Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mark in the Middle

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 603 posts

Re: Mark in the Middle

#291

Post by dheera »

grawprog wrote: post #203

So, facebook employees are mad they're not allowed to censor things they disagree with that people post on facebook? I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway. In fact, I don't understand why employees at tech companies believe they have the right to police people's opinions period. I see it amongst commenters here too. What gives any of these people the right to po…

> I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway.

Not only that, but they seem to be responsible for policing political opinions in the US alone.

Also, I never told them what citizenship I have in the process of creating my account. Why do I get so many US election reminders on Facebook but not election reminders for the 97 other democracies in the world?

Re: Mark in the Middle

#292

Post by maxsilver »

umvi wrote: post #180

If I had to guess it's because facebook has a larger portion of older conservative folks than other social media platforms? If you look at /r/politics on reddit you see the opposite problem (over-representation - nearly 100% - liberal news sources) which is probably because older conservatives don't use reddit? It can't be healthy for entire social media platforms to be completely dominated by one party or the other.

> If you look at /r/politics on reddit you see the opposite problem (over-representation - nearly 100% - liberal news sources)

Is this actually true? I get that there's usually one or two left-leaning sources on there, but more than half of the stories on /r/politics (the top 30 stories, as of 9/24 in my browser) are from centrist / conservative-leaning news sources.

The real problem seems to be that the overton window has shifted so far right that "liberal" in the US means "super-hyper-conservative, but a fraction less conservative than today's GOP talking points".

MSNBC, USA Today, Politico, Washington Post, Newsweek, NY Times and more are all on the front page of /r/politics right now, represent slightly more than half of the stories in the first 30 entries, and not a single one of those sources are remotely "liberal" in any way.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#293

Post by pavanky »

lightgreen wrote: post #195
pavanky wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a cop out from Facebook and any social media company if there was any. The algorithmic feed that drives more engagement drives their user base to be more extreme. It is also hypocritical of Facebook employees who were quiet when worse atrocities were happening in other parts of the world where their platform is "the only source of truth" (read Myanmar / Philippines).

> The algorithmic feed that drives more engagement drives their user base to be more extreme. Just to clarify: more extreme is not necessary more right or conservative.

Yes. And a platform whose userbase is already conservative will become more extreme in that direction.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#294

Post by lightgreen »

shagie wrote: post #105
dx87 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just finished reading "The Coddling of the American Mind", and it goes into the subject pretty well. A lot of it stems from parents not letting their kids be independent, so they never learn to deal with disagreements from dealing with other kids, then colleges cave to whatever demands they have because they just want to collect tuition money.

An article from four days ago: How Boomer Parenting Fueled Millennial Burnout -- https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/09/anne-hele... The initial bit of the interview in the article: > Anne Helen Petersen: There are two major factors. The first is conceiving of children as mini-adults—trying to cultivate behaviors, postures, and skills that are associated with adults, like being able to carry on conversati…

> The first is conceiving of children as mini-adults

Or it's opposite.

Children recently get so overprotected (eg they no longer can go walk in the forest alone for example), so when they reach 20, they are still children mentally, they cannot stand for themselves, and they expect protection from employee, government, society even when they hear something offensive (which is a lot).

Re: Mark in the Middle

#295

Post by justanotheranon »

charlesu wrote: post #110
verdverm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point is off, people have switched camps to the right since last election, despite how hard this may seem to believe. They look at how childish the left has become and have decided the right is less evil.

> They look at how childish the left has become and have decided the right is less evil. The left is childish? President of the United States literally tweets gifs of himself beating up CNN on Twitter. We live in differently realities. I see one side that shows some semblance of decorum and another that is basically the political equivalent of the Joker but without the charisma and philosophical consistency.

this shows how dangerous the Left Wing filter bubble has become.

undecided voters dont care about a 2 year old funny meme gag video. they care about 100+ days of nightly riots in dozens of cities. they care about police officers being shot by assassins and ordinary home owners being assaulted by mobs with impunity. they care about sky rocketing homeless, murders, burglaries and robberies. they care about millions of small businesses being permanently closed and tens of millions of unemployed.

just like in 2016, the Left drank its own kool-aid and believed in its own filter bubble propaganda and got blind sided by the freight train of Reality.

Trump will win again, and the Left will be shocked and cry again because they walled themselves off from the real world.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#296

Post by mcguire »

verdverm wrote: post #94
pjc50 wrote: post #68

> "In my work with Joel, I’ve found him to be ... very rigorous and principled in his thinking [and therefore I'm happy to work with him despite being a Republican]" The set of people for whom this is true is shrinking by the day; remaining Republican requires an increasingly bizarre set of intellectual contortions. For example, you'd have to believe that appointing a Supreme Court justice right at the end of your te…

Historically this is pretty standard, I think 28 times there has been a vacancy in the SCOTUS in an election year. It has (almost?) always followed the pattern of: - when same party, nominate and confirm - when not same party, nominate no confirm We all really need to expand our historical perspectives on many issues instead of being short sighted politically.

Supreme Court nominations: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/nominations/SupremeCourtN...

Re: Mark in the Middle

#297

Post by xkcd-sucks »

grawprog wrote: post #203

So, facebook employees are mad they're not allowed to censor things they disagree with that people post on facebook? I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway. In fact, I don't understand why employees at tech companies believe they have the right to police people's opinions period. I see it amongst commenters here too. What gives any of these people the right to po…

> people in general these days

Wait till you read some 19th century US history, you're in for a treat

Re: Mark in the Middle

#298

Post by pwned1 »

raverbashing wrote: post #32
ThomPete wrote: post #4

I will never understand the extreme intellectual fragility of cancel culture. A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement or what is it that have created such a thin skinned generation of seemingly well educated people?

> A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement You mean the "anti-maskers" who throw a fit for wearing a face covering for 30min when they have to go to the supermarket?

There are plenty of "pro-maskers" who have the same meltdowns. Videos are replete online. It's all just a symptom of a culture that can't handle treating each other like human beings. Like everything is an anonymous forum online.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#299

Post by dfxm12 »

umvi wrote: post #180

If I had to guess it's because facebook has a larger portion of older conservative folks than other social media platforms? If you look at /r/politics on reddit you see the opposite problem (over-representation - nearly 100% - liberal news sources) which is probably because older conservatives don't use reddit? It can't be healthy for entire social media platforms to be completely dominated by one party or the other.

The most material difference between the two is that Reddit is based on user voting and Facebook is based on an opaque algorithm controlled by Facebook's executive board.
Post reply on HN