This just further highlights the delusion that everyone is living in right now, 50% of Americans think the other 50% is out to kill them and take away their basic rights.
This is true of both sides, they each truly believe the other side is a real danger. And both sides will say the other side is the real problem and I’m both siding something that is obviously one sided.
I cross the divide and have emphatically, honestly, without any irony been called an evil socialist by one and nazi authoritarian by the other.
Well again as someone who talks to both extremes very often, they’re honestly not. They both just be left alone but have been led to believe by their media consumption that if they don’t do something the other side will, a kind of reverse prisoners dilemma.
Lol. I have the other side telling me that this all misunderstood and then they’ll point you to the AOCs, Sanders talking about “make lists, lock them up”. They’ll say one side is only talking, but look at Portland, Seattle, DC, etc. there was actual violence. Then the other side will point to Kenosha, which the Trump side will point to as well as proof for them. And they’ll tack on Portland.
Third! This is such a weird moment in America history. In one side you have a rag-tag group of: classical conservatives, flyover working class white people,cuban-americans, evangelicals and in the other you have hollywood, the media, the tech companies, their employees, and the colleges. This is not a right/left split, not even a liberal/conservative split, this is a power split (on which the regular people are just cannon-fodder soldiers) between old money and new money.
Actually both sides fervently believe the other side is doing everything they can to undermine our system of government, and both sides have valid points.
Why was election integrity highly questionable in 2016 (Russia, etc.), but not in 2020 after 4 years of Trump? Did something change in those 4 years to make election integrity unquestionable? In fact, election integrity is so unquestionable in 2020 that all the big tech companies are banding together to censor anything that questions election integrity.
If you identify with the right:
If there is a massive conspiracy to change the outcome of the election, why are not more whistleblowers coming forward? How was it coordinated across states?
The truth is that questionable things probably did happen in the 2020 election. The left needs to acknowledge this. The truth is that there isn't enough evidence that these questionable things probably didn't change the outcome of the election. The right needs to acknowledge this. Both sides need to agree on how to improve the 2024 election.
I would love for you to provide citations and references for your claims that people questioned the validity of the 2016 election. Many claimed Russian interference, many claimed that James Comey put his thumb on the scale, many claimed that the media provided Trump with a great deal of free media and that the mainstream media were easily whipped up with anti-Clinton stories, many claimed that the sitting administration erred in not publicizing known associations between high-level Trump campaign operatives and Russian agents.
NO ONE claimed that the vote was illegitimate. NO ONE claimed that the ballot boxes had been stuffed. The 2016 vote was much closer than 2020 and still the party that lost accepted the result and even if they mumbled about 'not my President' there was no one claiming that the election was stolen.
Please stop with the bullshit both-sides claims, it is pathetic.
more like shouted it at the top of their lungs for 4 years straight
> I would love for you to provide citations and references for your claims that people questioned the validity of the 2016 election
> there was no one claiming that the election was stolen.
I mean, I lived the 2016 election I remember the response of my left leaning friends, and some of them absolutely believed the election was rigged. Some quick googling can dig up lots of articles from 2016:
None of those articles contain claims that votes were changed (election fraud) or that voters voted repeatedly or illegally (voter fraud).
They do contain claims of voter suppression, which I'll note continue to be made by those on the left this year (and in 2018 and in pretty much every election, disenfranchisement is an ongoing concern on the left).
Voter suppression (widely studied, widely documented, not even up for debate at this point) and a candidate complaining about several factors I already noted, but no claim of actual vote rigging or attacking the legitimacy of the vote.
Weak sauce. No wonder no one has any respect for so-called conservatives. They are the most fragile of snowflakes and seem to need to live in their own little safe space.
Election integrity was not questionable in either 2016 or 2020. There were massive amounts of disinformation - both from foreign actors and from Trump - in both elections. But there was not significant fraud in either election.
The claim by the left about 2016 is that there was foreign influence (and potential illegal collusion) in the election. There are fringe elements who claim that there was direct modification of votes, but the mainstream accusations are and were limited to things like advertisement targeting, funding, and potentially sharing of information between foreign actors and campaigns etc.
The mainstream claim by the right in 2020 is that there was widespread voter or election fraud (e.g. people voting multiple times, or people's votes being changed or vote counters not counting votes for a candidate).
There's a reasonable amount of evidence to support the assertions in 2016, including official government sources. There's reasonable amounts of evidence to conclude that many of the same tactics in 2016 were tried in 2020, including official government statements, but may have been less effective (due to awareness by the government, and policy changes by companies like Facebook and Google), and a lack of things like the DNC hack to make a big splash.
There's was no evidence of widespread voter or election fraud in 2016 or in 2020.
The police are not part of a system of government. Removing the police would leave the US a democracy.
You removed the words "system of" which changes the phrase from a democratic to a nationalistic one. Blind support for the government isn't healthy for a democracy.
I think a large part of the issue is that people that lean slightly one way are getting lumped in with the extremes of that direction where they don't see themselves like that.
Someone that questions immigration laws isn't necessarily a white supremacist for example, but that narrative isn't as interesting (doesn't sell as much advertising) as the white supremacist one.
On partisanship: "The extremist-related murders of 2019 [in the US] were overwhelmingly (90%) linked to right-wing extremists. All but one of the incidents had ties to right-wing extremism...Almost all of the 2019 extremist-related murders were committed by white supremacists"
On weapons: "In the past 10 years, 315 of the 435 people (72%) killed in the U.S. by domestic extremists were shot to death."
> then they’ll point you to the AOCs, Sanders talking about “make lists, lock them up”
I don't see an equivalancy with "find problem people and lock them up", which inherently implies judicial process, and the other side, with Trump saying:
"After repeatedly being interrupted by protesters at a campaign rally in Miami, Trump warned he’ll “be a little more violent” next time when addressing protesters. “See the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time.’ The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent. And the fourth group, I’ll say get the hell out of here!”"
"Trump told Fox News the next day, “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”"
"“If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. There won’t be so much of them because the courts agree with us,” he said."
So you have a vague, completely unprovable, argument, based on heresay and reddit posts, whereas I can point to the left rioting in major cities across the country for months on end. You can't deny this. There's thousands of hours of video footage. I fled Seattle a few months ago due to your party's nightly violence. The right is sitting at home and doing absolutely nothing. Even after obvious election tampering the right is STILL doing nothing. Only the left can point at the people doing literally nothing, as you spit in their face and torch American cities, and accuse them of violence.
That's the problem. The only tampering that seems obvious to me is the years-long efforts to limit voting rights, and at the moment the desperate attempts to invalidate mail-in ballots.
We can't agree on basic facts; how can we agree on remediations?
Aren't democrats constantly calling for (and committing violence) against their political opponents? Didn't see any red hats out with antifa when they were hitting people over the head with bike locks all summer. Also Cynthia Johnson literally called for Democrat "soldiers" to "make Trump supporters pay".
Hey, could you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do that, and I don't want to ban you (especially a 10-year-old account!) but you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly, and we need you to stop.
I think the real truth of the matter is the majority of Americans know the sky isn't falling. Profit motivated media is blowing the political divide way out of the water, fear mongering to sell eyeballs to advertisers. I've got a few friends who are utterly convinced America is on the cusp of a civil war, but that's only a few. They're the ones who watch too much Fox News or CNN I think.
I think the overwhelming majority of people who make claims like that are just full of hot air. If the shooting ever started, they'd be hiding indoors with the rest of us. This is one of the reasons I think the scenarios they propose is unlikely. This is nothing new of course, there have always been people willing to talk about extreme grandiose nonsense they'll never do. These people aren't hard to find if you go looking, making it easy for the media to broadcast their prattling to scare everybody else shitless. Scared, people stay tuned during the commercial break to hear the latest up to date news about what horrible things are surely imminent.
A few months ago I had a few friends of either political persuasion telling me there would be a revolution or coup the day after the election. That didn't happen, and I think most are starting to realize it won't happen. By this time next year, when Biden's presidency is well underway, I think many of the people feeling very concerned today will feel foolish in retrospect.
For the majority of Americans on HN or employed in tech or finance or some other salaried office work, the sky isn’t falling, we’re doing well. but we’re also a minority of Americans.
Walk through towns & small cities in Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Alabama. In a lot of these places the sky is falling, there are few jobs & high rates of opiate abuse. There isn’t much of a social safety net. Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests, and honestly the democrats also aren’t addressing the roots of inequality sufficiently. The United States is basically divided between those of us who are doing well and those of us for whom the sky is at least looking brittle. That’s the issue putting pressure on society today.
I'm not saying that times aren't rough. Obviously tines are rough. What I'm saying is that America is not on the cusp of a civil war and the overwhelming majority of Americans aren't itching to kill each other, they just want things to return to normal.
> What I’m saying is that America is not on the cusp of a civil war and the overwhelming majority of Americans aren’t itching to kill each other, they just want things to return to normal.
The second half is probably true, the first half is less clearly so. On the actual cusp of the actual civil war, the overwhelming majority of Americans weren’t itching to kill each other and most just wanted things to return to normal. Of course, there were broad camps with radically different views as to the barriers to normalcy and considerable propaganda effort expended to nurture some of those views by people who had already come to the conclusion that a fight was, if not desirable, a necessary risk to secure their political goals.
(Also broadly true of the Revolutionary War, for that matter, and, really, most other internal and international armed conflicts in history.)
> Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests...
I get so tired of this poorly reasoned idea that continues to be spouted from the left as if it is gospel, and that the "rubes" are just not as enlightened as some journalist in New York or a javascript dev in Mountain View.
How exactly would voting for someone like Biden help the average working class voter in middle America?
* Tons more quota / diversity based help that will re-distribute the already small amount of aid to people who are NOT them.
* Medicare for all and similar schemas: Ask them how Obamacare has worked out. It's likely they now can't even use any health services since they're still paying premiums, but now have a $7K deductible for their family of four.
