll back to counteract the technological changes that have resulted in menial jobs without a career ladder or higher-than-subsidence pay?
How would we be better off with a bunch of men chasing these same still-meaningless jobs but with more dependents tied to them? How should we value the frustrations of the people least suited to compete in this new system against the frustrations of people not even allowed to compete in the old system? The more-options-for-more-people scenario has strong "better off" appeal right there.
You could just as easily conclude that the solution is to push forward and make it acceptable for single-income women-led houses, with "househusbands" who play video games all day while babysitting the appliances and kids. We've automated the shit out of the non-emotional-labor parts of that "housewive" job too, after all!
You preach a return to historical tradition but those traditions were forged in a vastly different technological landscape with far more physical labor required for survival, resulting in some splits generally around physical strength. Today is far different, so it's unreasonable to conclude that those old traditions are the best fit.
I don't think you understand my argument. This isn't about defining what is and is not menial or what kind of lifestyle is socially acceptable. The point is that the job market is a market like any other - if you double supply without changing demand, price for labor (wages) goes down.
>You preach a return to historical tradition but those traditions were forged in a vastly different technological landscape with far more physical labor required for survival, resulting in some splits generally around physical strength. Today is far different, so it's unreasonable to conclude that those old traditions are the best fit.
I don't deny that the landscape has changed. However, human nature largely has not - and tens of thousands of generations of specialization have almost certainly optimized women (in terms of physiology, behavior, and desire) for more social and less competitive tasks. Evidence is all around us - typical male interests and behaviors tend to be far more competitive and aggressive, and we have physiological and genetic mechanisms to explain this difference (testosterone in particular).
>You could just as easily conclude that the solution is to push forward and make it acceptable for single-income women-led houses, with "househusbands"
Well, not exactly. While it could theoretically balance the labor market, what I'm suggesting is that such a campaign would run counter to human nature and lead to worse outcomes in life satisfaction and possibly even economic measures, because of innate differences between male and female psychology and evolutionary suitability (on average) for certain tasks.
I'm not suggesting that we revert to arranged marriages and dowries - and I acknowledge that most of the social progress of the past 100 years or so has been overwhelmingly positive. What I am saying is that perhaps the pendulum with respect to gender roles has swung too far and it's time for it to swing back a little close toward a healthy middle which is more consistent with human nature.
But then what does that "healthy middle" actually look like without reverting the doubling of supply of labor?
I think you are overgeneralizing about "human nature" and under-valuing people's choices, based on what you're reading/hearing/seeing about one particular group of people.
It seems like you're suggesting "pushing" this group back into the rat race because of genetic disposition to respond to competitive pressure, but I'm highly doubtful that people who are already voluntarily dropping out of the competition/rat race, who aren't chasing the cars/glory/money/women/whatever, are going to be well-served by that.
So... what do you want? A government program to promote the joys of being a housewife? Do you really think that will move the needle on a systemic socioeconomic issue?
Or would you rather see an authoritarian solution? I'm sure that will go over well.
Keep in mind regardless of what you want as a woman, there's very real economic risk to being dependent on a man. Wanting to live a happy life as a housewife doesn't put food on the table when he loses his job and doesn't pay rent when he divorces you. It doesn't make life any easier when you find he has a mistress but you don't have the means to leave him.
Meanwhile, for those who are in the money with well-paying careers and considering quitting work to settle down, the opportunity cost of leaving behind your career is enormous: you are leaving tons of cash on the table even if you plan to rejoin the workforce later (as your career is not progressing for N years), you are giving up your dreams of vacationing abroad for maybe 18 years, and so on.
And this is all assuming the man even makes enough on his own to pay for the family. Many households simply require two paychecks in today's economy, and what you want as an individual will be trumped by the cost of rent every time.
I happen to agree that there's nothing wrong and nothing subservient with being a housewife. But to sum up such a complicated and vast socioeconomic development as merely "shaming two or so Western generations into believing that the life of a housewife is menial and subservient" is patently ridiculous.
> Wanting to live a happy life as a housewife doesn't put food on the table when he loses his job and doesn't pay rent when he divorces you. It doesn't make life any easier when you find he has a mistress but you don't have the means to leave him.
By and large, these two issues did have solutions.
> Wanting to live a happy life as a housewife doesn't put food on the table when he loses his job and doesn't pay rent when he divorces you
With regard to job loss as well as death and disability, fraternal organizations (such as the Knights of Columbus) were basically founded for this purpose. Still today, they offer a highly rated insurance program and provide scholarships for the children of any members who die before their kids attend college or vocational school.
Divorce was handled by simply not allowing divorce without reason, and requiring the husband to pay upkeep. In more civilized legal systems, wives have automatic access to their husband's finances (community property).
> It doesn't make life any easier when you find he has a mistress but you don't have the means to leave him.
In all 50 states, adultery is still a civil crime. A cheated on wife can sue her husband for adultery if he spends money on his mistress and neglects her and forcefully garnish the wages if she has too.
The merits or lack thereof of these solutions is up for debate, but I don't think we should pretend they didn't exist and stay at home wives were left for dead by society. By and large there were support systems.
Keep in mind regardless of what you want as a woman, there's very real economic risk to being dependent on a man.
Before we automated away most of the jobs for men (leading to the current crisis) we did it first for women, with household appliances like refrigerators, laundry machines, and dishwashers. Go back to the 18th century (or earlier) and you'll find that husband and wife are equally dependent on one another. Families lived on farms where it was "all hands on deck" just to keep everyone fed, clothed, and warm during the winter. This meant even the parents were dependent on their own children to help out, as there was always more work to do.
It really wasn't until the 20th century when men started working away from the home and women found their chores automated, leading to long periods of boredom and loneliness. The genie is out of the bottle on all of this, though, so going back to live on the farm like Agricola [1] is not going to be an option for most people.
There are still some people who live the old way, though. They're called the Amish and they have much tighter family bonds than the rest of us. Even they have a real challenge maintaining their way of life, given that their children are allowed the opportunity of living among "the English" (that's us) for a while before they decide to commit to the community or strike out on their own. It's hard because modern technology is so very addictive.
Eh, the "family bond" of the Amish also involves ruthlessly shunning their children and the children of their neighbors for doing things that most people would consider completely normal, so grain of salt re: tight bonds.
It goes both ways. The Amish have very deep and committed beliefs about their way of life and its connections to the family unit, which is primary in their community.
What we consider “completely normal” (cell phones, dating apps, sharing economy conveniences and luxuries) hasn’t done anything to keep us from atomizing to the point where people are killing themselves directly or through alcohol/drugs. The Amish want to keep those things out of their society because they see plainly what the rest of us have become.
It’s extreme and difficult to understand, but I wouldn’t call it ruthless. Those who are shunned have made the informed decision to reject their rules and leave.
>So... what do you want? A government program to promote the joys of being a housewife? Do you really think that will move the needle on a systemic socioeconomic issue?
Not at all. I would like to see policy makers back away from the nonsensical notion that lack of gender parity across industry is indicative of a broken society, and stop pushing young women aggressively into STEM and leadership roles and encouraging industry to effectively set quotas.
>Keep in mind regardless of what you want as a woman, there's very real economic risk to being dependent on a man. Wanting to live a happy life as a housewife doesn't put food on the table when he loses his job and doesn't pay rent when he divorces you. It doesn't make life any easier when you find he has a mistress but you don't have the means to leave him
Sure, those are legitimate risks, but as other commenters have pointed out there are ways around them. But what people fail to consider is that there is stress associated with the rat race, particularly if someone is pushed into a role unsuited for them, either by cultural or economic pressure.
>And this is all assuming the man even makes enough on his own to pay for the family. Many households simply require two paychecks in today's economy, and what you want as an individual will be trumped by the cost of rent every time.
As I've mentioned, besides globalization, I think the largest contributor to the dual breadwinner requirement is the cultural push by liberal policy makers to get women working. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say.
>Meanwhile, for those who are in the money with well-paying careers and considering quitting work to settle down, the opportunity cost of leaving behind your career is enormous
A problem neatly solved by specialization of home roles, though there's no reason a man can't stay home to take care of the kids. The main issue here is that a vocal minority has taken hold of policy with flawed assumptions which consider neither human nature nor unintended effects, and we're dealing with the fallout.
>I happen to agree that there's nothing wrong and nothing subservient with being a housewife. But to sum up such a complicated and vast socioeconomic development as merely "shaming two or so Western generations into believing that the life of a housewife is menial and subservient" is patently ridiculous.
Do you disagree that two generations of feminist ideology have structured educational and industrial policy such that women are strongly discouraged from child rearing? If not, where do you expect the demand and funds for all of that extra labor to come from when the fundamental needs of society are more or less unchanged? Sure, there are other geopolitical influences on wages and life outcomes, but this is a major and understudied driver.
> though there's no reason a man can't stay home to take care of the kids
Yes there is. Babies spend nine months in their mothers. When they are born they prefer their mothers more. Not out of hatred of their fathers but because that is who they are used to, due to simple facts of biology. More importantly, only mothers can breastfeed. While true that fathers can stay home with older children, there is an obvious advantage to mom staying home with babies, both for mom and baby. Keep in mind the WHO still recommends breastfeeding until age 2. Two years out of the workforce is a lot.
I'm not going to argue the side points because I doubt either of us have evidence
My post is just meant in support of GPs "that ship has sailed". STEM and leadership initiatives affect a tiny portion of the workforce by definition of how few women are in these roles, so it's clearly not bringing us back to the 1950s family unit. If you have another policy suggestion that could revert decades of socioeconomic change let me know
Maybe arguing for a solution where women were property of their husbands is cruel. I reckon the people making these arguments don’t expect to be on the barrel-end of that social dynamic.
Maybe we as men can figure out a different way to interact in society that doesn’t require stripping the other half of their rights.
Maybe the people making this argument just can’t compete in the modern world.
There have been plenty of societies with strong marital bonds where women were not property. Even in England women were not property. That is a tired line that undersells reality. One could equally say men were property since under the law of coverture in england a wife could enter into debts on behalf of their husbands poteentially forcing them into servitude to pay that debt while men could not do the same to their wives.
You say women have been shamed into pursuing careers, but I don't see the evidence for that as the root cause of their increasing participation in the career-age workforce, nor do I think it's obvious that this expanded workforce is the cause of the general modern necessity for a dual household income. Why not the opposite? That the increasing costs of housing, goods, and services, due to XX factors, are making single-income multi-person households infeasible?
Seriously, what percentage of people in households that are dual-income by necessity are happy with their situation?
I agree with you, but given the current culture the most likely outcome here is continued grinding hopelessness of men in Western society. Women may fare better briefly for one or two generations by moving into and evicting men from the remaining roles, but within another few generations automation will put both men and women back into the home. However, not as a family unit, but as wards of the state.
>The unfortunate truth is that the majority of people live their lives according to the norms of their societies - even when such norms have negative overall outcomes.
