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Kanye West is buying Parler

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Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#781

Post by jprd »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #213
tptacek wrote: post #117

This is really a story about a celebrity's mental illness and public breakdown. If you haven't been following the news, West has spent the week saying increasingly unhinged things, not just about politics but about Pete Davidson, his wife, and (if I'm remembering right) his kids and the fake actor children that have been installed in his former home to corrupt them. He was interviewed for a show on Fox and a big chun…

It's sad because to become successful Kanye had to ignore hundreds/thousands of important people telling him he wasnt good enough and he would never make it as a rapper. Then he became, arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time. Now image you've done what seems impossible despite countless people telling you it wont work out. You are in the top 1% of fame. Now someone tells you your other ideas are…

Whoaaaaaaa. Whoa. Easy there.

I don't want to get off topic here, but talking about Kanye West as "arguably the most popular hip hop artist of all time" should also come with that argument attached to justify such a grandiose statement. I mean, I need to see some Claire Danes w/red yarn vibes to even begin to understand that position.

You can talk of Kanye and Swift in the same sentence (never had a struggle meal, I see your nick Taylor ;) ), but Kanye vs. Nas? Jay? J. Cole? Sheeet, even Em? I don't even know if there are metrics that could make that statement valid unless you restrict it to some weird "early 'aughts" sub-generation.

I challenge thee to numbers, graphs and beyond all - cultural import!

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#782

Post by jprd »

notduncansmith wrote: post #600
kgwxd wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of this is confirmed by tons of other people affiliated with Roc-a-Fella Records (like Jay-Z and others) at the time. They're in on the story.

I’m not buying this Kanspiracy theory.

I don't know if you coined that or not, but I will forever claim you did regardless.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#783

Post by stale2002 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #762
stale2002 wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what the block button is for. Most people who are in favor of free speech, are perfectly fine with you personally clicking the block button. Instead, what they don't want, is a centralized platform preventing consenting parties from engaging with each other. See the difference?

What exactly is the difference, again? A block button is prone to breaking thru numerical power. If enough people are responding to you and or harassing you there is no manageable way to block all of them, especially without first passively engaging with their posts in the first place. So instead people build addons and blocklists to manage all of that for them. Now you have a separate centralized platform for dealin…

> What exactly is the difference, again?

Think about 2 situations. Person A, wants to see the content of Person B. So person A voluntarily chooses to see the content.

And the other situation is Person C, does not want to see the content of person B, so chooses not to do so.

> there is no manageable way to block all of them

Yes there is. Someone could choose to allow an automated method of blocking people that they don't want to see.

As long as nobody is forced to use this automated moderation, or can change it, while still having access to that platform, then it is fine.

> Now you have a separate centralized platform for dealing with a certain subset of users.

No actually, it is quite a bit different. The difference being that a person could chose to modify this blocking authority. It is all fine and well to have blocking authorities, as long as I, the user can turn it off, if I choose to do so, on that platform, or otherwise modify my own blocklist, or add a white list.

So that is the solution. Feel free to have blocklists. Just let me change the blocklist, for myself, if I disagree with it.

There, everyone gets what they want.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#784

Post by AnotherGoodName »

btbuildem wrote: post #730
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It tells me there's places of free speech on the internet but what is really wanted here is forced listening. Free speech on small fringe sites somehow doesn't count because it's not forced on people that don't want to see it. It's pretty clearly not a free speech issue at this point.

That's a good observation! I get unreasonably irked when some subreddit won't let me post a comment / removes a comment. Like, "who do you think you are to limit my ability to express myself here?!" Deprived of context, my contribution is meaningless -- so, how does that interact with the freedom of speech, really? Say I'm in a crowded square where people are arguing about squids, and I have a squid-related revelatio…

It'd be weird and very abusable if free speech ever implied the right to a venue.

If they couldn't stop people talking at their venue what's to stop someone completely sabotaging their agenda?

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#785

Post by alfnor »

mariodiana wrote: post #477
AlwaysRock wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad because to become successful Kanye had to ignore hundreds/thousands of important people telling him he wasnt good enough and he would never make it as a rapper. Then he became, arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time. Now image you've done what seems impossible despite countless people telling you it wont work out. You are in the top 1% of fame. Now someone tells you your other ideas are…

Kanye makes me think of someone I knew. I knew a young woman once whose conversation was impossible to follow. She was a college graduate, and seemed intelligent. But, I think either her mind wandered, or else she simply lacked the capacity to reliably establish context in conversation. I assure you, I really tried to make sense of what she was saying to me. She was beautiful, and I was interested in her. (I say this…

Interesting, because personality disorders run in my family (ADHD, ASD, schizophrenia, OCD, depression, anxiety, etc.) and as someone with two of those diagnosed (and likely a third undiagnosed), I tend to follow Ye's line of thought flawlessly.

