We can have democracy or we can have Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#401

Post by giantg2 » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

wool_gather wrote: post #388

giantg2 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can do it that way. You just end up with many of the same issues we see today being exacerbated further, like rule of law not being followed and a lack of understanding about the legal structure. The point of citizenship distinction is part of organizing a democratic government and maintaining cohesion. It tests a person on the basic form and laws of the government and their allegiance to the tribe. The point here…

You make good points, though I'm sympathetic to the parent's point too. In the very layered federal system we have in the US, it might be possible for us to have it both ways. Non-U.S.-citizens could be given a vote in local/municipal/county matters, but still not for national representation. (And some states might want to try out different levels of statewide enfranchisement.)

Yeah, I thought a municipality or state was allowing non-citizen voting for the local elections. I think parts of MD and CA.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#402

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #356

stale2002 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't like them, start your own institution This point works against you, and actually supports the free speech advocates. If you don't like facebook, and want to have a more censored platform, then leave and go make your own social media company. But this whole thread is not about that. People do not want facebook to be allowed to support as much free speech as it is currently doing. Why can't these pro cen…

? Facebook censors. Heavily. My argument was the opposite - that if people want less censorship, because they don't agree with FB banning their version of 'hate speech' - then they can make their own website. There are 0 common platforms that don't censor. They all do, all day long. Do you realize how much content on there is not suitable for publication? Death threats, doxxing, harassment, using the n-word to refer…

> that if people want less censorship, because they don't agree with FB banning their version of 'hate speech' - then they can make their own website.

But specifically this thread and whole article is about people wanting more censorship, on FB. Those people are the ones who can leave, and go make their own website. Everyone else, who supports free speech can stay on facebook.

Facebook has enabled significantly more free speech, and democratization of information. That is why people are upset in this thread, and this article. They are upset about how much free speech facebook has enabled.

> The 'free speechers' might want to be inclined to allow that to pass

The free speechers have already won. This is what people in this thread and article are complaining about. They are upset about how social media has allowed a lot more free speech, and has democratized speech and information to very large degrees.

If you don't like how much free speech is on the internet right now, then you are the one who is going to have to create your own website. Because the pro-censorship people are the ones who lost, and are currently very upset about the fact that they lost.

Thats the entire point of this article thread.... That people are upset about how much more free speech is available right now, and how much easier it is for people to spread ideas.

Those are the people who should leave and make their own platform that has less free speech, if they are upset.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#403

Post by raarts » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

darepublic wrote: post #261

geertj wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of the people that think the virus isn’t real are critical thinkers though (meaning Occam’s razor, the scientific method, etc)? It’s not just education per se that we need, but education in critical thinking, and also history.

What critical thinking is involved in believing the virus is real? Apart from those who made some independent study I would say there is little critical thinking at all... Just faith in the institution of government and press.

My only proof from personal experience was when my wife got it, and lost her smell. Never having heard of that symptom for flu before, that was my personal proof.

Until a colleague told me he lost his smell 2 years ago after a serious flu.

I still do believe the virus exists, but not having the equipment to look at it myself how can I be absolutely certain?

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#404

Post by Shared404 » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #400

Shared404 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry. Grow up. I wear a mask 8 hours a day. Surgeons do for longer. Is it really that much to ask? I honestly don't understand this mindset.

Its fine for you doesn't mean its fine for other. Not everyone the same. Whether its too much or not can be different for different people. Its not hard to understand right?

> Its fine for you doesn't mean its fine for other.

True. I mentioned that disease which causes actual pain.

That is a legitimate reason.

However

If your reasoning is "It's uncomfortable" you are being ridiculously childish, and risking the lives of others.

I literally cannot understand the "I would rather risk killing someone than having this piece of cloth on my face for a few hours" mindset.

EDIT: Spelling (that -> than)

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#405

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #386

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That Facebook is maliciously and mostly singlehandedly responsible for the death of the newspaper and journalism. The mistake here is in blaming Facebook in particular when it was really the internet in general. Ironically what really happened here is basically the opposite of the premise. You used to have local media monopolies, or at least sufficiently concentrated local media markets that the players were making…

> dramatically increased competition for ad space, ... lowered prices ... grew the market ... incumbents weren't making as much money ... increased competition. My assumptions have long been that while total ad spending has been fairly stable, the business shifted to digital. In other words, FAANG did not grow the size of the ad market, merely captured it. Sadly, I can't quickly find any cites. If I understand your p…

So really two things happened as a result of the internet. One, there are now many more places to buy advertising. People are seeing more advertising than they ever did before, and there is more competition to provide space. Two, demographic targeting.

Suppose you sell widgets at a margin of $10/customer. You buy an ad in the newspaper, 10% of the readers are prospective customers, 5% of the prospective customers buy the product because of the ad, so showing the ad to 50,000 readers is worth $2500. The newspaper knows this, and the market lacks competition, so that's about how much they charge.

The internet comes in. Now you can target based on demographics, so the percentage of people who see your ad who are prospective customers is now 40% instead of 10%, and showing it to 50,000 people is now worth $10,000. But there are also many more sites competing to sell advertising, so the ad network doesn't get $10,000, it gets e.g. $1000.

Then the advertiser says holy cow, we can make $10,000 by buying $1000 in advertising? Buy more until diminishing returns causes the marginal value to get back to breakeven. Go buy $5000 in advertising. They end up spending twice as much as before even though the price is lower. (Remember though that advertising is mostly zero sum. The advertiser isn't actually making a ton more money all of a sudden because their competitors do the same thing and it cancels out. They're only buying that amount of advertising because that's the amount of sales they lose if they don't.)