* Shoveling money from the right's corporate masters to the left's friends in the public unions, legal industry, big tech, etc. is not a net gain for these voters.
* Increased immigration and globalization that may very well increase the economy as a whole, but certainly won't be trickling the wealth down to them.
* changes in the tax code that may raise or lower rates by a few points here and there, but have absolutely no effect on average working class voters who don't pay much in federal taxes anyway.
* Green energy initiatives that will allow rich people who can afford it to virtue signal, but will raise the prices of gas, heating, electricity, etc. for everyone else.
Please let me know which actual policy changes that Biden and Co. can and will implement that would help these voters, but who are just too dumb to realize?
There are plenty of rubes on the left but I don’t bitch about them nearly as much because, at least in the current political climate, they aren’t active barriers to the changes I’d like to see in America. I’m not someone who believes left and right are intelligent & enlightened vs ignorant & foolish. Though I do believe the right to be more cynical and openly self interested.
You literally said the people on the right vote against their own self interest, now you’re saying that they vote against change you want... but isn’t necessarily better for them. If you’re wondering why ppl don’t take you seriously this is why.
an individual stupid person does not matter. A large enough mass of stupid people can overturn nearly anything. It seems likely that this time, the mass of people who've decided that Trump won won't be large enough to effect the coup that Trump is _attempting_, but it's larger than we've seen, and that's somewhat scary.
Just 126 congressmen and what is it now, 17 Republican Attorney Generals demanding the Supreme court vacate the election and hand it to the lame duck president?
This issue is not this set of clearly poor players - it's the groups on both sides watching and learning that are going to be much more professional about their efforts to gain power with any means necessary. This is the trial run set up, so the limits and weaknesses of our systems can be evaluated. The fact that this set of not even remotely qualified actors are occupying the White House shows how weak the controls have been. And these players have spent their time in power layering the judicial bureaucracy with their sycophants. No, there is reason to be concerned, very good reasons.
Granted, I haven't seen the data the people leaving FB are using to make their arguments, but at least they are saying that misinformation and posts arguing for assault or killing of individuals are much more prevalent among "conservative" groups:
> We have a very good idea which actors in the US drive the largest volumes of this kind of content. In the last 14 days, the 10 pages responsible for the largest concentrated volume of likely violating Hate Speech comments have been:
Breitbart
Fox News
The Daily Caller
USA Patriots for Donald Trump
Donald Trump for President
Donald J. Trump
Ben Shapiro
Conservative Tribune by WJ
US Chronicle
The Western Journal
These pages, and a few perennial others that didn’t happen to make the top 10 in the last two weeks, but that you can find by browsing the dashboard, are filling our platform with violent and hateful content at a rate and concentration that is simply overwhelming…
Disappointed you're being downvoted. Everybody seems to have taken an "if you're not with us you're against us" approach. The left appeals to your sense of morality ("you're evil if you support this president") and the right appeals to your sense of intelligence ("you're an idiot if you support socialism").
My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?
People don't seem to want to defend their positions anymore. They want to say what they feel and face no challenge or debate. Even this "key" data scientist won't talk to the media, won't be identified. Sorry then, I don't give his opinion a lot of weight. It's easy to throw stones from inside a safe space.
>My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?
I've heard this argument often.
What I'm about to say is not directed at you personally but your argument.
Maybe you, general you, are the one who needs to grow. It's possible that your knowledge of the subject is dated, judgement clouded by any number of things, that you underestimate the severity of the problem, that you're conflating a dislike of a person, movement, idea with groups of people, or other things.
I say this because most of the time when people make this comment they follow it up or precede it with some very questionable statements. Generally these inappropriate statements are rooted in ignorance of the topic though sometimes your argument is used in bad faith to justify hateful or discriminatory ideals, speech, and action.
Again, I'm not suggesting anything against you idrios, merely adding my experience with this argument.
Not offended. In fact your response like this is exactly what I was asking for in my comment.
You are right, the "at least hear me out" argument is often used as defense to say something very questionable. The reason I phrased it that way though is because I am very close to one person who is as far right leaning as you could expect any reasonable person to be, and very close to another who is as far left as possible. I'm kind of forced to be in the middle if I want to maintain both of these relationships.
So to myself, I was using those 2 people as stand-ins for everyone else who might share their views. Both are very smart, both have very strong opinions that have been reached through a longstanding evolution of very small differences core values, and both are so deeply vested in their views that they wouldn't even be able to talk to each other.
So my comment was an appeal to anyone who feels that way about the other side, because I see no other way to fix the extreme polarization of ideals in the US.
Personally, much more left leaning than right. My biggest concern about the future right now is the economy. I think we've made great progress in the last several decades breaking glass ceilings for women and minorities in the workforce and made some fantastic, huge technological breakthroughs. But I think a side effect of this is fewer jobs (from automation) and increased competition for those jobs. So I lean left on this issue -- I think we need an increase to minimum wage or a basic income or anything that gives more support for the unemployed. Worst case in my mind, they take advantage of this system and remove themselves from the labor pool making job applicants more competitive. I'll also add, with a bit of incredulity, that my conservative friend doesn't see a gap between wealthy and poor as an issue.
But I'm not 100% left. I'm not for socialized healthcare -- I worry about doctor visits becoming like the DMV (though even that would be an improvement to what we have now) and I worry about hospitals charging whatever they can because it's on the government's paycheck (even if that is an improvement to them doing it because it's on the insurer's paycheck) -- because I think there are better fixes to healthcare that don't require it being provided by the government.
On a more meta-level, I think there are far more political ideologies than just left and right, that progressive democrats have forced themselves to align with establishment democrats, as how Christian conservatives have forced themselves to align with anti-establishment conservatives (there might be a better label for it). So in that light it's ridiculous to me how, say, a progressive democrat can denounce a Christian conservative while supporting an establishment democrat when they have nearly as little in common with both.
Also, thank you for asking me this outright. Nobody on the internet ever has. What do you believe?
Thank you for such an honest and thoughtful response, and forgive my delay.
We probably agree on a lot of politics. I do believe in a national healthcare system (socialized medicine?), because our current approach is so unjust, and because I fundamentally believe that a democratic government is the tool that people use to collectively better themselves. I also believe in free higher education for the same reason. I think both would pay for themselves.
That said, I know actually doing those things (especially healthcare) in the U.S. would be quite tricky and that the practical implementation of something matters as much as what should ideally be.
In general I believe in intellectual honesty, integrity in public services, treating everyone with the same level of respect, and that people generally do better when they work together. Which is why I think the Trump Administration and the current crop of Republicans enabling him (note that I'm not saying all!) are such pieces of shit. I didn’t used to be so crude but at some point you have to make clear what’s not acceptable in the kind of society I believe in.
I'm also a huge fan of the arts, the liberal arts, and so a big believer in freedom of expression.
So I can be a bit of a political idealist. At the same time I've read a lot of history and think I understand that the world is a rough place and that people in power often have to make shitty choices between bad and worse.
TBH I think one of the biggest positive changes, both in this country and in the world, could be in the field of mental health. Consider how revolutionary modern medicine has been in terms of the physical health of the individual and all the positive good and realization of human potential that has come from that.
Mental health is (at least in Western science) still a very young field and only beginning to be socially accepted. Also consider just how much damage a troubled individual - especially someone in a position of power - can do. Even just a shitty manager can really fuck up other people's lives.
We also have to acknowledge that no one can have good mental health when they have constant economic insecurity, or lack a way to meaningfully contribute to their community/to society.
I believe that if we keep fucking over our planet, it's gonna be real shitty for the human race. Pollution plays a big role in mental health as well (nature is actually critical for good mental health, plus pollution causes myriad physical and mental health issues in the population).
So I tend to be a pretty strong critic of capitalism as it is today, and how it just makes things like polluting the environment "externalities". I see markets as a financial tool and not inherently good or bad (and definitely not magical!), and, I think regulated capitalism can have it's role, but, the system we see today sucks. The national and global wealth disparity as it exists today is unjust, unethical, and, even if it's legal, criminal. It's shameful that the richest country in the world is so poor (poor civic infrastructure, poor citizens, poor quality of life, etc).
That said , while there are so many positive reforms we can make, I don't know what's out there to replace capitalism as a whole. We've yet to see some other sort of economic system really be tried (I don't count the USSR and most 'socialist' countries; tbh most of those governments were fucked up or, undermined by the US). So who knows what a better system is.
I do like the United States; what I like about it is that criticizing it is part of our civic duty.
Lastly I believe people really don't like to be uncomfortable, or change, or question themselves, which is why we see so much resistance to acknwoledging things like the patriarchy or white supremacy; no one likes to think that maybe their own friends, family, or themselves, have behaved in ways which have been harmful to other people. No one likes to question the unspoken ass...
I've flip flopped on issues and can see why people hold many of the problematic beliefs they do.
It seems to me that many lack the nuance and human experience to understand different people. It's the mindset of the raging homophobes that get caught with same sex partner(s). If you want to look to see how to deal with that issue in particular then look to media created by the people who've lived these experiences.
What's helped me the most is putting myself in uncomfortable situations and finding ways to cope. Don't like LGBTQIA+? Go to a gay bar, talk to the people there. Maybe find a way to get Fox to air humanizing stories about MPoCs, LGBTQIA+, abortion, addicts, and poor people.
It's harder to be close minded in typically blue urban areas where you'll regularly be confronted with norm defying people from all classes, colors, religions, and orientations. So the best way would be to find ways to bring these groups to the same haunts without them even knowing they're being funneled.
This is the exact same thing as applying a label. Even if someone who disagrees with you does "need to grow," telling them that is a pretty surefire way to get them to write you off. If you actually want to convince and persuade people, you have to meet them where they are. That's the hard work in a democracy, and it can be frustrating and infuriating to see the pain that some people suffer because of the ignorance of others, but that's the way this country is supposed to work—through persuasion and conversation. We've tried lots of other methods of government and social structure throughout history and none of them has done better.
That's the problem. This is why inclusive laws are so important. We don't have many now, and they're under constant threat.
