Hacker News Reader

Comment by chatmasta | Hacker News Reader

Interesting article. I wish he touched on another point, which is the political monoculture in tech and media. The left has a vice grip on the discourse in these industries. Many conservatives have a justified fear of speaking publicly, worried they’ll be labeled a racist/nazi and have trouble getting jobs or making sales. I’m not sure what the downstream effects of this will be, but the culture of ostracizing wrongthink is real, and a worrying trend.

View on HN

The fact that you think either side has a "vice grip" on anything speaks volumes to how effective the filter bubbles have become. You hear what you want to hear, see what you want to see, the engagement stats are through the roof!

90% of reality has been filtered out and you're being fed a constant stream of "poor white man persecuted for wrongthink" stories to keep you clicking.

How does the left has a vice grip on discourse in media? The most watched cable news network is conservative. The largest operator of local tv is conservative.

In traditional media, yes. But most New Media companies (Google, Facebook, BuzzFeed, etc) are liberal leaning.

That is hilarious. Good thing they have strong unions and "don't be evil." Being slightly less conservative to the rabid dogs of today's right wing juggernaut is not a socialist utopia.

In your world george bush jr. is a socialist lefty.

I believe parent's point might be a bit more "tech / media on the US west coast is a liberal monoculture." Which seems objectively supported.

Without wading into the weeds, one casualty of these American political times is the loss of intellectual conservatism as a tenable public position.

We are all made greater having our convinctions tested with honest debate, and lesser for the lack of it.

The problem is, people with seemingly unpopular views do not know which of their acquaintances share their views. So it’s hard to estimate the popularity of a given view, and the default option becomes silence. Inevitably, the popular view quickly seeps into the void, meeting no resistance as it becomes the de-facto standard of thought.

The end result is a polarized society driven by a stagnant discourse of self-indulgent moral platitudes.

Intellectual conservativism was destroyed from the right. Incoherent anger politics turned out to be far more effective at getting the voters.

Edit: meanwhile in Oregon the conservatives have fled to break a quorum rule and are issuing press releases with armed anti-government groups. As the Maoists discovered, who needs intellectuals when you have guns and slogans?

Intellectual conservatism - at least under certain definition - is tricky to defend. When there is a choice between "progress" - moving forward - and "stability" - avoiding changes - staying implies perceived perfection, which doesn't seem particularly intellectual. Progress doesn't just mean "change by all means", but conservation does mean "reject change", otherwise there would be no difference to talk about.

You can be conservative in some directions and progressive in others.

In some ways conservatism can mean "let's go, but not go too fast" but recently it's been more of an ideology of regression.

At least in the American bipolar system, there are many "moving forward" ideas that have traditionally been conservative positions.

Maximizing personal economic freedom and unrestricted international trade, for two.

So I would say there are certainly platform points that are more alternatives than forward vs backwards. Or were.

> The most watched cable news network is conservative. The largest operator of local tv is conservative.

In USA. But nowadays is more complicated than this. There is also CCTV and Al Jazeera for example that have a mix of USA and non-USA watchers largely exceding the number of USA population.

You sort of answered your own question. People looking for a left-leaning narrative have (C)(MS)NBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. People looking for a right-leaning narrative have Fox(News)(Business).

Fox has consolidated the right-leaning audience. Anyone who complains about them should always follow the complaint asking why there aren't more conservative news networks to keep them honest.

Most of these networks (CNN, CBS) aren’t actually left leaning, except in comparison to Fox. Consider how much time they gave to stories like Hillary Clinton’s email server during 2016. They didn’t focus soley on Benghazi for a year, but that shouldn’t make a network “left-leaning”.

left and right have always been relative terms. saying CNN isn't "actually" left leaning is like saying California isn't really west because Hawaii exists.

If those terms are relative, then according to the list in the comment above, Fox is far right and the rest are center.

That you can think these networks have left-leaning narratives just goes to show how much right-wing politics have become the norm.

As another commenter pointed out, the only thing that can be tought of as "left-wing" with them is that they are to the left of Fox News.

To go back to basics, left means distributing profits more equally, having built-in methods of solidarity, and giving power to the people (all of them).

Calling Facebook or Google monocultures is perhaps a bit exaggerated when they're filled with immigrants, and have offices all over the globe.

highly educated people middle class and upper people can have more in common with the same type of people in other countries, consuming the same goods, media, and entertainment, than the citizens of their own country who are in different circumstances.

Sure, people can have tons in common, but attempting to argue that educated people in, say, India, Korea, and France all basically have the same political or social belief enters the realm of the ridiculous.

Yeah I always roll my eyes when people talk about "the West". Even the right wing political parties here would be considered center left in the US.

Only socially liberal. Economically speaking, the tech industry is more akin to the traditional economic liberalism. Not left by any stretch of the imagination.

Thank you: good and relevant point. There's a possible argument that current politics is in part a reaction against neoliberalism: which is to some extent socially left, but in terms of hegemonic power, is profoundly conservative in nature.

Always cumbersome when our frameworks of language and thought break down, and stop fitting observable reality.

> Many conservatives have a justified fear of speaking publicly, worried they’ll be labeled a racist/nazi

Why would they be worried about being labeled a racist, unless of course they are saying racist things.

Am I missing something here?

They are worried about being labeled a racist, because that carries a heavy social cost. They can be very easily fired, lose their jobs only based on vague allegations.

We live in a time where slander carries virtually no penalty and big corporations are terrified of being seen as anti-PC.

The mainstream media and internet outrage mobs can very easily ruin anyones day. It doesn't matter if they are right or not. Sometimes the "news" are entirely fabricated.

There are reasons to avoid being called racist, or not being PC, but anybody can call anybody anything - it's the arguments that matter. Fearing participating in a discussion and maintaining views carries a possibility of being wrong without correction, which should reasonably be avoided.

Unfortunately we don't have ways of reasonable exchange of opinions in our populism times.

Who controls what is PC? Now and 10, 20 years from now?

Legal system was put in place to prevent mob rule. Internet has again enabled mobs to go around and freely harrass, bully and target individuals in order to enforce their own ideals, instead of what is written in the law.

What makes someone upset is not the same what is unjust.

I've only heard of people losing their jobs over specific and strong allegations of aggressive bigotry.

Yes. For example, being anti-illegal immigration and pro strong national borders is something that is hard to talk about without being labelled a racist.

No, it’s not — you just have to avoid saying things which are racist or being dishonest about your motivations. For example, if you want to talk about illegal immigration don’t use rhetoric of the “brown criminal hordes” genre and hope that your audience isn’t aware of the stats. Do be prepared to talk about your proposed legal changes and what problems they address.

Maybe in your social/family circle, but up here in Portland and in my observable social circles, it's a topic that you can't discuss except for with people you know really well. Or rather, you can, and the person on the other side might not call you racist to your face, but they'll entertain no discussion of the topic other than suggestions that you are a bad person for not being compassionate enough. The fact that you have to give a disclaimer along the lines of "Don't get me wrong, I think Trump is an idiot and I have voted Democratic since I could vote..." to even have anyone participate in the conversation, is telling.

I even made a throwaway because I am scared of being viewed as a racist in my workplace.

I haven't seen anyone taking a non racist stance on those issues get called a racist.

Are you kidding? There's a huge contingent of libertarians in tech.

I never mentioned the size of any contingent, only the volume, and implicit power, of the dominant one.

I think you might look at is as a situation where the libertarians won/defined the economic politics of these big tech companies and indeed the internet itself, while the left/liberals came to define the social politics of the big tech companies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com