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Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#131

Post by maerF0x0 »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #116
joshkpeterson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're literally describing body cams, which people are activists are actively working towards making ubiquitous.

Can they be turned off or conveniently covered, malfunction, repositioned, break, run out of power, stop recording, corrupt data or have the recorded data be 'just not in the system' when an officer is alleged to have committed a crime? All of those things will happen because it happens all the time with video evidence from dash cams and audio from body mics when it's subpoenaed.

IMO if any of those things happens, then either the Officer or the IT staff need to be fired. If a piece of equipment fails its either the provisioner or users fault. One of them must be accountable.

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#132

Post by williamcotton »

eternalban wrote: post #50
justsaysmthng wrote: post #27

HN is the most intelligent and open minded online community of this size that I know online. I have deep respect for you guys and girls and your opinions are always enlightening and thought provoking. I really feel much smarter because I have access to all these very valid points of view that you are surfacing. But even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" which leads me to go into this…

> even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" There is absolutely no social cost for downvoting without commenting. Adding costs and accountability: - force comment box on downvotes - deduct from karma - flagging only Is it important for HN's community to have a "psychologically safe" [1] at this point in time? I can not think of a more critical time for the "STEM" crowd to have a viable…

HackerNews is a marketing channel for a technology investment firm.

Why should they care about balanced conversation? What if those balanced conversations somehow promote criticism of companies that they are involved with?

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#133

Post by iolothebard »

justsaysmthng wrote: post #27

HN is the most intelligent and open minded online community of this size that I know online. I have deep respect for you guys and girls and your opinions are always enlightening and thought provoking. I really feel much smarter because I have access to all these very valid points of view that you are surfacing. But even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" which leads me to go into this…

Try the new kinder friendlier SJW reddit. I'd been on there since 2005. They can go sit on a rusty nail.

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#134

Post by marcosdumay »

Grishnakh wrote: post #96
guessbest wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is just aggressively positive. I miss Slashdot. I liked that it had people who had industry knowledge who would post as an Anonymous Coward to correct someone who was being idealistic. I don't know where those people have gone, but it is certainly not here. They probably were dispersed to other sites.

Yep, Slashdot used to be great like that. Those people are gone now. They're not on SoylentNews, and there's sure as hell not on here. I don't think they're on Reddit either. They're not anywhere. My guess: they've retired from tech after getting tired of all the BS and nasty personalities, and done something entirely different with their lives. Maybe they took their savings and moved to Costa Rica and opened a resta…

They are probably everywhere, but we lose their insight when they can't post as anonymous or it is hard to do so. Pseudonyms just won't cut it.

Anyway, we also lose a great deal of spammers, trolls and just disturbing people. That's the other side of the coin.

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#135

Post by ywecur »

williamcotton wrote: post #132
eternalban wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" There is absolutely no social cost for downvoting without commenting. Adding costs and accountability: - force comment box on downvotes - deduct from karma - flagging only Is it important for HN's community to have a "psychologically safe" [1] at this point in time? I can not think of a more critical time for the "STEM" crowd to have a viable…

HackerNews is a marketing channel for a technology investment firm. Why should they care about balanced conversation? What if those balanced conversations somehow promote criticism of companies that they are involved with?

They obviously care as they implement extensive moding to avoid this place from devolving into something like Reddit.

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#136

Post by eric_h »

kirykl wrote: post #89
ywecur wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to this: Replace the down vote icon completely with the flagging icon, as the down vote icon probably encourages aggravated people to use it in the wrong way.

Flag opens a drop down for Spam, Me-too, too Far off topic..etc

Much like Slashdot's moderation system.

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#137

Post by geographomics »

Most of the commentary here so far is really quite tangential to the actual research done. Everyone commenting on this article should make sure they've read the study first, with particular attention to the 'Limitations' section on page 11: http://m.jmq.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/02/25/1077699016...

One other feature of the study that limits its wider applicability is that it is entirely US-centric. It would be interesting to read follow-up work on samples taken from other cultures and countries.

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#138

Post by RodericDay »

imron wrote: post #100
eternalban wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" There is absolutely no social cost for downvoting without commenting. Adding costs and accountability: - force comment box on downvotes - deduct from karma - flagging only Is it important for HN's community to have a "psychologically safe" [1] at this point in time? I can not think of a more critical time for the "STEM" crowd to have a viable…

I like the idea of downvotes costing you karma. Forcing the comment box is also interesting. Maybe only make the downvote available to people who have already replied to a post.

One paradoxical thing about discussions here is that often I see a bad post, followed up with a really good reply. And I want the two to be seen in tandem, but if I sink the parent I also sink the child. So I often upvote both.

Just a stray thought.

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#139

Post by imron »

jacquesm wrote: post #129
imron wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of downvotes costing you karma. Forcing the comment box is also interesting. Maybe only make the downvote available to people who have already replied to a post.

Karma economy: Every submitted link or comment: +1 karma, every upvote, another +1, but a -1 for the upvoter. In the case of a downvote on a comment: -1 for the comment writer, -1 for the downvoter.

I think the upvoter should remain karma neutral. That keeps a steady flow of karma currency entering the system, which is necessary when the primary mechanism for filtering and ranking interesting content is upvoting.

If you penalise users for doing that, they'll do less of it, which will make the ranking/filtering less effective.

Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

#140

Post by justsaysmthng »

yason wrote: post #121
justsaysmthng wrote: post #27

HN is the most intelligent and open minded online community of this size that I know online. I have deep respect for you guys and girls and your opinions are always enlightening and thought provoking. I really feel much smarter because I have access to all these very valid points of view that you are surfacing. But even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" which leads me to go into this…

I don't really care enough to self-censor and I often play a game of negative karma with myself here. To motivate myself to finish the comment I know won't be taken well in the average I first remind myself that the point of my comment isn't to cater to the consensus of the majority of the HN crowd but the reason I started writing it was because I felt something needed to be said and if there is one other person who…

Thank you for the tip.

Curiously, the original message sparked a lot of commentary and it seems like lots of people here are feeling the pain of "unjust" moderation sometimes.

Sometimes I also play the "fuck it, let them mod me down, I'll just say it" game - I expect to be buried and that's fine -(although people tend to heavily up vote maverick comments).

But sometimes modding takes me by complete surprise - "Wtf, why did I they mod me down?"..

For some reason, I tend to internalize negative feedback from random strangers a lot more than I internalize the positive feedback.. And I feel like I'm not the only one doing this, which is a bit of a relief :).

But my original comment wasn't necessarily a complaint about the status quo here on HN - some hiccups aside, it's still the most civilized and wise forum online..

What worries me is that we still haven't figured the public forum thing out and some versions of it are plain dangerous (eg. forums on certain news websites tend to degenerate into racism, hatred, bigotry, etc).

The up/down vote paradigm seems to have reached it's peak, we need a new way to collectively filter thoughts.

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