People in the democratic party are beginning to come to terms with the fact they've had a cancerous brand issue since Bill Clinton, which Hillary further damaged. I don't know what to say of the Republican party who've fallen into lockstep with trumps criminal behavior.
Either we live in a country with laws and punishments for the criminals or we don't. Trump's made it unequivocally clear, on the world stage, that our law enforcement is prohibited from doing much besides abuse the human rights of immigrants (to his bases celebrations no less), round up junkies or put the occasional symbolic head on a spike. In a situation like this I don't believe it's going to be rational discourse that solves these problems. While I'd love to sit down and have rational conversations about politics with people from the other side, I'm afraid that many people are incapable of admitting that they're wrong, at least not before they've tried everything else. It's a movie trope and a saying for a reason.
Honest question, why do the liberals feel in danger?
I personally don't attribute myself to either side, nor did I vote for either. However...
I've seen rioting (been caught up in one and feared for my safety), noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment), going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment), and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives.
What exactly are the conservatives doing? I don't see anything necessarily being blocked / attacked? Am I missing something?
"In late October 2018, Shea acknowledged that he had distributed a document described as a "four-page manifesto" titled Biblical Basis for War that listed strategies that a "Holy Army" could employ. The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"."
"In April 2019, The Guardian published records from a right-wing chat group of four people that Shea participated in, where Shea used an alias of ‘True Warrior’ in Latin. Other members in the chat group discussed carrying out surveillance, intimidation and violent attacks on political enemies, including Antifa activists and "communists." Shea himself volunteered to conduct background checks on residents of Spokane, resulting in Shea naming three individuals. One of the chat group's members forwarded the information to The Guardian, while another confirmed the existence of the chats and acknowledged the discussion on conducting surveillance on "Antifa" people."
"An investigation commissioned by Washington House of Representatives reported, on December 1, 2019, that Shea had planned and participated in domestic terrorism on at least three occasions. This included his participation, organizing, planning, and promotion of the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, the 2015 armed standoff in Priest River, Idaho, and the 2016 armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Shea led a delegation of right-wing legislators from Oregon, Washington and Idaho that met with law enforcement on January 9, 2016, in Burns, Oregon and were appraised of confidential intended law enforcement strategies for dealing with the refuge occupiers. Shea then disclosed those details to Bundy, according to the report."
None of those are the government, sure there are radical citizens (domestic terrorists), admittedly. Everyone universally thinks this is bad.
That being said, the right appears to be concerned about all their constitutional rights taken away. To me, that seems far more of a direct and far larger attack on millions of people than these random domestic terrorists.
No one is falling for your bad faith concern trolling after this statement. He specifically mentioned an elected politician that your response blithely ignored.
These random domestic terrorists are a part of a disparate and loosely affiliated network of religious extremists ranging from white power prison gangs to the federalist society whom control the supreme court of the United states of America. Underestimating the threat of radicalized religions is a mistake.
> That being said, the right appears to be concerned about all their constitutional rights taken away. To me, that seems far more of a direct and far larger attack on millions of people than these random domestic terrorists.
You can be concerned about something without it being a legitimate threat. The right was concerned about Obama "coming for the guns", and before that, with Clinton "coming for your guns". Yet Obama got an "F" rating for his efforts in "controlling guns" from the gun control/reform lobby.
Theorizing that Operation Jade Helm was an effort to repeal the Second Amendment by force doesn't make it so, and elements of the right can be concerned by it all they like, it just doesn't make it something the left is responsible for.
You picked a terrible example, as he did restrict guns on a number of occasions during the terms. The fact that the gun control lobby gave him an "F" rating is because the fact that they want too much and are never happy with just a little.
> None of those are the government, sure there are radical citizens (domestic terrorists),
“Radical citizens (domestic terrorists)” and “the government” are overlapping groups. For instance, most people would agree that armed public law enforcement agencies are very much “the government”, but:
The right wing has always had its fringe nutjobs and even terrorists; these seem (or seemed, until recently) to be trending down in severity and frequency, and everyone across the spectrum has typically condemned right-wing political violence. We're pretty good at marginalizing right-wing groups and mitigating their violence to the point where the odds of being impacted by right-wing violence were super low.
That feels less scary to me than watching hundreds of people descend on my neighborhood or a nearby neighborhood and set it alight or otherwise destroy it followed by the media and cultural elites (never mind colleagues, bosses, etc) tacitly approving of the violence (if not outright celebrating it--memorably a former ESPN reporter tweeted "Burn it all down!" and then when the violence approached his own neighborhood, "Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood"). This isn't to invalidate anyone's fear of right-wing violence; we all have different experiences and perspectives; I'm only sharing mine.
Note that we don't have to choose between left and right wing violence. We can and should condemn all kinds of political violence--indeed, it seems like every spike in the popularity of right-wing identity politics lags some much larger spike in left-wing identity politics, and every spike in right wing violence follows some spike in left wing violence and so on (e.g., you don't have proud boys without antifa). If I'm right, then it's kind of good news, because it means we can curb right wing violence and extremism simply by holding the left to the same standard.
Aren't democrats trying to swing to the other extreme and allow full term abortions? Even if it only happens rarely, the only difference between a viable fetus abortion and murdering a newborn in a NICU is a layer of skin surrounding one of them.
Well, let's go with a Washington elected Republican, that the Republican party refused to cut ties, who published a manifesto that stated:
> the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males".
Yes, there were 3 domestic terrorists (with 2 FBI agents effectively suggesting it...).
My concern is more at the government level - are there any threats from conservative republicans in office?
From the rights perspective, it appears they are concerned about a lot of amendment issues; which seem far larger than the isolated incidents of domestic terrorists.
I also recommend searching for "proud boys arrested". You'll get plenty of news articles about many of their members being arrested for assault, violent threats, and attempted murder.
Corporations blocking content is not a first amendment violation. They're not the government. You can argue corporations are blocking content and have an agenda but it's not a first amendment issue. Forcing corporations to host content would be though.
We can build a society where free speech isn't technically dead because you won't go to prison for saying stuff, but it sort of is dead because your speech is auto-censored by algorithms to make sure you adhere to approved speech. Is this a healthy society?
Much of the rioting has been conducted/instigated by right-wing provocateurs (several specific ones have been identified), and much of the most severe lawless violence independent of origin of violence-in-general has been conducted by organized right-wing groups with the tacit, and sometimes active, collaboration of law enforcement (the police giving praise, thanks, and supplies to right-wing armed vigilantes, including Rittenhouse, just prior to the shooting he did — and doing so when they were out after curfew — while then turning around and publicly blaming Rittenhouse’s victims for being out after curfew is a fairly graphic illustration of this trend; as is the Trump Administration directive to DHS personnel on talking points supporting Rittenhouse after the incident.)
This seems like a particularly inflammatory characterization of events. I'll just say that I think Kenosha was a tragedy, ideally Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there. Ideally there wouldn't have been riots in the first place, and failing that, the government should have effectively marshaled the police and national guard to keep the peace so (largely untrained) private citizens didn't have to do the job. I can understand why police viewed those private citizens as "help" in keeping the peace, but obviously that's problematic (bringing us back around to the rioters creating the situation and the government failing to adequately manage it). And of course everything Trump says tends to do more harm than good.
As for Rittenhouse's "victims", by all appearances Rittenhouse was acting in self defense--maybe he was instigating the conflicts before the cameras started filming, but there's no evidence to support that; on the other hand, the footage does show Rittenhouse being chased and physically attacked before firing. I'm inclined toward the presumption of innocence, but I also understand that this is very controversial.
> noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment)
Like? (And before you answer, remember that the 1st amendment applies to businesses, too.)
> going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment)
When has either political party "gone after firearm ownership" in any way?
> and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives
That's because their ideals include: - Take away other people's basic rights - Enforce their version of Christianity on everyone - Encourage murder and vigilantism - Overthrow the government
I take your broader point, but I don't think it's 50/50 as much as it is a vocal 10% on either side with the majority remaining pretty moderate and reasonable. I don't personally cross the divide, I'm a political liberal (earning me the 'socialist' brand from the right) but I don't dabble in the tribalism and try to be charitable toward those I disagree with (thus I'm a nazi to the 10% on the far left) but there's still a huge swath of people in the middle.
I think one of the issues (beyond media's propensity towards sensationalism to draw attention) is that the extremes at either end of a debate are very black and white. Black and white can be explained in a single sentence many times but everything in between is nuanced (or grey as you called it). The problem with nuanced positions is it requires more than a 280 character payload to explain...
I think the bigger problem is that nuanced positions don't sell as well as sensationalism. Outrage is a powerful drug and the media has us hooked on it.
For example, I actually think that anyone who doesn't believe that the election was legitimate - i.e. that no meaningful fraud occurred - should be banned from the HN community.
Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant.
Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda. They're uninterested and in fact dismissive of real, actual evidence and facts as examined in multiple court cases - and they refuse to accept the validity of the outcomes of those cases.
They wish to overturn the legitimate outcome of the Presidential election. Full stop.
They act exactly like those crypto-racists who know that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards.
I don't see anything remotely equivalent to this happening on the other side of the fence at this time.
I've never seen anything like this in the United States and enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square, because it's gone so far that anything other than a total rejection ends up functioning as an implicit legitimization because the claims are so untrue, shocking, and destructive.
By allowing the lie of election fraud to be presented as just another thing to be discussed on HN, HN is enabling those people and their cause, which is to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
And I think it's unfortunate and wrong that I probably have a better chance of being banned from HN for this comment, than someone who is obviously attempting to undermine people's belief in the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election, which is to say, undermine small-d democracy in the U.S. and advocate for an authoritarian, one-party state.
Which is literally what they're doing. And no, the Democrats or anyone else on the Left are not doing anything remotely equivalent to that right now.
So one side is trying to stage a coup using the SCOTUS as a weapon, thereby defying the will of the citizenry, and the best you an come up with is "Both Sides"?
