No, the erasure is not on them; it's entirely our fault.
Our modern equivalents of the library are being purged, and you're happily cheering the flames.
No, they aren't. Not in any way, shape, or form. Private companies don't have any obligation to continue showing anything. They don't have any such 'moral' obligations at all. They aren't going into libraries and purging books.
An actual purge would be something like systemically recalling, redacting, and deleting any remaining records of art that involve Cosby. Saying this is 'our libraries being purged' is completely alarmist and untrue.
What if the libraries are privatized?
> An actual purge would be something like systemically recalling, redacting, and deleting any remaining records of art that involve Cosby. Saying this is 'our libraries being purged' is completely alarmist and untrue.
No. An actual purge would consist of removing the work from circulation and locking the remaining copies in a restricted section in the library (a giftschrank). What you describe sounds like it's inspired by the fictional total censorship regime shown in 1984 [1] than by nonfictional examples.
[1] Which was probably lie even in the context of that fictional world; I wouldn't be surprised if the Inner Party actually had accurate archives kept in a giftschrank.
Then there’s a serious issue with your society that needs to be resolved independent of anything else - libraries are a public good, not for the benefit of any individual entity.
You can still go to libraries and obtain things, there is no purge or anything remotely even close happening. It's absurd to expect a private company to always offer content from now until the end of time.
> No, they aren't. Not in any way, shape, or form. Private companies don't have any obligation to continue showing anything.
True, but in the world today the overwhelming majority of accesses to these things is via paying for access to it from private companies. If private companies refuse then it becomes non-available, for most practical purposes.
Not having access to a private company's catalogue is a different issue altogether.
Then they should relinquish their copyrights.
Consider that We The People developed a legal framework for companies to exist as the existence of companies as a thing was deemed to be a net good. But what if it isn’t any more, if companies are purely focused on profits at the expense of the legal and social environment in which they exist? Then the law can be amended.
That is parallel to a company deciding to list or not list a tv show in their catalogue.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the "modern equivalent of the library" is, well, the library. A quick check reveals that it is still possible to find The Cosby Show at most libraries of record.
HN seems like a generally civil place. Comments like these make it seem more uncivil, just like police patrolling "bad" neighborhoods more frequently.
Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
I mean its not a very good rule, the general definition [snide and sharply critical.] could apply to most comments; but what specifically is you objection with 'cute', seems it could be taken as a compliment.
And fyi- summarizing this persons quote as 'dumb thing' could be construed as snide and sharply critical.
"Cute" is a term of affection, but it's an internet snark trope to use positive language in a demeaning way, because it makes a comment nastier when you do that. Another example is "I love how you", which is used about as often to attack someone as to compliment them (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22i%20love%20how%20you%22&sor...).
>It's not the case that "snark" could apply to most HN comments.
Breaks the Please don't post shallow dismissals rule.
>That's why it's a good rule for HN.
Breaks the Don't be snarky rule.
>"Cute" is a term of affection, but it's an internet snark trope
The use of "Air quotes" is the first snark trope on google. same rule you broke twice.
Now I'm not calling for you to be banned, just pointing out that you attacked a borderline case and did it with a post that borderline broke the same vague rules.
I don't think it would have compromised your message if you had been both more specific and a little more polite the first time around. Something like "Your use of 'cute' appears condescending and snarky. This is against the site rules, which you can find here <link>." I think people are more receptive to that tone anyway, and if you do happen to be accidentally overzealous, you've allowed enough room for both of you to save face.
I realise that I too should have posted this comment the first time around, and my initial reply to you (a simple quotation of the site rules I believed you to have violated) was also shallow and snarky, in precisely the same way. So, sorry about that. By way of apology, let me express that I am grateful for the excellent work you do, and that I would surely be much ruder in your position.
"Please review the guidelines" does not imply you haven't read them. That's why I say "review" rather than "read". I used to say "(re-)read" but that was clumsy. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
The guidelines say strongest plausible, not strongest possible. I don't see a non-snarky plausible interpretation of "cute" in that sentence.
You guys remember that Hacker News is a community, yes? Community members have duties to the community, and to one another, no matter how strongly they disagree.
The thing is, out there in the world, you don't have to bother worrying that there's some starchy HN exceptionalism that doesn't allow you to answer something that's complete bullshit with a 'proper intellectual response'. It is a bit wearying to constantly deal with juvenelia ("Getting dropped from network TV is like being 'disappeared' by Stalin) in a fashion that would be commensurate with, say, a improper attribution of a remark from Wittgenstein uttered in the drawing room.
It feels like HN's policies against 'snark' have the (no doubt unintentional) effect of shifting the Overton window towards requiring remarks - no matter how juvenile and daft - to be met with proper and careful drawing-room etiquette. So saying stuff that's completely absurd needs to be either unanswered (and left to stink up the room) or carefully argued against (making it sound way more plausible than it is).
I understand that the slippery-slope version of my argument here suggests that anyone can meet anyone else with a torrent of personal abuse simply as a result of disagreement. That being said, I'm not 100% convinced that the right answer to someone uttering absurdities is to meet them with logical, guideline-approved non-snark.
Also: to the nice people on the subthread defending my remark as somehow not snarky, thanks, but no. I intended to be a prick here - there's no entirely guidelines-compliant interpretation of my comment. My argument above is that judicious snark is probably better, and more honest, than either masking it ("your argument is characteristic of arguments made by people no doubt considerably less intelligent than you obviously are, my fine Sir") or by pretending that absurdity isn't absurd ("Well, you see, Stalin actually made people disappear and systematically erased them from libraries, while in this case, what we're talking about is...").