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The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

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Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#361

Post by xelxebar »

richforrester wrote: post #270
mozumder wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when you vote Republicans. Republicans will do anything for profit. This is their core driving force. For them, money determines value for everything. "Who gives a shit about anything else? We should reinstate slavery because it would increase profits! Also, poor people are terrible people!" Democrats believe profits are nice and all, but isn't the final metric on value. There are a lot of other…

I realise this is a total straw man, but whenever I read Republicans vs Democrats I can't help but think about how utterly insane it is to have the opinions of 300 million Americans represented by TWO parties. Two. So Americans choose to agree with either EVERYTHING person A says, or EVERYTHING person B says. That's what it boils down to. And it freaks me out that in a day and age where we're so educated and "free",…

OP's comment is the straw man, not yours.

If you go out and talk to these actual Democrats and Republicans, the bipartisan distinction seems more and more like a fraud.

Seriously, have you ever met a person who's "core driving force" is money and "all they care about"? Does that description fit about half the people your know?

Seems pretty cartoonish to me.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#362

Post by kevinpet »

While I'd definitely like to see restrictions on internet browsing being protected at least as much as library circulation records [1] and video rentals [2], as a fan of checks and balances, the mere concept of a regulatory agency passing "landmark" regulations on anything is troubling. Either that power is in the law giving regulatory authority to the agency, and hence, it shouldn't be called "landmark"; or the power is outside the scope of what Congress intended when enacting the law, in which case it's a a bureaucratic power grab.

1. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacyconfidentiality/privacy/s... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#363

Post by pnathan »

abritinthebay wrote: post #257
pnathan wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Democrats also have policies that are... poor, particularly around the internet. This is a cross-party problem.

Given this vote was split along party lines this smells of whataboutism.

This vote had a bad result, and the Rs were pushing the bad thing. But a bit of puttering around older newspaper articles reveals the Democrats have also done their fair share of problematic votes here. Obama's Administration was not particularly sympathetic to these sorts of concerns, although more so than the current Administration. The EFF had more than a few things to say.

I don't mean to exculpate the Rs or go "ruh ruh whatabout those bad Democrats". Lack of understanding of consequences and technology is a cross-party issue, and each party has performs their ignorance differently. I think that part of this is age, as well as the age of the vested interests.

Also, personally, I wish you'd have checked my comments. I am no GOP evangelist/apologist. I'm trying to hew to the truth and be fair.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#364

Post by kirrent »

mozumder wrote: post #315
state_less wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I think you have to change the dynamics. Voting ought to better capture citizens preferences, it like we vote with one hand tied behind our backs. Why can't we at least rank the candidates?

Too complicated. Approval voting is much simpler than ranked-choice, and more appropriate for the general public.

My country has ranked voting. Compulsory ranked voting. No-one seems to have any difficulties with it. What's so hard to understand about rank the candidates in the order that you want them?

I did get the chance to flick through a Californian voter information guide for this last election and it seems like if your goal is to make voting simpler then looking at ballot initiatives would be far more useful.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#365

Post by sverhagen »

mattnewton wrote: post #288
mozumder wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when you vote Republicans. Republicans will do anything for profit. This is their core driving force. For them, money determines value for everything. "Who gives a shit about anything else? We should reinstate slavery because it would increase profits! Also, poor people are terrible people!" Democrats believe profits are nice and all, but isn't the final metric on value. There are a lot of other…

It's about the person, not the party. Plenty of profit motivated democrats and republicans who care about their districts. This kind of tribalism prevents us from finding middle ground; we should be against ideas and practices, and be principled instead of loyal to a party.

Ow, how I would have loved for not only Sanders, but also Trump to have been cheated out of their primary election, and then them both to have started a new party, America would have been a four-party system, overnight. One can dream...

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#367

Post by __david__ »

mozumder wrote: post #313
losteric wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primaries are part of the problem, not the solution. If I'm a member of party A, I can't voice a preference for the failed candidates of party B or A. I can only pick between the winners. For example, I've heard from a small but non-trivial number of swing supporters that they would have voted for Sanders, but instead voted for Trump. Ranked voting might have allowed them to vote Sanders > Trump > Hillary in 2016. Ot…

What everyone wants is Approval voting. Far simpler than Ranked-choice voting. Really, do people expect the public to be able to rank their candidates?

Um… Yes? Why do you think no one would be able to do that?

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#368

Post by 3131s »

defined wrote: post #343
peteretep wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> write whatever we want > however we want to You have conflated two separate things. > being that it's just > prescriptivism The irony of course being that "being that" in the way you've used it is one of the examples of "incorrect English" given by the op. And you're using it to support the idea that these things are important... > This word came about ... as a > corruption ... without the excuse > of it being a di…

Point taken, I made a mistake, but I think you're so focused on picking apart the comment that you've ignored the meat of it. That's ok, I said my piece and expected it to be downvoted - and it was.

I'll upvote you (although technically HN doesn't like meta-commentary about upvotes / downvotes) because you made your point well.

I don't have an issue with every "error" on that page and I have no problem with style guidelines for writing, but the problem comes when the prescriptivists think that logic is on their side when they opine on subjective stylistic and dialectic issues. "Ice tea" is a perfect example. The author of that site argues that "iced tea is not literally made of ice, it simply is 'iced': has ice put into it.". Apparently he is unaware of English's enormous fondness for attributive nouns. By his reasoning, we should all be saying "appled pie", or "apple-infused pie", or something crazy like that.

I also have a more general problem with prescriptivism because frequently it is used to justify a certain type of racist and classist thought.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#369

Post by Chathamization »

losteric wrote: post #307
Chathamization wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the general. But you also have to look at the primaries. For instance, this year we had 22 major candidates running for president in the two major parties. And people like Trump and Sanders show that there is plenty of room for heterodox candidates to be successful.

Primaries are part of the problem, not the solution. If I'm a member of party A, I can't voice a preference for the failed candidates of party B or A. I can only pick between the winners. For example, I've heard from a small but non-trivial number of swing supporters that they would have voted for Sanders, but instead voted for Trump. Ranked voting might have allowed them to vote Sanders > Trump > Hillary in 2016. Ot…

> For example, I've heard from a small but non-trivial number of swing supporters that they would have voted for Sanders, but instead voted for Trump.

If there's a sizeable proportion of people like that, they'd be able to get their candidate in the primary. By and large you need far fewer votes to win the primary than to win the general.

It always surprises me that there are people who don't bother to vote in the first round of voting, and then complain about the quality of candidates that made it to the second round. Well, yeah; you can't sit things out and hope that other people will pick the person you like. Only 28.5% of eligible voters voted in the presidential primary in 2016 (and non-presidential primaries often have lower turnout).

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#370

Post by [deleted] »

defined wrote: post #343
peteretep wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> write whatever we want > however we want to You have conflated two separate things. > being that it's just > prescriptivism The irony of course being that "being that" in the way you've used it is one of the examples of "incorrect English" given by the op. And you're using it to support the idea that these things are important... > This word came about ... as a > corruption ... without the excuse > of it being a di…

Point taken, I made a mistake, but I think you're so focused on picking apart the comment that you've ignored the meat of it. That's ok, I said my piece and expected it to be downvoted - and it was.

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