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The group chats that changed America

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Re: The group chats that changed America

#141

Post by neilv »

UncleMeat wrote: post #138
neilv wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understood, though I didn't have that idea about #2. My impression was that it was a well-known problem (going back to talk radio and Rupert Murdoch properties, and then growing and being more in our face with everything the Internet enabled). Maybe one of the problems is that, online, a flood of dozens of angry tweets stomping on someone, by (for the sake of argument) a small minority of people who are having a bad…

It is true that basically every public figure has people screaming at them on twitter or bluesky constantly. This is probably bad in general, and I think it is worth understanding how this sort of thing can affect the opinions and behaviors of public figures. I suspect that I wouldn't respond well to waking up every day to having people yell at me online. But this effect isn't politically aligned with the left . So i…

I've never had to deal with this firsthand.

If it's a public university, and their personnel are getting death threats regarding university work, the university had better make an effort to help -- if not for decency, then for liability. Including working with law enforcement.

One easy thing the university can do themselves (under the direction of a lawyer or administrator) is to ask IT for the Web server logs (or analytics) for accesses to the person's pages. They don't have to subpoena ISPs to see that, right before the most recent threat, there was a burst of referrers from `https://webforum.example/bobs-basement-militia?post=1232767`.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#142

Post by dang »

lovich wrote: post #140
dang wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the reply. My reaction, like most moderation comments, was shallow and limited in scope to what I know about forum dynamics. If you come out swinging with Nazi references, you're turning the knobs to 11 from the start. That's not compatible with the kind of discussion HN is going for. It's particularly troublesome when the thread is new, because threads are so sensitive to initial conditions. Also it's n…

Based on your lack of action on right wing extremist comments, I do not believe in the sincerity of your recalcitrance.

I'm afraid that's sample bias. We've done exactly the same kind of moderation countless times on all wings of commenters for many years.

You're right that not every comment which should be moderated actually gets moderated, but this is not because we're secretly on one side or the other. It's because we don't see most of what gets posted here. There's far too much of it to read, and we can't moderate what we don't see. If you see a post like that going unmoderated, the most likely explanation is that we just didn't see it (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).

To passionate users, it always feels like the mods are against them and secretly in cahoots with the other side, but this is an illusion (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If it helps at all, the other side has exactly the same complaint, just with the political bit flipped. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26368875 for a plethora of quotes; they're years old now, but the phenomenon is perennial. Here are a few more recent cases:

HN is mainly left leaning https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43559670 (April 2025)

HN has turned into a far-left hive-mind https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43214821 (March 2025)

this website is effectively a leftist filter bubble and you do nothing to address it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43146049 (Feb 2025)

a hard liberal-progressive tilt https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43136198 (Feb 2025)

a prog-left echo chamber https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43133747 (Feb 2025)

an echo-chamber of left-wing lunatics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42576474 (Jan 2025)

Re: The group chats that changed America

#143

Post by ethbr1 »

iszomer wrote: post #139
chimeracoder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have yet to hear a coherent description of what "woke" even fucking means that doesn't ultimately dissolve into a pot-pourri of personal grievances. Exactly - that's the entire point of a dogwhistle.

I have yet to understand what a dog whistle is in this regard but in response to quickslowdown's reply, I can only best describe 'woke' as using victimhood as the means to justify(?) their ephemeral power(?) in whatever context they deem fit? /shrug

A dog whistle is speech that's ambiguous enough for a speaker to claim "Well I wasn't talking about that" whenever they receive blowback for a thing they said, but mean it and communicate their meaning if there's no blowback.

To parent's point, the bullshit of the right's current definition of wokeness is that it's "things we don't like."

Which is about as useful as people calling something "problematic."

If there were firmer ideological underpining to the right's platform, I'd be willing to listen.

But currently, more words are spent complaining about and accusing others than talking about what they want to do.

> [woke is] using victimhood as the means to justify(?) their ephemeral power(?) in whatever context they deem fit?

Isn't that what the right is doing now?

I.e. we're victims, so we're justified in using our temporary political power to do whatever we want

Re: The group chats that changed America

#144

Post by lovich »

dang wrote: post #142
lovich wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on your lack of action on right wing extremist comments, I do not believe in the sincerity of your recalcitrance.

I'm afraid that's sample bias. We've done exactly the same kind of moderation countless times on all wings of commenters for many years. You're right that not every comment which should be moderated actually gets moderated, but this is not because we're secretly on one side or the other. It's because we don't see most of what gets posted here. There's far too much of it to read, and we can't moderate what we don't se…

I have interacted with you before and want to believe you but then I see comments in the same post like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43823412

> We got complaints about your use of the word "rabid" and I think they have a point. That crosses into name-calling in the sense that the HN guidelines ask you not to do.

> If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

This is in response to someone who is violating the rules on extremist/flame bait/trolling with a right wing bent. It appears that you were pointed out this comment based on the inclusion of the word “rabid”.

