Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture
economist.com
economist.com
But now, many of the people who would have decried this kind of hegemonic influence delight in it.
They delight in the fact we can establish norms for communication and discourse not only in the US, but any place that plays nice and does not censor the services for not abiding by local laws and mores (as typical media would have to). But because these new media carry water for them, this time it's okay.
Can you imagine corporate policy of SF or Menlo Park sets what people in Mumbai or Seoul can discuss regarding SARS-Cov-2? Or any other issue social media issues a diktat for.
I mean, it's quite ironic listening to people on social media talking down "American Imperialism" (for siding with allies in foreign policy basically) and being totally oblivious to the one they are actively participating in.
You don't have to imagine of course, it already does.
Also, last year someone mentioned here that joebiden.info (which AFAICT is just a website with a collection of inconvenient clips and reports on Biden, maybe misinterpreted to fit an agenda in some cases) was censored in Messenger, seemingly worldwide. Crazy stuff.
I am part of autoimmune support groups where plaqunial is a normal treatment. Pre pandemic.
Get constant warnings and fact checks about plaqunial.
Friends regularly have their post “fact checked” of course always by liberal sources.
Full blown 1984 / animal farm these days.
Perhaps home / auto loans should he decided on how “truthful” these companies decide you are. Surely no sane country “cough China” would do such a thing.
If I wrote the N-word here on HN, it would be downvoted until it disappeared, and if not, the mods would disappear it. Is this surprising to anyone? They don’t want that crap here. Facebook doesn’t want its definition of crap there. Twitter doesn’t want it’s definition of crap there. If you want to communicate without a filter, use a communication system without editorial filters.
I wish people always use quotes as in "liberal"
This does not mean that it does not have its uses but only that there might be too many people spreading bad medical advice/misinformation at the moment. Combine that with social media' inability to scale content moderation and you end with a blanket ban of the term. This might have gone better for you and your group if these companies could only differentiate if someone is suggesting improper or valid use of HCQ.
So you might consider yourself a victim/collateral damage of an unfortunate coincidence of both Trump spreading misinformation on hydroxychloroquine in the first place and tech's inability to scale moderation and quality of it at the same rate as their growth.
YouTube among others censored so much content surrounding SARS-CoV-2 (rightly or wrongly, I’ll remain neutral here), Apple and Google’s app stores straight up rejected apps for unofficial COVID info, including quite absurd cases like xscreensaver being rejected for including 3D renderings of the virus, or maybe just the word covid.[1] You really didn’t pay much attention if you’re unaware of these pretty extreme editorial decisions hotly debated last year.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25384689
Edit:
> seemingly unrelated segue
The censored worldwide part is related.
(Also removed a swipe in my edit, it didn’t add anything.)
Censoring US content worldwide still seems unrelated to exporting America's political culture. Maybe you could make an argument that is hindering the export, or providing a biased view of the export.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/counter...
That undermines the original claim in 2 ways. First it shows that you don’t have evidence for your original claim. Additionally, it also shows that it’s possible to present evidence for the kind of claim you’re making.
Also, are you asking for evidence that joebiden.info was censored? Took me half a minute to find: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23110664
Not that there is anything wrong with American political thought being exported. Would that their methods of free political debate were a little bit more widespread. It is a pity that social media is such a biased sample of the US political world.
I strongly disagree. The vitriol, demonizations, oversimplifications, "every issue has exactly two sides - ours and theirs" limitations of the space of thought, virtue signaling, bullshit / distraction issues, puritanism, etc... There is much wrong with exporting these. These things are happening especially on social media.
We see our elected leaders bending the knee to the new east India company.
It looks like we have been recolonised before we could decolonise.
Then imagine how it feels for people in countries that were never a western colony -- quite the opposite, under Russia's shoe.
It's like, if some aliens from another descended upon us and forced their morals.
USSR invested billions to build infrastructure, schools, factories, power plants, hospitals, irrigation systems, etc. in the middle of deserts.
These countries still continue to use Soviet infrastructure. They lack resources (including human resources) to build their own. Not a single big project, even something like a power grid or a new hospital was ever built there since USSR collapse.
Also, under USSR every nation had equal rights, even more, USSR invested into building national schools, publishing books in native languages, promoting national culture (musicians, poets, writers). There was not a single Western country that ever did that in the colonies. E.g. when India was liberated, about 90% of the population didn't know how to write. Some american visiting India in the beginning of the XX century, said that the whole colonial budget for education in India is smaller than budget of one school in New York (I don't want to look for original quote, it should be easy to find).