- People (men and women) are more stressed than ever
- People are reporting less satisfaction with life than ever
- People are increasingly anxious, isolated and suffering from depression
- What once took one person going to work to provide now takes two, and even then many struggle, and childcare is fobbed off on strangers who charge a fortune in a large part due to the premiums they have to pay for other strangers failing to take adequate care of the children fobbed off on them
- Pessimism for the future of the developed world is the highest it has ever been
- Despite living in the greatest economic times, ever, with less inequality than ever, we have classes of people who swear they're more oppressed than ever and are comparing those who disagree with fascists of the past. What optimism people retain is slowly being diminished watching this charade play out
- Men are dropping out of society, are graduating less, working less, are killing themselves, or trying to kill themselves, or are fracturing mentally, becoming homeless and/or turning to drug addicts at a rate we've never seen before
- More women are also experiencing some of the above, despite graduating more than ever, earning more than ever and being more empowered than ever
- Life expectancy in the developed world is starting to drop as people view society as fractured and without purpose, which is manifesting itself in transient, only briefly gratifying greed-fueled hedonism or self-harm and suicide
- The traditional nuclear family has been denigrated, people are now growing up in broken homes - which has terrible outcomes for children who become adults - and on the sidelines of broken homes acting as a warning sign on marriage, coupling, etc.
- Birth rates are, as a consequence, dropping through the floor
- Governments, hell bent on continuous growth at all costs because a drop in growth will bring the economic pyramid scheme they've concocted crashing down, are replacing their now-demoralized, not-breeding-at-replacement-rate populations with immigrants from completely different cultures who, while economically beneficial, have severe consequences on the idea of identity and sense of community in the areas and countries they (understandably) leave their broken home countries for
- The drop in sense of community, shared identity and sense of security is having severe ramifications on the next generation as they're kept indoors, glued to entertainment, while their parents become increasingly politically polarized against their own people
It feels like we're either in the midst of a grand but badly thought out social experiment, intentionally made, whose consequences our ancestors would mock us for, and our descendants loathe us for, or we've been manipulated into a race-to-the-bottom while being told it's good for us by someone or something to gain from it.
Maybe we're living out the Mouse Utopia Experiment for real, and with these NEETs we're now seeing the emergence of the "beautiful ones" while the rest of us chase one another around biting one another without real reason, straddling what little space is available to us, while the mice we've decided to call leaders fret over making us more productive so yet more food and cheap entertainment can be dropped into our laps.
The above may seem pessimistic but none of it is nonfactual. We techies are pretty out-of-touch with the average joe at this point, and while we enjoy the financial success on two incomes to provide the kind of life available to the average family on one income in our grandparent's generation, most cannot.
But we're told this is working. That it's progress. That we should continue on as we have. I ask is it working? Is this actual progress? Should we actually continue in this vein? Because from where I'm standing we've taken values, lessons, structure and understanding developed and passed down over hundreds of thousands of years as we progressed from animals, through pre-humans and to our modern form and have flipped them on their head, denigrated and discarded them at the behest of entities with loud mouths and personal agendas, backed not by science or nature but simply by assertion, and whose "rules" and "norms" seem to change on a whim as every day, week and month passes by.
I'm not saying I have the answers so I'd appreciate people didn't strawman the above, put words in my mouth and find outrage in them, etc.
Most of these claims I've never heard before, and I know at least one of them (the claim that inequality is lower than in the recent past) is definitely false, so I feel justified to ask: do you have any sources?
In the "Supply-Side Solutions" section, the author recommends improving k-12 education, more vocational training opportunities, and better counseling. I'm not sure if any of those recommendations entail "returning to the 1950s".
The author also notes that this trend is unique to the US, as this trend doesn't exist in other never-communist democracies. These other countries have increased female workplace participation, but don't have the mass male drop-out of the workforce.
Overall, I think it was a good, balanced analysis of the issue and I did not pick up on desire to return to the "good ole days".
The "return to the 50s" rhetoric is buried in statements like "Unfortunately, American family structure has been transformed over the past generation". Maybe it's unfortunate for exactly the people he's talking about in the article, but it was fortunate for a whole lot of other people.
He seems to understand that he can't go back, but he continues to wish that there were a solution to "repair the family or the other institutions that formed the foundation". And that's what's holding him back from recognizing new institutions that already work for a lot of men. Formulating a new relationship with women is a big start, rather than wishing that women would still go back to the kitchen so he could have a reason to exist.
Maybe these men should be stay-at-home dads. Or maybe they should start looking into previously female-coded activities, like being a full-time artist or Etsy crafter or volunteer. Not to insist on any of those, but to break out of the mindset that pervades the article that it used to be better and that that's the way it really ought to be but you can't say so because it's not PC. So he doesn't say it -- but it's there between the lines, and I think that that implicit assumption does even more harm than bringing it out in the open. It's the reason that these men keep failing in the same way.
Yeah, also this seems to contradict author’s own point that other countries don’t have the same declines in male participation rate, even though they have even lower marriage rates.
"Good" Public Elementary School (ages 6-11): Little to no bullying
Small Catholic Middle School (ages 12-14): a decent amount of physical/verbal bullying. I escaped most of it by being a bigger kid. But it definitely seemed like an issue in the Catholic schools in the area (I saw the same pattern at a summer school at another school).
"Progressive" Private high school (ages 15-18): Little to no bullying. But lots of pressure to succeed. We had a pretty bad suicide problem, considering the size of the school.
This is not the first time the HKPF has used overt force on a protester, just the first time it has done so publicly. Several protesters have already been "disappeared", and there are many stories coming out of brutal torture against activists. If Beijing authorities have learned one thing from Tiananmen Square, it's that in the internet age violent suppression must happen in private places, where it cannot be recorded by someone's cellphone and shared instantly with the world. Public acts of violence is a PR nightmare and only fans the flames of dissent.
This event will only harden HKers more. In the short term it might prevent mainstream protesters from taking to the streets out of fear of violence. But it will make the average HKer more resentful of Beijing's long arm and empower radical factions. And there are many ways to weaken a government's control outside of public protest.
EDIT: Protester is in critical condition. He was not killed.
"Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests." - Justice Earl Warren
There's a long history of the US electoral system favoring rural areas over urban areas. Typically, the courts had to intervene in order to remedy an issue where clearly the legislature has a conflict of interest. The most famous is Reynolds v Sims (1964), which stated that electoral districts of state legislative chambers must be roughly equal in population [1].
Hopefully, we can see similar change happen in the Electoral College.
On top of blocking thousands of websites (which includes Facebook, Google, Twitter) China's government employs thousands of government employees just to purge even the most mild criticism of the CCP on Weibo [1]. They also employ tens of thousands to export their propaganda overseas, using sock puppet accounts to push their worldview[2]. And their worldview is fiercely anti-democratic.
The Internet cannot remain free if we allow governments to use their power to control narratives and suppress the truth. US-based Social media companies are not ideal judges, but at least they publish their methodology and allow public criticism of their platforms.
Even here on Hacker News, a week or so ago I saw someone being chided for “breaking the HN guidelines” by calling out a sock puppet. When I looked at the comment history of the account doing the chiding, all of its comments were on China related articles, taking a pro-China view.
There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426.
But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guideline comes in: the one that asks users not to insinuate these things in HN threads, but rather to email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look for actual evidence. Accusing others without evidence is a serious breach of the rules, and a personal attack. When people do that, we ask them to stop as well. Example, from the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727420.
Does that mean that abuse doesn't exist, or that we don't take it seriously? No—it does and we do. But the way we take it seriously is by looking for evidence. So far, such evidence as we've found on HN nearly always indicates that the commenter is legit—they just hold a view that some other commenters find so wrong that they can't believe it's sincere. (Corporate astroturfing is a different can of worms, btw, and I'm not talking about that here.)
Here's the most remarkable case we've seen of a mass influx of new accounts angrily defending "pro-China" views: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20236444. Most users who are inclined to perceive astroturfing would have declared this an obvious case of manipulation. The only reason we didn't get an inundation of such accusations is that the wave of new accounts only showed up a day or two later, after most readers had stopped looking at the thread. But even this case, when we followed up on the evidence, turned out to be something quite different. I emailed every one of those commenters who had left an email address in their profile, and many responded. It turned out that the study under discussion had gone viral in China, someone had posted a link to the HN thread to the Chinese Quora-equivalent, and the new accounts were people who had found their way to HN from there and created accounts to speak their minds. I also posted in the thread asking the new accounts to explain how they'd come to HN, and several replied with the same story. Does that prove they weren't communist agents? No, nothing would prove that. But the null hypothesis—that people hold their views sincerely—was amply supported by the evidence. This was an extreme case, but over and over, the story we see is like that. Ornate machinations add zero explanatory power, but invoking them poisons the community; therefore we ask users not to invoke them.
Most people hold the views that they do because of their background. HN is a large, international community, orders of magnitude larger than your or my circle of acquaintances. What are the odds that in a group this large, quite a few people will have different backgrounds than you or I, and thus hold different views? The odds are basically 1. That means you're going to hear some "pro-China" views here, because there are users whose background connects them to China—by birthplace, family, education, work history, you name it—in ways that HN's Western audience mostly doesn't share.
Because this is happening, we have to decide what kind of community HN should be. Should we ban accounts, or allow them to be persecuted, for "pro-X" views where X is outside, say, a standard deviation of what most people here take for granted? Or do we want to be a pluralistic community that is strong enough to hold space for such views, and such people, even when most of us disagree? It's unclear which way HN is going to go about this—sctb and I can't control HN, only try to persuade—but I know that I'm only interested in participating in the latter. The other way leads to a community in which it's ok to smear others (such as a nation or ethnicity) and have mob attacks on innocent individuals: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 for one example that turned out ok; unfortunately there have been others which didn't, and users have been run out of town. I don't believe anyone here wants those things, but the tragedy of the commons will take us there if we don't all consciously resist it.
> Should we ban accounts, or allow them to be persecuted, for "pro-X" views where X is outside, say, a standard deviation of what most people here take for granted?
When those views are formed under the pressure and oppression of an increasingly influential authoritarian regime? Yes, you should. Otherwise there won't be much of a community left to protect. There is little reason to believe you can have it both ways as it isn't a level playing field. Ambivalence is one of the costs of democracy and it can't measure up to the adjusted views formed under a watchful eye.
This is why authoritarianism is on the rise all over the world. Because as people become afraid of the effects of global conflicts, economics, and politics all the establishment can offer are arguments of apathy and equivalence. Leaving the hardliners the only ones left standing with a message resembling anything close to common values.
I do believe you are writing in good faith, but I'm not sure you understand the situation. Facing undue pressure to confirm to certain views because of your background and thereby not being free to form your own _is_ what is damaging. That is what oppression is. Authoritarianism is there to achieve this result. The idea that these views are remotely equivalent is contradicted by all those facing the consequence of not wanting to conform to them and suggesting otherwise is a disservice to all parties.
I think another way of saying it is, any views coming from a country that doesn’t allow even a modicum of free speech should be discounted.
I think there’s two reasons: trust and reciprocity.
Trust - the fact that information in China is so heavily censored and moderated means that opinions are necessarily censored and moderated too. It’s as if somebody admitted that their single source of all political information was Alex Jones - it wouldn’t be unreasonable to treat their opinions with a high degree of suspicion.
