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The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

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Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#161

Post by colordrops »

matt4077 wrote: post #87
at-fates-hands wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to identity politics and the over saturation of a politically correct ruling class run amok. If people weren't so fucking reactionary to everything they read, see, hear and experience, we wouldn't be in this mess and rational discourse might have a chance. As it stands, people are so easily offended, there isn't any space for an actual discussion. As someone who considers myself an Independent, I spend hours…

This sort of false neutrality, tinged with the cynicism of putting scare quotes around "journalists", and the indecency of somehow mistaking their rather pedestrian fare of contrarianism with exceptional smartitude is exactly what I think of when faced with peoples' incredulity at the continuing existence of "independents".

People who take sides like it's a game of football are everything that is wrong with America.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#162

Post by TheCoelacanth »

CasteTraitor wrote: post #156
supernovae wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how so? another comment without context.

A perfect example would be the immigration debate. I believe if you are in this country ilegally you should be deported. Apparantly, according to many many liberals, that makes me a "racist." Of course race has nothing to do with it, I couldn't care less what color you are , if you're here illegally you need to be deported. And it's not just me, but I constantly see others who have the same beliefs getting accused of…

> I constantly see others who have the same beliefs getting accused of being racist

Probably because of the massive amount of racist rhetoric used in support of that position. It's not an inherently racist position, but when such a large portion of arguments in favor of the position use racist rhetoric it's hard to avoid being lumped in with those arguments.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#163

Post by ithilglin909 »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #162
CasteTraitor wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A perfect example would be the immigration debate. I believe if you are in this country ilegally you should be deported. Apparantly, according to many many liberals, that makes me a "racist." Of course race has nothing to do with it, I couldn't care less what color you are , if you're here illegally you need to be deported. And it's not just me, but I constantly see others who have the same beliefs getting accused of…

> I constantly see others who have the same beliefs getting accused of being racist Probably because of the massive amount of racist rhetoric used in support of that position. It's not an inherently racist position, but when such a large portion of arguments in favor of the position use racist rhetoric it's hard to avoid being lumped in with those arguments.

Lumping totally dis-similar arguments together is just intellectually lazy, which is most of my problem with the use of words like "racist, sexist, etc." They have valid applications, but are often used to circumvent rational debate.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#164

Post by meowface »

mikebenfield wrote: post #149
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All right, here's some context. People are classified as "racist" for believing that the culture that came out of northern Europe is not inherently oppressive. (Source: Watching what's happened on university campuses for the last couple of years. I can't point you to a specific documentation of a specific event at the moment.) When that's the definition of "racist", then racism is indeed "nearly meaningless" - it's b…

> Watching what's happened on university campuses for the last couple of years Have you been on a university campus recently? Contrary to what some reactionary conservatives seem to think, they are not generally oppressive places with no tolerance for conservative thought. Yes, occasionally 19 year olds say and do some silly things. That's kind of what being young and having your first taste of adulthood is supposed…

>Contrary to what some reactionary conservatives seem to think, they are not generally oppressive places with no tolerance for conservative thought.

It varies from university to university. Most universities don't experience anything like the authoritarian-left chaos at Evergreen [1], but you can find student organizations at universities all over America who hold these far-left beliefs. We had no scandals like this at my east coast university, but I'd estimate at least 10-20% of the student population holds extreme beliefs of this nature. You could see inklings of it on campus in the form of posters and group demonstrations and events. I have no statistics about the political leanings of universities in general, but if even 10 big universities have these issues (and it's definitely more than 10), then it's worth discussing.

At my university, even though it didn't seem to lean that much to the left, holding conservative views was definitely a stigma. Conservative students were routinely mocked and ostracized. And this isn't some self-pity, as I consider myself to have been and to be pretty left-wing on most social and economic issues. I just saw what people on the opposite side had to deal with.

>Consider, among many other facts, the fact that Alabama just very nearly elected to the US Senate a man who thinks the US was better under slavery and that the constitutional amendments granting women and blacks the right to vote should be revoked. If that's not enough to convince you that racism is a serious problem I don't know what would be.

Pointing to proof of a problem isn't proof that all opponents of that problem are justified. The position of many university campus students, and some professors, is not merely that racism is still a serious problem in the US but that non-minority groups have effectively been born with some innate sin which they must seek constant penance for due to historical power dynamics. Connected to this is a set of very tribalistic and insular beliefs not unlike what you see in alt-right communities. It's anti-intellectual and it's encouraging college students to view the world in a very narrow way. Oppression of minority groups was and is a dire issue, but it's important not to overcorrect.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-tur...

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#165

Post by fzeroracer »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #162
CasteTraitor wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A perfect example would be the immigration debate. I believe if you are in this country ilegally you should be deported. Apparantly, according to many many liberals, that makes me a "racist." Of course race has nothing to do with it, I couldn't care less what color you are , if you're here illegally you need to be deported. And it's not just me, but I constantly see others who have the same beliefs getting accused of…

> I constantly see others who have the same beliefs getting accused of being racist Probably because of the massive amount of racist rhetoric used in support of that position. It's not an inherently racist position, but when such a large portion of arguments in favor of the position use racist rhetoric it's hard to avoid being lumped in with those arguments.

