It's not really worth citing a duplicate post unless there's an interesting discussion attached. I know it's annoying to be first with something and not have it recognized, as it happens a lot. But if it's important for you to get eyes on something, consider the time of day when posting, and what else is trending that day, eg if there's a huge story dominating the front page you might want to wait a day to post.
That's not the rule—if we were that strict about reposts, a huge number of good submissions would end up getting zero attention because the first time they got posted was a swing and a miss. There's too much randomness in what gets liftoff from /newest for that to work. We want good stories to get multiple cracks at the bat.
This is in the FAQ: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates." By that rule, the OP is not a dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
The ontopicness question is orthogonal of course. Politics per se is not off topic here—some political overlap is both ok and inevitable: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The main question is whether the post is intellectually interesting or not. I think this one counts. Historical material is generally welcome on HN, and this particular angle hasn't had a lot of discussion.
You're right that we don't want race flamewar, political flamewar, or other flamewar. That means there's an extra burden on commenters to stick to the site guidelines when the topic touches on such flammables. This guideline, for example:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
interesting because I've seen the exact same scenario play out before: someone posts a submission that previously had low amount of upvotes but it was still flagged as a dupe and subsequently forgotten.
so with the precedent, what exactly is your criteria & process for determining whether a submission is dupe or not? It seems rather subjective.
Also with the overwhelming amount of political submissions on HN lately, its leading to a fatigue and polarization of "right" and "wrong" views expressed through downvotes which is essentially censorship from a non-centrist mindset-which ever bias is present at the time of the submission in the absence of moderation prevails.
I'd have to see specific examples. It's most likely that there was another version of the story that had gotten significant attention. It's also possible that some software made a bad call.
Let's not go into political battle about this here. It's clear that the topic touches on race and politics—that's obvious, and also superficial, and we needn't litigate it.
anigbrowl is right. I'm sorry—I know it sucks to be the first to post a submission and then see a repost 'win'. It's on our list to fix that by sharing credit and karma across multiple submitters. We'll get there someday.
In the meantime, the lottery at least evens out if you submit lots of good stories.
It is mentioned towards the end of the article but it's important to note that the revelations of the FBI's campaign of surveillance, harassment and murder of black leaders wasn't the result of voluntarily disclosure but instead the result of activists physically seizing records 1970s (the Church Committee investigations and the Freedom Of Information Act came later).
The most notable one that comes to mind is Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers [1].
It was a common part of the COINTELPRO playbook [2].
> The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.[15][69][73] Before the death of Hampton, long-term infiltrator, William O'Neal, shared floor plans of his apartment with the COINTELPRO team. He then gave Hampton a dose of secobarbital that rendered Hampton unconscious during the raid on his home.[46]
They might not have planned to execute the murder themselves (though I'm not so sure about that), but the deaths of black leaders was certainly one of the goals, or at least a very welcome side effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
try saying "where can I read more about this topic" if you are interested in the topic, instead of "source?"
since "source?" has come to mean an adversarial relationship even if you aren't trying to discredit the person that had not left a source yet. it commonly appears where someone's worldview is not the same and is not willing to accept new information whether a source was provided later or not.
for now "source?" means "I'm not interested in what you have to say and will waste your time"
and "where can I read more about this topic" means "please provide canonical sources so I can learn more", ironically
It's the most effective way of getting a response, though. For the same reason that saying "Linux can't even support dual monitors" is way more effective to get you assistance than "I've tried using these xrandr commands but can't get dual monitors working on Ubuntu. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?".
It's an ecosystem problem. You can't fix it by telling individuals to change. For my part, I don't answer these questions until someone has done some research of their own.
> try saying "where can I read more about this topic"
Very polite, but also much more ambiguous. Instead getting a reference backing up the claims, you could get a reading list recommendation on black-white relations in the US.
If you do anything on Wikipedia you are bound to quickly run into people who want to use their superior knowledge of the Wikipedia rules to remove your contributions. It’s a highly effective way to promote your own point of view because most contributors will just say ‘whatever’ and give up.
This tactic of course starts with the demand for sources; a very large amount of the statements in Wikipedia articles do not come with sources (which doesn’t mean the do or don’t exist) so it’s easy to sway the tone of the articles by selectively demanding sources for, and subsequently removing the parts that don’t fit your point of view.
> From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-pound (0.5 kg) bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices"[1]) made of FBI-supplied Tovex, a dynamite substitute, targeting a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house.[5]
Does it mean that because black and democrat people do it too that its "more justified" because all combinations of people in power find reasons to use force against us residents including disportionately against the black ones, or that because they do it too its not a problem worth paying attention to because state violence perpetuated by non-black people could therefore not be a prejudiced, or something else? if it was a general issue with the state apparatus the race/ethnicity/political affiliation of the perpetrator would not be useful or relevant at all.