Reciprocity - I don’t think China should be able to have its cake and eat it. ie. if your neighbor thinks you are too dirty to eat at their house, then they surely wouldn’t be welcome at yours whenever they please?
I appreciate this comment for actually saying what no one else is willing to: that we should ban accounts that disagree with you on certain topics. That's the subtext of so many arguments people make, and it's refreshing to hear it explicitly. Well, you didn't quite go all the way. But you did go clarifyingly further, and we barely ever get that.
The answer is that we don't moderate HN that way because we want it to be a pluralistic site. What I hear you saying is that a pluralistic site is impossible ("there won't be much of a community left to protect"). I don't think that's correct. I think HN, for all its problems, is such a site, at least for the time being. I also think that HN's pluralism is mostly what people dislike about it, even though no one ever puts it that way—not because they're dishonest, but because that's not how it feels.
In practice, a large pluralistic internet forum feels like you are being invaded and besieged by hostile forces. (By "you" I mean all of us). Whatever segment of the spectrum here is most awful, most offensive to your values and experiences, that segment makes so strong an impression that it swells up in importance beyond everything else put together and becomes the image of the entire forum in your imagination. But if you think about it, that is just what one would expect from a genuine pluralism, where the spectrum is much wider than one is used to in daily life and on the siloed, sharded internet.
That is the next hurdle, I think, that we need to overcome as a community. We need to grow in awareness that the presence of opposing views is mostly a function of the size and diversity of the forum, i.e. that there are many people here whose lived experience is very different from our own, who also have a need to speak and be heard. We need to grow in ability to hear their experience also—their story also—without snapping shut. By the way, that is also the answer to the objection people sometimes make, that we must be saying that all opinions and expressions are equally valid. That's not so. Not all expressions are valid, but as far as I can tell, all experiences are. The solution is for people to share more of their lived experience and not dress it up so much in secondary opinions and expressions, especially ones that demean or deny the experience of others.
That's how the container here needs to develop. I hope that if it gets stronger in that way, HN will be able to remain pluralistic even if there are external attempts to manipulate it. The healthy way to defeat those pathogens is via a stronger immune system. If the community can't do that, it will end up killing itself, by breeding its own pathogens—chief among which is users accusing fellow community members of being astroturfers, spies, or foreign invaders, not because they have any evidence for saying so, but because what those community members have to say is outside their window of tolerance, so they are unable to meet it calmly and must reach for an explanation of disingenuousness instead.
I contend it’s unavoidable that all sites such as HN will tend towards Slashdot over time. The fundamental reason for this is that any appeal to respect the commons and allow others free use of it, will only fall on the ears of the respectful users of said commons. Other users will exploit the freedoms afforded by the commons to indirectly deny others said freedoms or to “poison” the commons against reasonable users. At some point a tipping point occurs and the majority of the reasonable users leave.
The best way to not succumb to pathogens is for the community culture to build up strength to handle them. The real enemy is not the pathogens, but our own weak immunity to them. The strength we need most right now is for HN users to resist the temptation to call others astroturfers or spies simply because they hold opposing views—and to explain to fellow users that the rules here ask us not to do that, no matter how wrong the opposing view may be or feel.
Thank you for treating your authority and influence with diligence and respect. It's perhaps unsatisfactory and laborious but the world is better for it. Thank you.
I think what is missing in most the the China and HN discussions is that HN is not blocked by the great firewall, so it is much easier for regular people living in China to participate. They will naturally have more pro-China views. Just like residents of every country will have more positive views of that country. And when that country is criticized they will be even more defensive and reflectively pro what is criticized.
All this without having to be paid to do so, although that is possible as well.
Your information is 16 days out of date: https://en.greatfire.org/news.ycombinator.com There's now a partial block where it can be accessed from some locations and not from others.
That's not necessarily going to prevent "pro-China" views from appearing. People who circumvent the Great Firewall e.g. to follow celebrities on Instagram may not like the censorship, but could be on the same page with the government on other issues.
Semi-tangential, but many Chinese tech companies just have a perma-VPN company wide and use GSuite and Google search by default. And Hacker News is a tech-leading forum (though it's not that big of a thing in China AFAIK).
Always been curious -- why is this allowed by the Chinese government? If people feel comfortable using such a VPN, they must have some reasonable belief that the Chinese government doesn't care that much about it, right?
As far as I can tell, that is only a small minority of the commenters with such views. Far more are people in Western countries who have personal, familial, educational, or work ties to China, or who had experiences in China that gave them a different perspective.
In a way, though, we're talking about the same thing, because most of this follows from human loyalties—to family, tribe, country, etc.—that all of us have. It's true that some commenters are ideologically motivated, but even that is a second-order version of the same thing, since ideological commitment itself comes out of such loyalties.
Just to share some perspective as a native Chinese living in US for anyone interested:
- Most of immigrants from China after 2000 holds pro-China views, and there's strong tendency to become more pro-China after living in US for some time, after having full exposure to US media and getting to know how things really work in US.
- It's probably common to see HN accounts that comment mostly on China related issues. I don't have stats, but this is very likely, because when immigrants like us read HN comments upon these issues, it's usually as irritating as lots of you reading far-right pro Trump comments.
- When people question if an account is genuine just because they have pro-China voice, it's just confirming how hypocritical western "freedom of press" is, and pushing us towards more pro-China.
- HN is still fairly unpopular among Chinese tech immigrants, otherwise you'd be seeing a lot more sincere pro-China comments here.
When people question if an account is genuine just because they have pro-China voice, it's just confirming how hypocritical western "freedom of press" is, and pushing us towards more pro-China
Firstly, do you mean "freedom of speech"? Few people here are the press.
Secondly, can you elaborate on this view? I don't doubt that the situation is as you describe, but if true this shows a misunderstanding of the freedom of speech. It's not hypocritical(in general) to criticize speech one doesn't support, or to accuse the speaker of having ulterior motives, while supporting the freedom of speech. Freedom of speech doesn't give anyone the right to speak without being criticized.
It's not just the comments but those "free independent media" as well. Having freedom of speech doesn't mean having no bias. None of the US media I've seen doesnt have strong confirmation bias towards China. And even for US domestic issues, it's still appalling to see how media could be so polarized. Even when they report truth, they'd select facts that support their views while simply ignore things that's against them. I had to say that's a big disillusionment
You've switched topics. My question was about calling people hypocrites because they support the freedom of speech while criticizing speech you align with. I wonder if you see now why that doesn't make sense and why it implies a misunderstanding of what "freedom of speech" means.
It does not mean everyone likes everyone else's opinions. Just that we don't think governments should control what people say.
Did I ever say "freedom of speech"? English is after all my second language, and I don't expect I could articulate like a native speaker.
Just to make it clear, the most irritating part is that people's opions are clearly shaped by what they read from media, which you'd expect to be more neutral as "freedom of press" is "so great" but it's just not the case.
In China, at least people are generally aware of media censorship, and would take a grain of salt in what they read, but with independent press, people are generally less critical about their reports unless it directly contradictory with to what they know for a fact. As a result you got so many people commenting like they know more truth, even when the "truth" is so absurd. When they are presented a different side of the story, ok, that must be "government propaganda", and whoever supporting them need to be banned?
I understand your original point now. Thanks for clarifying.
One aspect of American media that you are ignoring is the fact that it's often biased, often politically biased... but it is not controlled by the government. And it is not monolithic.
The biased western media has brought down presidents and many other powerful, connected people (most recently Jeffrey Epstein). They revealed the secret, illegal actions of the NSA. Etc. All of these journalists were biased in some way or another... but they were all biased in different ways. A lot of the truth eventually gets out.
Now you could make the argument that all of Western media is biased against the PRC, but that's going to be a very tough argument to make. Who are they all loyal to, to cause them to uniformly be biased against the PRC? We know it's not loyalty to the United States because of the usa-hostile reporting I reference above. It takes ultra conspiratorial thinking to arrive at the conclusion that all of Western media is biased against the PRC.
So you seem to be pulling a bait-and-switch. You seem to want to conclude <Western media is uniformly biased against the Chinese government>... But you argument is the very weak <no Western media entity is free from bias>. The conclusion doesn't follow.
I hope I haven't misconstrued your argument. Cheers!
Plenty of reasons. To begin with, seeing how biased the Western media are when they report anything related to China is both appalling and disappointing. The impression of what average American has about Chinese government, Chinese people and their relation is light years away from reality.
Moreover, people immigrating to US from China tends to be more pro-democracy than average Chinese, but we got disillusioned after seeing how things worked out in American politics.
The life here is quite unsatisfactory for lots of Chinese, as there are many aspects of China making it a better place to live in compared to US. Can't speak for other people but frankly if I could have got a job with similar pay and similar workload in China, I wouldn't even hesitate for a second that I'd move back.
Out of curiosity, when you're talking about "Western media" do you mean only US-based outlets, or do the European outlets (excluding the English rags) have the same effect?
For me I was reading the Economists (through my uncle who works in publishing) in China since high school. My American foreign language teacher told me it’s too conservative. FWIW, it almost has the same effect
we got disillusioned after seeing how things worked out in American politics.
What parts of American politics disillusion you? And why do you think the USA should necessarily be the example? Do the criticisms you have of the USA also apply to other democracies, like the Democratic socialist countries in Europe? If not, why do you think they would constitute an effective argument against Democracy? "The USA has problems" is not an argument against Democracy.
Speaking from my own experience, it is probably because it is the US. If I were more exposed to say France or Germany instead, which at least to me seem to be less hypocritical, especially on international politics, I think I'd feel weaker nudging to be more pro Chinese government.
This is actually a relatively common thing. When people immigrate to a place that generally treats them like a foreign entity, they are more likely to strongly identify as that entity.
In general actually people who have access to western medias are educated enough to think differently, not to take the media's view wholly. I am sure many of them would just defend China out of pride (apply to people living in China), for others, mostly oversea Chinese, they have seen the world and concludes that is the right view to hold, and they don't have to follow western media's (CNN, BBC) view on things. I personally would not be so much pro-China if the news is not as biased as it is to be honest.
I'd like to see an honest explanation of the kind of bias you're talking about, on the part of Western media. I'm open to its existence, but I also know it's an easy accusation to lob without evidence.
I wasn't going to comment because I don't have time to do research for this. There was a website collected all edited photos by CNN a few years ago, I just don't have time to do this kind of analysis. You can basically say I 'feel' them are biased because a few photos I saw on BBC. Another typical thing happen is that the Chinese edition would word differently than the English one. Just yesterday, NYT published an article about a Chinese student run college press. Apparently the interview was done in February, and they just decide to publish it now after these students published content against violent protest in HK (I am all for the peaceful part, and against violence and British flag /US flag waving in protests though) The Chinese version of the article in title says this students website only manufacture fake stories, the English title is slightly better. And when they speak about the editor, they make association with negative words (such as North Korea, because he lives in a Chinese city of North). It is typical propaganda techniques. I have to say, journalism is dead. We don't have time to verify, no patience to wait for the truth coming out, I have chosen not to read news. We are wasting too much time on politics I think. Unfortunately on Hacker News, there are still politics, mostly about China.