One side believes the last 4 years has seen multiple attempts to remove their elected president. Not to mention the Justice kavanaugh confirmation madness.
What Trump has going for him, is picking up issues that need to be addressed, that have gone been neglected in a fast-evolving world, leading to unfairness. However, how these issues are treated and how people are treated, is important in a democracy.
If he's such a great leader and not just an opportunist populist, why do he need to instill a fear-culture where everybody who doesn't lick his boots get fired. People appointed by the same leader dare not speak up their own opinions. This isn't democracy. What type of leader do this? Hint: Communist leaders like Stalin, and fascist leaders like Mussolini.
If you're unable to spot a liar yourself, it is not too hard to form your own opinion on this:
Fortunately, a majority of the population see right through the lack of leadership and lies for what they truly are. The means are as important as the ends, and the ends are often obscured and full of misdirection, more like PR campaigns than anything of real and lasting value.
As someone who voted against Trump twice, I am horrified by his attempts to cling to office. At the same time, I am also reminded of the people in my social circle as well as in the Lefty media who in late 2016 talked about how Electoral College members had no legal obligation to cast a vote for Trump. (Except that many states have laws that say they do.)
What seems to be true of "both sides" is that both see their enemies as people who are set on their destruction and thereby justify "by whatever means necessary" thinking.
I too am one of those people thought a pinko socialist by some and a revanchist caveman by others.
As a person who voted for Trump twice, I’m horrified by the blasé way the left ignores serious issues with the vote. If you were a Facebook moderator, I truly believe that you would censor me because of your own political beliefs, and allow hate speech by those you agree with. I’m not alarmed by his desire to hang on to power, I champion it.
Maybe go find someone who subscribes to the NYT or watches MSNBC to hurl your unfounded accusations at. Because you’re not replying to someone who’s trying to grind you into dust.
Not sure how to take an incapable president seriously, other than he's very good at manipulating. Letting hundreds of thousands die while providing special treatment for himself and his cronies. However, there must be grave concerns that should be addressed politically, that shouldn't be ignored by either party. It seems both parties are hostage by the political system and dark background billionaires. Unfortunately, either is unable to break the stalemate into more constructive middle-grounds. This is the most serious concern, that this is exactly the intention.
Most of the republicans I know are disappointed, but not so severely that they want to go killing people. That sort of extremism is very fringe. Also, even if you count the mellow majority, they're far from 50%.
Well I have some good news for you, they lost the election. A few of them may not like to admit that, but they lost nevertheless and any scenario where Biden or Harris isn't president a year from now is a delusion.
Well the good news is that doesn't matter. They're sore losers but it won't amount to anything more than hot air, so take a deep breath and relax. Hit a blunt or something.
Do you really think that losing the election is going to make the Republicans go "huh, maybe we should stop trying to take away rights from millions of Americans? maybe we should stop treating millions of voters like trash?"
America has a pretty good history of peaceful transitions of power, and I expect that to continue. Republicans selected an asshole to represent them, and he's now lost the election. He can throw a fit with his lawyers, which will doubtlessly fail, and I fully expect Biden to take the presidency peacefully, as has happened in past American elections. That's the process at work.
People telling you that this time it's going to be a war or coup are trying to scare you. In retrospect, you will probably laugh at trump for being such a pathetically poor loser, and laugh at yourself for worrying about it.
It certainly didn't make Democrats reconsider taking the rights of millions of Americans away after they lost the midterms following the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban.
You seem reasonable, so please help me understand the other side.
I’m a big fan of conservative thinkers like Milton Friedman and George Will. I’m against the left’s attack on free speech and find their obsession with identity, at best, perplexing. I prefer isolationist foreign policy and less military involvement from the US. I’m originally from a conservative area and have many conservative relatives I know to be good people.
And yet I cannot conceive of how anyone could support Trump or the boot licking republicans who enable him. He is incapable of telling the truth. He does not seem to believe in reality, science, or expertise of any kind. He does not believe in rule of law. He is an authoritarian and egomaniac. Even before the election he challenged the idea of a peaceful transition of power. How is this supportable?
Edit: And to be clear I get that we live in a two-party country and that a vote for a candidate is not a wholesale endorsement. You look at the options you have and choose the "lesser of the evils," as it were. Hell, I would vote for Trump if the other candidate was Stalin.
Edit Edit: I know it’s bad form to make political rants like this on HN. I had a moment of weakness :/
A lot of my conservative relatives are too old to even know what Twitter is, so they completely ignore Trump on that front. They like that Trump doesn't kowtow to the media and they like his judge picks, his foreign policy, and executive orders. The media would zing Romney with little zingers and he would get all hang dog and apologize, but Trump punched back instead and his voter base loved that they finally had a candidate that would stand up to the media.
Trump also tried very hard to make good on his campaign promises.
Can you imagine opening an embassy in Jerusalem under Hillary? I can't, and my conservative relatives love that he did that and that he stands up to China and acknowledged Taiwan's president. They also love that he fights back against identity politics (removing requirement for forced diversity trainings, etc). In short, from their perspective he goes to bat on a lot of their grievances.
So yeah, his Twitter is a dumpster fire, but half his voter base doesn't even see it because they don't use twitter.
Look I’ve had conversations like this a lot, it comes down to exactly what you said. Two parties ends up being the lesser of two evils, and trump to most conservatives absolutely was the lesser of two evils. As other commentators said, he fulfilled many of his campaign promises. He pushed foreign policy in a direction the whole world needed but didn’t want. He’s been drawing down foreign troops since his first day in office, so much so that apparently his generals were lying to him about how many ppl they had out there.
It’s perplexing to me that if what you say you believe is what you believe why a politician being a liar is a problem for you.
All politicians lie, none as brazenly as Trump sure; but every single one of them has been caught lying in the last 9 months, many have been pretty brazen in their hypocrisy.
My many conservative friends will point to 1000s of small white lies and 100s of big ones that Biden told, as proof that the other side is just as complicit.
I get there is policy to like, particularly regarding the Middle East. I mostly disagree with Trump on policy, but even if he ticked every policy box for me, I can't imagine wanting to end rule of law and just have an imperial president.
Our political institutions like elections, the courts, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Reserve are built mostly on norms that took decades and sometime centuries to build up. He seems ready to throw them all out.
It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year.
Yeah, yeah, I know Facebook is a "private entity, and they can do what they want with their platform", spare me. Facebook is a social media monopoly. We need to protect free speech on these "private" monolith social media platforms before it's too late.
It's even stranger to me that the censorship is applauded and cheered on because people believe it's "for a good reason". But that doesn't change the fact that it's still just blatant political censorship on a massive level. Every evil regime in history has done evil things under the guise of convincing the citizens that it's OK because it's "for a good reason" or directed against "bad people", but that doesn't change the fact that it's still evil. No matter how much political propaganda they push about why the censorship is good, it's still massively partisan censorship and suppression.
And yet you can go to Parler, and they will happily censor pro-left / Democrat / liberal posts and positions. And openly do so. And have the people there stating it as their right (which it is). So these right leaning people absolutely do have a platform.
Is it as popular? No. Maybe that's because their perspective is less popular. You don't have the right to an audience to your speech and it's not suppression to choose not to use my [or Facebook] resources to amplify your words, nor is it my problem that your platform doesn't have the same audience and reach.
> It's weird how normalized censorship has become in just one year.
I feel like its people trying to deal with the discord of this new breed of politicians that brazenly lie so often that its impossible to know what's real anymore.
Politicians used to be masters of selective information and leaving key information out while still not technically lying. Now they say whatever the fuck they want with scant attention to reality and facts. That's what's causing this IMO because the amount of attention they receive means that they strongly impact the narrative.
As a non-US example; Boris Johnson yesterday stated that it was "very likely" that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, despite coming to power on an election campaign where he stated he had "an oven ready deal with the EU". If you were taking the British government's word at faith then yesterday's statement would have been a massive shock to you because for four years no government minister has stated that this outcome will happen.
I have seen just about every election related post flagged and then unflagged in the last few months. Does not include downvotes against people who disagree with each other. The community is being resilient to this behaviour and it’s going back to normal but it was a weird few months
No, what we need to do is stop using closed, centralized platforms which are controlled by someone whose interests are wildly different from our own. (And I don't care who you are, your interests are wildly different from Zuckerberg's.)
The solution is not taking away legitimate rights from someone else, it's taking control back from them.
I might be wrong because I'm not an American, but the way I understand the free speech is that it guarantees the government can't punish you for saying something. It doesn't guarantee your speech a right to have instant reach to millions of people. Facebook "censoring" someone is no different than a newspaper in the 20th century deciding to not publish your letter, or a book publisher refusing to publish your book, or a store owner removing your graffiti from their window. You had a right in 20th century to say anything you want to whomever you wanted. If you wanted to reach a ton of people at the same time, you either built that reach manually or you had to convince someone (TV, radio, book publisher) to help you. And it is the same today. You can say whatever you want to a friend, coworker, family member. And you can also say whatever you want to every citizen in the USA. But you're not guaranteed a right of any company to help you in that endeavor. If Facebook, Youtube, Amazon, Paypal don't want to help you in reaching people it is their right to do so. Youtube blocked you? Make your own website. Amazon doesn't want to sell your book? Print it yourself.
Claiming that Facebook or Twitter deleting someone's content is censorship because you have a right for your speech to have a huge reach would mean that there was no free speech anytime in history, except for a brief period of time when social media appeared before they started "censoring"
A small number of data scientists discovering a sense of morality (after cashing a few very large paychecks) doesn't feel like the tidal wave of employee dissent that many people are waiting for.
Well, it is not like the old media/old media style companies love FB, that they would not spin it this way. Ironically, they are guilty of some of the same things they accuse FB of.
Put a 5 year hiring freeze on any Facebook engineers that still work there after 2021.
If you're willing to sacrifice your ethics to work for a company that cheats and spies on folks, you can't be trusted with our company's product or culture.
