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Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

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Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#141

Post by PavlovsCat »

No hacking without freedom.

This is like asking on a weapons manufacturer forum to only discuss small arms used privately.

News services are making money of this? Oh my, as opposed to the usual posts here, which never are about money, at all? Are you actually serious? If I read the current front page, there is so much stuff on it that is not "deeply interesting". I just don't want to bash any particular one of it, I don't mind that, but I gotta call hilarious, unintentional irony here.

If you're that worried about deeply interesting subjects, and not an apologist for power and its abuses, then I am looking forward for your threads on all the other stuff. Funny how so far the people who complain seemed to have more of a problem with this particular topic, than superficial things in general? You think there is a connection?

As for the "this will not stop anyway", that's nonsense.

Somebody is saying this is inevitable - and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true. -- Richard Stallman

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#142

Post by seferphier »

We need stories on Snowden because ultimately this story is not about Snowden but how the government deals with the privacy of individuals.

We are at the intersection of privacy of individuals and technology. The internet made information abundantly available for anyone (including govt) to search. Our entire lives is being tracked and recorded permanently in history. The people ("big brother") that control this information can control our lives (we all have secrets and/or broke the law one way or another without knowing it).

We as the tech community, we have a responsibility to protect the privacy and the rights of individual more than anyone else. Some of us on Hacker News build products that millions of people use. We need people that build these product bring awareness of privacy concerns to their companies. If we will not stand up for the privacy of individuals, who will? the Senators of our country?

We need to make people more aware of privacy issues, not less.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#143

Post by PavlovsCat »

ebbv wrote: post #47
gori wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh give up. "Edward Snowden's favorite brand of chicken pot pie" "Kim Dotcom braids his hair!" "Julian Assange orders Cherry Coke instead of regular!" "Elon Musk buys three rare white leopards!" Do you really like to argue by ridiculing others this much? There hasn't been a story even resembling anything like this, people have actually upvoted things they found interesting. More links means more people are writing ab…

It does not mean more people writing about the actual issues, it means more people writing about irrelevant details of these people's lives like Edward Snowden's girlfriend's blog. That's the point. Nobody's saying don't post thoughtful opinion pieces or details about legislation or court cases or anything else actually having to do with the issues . You can claim that most or all of the posts that have appeared on h…

You can claim that most or all of the posts that have appeared on here are relevant, but they aren't all relevant.

Yeah, but "most" are. See how it works when you leave the sophistry out?

And your response is not to argue the point but to basically tell us to shut up. Thanks for contributing.

Are you kidding? Are you projecting?

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#144

Post by rgraham »

gyardley wrote: post #72
gori wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh give up. "Edward Snowden's favorite brand of chicken pot pie" "Kim Dotcom braids his hair!" "Julian Assange orders Cherry Coke instead of regular!" "Elon Musk buys three rare white leopards!" Do you really like to argue by ridiculing others this much? There hasn't been a story even resembling anything like this, people have actually upvoted things they found interesting. More links means more people are writing ab…

Good lord, there was something up here this morning that talked about the pizza and fried chicken Snowden had for his birthday. Before that, it was 'his girlfriend's a pole dancer and here's the cache of her deleted blog'. This guy stabbed his own cause in the back by going public, doing press interviews, and doing whatever else he could to make the story all about him, and for some inexplicable reason y'all want to…

I tend to think he knew they would find him and he preferred to be famous and hopefully talked about when they did. He wanted to control what he could of how he might be presented to the public. He probably also did not want to disappear one day with nary a word about him or spoken by him ever again. He wanted change. He risked a lot for it.

I don't think he risked it so he could do a few interviews. The fame and media attention is a tool.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#145

Post by toufka »

tomjen3 wrote: post #109
rednukleus wrote: post #4

> But we all know essentially how this will end: Prism isn't going away and Edward Snowden's fate is grim. That's a very defeatist attitude. I'm sure that there are better arguments for upvoting or not upvoting these articles than saying "this story is not worth paying attention to because we are completely helpless, let's go back to talking about app store metrics".

>The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political connotations now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a weapon, used by Ludendorff in a purge of those who favored a negotiated peace. At the start of World War II it was used extensively by Churchill and his supporters to silence their opponents. In 1940, any argument against Churchill's aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was it right or wrong? Ideally, no on…

eh? From your own quote: >>The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political connotations now.

