Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?
Is he on a plane, isn't he, will Country X extradite him, won't they, does his old girlfriend still pole dance, doesn't she, what is Wikileaks' stance on him, is he allowed to trend on Twitter, etc.
The great majority of these stories seem mainly fodder for news companies to gain revenue while people voraciously seek more information about a quickly diminishing story. The documents were released, the hearings have been held, there are some lawsuits pending.
But we all know essentially how this will end: Prism isn't going away and Edward Snowden's fate is grim. And while we can discuss myriad elements 'til we're blue in the face, fifteen front-page stories a day aren't going to help us understand the issues any better, nor are they coverage of some important event.
Let's stop turning HN into a tabloid news service and get back to the deeply interesting stories.
"Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads.
A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting.
What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, then perhaps it could be.
The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter."
158 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadThat's a very defeatist attitude. I'm sure that there are better arguments for upvoting or not upvoting these articles than saying "this story is not worth paying attention to because we are completely helpless, let's go back to talking about app store metrics".
Paul Graham, What you can't say. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
Please don't go and use words designed to shot down the debate.
"Defeatist" has nothing to do with no one 'getting to ask' a question.
The thing I have learned from reading history is that it often does not turn out the way people expected at the time. The details of what happens matter.
Honestly? Is this cause not worth fighting for anymore?
A balance between nothing and tabloid.
We're dangerously close to tabloid currently. Lots of irrelevant articles, lots of speculation and opinion, and the real stories are hidden in the noise.
I still think about 80% of the Snowden articles are worse than useless -- they're actively hiding the 20% of articles that are worthwhile, that we should all be reading.
But hey, I guess diverting our attention to the pointless bits of the story is an effective diversion tactic /conspiracy
Seeing the entire front page of HN covered in stories on it might be slightly annoying but it is much better than the alternative (no coverage) IMHO.
how about wikileaks? Julian Assange?
all those cables?
Upvoting them or reading a story about Edward Snowden's favorite brand of chicken pot pie is not doing anything to fight for civil liberties, though it will give views to garbage web sites like Business Insider and its ilk.
"Edward Snowden's favorite brand of chicken pot pie" "Kim Dotcom braids his hair!" "Julian Assange orders Cherry Coke instead of regular!" "Elon Musk buys three rare white leopards!"
Do you really like to argue by ridiculing others this much? There hasn't been a story even resembling anything like this, people have actually upvoted things they found interesting.
More links means more people are writing about it. This is good.
Nobody's saying don't post thoughtful opinion pieces or details about legislation or court cases or anything else actually having to do with the issues.
You can claim that most or all of the posts that have appeared on here are relevant, but they aren't all relevant. That's why this post that we're commenting on exists and has gotten upvoted; the quality of those posts has been abysmal.
And your response is not to argue the point but to basically tell us to shut up. Thanks for contributing.
I find the personal stuff in a story like this quite interesting, btw.
Of course there's a lot of duplicates and posts with similar information in them, but is that such a big issue? I think people who are flagging posts because they think it's sort of the same as another article is basically abusing the system.
Yeah, but "most" are. See how it works when you leave the sophistry out?
And your response is not to argue the point but to basically tell us to shut up. Thanks for contributing.
Are you kidding? Are you projecting?
This guy stabbed his own cause in the back by going public, doing press interviews, and doing whatever else he could to make the story all about him, and for some inexplicable reason y'all want to shove the knife in deeper and twist.
Really? Because I don't think "the goal" is to get detailed articles written up in blogs that will show up on Hacker News, I think "the goal" is to get the story out to as many people as possible and raise its profile in hopes of influencing governments.
And you have to understand the way that the press works. They've already WRITTEN a story about PRISM... so they can't write another one, because it's not "new". However, they CAN report on the daily movements of this guy, Snowden. And they can publish every interview he gives. And each time they can (will!) review just what it is that he revealed.
I think that, intentional or not, Snowden has successfully managed to bring media attention to this issue in a way that previous efforts had not.
I don't think he risked it so he could do a few interviews. The fame and media attention is a tool.
Yeah. His cause is completely dead. No one is following the spying on Americans issue now.
Ironically if you look at a list of recent submissions by this "peterwwillis", you will see a list of boring nothing-to-see-here content that should also be downvoted due to a lack of originality and new content.
Anchoring (wikipedia.org) - yep he linked to a random wikipedia article. I'm so glad we have people like peter to lead hn to a new promise land of link filled content to wikipedia.
Graph of BitCoin market price (USD) (blockchain.info) - Yes because what hn readers need is a link to blockchain.info as we were too incompetent to find it alone.
Ironic a poster crying about content submits such boring, shallow and useless posts.
But something that is actually relevant to current affairs should be flagged and downvoted? The guy who started this thread is a joke.
To all the foreigners claiming this is "american politics" and should be ignored, do you all really have such short sightedness you can't see this effects everybody in the world, not just americans?
And "Edward Snowden's fate is grim" so we should stop caring about him? I'm glad to not see this story go away, and I am actually understanding the issues better because of the articles about it here.
Let the community decide what should be on here.