It doesn't even have to be strict or real. You can say you waive it for candidates that publicly renounce Facebook's practices. You don't really need to check, just send a message that you don't tolerate Facebook's behavior.
Reverse Brian Armstrong.
edit: flagged? I think this is seriously worth discussing. We choose the world we build and live in.
'Torching the company' implies they're figuratively burning the place down, which seems like an exaggeration. A more appropriate fire idiom might be 'flaming the company', or you could say they're 'spitting fire.'
Maybe enough of my friends have already left, but facebook has seemed like an empty husk for at least the last year, and the ratio of ads (which ublock origin doesn't seem to filter) to content seems higher there than any other website I frequent by at least a factor of 3 or 4. It's so unpleasant to read anything on there that I usually just check notifications and bail as quickly as possible. Also, the ads they show are terrible.
The last useful thing I can recall seeing was a day-after-thanksgiving virtual friends meetup invitation. Events are the only reason I haven't bailed completely, and it seems the reason that this feature remains sticky is that lots of people don't want to bother to maintain email address books anymore.
This is doubtlessly why Facebook likes to buy their potential competitors. Any particular social media platform might be a transient fad, but the company itself can remain relevant by buying all the new fads.
Honestly, I'd prefer if Whatsapp had some monetization. Because the current way of them making money is "belong to Facebook, give them all the data", and I don't like it.
One out of 1000 posts is hate? Gosh, I don't spend much time on Facebook, but I easily scroll through 500-1000 posts every few days. I haven't seen one I would truly call hate. Oh sure, there are a few friends who say nasty things about the politician they dislike, but it doesn't strike me has hate speech.
Now I'm not denying that they're out there. They must be. But 1/1000 seems like a pretty high estimate. There are sooo many pictures of cats and grandkids and that cake someone just made.
Yes, but those would need to be really big groups because as far as I can tell there are lots and lots and lots of groups specializing in cats and discussions of high school.
It just seems like a pretty puffed up stat compared to my experience. I'm not saying it's zero. I'm just saying that there is plenty of inoffensive stuff too and it tends to drown out the ratio.
I'd work there, because of what I view as their pioneering of some important UI paradigms. I think it would be interesting to be immersed in the eng org where that came from.
The "hate speech" thing I think is really poorly defined; at the end of the day I think they're mad about Trump supporters and other deplorables having the audacity to say certain things. There's plenty of what they would refer to as "hate speech" on Twitter, but none of them seem to think Twitter is embarrassing to work for because it put a little "i" icon on Trump's tweets. All of this just seems farcical to me.
Sometimes you can judge a company by the enemies it makes. It seems Facebook is making enemies of the people that think political censorship is a good thing, that do not value free speech as a principle, and that are appalled that people have different values and beliefs.
Now as is brought up every time there is a complaint that tech companies are violating the first amendment, these are private companies and can control what is posted and what it shows. So, if Facebook decides they want to allow these posts in the name of free speech, it is their right as a private company.
Frankly, I am glad that people who believe that we should have more censorship are leaving their positions of influence at Facebook.
I'd be curious what really crossed the line for some of these folks.
Facebook's anything goes type behavior and litany of various bad choices has been there for a long long time. I'm kinda wondering what exactly pushed these folks to quit?
> I'd be curious what really crossed the line for some of these folks.
At the risk of sounding sarcastic, but with some anecdotal insider information for some of this cases, what crossed the line is they became independently wealthy or got a competing offer from a rival company. It's easier to "wake up" if you are waking up in a cozy bed to a nice breakfast.
Facebook already does this. You need a real cell phone number to make an account. They'll frequently require users to upload pictures of their id's to unlock their accounts after they detect suspicious activity.
I stopped using FB 6 months ago, not by cancelling or suspending my account, just by not going there.
I'm happier. I have more time. I have less adversarial interactions and stress in my thoughts.
At first I wondered how I could do this, since it would mean losing contact with friends. But a surprising number of friends contacted me via messenger to ask how I'm doing, and now we just interact one to one, like in the old days.
I find the interaction I get on HN far more satisfying and challenging than FB. The HN guidelines make it so.
It's not rocket science.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
With guidelines like these, and a community mod system that works, there is no need for sisyphean AI or data scientists.
What concerns me for the future is that HN is dependent for its discussions on the existence of independent journalism to provide the articles on which the HN community comments. If the economic and political trends that gave FB its power continue, what will HN readers have left to discuss? Tech news? That might not be enough.
I understand why HN excludes political discussion, and that makes sense in isolation. But outside of HN, this article about FB highlights that quality civics requires informed, civil discourse. How is that going to happen?
I don't come to HN to read details in articles unless they actually contain new information, it's the commentary that's engaging. Comments that highlight or put into context information that's usually on dozens of news sites. Twitter is rife with highly timely good content.
As you mentioned the rules and moderation is key to civil discussion. HN has it, FB does not.
I read HN comments before visiting a submitted link maybe 99% of the time. After that I would visit the link less than 10% of the time. Eternal September[1] hasn't hit us here, and I also attribute that to HN's moderation policy.
This forum is heavily moderated, its members are highly educated, it's also not very diverse, is not very large, and anything even slightly related to politics gets flagged to oblivion. FB is nothing like that.
>I stopped using FB 6 months ago...friends contacted me via messenger to ask how I'm doing, and now we just interact one to one
I hear what you're saying, but you stopped using Facebook's feed feature and now you only use the Messenger feature. I know this seems a bit pedantic, but you didn't stop using Facebook.
I have Amazon Alexa devices in my house. The reason I'm ok with this is because my relationship with Amazon is very straight forward: they sell me stuff, which I purchase with money. They give me nothing for "free". It's also very easy for me to not use Amazon or their services in any way, and they know this which makes me far more comfortable.
Google and Facebook on the other hand... Completely different relationship where services are exchanged for the sale of my personal details.
So why is everyone expecting Facebook to "correct" human behavior? They're just the platform, not the generator. If we're going to be fair, ISPs should be FIRST held accountable for the hate speech their users generate, because if we remove Facebook, someone else will provide a textarea and submit button, but will still use the same cable and internet subscription.
In the mean time, media reigns free into radicalizing the population into different-opinion camps, psychopath televangelists can zombify millions and get good profit from the ads. But no, Facebook alone is a threat to democracy.
You're using the slippery slope fallacy and conflating disparate issues.
Shut down Facebook if they can't stop violent organizations from flourishing on their platform.
Tax church's and find a way to make these psychotic televangelists illegal, maybe the irs can get them for tax evasion?
All these problems boil down to money. If Facebook acts against these radical groups without a court order their Republican investors and shareholders will flee en masse. A federal order is unlikely due to Trump's appointments and lack of precedent or law. A new law is unlikely because Mitch McConnell would sooner die of covid19 then let the democrats score a win, or make Republican social media wetwork harder in the future. McConnell is a founding father of the modern problems with money in Congress and he's been boosting about it for decades.
So, to sum it up. Mark is choosing to not do anything and keep profiting off of this shit because he has the legal cover to do so from Trump down. Trump just wants to kill platforms that aren't for him, just like he wants all democrat votes shredded..
Or how about the government step up and do its job looking into persecuting these groups? Facebook is not a government, they can't and should not police/persecute people. Are you going to shutdown car manufacturers because a psycho used his car to plow though bystanders on a bus stop?
Everything facebook has been asked to do is utterly futile. Sure, they can remove a post or two but the person making those posts still runs free.
Fabeook is a victim of their popularity. Because of their size they're easy to blame for pre-existing problems government neglected for too long. Government just doesn't want to deal with any of that for real and so will just throw an angry finger at FB and shift blame.
Part of their problem is that they don't seem to have a clear definition for hate speech... or at least not one that is public and that their entire user base can understand and accept. And for the same reasons, it's impossible to police using AI. If they really believe they need to censor wrong-think globally, they'll need to hire and train hundreds of thousands of people (at least). And even then they will fail to solve the problem in a way that keeps everyone happy.
From what a friend (who is one of those "third party content moderators") says, they don't have a clear definition for anything, even for their own moderators.
208 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 308 ms ] threadThis is true of both sides, they each truly believe the other side is a real danger. And both sides will say the other side is the real problem and I’m both siding something that is obviously one sided.
I cross the divide and have emphatically, honestly, without any irony been called an evil socialist by one and nazi authoritarian by the other.
Neither side is wrong to be afraid of the other doing these things.
The truth is very much in the middle.
I don’t know though, this was in a WhatsApp group, I remember seeing the conversation about something she said but idk if this was it
Neither side really instances the other side and many buy into the headline narrative that the other half aee basically all extremist nutjobs.
That is the divide.
Why was election integrity highly questionable in 2016 (Russia, etc.), but not in 2020 after 4 years of Trump? Did something change in those 4 years to make election integrity unquestionable? In fact, election integrity is so unquestionable in 2020 that all the big tech companies are banding together to censor anything that questions election integrity.
If you identify with the right:
If there is a massive conspiracy to change the outcome of the election, why are not more whistleblowers coming forward? How was it coordinated across states?
The truth is that questionable things probably did happen in the 2020 election. The left needs to acknowledge this. The truth is that there isn't enough evidence that these questionable things probably didn't change the outcome of the election. The right needs to acknowledge this. Both sides need to agree on how to improve the 2024 election.
NO ONE claimed that the vote was illegitimate. NO ONE claimed that the ballot boxes had been stuffed. The 2016 vote was much closer than 2020 and still the party that lost accepted the result and even if they mumbled about 'not my President' there was no one claiming that the election was stolen.
Please stop with the bullshit both-sides claims, it is pathetic.
more like shouted it at the top of their lungs for 4 years straight
> I would love for you to provide citations and references for your claims that people questioned the validity of the 2016 election
> there was no one claiming that the election was stolen.
I mean, I lived the 2016 election I remember the response of my left leaning friends, and some of them absolutely believed the election was rigged. Some quick googling can dig up lots of articles from 2016:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/hillary-clinton-sugg...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2016/12/16/t...
https://www.lwv.org/newsroom/press-releases/2016-presidentia...
