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TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

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Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#71

Post by UweSchmidt »

friendlybus wrote: post #59
oefrha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. For instance it’s pretty easy to create a programming language forum that bans all off-topic content, including identity politics in programming, workplace politics, etc. Unless you believe in the bullshit that is the absence of X == automatically siding what whatever X considers its opponent (usually “the establishment” or “the status quo”) at that moment in time.

"no politics" is still a political position established by the programming authors as a form of control.

Demanding to discuss politics at all times could be the position of a vocal minority hoping to have disproportionate impact. It is derailing topics and ultimately trolling.

Many food related discussions on reddit ignore both health and animal rights considerations. Would it be appropriate to bring these topics up each time someone posts their burger? Likely not

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#72

Post by TeMPOraL »

Faark wrote: post #67
TeMPOraL wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "there's no such thing as apolitical, apolitical = supporting status quo" meme needs to die. It's just a slightly smarter-sounding variant of "if you're not with us, you're against us". It purposefully conflates two groups of people - people who don't engage with an issue because they like the status quo, and people who don't engage with an issue because (within reasonable bounds) they don't care which side wins.…

> Think of it this way [..] Yes, being politically active all the time is not something we generally expect from most people / companies. Especially of the latter, since after all, their primary reason of existence is to make money for the investors. > don't care which side wins This is a valid political position. Probably the one I'd take for most realpolitik of small incremental changes based on occurring issues. B…

> But also one hard to justify in divisive times with diametrically opposed sides becoming highly popular, thus those extremes having an increasing chance to actually & drastically affect our lives.

I think it's especially easy to justify in our times, and it's arguably the sane position to take. Polarization and extremism we see in politics today is dangerous to society and democracy itself. Disengaging from various small changes that are orthogonal to you and your community is advisable, because the cost of engaging is increasingly the deterioration of individual relations with people. It's blowing up your own country from the inside.

A lot of political disengagement, including my own, boils down to this: we don't want to fight someone else's war, and we'd preferably like they didn't fight that war, because all this fighting claims a lot of collateral damage.

> By the way, that doesn't mean everyone has to become experts in lots of topics. Delegating this is quite the responsibility as well.

Delegating in modern democracies is actually one of the reasons people disengage even when they do have a stake or opinion on the topic. It's very hard to make any impact on an individual issue (not "it takes some effort hard", but closer to "winning gold on national championship" hard).

Say, for example, that I want my country to invest in nuclear power, or institute carbon taxes (both are things I currently believe in, and to make it less difficult, I'll use "or" in this example, even though I want "and"). There's literally no party in my country I could in good conscience vote for, or work to support. Not a single one. With the one party that seems to share my views on those two topics I have enough disagreements on other things that I feel reluctant to vote for them. And even if I were to put aside our differences for the sake of pushing the two issues I care about, and even if they magically won the next election, I'm very sure (based on historical experience) that they'd successfully change one or two things for the worse (from my POV), while making exactly zero headway on the issues I voted on them for.

I think more people realize this than not, hence the bad election turnouts in most established democracies worldwide. People don't believe their voices will be heard, because there's enough distortion in the middle.

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#73

Post by yourbandsucks »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #69
madiathomas wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for clarifying. I am in the same boat. Whenever I go against ideologies of HN, I am always prepared to lose some karma also. I refuse to use a throwaway account.

As it should be. Politics done right means we can agree or disagree with each other, but otherwise still coexist in peace. As for burning karma, you can lose it when arguing either way, and in my experience, whether you lose or gain points depends primarily on a) the quality of your comment (as separate from contents), and b) whether it's the US or Europe that's awake at the time you post it.

I mean.. politics ought not to be an exercise in demanding conformity and punishing any non-standard thought.

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#74

Post by ridaj »

Calling this censorship rather than editorial curation implies that content distribution platforms are somehow expected not to have an editorial line. I find this very odd and a misuse of the term censorship.

"America's got talent" is a great show too, and they certainly select who gets onstage from all the people they audition. Is that censorship? I don't expect that TV show to give me info about protests any more than Tiktok.

