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Comment by Clanan | Hacker News Reader

This U.S. election has been an important inflection point in displaying the bias and application of bias by "apparently" disinterested entities like Twitter, reddit and the like - places that claim to advocate diversity and openness, yet struggle to do so in the face of conflict. I hope this spawns a renewed push for education into why things like freedom of speech and tolerance are so important.

It all goes back to people being people. For us humans it's too easy to break the rules because we think we know what's best, etc. As the saying goes, history too easily repeats itself. Castro's passing is perhaps ironic in the timing.

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As an immigrant from the (once) Soviet Union, the current inability among my Silicon Valley/tech friends to say anything but pro-left views scares me. Even hinting that I may want something other than NYT-like viewpoints seems to cause people to bring out the pitchforks.

There are probably more conservatives/libertarians in tech than you think, but don't speak their views for fear of being outcast (e.g. not getting hired, invited, funded, etc.). In fact, they probably even publicly agree with pro-left opinions just to keep from being "outed", even though they may disagree in private. What's ironic is that the left prides themselves on being diverse, inclusive, and open-minded. It'd be quite funny if didn't lead down such a dangerous path.

I'm beginning to understand why early enlightenment thinkers formed secret societies to discuss their ideas. Because if the normies found out what they actually believed, then they'd probably be outcast from their societies, or worse. Maybe there needs to be a secret handshake or something.

> There are probably more conservatives/libertarians in tech than you think, but don't speak their views for fear of being outcast (e.g. not getting hired, invited, funded, etc.)

Personally, I don't hold anyone's personal beliefs (political or not) against them...BUT how they arrived at those beliefs and maintain them in the face of challenges to them does provide evidence for how they think, which has some relevance in predicting how they will think in other situations.

Take the very contentious issue of abortion. Whether you are for or against legal abortion, it doesn't matter to me because there are thoughtful, well-reasoned arguments that can be made for both sides. Absent any other evidence, I would assume your position on abortion is based on such arguments.

The more extreme political beliefs, right or left, that are inconsistent with the expert opinion of the vast majority of industry and academic experts in economics, science, history, ethics, foreign affairs, and military tactics would raise a big warning flag for me, because I have not been able to find anyone able to explain a way to hold those beliefs that does not require accepting vast conspiracy theories that are way too big to be even remotely feasible.

Not sure how your comment relates to my post. Are you saying you'd work with a libertarian (or a communist) but not one that believes in something you think is a conspiracy theory?

Essentially. It's not the belief that matters to me, it's the process of arriving at that belief that is important. (I'm talking about beliefs where the belief itself is irrelevant to one's suitability for whatever joint endeavor I'm considering with them. If I was, say, looking for someone to help me slaughter some cows, for example, then people who have a strong belief that all killing of animals is murder would probably be unsuitable, no matter what process led them to their beliefs on animal killing).

Beliefs that involve conspiracy theories are not necessarily signs of poor reasoning ability. Many things that were conspiracy theories have turned out to be true--but they were always conspiracies that were limited in scope.

The conspiracy theories that raise a red flag about the reasoning ability of those who believe them are the ones that require the conspiracy to involve so many people over such a big area that it would be impossible to keep it secret, or that require the conspirators to have such vast control over so many aspects of government and business that they could easily make anyone who tried to expose them disappear.

Take bike paths for example. There are people who oppose the construction of bike paths. I've seen at least two reasons for objecting to bike paths.

One objection I've seen raised was from people who thought that the street markings for the bike paths were ugly. They did not want ugly streets in their neighborhoods.

If someone objects to bike paths and this is their reason, all I can infer from that is that their notion of what is ugly doesn't match mine. I find a street with a bike line no more or no less ugly than one without a bike lane.

Another objection I've seen is that the purpose of bike paths is to make cities easier for people to get around in, in order to encourage more migration from rural areas to the cities, so that when the UN sends troops to take our guns away and enslave us under "Agenda 21", we'll be nicely packed in cities. A tightly packed population is easier to surround and disarm than a spread out rural population.

If someone objects to bike paths, and delaying our enslavement by the UN is their reason, I'm going to infer that they are an idiot.

Seems reasonable. Critical thinking is the key.