They do contain claims of voter suppression, which I'll note continue to be made by those on the left this year (and in 2018 and in pretty much every election, disenfranchisement is an ongoing concern on the left).
Weak sauce. No wonder no one has any respect for so-called conservatives. They are the most fragile of snowflakes and seem to need to live in their own little safe space.
A 2018 YouGov poll said that 66% of democrats polled believe the claim that Russia tampered with vote tallies on Election Day to help the President.
> https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
The mainstream claim by the right in 2020 is that there was widespread voter or election fraud (e.g. people voting multiple times, or people's votes being changed or vote counters not counting votes for a candidate).
There's a reasonable amount of evidence to support the assertions in 2016, including official government sources. There's reasonable amounts of evidence to conclude that many of the same tactics in 2016 were tried in 2020, including official government statements, but may have been less effective (due to awareness by the government, and policy changes by companies like Facebook and Google), and a lack of things like the DNC hack to make a big splash.
There's was no evidence of widespread voter or election fraud in 2016 or in 2020.
You removed the words "system of" which changes the phrase from a democratic to a nationalistic one. Blind support for the government isn't healthy for a democracy.
Someone that questions immigration laws isn't necessarily a white supremacist for example, but that narrative isn't as interesting (doesn't sell as much advertising) as the white supremacist one.
One faction actively did everything they could to undermine an election through fraud and impropriety, everyone else didn’t.
That is the divide.
This is what gp is talking about, both sides believing they are righteously just while they consume media in their bubbles.
On partisanship: "The extremist-related murders of 2019 [in the US] were overwhelmingly (90%) linked to right-wing extremists. All but one of the incidents had ties to right-wing extremism...Almost all of the 2019 extremist-related murders were committed by white supremacists"
On weapons: "In the past 10 years, 315 of the 435 people (72%) killed in the U.S. by domestic extremists were shot to death."
Source: ADL Report on Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2019 (https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2019)
I don't see an equivalancy with "find problem people and lock them up", which inherently implies judicial process, and the other side, with Trump saying:
"After repeatedly being interrupted by protesters at a campaign rally in Miami, Trump warned he’ll “be a little more violent” next time when addressing protesters. “See the first group, I was nice. ‘Oh, take your time.’ The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I’ll be a little more violent. And the fourth group, I’ll say get the hell out of here!”"
"Trump told Fox News the next day, “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”"
"“If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. Just knock the hell out of them. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. There won’t be so much of them because the courts agree with us,” he said."
That's the problem. The only tampering that seems obvious to me is the years-long efforts to limit voting rights, and at the moment the desperate attempts to invalidate mail-in ballots.
We can't agree on basic facts; how can we agree on remediations?
This election was roughly the same as any other us election in terms of fairness and all the rest. Probably better.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules, we'd be grateful.
A few months ago I had a few friends of either political persuasion telling me there would be a revolution or coup the day after the election. That didn't happen, and I think most are starting to realize it won't happen. By this time next year, when Biden's presidency is well underway, I think many of the people feeling very concerned today will feel foolish in retrospect.
Walk through towns & small cities in Indiana, Kansas, Florida, Alabama. In a lot of these places the sky is falling, there are few jobs & high rates of opiate abuse. There isn’t much of a social safety net. Unfortunately many of these people vote against their own financial interests, and honestly the democrats also aren’t addressing the roots of inequality sufficiently. The United States is basically divided between those of us who are doing well and those of us for whom the sky is at least looking brittle. That’s the issue putting pressure on society today.
The second half is probably true, the first half is less clearly so. On the actual cusp of the actual civil war, the overwhelming majority of Americans weren’t itching to kill each other and most just wanted things to return to normal. Of course, there were broad camps with radically different views as to the barriers to normalcy and considerable propaganda effort expended to nurture some of those views by people who had already come to the conclusion that a fight was, if not desirable, a necessary risk to secure their political goals.
(Also broadly true of the Revolutionary War, for that matter, and, really, most other internal and international armed conflicts in history.)
I get so tired of this poorly reasoned idea that continues to be spouted from the left as if it is gospel, and that the "rubes" are just not as enlightened as some journalist in New York or a javascript dev in Mountain View.
How exactly would voting for someone like Biden help the average working class voter in middle America?
* Tons more quota / diversity based help that will re-distribute the already small amount of aid to people who are NOT them.
* Medicare for all and similar schemas: Ask them how Obamacare has worked out. It's likely they now can't even use any health services since they're still paying premiums, but now have a $7K deductible for their family of four.
* Shoveling money from the right's corporate masters to the left's friends in the public unions, legal industry, big tech, etc. is not a net gain for these voters.
* Increased immigration and globalization that may very well increase the economy as a whole, but certainly won't be trickling the wealth down to them.
* changes in the tax code that may raise or lower rates by a few points here and there, but have absolutely no effect on average working class voters who don't pay much in federal taxes anyway.
* Green energy initiatives that will allow rich people who can afford it to virtue signal, but will raise the prices of gas, heating, electricity, etc. for everyone else.
Please let me know which actual policy changes that Biden and Co. can and will implement that would help these voters, but who are just too dumb to realize?
Just 126 congressmen and what is it now, 17 Republican Attorney Generals demanding the Supreme court vacate the election and hand it to the lame duck president?
https://www.thoughtco.com/hitlers-rise-to-power-timeline-122...
And the more boring path:
https://www.softschools.com/viewTimeline.action?id=207
> We have a very good idea which actors in the US drive the largest volumes of this kind of content. In the last 14 days, the 10 pages responsible for the largest concentrated volume of likely violating Hate Speech comments have been:
Breitbart
Fox News
The Daily Caller
USA Patriots for Donald Trump
Donald Trump for President
Donald J. Trump
Ben Shapiro
Conservative Tribune by WJ
US Chronicle
The Western Journal
These pages, and a few perennial others that didn’t happen to make the top 10 in the last two weeks, but that you can find by browsing the dashboard, are filling our platform with violent and hateful content at a rate and concentration that is simply overwhelming…
My only issue is that it's become impossible to even talk about your opinions without being given a label. How does anyone grow in this environment?
Invite debate, look for commonality and move forward.
I've heard this argument often.
What I'm about to say is not directed at you personally but your argument.
Maybe you, general you, are the one who needs to grow. It's possible that your knowledge of the subject is dated, judgement clouded by any number of things, that you underestimate the severity of the problem, that you're conflating a dislike of a person, movement, idea with groups of people, or other things.
I say this because most of the time when people make this comment they follow it up or precede it with some very questionable statements. Generally these inappropriate statements are rooted in ignorance of the topic though sometimes your argument is used in bad faith to justify hateful or discriminatory ideals, speech, and action.
Again, I'm not suggesting anything against you idrios, merely adding my experience with this argument.
You are right, the "at least hear me out" argument is often used as defense to say something very questionable. The reason I phrased it that way though is because I am very close to one person who is as far right leaning as you could expect any reasonable person to be, and very close to another who is as far left as possible. I'm kind of forced to be in the middle if I want to maintain both of these relationships.
So to myself, I was using those 2 people as stand-ins for everyone else who might share their views. Both are very smart, both have very strong opinions that have been reached through a longstanding evolution of very small differences core values, and both are so deeply vested in their views that they wouldn't even be able to talk to each other.
So my comment was an appeal to anyone who feels that way about the other side, because I see no other way to fix the extreme polarization of ideals in the US.
But I'm not 100% left. I'm not for socialized healthcare -- I worry about doctor visits becoming like the DMV (though even that would be an improvement to what we have now) and I worry about hospitals charging whatever they can because it's on the government's paycheck (even if that is an improvement to them doing it because it's on the insurer's paycheck) -- because I think there are better fixes to healthcare that don't require it being provided by the government.
On a more meta-level, I think there are far more political ideologies than just left and right, that progressive democrats have forced themselves to align with establishment democrats, as how Christian conservatives have forced themselves to align with anti-establishment conservatives (there might be a better label for it). So in that light it's ridiculous to me how, say, a progressive democrat can denounce a Christian conservative while supporting an establishment democrat when they have nearly as little in common with both.
Also, thank you for asking me this outright. Nobody on the internet ever has. What do you believe?
We probably agree on a lot of politics. I do believe in a national healthcare system (socialized medicine?), because our current approach is so unjust, and because I fundamentally believe that a democratic government is the tool that people use to collectively better themselves. I also believe in free higher education for the same reason. I think both would pay for themselves.
That said, I know actually doing those things (especially healthcare) in the U.S. would be quite tricky and that the practical implementation of something matters as much as what should ideally be.
In general I believe in intellectual honesty, integrity in public services, treating everyone with the same level of respect, and that people generally do better when they work together. Which is why I think the Trump Administration and the current crop of Republicans enabling him (note that I'm not saying all!) are such pieces of shit. I didn’t used to be so crude but at some point you have to make clear what’s not acceptable in the kind of society I believe in.
I'm also a huge fan of the arts, the liberal arts, and so a big believer in freedom of expression.
So I can be a bit of a political idealist. At the same time I've read a lot of history and think I understand that the world is a rough place and that people in power often have to make shitty choices between bad and worse.
TBH I think one of the biggest positive changes, both in this country and in the world, could be in the field of mental health. Consider how revolutionary modern medicine has been in terms of the physical health of the individual and all the positive good and realization of human potential that has come from that.
Mental health is (at least in Western science) still a very young field and only beginning to be socially accepted. Also consider just how much damage a troubled individual - especially someone in a position of power - can do. Even just a shitty manager can really fuck up other people's lives.
We also have to acknowledge that no one can have good mental health when they have constant economic insecurity, or lack a way to meaningfully contribute to their community/to society.
I believe that if we keep fucking over our planet, it's gonna be real shitty for the human race. Pollution plays a big role in mental health as well (nature is actually critical for good mental health, plus pollution causes myriad physical and mental health issues in the population).
