Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times • Hacker News Board

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#571

Post by otterley » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

smaryjerry wrote: post #569

Forgeties79 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To compare a former exec listing a very possible situation to the ravings about aliens is, once against, blatantly dishonest. To get back to the original point, I don't know what to tell you. If you think cancelling is a tactic only implemented by the left, then there is a very thick layer of irony in your "one persons opinion who through either ignorance, pressure, or bias will choose a political side" line. Have a…

This is just common sense in my eyes that you should scrutinize a source when especially if it comes from a very small group or one person with motivations to pick a political side and you will find one person to pick an opposite side in every case. I already stated that cancel culture comes from both sides and we don’t have data to prove this definitively but when the cancellation is an overreaction it is typically…

> you will find one person to pick an opposite side in every case

Of course there will be someone with a contrary opinion in almost every controversial issue. The key is to closely scrutinize the competing arguments based on the strength of the argument, the available data, and your moral compass, and make your judgment based on those. Personally, I am biased towards the positions that are based on the most intellectually-rigorous arguments supported by voluminous data; and I'd hope the type of people who frequent HN do the same, regardless of their political affiliation.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#572

Post by Forgeties79 » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

smaryjerry wrote: post #554

tptacek wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't talk to people like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I was referring to the bias ignorance and pressure that causes there to always be someone on the opposing side of a political topic as per his claim that one executives statement on Kaepernick was true. If you will also note he called me blatantly dishonest when he in fact has provable lies in his statement which he admits.

[flagged]

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#573

Post by tootie » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

spupe wrote: post #529

tootie wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The MSM" isn't really a single entity, but it's thousand and thousands of journalists. How many get cancelled for mistakes or behavior? Like 0.01%? And how often does a major outlet really report misinformation? Very rarely. Media attacking media gets big headlines, but in raw numbers it's really an insignificant number. And things like "Russiagate" are made up by detractors. No respectable journalists reported anyt…

Too bad, because he has a great account of how the Russiagate scandal was overblown by the media: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-mill... You could choose to look at it critically and decide for yourself what you believe in. It is a factual, point-by-point destruction of your claim above. Zero percent of it hinges on how perfect Taibbi as a person is, or was 20 years ago. Your ideological puri…

Wow, that has aged poorly. All of the stories he insists should be walked back have been confirmed. Manafort and Flynn were both pardoned by Trump despite definitely having communication with Russian agents and lying about it. Roger Stone was also convicted for his role in coordinating the DNC email release with GRU via WikiLeaks. Russian agents visited Trump Tower to sell the campaign emails. Trump lied about his business interests in Russia. And it's absolutely journalistic malpractice to say that Mueller declined to issue indictments when he very specifically said he did not evaluate criminal charges at all because he didn't believe he had the authority. That is just a talking point straight from Bill Barr.

The impeachment trial laid out the details of the Trump campaigns relationships with Russia. No, Trump wasn't taking direct orders from Putin. That was never even suggested. All the MSM stories described back channels, influence, complimentary strategies and that was all true. Trump and the right-wing media upgraded the accusations to a level they knew could never be proven in order to reset expectations to something unattainable. Then obstructed every investigation, waited for convictions on obstruction charges and issued pardons so no one could ever be forced to give up details. Taibbi is framing the story exactly how Trump wants it framed and ignoring the reality. Nothing he references in the MSM reporting was actually incorrect. The hype around what the result of this reporting would result in was never promised by any of the legitimate reporting.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-01/no-rus...

EDIT:

Bonus content, here is Taibbi casting doubt on the Ukrainegate whistleblower based purely on his personal bias about what a whistleblower should look like. Again, he was carrying water for Trump and was 100% incorrect in his agenda-driven reporting:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/w...

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#574

Post by lliamander » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:43 PM UTC

Misdicorl wrote: post #408

lliamander wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even left wing dominated cities have large numbers of right wing constituents. To think this is the cause of police brutality is a stretch to put it mildly. > Right wing cancel culture are lynch mobs and the literal bombing of an American city and the imprisonment of an unconscionable number of black males. Again with the random grab of different grievances. None of these are relevant to this conversation, but expl…

I'm not able to respond to your below point. I understand why you jumped to the crack/cocaine disparity. In response if like to surface three points 1) it seems unlikely (although I don't have/know data) that a 10% population can have 80% of the convictions without intentional bias at play. Black people are not the only poor people in America. 2) I emphasized drug policy in general. I think you will find it much hard…

So there's two levels to this debate:

1) How unfair/biased is the policing of blacks in America?

2) To what extent is that unfairness the result of the right intentionally trying to harm their outgroup?

That second point is essential to your argument that that bias in criminal law is a form of "right-wing cancel culture". When a left-wing twitter mob joins in to get a man fired from his job for holding his fingers in the shape of the "OK" sign[1], that is their explicit intention.

Likewise, you are arguing that biased outcomes in criminal law are the intentional outcome of right-wingers targeting their political enemies (who are black people, apparently?). Even if you were completely correct about racial unfairness in the criminal justice system (which you are not) the fact that the policy was championed by black politicians and endorsed by a Democratic-majority House of Representatives makes your thesis that it was all a right-wing plot completely untenable.

As for the enforcement side, even if the police enforcing these laws were majority right-wing, this is still primarily happening in cities where the politicians, judges, district attorneys, etc. all have a left-wing bias.

With all this in mind, what you are arguing sounds more like a conspiracy theory. Again, not every outcome you don't like is the result of intentional action by your political enemies.

