And honestly, we should not trust something funded by X to be unbiased towards X anyway, that's just common sense.
Unless you have not noticed a lot of news are being censored systematically on HN when they touch certain topics, some of them is giving SV/IT a bad PR, or poor work conditions in IT , political POV...
references: http://hckrnews.com/ (use all button) http://hnrankings.info/
There's definitely solid evidence of censorship, at some point I'm going to collect the main points into a blog post.
It's generally considered bad taste and hypocritical to preach something and not abide to what you preach yourself. In my country a lot of media people are for example writing about embracing immigration and slander anyone who disagrees but studies have shown that the people who work in these media outlets does not live in areas affected negatively by increased immigration to a large extent.
There is a reason why people hate that kind of shit and that's because it stinks and is used by people in power to shit on people without power.
Can you provide some examples?
What would be bad is if he had specifically asked or funded them to make that post. But you can't blindly assume malintent and hypothesize that Google has been funding New America so they can bash on other monopolies.
There is no proof of that, that's just you assuming the worst.
Lots of people who dislike immigration also do not live in areas affected negatively by it. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider their views, although it may influence how much weight we want to put towards them when making policy.
Unless, they of course, create their own media organisations which is happening in every western country and is the core reason for all this "fake news" which is a term ironically often most used by old mass-media that themselves heavily rely on half-truths at best.
(And that article was about Google effectively threatening to lower search rankings on publishers who didn't add +1 buttons, which is a similar complaint.)
Not an SEO guy but think I remember reading something on that.
So why would giving points for including links to their own social network (that ultimately didn't go anywhere) be unsavory if it's treated essentially the same as others?
My guess is this more the tone of what was implied rather than "If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer." (Although substantially the outcome may be the same).
Go to google, get google's view on things. Go to facebook, get facebook's view on things. Go to X, get X's view on things. Powerful companies using their influence on the media is business-as-usual. Regardless of the moral position in this incident, journalism has always been under such pressures - it's not being 'chilled'.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias
The whole article is worth reading.
A good example would be the New York press. Most of their papers, of which there were many, were owned/operated by political parties - according to the documentary series called, simply, New York.
I suspect your vision of these principles is subjected to some sort of bias? I'm not sure what it is called. It might be survivorship bias, or maybe confirmation bias? I don't want to speculate, as that's not my domain. However, I don't actually think those principles have ever really existed - as a general rule. Again, there are examples of such, but it doesn't appear to be the norm.
If you get bored, go down to your local library and have them dig you out some old microfiche. This is nothing new. Censorship and biased reporting have been a known problem and already is the norm.
To be clear, I agree it is a problem. It's a horrible problem. However, it's not new and it's aleady normalized. That's why I constantly speak out to support the freedom of expression. That's why I recently, in HN, spoke out to support the Nazis right to express themselves and why I decried Google taking away their domain name. I don't like Nazis. I like free speech. Nazis are pretty deplorable, after all.
As for censorship, it comes in various forms. Soft censorship is most common, in the Western world. I can relate a time when it happened to me, if you want. I was a freelance journalist back in my university days.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejji...
It does make me question this, however. How are you certain you're not introducing your own biases with it? Or, perhaps not even biases of your own?
Sometimes bias exists simply by virtue of externalities. An example might be that, when differentiated by economic ability, black people don't actually do more drugs than white people - though crime stats would indicate otherwise. The difference is their neighborhoods are policed more heavily and the biases in enforcement. Notably, even black officers may be biased in their enforcement.
It really seems like a tough nut to crack. I'm a mathematician, not a social scientist. I don't actually have any idea how to fix this.
We may introduce some bias through our algorithm, insofar as the weights we assign various factors favor one type of article over another. But we haven't used a training set yet (which is where ingrained biases would be factored in) so the algorithm is fairly simple for now.
I agree with you this isn't an easy problem to crack. We wanted to see if (a) there's interest in a solution and (b) reservations about our approach before investing more. So this is exactly the kind of feedback that's helpful. Thank you again.
