Live data from Hacker News

Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

npr.org

81–90 of 118 posts

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#81
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensationalism generates extremist beliefs as a consequence of its operation. The mainstream media\media monopoly has two deeply engrained habits; one, the belief in distributing free news, two, in sensationalizing every story to maximize ad revenue. Technology reduces cost, ergo, when costs reductions meet these two habitations, the net result is training the audience to accept sensationalisation itself as a brand a…

>The reason the MSM puts out news is to sell advertising I'm pretty skeptical about that. The major media outlets have significant influence over the political ideas that circulate through the electorate. In a democracy, that means having a lot of influence over which candidates are viable in elections, which, given how powerful governments are, is worth quite a lot more than ad revenue. Why do you think Jeff Bezos b…

>Why do you think Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post? Do you think he was after the ad revenue?

So he can control the narrative about Amazon via one of the largest US newspapers and allow it to make more money. It's always about money. Power is just a proxy to money. Or maybe it's the other way around...

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#82
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a member of those companies' boards, so I could not say. I suspect because they're politically aligned with the "soundbite" message presented by the leadership of the riots, and that their marketing teams calculated it is beneficial for PR purposes. Useful Innocents.

My suspicion is that the protests are far less coordinated or politically aligned than you suggest. For every "committed Marxist" involved I think you have a lot of plain old liberals and people with no real coherent political ideology at all.

That's surely the case with many protestors, but these protests these widespread didn't happen without coordination at the top. Ironically, that's one of the reasons why Occupy Wall Street failed miserably: it was mostly just bored NYC-area college students that wanted something to do.

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#83
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-racism, which is explicitly non-color-blind, is now accepted ideology among the center right in the US. See for instance Mitt Romney marching in the "Black Lives Matter" protest: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/politics/mitt-romney-black-li...

Ironically, anti-racism is sounding awfully like racism to me. But maybe that's just my colour-blind self...

It's a right-wing dog whistle: https://www.salon.com/2014/01/20/how_conservatives_hijacked_...

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, anti-racism is sounding awfully like racism to me. But maybe that's just my colour-blind self...

It's a right-wing dog whistle: https://www.salon.com/2014/01/20/how_conservatives_hijacked_...

tbh anti-racism sounds like a left-wing dog whistle to racists on their end of the extreme.

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#85
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't, really. But they already do it, often in ways I dislike, and I can't see why to pretend the genie is back in the bottle and acting like I'm sad they're exercising that power against what I consider obviously harmful disinformation.

If you forgo justice in the name of the greater good don't be mad when you get neither. By your own admission, it's a precarious moral tightrope you're walking here.

I don't think that's really what I'm saying.

Every Web forum (this one quite notably included) has some kind of ground rules for moderation because if you don't have them they become overrun with pornography, hate speech, or some other kind of content that puts off the majority of users -- in other words they were never radical free speech zones in the first place. If we were talking about sending people to jail for sharing PizzaGate conspiracies I wouldn't support it, but I don't really see what benefit there is to Facebook or Twitter tolerating such content, and with something like 10% of Americans saying they at least partly believe in QAnon it is getting hard to act like the problems arising from this content are irrelevant or just a sideshow.

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... Anytime a paragraph starts with a dictionary definition it is rarely going to result in a good explanation of a difficult and nuanced topic.

I think the salient point is that there are extremists on both sides but the article only concerns itself with right-wing extremists. In effect, this isn't a campaign against "extremism", it's a campaign to combat right-wing extremism while left-wing extremism continues to proliferate unfettered. The OP characterizes this as a cultural revolution, but I don't think he made a particularly good case for it. Notably, I…

I suspect they put it that way because they don't want to offend conservative readers.

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core base of the Democratic party; Pelosi, Schumer, Feinstein, and their ilk; have been in power in their jerrymandered districts for decades, and in line with accusing others what what they themselves are doing, they accused the Republicans for over a year with planning to usurp power for the mortal sin of making a fuss over Mail In Balloting, something most western countries have heavily restricted or outright…

Getting a massive army to go for years of guerilla war is quite a different proposition from getting a small, committed group of people to storm a building and start taking hostages, especially if there is a rump that supports them.

So you don't need a massive army to engage in an insurrection but you do need a massive army to engage in Guerilla warfare? What sized army do you need to engage in terrorism?

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#88
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensationalism generates extremist beliefs as a consequence of its operation. The mainstream media\media monopoly has two deeply engrained habits; one, the belief in distributing free news, two, in sensationalizing every story to maximize ad revenue. Technology reduces cost, ergo, when costs reductions meet these two habitations, the net result is training the audience to accept sensationalisation itself as a brand a…

>The reason the MSM puts out news is to sell advertising I'm pretty skeptical about that. The major media outlets have significant influence over the political ideas that circulate through the electorate. In a democracy, that means having a lot of influence over which candidates are viable in elections, which, given how powerful governments are, is worth quite a lot more than ad revenue. Why do you think Jeff Bezos b…

If they had the kind of sway over the public you say they had, then Trump wouldn't have recieved a record 72 million votes in 2020. They spent 4 years lambasting him over every single thing they could and the impact was an election about 90 million people in the US Think was rigged.

Stuff like this doesn't help the optics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGRnhBmHYN0

Nor does Zuckerberg spending $500 million on ballot harvesting initiatives and skirting the law where he could. The one thing this last election prooved is that when rich and powerful people feel threatened with losing power or fortune, they often decide to use whatever power they have and spend whatever fortune they've got to maintain what they have. We'll find out, as the forensic investigations drag on, exactly how compromised this election was. Suffice to say, an awful lot of people on the left are acting like they have nothing to lose which is a strong signal indictments and convictions are on the road ahead.

Look at the MSM's SEC 8k and 10k filings. https://investors.newscorp.com/node/10126/html

Free news is done to sell advertising, which also finds its way into their subscription businesses and even if you pay for WSJ, the articles are often paid for or done as political favors.

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a massive army to go for years of guerilla war is quite a different proposition from getting a small, committed group of people to storm a building and start taking hostages, especially if there is a rump that supports them.

So you don't need a massive army to engage in an insurrection but you do need a massive army to engage in Guerilla warfare? What sized army do you need to engage in terrorism?

Your own scenario was a large percentage of gun owners rising up, wasn't it? I'm simply telling you I think that's far harder to pull off than an alternate version of the Capitol raid where they managed to get their hands on representatives.

Re: Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

#90
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MLK recognized that people are, and are always going to, judge others as they are and like people who are similar to them. This is human nature, and it's important for our survival. People are always going to be different, but they can however, make a decision to treat others with basic dignity and respect, to set boundaries around dignity and respect, and not use those diffrences as a reason to persecute or take adv…

>That is the reason why his message resonated so well. Not because he was color blind, that is naieve. It is because he pointed out, and very rightly, that ignoring the black community or any community of people over racism creates a lost opportunity. What did or didn't resonate well is not really the point of the discussion but now that you bring it up, you'll remember one of King's least popular positions was one o…

Does implimenting worker quotes address racism at it's root?
Post reply on HN