Can someone explain to me why they think this belongs here? This has remarkably little to do with technology and is certainly not "deeply interesting" or "intellectually gratifying".
To quote the submissions guidelines:
"What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
What does this mean about rapid consolidation of perception within stratas of the US? What does this imply about the future, and tech's role within it? (assuming you agree that tech facilitates the speed and breadth of this convergence.) SHOULD we (tech) even care?
My brain is going the following place:
Clearly this is "google giving people the results they expect" in the same way we've seen for the innumerable other complaints about google search results recently. Does this mean that Google is "picking a winner" and only representing one strata, or does it mean that the other strata is underneath the noise threshold against the primary userbase, or does it mean that they simply use other services that may give a different view?
It's factual that trump got some millions # of vote, as much as one may hate him. Is that community simply quashed in the primary tooling, has that community shrunk, or do they have their own ecosystem?
This ramble was not one of my most well constructed, and I think I repeated myself, but the OP certainly was thought provoking to me, and not just in a "Hah hah trump is dumb" way.
_Far_ from the deepest or most complex article that pops up on here, but I think if we relinquish our ability to ask interesting questions about simple facts, we've given up a lot of what makes HN special.
I disagree with the claim that this is Google "giving people the results they expect" and its not them picking a winner either. In the past, Google has dealt with people pulling the same tricks to get other politically incendiary things listed highly by their ranking algorithm, and have often chosen to not tamper with the results even when its not something that they agree with. So I don't think this says anything particularly interesting about Google or about whether conservatives have stopped using Google search, etc; mostly, it is a run-of-the-mill case of a group of people gaming of Google's search algorithm to their own ends.
With all of that said, I hadn't expected someone to reply to my comment with a post nearly as thoughtful as yours, so thank you for that.
I normally ignore political posts, by looked in here hoping to find something about the current state of Google bombing and/or Google's manipulation of search results. So I think it could lead to some good technology related discussion.
Oh, I can tell you that. I posted it out of curiosity in the event it would trigger a discussion on what the state of the art in Google bombing was. Which, to me as a hacker, gratifies my intellectual curiosity.
7 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 29.3 ms ] threadTo quote the submissions guidelines: "What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
What does this mean about rapid consolidation of perception within stratas of the US? What does this imply about the future, and tech's role within it? (assuming you agree that tech facilitates the speed and breadth of this convergence.) SHOULD we (tech) even care?
My brain is going the following place: Clearly this is "google giving people the results they expect" in the same way we've seen for the innumerable other complaints about google search results recently. Does this mean that Google is "picking a winner" and only representing one strata, or does it mean that the other strata is underneath the noise threshold against the primary userbase, or does it mean that they simply use other services that may give a different view?
It's factual that trump got some millions # of vote, as much as one may hate him. Is that community simply quashed in the primary tooling, has that community shrunk, or do they have their own ecosystem?
This ramble was not one of my most well constructed, and I think I repeated myself, but the OP certainly was thought provoking to me, and not just in a "Hah hah trump is dumb" way.
_Far_ from the deepest or most complex article that pops up on here, but I think if we relinquish our ability to ask interesting questions about simple facts, we've given up a lot of what makes HN special.
With all of that said, I hadn't expected someone to reply to my comment with a post nearly as thoughtful as yours, so thank you for that.