I'm not heavy into the soft sciences. I'm a mathematician (complete with Ph.D.!) if that'll help you? I'm not sure if you're open source. To be truly objective, I may actually need to see that.
I'm very much retired - and willing to sign both an NDA and a non-compete, if you want. If you don't want, I'm not sure how much I can offer other than observations. It will also take a bunch of research to the methodology, but I'm not actually doing anything better.
I'm going to approach this from assumptions, and then thoughts based on those, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.
* It grades based (purely?) on linked sources.
* It grades those sources based on their host's bias and credibility ranking (sourced by mediabiasfactcheck.com?).
Given those, the extension's rating of an "objectively good" outlet and an "objectively bad" outlet referencing themselves in a followup article would differ only based on some databases credibility ranking?
If the user only trusted this extension, I could as an outlet easily trick it by linking in external sources such as quackblog.biz and truthiness.zone, while decrying a link from biasedrag.com to present the veneer of offering counterpoints.
I applaud the effort, but I don't think looking at sources for news works, as outside of science news, they are usually the first to post on things, and thus the only "news" linking to sources, are second-hand outlets or blogs.
The first reuters article I tried for example didn't get a rating: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-amazon-mining/braz...
Without transparency, you as the extension author becomes the central arbiter of news, which is IMHO more dangerous than a status quo of outlets.
A lot of news that is factual, unbiased, etc don't require a counterpoint or opposing views as a fact at its core is a fact. A lot of topics are of course aggregates where things get muddy, and statistics involve a lot of assumptions.
I like the idea, but I'm unsure of the possibility of the venture.
Your initial assumptions are correct on the inputs to the algorithm.
>the extension's rating of an "objectively good" outlet and an "objectively bad" outlet referencing themselves in a followup article would differ only based on some databases credibility ranking?
I may not understand your question. But there's an algorithm that factors in count of sources, diversity of sources, political leaning of sources, credibility of sources, and (soon) author depth of experience in that topic. So it's more than simply referencing a database. Does that give you more confidence in what the rating or not enough?
>If the user only trusted this extension, I could as an outlet easily trick it by linking in external sources such as quackblog.biz and truthiness.zone, while decrying a link from biasedrag.com to present the veneer of offering counterpoints.
True. You'd have to link to sites that are rated by Mediabiasfactcheck (MBFC) so you can't link to random stuff and get a high rating. And if the author was trying to game the rating at least they did decry the points from an alternate viewpoint; that's better than what happens with the news today.
MBFC is not perfect of course but their methodology follows the Fact-checkers’ Code of Principles developed by Poynter Institute so is generally consistent and high quality.
>I applaud the effort, but I don't think looking at sources for news works, as outside of science news, they are usually the first to post on things, and thus the only "news" linking to sources, are second-hand outlets or blogs.
Fair point on breaking news. We wanted to first solve for non-breaking-news (i.e. issue centric), which do have sources and those range widely in quality. i.e. most things discussed on HN are not breaking news but deeper news. On breaking news we plan to have some calculations based on source info like tweets/posts/videos as well as author's expertise in that topic. What do you think?
The Reuters article has no links hence we cannot rate it. Not great but maybe helping people to get accustom to looking at sources, or lack there of, is good in and of itself?
>Without transparency, you as the extension author becomes the central arbiter of news, which is IMHO more dangerous than a status quo of outlets.
Agreed. I'll update our FAQ to be clearer on how we do the rating. (Just rolled out yesterday so a bit slow on the documentation; sorry). I hope we can make clear that there is no objective arbiter of bias but rather such tools can help you get smarter about evaluating the news you read.
>A lot of news that is factual, unbiased, etc don't require a counterpoint or opposing views as a fact at its core is a fact. A lot of topics are of course aggregates where things get muddy, and statistics involve a lot of assumptions.