I don't see it as quite that simple. I think the difference is that dissent is, to varying extent, suppressed in China. Which can lead to a homogeneity of view that looks suspicious, even when it may not be. I suspect many Chinese who do have sympathy for events in HK would be circumspect expressing that. Just as was the case in former East Germany or Soviet Russia, wearing your views on your sleeve comes with consequences. What I privately think and what I write online may be two very different species, or maybe I avoid certain subjects entirely online.
Many Americans, Brits, HKers and other nationalities usually find people are supportive of some aspects of their country but openly criticise other aspects, sometimes vocally, sometimes by demonstrations. Unless you step over into hate speech and incitement that comes without consequence. Even America, which often seems from the outside to be one of the more blindly patriotic nations, has a good and healthy proportion who will criticise. Then there's us cynical Brit's who, at times, seem to have a majority criticising most things about Britain and reserve pride and flags for very special occasions. :)
It's fair to say even HN is not blocked by GFW, majority chinese are not comfortable reading/writing english to participate discussion here, or on FB, twitter.
Also economy wise if using VPN or otherwise to get onto the internet having a cost/inconvenience, it's not wise to spend it on political discussion, youtube or netflix might be just better options.
Most Chinese posters to HN (pro or otherwise) either have access to a VPN or are overseas anyways. Not all people posting from within China are particularly pro China or even Chinese (maybe half?).
FWIW, I think if there’s any community that can meaningfully ensure discussion from all sides can occur without irrevocably degrading the level of quality / emphasis on seeking truth within that discourse, it’s HN.
I would be careful though, as the culture of thoughtful inquiry that HN has managed to cultivate in these past few years, could easily end up being destroyed and end up going the way of Reddit.
The only reason it hasn’t, at least in my opinion, is because of the largely technical/engineering focused user base that HN caters to. There’s only a limited number of us in the world though, and if moderation from your side doesn’t keep up, it’s pretty much inevitable that the site will get overrun as it becomes more and more mainstream.
The #1 way for us all to be careful is to follow the guideline against insinuating astroturfing or bad faith in comments, and to encourage other community members to follow it. I hope the users who have been reading my posts about this (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for plenty more) will start doing more such encouragement. Because you're right: we can't keep up. Only the community can.
Have you considered hiring more people to work specifically on data analytics, fraud detection, etc. for HN?
This is a pretty valuable place, and I would hate to see it fall because of a lack of resources/support. I’m not sure how Paul Graham or YC in general views it, but surely there’s enough inherent value in the existence of something like Hacker News even from a purely business standpoint to support having more funds allocated or it?
Your comment seems to imply that posting a link to a thread elsewhere in an attempt to attract sympathetic commenters is a legitimate strategy to "open a debate". On Wikipedia, such commenters are sometimes derisively referred to as meatpuppets; although they may not technically be sockpuppets, the value and effect does not differ significantly, either practically, or, in my view, ethically. Even HN agrees with this in at least one context: it is agreed among almost all members, and, as far as I know, moderators, both past and present, that posting a link to a thread with the purpose of attracting users to take some binary action on the thread (usually upvoting, but sometimes downvoting or flagging) is bad and wrong.
Why should mass commenting be different?
I think an analogy might be drawn to corporate representatives. If they want to advertise and market their products, that may be acceptable, if they are otherwise contributing to the community, outside of their narrow product. If they only post links to their website, they will be banned with great haste. Similarly, if pro-China users want to legitimately contribute to the discussion, they should be free to do so as legitimate members, participating in all elements of the site, not only via pro-China comments.
I think there's a big difference between something like a corporate campaign or voting ring where a bunch of comments show up to boost a product, and a case like the one I described where many people showed up organically to express an alternate point of view. For one thing, in the second case there is something to learn.
In general, though, you're right that users here should be using the site as intended, and that means not using it primarily for arguing about politics or nation.
Also to note, we've been hearing non-stop about puppet accounts taking over social media for the last few years. As mortal users on this and other sites, most of us don't have the tools or information available to us to reliably distinguish between puppet accounts and someone who genuinely holds stupid views. Some suspicion along these lines is to be expected.
I agree, but the suspicion is not cost-free. When people accuse each other recklessly of being astroturfers, shills, spies, or otherwise fakes, they do real damage to this community. If that becomes the culture here—which frankly it feels on the cusp of—it could kill the community. Therefore we need users to exercise some self-control and not simply vent their suspicions incontinently into the threads out of frustration at how wrong they feel someone is. If after that they still feel there's cause for suspicion, they are welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look for actual evidence.
Another way to look at it, I get a lower trust score to people holding pro-China view because such disinformation campaign is rampant. It is in a way a social punishment that disincentivize such underhanded technique. Does your good faith measure in a way undermine such natural counter mechanism.
Would be great if down vote is explained. As you probably know for sure by now [0] they do put massive resource into disinformation. Contrast with the "west" their PR statements don't have to be sound nor creditable, as long as it assembles a sentence that supports the party's stance they'll say it. Because a authoritarian government don't have to earn the trust of the people.
Now you have people truly believing those blatant lies, taking the same stance as the party and start spreading it, does it matter whether they truly believe it? Instead of politics, we're talking about basic human values here.
I do think letting disinformation pollute the stance itself naturally is the proper fix. Without that, do true believer of rather good character have he incentive to voice their concern, as one of the driving force to shape decision makers in the party? It's fixing the root cause, not the symptom. Such that disinformation, as a latest major threat to democracy works contrary to its intent thus stopped.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with people sincerely stating their pro-Chinese government views, even if they focus only on China-related topics in a way that makes them look like a sock puppet.
But that’s the moral hazard of being on the side of an entity that makes extensive use of astro-turfing. Its sincere supporters are more likely to be perceived as sock puppets.
There’s another discussion to be had about whether one should discount the opinions of those who live under a state of pervasive censorship, but that’s a lot more nuanced since we all have our own filter bubbles.
also, I would be stunned if China decided to target HN with professional propoganda. It's just not that large or well known.
If, say, eight out of ten people haven't heard of hn then why even bother? just put more resources into spamming twitter or whatsapp or whatever they use in china
My current account was not created to post political dumps, but the atmosphere is changed upside down so much, it's really hard to just walk around it while still keep a peace of mind.
Can I ask for an account deletion and removal of all posted content? Thanks!
> Can I ask for an account deletion and removal of all posted content? Thanks!
I asked for that once and was refused with the reasoning:
> I’m sorry to disappoint, but Hacker News doesn’t delete entire accounts because that would gut the threads it participated in. We do sometimes remove specific comments if users are worried they’ll get in trouble, and we’re also working on the ability to rename accounts. Would either of those help?
If you are European, this seems fundamentally incompatible with the requirements of the GDPR, unless they have a better basis for processing than consent (which I doubt for a site like Hacker News).
There is a better basis, one that covers even sensitive data under Article 9. Specifically, the processing is lawful when "processing relates to personal data which are manifestly made public by the data subject" [1], as is the case here.
Well, then they can remove comments that doesn't receive any reply. Do they?
If the least thing they could do is renaming, then please rename my account to `chairmanmao`, so it won't contain my name anymore. I will ditch this account after everything is done.
> it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle
Funny since your priority on HN is to push your far-left social justice agenda, shadowbanning people who say anything that can be remotely construed as not agreeing with your worldview.
Sincerely, I got an admonition and flag from you for calling out 2 different recent accounts, created at the same time, with very similar names that all they did was to defend China's autocratic government.
Although I can understand the admonition (for using the wrong medium to call out those accounts), I simply can't understand how those 2 accounts are still active, given their obvious purpose that goes againt HN guidelines in a more serious way.
I think when you are getting a large amount of commentary from a totalitarian state, your default response should be suspicion not to just allow it. Each of the totalitarian states in our world today have proven they have massive information operations ongoing to deceive people in democracies. They have found this as a weakness in free states. You should be responsible and delete all such accounts by default.
Of course we would ban accounts that are part of "massive information operations to deceive people". The problem is that users routinely accuse other users of such nefariousness without evidence, and that unfortunately is also a form of abuse.
Someone simply disagreeing with me is not evidence that they are an "information operation" or "commentary from a totalitarian state". In most cases it simply indicates that opinion is divided in a large community.
When concerns about abuse come up, we have to look for evidence. Otherwise the policy becomes "ban anybody who disagrees with me", which is mob rule. Nobody would advocate that in principle, but in practice I'm afraid that's the direction that emotions tend to point in, and they're much stronger and swifter than most people seem to realize.
I agree with you when it comes to topics like Trump. Obviously, there are many people on both sides of that issue.
When it comes to a topic like should protesters in Hong Kong be allowed to continue and make requests for freedom, generally the only opponents are going to be state sponsored. I think you need to draw your moral lines not just at preventing someone who supports outright genocide, but probably at those supporting the extinguishing of others freedom.
> When it comes to a topic like should protesters in Hong Kong be allowed to continue and make requests for freedom, generally the only opponents are going to be state sponsored.
I think dang answered this eloquently and you're merely prompting him to repeat himself: "Someone simply disagreeing with me is not evidence that they are an "information operation" or "commentary from a totalitarian state"
One more thing, freedom around the world is under assault from massive state sponsored attacks that have been well documented by a number of news organizations and now social platforms. Lies and fake stories have been discovered by these totalitarian regimes to be far more effective in undermining democracy and freedom than guns and bullets.
HN is an immensely popular community and most likely is facing similar assaults. If you have not found state sponsored attacks, it may be because you haven't looked hard enough yet. Dang, I know you are a talented programmer and with full access to the database, I think you could build tools to unearth this sort of behavior.
> If you have not found state sponsored attacks, it may be because you haven't looked hard enough yet.
> I think you could build tools to unearth this sort of behavior.
Dang has said they already look for this sort of behaviour and ban accounts if discovered. You're implying that nothing is done at all. You're implying that dang hasn't looked at the database and tried to sort this, and that it's an easily solvable problem. If it were, I'm sure dang would have automated it. Twitter and Facebook struggle with this, so the problem is not solved.
Your principles seem to be summed up as: so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is; and that the defense of this necessitates a generous presumption of good faith.
We must acknowledge that HN carries a substantial degree of influence, and consider how to responsibly wield that influence. The readers here are a lucractive demographic - generally we are an educated, wealthy, and politically engaged group. As propaganda becomes more sophisticated, it's likely - if not inevitable - that it will target us. It's the responsibility of the moderators of our online spaces to protect us from propaganda, else Hacker News is used as a weapon, to ill or to good - a possibility that you must be aware of.
Distinguishing between propaganda and genuinely held positions is difficult, and approaches impossible as propaganda technology becomes more sophisticated. For this reason, I think it's reasonable to suggest that certain viewpoints are simply not welcome on Hacker News. There are some easy examples: racist or sexist views being one of them. I presume that someone expressing racist viewpoints, no matter how eloquently stated, is not welcome to do so on Hacker News. Then there are more difficult problems, which stem from a complex web of related judgements. To address these, I suggest reflecting on your own moral principles, and considering what ideals are worth protecting in the face of propaganda. In the case of Hong Kong, the ideals at risk here are the right to self governance. And there's little question that the alternative Hong Kong faces would be tragic - China is demonstrably a country with little freedoms afforded to its people and large-scale human rights violations being carried out all the time. The demonstrators in Hong Kong will not be let off easy for the risks they're taking, should they fail.
