Ask HN: Can we please slow down the stories about Edward Snowden? • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by discostrings » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:48 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #150

techtalsky wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 improv…

You're presenting two options, of which you imply only one can be chosen:

* "Getting out of the building" and engaging others with an important issue

* Continuing to discuss the development of that important issue and organizing action with a community that is already mostly sympathetic

But the truth is that these options are not mutually exclusive. One can do both quite easily. As you said, the hard work is interacting with real life politics. I imagine many who post here are doing that. But doing the hard work doesn't preclude also keeping the issue fresh in the minds of one's mostly-sympathetic peers who are at the forefront of calling for (and hopefully making) change.

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

#152

Post by darkarmani » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 7:50 PM UTC

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…

> This guy stabbed his own cause in the back by going public, doing press interviews

Yeah. His cause is completely dead. No one is following the spying on Americans issue now.

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

#153

Post by techtalsky » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 8:21 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #150

techtalsky wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 improv…

I absolutely agree with you but I think keeping it important here is a part of keeping it in the consciousness of people here who have the power to take action. This is an absolutely red alert level problem where even the insane powers provided by the USA PATRIOT ACT are being superceded. A million conspiracy theorists were 100% correct about domestic spying and people who didn't want to believe that the 4th amendment could be so sidestepped were wrong.

At the very least people can join and support the EFF, ACLU, and other orgs making real movement. The US government is hoping this will die down quickly. I'm just saying it shouldn't.

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

#154

Post by notahacker » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 8:23 PM UTC

jchung wrote: post #64

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…

Mass upvoting helps exactly nobody. It's slacktivism, not activism. If you feel strongly about this cause, I would encourage you to stop mass upvoting, and get involved in the real world. Perhaps your action would merit its own post to HN, and something that would inspire others to join you in action. You might end up doing something amazing.

I'd go further. Mass indiscriminate upvoting actually undermines the cause, because instead of encouraging HN members to participate in discussions on secure communications and the responsibilities of tech companies which people posting here are particularly well placed to act on, people are debating the intricacies of extradition treaties, speculating about whether there's a connection with Moodys' downgrade of Hong Kong's credit rating or upvoting false rumours about Twitter blocks.

The effect of such a deluge of trivia on many people is to intentionally avoid the whole topic. It's like ad blindness.

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

#155

Post by renegdn » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 8:27 PM UTC

mayneack wrote: post #133

jchung wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass upvoting helps exactly nobody. It's slacktivism, not activism. If you feel strongly about this cause, I would encourage you to stop mass upvoting, and get involved in the real world. Perhaps your action would merit its own post to HN, and something that would inspire others to join you in action. You might end up doing something amazing.

Why not both?

I don't know

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

#156

Post by davidw » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 8:42 PM UTC

techtalsky wrote: post #153

davidw wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 improv…

I absolutely agree with you but I think keeping it important here is a part of keeping it in the consciousness of people here who have the power to take action. This is an absolutely red alert level problem where even the insane powers provided by the USA PATRIOT ACT are being superceded. A million conspiracy theorists were 100% correct about domestic spying and people who didn't want to believe that the 4th amendmen…

> people here who have the power to take action.

You have the power to take action. 'Upvote it so someone else will do the work' is lame.

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

#157

Post by davidw » Mon, Jun 24, 2013, 9:49 PM UTC

discostrings wrote: post #151

davidw wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 improv…

You're presenting two options, of which you imply only one can be chosen: * "Getting out of the building" and engaging others with an important issue * Continuing to discuss the development of that important issue and organizing action with a community that is already mostly sympathetic But the truth is that these options are not mutually exclusive . One can do both quite easily. As you said, the hard work is interac…

If you crowd out the tech and the startups with politics, you'll be left without much of anything.

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

#158

Post by levosmetalo » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 10:31 PM UTC

publicfig wrote: post #78

levosmetalo wrote: post #56

You can install "Selectivity for HN" Greasemonkey script to hide those stories. It reduced my front page to just about ~10 relevant posts. It might help to flag those posts too, but if you try it they will most likely just remove flag privilege for you, since this Snowden thing seems to be a new fetish here on HN, similar to the time Steve Jobs died when you couldn't read anything else. Btw, from the HN guide: "Off-T…

Could you possibly link to the script, I'm having trouble finding it for some reason.

You can find a script home page at http://swapped.cc/#!/iip

However, I had to manually enable script on https://news.ycombinator.com/* since it is enabled only on http by default.

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

#159

Post by saltonc » Wed, Jun 26, 2013, 1:28 AM UTC

The same thing happened when Aaron Schwartz died, and earlier with Steve Jobs' death. It's the mark of a community that cares. Sometimes, I agree it's frustrating, but I prefer that it happens and I have the minor inconvenience, than for it not to happen at all.