So I tend to be a pretty strong critic of capitalism as it is today, and how it just makes things like polluting the environment "externalities". I see markets as a financial tool and not inherently good or bad (and definitely not magical!), and, I think regulated capitalism can have it's role, but, the system we see today sucks. The national and global wealth disparity as it exists today is unjust, unethical, and, even if it's legal, criminal. It's shameful that the richest country in the world is so poor (poor civic infrastructure, poor citizens, poor quality of life, etc).
That said , while there are so many positive reforms we can make, I don't know what's out there to replace capitalism as a whole. We've yet to see some other sort of economic system really be tried (I don't count the USSR and most 'socialist' countries; tbh most of those governments were fucked up or, undermined by the US). So who knows what a better system is.
I do like the United States; what I like about it is that criticizing it is part of our civic duty.
Lastly I believe people really don't like to be uncomfortable, or change, or question themselves, which is why we see so much resistance to acknwoledging things like the patriarchy or white supremacy; no one likes to think that maybe their own friends, family, or themselves, have behaved in ways which have been harmful to other people. No one likes to question the unspoken ass...
It seems to me that many lack the nuance and human experience to understand different people. It's the mindset of the raging homophobes that get caught with same sex partner(s). If you want to look to see how to deal with that issue in particular then look to media created by the people who've lived these experiences.
What's helped me the most is putting myself in uncomfortable situations and finding ways to cope. Don't like LGBTQIA+? Go to a gay bar, talk to the people there. Maybe find a way to get Fox to air humanizing stories about MPoCs, LGBTQIA+, abortion, addicts, and poor people.
It's harder to be close minded in typically blue urban areas where you'll regularly be confronted with norm defying people from all classes, colors, religions, and orientations. So the best way would be to find ways to bring these groups to the same haunts without them even knowing they're being funneled.
That's the problem. This is why inclusive laws are so important. We don't have many now, and they're under constant threat.
People in the democratic party are beginning to come to terms with the fact they've had a cancerous brand issue since Bill Clinton, which Hillary further damaged. I don't know what to say of the Republican party who've fallen into lockstep with trumps criminal behavior.
Either we live in a country with laws and punishments for the criminals or we don't. Trump's made it unequivocally clear, on the world stage, that our law enforcement is prohibited from doing much besides abuse the human rights of immigrants (to his bases celebrations no less), round up junkies or put the occasional symbolic head on a spike. In a situation like this I don't believe it's going to be rational discourse that solves these problems. While I'd love to sit down and have rational conversations about politics with people from the other side, I'm afraid that many people are incapable of admitting that they're wrong, at least not before they've tried everything else. It's a movie trope and a saying for a reason.
I personally don't attribute myself to either side, nor did I vote for either. However...
I've seen rioting (been caught up in one and feared for my safety), noticed stuff being blocked by the left (1st amendment), going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment), and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives.
What exactly are the conservatives doing? I don't see anything necessarily being blocked / attacked? Am I missing something?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
Literally armed people swarming government buildings to protest masks, bomb threats and plans, kidnapping.
https://www.reddit.com/r/InsaneParler/
gives more insights.
Washington?
You have Matt Shea, an elected Republican:
"In late October 2018, Shea acknowledged that he had distributed a document described as a "four-page manifesto" titled Biblical Basis for War that listed strategies that a "Holy Army" could employ. The document, consisting of 14 sections divided into bullet points, had a section on "rules of war" that stated "make an offer of peace before declaring war", which within stated that the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males"."
"In April 2019, The Guardian published records from a right-wing chat group of four people that Shea participated in, where Shea used an alias of ‘True Warrior’ in Latin. Other members in the chat group discussed carrying out surveillance, intimidation and violent attacks on political enemies, including Antifa activists and "communists." Shea himself volunteered to conduct background checks on residents of Spokane, resulting in Shea naming three individuals. One of the chat group's members forwarded the information to The Guardian, while another confirmed the existence of the chats and acknowledged the discussion on conducting surveillance on "Antifa" people."
"An investigation commissioned by Washington House of Representatives reported, on December 1, 2019, that Shea had planned and participated in domestic terrorism on at least three occasions. This included his participation, organizing, planning, and promotion of the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada, the 2015 armed standoff in Priest River, Idaho, and the 2016 armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. Shea led a delegation of right-wing legislators from Oregon, Washington and Idaho that met with law enforcement on January 9, 2016, in Burns, Oregon and were appraised of confidential intended law enforcement strategies for dealing with the refuge occupiers. Shea then disclosed those details to Bundy, according to the report."
That being said, the right appears to be concerned about all their constitutional rights taken away. To me, that seems far more of a direct and far larger attack on millions of people than these random domestic terrorists.
> [Matt Shea], A Republican, he represents the 4th Legislative District in the Washington House of Representatives.
> None of those are the government, sure there are radical citizens (domestic terrorists), admittedly. Everyone universally thinks this is bad. ...
Is someone who is part of a state legislature not part of some level of government?
You can be concerned about something without it being a legitimate threat. The right was concerned about Obama "coming for the guns", and before that, with Clinton "coming for your guns". Yet Obama got an "F" rating for his efforts in "controlling guns" from the gun control/reform lobby.
Theorizing that Operation Jade Helm was an effort to repeal the Second Amendment by force doesn't make it so, and elements of the right can be concerned by it all they like, it just doesn't make it something the left is responsible for.
“Radical citizens (domestic terrorists)” and “the government” are overlapping groups. For instance, most people would agree that armed public law enforcement agencies are very much “the government”, but:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-suprem...
That feels less scary to me than watching hundreds of people descend on my neighborhood or a nearby neighborhood and set it alight or otherwise destroy it followed by the media and cultural elites (never mind colleagues, bosses, etc) tacitly approving of the violence (if not outright celebrating it--memorably a former ESPN reporter tweeted "Burn it all down!" and then when the violence approached his own neighborhood, "Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood"). This isn't to invalidate anyone's fear of right-wing violence; we all have different experiences and perspectives; I'm only sharing mine.
Note that we don't have to choose between left and right wing violence. We can and should condemn all kinds of political violence--indeed, it seems like every spike in the popularity of right-wing identity politics lags some much larger spike in left-wing identity politics, and every spike in right wing violence follows some spike in left wing violence and so on (e.g., you don't have proud boys without antifa). If I'm right, then it's kind of good news, because it means we can curb right wing violence and extremism simply by holding the left to the same standard.
They ARE trying to remove abortion, in many states including no exemption for rape/incest/threat to mother's life.
You have militia groups patrolling the southern border.
> the enemy must "surrender on terms" of no abortions, no same-sex marriage, no communism and "must obey Biblical law", then continued: "If they do not yield — kill all males".
My concern is more at the government level - are there any threats from conservative republicans in office?
From the rights perspective, it appears they are concerned about a lot of amendment issues; which seem far larger than the isolated incidents of domestic terrorists.
I also recommend searching for "proud boys arrested". You'll get plenty of news articles about many of their members being arrested for assault, violent threats, and attempted murder.
Much of the rioting has been conducted/instigated by right-wing provocateurs (several specific ones have been identified), and much of the most severe lawless violence independent of origin of violence-in-general has been conducted by organized right-wing groups with the tacit, and sometimes active, collaboration of law enforcement (the police giving praise, thanks, and supplies to right-wing armed vigilantes, including Rittenhouse, just prior to the shooting he did — and doing so when they were out after curfew — while then turning around and publicly blaming Rittenhouse’s victims for being out after curfew is a fairly graphic illustration of this trend; as is the Trump Administration directive to DHS personnel on talking points supporting Rittenhouse after the incident.)
As for Rittenhouse's "victims", by all appearances Rittenhouse was acting in self defense--maybe he was instigating the conflicts before the cameras started filming, but there's no evidence to support that; on the other hand, the footage does show Rittenhouse being chased and physically attacked before firing. I'm inclined toward the presumption of innocence, but I also understand that this is very controversial.
Like? (And before you answer, remember that the 1st amendment applies to businesses, too.)
> going after firearm ownership (2nd amendment)
When has either political party "gone after firearm ownership" in any way?
> and a constant attack on all conservatives & their ideals / objectives
That's because their ideals include: - Take away other people's basic rights - Enforce their version of Christianity on everyone - Encourage murder and vigilantism - Overthrow the government
Keep up the charitable liberalism I say.
For example, I actually think that anyone who doesn't believe that the election was legitimate - i.e. that no meaningful fraud occurred - should be banned from the HN community.
Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant.
Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda. They're uninterested and in fact dismissive of real, actual evidence and facts as examined in multiple court cases - and they refuse to accept the validity of the outcomes of those cases.
They wish to overturn the legitimate outcome of the Presidential election. Full stop.
They act exactly like those crypto-racists who know that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards.
I don't see anything remotely equivalent to this happening on the other side of the fence at this time.
I've never seen anything like this in the United States and enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square, because it's gone so far that anything other than a total rejection ends up functioning as an implicit legitimization because the claims are so untrue, shocking, and destructive.
By allowing the lie of election fraud to be presented as just another thing to be discussed on HN, HN is enabling those people and their cause, which is to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
And I think it's unfortunate and wrong that I probably have a better chance of being banned from HN for this comment, than someone who is obviously attempting to undermine people's belief in the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election, which is to say, undermine small-d democracy in the U.S. and advocate for an authoritarian, one-party state.
Which is literally what they're doing. And no, the Democrats or anyone else on the Left are not doing anything remotely equivalent to that right now.
https://theconversation.com/why-hard-core-trump-supporters-i...
If he's such a great leader and not just an opportunist populist, why do he need to instill a fear-culture where everybody who doesn't lick his boots get fired. People appointed by the same leader dare not speak up their own opinions. This isn't democracy. What type of leader do this? Hint: Communist leaders like Stalin, and fascist leaders like Mussolini.
If you're unable to spot a liar yourself, it is not too hard to form your own opinion on this:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trump...