In short: like it or not, HN is a tool which will be wielded by oppressors, and will likely be an effective tool at that. Identifying oppressors is difficult but identifying the values of oppressors is easier.
Also worth note: HN is inextricably linked to YC, which has financial investments in China. If you don't want to be views as having a pro-China bias, you need to put in extra work to remove the foot from your mouth.
"In the case of Hong Kong, the ideals at risk here are the right to self-governance."
American here using a VPN from China, not an operative. My view after 10 years in China with businesses in China and Hong Kong, is that it is useful to think about Hong Kong similarly to a USA state. It's a state where the people inside can exit into China at will, while all the other people in all the other states in China must get permission to enter Hong Kong. So, its a state where the people living inside have all the benefits of being Chinese, with few of the downsides. But from a bigger picture, Hong Kong is not anymore entitled to complete self-governance apart from China's oversight than California is entitled to act against the US federal government. Very few Americans would support any US State in the Union to exit the Union. And, Chinese nationals do not support it for their own Country's territories.
About your extra thoughts that China is "is demonstrably a country with little freedoms afforded to its people". Every place has its majority and minority viewpoint, and what you are saying here is at best a fringe minority viewpoint in China. On the whole, the Chinese majority does not welcome your pity in regards to their systems. They are amazed at the shitshow they see about USA violence and political machinations. They see marches on Portland Oregon with Antifa on the left and whoever on the far right and think, China has it good, and in many ways, they are correct.
Violent crime as measured in murders per 100K of population in the USA is a magnitude worse than in China, the murder rate is literally 10x worse in the USA. I've walked down dark streets at night all over working class neighborhoods in Guangdong province and never once felt unsafe. At nighttime, there are huge crowds in public squares, sometimes with hundreds of women dancing coordinated to music, and there is no fear. I've done the same in large cities like Shanghai, going where I please at midnight, with no feeling of danger. That's what they value here and it brings a type of freedom that you can't enjoy in the USA.
Chinese do not share the same values as you, and from my view, that's OK.
> It's a state where the people inside can exit into China at will, while all the other people in all the other states in China must get permission to enter Hong Kong.
This is not 100% true. Setting aside the fact that not all permanent residents in Hong Kong are Chinese nationals, there have been many cases where people have been denied entry into mainland China. But this is a minor point compared to the next point you make:
> So, its a state where the people living inside have all the benefits of being Chinese, with few of the downsides.
As a native HKer this sounds very weird. I'm not sure how the previous point leads to this.
Anyways, I know this is how it's portrayed in mainland China, but the current movement is not about creating an independent Hong Kong separated from China. Sadly, most mainland Chinese people have already made up their mind and let their patriotism fuel their hatred towards Hong Kong.
> So, its a state where the people living inside have all the benefits of being Chinese, with few of the downsides.
I also don't agree with that point but probably for different reasons. Hong Kong was simply straddled with a half oligarchic system nominally democratic but in actuality structurally setup to be unconcerned with the livelihood of the middle class.
While the CCP is at least nominally held to be the steward of the common people's wellbeing, most of the functional constituencies in the legco have no 'fiduciary' responsibility towards the average Hong Kong person. Seats like Insurance and Financial Services aren't even voted on by the insurance or fintech workers but by the corresponding corporate monopolies in the unregulated market. These oligarchs also have no interest in any of Tung Chee-hwa's economic reforms that might have helped Hong Kong's workers bridge though China's declining need for Hong Kong as a trade funnel and the present social stagnation and 20% poverty rate. That's 20 times the poverty rate of mainland China.
Another reason for the lack of economic reforms is that many people in Hong Kong have drunk the free market fundamentalism kool-aid for so long that they actually believe it's the reason for Hong Kong's past success. What ended up happening of course is that markets don't have level playing fields anymore.
I've only lived in HK for a short amount of time so this might be unfounded. But I would opine that it's not the people of Hong Kong that have drunk the neoliberal kool-aid but that that's the intent of the colonial political control design.
Like most colonial extraction-based political structures like post-Roldos Ecuador, post-Allende Chile or Colombia today, the oligarchy of local ruling families benefited from the monopolistic political structure, then with their vested interest in the colonial institution and with the elite powers they hold (in monopolies in media and control of functional constituency, for instance), they put the broader public deeper and deeper in the hole while directing the general public discontent towards... less intellectually complex conflicts like mainlanders pissing in the subway.
This is fine while doesn't need to demonstrate economic self-sufficiency when they can simultaneously monopolize China's trade but it would be very self-destructive to think that Hong Kong staying afloat has anything to do with Hong Kong's own industry (at least not since the last wave of Shanghai émigré-bootstrapped textile industries in the 60s) or policies.
>> So, its a state where the people living inside have all the benefits of being Chinese, with few of the downsides.
As a native HKer this sounds very weird. I'm not sure how the previous point leads to this.
Anyways, I know this is how it's portrayed in mainland China,
Which is where the problem is, even from an American living inside China believes HK is talking all the advantages without any downside. And just like you said this is how it is portrayed in China, and how majority thinks like this.
That was the the view [1] as shown in previous HN article.
> But from a bigger picture, Hong Kong is not anymore entitled to complete self-governance apart from China's oversight than California is entitled to act against the US federal government.
Except that California has "act[ed] against the US federal government" for years, regarding marijuana. As have several other states.
I do agree, however, that Hong Kong represents a far stranger situation. From a traditional Chinese perspective, it likely appears that Hong Kong was "corrupted" by years of British governance. And I can appreciate how that shows up as British occupation. Just as it did in India etc.
> Violent crime as measured in murders per 100K of population in the USA is a magnitude worse than in China, the murder rate is literally 10x worse in the USA.
Assuming you believe the State statistics that could be true. However, their is plenty of evidence many official numbers are manipulated and this is likely to be one of them.
Which is the issue, even people living in China really have no idea what the Chinese populous thinks about most things. When people fear to speak the truth, what you hear has little to do with what they think. Private comments are frequently at odds with public statements.
> I sought out information about you to judge your biases. I found that you're...
I don't know how you could think that it's ok to pull a move like that on HN, but it's not ok. Specifically, checking up on and bringing in someone's personal circumstances, which they didn't choose to mention, in order to use them as ammunition an argument is not ok on HN. Please don't do that.
I'm glad that you didn't publish the details, which would have been even worse, but that also means that what you wrote there is just an insinuation.
Even if it's one click away, it isn't your prerogative to cross the line and introduce it as ammunition in an argument. That way lies significant degradation of the community, and I'm surprised that you stooped to it here. Please don't.
The thing is, it's not relevant to the discussion, either yours or anyone elses, because we're discussing issues, not investigating people or putting them on trial.
A point is a point, no matter who made it. It's up to you if you wish of course, to refute it, but by using argumentative devices, evidence, studies, or explaining how you arrived at your point of view only. Not via character assassination.
As an aside, I feel these accusations merely make some people shut up on here. I've actually loved this thread in general mostly because people have come out of the woodwork and explained why they think this or that, and there have been some really inquisitive questions.
Haha, I'd rather you would have seen me in the Chinese police station last year, absolutely furious and further raising hell in a yelling match with the local Chief of Police after he raised his voice at my Chinese partner. Had a similar experience when my Chinese resident permit was delayed for a dumb reason, causing me to miss my daughter's high school graduation in the USA.
I'm not afraid to say exactly what I think when it needs said, and I've said what I truly think here.
Is your perspective that as long as you aren’t personally targeted and can make money, it doesn’t really matter what the government does? You talk a lot about how nice/safe it is for you personally as you enjoy the benefits of living in China as an expat, but at the same time, you do have to realize that your current situation is one of extraordinary privilege and not necessarily representative of the reality for vast swathes of people in China today right?
For example, the things being done to Chinese people by the government in places like Xin Jiang right now. You might not personally be seeing it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
I don’t mean to disparage you or the choices that you’ve made as I’m sure there are many complex reasons for why you’ve ended up where you are currently. I would urge you though, to think more deeply and consider your actions with the perspective that as someone with the privilege and ability to be able to freely leave the country and speak out against the government without being silenced/jailed, you are in a unique position to make an impact that a native Chinese citizen might not necessarily have.
Personally, as an American with parents that originally grew up in China, I know that I have a great amount of privilege in being able to freely talk about these issues that many of my international student peers in college are unable to express for fear of the consequences they might incur. That’s why for me, I feel like my privilege comes with a certain amount of responsibility to speak out. Your status as an expat puts you in a similar level/position to be able to provide a voice for those that otherwise might never be able to freely express themselves.
There is a lot of virtue-signaling going on here, but understanding the state of today's USA education systems, I'll try to parse it.
> Is your perspective that as long as you aren’t personally targeted and can make money, it doesn’t really matter what the government does?
[Bob]: No. My perspective is that of a person who spent their first 32-years in America, who one day about a decade ago during the depths of the economic downturn, decided to try to eat the dogfood of living and operating a bootstrapped business in China so that I could better understand it and the world I live in.
> You talk a lot about how nice/safe it is for you personally as you enjoy the benefits of living in China as an expat, but at the same time, you do have to realize that your current situation is one of extraordinary privilege and not necessarily representative of the reality for vast swathes of people in China today right?
[Bob]: I'm not claiming it is particularly safe for me alone. The feeling is one of an environment of general safety. As in, lack of violent crime. A Country where, on innumerable local blocks across its many cities, there are instances of thousands of people in public squares at night, enjoying things like group song and dance. You don't see that everywhere in the USA. I do realize, there may be many non-Han Chinese communities I'm not exposed to where the freedom to express themselves is not so great.
> Your status as an expat puts you in a similar level/position to be able to provide a voice for those that otherwise might never be able to freely express themselves.
[Bob]: No, unfortunately, my status as an expat doesn't give me any particular right to speak for its citizens, nor impune myself in the business of China's governance of its citizens. I'm here as a guest in China. China reminds me of that every year when I go through the month-long process to renew my resident and work permit. Anyway, guests don't go to someone else's house and tell them how to run it. But, I fully support your own free speech rights to say anything you want about China or the governance of its peoples.
That said, there are plenty of things I don't like about being in China. Being here has led me to change my views on many issues, versus my views from a decade ago. Previously, I was far left in viewpoint for the times. Such as, I held the view America should nationalize the banking system. While that still may have been the right call, overall, after a decade of bureaucracy, I'm no fan of big government.
And now, I'm a much more rabid proponent of American's protecting their free speech and privacy, at all costs. Otherwise, it's a slippery slope to end up with what they've got here in China.
> There is a lot of virtue-signaling going on here, but understanding the state of today's USA education systems, I'll try to parse it.
I’m not sure what you mean exactly by virtue signaling here. Can you highlight what parts of my comment you feel like weren’t genuine?
> My perspective is that of a person who spent their first 32-years in America, who one day about a decade ago during the depths of the economic downturn, decided to try to eat the dogfood of living and operating a bootstrapped business in China so that I could better understand it and the world I live in.
