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The group chats that changed America

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Re: The group chats that changed America

#111

Post by freshfunk »

Whether you align or don't align with these politics, I find it generally distasteful when private chats are leaked. There's clearly some expectations of privacy (using Signal with expiring messages) and someone leaking this really destroys trust and open communication. It causes people to not engage in open dialog and to move to even smaller and smaller circles. This ends up stifling open and honest debate and results in more narrow, provincial views of the world.

And for what? For clicks? To tell on someone? To smear someone? What "good" was accomplished from this leak and this article? Some advertiser dollars were made -- probably a trivial amount compared to the value of honest debate among the most powerful in tech.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#112

Post by quickslowdown »

slibhb wrote: post #49
ajross wrote: post #29

This tracks with my experience here, watching tech thought leaders. Obviously Andreesen went very hard right, as did Musk, but just in general the tech elite suddenly and surprisingly turned Trumpy over the last few years; Ackman being a really good case study. Note that pg himself took a fairly surpising reactionary turn in right about the 2020/2021 timeframe this article describes. A guy who'd always been a left-ce…

[flagged]

Virtually everyone in the echo chambers you frequent are anti woke. That doesn't apply at scale, where people aren't willing to accept your "woke" shorthand.

My understanding of "woke" is levelling the playing field & being aware of your biases so you can be a better human. It's hard for me to imagine someone being against "all humans are equal & deserve equal access to opportunity, if they have the skill & motivation." I know people are out there who don't believe everyone is equal, maybe that's the "anti woke" you speak of?

Either way, "woke" as a term is poorly defined to the point I immediately disengage when someone starts screeching about it, because it means nothing and now the rest of the conversation is pointless.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#113

Post by cptroot »

freshfunk wrote: post #111

Whether you align or don't align with these politics, I find it generally distasteful when private chats are leaked. There's clearly some expectations of privacy (using Signal with expiring messages) and someone leaking this really destroys trust and open communication. It causes people to not engage in open dialog and to move to even smaller and smaller circles. This ends up stifling open and honest debate and resul…

For what it's worth, nothing was leaked in this article except for the existence of these chats. There are no screenshots, and very few concrete details other than some information about membership timelines.

This article contains genuine reporting about the right-wing influencers working to shift the opinions of the richest people in the USA. That seems like a large amount of good to me.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#114

Post by ajross »

slibhb wrote: post #107
ajross wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Characterizing those issues the way you do, instead of as considered and real efforts to do good stuff in the real world, is precisely the result of the echo chamber in question. It really doesn't occur to you to at least nod to the fact that some of us see things differently? People can be wrong and not "woke" (which you're clearly using to connote "evil" or "enemy"). The slide from reasoned discussion into hyperbol…

I don't dispute that these are "efforts to do good stuff in the real world". It's just very obvious that they are having the opposite effect. I don't kow what that has to do with an "echo chamber". > People can be wrong and not "woke" (which you're clearly using to connote "evil" or "enemy"). Of course they can. The Trump administration is wrong and unwoke. I did not use "woke" to connote "evil" or "enemy". Where are…

> It's just very obvious that they are having the opposite effect. I don't kow what that has to do with an "echo chamber".

Yikes. When something is "very obvious" to you, to the extent that you find yourself exasperated by everyone else's inability to see the obvious truth you're taking as a prior... You are almost certainly in an echo chamber.

The stuff you sneer about here has real argument around it. It's not as dumb as you clearly think it is. Does that mean you're wrong? No! But it means you're not thinking clearly. It's time to talk to some woke DEI hippie school board members or admissions officers or whatever, and maybe see if you can find out what they actually think about gender or racial justice or whatever.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#115

Post by brendoelfrendo »

freshfunk wrote: post #111

Whether you align or don't align with these politics, I find it generally distasteful when private chats are leaked. There's clearly some expectations of privacy (using Signal with expiring messages) and someone leaking this really destroys trust and open communication. It causes people to not engage in open dialog and to move to even smaller and smaller circles. This ends up stifling open and honest debate and resul…