And to add onto your point there's a lot of nuance in terms of what it means to be against illegal immigration. Some people define it very harshly (toss out everyone that's an immigrant), some people define it as providing avenues for hard-working undocumented immigrants to become US citizens even if they are illegal.

So when you come out against illegal immigration, your stance can run the gamut of not racist at all to incredibly racist. It just turns out that most of the time the statistics simply don't line up for illegal immigrants committing more crime, stealing jobs and so forth. Which then makes the argument not about fact, but about feeling. Which then tends to be more inclined towards racism.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#166

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

nickik wrote: post #150
humanrebar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is very easily said but practically impossible. It's very practical to say should not be able to buy . Likewise, it is practical to say cannot favor their product in feeds, search, app stores, etc. over competitors. > Again, said very easily. Have you considered what that would mean? Sure. To the extent that open standards support types of media, it's a solved problem. Displaying tags has been a thing for deca…

You are missing my point. You are assuming a perfect regulater in your imagination. However this is not how the real word works. Do you remember all the democratic autrage about Net Neutrality. How everybody cried about how unfair it was. Who are actually the exact people that get to make these choices. How do you enforce fair proceedings? How do you handle appeal? How do you do all this without making it fundamental…

Do you want a democratic vote to make these choices?

Do you want the Senate as a whole to vote on these issues?

How about a congressional subcommittee?

Do you want a largely unsupervised undemocratic bureaucracy to just make these choices by fiat?

Hmm, well to me it seems like the that last option is the worst of the bunch. And that's what we get when we don't regulate at all - unsupervised, undemocratic, corporate bureaucracies making decisions that critically affect our lives. I don't need a perfect regulator, I just need a regulator because even in your worst case scenario for a regulator you've only tied what I already live under. To your net neutrality argument, your argument is essentially that instead of having a regulatory body in charge of net neutrality who then rescinded it, we should never have had that government body at all - to me that's just unconvincing, at least I got some years of net neutrality this way, better than none at all.

The list of problems goes on. What is the legal bases for these effect and how do you punish people who don't follow the rules? How about the US not controlling the internet and if the US goes away from global standards it could massively hurt the US as a industry standard.

Why do you need every detail of a plan to see if something is good? You want us to quote from law journals for you? Why don't you just admit you don't like the idea - don't pretend that if only we could lay out a plan you'd be for it, your disagreement isn't in implementation it's in foundation.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#167

Post by drngdds »

narrator wrote: post #8

Which makes me ask the question: do you, gentle Hacker News reader, really want diversity of opinion and why? Do you have unpopular opinions and if so, would you get fired or ostracized for sharing them? Are you practicing crimethink? After all, the only people actually working on alternatives to Google and Facebook are the alt-right who have been de-platformed. Gab.ai is so de-platformed that google doesn't even let…

What an insufferably smug post.

But anyway, Mastodon exists as a good Twitter alternative, and it's not made by alt-righters. It's decentralized so no company or politically-motivated group can censor it.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#168

Post by oglopf »

narrator wrote: post #8

Which makes me ask the question: do you, gentle Hacker News reader, really want diversity of opinion and why? Do you have unpopular opinions and if so, would you get fired or ostracized for sharing them? Are you practicing crimethink? After all, the only people actually working on alternatives to Google and Facebook are the alt-right who have been de-platformed. Gab.ai is so de-platformed that google doesn't even let…

>>After all, the only people actually working on alternatives to Google and Facebook are the alt-right who have been de-platformed.

That's just false. You paint this as either one or the other missing the point that someone like me might like many.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#169

Post by camdenlock »

This has been troubling me for a while. We mainstream liberals seem to be calling for more diversity, but the most vocal amongst us seem to want only superficial diversity (i.e. a variety of physical appearances) instead of diversity of thought/ideas.

Take, for instance, the firing of Denise Young Smith from Apple. She correctly argued in favor of ideological diversity being a worthwhile goal for an organization, saying: “There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room, and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience.”

She was crucified by (ostensibly?) mainstream liberals, who apparently felt that such a comment didn’t reflect the true goal of diversity: having a variety of phenotypes in a room.

This is only one concrete example, but it’s representative of what I’ve noticed is a growing trend. Not sure if anyone else here has seen it as well, but I suspect some of you have. I hope we all wise up and recognize that what we truly want is a mixture of experience and viewpoints, not just mere phenotypic variety.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#170

Post by seppin »

christmasity wrote: post #80
guelo wrote: post #17

Right wing propaganda is so strong and coordinated these days that they can develop a new goal and drive a single message repeatedly across multiple platforms for months or years. This attack on Google is a new right wing message developed this year but they just keep hammering at it across all their channels tailoring their argument to the different audiences and continuously building mind share and momentum.

>Right wing propaganda is so strong and coordinated these days that they can develop a new goal and drive a single message repeatedly across multiple platforms for months or years. If that is the case, why is it that we see mostly left wing propaganda on social media and most news sites?

> mostly left wing propaganda on social media

You don't go on Twitter, then

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