221–230 of 486 posts
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That site has been banned on HN for years. We're happy to make exceptions for specific cases where there's a substantive post, though, like this one.
I have to ask, why a site like Breitbart which has broken a lot of substantive stories would be banned? I’ve seen less credible left leaning sites on HN. I’m hoping there is a really good reason because right now I am concerned.
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I don't know what dang's answer will be, but why would you assume that you are allowed or encouraged to treat your "throwaways as throwaways"? The written FAQ doesn't exactly encourage them: "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users should have an identity that others can relate to. " Separate from dang's moderator tools, you might also note that there…
The no-throwaway rule is probably to prevent people from making a new account for every comment. I am not at that level of paranoia yet, but I do rotate my accounts once a year to avoid accumulating too much information under one username. This is usually enough to prevent stylometric analysis. So I just need to worry about people with access to HN database/logs/moderation tools, assuming HN itself never gets comprom…
"(00:54:33) An employee asks what Google is going to do about “misinformation” and “fake news” shared by “low-information voters.” Pichai responds by stating that “investments in machine learning and AI” are a “big opportunity” to fix the problem." Anyone find this disturbing? They're trying to use AI to manipulate what users 'should' see?
Google may be involved in a lot of manipulative things, but trying to distinguish between blatantly incorrect sources of information and the rest does not seem like a shady political motive to me, and there overall goal seems worthwhile to me. Encyclopedias and scientific journals also manipulate what people are seeing and I don't think filtering mechanisms in general are problematic; it depends on how the information is selected, and if this is done through a good process, it can be very beneficial.
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> I think they are going to fail, and quietly increase the human involvement once they realize that their AI isn't good enough. Then they will slowly scale back the humans as their AI improves, until the next controversy when they realize that they still need humans. Exactly. AI is not good at subjective decisions of qualitative data. For example, nobody knows any political candidate's net worth apart from IRS, until…
Realistically there doesn't exist a good solution for this. That's why every single site out there with user content that is large enough is struggling with moderation. There is no solution that scales up to billions of users, and while it's true that AI most likely won't work, it is the best they've got right now. Do you have a better solution? Because Google has hired some of the smartest people and even then they…
Let the receiver evaluate the information? Sure, some will have false believes. Cannot change that and you shouldn't even attempt to do so. Because authority has been wrong to an equal degree.
The whole premise falls flat in my opinion.
There won't be any viable solution, if the problem cannot even be defined. Currently it is based on a feeling that there are mean and false statements on social media.
And this fact is emphasized by parties who like more control about content.
Anyone aware of the current capabilities of AI should know, that it is no solution, at least in its current state. Sure, big tech likes to signal otherwise. But these statements just underline their business interest in that sector. Nothing wrong with that.
Wanting to tighten control about content is.
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> But from a tech perspective its always destabilizing to endorse a political ideology just like it is destabilizing to endorse a religious ideology in what is a collective for economic output. Is it destabilizing at all? The British Empire, one of the world's most economically successful projects, had its own religious ideology. The US has a "Protestant work ethic." When have we historically seen the adoption of rel…
Didn't catholics in britain have a hard time og it for some period? Didn't that contribute to internal instability? Or am i misrecalling history lessons?
Part of my decision for leaving Google was the insane left leaning bias within the company. I never outed myself as a conservative person because I've heard coworkers equate republicans to monsters.
I'm honestly confused why they didn't just postpone TGIF and then ignore the election. Just say someone got sick or something. Let employees deal with the results themselves and move on.
It's good knowing that the giant behemoth you work for will have your back, and even support from your peers will do a lot.
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> I value political neutrality in the workplace If you're doing meaningful work, you're changing things in the world. Changing things in the world is necessarily and inevitably political. If the workplace appears politically neutral, then one of two things must be true. Either what you're doing doesn't affect the outside world, or there are hidden, unstated political motives at work. I would much prefer my company's…
You are part of the problem. Is antibiotics development changing the world? I should hope so. Do bacteria care about which presidential candidate won? Absolutely not. Most fields, in fact, do not involve the acrimonious political issues of the day. The idea that "everything is political" is a lame excuse that activists use to hack politics into spaces where it doesn't belong. Even if a field has some tenuous connecti…
No personal swipes, please. Your comment would be fine without that.
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Bacteria absolutely care -- or at least we humans care about how it affects bacteria. Political policy determines how the FDA regulates (or doesn't regulate) drugs, including antibiotics. Political policy determines if taxpayer dollars are spent getting antibiotics to those who need them, or on missiles instead. Political policy determines whether doctors are incentivized to minimize antibiotic prescriptions (and pre…
> Bacteria absolutely care Seriously? > Political policy determines how the FDA regulates... That's exactly what I mean when I talk about a tendentious excuse for putting activism where it doesn't belong. A drug company might have a lobbying arm that has to care about policy (and that, for pragmatic purposes, talks to all sides!), but a researcher looking at chromosomal recombination isn't going to do a better job of…
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines like this?
They include: "Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."