As for addressing the question how unfair in general the criminal justice system is towards blacks, there are several other good arguments in the link I shared. I don't have any specific stats about marijuana-related convictions, but even if there is a bias in that area, I think the arguments linked undermine the idea that in general the criminal justice system is unfair to blacks[2].

[1]https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...

[2]Of course, the higher rates of incarceration of blacks is certainly tragic, and I would be glad for solutions to reduce that rate. There are probably many factors that cause this higher rate, but my argument is simply that biased laws and law-enforcement are not among them.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#575

Post by dang » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:54 PM UTC

yeetsfromhell wrote: post #344

lliamander wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the quote, but Norman Rockwell said that the inspiration for his Freedom of Speech painting was a town hall he attended where a man not much liked by the community was allowed to speak his piece, even when the people did not like what he had to say. I'm not arguing we shouldn't be able to shame or shun (the NYT itself would be my preferred target). I think the idea is that we should aspire to resolving o…

Once US society made the jump from "right vs wrong" to "good vs evil" it became an intractable problem. @dang: was this a mistakenly flagged post? I don't think what I said was off topic or objectionable...to anyone, really.

I suppose some users thought it was too unsubstantive, given the inflammatory topic.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#576

Post by lliamander » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 7:56 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #520

lliamander wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That grab-bag of issues suggests you have a confused notion of what constitutes "the right". For instance, how is police brutality a example of "right-wing cancel culture" when some of our most salient examples occurred in left-wing dominated cities? Not everything you disagree with is a political weapon used by your enemies. I will concede (though you didn't make this point explicitly) that the religious right has h…

I think this is another case of defintions breaking down. There are no left-wing dominated cities in the US. There are liberal dominated cities, and liberals tend to support the same things as "conservatives" (big scare quotes), with the difference being target (sometimes). Painting Black Lives Matter on one street when no one asked for it while still supporting policies BLM is against does not make one leftist. Plen…

> There are no left-wing dominated cities in the US.

That they are not as left-wing as you does not mean they are not left-wing. Whatever they are, these cities are certainly not dominated by right-wing politics.

> There are liberal dominated cities, and liberals tend to support the same things as "conservatives" (big scare quotes), with the difference being target (sometimes)

What is a "liberal" in this context?

> Painting Black Lives Matter on one street when no one asked for it while still supporting policies BLM is against does not make one leftist.

One can be a hypocrite and a leftist at the same time.

> Meanwhile, the self-identifying conservative editor of the local paper supports a lot of policies that would be seen as leftist: BLM, trans rights, marriage equality. Liberals were firmly against these things until popular sentiment started to shift.

What makes this individual a conservative?

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#577

Post by gjm11 » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 8:28 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #539

jollybean wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubbish - Pinker is exactly the person that should be protected and there's no need to 'rehabilitate him' from anything. Celebrities of various kinds interact with each other, that's how that works. If you were invited to a conference and the CEO invited you on his plane because you had something interesting to say, and 10 years later we find he was a rapist, do we cancel you? If you're going to tell me that Pinker w…

Funny, I can't think of that many other "celebrities" that contributed directly to Jeffrey Epstein's sweetheart sentence in 2008, which enabled him to continue trafficking and abusing minors in the ensuing decade.

What do you think Pinker should have done when Dershowitz wrote to him asking "what exactly do you think this statute means"?

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#578

Post by 8bitsrule » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 8:34 PM UTC

There's certainly a need for discussion about bad behaviors. But as some wise man advised: let he who's without sin cast the first stone.

Most young people make mistakes. When someone is 'cast out' because of something they stopped doing decades ago (in a different time), that's a violent, revengeful and counter-productive act. Without forgiveness, we live surrounded by hate.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#579

Post by smaryjerry » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #535

smaryjerry wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Texas law was not supported by mainstream conservatives, it was done by Christians and the federal law is not under threat, this yet another thing meant rile people up to earn votes for a specific party. There is a zero percentage chance the Supreme Court re-hears the case on abortion.

> The Texas law was not supported by mainstream conservatives This is a classic No True Scotsman argument: that law was enacted by Texas Republicans and has been protected by the Republicans at various levels of federal court up to the Supreme Court, and copies of that law are being enacted by Republicans in other states. If you want us to believe that’s not aligned with mainstream conservatism, show that the larger…

You are right other conservatives won’t fight against it but it is also only religious conservatives that support it, at least banning abortion per the Texas law. In my own experience in a heavily democrat area, every single democrat I’ve met also support a ban on abortion after a certain period of time and the debate is more over how long or what point after conception until it should be banned.. that point is often swayed lower and I’d argue too low with conservatives, but even as you see in the Texas, it’s still allowable for 6 weeks after, not at birth. Mainstream conservatives rarely call for banning this early barring religious conservatives. And while this may sound no true Scotsman, conservatives are much less religious than they used to be in my experience, the country itself is also much less religious and this is allowing the mainstream conservatives to move away from religion based positions.

Re: Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times

#580

Post by krapp » Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #298

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can literally make your own twitter any time you want. Until cloud companies decide to stop hosting you and registrars refuse to register your domain. But of course you can also make your own cloud company and your own domain registrar as well.

> But of course you can also make your own cloud company and your own domain registrar as well. Until your upstream network provider decides to drop you (this happened to Epik, temporarily killing the whole company until they dropped 8chan). But of course you could also make your own backbone ISP.

Epik was hosting platforms that contained extremist content, encouraged and celebrated mass violence and allowed conspirators to plan sedition against the government. Yes, if you're doing that, you should expect that some businesses may choose to reconsider their relationship with you.

It's not a problem even most garden variety racist assholes on the internet are likely to have, though.

Also, 8chan is doing fine.