Now instead of coming in as a mod enforcing impartial rules, you’ve added words that give the tone that you are only admonishing this person because they got snitched on.

If I believed you were impartial then even if you were pointed out this instance of rule breaking by an impartial observer, I would still expect you to treat it in a neutral manner.

I understand after reading your links that I am probably falling to some sort of bias when I called you out on this particular, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone these days

Re: The group chats that changed America

#145

Post by iszomer »

ethbr1 wrote: post #143
iszomer wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to understand what a dog whistle is in this regard but in response to quickslowdown's reply, I can only best describe 'woke' as using victimhood as the means to justify(?) their ephemeral power(?) in whatever context they deem fit? /shrug

A dog whistle is speech that's ambiguous enough for a speaker to claim "Well I wasn't talking about that " whenever they receive blowback for a thing they said, but mean it and communicate their meaning if there's no blowback. To parent's point, the bullshit of the right's current definition of wokeness is that it's "things we don't like." Which is about as useful as people calling something "problematic." If there w…

> If there were firmer ideological underpining to the right's platform, I'd be willing to listen.

But there isn't and will never be imo, as human behavior cannot be hard-categorized into easy to understand boxes. Just as a light example, look at the former D's that were appointed and confirmed by the current administration. Would you say they have accepted a level of the Right's conformity over their original/core beliefs?

Re: The group chats that changed America

#146

Post by UncleMeat »

neilv wrote: post #141
UncleMeat wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that basically every public figure has people screaming at them on twitter or bluesky constantly. This is probably bad in general, and I think it is worth understanding how this sort of thing can affect the opinions and behaviors of public figures. I suspect that I wouldn't respond well to waking up every day to having people yell at me online. But this effect isn't politically aligned with the left . So i…

I've never had to deal with this firsthand. If it's a public university, and their personnel are getting death threats regarding university work, the university had better make an effort to help -- if not for decency, then for liability. Including working with law enforcement. One easy thing the university can do themselves (under the direction of a lawyer or administrator) is to ask IT for the Web server logs (or an…

Well let me tell you very clearly: this is not how any of this works.

The FBI won't care. The local cops won't care. The university won't pull logs for network traffic, nor would the existence of this information be meaningful to anybody to take any action.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#147

Post by pjc50 »

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…

To give an unrelated example, there's currently a huge drama explosion in the vtuber world due to Person X trying to strongarm an artist into not working with Person Y, while X and Y being ostensibly best friends with each other in public.

People do not like being lied to, and they especially do not like someone lying to them while concretely making their life worse.

> compared to the value of honest debate among the most powerful in tech

Yet again this seems to be using "honest" as code for "racism".

Re: The group chats that changed America

#148

Post by pjc50 »

ivape wrote: post #51

GWB didn't strike me as someone who could come up with the idea of prolonged Mideast conflict on his own. The think tanks that infiltrated his mind like the movie Inception is not unlike what is being described in the article. It's tough to accept how impressionable we are regardless of age. Just in tech companies we know salesman get into the ears of leadership and sell them on all sorts of ideas. Even though Gen Z…

> GWB didn't strike me as someone who could come up with the idea of prolonged Mideast conflict on his own.

This was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C... , the "Project 2025" of its time. They're the ones really responsible for the Iraq war, but they never got the Iran War they really wanted.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#149

Post by corimaith »

roguecoder wrote: post #55
slibhb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"Woke" just means "admitting actual history happened". It is impossible to be an actual nerd and not be woke. Money-men "founders" have nothing but distain for the geeks that made them rich. [Edit: I see people don't like this, but are simply down-voting rather than engaging. What is your definition of "woke" then, if not an awareness of America's history?]

Do you still believe in the ideals of the Enlightment?

If you do, most of the left, under that banner of "woke" would find it right to oppose you.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#150

Post by ethbr1 »

iszomer wrote: post #145
ethbr1 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dog whistle is speech that's ambiguous enough for a speaker to claim "Well I wasn't talking about that " whenever they receive blowback for a thing they said, but mean it and communicate their meaning if there's no blowback. To parent's point, the bullshit of the right's current definition of wokeness is that it's "things we don't like." Which is about as useful as people calling something "problematic." If there w…

> If there were firmer ideological underpining to the right's platform, I'd be willing to listen. But there isn't and will never be imo, as human behavior cannot be hard-categorized into easy to understand boxes. Just as a light example, look at the former D's that were appointed and confirmed by the current administration. Would you say they have accepted a level of the Right's conformity over their original/core be…

Using Bessent and Navarro as examples, they both have ideological underpinings to their approaches.

Unfortunately (for the world) they're also contradictory.

And the administration doesn't seem capable of enunciating a coherent decision as to which guides its policy -- instead it's last-man-in-the-room-ism.

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