I think the fact that this is flagged shows that ycombinator is part of the same problem. Freedom of speech is what's great about this country, and big tech is about suppression of it. I look forward to my post getting deleted by the mods, reinforcing the simple truth.
Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
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Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#92It is the people who want suppression of information. Twitter and FB are responding to user demand. This post has been flagged. People don’t want to see or hear about this. HN may, or may not, remove it. Either way, there are HN users who want this removed.
Users flagged it. That's usually what happened.
Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#93This story has “62 points” and was posted 43 minutes ago (at the time I’m posting this comment) but as soon as I read the story and hit back in the browser, it was pushed off the first three pages of articles. What happened? Did this story get flagged? There’s lots interesting discussion here.
Users flagged it. That's usually what happened.
It also set off the flamewar detector as as1mov described, but flags were the dominant factor.
Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#94I certainly hear a lot more talk about the suppression than the actual story (excluding the non-stop spew from Trump, I tuned him out a long time ago), so Twitterbook's attempts at suppression seem to have backfired. Taibbi may think it's under-reported, but even my non-tech acquaintances know about this scandal.
Awareness of the story in the context of potential disinformation and twitter's attempt at stopping it is entirely different than awareness without this extra context. The downstream effects of the two scenario are likely to be very different.
Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're right, but I don't think the previous status quo was tenable either, and maybe even more problematic. Disclaimer: these are opinions. We allow mainstream press, owned by allies of a politician, to make outlandish claims unverified in the weeks leading up to an election. This has always been "correctable" in the past, in a world where articles could be retracted or condemned, particularly by even more m…
The truth is not a social construct. Either Hunter Biden received that "thanks for the meeting with your father" email or he didn't. Importance is a social construct. If that email is what it puports to be, then whether it is important is a point of view. The media don't (mis)lead us by telling us lies, they do so by deciding which parts of the truth are important enough to tell us.
Our understanding of the truth of things we read online is a social construct. Whether or not Hunter Biden received an email isn’t something ordinary readers like us will ever know, having no direct access to any of the evidence. At best we can read accounts written by others and decide whether they seem plausible.
Even our understanding of Hunter Biden’s existence is a social construct to most of us, since we have never met him and never will. (It’s much easier to make the call on that one, though, based on pictures and it being undisputed.)
Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#96Many are confusing "censorship" with "content moderation". The difference is very important.
Censorship is when you are prevented from publishing on your own platform. Content moderation is when a platform owner choses what can be published on theirs.
Twitter decided they did not want their platform used to spread what they considered to be Russian disinformation and propaganda, but they in no way prevented the NY Post or anyone else from publishing the story.
In the same way, when Hacker News and other well-run platforms remove or hide abusive and troll-like comments they are not infringing on anyone's 1st Amendment rights. A site does not lose the right to moderate content just because they become successful.
Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but people mostly only say this when they don't like that the other guy has written better software.
I'm sorry, but you must not be familiar with the Post. It's a sensationalist tabloid. The reason they don't publish retractions is NOT because of the airtight integrity of their reporting.
Your comment contains no information about the veracity of the content in question. It's a straight-up ad hominem.
Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#98Why is this flagged? Even if you disagree with the assessment, the relationship between the press and big tech described here seems very relevant to HN. Isn't removing it making its point?
Users flagged it. That's usually what happened. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890813 .
Ah, I always figured flagging put it in be a queue for review by a mod. Didn't know it happens automatically.
Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users flagged it. That's usually what happened. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890813 .
Ah, I always figured flagging put it in be a queue for review by a mod. Didn't know it happens automatically.
For some reason people seem to be assuming that more lately (i.e. that "flagged" means mods did it). I'm not quite sure how to correct that notion. I suppose we could hyperlink "[flagged]" to an explanation...but would people click? It's not as if this isn't in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Explanations don't seem to help much.
Re: Suppression is a bigger scandal than the actual story
#100I certainly hear a lot more talk about the suppression than the actual story (excluding the non-stop spew from Trump, I tuned him out a long time ago), so Twitterbook's attempts at suppression seem to have backfired. Taibbi may think it's under-reported, but even my non-tech acquaintances know about this scandal.
> even my non-tech acquaintances know about this scandal.
Baudrillard talks about this regarding the Watergate scandal. The word scandal implies this is a one and done thing, you've seen the thing, and there is absolutely nothing else to see. This was an outlier.
But was it? I think this one story itself is a canary in the coal mine. Extrapolate this to the long tail of stories for which their potential suppression won't make enough waves, and this is a much much bigger problem than what your non-tech acquaintances might hear.
This concentrated of a narrative shaping power is certainly not unprecedented but is something we would normally associate with totalitarian regimes. And even then it would be easy for people to assume the suppression from state channels. What we have today is a much knife-edge mixture of truths, non-truths and missing truths, coming from hundreds to thousands of micro channels with people's faces attached to it. I think the grand total of its effects will indeed be unprecedented.