I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler • Hacker News Board

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#101

Post by 3pt14159 » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 9:15 AM UTC

saargrin wrote: post #97

3pt14159 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly critical of certain billionaires, Bezos included, but I do not endorse or even tolerate language like "eat the rich" because I still value the humanity of people that I think are presently exploiting a broken political / economic system. Bezos has done some good. Especially on climate change. Just because we disagree on the distributive effects of capitalism doesn't mean we're not both part of the same hum…

bezos ,almost single handedly, drove the whole concept of consumer accessible computing having been in the IT field throughout this period,i remember the awful pains you had to go thru to get any reasonable amount of computing power ,including purchasing hardware with months-long leads and having to deal with import/export documents and shipment ,not to mention things that are completely irrelevant like power require…

I was also in the IT field before the dot com bubble burst. You're right that he's done a lot to enable startups, but there were other options before AWS came around. Rackspace, Linode, etc.

But I will say this: AWS really has done a lot of good to improve security in software. Their cloud is massive and the security options they provide are great. They also simplify many otherwise complex things for many people, but I disagree that Bezos deserves every single penny of his fortune.

He doesn't pay enough in tax. The loophole of never paying tax if you don't sell your shares is stupid. He gets to do all the cool billionaire things like building space rockets, etc. And meanwhile people with conditions where going to the loo take longer (PTSD, IBS, ETC) are in pain holding their bladders all day because they can't afford to lose their job because they have desperate families to feed and clothe.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#102

Post by saargrin » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #101

saargrin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bezos ,almost single handedly, drove the whole concept of consumer accessible computing having been in the IT field throughout this period,i remember the awful pains you had to go thru to get any reasonable amount of computing power ,including purchasing hardware with months-long leads and having to deal with import/export documents and shipment ,not to mention things that are completely irrelevant like power require…

I was also in the IT field before the dot com bubble burst. You're right that he's done a lot to enable startups, but there were other options before AWS came around. Rackspace, Linode, etc. But I will say this: AWS really has done a lot of good to improve security in software. Their cloud is massive and the security options they provide are great. They also simplify many otherwise complex things for many people, but…

while i do agree there ought to be a better way of sharing profits from the productivity rise that he and his company enabled, that is far and removed from calls to guillotine him that one often comes across on the not-so-far-left

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#103

Post by formalsystems » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

yeuxardents wrote: post #4

I fully believe the flip side of this is. Had social networks not, over the last 10 years, been consistently banning anyone and everyone they could for everything ranging from simply slightly disagreeable speech all the way to flat out illegal speech, you would not have needed a massive analysis of data from one-off sites. The crowd sourcing and eyes on the information of regular people could have predicted it. By cr…

Thank you for your insight on this.

The tremendous collective insight of the HN community has led me to realize I need to do far more research before inserting my opinions into these writings (or simply not insert them at all), and I am rewriting all my analysis in Python with ready-to-download datasets so any claim is reproducible and verifiable by anyone. I truly did not expect this level of attention and take the responsibility to put out correct information seriously.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#104

Post by formalsystems » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #56

yeuxardents wrote: post #4

I fully believe the flip side of this is. Had social networks not, over the last 10 years, been consistently banning anyone and everyone they could for everything ranging from simply slightly disagreeable speech all the way to flat out illegal speech, you would not have needed a massive analysis of data from one-off sites. The crowd sourcing and eyes on the information of regular people could have predicted it. By cr…

Sunlight really isn't the best disinfectant. By allowing extremist content unhindered on your site, you are giving them a platform, you are helping them reach more people. You are in fact helping them boost their signal, rather than adhering to some ideal that ordinary people can somehow talk down extremists. You cannot reason with a true believer. You cannot use facts to debate someone for whom the entire concept of…

This is valuable insight which anecdotally I agree with completely. Plenty of people got onto Parler from time-to-time and tried to throw in some reason and facts. They were silenced/ignored as quickly as those trying to throw lies/misinformation into Twitter discourse.

I'm taking a step back to think deeper on this before throwing out an impulsive personal opinion one way or another on this. I'd like to do some deep NLP analysis on comment threads to automate processing/understanding of the discourse.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#105

Post by formalsystems » Mon, Jan 18, 2021, 9:53 PM UTC

ballenf wrote: post #22

me_again wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious: anyone feel they have ever successfully "talked someone down from a ledge" in an online forum in this way? Presumably it must happen but it seems vanishingly rare.

You see it here on HN all the time. An inflammatory post gets scolded/graciously questioned and the person retracts/apologizes/softens. Not every time, but a lot. But HN might be unique in that regard? Or maybe there's just a scale beyond which it doesn't work?

I believe HN is unique in this regard. I myself have been both scolded and graciously questioned by HN users on my writing, and it is always done in such a concise and well-written way. I am honestly completely new to writing anything online, and consider myself fortunate that there is a community of highly intellectual people willing to take the time to give my writing succinct criticism, without feeling the need to attack me personally.

It has also made me aware of how well-researched many HN user's opinions are on both sides. My opinions have largely been formed in conversations with young people of the liberal city I live in. They will cheer at anything that attacks whoever they see as their opponents, regardless of the research quality or partisan tone behind them. I have received a far greater range of perspective from brilliant HN users on both sides, which has prompted me to take a step back and re-evaluate how I am writing about this incendiary topic.

Re: I ran a crawler to collect posts and comments on Parler

#106

Post by 3pt14159 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 8:12 AM UTC

saargrin wrote: post #102

3pt14159 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also in the IT field before the dot com bubble burst. You're right that he's done a lot to enable startups, but there were other options before AWS came around. Rackspace, Linode, etc. But I will say this: AWS really has done a lot of good to improve security in software. Their cloud is massive and the security options they provide are great. They also simplify many otherwise complex things for many people, but…

while i do agree there ought to be a better way of sharing profits from the productivity rise that he and his company enabled, that is far and removed from calls to guillotine him that one often comes across on the not-so-far-left

I explicitly am against the calls to guillotine him. So here, we are in perfect agreement. He's a human being and should be treated with dignity, and he's far from being the very worst out there.