Censorship is when the powers of government or the marketplace are such that nobody could, if they wanted, get their message out. Yes there is actual censorship in China that filters anything from group messaging apps to movies, but isn't Tiktok here just defining an editorial line of non-controversial content?

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#75

Post by andrepd »

_akei wrote: post #39
oefrha wrote: post #13

I fail to see why every platform has to become a fucking idealogical battleground. If I’m in the market for a social network myself (HN notwithstanding) I’d probably choose a politics-free one if possible.

Did you just call Hacker News apolitical? I feel even Reddit is better when coming to political debates because on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns to your political ideology. On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until…

>On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable.

I agree that downvoting for disagreement is bad, but have you considered you might simply be wrong? I strain to believe that anybody attacked you simply for being from Russia/China/Africa/whatever. They are attacking the regimes of those countries, not their population. These are two distinct things, and it's ridiculous to think that disliking a dictatorial government somehow means hostility towards the people themselves.

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#76

Post by TeMPOraL »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #73
TeMPOraL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it should be. Politics done right means we can agree or disagree with each other, but otherwise still coexist in peace. As for burning karma, you can lose it when arguing either way, and in my experience, whether you lose or gain points depends primarily on a) the quality of your comment (as separate from contents), and b) whether it's the US or Europe that's awake at the time you post it.

I mean.. politics ought not to be an exercise in demanding conformity and punishing any non-standard thought.

Exactly.

What I like on HN is that, unlike some other communities I've observed, you can still gain votes when reasonably arguing on either side of the issue. The hive mind isn't as strong yet to defy all reason.

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#77

Post by yourbandsucks »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #76
yourbandsucks wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean.. politics ought not to be an exercise in demanding conformity and punishing any non-standard thought.

Exactly. What I like on HN is that, unlike some other communities I've observed, you can still gain votes when reasonably arguing on either side of the issue. The hive mind isn't as strong yet to defy all reason.

Eh. I commented that "Chinese people are people too" the other day and got pretty heavily downvoted.

Are those downvoters expressing a reasoned belief that Chinese people aren't people? Or are they just reduced to a set of tribal motor reflexes with up and down arrows?

I'm actually kinda hoping it's the 2nd one rather than the first.

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#78

Post by friendlybus »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #71
friendlybus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"no politics" is still a political position established by the programming authors as a form of control.

Demanding to discuss politics at all times could be the position of a vocal minority hoping to have disproportionate impact. It is derailing topics and ultimately trolling. Many food related discussions on reddit ignore both health and animal rights considerations. Would it be appropriate to bring these topics up each time someone posts their burger? Likely not

Just saying the categories are always there. It could be the position of a vocal minority, but also of the government that seeks to change what you are doing politically, or a mass uprising wishing to change what you do.

Control will always exist, so I think it just needs to be integrated into a small order that can be managed, rather than jump into one of the always/never/any categories to stonewall it.

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#79

Post by [deleted] »

_akei wrote: post #39
oefrha wrote: post #13

I fail to see why every platform has to become a fucking idealogical battleground. If I’m in the market for a social network myself (HN notwithstanding) I’d probably choose a politics-free one if possible.

Did you just call Hacker News apolitical? I feel even Reddit is better when coming to political debates because on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns to your political ideology. On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until…

[deleted]

Re: TikTok: Cheerfulness and censorship

#80

Post by TeMPOraL »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #77
TeMPOraL wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. What I like on HN is that, unlike some other communities I've observed, you can still gain votes when reasonably arguing on either side of the issue. The hive mind isn't as strong yet to defy all reason.

Eh. I commented that "Chinese people are people too" the other day and got pretty heavily downvoted. Are those downvoters expressing a reasoned belief that Chinese people aren't people? Or are they just reduced to a set of tribal motor reflexes with up and down arrows? I'm actually kinda hoping it's the 2nd one rather than the first.

I said "can", not "you always do". That said, context matters, and in the wrong context, a terse factual statement will be taken by almost everyone at anything but face value.
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