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Yes, It's Fascism

theatlantic.com

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Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#311

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

nicbou wrote: post #252
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will be affected by the (hypothetical) fall of American hegemony, whether it’s increased aggression in spheres of influence (Russia, China, India), market failures, or even a fracturing or collapse of digital services (Azure, AWS). I don’t understand the insistence that this isn’t on topic. Hard not to paint it as anything but willfully ignorant.

I'm not ignorant. I just don't want it in my morning cereal when it's also everywhere else. Awareness of your country's politics definitely isn't the issue here. I am keenly aware of the US presidents' threats to invade my country. The issue is the insistence that it has to be discussed in every community, all the time, and that the importance transcends categorisation. Every website just becomes another dumping grou…

Okay so you didn’t really argue against it being on-topic, just that it bothers you / puts you in a bad mood.

IMO it sounds like you’d be better off reading Linux mailing lists and open source READMEs if you want to avoid politics. Just so happens that right now politics is uncomfortable, but it wasn’t 10 years ago when the interest rate was effectively 0% and the US gov and SV had still some semblance of separation.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#312

Post by dang »

ryandrake wrote: post #304
dang wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I can't imagine doing that - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581665 .

You could publish hashes of the flaggers' usernames rather than the usernames themselves. The point is not to go on witch hunts--it's to stop the endless discussions and questioning around whether what we are all seeing ( certain topics always seeming to disappear quickly) is the result of flagging activity that is evenly distributed across the site or coming from a relative handful of brigaders.

Everything I know about internet dynamics and human nature tells me that that wouldn't work—it would just exacerbate the conflict.

The problems we're talking about come from the fundamentals: how HN is defined (i.e. its mandate), how the site is structured (one front page that everyone shares, only 30 stories per page, etc.), how people feel, and what's going on in the world at large. Given those fundamentals, these conflicts are inevitable. All we can do is work on how we respond to them—trying to respond better, more creatively, more relationally. By "we" I mean all of us: mods qua mods, users qua users, mods qua users, and users qua mods.

That's not going to happen to anyone's satisfaction, but if it can happen at all, that has to be good enough.

I feel like Freud telling you guys you're all doomed to frustration!

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#313

Post by johnnyanmac »

nicbou wrote: post #233
Zigurd wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Techno accelerationists don't like to be reminded of their complicity.

Every thread about US politics has this comment, and the same response: this is not the right outlet, and some people feel like this content does not fit the topic of the website. If you are not American, it’s rather tiring to have every website and news outlet talk about it ad nauseum, and have it take over every subreddit and conversation. Americans get all uppity when you tell them that you don’t want that, as if…

Despite the name, this isn't a community for only "hacker" articles. It's overall to promote curiosity and engage those curiosities. There is no hard "no politics" policy here. The spirit of the rule is to not turn this into a 24 hour real time report of the state of the world.

But this article isnt that. If you don't find any of the last years of happening this year curious at the bare minimum, I wonder how deeply aware someone really is of it.

>If you are not American, it’s rather tiring to have every website and news outlet talk about it ad nauseum

I'm sure greenland sees it as tiring too. But of there wasn't such a huge pushback, "tiring" would be the least of their concerns. Why can't we then have a deeper discussion after that to analyze how it came to this (and how to prevent it)? We sure can't have that discussion on Twitter.

Also, I'm pretty fundamentalist when it comes to posting on social media: if I don't like it, I don't click in. If I clicked into every AI buzzword post, I'd go insane. But others want it, who am I To judge? Certainly not a moderator. If you want me to moderate, we can discuss pay.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#314

Post by scruple »

neogodless wrote: post #295
scruple wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this common belief grounded in reality? We're well past the notion that the "old man" (and his VP, as well as most, if not all of his cabinet) believes in the law and he has stacked the deck in his favor.

To beat a dead horse, propaganda works. And it's so much more pervasive than an occasional misleading message. Millions in the U.S. get "information" from a firehose of propaganda. That defines the reality they see. Others perhaps just feel hopeless but... want to believe that our constitutional democracy somehow manages to hold on and rebound.

It is exhausting and frustrating. What level of evidence is required here? And why? It's not unlike the article. Do we need to wait around for firing squads or something? What does it take for people to wake up?

