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Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

arstechnica.com

641–650 of 868 posts

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#641
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit rich to claim you're neither right nor left, when you're constantly repeating right wing talking points. Maybe you don't prescribe to a label, but all your arguments thus far all hinge on labels and not policy.

He didn't state any of his own political views so you can't place him. You should consider whether those talking points actually have some legitimacy rather than using them to identify which group he's in. This is actually part of the problem he refers to.

So you're l saying he raised specific points but that they aren't reflective of his political beliefs but are somehow reflective of mine because I don't agree with them?

That's certainly a level of mental gymnastics to paint things favorably for your political beliefs.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#642

I think all censorship should be deplored. My position is that bits are not a bug. That we should create communications technologies that allow people to send whatever they like to each other. And when people put their thumbs on the scale and try to say what can and can't be sent, we should fight back - both politically through protest and technologically through software. - Aaron Swartz

What is the context for this quote?

Swartz never created a social media platform nor had to make decisions on how to moderate user generated content across millions of users. He made JSTOR articles freely available.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#643
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many left wing dictators have there been?

Plenty? Have you ever heard about the XX century? Bolsheviks? Fidel Castro?

I'm not saying there are none. I'm raising the point that there's been quite a lot more right wing dictatorships than left wing through history.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#644

I spent a number of years living in America in the past, and made friends with people across the political spectrum there. And what has always stood out to me is how much hatred and animosity the American right and left have for each other. Talk with someone over beers long enough and they really open up about it, probably because I'm an outsider. As far as political orientation goes, by worldwide standards America a…

I disagree that Democrats are center-right. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are definitely left wing, even for European standards. But you might be partly right. One of the reasons for that are rules of political marketing (rarely politicians have enough courage to ignore them). One of those rules says that you need to differ and polarization is good. You want to win? Show how different you are. Another ru…

The rest the Democrats are far to the right of Bernie, AOC et al.

The left will tell you the mainstream Democratic party is working to minimize the impact of the left wing, and succeeding (see recent failures to enact progressive policy on minimum wage and immigration.)

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN Rules: don't comment on being downvoted. It's not interesting.

HN Commandments: pray you don't offend the rain gods. Your karma will be wiped away in a furiously terrible flood.

They're called guidelines not rules or commandments. People violate them all the time and get away with it and I'm pretty sure that's why they're called guidelines. There's one person moderating here and that's dang. I've had plenty of pushback for both the left and the right I've got no shortage of karma.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, a majority of GOP voters believe that Democrats stole the election, and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Here is a pollster that is respected by US conservatives: https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ele... Many also believe that patriotic violence is acceptable to protect the legitimacy of democracy. What kind of conversation do you have when people believe their democracy…

Claims about electoral fraud are a regular occurrence in American politics. Democrats made similar claims about at least the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections. Trump's claims about election fraud and the sheer number of lawsuits are an escalation but it isn't a difference in kind. Edited to add the following. The child post correctly points out that I should have mentioned Trump's inciting a violent attempt to overthrow…

What were the fraud claims of 2004 and 2016? 2000 was a unique case, and both sides were upset with the process (rightfully so.)

On the left I see claims of disenfranchisement done through legal means, which whether you agree with or not is at least something real and concrete.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#647
post #578

Why is the second sentence of this article about how the CEO of Gab used a Transphobic slur? It kind of seems like the author threw that in there to make sure the reader agrees with their political views, but the article doesn't say what the slur was, and I don't think the author would defend the idea that being transphobic makes it okay to hack a person's website, but it kind of feels like that's the point implicitl…

He said “trannies” I wouldn’t say it’s a transphobic slur. He said it to clearly piss off people though. The ceo sounds like a very secure, happy person with no mental problems. Also, transgender issues aren’t political. Modern monetary theory can be political. Immigration policies are political. Human rights are not political. I’m not a liberal or anything, just a rational person.

> I’m not a liberal or anything, just a rational person.

As a rational person, it must have occurred to you that if what you say is true, abortion and gay rights would have stopped being election issues many moons ago.

The reason they haven't is because it works, it gets people to the polls. That's politics. People don't vote for 'rational', 'objective' technocrats who are 'policy wonks'. They will vote for whoever they think will deliver on the pie-in-the-sky promises they agree with.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view as an American who has lived in Europe (Sweden, later Germany, and the UK) my framing of the US political situation is as follows: Democrats tend to be authoritarian and pro-centralization of power. Republicans tend to be anti-authoritarian and pro-decentralization. Both major parties have a long history of deep corruption. They've essentially colluded to rob the American people blind. Unfortuna…

It feels to me as if you are focusing your attention solely on the national parties and coming to view authoritarian and centralization on very narrow terms (e.g., use of executive orders). Take a step back, look at the broader contexts of the parties at the state and local levels, and it becomes more clear that your labels are not particularly accurate. Take centralization. You see that the Republicans are pro-decen…

I don't disagree. I believe both parties have deeply rooted issues with corruption.