From my original comment, I’d like to reiterate that I’m not trying to attack you as an individual or the path you ended up taking to get where you are today. I realize now after more careful consideration and reading your response, your ability to freely speak on certain aspects might be constrained due to existing attachments to your business and marriage in China. You have every right to make sure that those things you currently have are safe and protected, and if that precludes you from being able to fully express yourself I totally understand.
I’m sure you’re doing the best you can right now with what you have to work with, and I’m not trying to saddle you with obligations to try and reform deeply entrenched systems of governance by yourself. Small consistent steps taken over time can lead to a surprising amount of meaningful impact and change though.
> I do realize, there may be many non-Han Chinese communities I'm not exposed to where the freedom to express themselves is not so great.
I appreciate that you can see that your experience might not necessarily be entirely representative of what it’s like to live in China.
> And now, I'm a much more rabid proponent of American's protecting their free speech and privacy, at all costs. Otherwise, it's a slippery slope to end up with what they've got here in China.
I completely agree with you here. Having to constantly be careful of what you say for fear of being silenced or jailed, is a reality for the vast majority of Chinese citizens. My parents directly experienced the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 back when they were going to college. I know better than most, that I enjoy a great deal of privilege in being able to have the freedoms I do today that my parents didn’t necessarily get to have at the same age. That’s personally why I’m such a strong proponent of voting and political participation for myself and my peers. From my perspective, young people in America are becoming far more politically active, and I think you’ll see the effects of it in the upcoming 2020 elections next year.
> I’m not sure what you mean exactly by virtue signaling here. Can you highlight what parts of my comment you feel like weren’t genuine?
I'm not questioning that your comments were not genuine. But, it can be quite off-putting to lead your logic by explaining to someone you don't even know, how privileged they are, making many assumptions about that person and their reality. You used the word "privilege" four times in four sentences. There are other more rational and thought-provoking ways to structure your logic to engage and convince people of your views. Otherwise, you seem like a very thoughtful person, passionate about standing up for those who may not have a strong voice or representation. Those are very commendable attributes and I wish you the best.
> so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is; and that the defense of this necessitates a generous presumption of good faith
Isn't that the point of a discussion forum such as HN?
> I think it's reasonable to suggest that certain viewpoints are simply not welcome on Hacker News
I disagree that contrary viewpoints "no matter how eloquently stated" should be purged. Let them stand or fall on their merits.
The problem comes to distinguishing genuinely held beliefs from subversive comments designed to manipulate the HN audience. The fact that an idea comes from your peers is a powerful one. The average commenter on HN is not so different from you, after all, if they independently came to a conclusion then it might have some merit. However, if they came to that conclusion because they will be rewarded for expressing it or punished for expressing a dissenting opinion, the value is much less.
Some people make it easier - on many occasions you'll see someone discussing a subject but first disclosing their relationship, such as an ex-Google employee commenting on a Google-critical article. If a Chinese party official came to HN to express their views and disclosed themselves as such, I would welcome them to express their opinion here. What I'm concerned about is commenters with undisclosed affiliations writing manipulative comments which help prop up an oppressive state.
> The problem comes to distinguishing genuinely held beliefs from subversive comments designed to manipulate the HN audience
How do you propose to do that? Clearly one must look for evidence. When evidence shows such abuse, we ban the account. Far more often, though (and I'm understating things when I put it that way), evidence shows the opposite: the user was expressing their genuinely held beliefs. Should others be allowed to denounce them as astroturfers, shills, or spies, based on nothing but how strongly they disagree? On HN the answer is no. That follows from the values of this site, and we have a rule in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html saying so.
This incredibly rude comment will do nothing to reduce oppression anywhere in the world, but I'm sure it made you feel better to write it, and that's all that matters, right?
> Your principles seem to be summed up as: so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is;
While I'm generally an admirer of dang and sctb, a variation of this is my criticism, as well:
They tend to overemphasize "manners", while being blind to anti-social and trollish behaviour.
It's fine to chide me for blowing off steam, I shouldn't do that. But when it is because "the other guy" has behaved and "discussed" very dishonestly, I don't think he should get a pass.
At least the whole sub-thread should be deleted, but usually my (wrong, but still rather slight) reaction (like "I find your way of responding dishonest" – not even "I find you dishonest", mind you) is deleted and the dreck that I was subjected to remains.
Because he did not use the words "asshole" or "dishonest" and rather cleverly expressed the same in a "clean" way.
It just incentivises commenters to get more sneaky, back-handed and dog-whistly. And that is already destroying this community, I feel.
They tend to overemphasize "manners", while being blind to anti-social and trollish behaviour.
It just incentivises commenters to get more sneaky, back-handed and dog-whistly
I can't express how surprised I am (in a good way) to see this finally addressed and vocalized, because I myself have struggled with a way of putting it to words, and wishing to see others communicating it publicly.
Among women and people of color this site has a VERY unfavorable reputation for how our opinions and thoughts are moderated rather strongly because of the frustration we express with dog-whistle arguments that are delicately delivered with kid gloves, while the harbingers of opinions and principles that dehumanize, otherwise, minimize, de-legitimize and/or otherwise ostracize our lived experiences as women and minorities in tech are left alone and allowed to promulgate throughout the rest of the community unmolested.
Thank you both to the two previous commenters for giving my frustrations with this moderation style a voice.
When you say "moderated" I assume you're talking about the moderators of this site, who are me and sctb. I don't agree with you at all that this is how we moderate HN. In fact, what you describe is something that we both try to be careful not to do. If you're going to accuse us of something so awful, you should supply links to cases where you think we did this. That way we can learn from our mistakes if you're right, and readers can see for themselves if you're not.
Yes, your assumption is correct, but I'm not particularly interested in how much you agree or disagree because I don't have much hope that this will change, and your mere disagreement alone isn't going to make me pull an about face on the frustrations I feel about topics people of my social-persuasion and the others I elucidated on and pretend that those frustrations don't have merit--not in the face of my six years of participation in this community.
And further, frankly:
If you're going to accuse us of something so awful, you should supply links to cases where you think we did this.
No, I don't think I will because believe it or not (which you probably wont, but again: don't much care), you and I have interacted on this very topic before via a different account, you and other individuals have interacted on this topic before. I've watched those interactions happen.
This isn't the first time HN has been called out on this Dan, and it's not the first time you've responded to people levying them, so I'm not entirely convinced you need help finding such examples.
If you want "cases", I'm pretty sure you know the correct hashtag on twitter to go looking for because I and many others catalogue these events quite actively and quite publicly.
But I'm not holding your hand finding them.
Be well.
Edit:
I'd be remiss not mentioning this: Just because I'm calling out the HN moderation tactics does not mean I'm laying down accusations on the HN moderators as individuals or what your individual beliefs on this topic are. I-like the two commenters above me have done-am pointing out what I feel to be a glaring blind spot in the moderation styles as experienced by a member of a specific social group. A group I would also feel remiss not mentioning is not represented in the moderation ranks. Take this however you will, feel about it however you want, consider my peace on the matter spoken.
Having reviewed your comment several times, I still feel that my representation of it is a good-faith interpretation of what you said. Yours has much more depth and nuance, justifying that perspective and elaborating on how you go about accomplishing it, but I think my summary is an accurate portrayal of your core principles. Can you clarify in what way it's not?
I didn't say anything like "so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is". I try to be cautious about not making grand generalizations like that, or even thinking them. They tend to have grand and troublesome consequences.
What I wrote was narrowly scoped and is mostly an empirical claim: in the majority of cases when users invoke astroturfing/shillage/spying against others in arguments, there is no evidence to support the accusation and usually evidence to refute it. Because this comes up so frequently, it seems there's some sort of bias (probably a universal one, because I don't think we're wired so differently) that causes users to reach for this mud and throw it at other users, even though they have no basis for it other than that person having an opposing view—which is to say, no basis for it at all.
Since there's usually no evidence and yet these accusations are so common and so damaging, the site guidelines ask users not to post them in the threads. At the same time, real abuses exist, so concerned users are invited to email hn@ycombinator.com with links so we can look for evidence.
That was the gist of my comment. The rest was an attempt to plead for tolerance by offering an explanation of how HN ends up with so many posts that can seem disingenuous: it follows from the size and diversity of the community. Humans are not wired for anything that big, and HN is an intimate-seeming place that doesn't feel as large or diverse as it really is, so when views show up that are more than an arm's length away from what one is comfortable with, it activates the circuitry for perceiving enemies and invaders.
If HN is to thrive in accordance with its value of intellectual curiosity, we all need to work on managing that circuitry in ourselves, and not simply jump to where the limbic system would take us. That's really what the call for evidence is getting at. It requires a person to stop, interrupt the mechanical reaction, invoke the slower and more reflective circuits, and then look more closely at what might really be happening. If we could learn to do that as a community, 99% of the accusations of astroturfing, shilling, and spying against other users would vanish. That would make HN a better place, and would also help clarify which cases really do need investigating and taking care of.
Your comment presupposes all propaganda is negative, underhanded, corrupting; it is not. Propaganda is any propagation of doctrines, theories, or causes. For example, HN is a propaganda machine for start-up companies, people hoping to get rich quick, bleeding edge technologies, privacy advocates, the never-ending addiction to banal tech companies and their meaningless products, etc. Other things are propaganda too, like stories about gender equality, climate science, and "considered harmful is considered harmful". You can't try to convince people to act or think a certain way without the propaganda to do it. Propaganda is, by definition, genuinely held positions; just not always your positions. The concept of propaganda is amoral, even if its subject matter is often highly moral.
Based on your examples, what you're really concerned about is morality and rules. What are the moral values of HN, and what rules should be imposed to enforce them? What morals are ok, and what aren't, by which people?
> Identifying oppressors is difficult but identifying the values of oppressors is easier.
Well, let's examine that. On the one hand, you probably disagree with the Chinese Communist Party using this site to try to gain sympathy for its doctrine. On the other hand, you might think it's OK for millennial Americans (who for whatever reason have culturally decided that capitalism sucks, and that some form of ism is the only alternative, if perhaps half-jokingly) to share articles with a similar message. They both may preach communism, or denounce capitalism. Which is OK, and why?
Basically, you want to know where the red line is. And that's the problem with moderation: there is no red line. There's a whole lot of blurred colors. You start with a very sensible, good, popular moral position like "no racism or sexism", and then you end up fighting weird angry splinter groups who have decent arguments about what it means to be racist or sexist; maybe you would be to them, or maybe they are to you, but neither of you believe you yourselves are. (Try to explain to the average nerdy fan of The Big Bang Theory that it's probably the most toxically misogynistic show on television, and you might find a heated argument; but is TBBT banned from HN?)
The only easy solution is to make a site which is literally dedicated to the morality of a single person - an autocracy. The rules are whatever that person says they are. But since some people don't like that idea (!) what you end up with is a benevolent oligarchy. A few people run things and try to be nice to the users, but basically it's those few people whose morals and values become the de facto rules. Those rules are intentionally fluid and based on interpretation and guidelines, to encourage as many users to use the site as possible, yet provide enough of a LART to keep Eternal September at bay.