So the advertiser pays twice as much as they used to in order to get more value (or avoid losing more value) than they used to. But most of the money is going to Facebook and Google and diffused out to a million random kitten blogs, when it used to go to local media outlets.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#406

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #366

stale2002 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "assault weapons ban" basically cosmetic features illegal. Which is silly. This is precisely the problem that people have with the term "assault weapon". If you are using the words "assault weapon" you are basically saying that you want to ban guns that look scary, because this is what the original assault weapons ban did.

You'll note that the comment blisterpeanuts objected to didn't include any cosmetic features (unless you consider "compact" to be cosmetic I guess), but somehow that wasn't ok either. And note that he didn't object to the term being used, but to the term being used incorrectly. But after a bit of googling I guess I found the missing context: "Assault weapons" being full-auto amounts to a US gun scene shibboleth to ma…

> "haha, semi-automatics are normal guns and not assault weapons"

Specifically, the assault weapons ban has nothing to do with banning semi-auto weapons. It has to do with banning things like bayonets on weapons.

Thats the point. The only definition of assault weapon, that has ever existed in the law, has been regarding banning mostly cosmetic features of a gun.

> without having to engage the substance

The substance of the assault weapons ban, is regarding mostly cosmetic features. It is instead other people, who are trying to ignore talking about the actual substance and specifics.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#407

Post by ardy42 » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #400

Shared404 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry. Grow up. I wear a mask 8 hours a day. Surgeons do for longer. Is it really that much to ask? I honestly don't understand this mindset.

Its fine for you doesn't mean its fine for other. Not everyone the same. Whether its too much or not can be different for different people. Its not hard to understand right?

>>> One. Wearing Mask can be uncomfortable, and it is real downside (at least for me)

>> I'm sorry. Grow up. I wear a mask 8 hours a day. Surgeons do for longer. Is it really that much to ask? I honestly don't understand this mindset.

> Its fine for you doesn't mean its fine for other. Not everyone the same. Whether its too much or not can be different for different people. Its not hard to understand right?

Some people aren't fine having a DD or getting a taxi after a night out, and would rather drive themselves home drunk. Those people have a far greater likelihood of getting into a crash that kills themselves or others.

Your decisions and actions can have real consequences for others, it's not just about your personal preferences. Reflect on that and take the GGP's advice.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#408

Post by nondeveloper » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #374

nondeveloper wrote: post #299

America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally. Whenever I read that people “aren’t educated” enough or are “unduly influenced” by media, e.g., newspapers, television, or social media, I like to remind myself of this. I notice that there is, and…

> America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally.... > I’ve come to know many politicians in the past few years, some of them nationally prominent. And I can say without hesitation that the average person is as qualified to make decisions about…

> I don't think that's what being advocated for. What specialists are good at is providing accurate information in their specialty. Often different specialists will disagree.

This is an interesting point insofar as the second and third sentence seem to contradict each other. Am I over-simplifying?

A translation of what I expressed above is that common people have common sense and that common sense inoculates us from misinformation. It’s an imperfect response, but effective.

What Facebook is and does, at least in terms of spreading misinformation, is not new. Newspapers were that for a long, long time and, arguably still.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#409

Post by ardy42 » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

nondeveloper wrote: post #408

ardy42 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally.... > I’ve come to know many politicians in the past few years, some of them nationally prominent. And I can say without hesitation that the average person is as qualified to make decisions about…

> I don't think that's what being advocated for. What specialists are good at is providing accurate information in their specialty. Often different specialists will disagree. This is an interesting point insofar as the second and third sentence seem to contradict each other. Am I over-simplifying? A translation of what I expressed above is that common people have common sense and that common sense inoculates us from…

> This is an interesting point insofar as the second and third sentence seem to contradict each other. Am I over-simplifying?

It's not a contradiction. For instance: maybe you have an specialist (a consensus epidemiologist) that says if we don't do A, B, and C, then N thousand people will die. Maybe you have another specialist (an consensus economist) that says if we do those things, it will cost the economy M billion dollars. Maybe you have other specialists in those fields that say other things, but are fringe figures rather than consensus figures.

Now the political figure or ordinary person has a menu of options, and has to make the trade-offs between them.

Re: We can have democracy or we can have Facebook

#410

Post by InitialLastName » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #394

InitialLastName wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting the study material in the mail doesn't help if your education system isn't equipped to teach people how to read (much less study the government). You might or might not have noticed, but the politically and economically disenfranchised are not well-known for their access to legal recourse.

If illiteracy is a widespread issue, then there are bigger issues at play. Not to mention, do we really want people like that voting? After all, that would make one ineligible to perform other duties which require basic english proficiency required of citizens (military drafts, jury). Rights come with responsibilities. Lawyers would love to take a clear cut case on a contingent basis.

> If illiteracy is a widespread issue, then there are bigger issues at play.

There are bigger issues at play [0]. Largely the echoing effects of white flight on second-tier cities, and politically motivated defunding of urban education. As with most of the other forms of systematic discrimination in our lives, there is always just enough plausible deniability to avoid judicial ramifications.

I'm all for doing everything we can to ensure the people voting in our elections are educated enough to make informed decisions. I just don't think we should be doing that by depriving people of the fundamental right (in our system) to elect their representatives.

edit: to add the citation I forgot

[0] https://literacyrochester.org/new-york-state-has-a-literacy-...