Agreed on both points, though I might counter that there's no such thing as unbiased news just because of topic selection and language used. Anyway, our algorithm doesn't require that counter-points be considered though it does evaluate that. So an article with high quality sources that lean one way politically can score ok but we'll notify the user of this lean preference.
We are unlikely to be able to say a claim is true or false, or that statistics are selectively being used to prove a point. That's pretty tough to do with an algorithm. But maybe the counterpoint sourcing can at least hint at if the author has considered this?
>I like the idea, but I'm unsure of the possibility of the venture.
We wanted to see if the idea has merit and your sentence is exactly what I was looking for. So thank you and thank you for all the feedback. As for the venture... I hear you, we have more to do. Please let me know of any other comments. I'm at amoorthy at civikowl dot com.
I'm not particularly fussed over nazism getting a raw deal in the free speech debate. It's not the 'thin end of the wedge' when an ideology that caused the deaths of over 50M people in a mere half-decade is verboten. That's not a particularly 'slippery slope' to slide down. Nazism has had its run, and it proved to be the single worst ideology in the history of humankind. If someone thinks that perhaps the Nazis had some good ideas, fine, argue for those... but grab a new name. After all, if it's the ideas that matter, then losing the branding shouldn't be a problem.
I don't like what they had to say, and I'm not white so they pretty much hate me, but the freedom of expression extends to even stupid people. Freedom of speech shouldn't be about just the absolute barest considerations of legal protections, it should be a social ideal.
Yeah, the Nazis hate me. Yeah, they pretty much suck in every way. I kinda like being able to say they suck and I really don't care that they think the same about me. I care when it becomes a credible threat. Well, slander is not acceptable so long as truth is an assertive defense.
We are probably not going to agree about this. That's okay, I know I hold a very strong view. It doesn't bother me that they speak. It just makes them easier to identify.
That is, in my opinion, the key point.
These days it's mostly "racist" views, which may or may not actually be racist. For instance, the old leftist view of isolationism and protectionism as a way to defend workers rights worldwide is repressed as racist because it advocates closed borders (for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with ethnic or religious differences, but to prevent worker competition from crushing wages).
But various ideas that have somehow acquired protected status are being censor-protected against criticism as well. From religions, quite a few individuals, and even events. In some ways quite successfully.
Since I regularly stay in Paris, for instance, I can tell you that the constant riots and car burnings that were reported for a short while in 2011 are still going strong and it is almost absurdly normal for riots to occur in all the large cities in France, with constant violence, victims and all you'd expect from riots, except it's now a constant part of life. I even hear that the same happens in large neighboring cities, like Brussels. It's beyond absurd how this is reported, reminiscent of how anti-government actions are reported in places like the middle east or Africa. The issue is that, as absurd as it sounds, there is a large-scale mostly-immigrant uprising against the French state constantly happening in France. Reading French or international press, I find this idea absurd, and yet, you can easily go out and see this happen near where I normally stay (as long as you're male).
But this is obviously the new normal, and it mostly makes you wonder what is happening. The government, for it's part, has actually published that they're indeed doing this. Again, it's utterly surreal that this is normal in Western Europe.
My question is, I can't tell what your views are by your post. I tried, and I can't really tell. I can't truly infer them, either. So, do you support this way of thinking? What are your personal views on the freedom of expression?
For those not from the area, the ACLU has gone to bat to ensure that people representing the Nazi Party (of America, I think) had the right to march down predominately Jewish neighborhood roads.
I don't think it is clear, but I really don't like Nazis. I do, however, like the freedoms to speak, assemble, and believe - I like those more than I dislike Nazis.
(This is kind of hard to articulate.)
That said, I see how it's being used. And I was fine with that actually, until I really saw for myself it's being used to mask a lot of human misery in western Europe. And why ? Only reason I can come up with is political reasons, politicians attempting to "prove" that they're doing (a lot) better than they actually are.
As in I would be fine with censorship of some extremist viewpoints, by responsible parties. Unfortunately if you cannot trust things like West European governments with this power, who can you trust to censor ?
