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Regrettably, that is what's lost in all of this. Protesters against other opinions and belief systems strongly defend free speech so long as you are saying what they approve of.
There are a lot of downvoted posts in this thread that make reasonable arguments and that are promoting discussion. I disagree with a lot of them, but it’s awkward for this to be a story where people are heavily downvoting people they disagree with
It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…
In that sense HN really made me a more civil person to discuss with, while I am still able to write controversial opinions when I happen to have them.
So on balance, in my experience, the downvoting has been a good development for me.
[1] There was a year where I was arguably mildly depressed about my job situation. I graduated had all the bells and whistles, and worked amazingly hard for it (I almost burned out twice). Yet, I couldn't get a prestigious job. And for me, that was the whole point. Why work hard if it doesn't get you anywhere? I gave up on a lot of things.
The tone in my comments during that year was more negative than usual despite my opinions being similar. I experimented with being more positive than I actually felt, while still expressing the same opinions, and noticed I'd be downvoted less and upvoted more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And on the other hand, saying "White Lives Matter" got not only the man saying it fired. His girlfriend was found to be guilty by association and also fired. https://tribuna.com/en/chelsea/news/2020-06-25-burnley-fan-b...
That's not true. His girlfriend was fired previously for posting racist messages on Facebook and then refusing to go on a sensitivity training course offered by her employer. That article is a summary of a daily mail article, so it's bad journalism squared.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Data scientist fired for retweeting study showing non-violent protests are more effective This is a blatant misrepresentation. The tweet talked about "race riots" and Democrat election results. Many people would argue that the point of direct action is not to sway electoral votes toward the Democratic party.
And particularly, that election was in the middle of the southern strategy switch, and the Democratic party didn't define itself as the left wing of acceptable politics in the nation as it does today. Particularly the Southern Democrats hadn't overwhelmingly converted over to Republicans yet. It was only after the Civil Rights Act was passed (which was six days into the race riots mentioned, so real actionable change…
Had there been an actual switch, you'd expect to see numerous members of congress switching sides.
The "party switch" narrative is a lie. It's to cover for the fact that the republicans kept voting for civil rights until they were finally able to pass it. Today, being the party in opposition to civil rights wouldn't be seen as OK, so a false version of history is pushed to cover up the truth.
A better explanation for the change in voting is that party preferences changed once the issue of civil rights was no longer under consideration. With that gone, other political goals were able to determine party preference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…
To reply to a part of your comment: I've come to realize that most downvotes can be mitigated by simply adding in disclaimers, explicit assumptions, general kindness and general positivity [1]. In that sense HN really made me a more civil person to discuss with, while I am still able to write controversial opinions when I happen to have them. So on balance, in my experience, the downvoting has been a good development…
There are a lot of downvoted posts in this thread that make reasonable arguments and that are promoting discussion. I disagree with a lot of them, but it’s awkward for this to be a story where people are heavily downvoting people they disagree with
It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…
For example, I personally helped work against slavery on the Black Market in the Middle East, and I wanted to raise awareness of this issue.
But now I have to be worried that I'll insult people by using the term Black Market, and will also insult people by giving off the impression that the the Middle East is a 3rd world primitive place where they buy and sell slaves.
There is no "right" way to convey the issue above without offending someone. So what should I do? Just shut my mouth and don't say anything? Then the slave trade will continue to operate freely...
All speech besides threats of violence needs to be free, or we can't progress as a society.
Just in case someone finds the examples in the article all acceptable censorship, here's a few more off the top of my head: Evergreen professor forced to resign for opposing day of white absence: https://blog.usejournal.com/the-controversy-of-bret-weinstei... UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail": https://freebeacon.com/issues/university-to-investigate-lect... Dat…
In mainstream news (ap, CBC, bbc, others), increasingly people and groups are being labelled as racist without any discretion. Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories[1]. Surely, there is at least one racist in the group, but increasingly every single person who doesn’t tow the line is being called out - entire police departments, mayors, city councils, schools…
You missed out the bit where some of them were doing Nazi salutes or carrying EDL / Britain First etc flags.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a question I've been struggling with lately. Downvotes reinforce groupthink, that much is subjectively clear. I've considered solutions, and I believe forcing people to reply before they are allowed to downvote would help. However, in opposition to my own idea, I consider that simply requiring a more effort wouldn't necessarily change the groupthink problem, but would just stifle low effort downvotes. Let's cons…
One of the problems with upvote/downvote is that it is binary, while topics of discussion in the social rarely aren’t. In the social space of forming opinions, many things happen in a grey spectrum, and need not be polarized all the time (upvote / downvote)