The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought • Hacker News Board

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#171

Post by ch4s3 » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 1:22 AM UTC

nickik wrote: post #148

ch4s3 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a categorically false assertion. Almost everyone hates comcast. And left, right, and center numerous municipalities are trying to break Comcast's local monopolies, but are being stopped by state legislatures. Regulatory capture is a big problem, and the buying of politicians is a problem on both sides politically in the US. *Edit: I'd be curious to know why people disagree with my statement.

Maybe you are misunderstanding me. Maybe I was not clear. With state I'm 'the government' not 'state government' in case this was not clear. I was just trying to say why on federal level does not try to fix these issues on a higher level. My point was that neither sees it as a important enough issue, not to mention complicated because of all the different levels.

I'm not sure there's a lot of fixing anything at the federal level lately.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#172

Post by pj_mukh » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 1:25 AM UTC

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…

"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 to be about."

My god. I really wish more people would point this out. The hysteria about University politics is such a bore now.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#173

Post by TheAdamAndChe » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 1:38 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #79

prepend wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting idea. Is the propaganda so strong and coordinated that the Republicans can influence EU antitrust agency? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-antitrust/eu-an... I think it’s interesting that you think antitrust Google benefits right wing groups over left wing groups. I think this thought is mainly due to the dichotomy of “google = good” and “republican = bad” having some transitive log…

I'm not saying the argument is right or wrong. I'm just amazed at the message discipline across many channels. Steve Bannon declared in july that they were going to start pushing for this [1] and since then the message keeps popping up everywhere. It's amazing power to shape the public discourse. [1] https://theintercept.com/2017/07/27/steve-bannon-wants-faceb...

Yet Bannon's push against big websites wasn't done in a bubble. Public sentiment towards these sites is changing, with revelations about James Damore, Russian propaganda, Alexa being an overtly feminist Black Lives Matter supporter[1], and many other things like this.

Like it or not, culture matters. The fact that all of these powerful sites are blatantly picking sides while at the same time accruing massive amounts of power is inevitably going to gain attention from legislators.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2017/dec/12...

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#174

Post by TheAdamAndChe » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 1:51 AM UTC

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".

Well given the fact that pretty much all major news organizations blatantly pick a political side, putting "journalists" in quotes and being skeptical of any single source isn't too crazy to me.

If news sites prioritize view counts over maintaining an unbiased viewpoint, Roy Moore is what results. Republicans did not trust liberal news organizations to tell the truth.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#175

Post by coolgeek » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 1:51 AM UTC

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…

> You aren't one of those filthy alt-righters who voted for Trump are you?

Yeah, nice try.

No platform is banning people "who voted for Trump"

They're banning people who are openly trying to recreate Nazism, the KKK, and other such violently prejudicial entities

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#176

Post by kps » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 1:55 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #109

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you practicing crimethink? -A few hundred years ago, being an atheist was "crimethink", as was religious tolerance towards Jews, Muslims, and so forth. -A few hundred years ago, questioning the divine right of kings to rule was "crimethink". -In the early 1600s, Galileo stood trial and was condemned for the "crimethink" of saying the Earth moved around the Sun, in contradiction to the teachings of the Church. -…

"The only ideas I'm afraid of letting people say are the ones that I think may be true and that I don't like." - Sam Altman

> - Sam Altman

… whose company's forum makes unpopular opinions literally fade away to nothing. Actions speak louder than words.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#177

Post by coolgeek » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 2:02 AM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #29

humanrebar wrote: post #13

This is the first I heard of the Prager U parental filtering and demonetization. The videos are certainly conservative, both culturally and economically, but the ones I've seen aren't objectionable in any way. In many ways, they are less objectionable than a lot that goes out over the AM radio bands in the U.S. Ars Technica on the story: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/prageru-sues-you... Best I can find…

What do you think about the fact that this WSJ article though is "the first you've heard of it"? Could the story itself perhaps have been suppressed in some deliberate manner by Google?

Actually, it's not an article, it's an Op-Ed. You'll see that if you click through.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#178

Post by nova22033 » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 2:04 AM UTC

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…

gab.ai fanboys: we basically created western civilization

Also gab.ai fanboys: We can't survive without google hosting our services.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#179

Post by nickik » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 2:09 AM UTC

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #166

nickik wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

> 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.

Your implaying that state burocracy and markets produce the same outcome. That is 100% false, as both systems have totally different feedback mechanism. It is a totally different thing if you are a open soruce standards commity that has to actually attrackt people rather then a burocracy that has no insentive to attrackt people.

The market process is guided by the choices of all the players, and this is why even in a bad case the deversity will be higher then in any government run situation. Standards can be overcome, thrown away, upgraded depending on the chaning needs people.

We already have the largly unregulated market and in that market we have lots of standartisation both completly open and industry standards. Open Source software is winning in many places. New spaces are being opened up for standards, like RISC-V. Yes its not perfect, but you have to realize that you are risking everything we have by giving some government burocracy (and a US burocracy at that) the complete power over the internet.

There are good and well studied reason why this approche is better then the political processes I have mentioned.

> 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.

If you don't have even a basic idea what the scope and power of your policy is, how are you gone compare it to anything else? I am a consequentialist, if you can make a reasonable argument that your burocarcy can significantly improve on the current 'anarchy' approch then I'm happy to listen to your argument.

We actually do already have lots of government promoted standards, and if they are any indication then I would be running into a different direction as fast as I can.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#180

Post by TheCoelacanth » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 2:09 AM UTC

ithilglin909 wrote: post #163

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Most people are intellectually lazy. Better get used to it. If you want your arguments to be consistently distinguished from the racist ones you will have to put in more effort to make them seem more distinct.