Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Ok. I have officially heard enough about Julian Assange.

Unless there is considerably new information on this story -- charges filed, some new tech angle, unforeseen reaction to the leaks -- I am flagging any new posts I see.

I don't flag much at all, I have a very high threshold, but this is really pushing the limits. At the very least let's agree that there are good people on both sides of this issue. Some folks think Assange is a criminal. Others don't.

It's fair to say that postings going on about possible sinister plots, political action recommendations, and ways to get back at whomever opposes wikileaks doesn't help me form a better startup, doesn't inform me on startup or hacker-related issues, and can only serve to keep alive a constant bickering argument. That's not why I'm here. I just can't see all of these postings as anything more than emotional appeals to light the torches and go storm the castle. Great political fodder, perhaps, but some of us like Dr. Frankenstein and don't want the castle stormed.

So to all of you who are out there wanting to make a difference and change the world, I feel your pain. Go organize, protest, and plot somewhere else please. Godspeed.

"I am flagging any new posts I see"

I agree with you that this particular story is somewhat inappropriate. The Swedish prosecution obviously have done a terrible job, but "who did what and when" is pure gossip.

On the other hand this is the one of the biggest technology related stories of the year. Of the Swedish cables only 1% have been released publicly and newspapers have been running "front page" stories about the leaks for a week [1]. A majority of which is about the actual content of the leaks and not meta. Swedish national television also ran a program about the content of the leaks earlier tonight. I would imagine it's the same in many other countries. In short: This story is huge.

What I don't get is why you have to post so many comments on a subject you don't like or are interested in. You've been here long enough to know that this is a community driven site and the posting guidelines are very loose. Sometimes events like this creates a snowballing of votes. You yourself posted a political story about the TSA just weeks ago for instance. I personally not very interested or affected by the whole TSA deal. But guess what, I just ignore those stories and read the other ones instead. Because if everyone would start commenting on stories they didn't like or didn't feel was suited for HN, almost every story would feature that kind of complaint.

So if you feel it's truly inappropriate for HN then flag it. If you disagree, are not interested or feel you have read to many similar stories; then just ignore it and maybe someone will return the favor when something you are interested in goes into a vote "snowball".

[1] Biggest newspapers: http://www.svd.se/ http://www.dn.se/ http://aftonbladet.se/ http://www.expressen.se/

What I don't get is why you have to post so many comments on a subject you don't like or are interested in.

I'm not going to play the game where you start questioning me personally, then the whole conversation becomes about me. Let's agree that we don't need to go there. If you'd like answers to your question, I'm more than happy to provide them offline.

I think we actually agree. This IS the biggest tech story of the year, perhaps the decade. I'm just asking folks to do a bit of self-censorship and cut back on the activism and gossip posts. Like I said, if something truly breaks, I'm all for posting and discussing it. But stuff like "take your PayPal business elsewhere!" and "Wikileaks lawyers watched!" and others have this breathless quality that's just a bit over the top. The only thing it invites -- the only purpose it has that I can see -- is a bunch of guys to pile on with "hell yeah!" posts and comments.

You guys want to keep posting them, I'll keep responding and flagging. Fair enough. I just wanted to explain myself, because in the several years I've been on here, I've probably flagged less than 20 stories. I hate flagging.

Not to mention, there are plenty of people who might question plenty of the recent stories you've shared yourself as off-topic and political. For example posting the Ron Paul story about scanners, or telling HN to vote. It's one thing to flag "great political fodder" but another to post political fodder yourself while flagging that posted by others, methinks!

First it will be wikileaks servers getting shutdown and the hackers there getting jailed on trumped up charges. And us "normal" hackers won't care. Then the Torrents will get closed off. It's all piracy, what do we care. Then maybe Google will start shutting down Google Docs accounts and censoring more search results (hello China) because someone has shared documents that ought not to. But we won't care. We'll move to dropbox and DuckDuckGo. Until eventually it's YOUR server getting shut down, my "normal" hacker friend. And then who will speak up for you?

Listen to me very carefully. I think free speech is the best thing that each of us owns, and I know for a fact that freedoms are terribly under assault. I am terribly concerned that we are losing the last bit of freedoms we have. We live in a secrecy state that is only getting worse.

But that emotional reaction doesn't make what wikileaks does right. It's completely possible that they have done a great good service -- and they are also criminals. You know what I feel about wikileaks? That idiots who agree with you are more dangerous to your cause than clever people who disagree.

Perhaps you disagree. Fine. I don't expect everybody to agree with me. My point is that this is not a black-and-white, good-versus-evil argument. Everybody wants it to be one. Freedoms have limits. Hell, everything has limits. If you'd like to discuss this at the meta level? Email me. A few other HNers have and I enjoy the discussion. But on a board like this you're only going to get gut reactions and cartoonish slogans. The conversation is just not going to go anywhere except to a bad place. Like trotting out the old "they came for the Jews" thing, or bringing up Nazis. We're a hair away from calling each other asshats. I can see from some of the other comments that we're headed that way in a hurry. It's just a bad topic area right now, no matter what your opinion is about it.

For civility's sake, let it go for a while. Please.

In this case, I disagree. The reasons for the right and wrong of it are better expressed by The Atlantic than I'm able.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the...

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