What is up with the comments in this thread? How are people seeing this as the Indian government taking a stand against censorship or whatever? The same government is upset that Twitter reinstated several accounts critical of the administration.
On a related note, this thread will soon be flagged, like all threads that are even mildly, indirectly critical of Narendra Modi. Enjoy the thread while it's up.
In reality, the community is divided similarly to how society at large is divided. But the actual experience of this is extremely difficult to bear when we're all bumping into each other in one big Brownian room. I wrote about this at length here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
Each side is so upset by the manifestations of the other side that they come to see them as utterly dominating the community. This is out of proportion numerically, but that's because it's not a numerical experience but an emotional one.
We humans place a much greater emphasis on what we dislike than what we like—the bad (e.g. what you disagree with) stands out more than the good (what you agree with), and you are much more likely to notice it and weight it more heavily [1]. This is what leads to false feelings of generality [2]. Unfortunately it also leads to the feeling of being surrounded by enemies or, as I sometimes put it, demons [3]. This dynamic encourages flamewars, because each side feels like it is the righteous underdog in an unfairly biased situation, and anyone who feels that way will feel justified in lashing out in "defense".
If the combatants in such a situation could really see how closely they are mirroring each other, it would surely change something somehow.
I definitely don't mean to pick on you personally, nor the theme of Indian politics in particular; it's just one of many, and this dynamic seems to be universal. I think the next big phase of work we need to do as a community is to develop more awareness of it, and that's work that we all need to contribute to.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Implicit in your comment is the idea that I’m just imagining this, like a paranoid person claiming persecution. But IME, Bay Area Indians are highly supportive of Modi and are highly active on HN. They incite a flame war, flag the thread and the thread vanishes. If a moderator comes across it, they see that there was a flame war and the flag was justified.
I get where you’re coming from - that maybe I’m overestimating the prevalence of apologists for a mass murderer. Maybe I am. But I think you are discounting how effectively they use the mechanics of HN to shut down criticism of their deity.
By the way, your explanation of that persecution complex was good. The challenge is people (like me) looking at and thinking “yeah, sounds correct except in my case, where I know for a fact I’m a persecuted minority on HN”
But maybe it’s enough to convince people in general that there’s no such persecution going on, even if there is. That way comments like mine that imply it’s existence end up with -10 instead of +23 or whatever. So fewer tedious comments, but maybe easier for the downvoting/flaming/flagging cabals (should they exist) to take control of the narrative on HN.
You’ve been doing this a long time. So you’ll probably make a good decision, whatever you decide.
Exactly! that's how we all do it. The weird thing is that even when you become aware of it, it doesn't stop. You simply become aware that you think this way, just as everyone thinks this way, and that despite knowing this, you still feel that you are the noble exception to the universal rule—a human among worms, as it were. It is like an optical illusion that persists even after you know that it is an illusion. However, the awareness seems to have the effect of modulating one's behavior, which is the important thing.
I suppose it's still an open question what really has a chance of shifting this at a community level. Asking people to go against human nature is a tall order. One thing I've tried is pointing people to similar-but-opposite generalizations being made by the other side; or showing them long lists of contradictory generalizations, like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. I'm not sure it really helps, though.
I don't care about Modi but I flagged your comments because I'm tired about the endless whining about "them" supposedly manipulating HN. If you don't like Modi tell me why, don't go around strawmaning and generalizing Indian tech workers.
I don't spend time analyzing HN discourse like I think you probably do as a natural part of your role here, but it occasionally feels (perhaps a little less here?) like the actions of certain entities get a higher percentage of suspiciously blind or low effort defenders and whatabouters than others on high traffic public fora.
nb. Like you, I'm not talking about specifically this thread just the concept in general.
Internet users invest far too much energy into perceptions of "asymmetric astroturfing" and other sinister manipulations. Most of what they think they're seeing is easily shown to be a figment of perceptual bias, driven by their own passions on the topic. When I say "easily shown", I mean even from the public data. People could, but generally don't bother, to check the history of the accounts they accuse. When an HN user was posting about, I don't know, Ansible in 2018, or Forth in 2014, what are the odds that they're a foreign asset or secret shill on $hot-topic of 2021? That's literally what most of this stuff amounts to.
What most needs to happen is for us all to become aware of how these psychological mechanisms function in ourselves, so we can interrupt the process by which they convert into sinister fantasies about others. This isn't unrelated to the "balance of the community at large"—it's at the heart of that question. Not seeing, or not wanting to see, the genuine variation of the community on divisive topics is what leads to sinister fantasies. The odds are overwhelming that the person against you on $hot-topic is not $evil-manipulator, they're simply someone with a different background than you, who is as sincerely persuaded as you are.
Does genuine manipulation also exist? Yes, but even answering 'yes' to that already gives a mistaken impression of the proportions. The group-psychology dynamic I'm describing is responsible for the overwhelming majority of these perceptions. That's why the site guidelines ask people not to go there in the comments, but rather to email hn@ycombinator.com if they have concerns. Then we can look at the data and see if anything objective can be found.
I hope I haven't bitten your head off! My comments on this can get tetchy because of the number of times I've had to repeat myself on this issue. At some point I'm going to compile all this into maybe a single explanation that can just be linked to.
And by extension perhaps the most popular or trusted person in the world.
The fact that he rose from poverty with no family connections has rubbed on the wrong side of many princes in waiting and their entourage.
The current Indian Prime Minister is very popular among Bay Area Indians and techies and so they will defend him nearly always.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50819905
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/01/asia/india-internet-cut-farme...
Your honor, I can present many who did not witness me murdering X
That makes them feel good, so they support him.
Nothing is perfect, but what are you referring to specifically?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-reports-int...
But the whole thing was a big nothingburger.
Right now, there is a lot of doubt: All I have is some words typed by someone on the Internet.
> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-reports-int...
That article barely discusses the laptop, and quotes Hunter Biden saying he didn't know if the proported laptop was even his. It says nothing about authenticity of the contents.
Of course a Politifact that says ”we dont know” is useless and so they have to invent truths to be relevant.
@MSNBC Oct 9, 2016 FACT CHECK: Trump says Clinton "acid washed" her email server. She did not.
The Claim
Trump says Clinton 'acid washed' her email server.
The Truth
Clinton's team used an app called BleachBit; she did not use a corrosive chemical.
[0] https://twitter.com/msnbc/status/785299708730339328?lang=en
[0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/10/donald-trump-see...
Edit: If you downvoted me, please explain why. I don't get it unless you care more about being on the right side than knowing the truth.
It seems lots of emerging stories should carry that label.
As politi-facts put it:
"There is no evidence that the coronavirus was made in a lab. The overwhelming consensus among public health experts is that the virus evolved naturally."