So no, I am very much against almost any censorship. It is not reasonable the way it's being used and we shouldn't have it.
This opinion is not widely shared in Western Europe.
... why in hell not? Google is not a government-supplied service. They're a private company. How can you be for blanket freedom of speech, yet restrict a private party from expressing themselves? Google already curates your experience for you - see the 'google bubble'. How come blanket-freedom-of-speech advocates don't complain about that? It's not like Google's decisions jail anyone or impound cars or similar.
For that matter, why don't blanket-freedom-of-speech advocates complain about Apple's 'walled garden'?
> that's a matter for the courts
That's a terrible way to go for social justice as a first port-of-call. The courts are not particularly available for poor or uneducated people. And in the US, public defenders have to be extremely careful about not touching political cases or they can lose their funding. The courts are overloaded, slow, expensive, time-consuming, confusing, and often enough don't 'get it right'.
Freedom of expression is more than just a matter of meeting the barest legal requirements. It's an ideal, to be aspired to and inspired by.
Google didn't just curate content they linked or hosted, they took a domain name away without due process. It's obvious that you're okay with that. I'm not.
Party X then willingly signs on to a business relationship with corp Y, who has terms of service that have an entire line item stating that they can reject applications at corp Y's sole discretion. Right here, this is your due process. Corp Y then exercises their rights as per the ToS - they didn't lean on anyone (which is what this thread was originally about), they were exercising the rights granted to them by the business contract. Party X agreed to these terms. Party X is at fault here for not doing their due diligence with their business partners - something they really should have paid attention to, given their situation at the time.
Regarding the 60 days, this is not corp Y applying extrajudicial punishment. It's a matter of 'falling between the cracks'. ICANN rules set this 60 days[1], not corp Y, and this 60-day limitation info is also available in the ToS.
Google offered a service with terms, Stormer accepted it, Google exercised their rights as per the terms, and the 60 days is an accidental by-product of interaction with the overseeing body's rules, not a 'fuck you' from Google.
A marker of a chilling dystopian future, this domain cancellation ain't.
[1] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/text-2012-02-25-en
I'm not sure you understand what freedom of expression really is. I'm not sure that you value it like I do. I'm not sure if you have the same views of the right of the individual as I do.
That's okay. I accept your views. I think you're fundamentally wrong, as I've demonstrated in this sub-thread. To put this in perspective, I still respect you - even though we fundamentally disagree.
That's the root of freedom of expression. You'll note that I don't tend to refer to it as Freedom of Speech, or the First Amendment. I speak of it as a social goal. I speak of it as something to aspire towards.
If you're curious, the EFF and ACLU both agree with me.
I need to be very, very clear. I don't like Nazis. I like the freedom to express myself, and any infringement on that is an infringement on my future liberties. Some things, such as credible threats of violence, are worth suppressing or penalizing. Others? Not so much.
Sort of related, I am sorry that your comments have been moderated so poorly. I had nothing to do with it and, though I don't agree with you, I respect you, as a human, enough to pay attention to what you've said and to respond in kind.
Without the liberty to express ourselves, most other enumerated rights lose value. In all but the rarest of cases, I will support the ideal of liberty.
If you want to disagree further, this is not the place for it. I'm freely available at uninvolved@outlook.com - or we can pick a site of your choosing and keep it public.
If we're being honest, then frankly, this is patronising. Just because I don't 100% agree with you is no reason to claim that I don't know what I'm talking about. This is a cancer in American political dialogue, that everything is 0 or 100%, and everyone can be split into two camps, for and against.
> I'm not sure that you value it like I do.
This is more accurate. I'm actually strongly for freedom of expression. The difference between us is that I'm not a purist that thinks freedom of expression trumps any other human right.
The problem with the 'even the nazis!' stuff is that people end up acting on their beliefs. We know how nazis treated people, and have painful, painful evidence of that. And as I've said time and time again, if you think some of the stuff nazis had ideas about were right, then argue those ideas. Just don't use the brand.