We end up with divisive topics that only half of us is interested in on the first page. The other half might completely hate it, even!
I don't seem to be able to flag any more so I guess that was picked up as abuse, so unfortunately I can't flag any more of these stories.
I wouldn't mind seeing stories on all of this, as long as they are only posted when something interesting has actually happened, as opposed to just because there hasn't been a story on it for 5 minutes
Things people like gets upvoted and rise to the top. You did abuse the system, because you used the flagging as a downvote button. This is not Reddit.
Weird that you cannot spot the contradiction here.
Why not let others here decide what they think shouldn't be here instead of upvoting crap posts? Other people are abusing the upvote button by voting for content that should not be here.
> This is not Reddit.
The quality over the past week has been lousy.
We do not have a downvote button. Major news is allowed here.
This is an active story that a lot of people is interested in, and this means that a lot of posts about it is upvoted.
Shouldn't the flag button only be about things that are not allowed? Not as a way to remove things you find not interesting?
The issue here is that the upvoting is democratic. One person flagging posts based on his opinions (and as you can see in this thread, your opinions are not the same as others, imagine that!) and them getting completely removed because of it is not democratic.
If you don't like things, don't upvote them. They get upvoted because others like them. How can this be so hard to understand?
Your opinion of the quality of the posts here is not what should decide what posts others read!
There's a clear distinction between the two.
Same here, though I believe I lost my flagging ability after 2 or 3 Snowden stories. Definitely a heads up for anyone else who might think these types of stories hit the "Off-topic: Most stories about politics" part of the post guidelines.
I did that for Steve Jobs. I personally want to read every new element about the Snowden effect but I realize not everyone else does.
This doesn't solve the bigger problem, namely, that posting countless stories on Snowden is really killing HN. Seriously, we're one step away from having stories on what Snowden had for lunch on his flight to Moscow on the front page. I don't buy the "Let the community decide what should be on the front page" argument either. Communities tend to follow the same laws of entropy like anything else in this universe. Without a certain number of people putting in considerable effort to keep up the quality of submitted articles and discussions, they tend to devolve into places with a bunch of articles that bring nothing new to the table, and with discussions that are nothing more than long, tiresome rants or flame wars that have no real value.
Joking aside if there is a story about his lunch on his way to Moscow, which also means he is flying to Moscow. That's important.
I'm indifferent about the situation because I don't live in US. But it still matters, you're just not interested in it. So you should do what he says and mentally filter it out. If this was 9/11 or something you felt more connected with (I'm not saying 9/11 is it, but I'm assuming your American and probably feel something for that date), you would not be saying this to begin with.
It is irritating, that's for sure.
People should be visiting new and flagging articles that don't belong here, and upvoting good articles.
It's a bit worrying that "over flagging" could cause someone to lose their ability to flag articles - some users have reported that.
Still, most of the Snowden articles are garbage and should be flagged.
PS - Hi NSA.
>whereisedwardsnowden.com is already registered, but these options are available...
Unfortunately what makes good click bait also makes good upvote bait and most people will just fall for it unthinkingly. And looking at the comments so far, apparently will defend doing so.
Yes there are larger issues at stake which are why these people are in the news, but 99% of the stories being upvoted have nothing to do with the larger issue and are instead press releases with no interesting content, meant solely to drive clicks and in the case of older stories like Kim Dotcom, meant to keep their names in the news.
Stop being a sucker; be more critically minded with what you choose to upvote and read.
Also, calling me a douche for expressing an opinion shows that you are clearly a very intelligent and thoughtful person so I am very interested in your well considered opinions on important matters. I'm sure you contribute a lot to not only this community but the world as a whole with that keenly honed intellect of yours.
The example I keep seeing is people complaining about his flight itinerary. It isn't irrelevant, not even close. The fact that China allowed him to leave is very interesting. The fact that Russia has allowed him to enter is very interesting. If they let him leave and eventually make his way to Ecuador, that will be interesting as well. This is a window into the relationship being the US and China and Russia, and it turns out those relationships are very important. If you think this stuff is irrelevant, you aren't paying enough attention.
The moment you asked - everybody is thinking and discussing it.
For those who think that "we all know essentially how this will end", think about what the world would look like if every major change had been met with this kind of pitiful attitude. Every revolution, every change for the better, has come out of people rejecting that sentiment.
It's not too late to turn away from the abyss and go back towards sanity and a better future.
This isn't a quaint distraction that's getting in the way of us discussing serious issues like gradients in web design buttons... this is a big story and deserves to consume some HN news 'cycles'.
Also, are you sure it's not too late?
He wasn't saying don't post thoughtful op-eds about PRISM (and if he was I think he'd get no support here at all), he's saying enough with the tabloid like articles about the people at the center of controversies, which have nothing to do with the larger issue.
But even then I would object to drawing too sharp a distinction between Snowden's story and the NSA story. There's an integral relationship between the two, because how the US handles leaks and leakers has everything to do with the national debate on how the US gov handles secrecy in general.