Nah, screw these people. Right wing billionaires actively courting and trying to influence their peers in business and media? This is the smoke-filled room as a group chat with disappearing messages. What good was done here? Well, hopefully, people realize that Marc Andreessen is neglecting his responsibilities to post all day and David Sacks whines when people challenge him. I want to know who's hanging out with Chris Rufo and Tucker Carlson, or introducing oped columnists to Curtis Yarvin, and I want it to be abundantly clear that they suck.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#116

Post by ajross »

cloverich wrote: post #89

Here's a fun project idea. Take as input tweets, articles, etc, from various politicians and think tanks. Then generate a mapping of who is probably in a Signal chat with one another, and at what point in time. I could imagine if the model was very good and well done, to even generate names for the chats, in a UI where clicking into it could show a graph of involvement, ideas likely shared, and approximate timelines.…

People do this already, but the signal (heh) detected by that kind of analysis isn't consumption of shared media. That's weak‚ and near the noise floor. The much stronger component is just dissemination of deliberate talking points, which happens all the time. What you need to add is the ability to discriminate the spinsters from the "real people", which is basically impossible.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#117

Post by swatcoder »

freshfunk wrote: post #111

Whether you align or don't align with these politics, I find it generally distasteful when private chats are leaked. There's clearly some expectations of privacy (using Signal with expiring messages) and someone leaking this really destroys trust and open communication. It causes people to not engage in open dialog and to move to even smaller and smaller circles. This ends up stifling open and honest debate and resul…

It's not unreasonable to say that the more outsized influence you have over others, the less privacy you can expect to preserve against them (or the harder you have to work to maintain it), both ethically and practically.

There's pretty wide intolerance for leaking everyday discussion by everyday people, but some people are in a position where their actions can very greatly impact others and some of their relationships and discussions have bearing on that. You can't be surprised if the potentially-impacted seek to seize transparency even where it's not handed to them.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#118

Post by giraffe_lady »

freshfunk wrote: post #111

Whether you align or don't align with these politics, I find it generally distasteful when private chats are leaked. There's clearly some expectations of privacy (using Signal with expiring messages) and someone leaking this really destroys trust and open communication. It causes people to not engage in open dialog and to move to even smaller and smaller circles. This ends up stifling open and honest debate and resul…

> And for what? For clicks? To tell on someone? To smear someone?

To stop them from doing what they are trying to do. The goals they are working towards are malign & repugnant and this makes them my adversaries. I'm not interested in a fair fight with a neosegregationist billionaires' coup. They certainly aren't going to give me a sporting chance.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#119

Post by [deleted] »

freshfunk wrote: post #111

Whether you align or don't align with these politics, I find it generally distasteful when private chats are leaked. There's clearly some expectations of privacy (using Signal with expiring messages) and someone leaking this really destroys trust and open communication. It causes people to not engage in open dialog and to move to even smaller and smaller circles. This ends up stifling open and honest debate and resul…

[deleted]

Re: The group chats that changed America

#120

Post by Jensson »

chimeracoder wrote: post #110
Jensson wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Collectively, HN has long been extremely comfortable with authoritarianism and far right ideologies, as long as those opinions are expressed in a framing that conveys intellectualism and "civility". HN also does the same for far left authoritarian ideologies, those are also here and upvoted. I don't see how this pushes out anyone.

> HN also does the same for far left authoritarian ideologies, those are also here and upvoted. Appropriately, this reply (which is exactly what I was expecting) is itself an example of the effect I'm describing: the false presumption that two point which can be distinguished are inherently equivalent and comparable. > I don't see how this pushes out anyone. Given your other extensive other comments about these topic…

I believe in the Scandinavian model. Which means socialized healthcare and free higher education, atheist education, and abortion rights, but also means voter ID, kick out illegal immigrants, right to work, no affirmative action in college admission etc.

I think you Americans are crazy both on the left and the right, I am criticizing the left more since that is more represented here, there is no need to criticizing the right since so many do it already.

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