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-complete-listing-so-...
https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-101-lies-hank-berrien
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+lies+list
Fortunately, a majority of the population see right through the lack of leadership and lies for what they truly are. The means are as important as the ends, and the ends are often obscured and full of misdirection, more like PR campaigns than anything of real and lasting value.
What seems to be true of "both sides" is that both see their enemies as people who are set on their destruction and thereby justify "by whatever means necessary" thinking.
I too am one of those people thought a pinko socialist by some and a revanchist caveman by others.
a) Any irregularities are too small to effect the outcome
b) Most serious biases in the process are pro republican
It's not.
People telling you that this time it's going to be a war or coup are trying to scare you. In retrospect, you will probably laugh at trump for being such a pathetically poor loser, and laugh at yourself for worrying about it.
I’m a big fan of conservative thinkers like Milton Friedman and George Will. I’m against the left’s attack on free speech and find their obsession with identity, at best, perplexing. I prefer isolationist foreign policy and less military involvement from the US. I’m originally from a conservative area and have many conservative relatives I know to be good people.
And yet I cannot conceive of how anyone could support Trump or the boot licking republicans who enable him. He is incapable of telling the truth. He does not seem to believe in reality, science, or expertise of any kind. He does not believe in rule of law. He is an authoritarian and egomaniac. Even before the election he challenged the idea of a peaceful transition of power. How is this supportable?
Edit: And to be clear I get that we live in a two-party country and that a vote for a candidate is not a wholesale endorsement. You look at the options you have and choose the "lesser of the evils," as it were. Hell, I would vote for Trump if the other candidate was Stalin.
Edit Edit: I know it’s bad form to make political rants like this on HN. I had a moment of weakness :/
Trump also tried very hard to make good on his campaign promises. Can you imagine opening an embassy in Jerusalem under Hillary? I can't, and my conservative relatives love that he did that and that he stands up to China and acknowledged Taiwan's president. They also love that he fights back against identity politics (removing requirement for forced diversity trainings, etc). In short, from their perspective he goes to bat on a lot of their grievances.
So yeah, his Twitter is a dumpster fire, but half his voter base doesn't even see it because they don't use twitter.
It’s perplexing to me that if what you say you believe is what you believe why a politician being a liar is a problem for you.
All politicians lie, none as brazenly as Trump sure; but every single one of them has been caught lying in the last 9 months, many have been pretty brazen in their hypocrisy.
My many conservative friends will point to 1000s of small white lies and 100s of big ones that Biden told, as proof that the other side is just as complicit.
Our political institutions like elections, the courts, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Reserve are built mostly on norms that took decades and sometime centuries to build up. He seems ready to throw them all out.
Yeah, yeah, I know Facebook is a "private entity, and they can do what they want with their platform", spare me. Facebook is a social media monopoly. We need to protect free speech on these "private" monolith social media platforms before it's too late.
Is it as popular? No. Maybe that's because their perspective is less popular. You don't have the right to an audience to your speech and it's not suppression to choose not to use my [or Facebook] resources to amplify your words, nor is it my problem that your platform doesn't have the same audience and reach.
Uhhh... no, banning lies and hate speech is not "political censorship". That implies that lies and hate speech are legitimate political views.
I feel like its people trying to deal with the discord of this new breed of politicians that brazenly lie so often that its impossible to know what's real anymore.
Politicians used to be masters of selective information and leaving key information out while still not technically lying. Now they say whatever the fuck they want with scant attention to reality and facts. That's what's causing this IMO because the amount of attention they receive means that they strongly impact the narrative.
As a non-US example; Boris Johnson yesterday stated that it was "very likely" that Britain will leave the EU without a deal, despite coming to power on an election campaign where he stated he had "an oven ready deal with the EU". If you were taking the British government's word at faith then yesterday's statement would have been a massive shock to you because for four years no government minister has stated that this outcome will happen.
I'm expecting at some point for global warming argumentation to be banned on social media.
We need to protect free speech.
Protecting private power is anti-democratic. Where it suits Facebook they control speech on their platform.
Believing Zuckerberg to be beyond the reach of mortal emotions such as avarice and being willfully ignorant is dangerous.
Technical people can conjure a replacement anytime. Facebook is ultimately just a legal ownership construct.
There are number of solutions available. I use k8s + kilo hosted privately on Rpi sent to friend and family. Look, free software and speech!
SV is has been mesmerizing the world with big data tricks. To be certain, there are very important uses for that in science and engineering.
Most of social media though is nothing special.
I learn more emailing academics than I do ogling Instagram models, and zoning out to COD soldiers on Twitch.
You have no free speech on private platforms. All platforms have content moderation or else they'd have a 100 to 1 ratio of spam to real posts.
Too late for what exactly?
The solution is not taking away legitimate rights from someone else, it's taking control back from them.
Claiming that Facebook or Twitter deleting someone's content is censorship because you have a right for your speech to have a huge reach would mean that there was no free speech anytime in history, except for a brief period of time when social media appeared before they started "censoring"
A small number of data scientists discovering a sense of morality (after cashing a few very large paychecks) doesn't feel like the tidal wave of employee dissent that many people are waiting for.
Put a 5 year hiring freeze on any Facebook engineers that still work there after 2021.
If you're willing to sacrifice your ethics to work for a company that cheats and spies on folks, you can't be trusted with our company's product or culture.
It doesn't even have to be strict or real. You can say you waive it for candidates that publicly renounce Facebook's practices. You don't really need to check, just send a message that you don't tolerate Facebook's behavior.
Reverse Brian Armstrong.
edit: flagged? I think this is seriously worth discussing. We choose the world we build and live in.
The last useful thing I can recall seeing was a day-after-thanksgiving virtual friends meetup invitation. Events are the only reason I haven't bailed completely, and it seems the reason that this feature remains sticky is that lots of people don't want to bother to maintain email address books anymore.
WhatsApp is still ad free, let's hope it stays that way (and if not, that people migrate away).
Now I'm not denying that they're out there. They must be. But 1/1000 seems like a pretty high estimate. There are sooo many pictures of cats and grandkids and that cake someone just made.
It just seems like a pretty puffed up stat compared to my experience. I'm not saying it's zero. I'm just saying that there is plenty of inoffensive stuff too and it tends to drown out the ratio.
The "hate speech" thing I think is really poorly defined; at the end of the day I think they're mad about Trump supporters and other deplorables having the audacity to say certain things. There's plenty of what they would refer to as "hate speech" on Twitter, but none of them seem to think Twitter is embarrassing to work for because it put a little "i" icon on Trump's tweets. All of this just seems farcical to me.
Facebook is a useless time sink in the west its essential for shopping and socialising when you're in third world countries though.
Now as is brought up every time there is a complaint that tech companies are violating the first amendment, these are private companies and can control what is posted and what it shows. So, if Facebook decides they want to allow these posts in the name of free speech, it is their right as a private company.
Frankly, I am glad that people who believe that we should have more censorship are leaving their positions of influence at Facebook.
Facebook's anything goes type behavior and litany of various bad choices has been there for a long long time. I'm kinda wondering what exactly pushed these folks to quit?
At the risk of sounding sarcastic, but with some anecdotal insider information for some of this cases, what crossed the line is they became independently wealthy or got a competing offer from a rival company. It's easier to "wake up" if you are waking up in a cozy bed to a nice breakfast.
A nice cozy breakfast is table stakes. I want to make a difference in a good way; I'm sure these folks leaving are no different.
Maybe they need to double down on "real names". To post to more than your personal friends, you need a Real ID or your national equivalent.
I'm happier. I have more time. I have less adversarial interactions and stress in my thoughts.
At first I wondered how I could do this, since it would mean losing contact with friends. But a surprising number of friends contacted me via messenger to ask how I'm doing, and now we just interact one to one, like in the old days.
I find the interaction I get on HN far more satisfying and challenging than FB. The HN guidelines make it so.
It's not rocket science.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
With guidelines like these, and a community mod system that works, there is no need for sisyphean AI or data scientists.
What concerns me for the future is that HN is dependent for its discussions on the existence of independent journalism to provide the articles on which the HN community comments. If the economic and political trends that gave FB its power continue, what will HN readers have left to discuss? Tech news? That might not be enough.
I understand why HN excludes political discussion, and that makes sense in isolation. But outside of HN, this article about FB highlights that quality civics requires informed, civil discourse. How is that going to happen?
As you mentioned the rules and moderation is key to civil discussion. HN has it, FB does not.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
I hear what you're saying, but you stopped using Facebook's feed feature and now you only use the Messenger feature. I know this seems a bit pedantic, but you didn't stop using Facebook.
I stopped all exposure to FB content except dm via the messenger app.
Google and Facebook on the other hand... Completely different relationship where services are exchanged for the sale of my personal details.
In the mean time, media reigns free into radicalizing the population into different-opinion camps, psychopath televangelists can zombify millions and get good profit from the ads. But no, Facebook alone is a threat to democracy.
Shut down Facebook if they can't stop violent organizations from flourishing on their platform.
Tax church's and find a way to make these psychotic televangelists illegal, maybe the irs can get them for tax evasion?
All these problems boil down to money. If Facebook acts against these radical groups without a court order their Republican investors and shareholders will flee en masse. A federal order is unlikely due to Trump's appointments and lack of precedent or law. A new law is unlikely because Mitch McConnell would sooner die of covid19 then let the democrats score a win, or make Republican social media wetwork harder in the future. McConnell is a founding father of the modern problems with money in Congress and he's been boosting about it for decades.
So, to sum it up. Mark is choosing to not do anything and keep profiting off of this shit because he has the legal cover to do so from Trump down. Trump just wants to kill platforms that aren't for him, just like he wants all democrat votes shredded..
Everything facebook has been asked to do is utterly futile. Sure, they can remove a post or two but the person making those posts still runs free.
Fabeook is a victim of their popularity. Because of their size they're easy to blame for pre-existing problems government neglected for too long. Government just doesn't want to deal with any of that for real and so will just throw an angry finger at FB and shift blame.