I've never really understood which point people thought they were making (assuming you were making one at all, it just looks like the similar points made in other discussion forums. like "look black people are killing each other so why spend any energy on this other issue I don't want you to spend energy on!")
The question is cause and effect. Terrible things happen for a variety of reasons - sometimes because leaders want terrible things and sometimes because leaders want good things but are fools - I won't try to list every possible reason.
The notion here is that a black mayor probably didn't want bad things to happen to blacks, so this specific incident probably was caused more by mistakes than malice on his part. Further, blacks and whites probably makes mistakes at similar rates. So, some incidents with white mayors may have also been caused my mistakes, not malice, we've now agreed there's a baseline level of mistake making.
The point is, intent matters. If Joe Biden passed the 94 crime bill because he hates blacks, that's different that Joe Biden passing the 94 crime bill because he thought it would do good, and turning out to be incorrect.
Fwiw, I've never understood how anybody could not get the point here. It's obvious, just incomplete and kinda hand wavy.
I mean, if "the FBI supplied high explosive for these people to bomb a civilian street" doesn't meet the bar then nothing is going to satisfy you, is it?
These sorts of things are like the bible before the printing press. The (metaphorical) clergy don't trust the laymen won't read it and draw incorrect conclusions like "this could happen to demographic groups I'm a part of maybe we need to reduce the scope of federal law enforcement."
The term "surveillance" is always used in headlines of articles about this phenomenon, but "sabotage" would be more descriptive of the full scope and purpose of the intelligence agencies' activities.
"The Oaklandside was launched with initial funding of $1.56 million from the Google News Initiative (GNI). This is the GNI’s third collaboration in its Local Experiments Project, which aims to develop new business, operational and product practices to create sustainable local news business models. Google has no input or influence on our editorial decisions."
I had not heard of GNI. How's that going?
Here in Australia Google is facing off with a conservative government that is assisting Murdoch with an extortion attempt (forcing Google to pay for linking and grabbing summaries from News Limited publications). Google's strategic response has been confused and ineffective, prompting commentators to suggest something possibly more like GNI would be a better destination for the dollars than Murdoch's pocket, since Murdoch's output isn't even predominantly news anymore - it is entertainment and ideology.
I'm slightly more suspicious now. Sounds like they want to seed nonprofit news sources that won't gang up and fight them for royalties, as in Europe or Australia.
But I read Oaklandside pretty much every day, and I can vouch for their coverage. Especially Natalie Orenstein's writing on the housing and homelessness beat. It's amazing they have a housing a homelessness beat.
Sounds like Oaklandside's editors are well intentioned.
How will they get funding to pay journalists' wages long term?
If they try to do it through advertising, they compete with Google. If they find a sustainable alternative method which can scale to support thousands of local news publications all over the world, they are Houdini.
The first half of the article paints the FBIs work against the civil rights movement as an anti-communist movement so fervent that it caught up the civil rights movement along with it.
I'm sad to see this accepted so uncritically, especially as the rest of the article belies it. The truth is that american leadership opposed the civil rights movement because it challenged their power and wealth. Communism is just the boogeyman used to justify surveillance and sabotage.
To your point, the FBI memo referenced in the article specifically differentiates the new counterintelligence program focused on civil rights groups from the pre-existing program focused on communist groups.
On the same topic is this post from a bit over a month ago. "Ex‐FBI operative says he worked to disrupt political activities up to '74 (1975)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25595897
60 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadI've also flagged this submission for being dupe and frankly HN shouldn't be used as a platform to push racially charged politics.
Nothing good is going to come out of it.
fairly sure it doesn't, but I'll email just to check.
mission accomplished
This is in the FAQ: "If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates." By that rule, the OP is not a dupe. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
The ontopicness question is orthogonal of course. Politics per se is not off topic here—some political overlap is both ok and inevitable: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The main question is whether the post is intellectually interesting or not. I think this one counts. Historical material is generally welcome on HN, and this particular angle hasn't had a lot of discussion.
You're right that we don't want race flamewar, political flamewar, or other flamewar. That means there's an extra burden on commenters to stick to the site guidelines when the topic touches on such flammables. This guideline, for example:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
so with the precedent, what exactly is your criteria & process for determining whether a submission is dupe or not? It seems rather subjective.
Also with the overwhelming amount of political submissions on HN lately, its leading to a fatigue and polarization of "right" and "wrong" views expressed through downvotes which is essentially censorship from a non-centrist mindset-which ever bias is present at the time of the submission in the absence of moderation prevails.
Surveillance is a staple topic of HN.
Can you explain how posting this article amounts to someone using "HN... as a platform to push racially charged politics"?
But I agree we don't need a political battle here. Thank you dang.
In the meantime, the lottery at least evens out if you submit lots of good stories.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...
Source?
It was a common part of the COINTELPRO playbook [2].
