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Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
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Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#92HN is the most intelligent and open minded online community of this size that I know online. I have deep respect for you guys and girls and your opinions are always enlightening and thought provoking. I really feel much smarter because I have access to all these very valid points of view that you are surfacing. But even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" which leads me to go into this…
I looked at your comment history, and I don't think you got downvoted because of your opinions. It's more likely a matter of writing style. The folks here like efficient communication and concise, well thought-out arguments. Some of your long comments are more along the lines of Socratic self-debates where you are thinking through a subject in detail. There's nothing wrong with it, but it just doesn't fit the medium. HN is great for sharing insights on the news of the day, but not conducive to in-depth intellectual engagements.
Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What matters a few karma points Aren't there effects of downvotes like rate limiting and post position?
Or shadow bans even ...
A friend's account was shadow banned for discussing tech unionization in the era of certain companies pushing the "10x/unicorn engineer" myth.
It accumulated quite a number of up votes as well.
Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I on the other hand assume that random downvotes are part of the system and don't worry about them overly much. I also don't check on my post history except to see if there are replies to my comments. I have been kicked out of online communities for not aligning with the groupthink, but I tend to see that as a positive for me in the long run. If I'm so disliked by a community then I'm not going to force it. I one ang…
The problem is that karma is all-important on this site, and ends up creating different social strata, and a feedback mechanism which is what these other posters are complaining about. On Reddit, for example, it really doesn't matter if you get a few downvotes. Your post is still visible, and you still have the ability to up or downvote anyone else. You are not a lesser member of the community on that site when you g…
> "If you have low karma, you can't downvote people"
This is a good thing. It makes it difficult to create a downvote-bot-brigade. It means that only people who have participated in building the community up to a certain degree have the right to act as gatekeepers.
> "you can't post very much"
I'm not aware of any such restriction, except for very-very new accounts.
> "it's absolutely to your advantage ... to self-censor"
In a sense, this is by design. If downvotes don't help people learn what sort of comment is and isn't welcome here, then we'd be overrun with cat pictures. Downvotes are supposed to teach you "this doesn't belong" just like upvotes are supposed to teach you "this is an appreciated comment".
I think it's even OK that occasionally a decent comment will pick up a couple of downvotes because it's slightly disagreeable, poorly written, or just that someone clicked the wrong button on accident -- a few random points of negative won't hurt someone whose contributions are generally positive.
Where it becomes a problem is when well-thought-out, civil, reasonable comments get heavily downvoted. When someone with a contrary opinion can't make any positive progress. I try to make it a point to toss upvotes on comments like that, but perhaps more could be done.
One thought: even if we don't require a comment box for all downvotes, perhaps requiring a comment box for downvoting something beyond a certain level of negative (like, beyond -1) would keep people from piling on mindlessly or needlessly.
Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I often find myself self-censoring or abandoning the comment halfway, because I know it will get down voted and it's just a waste of time. Please don't, it is just karma. > Which brings me to the thought: If one of the most intelligent and open minded online communities can exhibit censorship or can determine users to self-censor, then what can be said about other communities/platforms ? I think its an example of a…
It is not "just karma". This isn't Reddit. On here, low karma means you can't downvote (while higher-karma people can, so they can use that to suppress the opinions of the low-karma people), which effectively makes you a second-class citizen here. Even worse, if the mods disagree strongly with your post, they'll happily detach it (so no one else can see it) and threaten to ban you.
It is to me. I've got ~9 HN accounts over 1k and I cycle to a new one every so often because that is how little I care about the features that karma-gated.
If you take HN seriously enough to care, ummm, why?
No offense but this place largely acts like a more technically sophisticated Reddit with everything from downvoting factual statements to upvoting provably false opinion. That doesn't include the inherent bias in the design towards YC companies and so forth.
Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#96HN is the most intelligent and open minded online community of this size that I know online. I have deep respect for you guys and girls and your opinions are always enlightening and thought provoking. I really feel much smarter because I have access to all these very valid points of view that you are surfacing. But even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" which leads me to go into this…
HN is just aggressively positive. I miss Slashdot. I liked that it had people who had industry knowledge who would post as an Anonymous Coward to correct someone who was being idealistic. I don't know where those people have gone, but it is certainly not here. They probably were dispersed to other sites.
Yep, Slashdot used to be great like that.
Those people are gone now. They're not on SoylentNews, and there's sure as hell not on here. I don't think they're on Reddit either. They're not anywhere.
My guess: they've retired from tech after getting tired of all the BS and nasty personalities, and done something entirely different with their lives. Maybe they took their savings and moved to Costa Rica and opened a restaurant on the beach.
Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#97This suggests we should implement mass surveillance of law enforcement personnel. If, as many people assert, the bad behavior of law enforcement is the actions of a minority, then mass surveillance of law enforcement should provide a chilling effect on that minority and result in fewer examples of these abuses. Somehow I don't think that argument would win the day though.
You're literally describing body cams, which people are activists are actively working towards making ubiquitous.
Not really, though, right? The body cams video would almost certainly be treated the same as dashcam video, would it not?
Generally, dashcam video is extremely difficult to get released if it incriminates or disagrees with the reporting of the police in any way.
That's not really surveillance by any meaningful definition.
Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or shadow bans even ...
A friend's account was shadow banned for discussing tech unionization in the era of certain companies pushing the "10x/unicorn engineer" myth. It accumulated quite a number of up votes as well.
it may be worth checking to see if your friend made other comments around the same time that may have actually been the source of a shadow ban. I've had half a dozen times where someone linked to a comment that supposedly got another account shadow-banned, and I looked at their history and found another comment made at about the same time that was a much more likely culprit.
Like, "I got shadow-banned for this comment about memory management in iOS" "... you sure it wasn't for this comment from a few hours earlier about how people who vote for the other political party are [long list of expletives]?"
Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#99Interesting. I would expect it to also foster radicalism. By creating an environment where only the most-vocal, least-risk-averse adherents to a particular way of thinking are willing to risk making their ideas known. If you make an environment where only those who are willing to face death, imprisonment, or harassment for their ideas are the ones doing the talking, then you make the only voice being heard be one of…
Radicals don't gain majority support, can be demonized, scapegoated and persecuted into being impotent. It is very easy to rally people with moderate or disparate ideas together against a common enemy.
See: witches, anarchists, terrorists, etc
Re: Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study
#100HN is the most intelligent and open minded online community of this size that I know online. I have deep respect for you guys and girls and your opinions are always enlightening and thought provoking. I really feel much smarter because I have access to all these very valid points of view that you are surfacing. But even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" which leads me to go into this…
> even this community suffers from this strange phenomena of "group think" There is absolutely no social cost for downvoting without commenting. Adding costs and accountability: - force comment box on downvotes - deduct from karma - flagging only Is it important for HN's community to have a "psychologically safe" [1] at this point in time? I can not think of a more critical time for the "STEM" crowd to have a viable…
I like the idea of downvotes costing you karma.
Forcing the comment box is also interesting. Maybe only make the downvote available to people who have already replied to a post.