"Defeatist" has nothing to do with no one 'getting to ask' a question.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#146

Post by ryandrake »

swombat wrote: post #28

Please post more about Snowden, PRISM, NSA, GCHQ, and all the rest. I will upvote every one of them. For those who think that "we all know essentially how this will end", think about what the world would look like if every major change had been met with this kind of pitiful attitude. Every revolution, every change for the better, has come out of people rejecting that sentiment. It's not too late to turn away from the…

I started reading and registered an account on HN very recently (a few weeks ago), because I thought it was about technology, Internet, start-ups, science, etc.

Little did I know, Hacker News actually seems to be about the US Government, NSA, PRISM, cyber-surveillance, secret courts, wiretapping, conspiracies, and other such topics. At least, based on the volume of stories here. Is there a way to filter them out and get back to reading about technology?

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#147

Post by GHFigs »

cletus wrote: post #91

I'm not normally in favour of "political" stories on HN but this one is an exception for three reasons. Firstly, mass surveillance and the end-run around the Constitution is a technological as well as social and political issue that also touches on the hot button issue of privacy and how the legal system is increasingly at odds with the Internet (eg distinguishing between "US persons" and "foreign persons" is increas…

this one is an exception

Just like the last hundred, right? The problem with this is that it never ends, because every asshole with an itchy mouse finger thinks it's his job to keep people informed by mindlessly upvoting increasingly trivial details about allegedly important stories. The site just sinks under a sea of exceptions. Nothing important actually happens as a result, but everybody feels empowered because they're "raising awareness" of things everybody who didn't abandon ship has already turned fanatical about. All you're accomplishing is the sustainment and amplification of your established convictions.

Wake. Up. Sheeple.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcotizing_dysfunction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_minutes_hate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#148

Post by hysterix »

chaz wrote: post #137
hysterix wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pathetic the defeatist attitude the majority of americans have. We finally get a week or so of pushing these sort of stories to the front page and now people are complaining. Ironically if you look at a list of recent submissions by this "peterwwillis", you will see a list of boring nothing-to-see-here content that should also be downvoted due to a lack of originality and new content. Anchoring (wikipedia.org) -…

Please dont make this a personal issue about just OP. Hundreds of upvotes on this -- he's clearly not alone.

I don't mean to make this personal, but someone who submits a wikipedia entry as a submission should not decry posts that are about current affairs directly relating to software development and the tech industry.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#149

Post by davidw »

ISL wrote: post #111
Kylekramer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment, minus Snowden. We should be talking about this issue. Snowden is at this point immaterial to the larger issues unless he leaks more details. Discussing himself distracts from his purposes. His movements and people's opinions about his movements (which dominated HN this weekend) are of no consequence to PRISM and the NSA. The honest truth is we are no closer to discovering the truth about w…

If we stop talking about Snowden, he'll have lost his only viable defense. If what he leaked is important and worthwhile, then he ought to be defended. The probability that he'll receive fair treatment by our government and a fair trial is directly related to his presence in a spotlight. How the government treats Snowden is a proxy for how the government may treat each one of us in the future; he's now committed to b…

> If we stop talking about Snowden, he'll have lost his only viable defense.

No he won't, because in the grand scheme of things, no one cares whether HN talks about him or not.

Re: Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden?

#150

Post by davidw »

techtalsky wrote: post #103
cletus wrote: post #91

I'm not normally in favour of "political" stories on HN but this one is an exception for three reasons. Firstly, mass surveillance and the end-run around the Constitution is a technological as well as social and political issue that also touches on the hot button issue of privacy and how the legal system is increasingly at odds with the Internet (eg distinguishing between "US persons" and "foreign persons" is increas…

Thanks for writing this post so I didn't have to. The readers of HN for the most part belong to a sort of protected class and do, in fact, have some political power. It's the time to beat this drum as hard as we can. I think it's time for this issue to stay at the very top of our consciousnesses. Obama's twitter account is blithely tweeting about climate change (also important) when the blatant end run around the bil…

Beating the drum in the echo chamber will accomplish two things:

* Jack.

* Shit.

As Steve Blank is wont to say, if anything is to happen, you need to "get out of the building". That means interacting with real life politics, not upvoting stories on a niche news site. Unlike upvoting stories, this is actually hard work.

What's the point of visibility for a story anyway? The point is to actual do something that improves the situation. Voting things up seems like "gee, I wish someone would do something about this, maybe if they happen to see it it will happen".

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