Here's a clear example of where freedom of expression oversteps the bounds[1]. Bananas with nooses around them, directed at a black sorority at American University. "Let the courts deal with that" is nonsensical; blacks have a long tradition of the courts not working for them, particularly in the context of the lynchings that this action is supposed to invoke memories of. And even if you could find the culprit and eventually get it to the courts, all the culprit has to do with your ideal is show that they weren't threatening to actually do something, instead just making a joke. So even though the banana-hangers never actually intended to lynch someone, they've gotten entertainment from making other people scared. The problem with free-speech purism is that it pretends that dog-whistle politics[2] doesn't exist, that there's no subtextual threats - something has to be an actual threat before action is required... but of course people are not that stupid. The banana-hangers here are analogous to the nazi protestors - they're referencing earlier atrocities to make people scared and get their way, while not openly directing threats at specific individuals.
Basically, the ideals you should have for your culture should include "don't make other people miserable just for your entertainment". Freedom-of-expression purism is a simplistic ideal that requires throwing out a lot of common sense. And look at it - even the country that has in its constitution that the government can't restrict freedom of speech... has lots of restrictions on freedom of speech. Classified information. 'Free speech zones'. Private details of others. Medical records. No hiring limitations based on race, gender, or religion. No sexual harrassment.
Similarly, the EFF and the ACLU should support Google's decision to reject Stormer's application[3]. Google hasn't stopped Stormer from expressing themselves outside of google's network. Yes, there's the 60-day issue, but as I explained and referenced above, that's a 'slipped through the cracks' problem, not vigilante justice. In any case, a 60-day abeyance is nothing compared to the waits required for "take it to the courts". If someone has your stuff, it's going to take a long time to get the issue to a court, and often longer still until you actually get your stuff back.
In short, freedom of expression is an ideal, but it's not the only ideal. Managing a complex human society requires more than simplistic ideals. And as a simple proof of that, the denizens of the Stormer wilfully engage in tactics to silence other people with fear. They are working against this ideal of freedom of expression that you are so passionate about, and have an effect in real terms, not philosophical ones. By protecting their expression (and protecting them from the consequences of their actions) you enable them to suppress others' expression. An own-goal.
Re: the downvoting, don't worry about it. I know it's not you because you can't downvote responses to your own comments. But even if it was, it's just a few downvotes. The real problem is with the way HN ghosts your comment if you get just a single disagreement on balance. But it's been that way forever and it ain't gonna change.
> If you want to disagree further, this is not the place for it
I don't really understand this point - HN is a general interest forum, where political debate is welcomed. I prefer to keep these debates public, but don't really see the point of moving to a different forum.
[1] http://defendernetwork.com/news/national/akas-american-unive...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics
[3] In fact the EFF does support Google's right to choose, but then talks about the dangers of it philosophically. I couldn't find any ACLU opinion on the Stormer issue. SPLC, another civil rights outfit, isn't a fan of the Stormer though.
How many deaths were caused by religion? People simply believing that God plainly told them to do certain things (It's God's will).
Shall we ban "climate deniers" too? Imagine the death from climate change? Animal rights activists?
slippery slope. Been dealt with it by SCOTUS perfectly
Note also that communism is an ideology that is broader than the Soviets or the Chinese of the 50s and 60s. Modern-day communist activists don't go around trying to relive the 'glory days' of that era; they don't wave the hammer-and-sickle flag. As I said elsewhere, if you think that the ideas of the nazis are worth pursuing, then argue for the ideas. Just get a new name. After all, if it really is the ideas that are important rather than the branding, they should stand on their own.
You can argue for fascism without specifically identifying with the Nazis, just like you can argue for communism without specifically identifying with the Soviets.