The end result is that there aren't any definitive morals running the ship, by design. Go look - there is no explicit rule against sexism or racism. That would be too easy to argue. The vagaries of human morality are too loose, so you can't just eliminate what seems simple. You can only plumb the depths, interpret what feels bad, and chip away at it.
>Well, let's examine that. On the one hand, you probably disagree with the Chinese Communist Party using this site to try to gain sympathy for its doctrine. On the other hand, you might think it's OK for millennial Americans (who for whatever reason have culturally decided that capitalism sucks, and that some form of ism is the only alternative, if perhaps half-jokingly) to share articles with a similar message. They both may preach communism, or denounce capitalism. Which is OK, and why?
No, I think that debating ideologies is fine, and even healthy. I have no love for capitalism and no hatred for communism. But that's not the only thing China represents: communism does not imply the brutality China lays upon its people.
>The only easy solution is to make a site which is literally dedicated to the morality of a single person - an autocracy. The rules are whatever that person says they are. But since some people don't like that idea (!) what you end up with is a benevolent oligarchy. A few people run things and try to be nice to the users, but basically it's those few people whose morals and values become the de facto rules. Those rules are intentionally fluid and based on interpretation and guidelines, to encourage as many users to use the site as possible, yet provide enough of a LART to keep Eternal September at bay.
I'm not opposed to HN taking such an approach (in fact, I reckon I'm in favor of it), but the mods should be bolder in drawing moral lines (blurred though they may be). They already do this regardless - so they should do it with confidence in their own moral compass. And assuming they do so, then we can use their action (or inaction) as a lens to evaluate our moderators with and so decide whether or not we wish to cast our lot with HN.
Maybe it isn't what you're saying but how you say it that gets you downvoted.
It is much more difficult to ask someone to stop doing something than to encourage them to do an alternative thing. Suggest how the alternative activity would bring them greater success.
While they may still disagree, at least they'll see that you're on the same team.
I mostly only comment on China related articles, with a pro-China view. Sometimes I find it necessary to comment because it is rare to see pro-China comment here. I am definitely not state-sponsored, I might be brainwashed in your opinion, but definitely not getting paid for those comments, and those comments are from the bottom of my heart :)
I don't really like to read political posts on Hacker News, I am mostly interested in technology, but those posts with China in their title are just a click bait for me because I knew they are probably biased.
Edit: yeah, a downvote when I am just expressing myself. you want me to shut up and leave, right?
I believe you, but it's against the site guidelines to use HN primarily for political battle (which includes nationalistic arguments), and it seems you have been doing so exclusively. We ban accounts for that, not because we think they're insincere, but because political flames will take over the entire site if we let them, and there's a big difference between accounts that use HN this way and accounts that use HN as intended.
The way to fix this is to use HN as intended, which means posting on an diverse range of topics for reasons of intellectual curiosity. Would you please do that instead?
Thanks. I will not comment any more on any topics from now on. I use Hacker News to follow what's going on in tech world, unfortunately I see there are more and more political posts these days. I generally only read without commenting (either others comment has reflected my view or I don't feel the need of commenting). It is just those posts so one sided made me wanting to comment. Since your request is clear, I will no longer comment. Just to make it clear, I am not intended to have political battle at all.
Alas, I don't think my request was clear at all, if it seemed like I was asking you to stop commenting. Please don't! You are welcome here, and welcome to share your experience and perspective. It's just necessary to do it in the right spirit. To pick one example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20307074 is the sort of comment that we would interpret as political battle.
I think that's sensible. Though reporting by omission, disproportion or passive aggressive submissions are inherently political in nature.
Suppose for a moment that all the front page China articles are other 'tech news' such as "Israel creates novel way of demolishing buildings in settlements".
Not that I have anything concrete to suggest but consider the possibility that sometimes, half of the work is already done before anyone writes the first comment 'for political battle' or not.
I have a question from you. How, as a pro-China person, do you view the Dalai Lama? Because I see a certain inconsistency that nobody can explain to me: the DL insists he doesn't care about the complete autonomy or independence [0] of Tibet, just faving a bit more freedom so that people can practice their religion and cultivate their culture. This, in my opinion, is a moderate view, and in no way a threat to the integrity of China. But somehow the Chinese freak out whenever the DL is mentioned. Why is that? If anything, I'd say the DL could help in keeping peace in Tibet. Seems absurd to me. And I'm wondering what is the official Chinese opinion about this.
I don't care so much about Dalai Lama to be honest. I think religion has its place, but shouldn't be the center of stage. In my view, if you don't allow kids to vote before 18, why pushing religious view to them when they are young? I think that's more important to a person than political views. On personal level, I find religion is fundamentally exclusive (where you believe something is the ultimate truth), I think it shouldn't reform and develop with society and should eventually disappear. New religion should come out and replace old ones. Now religion is just trying to modernize and it shows it doesn't hold the ultimate truth, only want to win as many people as possible, like a pop band
I am not the government, and I cannot take their position to explain this. But here is my naive thoughts: Chinese government are engineers. If there is a bug in a feature cannot be fixed, keep the feature out of the delivery until it is fixed. DL is the feature. Also no one is willing to take the risk of working on the bug, because you may fail your KPI. So every time a customer request this feature, we will scare them off, so that no one is requesting this any more. It is kind of coward, but it doesn't know how to deal with it. And politicians in west really like the influence of DL, his popularity can help them in their career, so they want to bring him up again and again. I guess that basically is what's going on. Does it really matter every time Chinese government freaks out?
I am been told by the moderator not to comment on political issues, mainly because although I use Hacker News for tech news, I do mostly comment on China issues (not many though), apparently it is against the community guideline. so I will not comment any more. For me, I have lost wills to read news, and Hacker News is the only thing I read in the morning before work, it is unfortunately there are more and more political topics here.
Just to repeat what I tried to express elsewhere: I think your perspective is valuable. I think you should keep sharing it, as long as you do so within HN's guidelines (which you've mostly but not always done). But we do also have a rule asking people not to use HN primarily to argue about politics. The best would be for you to participate in other threads that gratify your curiosity as well—even if only to ask questions and learn. That would be much easier for us, because otherwise people are going to complain about why we enforce that rule in some cases but not others.
HHDL has a long and complicated life. His idealogy cannot be simplified to "seeking peace and religious freedom".
Tibet was a slavery society under his ruling 70 years ago, unfortunately. People do change, but there are certain historical bagagges cannot be nullified.
70 years ago, the Dalai Lama was 14 years old. It's unlikely he ruled much. The Panchen Lama was 11. Unfortunately, he had reincarnated as two different people supported by different factions in Tibet. One of them allied themselves first with the Kuomintang and then with the Communist Party, which eventually helped them have their candidate be recognized officially by the Dalai Lama. When the Dalai Lama (now 23) fled to India in 1959, the Panchen Lama sided with the Chinese government instead and was made chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region.
So on the one hand there was a lot of realpolitik in Tibetan theocracy; on the other hand the Chinese government had no qualms about continuing the system so long as it served their own purposes.
They both were kept their symbolic status at that time. HHDL was highest ranked in CCP before he fled. I don't know any evidence that sided with Koumintang backfired as you seemingly suggested for him.
Part of the system was kept (namingly the Lama leadership was kept symbolically), but the slavery is a history.
BTW, in the original post, I mentioned "70 years ago" as a way to suggest HHDL has a long and complicated life. His historical baggage by no way limits to Tibet before CCP though. It took him a long time to get his message what is today.
I'm just a guy, so it's just one perspective. I'm also not that well read so I'm likely to be mistaken so I apologize ahead of time given the sensitivity of the topic.
First, as much as I think the internet is a great knowledge spreader, it's not an amazing medium for mutual understanding. Me not paying the cost of time and money to get to a cafe to talk with you and the extreme ease of lobbing self-satisfying, snarky sound bites and closing the tab makes it really hard to talk about politics. It's really shaped by the accumulation of everything you experienced and everything you read as a person so not starting from the beginning is a disservice to communication. But alas, we can't.
FWIW, I align more with Buddhism than any other spiritual thought system. I'm sympathetic to his journey and think he and his followers are thrown into, and nominally became figureheads in a bigger clash that he can't control nor (I think) care very much about.
I don't think he himself, for instance, championed or was very fond of the CIA operation to take 2,000 Tibetans to be armed and trained in Colorado and then paradropped back into China for guerrilla warfare [1] (he was also just 20 back then). While I do think theocracy and political control [2] shouldn't mix, I don't think their social structure is anyone's business and I think he would be right to fight for self-determination. So it is unfortunate that he's stuck between having no means of opposing China vs taking US backing [3], which forces China's hands further (when China just very much finished fighting a hot war with the US).
If the world were in a vacuum, I very much believe in self-determination of all groups as Woodrow Wilson would define it. Anyone should be able to split off and do as they'd like. But as optimistic as he was going into the war, Wilson himself ultimately didn't persevere through the old world colonial powers to demonstrate that he believed it himself enough to even back a member of the victor side for self-determination [4]. Given the historical context (and the contemporary US overthrow of Albania 1949 [5], Iran 1953 [6], Guatemala 1954 [7], Greece [8], Indonesia 1958 [9], all of which decidedly did not end up with any 'self-determination' [10]), I wouldn't see China concluding that giving up Tibet in 1960 would somehow translate into Tibetan 'self-determination' rather than colonization [11].
That isn't to say though that China should be accepted for descending into absolute savage levels in the following decades of destruction. I absolutely do wish that the residents at Dharamshala could return to China if they choose so. But unfortunately I don't think the world of geopolitics is sterile enough to let it be a simple 2-party bilateral discussion.
I saw the comment you are referring to and it was most likely wrong. The majority of Chinese people are genuinely "pro-China" and there are vastly more regular Chinese people than professional sockpuppets.
That being said, I do agree with keeping politics off HN and wish it was enforced a bit more strictly.
There is a difference between discussing information warfare and being a soldier on the battlefield though. "Keeping the politics out", to me at least, means "let's not make this place the battleground". I'd welcome that as well.
Intentionally or not, I believe not talking about politics is politics, because not talking about something strengthens whatever the status quo - good or bad - at that time is.
I’m not advocating for constant political discussions on hacker news. But to pretend that technology can be separated from politics is to hold a false belief about reality.
Politics is fundamentally about social groups, power, and the ethical beliefs and norms of groups of people.
I believe that cultivating civility, genuine listening, and self-doubt in our hacker news community would ultimately be more constructive than pretending that our action or inaction - especially as technologists in this day and age - has no effect on our fellow human beings.
> Intentionally or not, I believe not talking about X is X [...]
That's extremist talk. HN is just one of many online communities, many of which encourage political debate. Technology can often be separated from politics as demonstrated by the majority of submissions here.
"Humans uniquely use such systems of symbolic communication as language and art to express themselves and exchange ideas, and also organize themselves into purposeful groups. Humans create complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families and kinship networks to political states."
To say that all human communities will have politics, is not extremist - it's simply language:
"Politics is a set of activities associated with the governance of a country or an area. It involves making decisions that apply to members of a group."