Are you suggesting that Breitbart is the mirror image of NYT on the right? Because that's what you seem to be implying here, and it is ridiculous. Breitbart is a cesspool. Perhaps you are claiming the NYT is, too?

No, he's suggesting that any time he suggests that the NYT might be anything other than the gospel truth, he's attacked (like this)

Correct.

No one should care about your opinion unless you support your contention.

You seem to be reading a lot into a simple business decision. Most advertisers probably don't want their brand advertised alongside (and thus associated with) highly controversial content, including racist content.

Thus most ad networks have general policies against hate speech and the like.

Same reason you can't monetize videos about war on youtube. It's not a conspiracy by google to stop people from making videos about war (which you are still free to do), advertisers just don't want their valuable brands becoming mentally associated with horrifying footage of human slaughter.

Unfortunately reality has a well-known liberal bias. Let's not mistake disinterest and impartiality for unquestioning support of "all sides".

Not sure what your first comment means. My point is simply that many entities pass themselves off as these open platforms for diverse opinions, when in reality they will target and/or censor those they disagree with. Is this a good thing sometimes? Obviously, e.g. with illegal things. But it can also be a dangerous habit. This isn't about pointing fingers at specific people or companies, but about recognizing that this is human and no one is above the temptation.

Reddit has infamously tried to be a free speech platform. They've allowed misogynists, nazis, rabid Trump devotees, and fat-haters a place to spew. The result of that spewing has been an enormous amount of trolling and harassment which ends up silencing people and making Reddit less diverse.

At some point you have to choose whose free speech you value more. Reddit has made some small attempts to stop the harassment, which in turn has made Reddit somewhat more diverse. Because misogyny has become a little less prevalent, I'm seeing more women on the site.

Free speech, as far as internet forums go, is not a black and white issue.

The first comment is a reference to http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2014/04/18/on-the-li... which suggests that yes, one "side" is more tempted and prone to this than the other.

The intent was to say that there is more to this than "platforms for diverse opinions ... censoring those they disagree with".

Regardless of their agreement, if they just censor those that are false they will appear to have a liberal bias. This is reportedly what scared Facebook away from dealing with fake, mostly right-wing, propaganda on their platform.

Are we going to pretend that the white nationalist alt-right has been a good citizen on platforms like Twitter and Reddit?

Hacker News itself is heavily moderated: spaces for expression are a commons, and people who abuse those spaces make them less useful for others, until they have infected the entire space making it only amenable to their sort of expression.

There's no such abstract ideal of free speech that transcends its legal definition. Speech is not neutral. If speech were neutral, it would not be so important. Since speech has effects, like harassing speech forcing people off platforms for expression, everyone has a shared interest in the expressive platforms they use. If an ideal of free speech precluded the moderation of conflicts arising from speech, what does it actually mean? That the most aggressive, vicious speakers get to monopolize the spaces they force others out of?

Re: Tolerance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Have to be careful with definitions. There are some fringe groups of white supremacists and their ilk which pretty much everyone (including Trump) wants to crawl back to their cave. There is also a diverse group of people of all backgrounds who want political change and are tired of both dems and reps. The latter group is magnitudes larger, and yet the former group seems to get all the attention. Why?

> Have to be careful with definitions.

OK, so let's spell it out explicitly. The term "alt-right" was created by Richard Spencer, who is often described as a white supremacist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer

> Spencer advocates for a white homeland for a "dispossessed white race" and calls for "peaceful ethnic cleansing" to halt the "deconstruction" of European culture.[16][22][23]

Think we can all agree that the people you are describing are trash. My point is that they are a fortunately very small non-statistically significant group and their beliefs do not represent the beliefs of most Americans (yes, including Trump voters.)

The post you replied to was talking about white supremacists, with no mention of Trump voters.

You are the one who brought up Trump voters at the first mention of alt-right white nationalists, which is ironic since you insist that the former has nothing to do with the latter.

Nice strawman. As usual, opponents of the enlightened are nothing more than rabid, racist idiots.

1. My beliefs are considered very heterodox here on HN. That's ok.

2. Likewise, I disagree, even vehemently with a lot of more mainstream opinions here.

3. Neither me nor those I disagree with in good faith are idiots.

4. If one hangs out with white supremacists and spouts their ideology """ironically""" or whatever, I think one is an idiot. Yea, that's true.

My thoughts exactly.

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