As for modern-day, pro-Communist activists being violent you need look no further than Antifa. According to the Washington Post, Antifa consists of "predominantly communists, socialists and anarchists" [1]. While Antifa is not exclusively Communist, a large portion describe themselves as such. And they are violent regardless of their self-justification: the Atlantic, "The Rise of the Violent Left" [2]; BBC, "Antifa: Left-wing militants on the rise" [3]; Politico, "FBI, Homeland Security warn of more ‘antifa’ attacks" [4].
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-ris...
[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40930831
[4] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/01/antifa-charlottesvi...
The only difference with the way society treats neo-nazis and antifa is that libertarians don't run around saying "I defend antifa's right to freedom of expression". Referencing antifa here isn't much of a counterpoint, because they don't get treated any better.
> While Antifa is not exclusively Communist, a large portion describe themselves as such.
This is a categorisation error. When Antifa commits their violence, they're not doing it to promote communism, nor are they primarly communist.
And as I said above, communism is a broad ideology - you can be for communism and still despise the hammer-and-sickle flag. Not to mention that modern-day communists don't think that Stalin 'got it right', whereas modern-day nazis do think that Hitler 'got it right'.
> I must have missed the part where Antifa gets a free pass. Antifa, like nazies, is a label used like a bugbear. Most often it's seen by ideological opponents who use it to discredit gatherings of protestors: "Oh, there were $LABEL there, therefore everyone there is $LABEL". Every time Antifa is mentioned in the media, it's as a negative. No-one seriously gets an Antifa onto talk shows to discuss their views, and they're painted as thugs and professional miscreants.
If you believe that antifa mentions in the media are negative then you clearly are not watching CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CBS or PBS or reading mainstream press. At most a couple of writers/contributors tip toe-ed into "we should not really be encouraging antifa" over last week or so just to be met with screams of "False equivalency".
I'm not, however, talking about traditional media here. Instead I'm talking about Google, CloudFlare, GoDaddy, Twitter, etc. Youtube demonetizing what Google considers right wing while letting communist garbage stay up.
And yes, that includes Nazis. Once you say "OK, but not them!", you no longer have a principal. More like a strategy.
So, maybe there is hope? Maybe it isn't hopeless, so much as it is a battle that can't be won, merely sustained. They say the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. I suspect they are right. Also, I might just be imagining that quote, come to think of it. If they don't say it, they should.
I've been the lone voice (of reason, I'd like to think) in many a crowd, and unfortunately a social environ wherein the immediate reaction is basically an immune response against the errant ’fool’ is both typical and deeply sub-optimal.
I dispute that he was "pushed" since his views were already in that direction (and the MRA overlap therein.)
Have you heard of a man called Rupert Murdoch?
"Owners don't bias news reporting" is an ideal, not an expectation. Pointing out an ideal case isn't appropriate for describing the common case. Biased news in newspapers have been with us for as long as there have been newspapers. Pretending it's something new, and that influence from outside the paper is something new, is just naive (perhaps 'wilfully ignorant') to the extreme.
Second, why isn't this an expectation. Obviously we can't make news orgs be completely unbiased, but we can push for more transparency. Heck, even breaking up monopolies would allow for more owners with more nuanced points of view getting prime time in each smaller organization.
For comparison, consider what Clearchannel Media did to US radio stations. (basically it turned everything into a homogeneous top-25 repeat station)
Second, where did I condone biased news? Where did I say it was okay? I explicitly specified that I was talking outside the moral dimension on this in my first comment.
It's rather annoying that someone who is linking me to fallacy websites is themselves putting words into my mouth, creating a strawman to attack instead of dealing with what I'm actually saying.
It was this line that got to me:
> s/chilling/humdrum/
Bias is pervasive. Has been forever. Maybe always will be.
But I still refuse to consider it "humdrum".
Perhaps I just have no sense of humor ;)
It's about using their market share in two businesses (search/news and ads) to force their way into social networking. ie the threat that if Forbes didn't play ball with Google+, search placement (ie traffic) and hence ad revenue would dry up.