Politics, as in the process of group decision-making, is part of what it means to be human.
You could even say that you and I are engaging in a political discussion right now ;).
I was assured that this never happens on hacker news and that the evidence that I and others pointed out was both poisonous and imagined.
I would actually love to be wrong, but the explanation given was just that it has been looked into, not anything in depth or addressing the patterns being brought up. Similar disinformation and fast bulk downvoting against the general trend happens when talking about reddit's /r/bitcoin and the company Blockstream that runs it.
At least there is a dialog here and everyone generally wants the same thing (actual opinions and explanations from reasonable people with no astroturfing).
> The Internet cannot remain free if we allow governments to use their power to control narratives and suppress the truth. US-based Social media companies are not ideal judges, but at least they publish their methodology.
Would it be too cynical to suggest the only reason they're doing this is because they don't operate in mainland China? Do you think they would write a report like this if they found the US government trying to push a pro-democracy narrative into China instead?
This puts them on the right side of US regulators where as exposing a US propaganda campaign, not so much. It's not about truth, or what's morally right, it's about money.
> Do you think they would write a report like this if they found the US government trying to push a pro-democracy narrative into China instead?
Yes.
It might be framed differently. But besides being something that can be uncovered by a myriad of legal mechanisms (FOIA, state AG suits, sunshine laws, et cetera), it would almost certainly emerge in quarterly risk factor disclosures around political retribution.
> Do you think they would write a report like this if they found the US government trying to push a pro-democracy narrative into China instead?
Yes, they would. No doubt about it.
> This puts them on the right side of US regulators where as exposing a US propaganda campaign, not so much.
Which regulator do you think would object to such a revelation?
> It's not about truth, or what's morally right, it's about money.
Yeah, that's often true, but if it's true that Hong Kongers living under a system where due process is respected is also what's good for "money", then "money" and what's morally right happen to be aligned this time.
What's that worth to Hong Kongers when they can simply be renditioned to Beijing?
Does it make sense to you why Americans were extremely upset when the US government did that to people in foreign countries during the Bush administration?
First, they cannot be renditioned. That's what this protest is about.
Yes. It is upset. It is also upsetting that the U.S. actually have limited due process as well (thus, can forfeit the asset without due process). There are practical reasons why, but it is still ideologically upsetting.
My understanding is that the now suspended new law would make it legal for Beijing to have a person taken from Hong Kong with nothing more than the signoff of the CE, who is basically Beijing's appointee. It's my opinion that there is no due process in PRC, so it's effectively making Hong Kongers subject to renditioning.
I agree that civil forfeiture as practiced for the last 20 years in the United States is wrong and needs to stop. The US government does some horribly unjust things, sometimes for decades without being checked. Few commentors on this web site would deny that. It's very important that governments don't get away with criminalizing dissent otherwise it's even more difficult to stop other excesses and abuses.
> Would it be too cynical to suggest the only reason they're doing this is because they don't operate in mainland China? Do you think they would write a report like this if they found the US government trying to push a pro-democracy narrative into China instead?
Excellent point. Snowden's revelations show that US tech companies have been threatened to comply with the three-letter agencies' demands. The US govenrment already has a lot of leverage over these companies, so they don't need to use these more primitive methods.
The internet is already not free for much of the world. It's depressing to type this but China successfully created a parallel version of the internet that is anything but free. That model got exported and now you see the same approach being taken across the world. The direction we seem to be heading in is one where the world's collective internet systems are effectively Balkanized.
As the article says, "Twitter is blocked in PRC". Probably an own-goal in situations like this, since the army of Chinese-government loyalists can't be fully unleashed upon the world. The people of China generally seem pretty loyal to its government, but I'm unsure how much that is due to constant monitoring and systems like "social credit".
From what I saw, `constant monitoring and systems like "social credit"` won't buy loyalty. Ordinary people do that more out of patriotism, an emotion against those who spread misinformation against their country. It's sort of like someone talking shit about your hometown, and you feel the urge to defend. Not a state-sponsored thing.
Do they make no distinction between the government and their country? Perhaps their country would be even better with a different government, one that isn't constantly bringing itself into disrepute with lack of openness and bullying.
Things won't turn to be bright overnight. Openness and no bullying is nice. But it takes time to get there. Some counterexamples are Iraq or Libya. Governments changed overnight to be closer to the way Westerners like. But are people better off? Civil wars. Ethnic group divides. Oil interests.
It's easier to point out things you don't like when things aren't the way you like than offer pragmatic solutions.
"if you take the last character from each part, top to bottom, left to right:
因果由國 容港治己 義憤民誠 - Cause and effect came from (or depends on) the country, allow Hong Kong govern itself, righteous indignation came from people being honest."
China's all-weather partner, Pakistan, has been doing similar information warfare against India regarding Kashmir after abrogation of article 370 on Aug5.
"We have found that just after the annulment of Article 370, more than 1,500 bots (fake profiles) from Pakistan surfaced on social media and started trending anti-India narrative. In these tweets, they are also urging United Nations to intervene," said Tarun Vig, co-founder of Innefu Labs, a cybersecurity firm.
He added on August 5 alone, more than 1,000 Twitter accounts were created from Pakistan which was discussing India and Kashmir. Bot profiles were sharing the same tweets over and over again.
The US mainstream media is bought and paid for by corporations, who don't have the public good in mind, but maximizing profit at the expense of all else including reporting on corruption, oligarchy, and environmental abuse.
The government should not control the media, but neither should advertisers.
true, and that’s definitely a problem, but government is a bigger issue because they have the ability to force a population: corporations can only influence (we can have a different discussion about how corporations give you “choice” but not really, but i think they’re different cases, and government is clear cut)
Ain't government is comprised of corporate owners? President. Then there's lobbying/bribing. Create/participate in wars. Sell weapons to the human rights respecting Saudi. And when corporations die, they take the people's money.
i agree with you completely, but a law is far more clear cut than complex social dynamics.
the outcome is similar in either way, and both are equally bad, but one is far easier to define specific actions, and specific parties that are not acting correctly.
>The Internet cannot remain free if we allow governments to use their power to control narratives and suppress the truth.
I wish more people applied this same line of reasoning towards the US-based social media companies themselves.
If we hold true that Twitter's influence is so powerful that world superpowers are gaming it effectively to control narratives, then why aren't people more outraged at the near constant censoring of alternative voices in the West? Why are we cheering the use of corporate power when it's wielded against an ideological opponent in the East, but when it's wielded against ideological opponents in the West we hear a chorus of "it's a private company, it can do what it wants". Ultimately, we're just rejecting communist state-power with corporatist private-power.
I can agree that the latter is preferable, but I wish people would see the parallels.
The hive mind refuses to engage with hard-hitting analysis like this. Hence the down votes and no responses.
Outside of this scope, what is concerning me is that you can't hold a pro-china position. Look at the other comments here.
> I have some friends in China posting similar anti-protest posts on WeChat social media. It's like the news they read has a completely different story than what it's being told in legitimate new sources.
Holding a pro-china position apparently means you're reading fake news or part of a misinformation campaign.
The news we read is CORRECT, the news you read is WRONG.
We have the same problem here in the West. If you go against the church of progressivem you're a Russianbot.
Twitter needs to not get involved. It's election meddling, even if they take the "pro-democratic" side.
It's not election meddling. It's counter-meddling. Counter-meddling is itself kind of a form of meddling, but you're left with no choice if your platform is in the process of being deceitfully meddled with by one of the most powerful states in human history.
Both parties aren't perfect but compared to state media, great firewall, social credit, kidnapping, and concentration camps it's weird to point out the shortcomings of Western social media companies.
> why aren't people more outraged at the near constant censoring of alternative voices in the West?
This is making a false assumption that the "censorship" is because of being different instead of those people not following super strict terms of service like "please don't use our service to start mass harassment campaigns of other people" or "don't advocate for genocide".
Hell, the constant complaining about twitter ("the hell site") on its own platform is proof of something.
You're saying "X happened to person with characteristic Y here, and people are cheering, therefore it's because of Y". That's rarely what's going on.
Most people are fine with China Daily being on Twitter in principle, just like Voice of America has an account despite it being basically American propaganda targeted abroad. The problem came in the specific actions being taken by these people.
Perhaps some ideologies lead to behavior that get them in trouble
US-based social media companies publish more methodology about how they remove Chinese accounts as opposed to how they remove American accounts. It becomes even more absurd considering that Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council contains no civil libertarians or anything resembling balanced interests.
I was thinking the same thing. But powerful countries (US, China, Russia, and probably a few other countries) have the capabilities to shoot down satellites. Maybe they will opt for that or at least threaten to do that if Musk allows to much freedom?
China will not be able to shoot down satellites just to stop video feeds escaping. Its an act of war. Also the USA will surely have capabilities to resist such attacks, and it only takes 1 stream to get through.
Democracy/free-enterprise need only hold its nerve, and it will win. Not for some moral reason, but simply because the overhead of maintaining a police-state is so much greater than a transparent society.
There is no doubt that we are over-reliant on cars. We (Americans) spent the last century towards developing automobile infrastructure. Now with global warming, it will take many more years to undo the damage. We can agree over that.
But focusing the blame on car companies and the wealthy one-percenters is historical revisionism. It undercuts the fact that these policies were eagerly supported by lower-middle class and middle class people like my family, as well as by many working class people from the countryside. It expanded our agency. It allowed us to vacation to beaches and parks. It allowed us to visit faraway families and pursue work in faraway places. In short, it provided us physical and economic mobility.
We didn't know the damage we were doing. And even if we did know, we probably would have done the same thing. But passing the blame doesn't solve anything.
Car support was pretty ubiquitous in rural areas where you really needed a horse to get around anyway and it really did radically improve life to get a car.
But car support in cities was quite tepid before the late 20’s, and a significant concerted effort of government and industry together ramrodded them in and sold it through a long propaganda campaign that eventually was accepted.
There’s a book about this early history called Fighting Traffic, by Peter Norton. The US came fairly close to banning cars in a number of cities, and to requiring mechanical governors to a 20mph limit in many others. A bunch of places installed memorials and monuments to “all the children slain by drivers” and so on.
It’s really interesting history that the auto lobby has worked hard to obscure.
Having grown up without a car in a country with good public transport, I never had trouble vacationing to beaches and parks, visiting faraway families, or pursuing work in faraway places (well that last point didn’t apply to me, but certainly did apply to e.g. my parents).
Now, having lived in the U.S. for many years, I still hate driving, but I’m basically crippled if I don’t drive.
You're just passing blame away from the people who are directly responsible for the excessive usage of cars to the users of cars, which solves even less.
If you want systemic change you need to approach systemic levers. Focusing on individual action is much less effective than focusing on the people who have power to change laws and reach the minds of consumers.
I'm not arguing that I support what Maduro said. He has an awful record as a leader. I'm arguing that this is the natural result of social media censorship. It's censorship by the US government by proxy.
Here is a simple test to see if the above statement is true: would Facebook censor a world leader as swiftly and as severely if this were a leader of an allied state, or even a leader within our own government?
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/05/09/venezuela-coup-regime-ch...