181–190 of 252 posts
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I've been surprised by the absence of discourse about HK on HN over the past week, given the magnitude of what's going on there and its relevance to this forum's interests. Meanwhile, relatively trivial articles are holding the front page for days.
Mods often suppress anything remotely political in order to keep the forum "civil". It's one of the aspects of this forum that I personally dislike.
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Interesting. I took a screen snapshot of the front page: https://imgur.com/gallery/thY5Tl6 Compared to #1 and #2 ranked posts, which have half the upvotes, but uploaded within the same hour or two, this post is ranked #19. Maybe many people are "flag"-ing the post so the HN ranking algorithm pushes it lower. (Edit: For the record, I don't believe the HN mods are doing any downmodding here, and it's probably just due…
I've been surprised by the absence of discourse about HK on HN over the past week, given the magnitude of what's going on there and its relevance to this forum's interests. Meanwhile, relatively trivial articles are holding the front page for days.
There is an option for mods to slow or accelerate the decay function of the post.
This is a practice that all content platforms use and few know about. Burying content down, or removing from feed (for Facebook/YouTube) is a soft censoring that avoids user and regulatory backlash.
I would like the platforms to be more transparent about the practice. They could display a ‘derank’ or ‘delisted’ label to all users.
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> Currently, governing decisions are made behind closed doors by a group of elites that carefully deliberate their choices after taking public opinion into account. How do you know how carefully choices are deliberated and how much public opinion is taken into account if decisions are being made behind closed doors?
You don't. You just have faith that's being done, like you have faith that democracy will always produce the best outcome eventually. Which of those two assertions above makes you more uncomfortable reflects the education system you went to, the society you grew up in, the people you interact with, and your sense of identity. I'm reminded of how Greek city states all used to have their own deities, believed their dei…
In an uptrend comment you said:
> when the current philosopher kings are doing so well, only a minority of people on the margins of society really want to rock the boat.
There are interesting trade offs along of the spectrum of individualism and collectivism. It’s hard to talk about whether or not China has gotten that trade off right when information about the “margins of society” is suppressed.
Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.
> Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard Don't you think that C-levels of all of them were previously dying to get into China, and were ready to do anything? On my memory, Google's advisers were all over Kremlin, coaching the regime in "internet media operations" in 2005-2008, teaching them how to hound opposition online, and doing psyops style public opinion manipulation, while inventing silly lies about the na…
Here's an actual story about Google and China: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/why-g...
Google quit China for 6 years, tried to go back, got outed again and shut down again.
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> Currently, governing decisions are made behind closed doors by a group of elites that carefully deliberate their choices after taking public opinion into account. How do you know how carefully choices are deliberated and how much public opinion is taken into account if decisions are being made behind closed doors?
You don't. You just have faith that's being done, like you have faith that democracy will always produce the best outcome eventually. Which of those two assertions above makes you more uncomfortable reflects the education system you went to, the society you grew up in, the people you interact with, and your sense of identity. I'm reminded of how Greek city states all used to have their own deities, believed their dei…
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It's odd that you include Spanish since until recently the same argument was made about half the books in the library being in Spanish instead of English.
Maybe in other states, but the US purchased much of California from Mexico, so that population isn’t immigrant to that region, but native to it. That historical basis—of there being (acquired) natural US citizens whose primary spoken language is Spanish—is one of the main reasons that Spanish is a national language. Spanish-language books aren’t at-all strange to see in (Southern) California libraries. They’re part o…
Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.
Companies don’t have values, people have values.
Many people think of companies as if they’re people because that’s how they’re presented in consumer media, and many US laws treat them as entities similar to people. But they aren’t people.
The supply and logistics chain that manufactures car seat headrests and transports them from Taiwan to Los Angeles does not have an opinion or a moral stance on any issue that you care about. It’s a bunch of factories and different forms of freight transportation.
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I agree that this is the behaviour displayed by (almost?) all large corporations and thus that expecting that they will behave differently is irrational, in the sense that that expectation will always turn out to be false. That said, I don't see why that means we should expect that behaviour in the sense that we should consider this the expected, correct, behvaiour from corporations. Perhaps if everyone believed that…
> If everyone was like OP in condeming these corporations maybe their expectations would eventually become real. No, they wouldn't, because the selection pressure on the organization is for the minimum amount of signaling required to optimize profits, not actual morality - not least of which because optimizing for profits optimizes for continued existence of the organization, and maximizing morality does not. Holding…
Neither do democratic government institutions (they do whatever the political winds say), nor non-democratic institutions (which are run for the benefit of those in charge of it).
The implication that the removal of profit would result in moral, ethical, and altruistic behavior is not supported by evidence.
Important to note that the US Agency for Global Media was funding and supporting the Hong Kong protests [1]. China could never get away with doing the same thing in the US. The fact is that media bubbles are a powerful tool. There is a reason the US / CIA spend so much time/money on projects like Radio Free Asia. If you are on the same side as the CIA and US imperialism, you might want to think about why that is and…
Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.
Hong Kong is "over there" and these companies do not have a large customer base there. China on the other hand is a monstrous potential market that they all salivate over accessing, but to do so they must suck up to the CCP.
Not hard to understand...