Comment by throwawaysea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaysea | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately there is little room for nuanced discussion anywhere. It’s hard to start a new platform to rival Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Google/YouTube. All four of these platforms are against open discussion and practice censorship against certain stances, irrespective of the presence of nuance.

There are lists of Reddit and YouTube alternatives that are worth visiting. But they’ll only have a chance if we all try them out, evangelize them to friends, and post content (rather than just consuming it). The big issues are lack of content or early swarming from one political group (which then deters the “other side” from joining). Parler, a Twitter alternative, has this issue. I’m nevertheless trying it out just to give it a shot. But we might need a tool to manage the process of achieving quorum on what platform interested people move to. If we fragment across all of available choices, they’ll all wither and die.

Here are some starter sources of Reddit and YouTube alternatives: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/.... Also see https://www.reddit.com/r/YoutubeAlternatives/, which is newer and less developed.

Kialo is an interesting platform for debate - https://www.kialo.com/. But it is a complex interface and certainly doesn’t have the reach and accessibility of the biggest (and worst) platforms like Twitter. Apart from Kialo I think developing one’s own nuanced perspective is easiest to achieve by reading many different news sources and having respectful real life conversations. But only a few in my social circle are up for such discussions - I suppose it is better than none.

PS I feel your pain on the loss of Slate Star Codex. I had many bookmarked articles that I now can’t read :(

> Unfortunately there is little room for nuanced discussion anywhere.

That's exactly what drove me to build my own vision for a discussion site! I wanted a place where people could have rigorous discussion about news or other topics with no hassle. I didn't use SSC, and from what I've gathered it was focused on long-form blogging(?), but for sqwok the aim is low-friction, open, simple, live discussion. Definitely open for feedback! https://sqwok.im

Too many Elon Musk posts. No thanks.

what would you like to see? it's because I've been posting content myself as I work on it, and I like reading about space/spacex etc. I'll post some new stuff

I think posting what interests you makes sense; there are just a lot of us out there who are tired of reading hero worship of that guy.

Why is this getting downvoted? It seems like a constructive comment, or am I missing something?

If I were to guess, it was downvoted by people who are offended by his closing statement "I feel your pain on the loss of Slate Star Codex". A sizable percentage of people agree with eschaton's post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23719748) and will downvote anything that suggests having SSC disappear is anything but a positive. I'm only guessing though, and would appreciate hearing the actual reasons from those who downvoted it.

That post you linked seems to me to be another example of othering an argument that goes against their beliefs.

It’s this kind of suppression of free speech (by ostracizing and libeling the speakers) that’s causing so much damage to our national discourse.

Pointing out that many SSC commenters believe in “human biodiversity” should not be controversial; neither should pointing out that this concept is just a thin coat of paint atop “scientific racism.” What should be controversial is people mourning that community as some sort of valuable place for discussion.

I disagree with your characterization, but I guess the real question is whether the beliefs of some members should negate the other positive values of the community. The value I found there was that there was genuine conversation between anarchist law professors and self-proclaimed social justice warriors, anti-abortion Catholics and trans activists, Trump supporters and Trump haters, global warming deniers and global warming scientists. I disagreed with the vast majority of what people said (on all sides of all issues!) but derived tremendous value from hearing what people believed in their own words. There are few places on the web where people who have serious disagreements about culture war topics can have can have productive discussion, and SSC was one of them -- thus I mourn its loss, and actively seek a replacement.

> It’s hard to start a new platform to rival Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Google/YouTube. All four of these platforms are against open discussion

Maybe it would be better to focus on protocols rather than platforms. If you use a platform, you will always be at the mercy of the people who own or control it.

Regarding accessing bookmarked articles, just go and use a recent Internet Archive snapshot:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/slatestarcodex.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com