Hacker News Reader

I have never gotten more upvotes so quickly but the only comments are by people who felt comfortable because they disagree. That says something

This will not last! The day of the judgement, those of us who voted for your comment will be disclosed, and we will be duly punished for our wrongthink.

It's rare that a comment floats on the line so perfectly - I don't even have a suspicion about whether you are mocking the parent for being dramatic/self-pitying, or if you are being sarcastic in a critique of those who are being accused of censorship.

So I succeeded in my purpose to mock everybody? But really, I think that we are not far from the "grand upvote disclosure" day where by some strange leak all upvotes in the internet will become public. Then people will start to be fired for having upvoted the wrong comment 20 years ago. This will be recursive, of course: if you ever upvoted a comment written by a wrong person, you become a wrong person as well. And so on. So, please be careful with the upvotes to controversial comments here.

Downvoted you just to be sure! :) (not really)

That's already the case on reddit to some extent, you can be banned for upvoting content.

From their announcement on the subject:

"""

Today, we’re making an update to address this gap: Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities.

"""

Funny how they call their toxic manipulative behavior as healthy. Such nonsense.

This entire approach of calling for resignations/firings (no matter the person) rejects careful, balanced thinking about the best way to proceed. Instead, it seems to feed on knee-jerk reactions to isolated statements and actions, often only heard second- or third-hand, that remind me more of a witch hunt than a thoughtful plan. I rarely see constructive discussion stemming from this approach. I'm curious about what characteristics the community really values in a leader of the FSF, but the discussion instead seems to overwhelmingly revolve around who can be forced to resign in disgrace, which leaves someone else to figure out how to actually improve the situation.

I think this can be appropriate when the situation is dire and all other courses of action have been exhausted. I'm just not sure this is such a situation.

In addition to not being particularly constructive, I agree with your point: the mob mentality means if I'm interested in discussing how to proceed _before_ everyone on the board of the FSF is fired, I open myself to the same mob that wants it done _now_. This makes discussing an already difficult problem significantly harder and more risky. Even if I bring myself to engage in conversation, many of the more deliberative folks I would like to hear from won't engage, likely for the same reasons that gave me pause. I encountered this to a surprising degree reading through comments on Ars Technica's coverage of this[0].

On the topic of the FSF, I really value that RMS has a very mature and well-considered understanding of the dynamics of computers and their software, and how those can shape society. But the points about him making others uncomfortable on a routine basis are concerning, and I think a more charismatic leader would certainly be an improvement. I would want that leader to have a similarly strong understanding of the core issues, though. I wonder if someone like Eben Moglen could perform in such a role. Come to think of it, it might be cool if Cory Doctorow could play a public-facing role for the FSF.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/free-software-ad...

>a full 80 percent of Americans believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” While today some smear the free speech movement as a “racist dog-whistle” or a “far-right talking point,” it turns out the numbers don’t fit that narrative.

This seems irrational. For example, I both "believe that political correctness is a problem in our country" and believe that "the free speech movement", in the modern context, is composed largely of "racist dog-whistles" and "far-right talking points". They aren't mutually exclusive opinions, yet the author writes as though they obviously are. Besides believing that "political correctness" has silenced important discussions, I also believe it's only one example of many forms of irrational side-taking and hatred that have silenced important discussions, committed across the political spectrum. It seems like the author is taking advantage of the instantly recognizable noun "political correctness" as a way to package a biased opinion that purposefully ignores closely related things that are damaging discussion and civility just as dramatically.

>somebody is flagging this story to keep people from even discussing the topic.

This applies to your entire comment, but the quoted line is most salient: Be careful not to fall into the victimized underdog mentality. There are legitimate concerns on both sides here, but there is a ton of noise in the form of pointing to imagined persons/crowds and accusing them of persecution. For example, submissions are frequently flagged for the poor quality of discussion they trigger - not simply because "somebody" is "trying to keep people from even discussing it", which is an easy sentiment to reach for, and falls under the category of fallacy that boils down to "our sociopolitical enemies are simply evil - don't you agree, fellow people on my side?".