On the levels that I am most knowledgeable about, the trend is roughly true. For example, Dems are the party of gun control while simultaneously militarizing police (a bipartisan effort). The moves to licensing and excessive taxation for what should be fundamental rights (e.g licenses to operate businesses, high taxes on your primary residence) is another trend that concerns me, but quickly goes out of the scope of what can be readily discussed on a forum.

My view is that both parties seek power on whatever levels they can get it. That's why I am for the abolition of political parties altogether, and a move towards a more direct democracy (public veto).

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that's disingenuous. It wasn't the same way on both sides. This kind of false equivalence crops up in a lot of places but it needs to be called out. Many high profile Remainers claimed Leavers were/are racist, ignorant, far-right, small minded, hated all foreigners, didn't know what they were voting for, were old and thus should have their vote be ignored, and worse. Leavers claimed Remainers were ... what? Af…

Taking the example of France, which I know better (caution: right/left in Europe does not mean quite the same as for Americans). The left (in particular the lefter parties) accuse the right to be racists, islamophobes, antisemites, sexists, at the heel of the bourgeoisie & capitalists, hostile to the working class, and guilty of ecological inaction. The right (not just the far right, even centre-right like the curren…

There's also, I think (disclaimer, righty lean), kind of a lack of understanding that goods conflict with each other.

For example, how is diversity really born? Friction, separation. That's how it works biologically, and that's how cultures have grown different as well. Japanese people figuring out Japanese solutions to Japanese problems, Brits doing that in Britain, and so on. There were a lot of these when travel was more difficult, and we couldn't just bruteforce eg. heating/cooling and water away with tech and energy expenditure. And those are the things that have created the charm of the cultures themselves.

Biology's the same, animals become different to cope with environmental pressure and we celebrate this. We rightly think it's a richness.

Wanting a locality to remain more like it is and retain its character is a desire for a good, it's not an evil thing. But when we run into something that triggers moral sentiment, thought often stops there. If we close borders, we will in fact be doing nasty things to people who could use help. But that doesn't have to precisely be because those outsiders are bad, them being different is enough: They will damage a good that we'd like to keep.

On the other hand, letting them in helps said people, but abandons the good the friction of moving into the country created.

> Violation of the right's values are much less personal, more indirect, closer to annoyance than outrage.

I think this is more because the right's grown up in an environment where the things they ought to hold holy haven't been allowed to be held holy, so we get substitutes like excessively economic politics, or the ugliness of populism: It's a moral impulse that has no dignified outlet, at least yet.

Ever wonder why many right-leaning people feel like they're more or less making apologies for their existence, that there's things that should feel important, but summon the air of dusty closets and mothballs to the mind when spoken of?

It's partly because the right-wing society concept was built on a somewhat different stack. Said conservatives often call themselves right-liberals, and therein lies the problem: Liberal.

Liberalism is not merely valuing liberty, and wishing a high degree of it. It's a descendant of French Revolution type thinking, an enlightened, rationalist concept where we've finally figured out via Reason how to conduct human life, an a John Stuart Mill -ish idea of freedom as the maximization of available choices being the end in itself. Liberalism is inherently universalist in conception, since it knows the right way to live. To a liberal bent, humanity is malleable given sufficient perseverance and wisdom. Rationalist Revo!Liberty is the bedrock of society, on top of which it is built. There is an inherent devaluation of the past here, since reason will tell us how to go forward, and we can't even tell what all this rickety nonsense does - it's likely a pile of superstitious junk anyway.

This does not work for the conservative attitude - in a Burkean sense, law is the slow accumulation of patches onto a rickety pile, that contains a lot of wisdom on how to live that we don't even remember why they're there in the first place: A mountain of Chesterton's fences. Man is held to be fallible, but something that can be honed by society and faith.

Drop the Revo!Liberty lego, let a Burkean patchwork law, religion as humans must have, and more secular tradition fall into its place at the bottom as the bedrock, and insert liberty as a product. Suddenly, the mothballs disappear. The conservative no longer needs to be a brake on Revo!Liberalism's inevitable forward march, an outdated version ten years late that will assimilate most anything their ostensible opponents push as the good status quo. The ideological stack becomes alive, and he can stand on his own two feet, on solid moral ground.

The Millian concept of liberty is troubled otherwise, too: A healthy society considers its own norms Good, and thus renders the human desire to conform a moral act. If the norms cease to be that, and are just arbitrary impositions, the only real moral act is defiance, it's the only one that contains proof of moral acts having been taken. Thus we go from stained glass to obese women holding severed heads, from public sculptures to giant public buttplugs. From melodic music to Yoko Ono, from beautiful paintings reflecting the wonder of creation to random splatter driven by hype. Subversion feels radical for the while but grows empty, fast. The only real 'morality' is in not being something, and that is it. There is nothing to truly aspire to except transgression or one-upping the Joneses.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

These ideas are the QAnon of the left. The GOP is without question stuck in a cult of personality, but that was not a Nazi symbol.

It's not clear that's the case. CPAC hasn't been willing to deny it. And the Charlottesville protestors did use that symbol: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/12/flags-and-oth...
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