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Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

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Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#31

Post by JohnTHaller »

CaioAlonso wrote: post #9
JohnTHaller wrote: post #3

"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stori…

Is that a problem?

Political pieces are generally considered off-topic, especially opinion pieces: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There's always been the odd liberal or conservative biased pieces that get posted to HN over the 11+ years I've been here. But there's been a ton of conservative pieces lately and they often seem to be from newer HN accounts. It seems similar to some of the patterns seen in some of the subreddits I subscribe to.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#33

Post by Sebb767 »

CaioAlonso wrote: post #9
JohnTHaller wrote: post #3

"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stori…

Is that a problem?

Yes, these articles lead to flame wars (just look here for enough examples) and don't really have anything to add to the topic of hn.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#34

Post by klyrs »

josephcsible wrote: post #2

One major distinction this glosses over is the difference between making it so you can't read something (e.g., banning it), and making it so you aren't required to read something (e.g., removing it from the curriculum). Only the former is censorship.

> Why does Professor Sachs make this assertion? On November 12, the governor signed a bill that makes it unlawful to include “instruction relating to critical race theory in any portion of the district's required curriculum ... or any other curriculum offered by the district or school.”

Now do the steel man (emphasis mine)

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#35

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #3

"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stori…

No post body was provided.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#36

Post by josephcsible »

Nursie wrote: post #18

The rants about "cancel culture" from the US right are hilarious, given their long history of boycotts of brands they dislike and escalating hate and fear for everything up to actual book burnings of material like Harry Potter. I'm not saying that the accusations of cancel culture are unfounded, I'm saying they are wildly hypocritical. (It's good that efforts at censorship on the right are raised in the article as a…

Legitimate boycotts are against stuff that people are currently doing bad, and they end when the bad stuff does. Cancel culture goes after people that tweeted something bad 15 years ago, that they've already recanted and apologized for, and never ends.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#37

Post by version_five »

josephcsible wrote: post #15
JohnTHaller wrote: post #3

"We are a digital media company providing engaged citizens with fact-based reporting and commentary on politics, policy and culture—informed by conservative principles." A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Often by younger accounts that tend to post a lot of things in a similar vein. Political opinion pieces generally don't belong on HN: "Off-Topic: Most stori…

> A ton of conservative opinion pieces are being posted to Hacker News every single day lately. Yes, but they end up "[flagged]"/"[dead]" way more often than liberal opinion pieces on the same topics do.

I mostly agree with you, however I note that another person has posted exactly the opposite comment. I find it interesting that people looking at exactly the same site can have such different reads of it.

Overall though, I'd say we're all right, in the sense that most partisan content gets flagged, and presumably each is more in tune with the stuff they agree with more. I end up commenting a lot on political threads, but overall, I'm happy HN keeps them in a tight leash and usually flags/buries them, because they really don't add much to the site.

The only exception I'd say is that HN is still basically the only place where one can have a (semi)adult discussion about many polarizing issues, without one side being banned entirely. Compare it to reddit, where anything outside the groupthink is not allowed to live at all. Possibly it's the threat of having the thread shut down entirely that keeps people on both sides more civil

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#38

Post by [deleted] »

EricE wrote: post #19
wayoutthere wrote: post #7

I believe in freedom of speech. What I do not believe in is freedom of mass speech. Your responsibility to the truth should increase in line with your reach. Have 1000 followers in twitter and want to talk about starting the next holocaust? Great, say whatever. A million followers? Yeah, that’s a problem. I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone.

>"I don’t know how this gets enforced, but we simply cannot give every lunatic a megaphone." At least in the US you can't enforce it - and yes, any lunatic can grab a megaphone if they want. The best way to handle problematic speech is more speech, NOT less. Trying to pretend lunatics don't exist is irrational and often a pretext to just block people that others disagree with. Screw that. Safest place for lunatics is…

[deleted]

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#39

Post by josephcsible »

klyrs wrote: post #34
josephcsible wrote: post #2

One major distinction this glosses over is the difference between making it so you can't read something (e.g., banning it), and making it so you aren't required to read something (e.g., removing it from the curriculum). Only the former is censorship.

> Why does Professor Sachs make this assertion? On November 12, the governor signed a bill that makes it unlawful to include “instruction relating to critical race theory in any portion of the district's required curriculum ... or any other curriculum offered by the district or school .” Now do the steel man (emphasis mine)

Isn't this still the same distinction? That's still just saying that nobody can force students to learn about critical race theory, not that they can't go read about it on their own if they want.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#40

Post by tomlockwood »

wayoutthere wrote: post #11
tomlockwood wrote: post #5

I think this article misses one big point which is how we - the people on this website - have actively constructed a world where advertisers can shift spend really quickly. Brand safety is a big reason for censorship - the idea of keeping ads for a company away from content that people might not like. YouTube demonetizes loads and loads of controversial topics across the political spectrum - and that's a Feature for…

That’s not censorship, it’s editorial oversight.

Editors censor things!
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