> The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.[15][69][73] Before the death of Hampton, long-term infiltrator, William O'Neal, shared floor plans of his apartment with the COINTELPRO team. He then gave Hampton a dose of secobarbital that rendered Hampton unconscious during the raid on his home.[46]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Part 6 of the "Evidence of Revision" documentary goes into a great amount of detail about the problems with the official narrative of MLK's assassination: https://archive.org/details/EvidenceOfRevision_201610/Eviden...
“Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential trouble-makers and neutralize them…”
I think I heard a shot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wauzrPn0cfg
try saying "where can I read more about this topic" if you are interested in the topic, instead of "source?"
since "source?" has come to mean an adversarial relationship even if you aren't trying to discredit the person that had not left a source yet. it commonly appears where someone's worldview is not the same and is not willing to accept new information whether a source was provided later or not.
for now "source?" means "I'm not interested in what you have to say and will waste your time"
and "where can I read more about this topic" means "please provide canonical sources so I can learn more", ironically
It's an ecosystem problem. You can't fix it by telling individuals to change. For my part, I don't answer these questions until someone has done some research of their own.
Very polite, but also much more ambiguous. Instead getting a reference backing up the claims, you could get a reading list recommendation on black-white relations in the US.
here you just made up a word and I dont know what it means, what does it mean to you?
That behavior is Wikilawyering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering
This tactic of course starts with the demand for sources; a very large amount of the statements in Wikipedia articles do not come with sources (which doesn’t mean the do or don’t exist) so it’s easy to sway the tone of the articles by selectively demanding sources for, and subsequently removing the parts that don’t fit your point of view.
> From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-pound (0.5 kg) bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices"[1]) made of FBI-supplied Tovex, a dynamite substitute, targeting a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof of the house.[5]
Do you have a source?
While taking responsibility, he always claimed he wasn't part of planning the specifics. FWIW I'm skeptical.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/10/when-i...
Although "black democrat" seems more relevant to some people than others and I'm not exactly sure why.
Does it mean that because black and democrat people do it too that its "more justified" because all combinations of people in power find reasons to use force against us residents including disportionately against the black ones, or that because they do it too its not a problem worth paying attention to because state violence perpetuated by non-black people could therefore not be a prejudiced, or something else? if it was a general issue with the state apparatus the race/ethnicity/political affiliation of the perpetrator would not be useful or relevant at all.
I've never really understood which point people thought they were making (assuming you were making one at all, it just looks like the similar points made in other discussion forums. like "look black people are killing each other so why spend any energy on this other issue I don't want you to spend energy on!")
The question is cause and effect. Terrible things happen for a variety of reasons - sometimes because leaders want terrible things and sometimes because leaders want good things but are fools - I won't try to list every possible reason.
The notion here is that a black mayor probably didn't want bad things to happen to blacks, so this specific incident probably was caused more by mistakes than malice on his part. Further, blacks and whites probably makes mistakes at similar rates. So, some incidents with white mayors may have also been caused my mistakes, not malice, we've now agreed there's a baseline level of mistake making.
The point is, intent matters. If Joe Biden passed the 94 crime bill because he hates blacks, that's different that Joe Biden passing the 94 crime bill because he thought it would do good, and turning out to be incorrect.
Fwiw, I've never understood how anybody could not get the point here. It's obvious, just incomplete and kinda hand wavy.
> It's obvious, just incomplete and kinda hand wavy.
So with it being incomplete and hand wavy you can’t see how anyone would assume any of my points either?
I’m going to wait for the person I initially replied to, to clarify
These sorts of things are like the bible before the printing press. The (metaphorical) clergy don't trust the laymen won't read it and draw incorrect conclusions like "this could happen to demographic groups I'm a part of maybe we need to reduce the scope of federal law enforcement."
I had not heard of GNI. How's that going?
Here in Australia Google is facing off with a conservative government that is assisting Murdoch with an extortion attempt (forcing Google to pay for linking and grabbing summaries from News Limited publications). Google's strategic response has been confused and ineffective, prompting commentators to suggest something possibly more like GNI would be a better destination for the dollars than Murdoch's pocket, since Murdoch's output isn't even predominantly news anymore - it is entertainment and ideology.
I'm slightly more suspicious now. Sounds like they want to seed nonprofit news sources that won't gang up and fight them for royalties, as in Europe or Australia.
But I read Oaklandside pretty much every day, and I can vouch for their coverage. Especially Natalie Orenstein's writing on the housing and homelessness beat. It's amazing they have a housing a homelessness beat.
How will they get funding to pay journalists' wages long term?
If they try to do it through advertising, they compete with Google. If they find a sustainable alternative method which can scale to support thousands of local news publications all over the world, they are Houdini.
I'm sad to see this accepted so uncritically, especially as the rest of the article belies it. The truth is that american leadership opposed the civil rights movement because it challenged their power and wealth. Communism is just the boogeyman used to justify surveillance and sabotage.
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/martin-luther-king-f...