I reread your comment and I think you are at least partially correct about how I framed things. If you read this, is there a more constructive way I could have raised this concern?

I do not believe the comments in this thread constitute a low quality discussion. The story should not have been flagged, in my opinion at least, and this action has stopped some of the only balanced discussion of the topic I’ve seen online since the story first broke. It has people from both sides being mostly polite and has links to some high quality material. It’s just a topic that many people are upset by. Also, after getting flagged, they git repo saw the rate of new PR signings almost flatline

It's definitely double standards for this to be flagged when the exact opposite of this was posted yesterday without a flag.

It totally shows that 'HN admins' are exactly the type of people that support cancel culture. Not really an eye opening.

You realise that regular users flag things, not admins?

You realize it has quotes ? And besides, don't be naive.

It would only be double standards if the same people who didn't flag one, did flag the other. It's entirely possible that it's entirely different people. Besides which, yesterday's _was_ flagged.

> political correctness has silenced important discussions our society needs to have

It would be interesting to know what are these "important discussions".

> 58% of Americans believe the political climate prevents them from sharing their own political beliefs

I don't think it literally prevents them, more like it makes them scared to share their political beliefs for fear of being called out when those are not "acceptable" beliefs. If anyone can give me an example of some political belief that is not justified in being "unacceptable", I'd be happy to re-evaluate this situation as being bad.

It's pretty much the same thing for people that say things like all guns should be banned. (This is not a stance I support BTW).

But who knows in ten years the opposite reaction might be true.

This is something I hadn't considered at all. As a non-US citizen the idea that all guns should be banned isn't that unacceptable to me in the slightest.

Sure. During dinner with my in-laws (siblings and parents), my MIL brought up the now-removed phrase from the manifesto on BlackLivesMatter.com that says "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another...". She and the rest of the table interpreted it as "BLM wants to abolish the family as a societal unit." I suggested the alternate, "unacceptable" interpretation that they are expanding the definition of family to include non-blood relatives and encourage caring communities. This was not received well, and I ended up getting texts about the incorrectness of my belief even after we had left that day. So now I am scared to share my political beliefs for fear of being called out, even when I share something that I view as reasonable and "possibly acceptable". But maybe you're looking for a bigger example.

Is this an example of political correctness silencing you? I'm honestly asking, because it's interesting. Traditionally, the phrase refers to being "sensitive", so e.g. your opinion would be the politically correct opinion, and theirs would be the "not afraid to hurt feelings" opinion. But if you take the phrase more literally, it would refer to the fallacy of judging what is "correct" according solely to the politics of the observer - regardless of what those politics are. In which case, yes, their political correctness is suppressing you (and if you had treated them the same way, your political correctness would have been suppressing them at the same time).

My comment was more a direct response to the parent comment's question 'If anyone can give me an example of some political belief that is not justified in being "unacceptable"…', but my scenario only fits a wider definition "being silenced by political correctness". Every American probably has a different definition of what "political correctness is a problem in our country" means. The classic definition from right-leaning Americans is "the fight on how to say and do things in the most inclusive way possible is getting in the way of actually doing the things." But me being silenced by my in-laws fits under the umbrella of political correctness if you define it as "the ardor of your support for the 'correct' political thinking burns others". That concept currently goes by other names currently. I call it culture wars and general tribalism. I think the political correctness fight of a decade ago has shifted and evolved into the broader tribalism of today. So "political correctness" as you described it doesn't fit, but I think it fits with how I think the survey respondents interpreted it.

Yes.

> Does anybody else find it a little scary to comment on this topic in case they get called out and targeted as well?

Honestly? No.

And the problem with the numbers in that poll is that there is no reason to think that all those people assign the same meaning to the words. Everyone's in favor of "free speech," but can they articulate a nuanced definition of it and the effects on society of that definition?