Some reporting might boil over into frivolous details; I truly don't care what he eats and I think those details trivialize the story. But in terms of driving attention to relevant details, I think Snowden's story and the NSA surveillance story command attention symbiotically as opposed to being mutually exclusive. It's like the thesis advanced by Alex Gibney in his Wikileaks documentary We Steal Secrets: the allegations against Julian Assange and subsequent attempts at extradition probably had the effect of bringing much more attention to Wikileaks. Similarly here with Snowden.
The honest truth is we are no closer to discovering the truth about what the government does than we were on day one of the leak while entertaining ourselves with platitudes about how "America is now a place where people seek asylum from" and Bourne movie fantasies.
There might be more problems in addition to what he helped uncover, but whether they are voiced might depend on what happens to Snowden.
You wouldn't halt QA process until you fix a critical security issue in your production system, especially if the fix might take some time. You'd probably be paying even more attention to improving bug visibility after such an incident, to make sure other problems are noticed in time.
How the government treats Snowden is a proxy for how the government may treat each one of us in the future; he's now committed to being the test case for our possible future.
I'm not stoked about discussing a random dude's travel plans either, but it would appear that the court of public opinion is more transparent than the system which would otherwise judge the man.
No he won't, because in the grand scheme of things, no one cares whether HN talks about him or not.
If you feel strongly about this cause, I would encourage you to stop mass upvoting, and get involved in the real world. Perhaps your action would merit its own post to HN, and something that would inspire others to join you in action. You might end up doing something amazing.
The effect of such a deluge of trivia on many people is to intentionally avoid the whole topic. It's like ad blindness.
If this continues to dominate HN for much longer, there is a risk that people will just stop visiting this site and it just becomes a home for conspiracy cranks.
- you think people should be more aware of the issue, or
- you think that each of these links individually provide value to the readers here
If the former, then please stop. We are aware: identifying valuable contributions would be a more helpful route towards revolution.
Personally speaking, I am unlikely to click on these articles now because few of them are providing any new value.
We can't simply shrug it off. It's in everyone's home now. And not only in the US. If we dismiss it now, we deserve every surveillance abuse that follows.
In short: if you think this is important stuff hackers will care about, vote it up, but smartly, not blindly.
Little did I know, Hacker News actually seems to be about the US Government, NSA, PRISM, cyber-surveillance, secret courts, wiretapping, conspiracies, and other such topics. At least, based on the volume of stories here. Is there a way to filter them out and get back to reading about technology?
Some HNer has set up a nice filter:
http://diff.biz/?remove=%28nsa|prism|privacy|crunch|snowden|...
It filters away all stories containing keywords nsa, prism, etc.
I'm a huge privacy fan, really. But after months of news about it, I'm quite through with it. We all know Gmail gets wiretapped, we all know how to encrypt data, and whether you do something about it is up to you. End of story if you ask me.
Politics too to an extent. It's important to know what's going on in the world. But I don't find it important to know where Snowden is going by the minute.
I too am not from the US, but this impacts me directly. Perhaps, even more so than US citizens, as they have rights (for the moment, at least).
It wouldn't be much of an issue if I didn't use Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, heck, even Oracle products. Not to mention that traceroute shows that most internet routes pass through the US, even if the destination is not there. After all, the fattest pipes are to the US.
I, and most posters here, have done nothing wrong. But the Stasi, if it still existed, might think otherwise. The US seems to be ok right now and focused on "terrorists" (real or imaginary), but we don't now who is going to eventually replace Obama.
I have faith that the american people will eventually put an end to the madness, before it is too late. But, in the meantime, please keep the NSA and Snowden news coming.
It is not obvious to me that either of these propositions is correct.
Yeah, sure, I don't care what he had for lunch or whether he's sitting in the aisle or window seat, but as far as getting attention on HN? What else would you expect?
No-one is calling for zero Snowden articles.
What people are asking for is for a reduction in the flood of Snowden trivia.
"Snowden Does X" will be reported by the twelve different news sources, and each of these will be posted to HN. Some of these will have blogpost reactions, which also get posted. An hour later some politician will respond to "Snowden Does X", which will be reported by 12 different sources, and blogged about, and etc etc.
The submissions are tedious and very repetitive.
But, worse, so are the comments. It's pretty much "The NSA is bad, and what they did is bad"; "Snowden is a traitor" or "snowden isn't a traitor".
Some of it was mildly interesting but now there's very little new "deeply interesting" commentary.
Snowden stories are, now, a good example of "intensely but shallowly interesting".
"Edward Snowden is not on the flight from Moscow to Cuba"
and
"Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?"
I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Has there been a bunch of noise/trivial stories about Snowden? No doubt. But I already said that.
Looks like the voting system is working as it should.
As much as you might be irritated by the amount of information related to him which is being published here, personally, I'm curious how the story will unfold. I presume that there are others who are curious and others who are irritated as well.
In most of the cases you are right - hn is not the place for gossip about famous people. The thing here is that we are not discussing what did Kardashian ate for dinner and why it's bad for her cellulite, but following a story of somebody who is not giving a shit and trying to if not defend, then at least shed some light on our privacy, as it's being taken from us.
Please don't get me wrong, but I'd strongly advise using some filtering tools (there are dozens) for hn in this specific case.