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#315

Post by johnnyanmac »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #279
ryandrake wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web site already has a tool for this: The "hide" button. If you don't want to see an article, just click it and go on eating your cereal.

That can be said about any post that goes against the guidelines. At that point, why even have guidelines in the first place?

Guidelines are for comments and post. If I don't comment nor post it's not my job to care about that. If it drains all the curiosity off the site (which I doubt), then I migrate.

I'll make sire not to male the park dirty and maybe pick up a litter or two. But I'm not a ranger.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#316

Post by johnnyanmac »

nicbou wrote: post #300
DeusExMachina wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can be said about any post that goes against the guidelines. At that point, why even have guidelines in the first place?

If you don't like my constant screaming, just get ear plugs

Yes, the internet is a loud place. Adding to the noise never helps. People who really care about this should male a quieter space for themselves, or start really pushing on mods and admins. Arguing among the rabble is the slowest method to achieve change.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#317

Post by johnnyanmac »

slumberlust wrote: post #255
hysan wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it isn’t mod actions but rather the very likely fact that there is a small, but large enough group of flaggers who will act in unison to remove any such post from the front page. If you want an affirmation of the efficacy of the moderation system, what you should want is transparency into the voting behaviors of the population. If you see a heavy voting correlation between flagged posts and either a specific…

Close. Takes tenured accounts to unflag and any schmohawk can flag. That dicotomy alone makes things way more likely to be flagged on average.

Very tenured apparently. I certainly can't unflag and I'm relatively active on a mature account.

I do wonder of boosting the flag threshold for posts to double that of a downvote would change much. Probably not depending on the flag threshold and of this truly is coordinatied

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#318

Post by johnnyanmac »

scq wrote: post #194
messe wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the explanation for this removal condemning the ongoing fascist revolt in the US is where? At least that's what it looks like to an outside observer from elsewhere in the world. It's been fascinating as an outsider to watch your republicans suddenly unsure about the second amendment after the last few days.

Mods didn't remove it, user flags did.

The issue isn't the flaggers per se. It's that moderators show no interest to seriously investigating flagging patterns.

Its very similar to ICE. Obviously they are guilty, but I place the real blame on lawmakers' hesitancy to tale actions to reel this in. They have the power to do so and won't even investigate the issue in ways the public cannot. That's complicicy.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#319

Post by learingsci »

RealityVoid wrote: post #106
learingsci wrote: post #57

Trump needs we better critics. Heck, we all need better Trump critics. This unfortunately is more of the same; doing more harm than good.

I think your point is true, better critique helps dismantling post-truth populism. I also think the article is correct in its assessment and is a good critique for a certain segment of the population. It might be true that it won't persuade any trumpers though. Not sure you can persuade them with articles.

The author wrote a book about how America needs to reembrace Christianity. A review of that book said it was unclear who the book was for, given that the author is a homosexual atheist Jew. I would say that applies to this article too. As you note, it won’t convince Trump voters of anything. Its only utility is for those who already think Trump is a fascist, a term that the author himself says is basically meaningless. It merely makes those who agree with its conclusion feel good and click links. Signal detection theory tells us more noise makes signals harder to detect. So the article is counterproductive. Ok, meets the authors definition of fascist; so what?

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#320

Post by johnnyanmac »

figgis wrote: post #238
dang wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've replied before I even had a chance to add a second sentence! Edit: admittedly it is taking longer than usual... I've answered that point many times, e.g. recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818 . If you take a look at that and have a question that isn't answered there (or here), I'd be happy to take a crack at it. I haven't had a chance to look at the flaggers of these recent stories to ve…

This is a really rough spot, giving users the tools to remove visibility from a post will eventually get abused. I would genuinely be interested in some form of anonymized stats on the individual accounts and the posts they are flagging but that's a whole deal. Am I wrong that there used to be a flagged option on the lists page, or am I missing where that is?

Phrasing political flaggers as "those who care about the quality of the site" already shows the hand here. You can argue downvotes are for disagreement, bit Flags are for slop and spam, not blocking what I don't agree on.

Flags are basically me waving my hands in the air calling for a mod. That's not something I do unless I feel it's outright harmful to the site. I'm a late commenter so I pretty much never have to flag postings (mostly just comment responses that come straight out of Twitter).

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