On the other hand, I often have to speed-watch speeches and lectures, as most neurotypical people stay on the same topic far too long for me to stay attentive. By speed-watching, the subject changes frequently enough for my mind to never start wandering.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#786

Post by technotony »

werber wrote: post #580
qq66 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much like his wife. By "his wife" do you mean his ex-wife Kim Kardashian? If so, in what ways is she an asshole?

She's under investigation for a crypto scam, https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-183 she's also long been criticized for cultural appropriation, https://time.com/6072750/kardashians-blackfishing-appropriat...

She settled with the SEC: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/03/kim-kardashian-settles-sec-c...

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#787

Post by monopoliessuck »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #759
monopoliessuck wrote: post #497

There's a really concerning trend on HN and elsewhere I'm seeing. Everyone now seems to think free speech is too dangerous to try and promote anymore. It's been a shift over a couple years. I'm not supporting Ye or any of his bullshit, but some of the comments on here are really chillingly authoritarian. Parler isn't going to be able to maintain "free speech" even if they or Kanye want it to, which I seriously doubt…

> There's a really concerning trend on HN and elsewhere I'm seeing. Everyone now seems to think free speech is too dangerous to try and promote anymore. What are you thoughts on free speech regarding misinformation or election denial? When so many republican candidates reject the result of 2020, what's the right answer? Allow them to continue to divide the country up until half of the populace no longer trusts the de…

I think mandated information disclosure is extremely important in a capitalist system. How can we make good decisions if we don't have good information? We need to ask more questions, trust, but verify. We do pass laws that require those that sell products and services to disclose X, Y and Z for their products in a standardized and uniform manner. Likewise, we should be skeptical and critical about what others are telling us.

Information that's not tied to such a simple tit for tat relationship gets in the weeds though. How do you define "misinformation" as it pertains to your mother on someone's feed? You can claim and sue for damages and if a judge and jury find your case, then that's what it is, but mandating strict systematic moderation of all internet users on social media is not the same as mandating information disclosure for the Kellogs or IKEAs of the world. We've decided that Horseradish dyed green can be sold as Wasabi on the ingredients list. This is officially supported misinformation right?

In this instance, election denial is almost complete idiocy, yes, but barring "election denial" wholesale is a terrible thing to do. Your questions are quite leading too. We need more discussion around these topics, not less. I've talked election deniers off their stupid cliffs before. When SCOTUS shot down the Bush v. Gore recount decades ago, Americans had reason to be upset and talk about it. Would it have been more unifying if everyone had just bowed their heads, quickly and quietly, accepting the results without fuss, sure...

Censorship is a great tool for quelling public dissent. It's a shortcut around reason though and we've built up these tribal walls that preclude solving problems together. If quieting dissenters is the thing you want to maximize, you'll do great with it. We're not the only ones chomping at the bit to censor those that disagree with us, but I guess be careful what you wish for.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#788

Post by ivank »

bnjms wrote: post #769
iaml wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you asked, but here’s an interview that released yesterday. https://youtu.be/-ZmbP5vIbyk

Thanks. I was looking forward to watching that. The comments thread was mostly positive. It’s gone now. Memory holed.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps... is somehow still working for me, but it may be region-specific

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#789

Post by mancerayder »

themitigating wrote: post #217
_chu1 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we just go back to not using one big central social communication platform and go back to the spirit of using separate independently owned forums, chatrooms and websites for our little niches and communities to prevent this issue.

How does this prevent the issue? You can say horrible things on smaller forums as well

Why are we concerned with people saying horrible things per se, and not with the fact that the horrible things are amplified on a Twitter platform? In the conversation above, the smaller forums idea lets people go where they want. If you wander into an offensive place and you get offended, that becomes on-you, and then we do away with the complaint about Twitter promoting the bad and people getting offended inadvertently.

The idea of chasing after evil ideas is flawed from the outset.

It's not new, either, which is why this very long hacker news thread bothers me. I usually like to wade on on these topics more extensively, but here the entirety of the population is applauding free speech being a shitty idea, without any historical conversation.

Oh and it's incredibly US centric. Freedom of speech is a principle that was discussed in the Enlightenment and beyond, and fought for (first against religious authorities in ancient times, then against religious authorities in the 20th century). It happens to exist in the 1st amendment as a government limitation, but as a principle and a moral it is well beyond that.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#790

Post by cudgy »

kibwen wrote: post #323
Joeri wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be free speech absolutist, but I am not any longer, especially when it comes to social media. The argument in favor of absolute free speech for me was basically “let everyone hear everything and make up their own mind”. This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly swayed by the volume of the argument. This is well documented in psychologic…

Same here. The notion of "free speech" was one of the most successful and liberating memes (in the original sense of the word) in human history. But with the advent of technology, overflow attacks on free speech make unrestricted speech as useless as no speech. It's like living in darkness, and then someone invents light, and everyone cries "more light", and it's great, and then after a while the light gets so bright…

So, in other words, you liked free speech until free speech became more prevalent when it became available to the masses via technology?

Part of accepting free speech is being tolerant of speech you may find offensive.

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