Hacker News Reader

Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

This is false equivalence.

Anti-Brexit is the status quo. It's by definition not controversial since they can't do anything other than advocate for how things currently are.

Pro-Brexit is by definition controversial since they were advocating for a complete upheaval in the relationship with the EU constructed over decades. And it was always going to be tinged with xenophobia and nationalism since that was the entire premise for the Brexit vote to begin with. And it doesn't get any more divisive than xenophobia.

View on HN

It's not status quo in an active vote situation. Your not showing up to vote did not cast a vote in favor of the status quo. Divisiveness is bidirectional by its nature.

The rest of your post is political fervor on your view of the vote and not related to whether YouTube's algorithms promoted divisiveness in all forms instead of just the one you don't like.

As the turnout implies, the anti-brexit camp had it harder to mobilize, since the status que seemed quite safe and unlikely to be challenged by many, especially, being already in a pro EU-region. So a lot of people did not come out to vote in favor since they seemed their vote not neccessary. Asymmetric mobilisation and de-mobilization is a thing.

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

The election had higher voter turnout than any national election in the UK in decades, and most of all polls showed the election was going to be very close. Blaming voter complacency does not seem logical.

It's quite reasonable to suppose that there are many reasons why one person would or would not mobilize to vote, and, correct me if I'm wrong, it's common knowledge that the "swing voter" effect is not due to undecided people becoming decided, rather that people are marginally motivated or unmotivated to vote.

So, in the spirit of democracy, where the desires of all those who /can/ vote (not just those who /do/ vote) are respected, it is probably interesting to examine why voters do and do not find the motivation to vote. Hypothetically, if we had mind-reading devices, and motivation was not a prerequisite for voting, which side of the vote would have benefited?

Asymmetrical motivation is the hypothesis that in referenda where Action/No-Action are the choices, there will be more voter motivation for Action rather than No-Action. This very reasonably applies to Brexit.

A swing vote just refers to a voter whose decision cannot be accurately predicted. Not voting is as much a part of democracy as voting. Even in extremely formal and small settings ranging from national congresses to the EU, abstaining from casting a vote one way or the other is very much a viable decision in and of itself.

I would argue that abstaining from voting in a formal setting is significantly different than not "voting" in modern elections. There's significant historical evidence of voter suppression, including suffragist movements. Voter motivation is not something that I think we should brush away lightly, because it has an impact on democracy just like voter manipulation and voter suppression.

This is not "by definition". General rule: Uses of "by definition" outside of mathematics are almost always wrong. Good article on the subject: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cFzC996D7Jjds3vS9/arguing-by...

Not to put too fine a point on it, if the author's intent is to say that their algorithm intentionally promotes nationalism and xenophobia, I think they missed the headline ;-)

I think it's perfectly fair to say that videos from both sides evoked similar passion. We can argue whether it's "good" passion or "bad" passion, but I can't see what difference it makes. Why would I watch a pro-Brexit video for a longer time than an anti-Brexit video, based on topic alone (i.e. assuming that both videos were equally effective in addressing their audience)?

Yep. See also: Clinton versus Trump. Trump was the perfect clickbait candidate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com