Now, quite on the opposite, Baltic states and Ukraine made it explicitly forbidden to speak Russian, for example. I don't know where else in the world it's explicitly forbidden by law to speak some language. I think that wasn't even true in Nazi Germany, so they surpassed even their masters (Baltic states and Ukraine supported Hitler and still celebrate soldiers that joined German nazi army)
A better comparison would be how the USSR handled its foreign occupations. Like Afghanistan for example, where they managed to kill 10% of the population to prop up a fraternal socialist government.
Also, USSR didn't try to occupy Afghanistan. It was a pointless war, but reasons for it are not as simple as "prop up a fraternal socialist government" and it wasn't fought to occupy Afghanistan.
Also, where the number "10% of the population" originate from? It definitely seems and exaggeration.
BTW, unlike US, USSR build roads, tunnels, power plants and hospitals in Afghanistan. Some of them are still used today.
The US and allies have done that, with varying results.
https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1871/201...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_in_Afghanistan
https://www.wsp.com/en-US/projects/afghanistan-infrastructur...
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/in...
The USSR was quite literally an evil empire which rightfully belongs in the trash bin of history
They're actually bound to (for the US) extreme views popular in a small part of California. Much of the rest of the US is dealing with the same cultural imperialism, and resents it quite a bit. I agree with the rest of your post.
"… What about Twitter? I have no idea what Twitter is good for. But if it flips out every tyrant in the Middle East, I'm interested." - Michael Rogers, Founder, Practical Futurist; Futurist-in-Residence, New York Times Company[0]
Best thing that could happen is that these centralized social media platforms keep kicking people off, for them to pursue other tools to use that fit their needs better.
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20140531073143/http://www.cfr.org...
The thing is, for most countries, having the US policy has been far more liberal than what's allowed to be discussed locally. And the set of things you can discuss on social media is far broader than what you can get into the local media discussion. Having SF set policy has (mostly) been amazing for queer liberation, for example.
The downside is incredibly loud, toxic, inorganic propaganda wars. And it really does spread everywhere. I have NYT, WSJ, and Bloomberg blocked on Twitter and still have a very up to date sense of what's happening in US politics. And suddenly there's a big anti-"woke" movement in the UK without anyone bothering to define what they think "woke" is.
Short-term, this toxic, zero-sum behaviour reaps havoc. Long-term, American culture capital will have been exhausted and the US will have signed its own death warrant.
If there is ABC movement from a powerful country, then those in the external country will want to use that to further their agenda to the degree that it is aligned with their own.
The CIA used to (and still does) try to push some kinds of narratives aboard, most prominently in the 'flower' revolutions in E. Europe, but much of the pop culture one's just happen 'organically'.
Particularly in the Anglosphere.
In Australia the anti lockdown / anti Vax stuff got shut down quite quickly.
Same goes for the BLM protests that tried it on without the right permits.
Kind of glad I don't have to put up with the same crap here or the media trying to call it peaceful.
I think it has a lot to do with the multi party system.
I don't have to align myself with one party or the other party, and all its polarising crap along with it. If one party has too much polarising rhetoric I can just pick a more moderate party.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, but I'm saying all sorts of movements cross the US border in an organic manner.
Edit: if you read the headlines in the Guardian or the Daily Mail, they mirror US issues to a great extent, much more so than they do in Germany or France, for example. Definitely the CBC in Canada. It's natural as the cultures are aligned.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Austr...
Is Australia really a multi-party country. Seems like Australia, much like Canada, has two major parties at the federal level who take turns governing the country, and a bunch of smaller ones who have no power and no chance of ever getting into power.
Whilst the smaller parties / independents do not have a real chance to gain majority, they can still have a voice and oftentimes hold the balance of power. This leads to some claiming that these smaller players have a much bigger influence than they deserve.
This is what gives the multi party system its power, coalition forces diversity.
If the Greens have a policy that will get people to vote for them, then the Labor party has to pick that up as well or start haemorrhaging preferences. Ditto the Liberals and various lobbies like One Nation.
It is extremely difficult for the major Australian parties to ignore a minor party that has better policies. Although the majors are stable as a brand, the actual policy mix and strategy is quite dynamic and influenced by the minors.
You've obviously picked up some opinions from the media about how protests on a completely different hemisphere than yourself were.
One of my Japanese friends also noted to me that his peers who studied abroad in the US definitely brought back American style politics with them, and would view their Japanese school / work environment through an American lens, bringing up similar complaints to Americans, which Japanese who haven't studied abroad in the US, would think little of.
> French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. “There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ warned Mr. Macron’s education minister.
> Emboldened by these comments, prominent intellectuals have banded together against what they regard as contamination by the out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture.
Its been that way for awhile but was considered fringe until recently. Not it’s at a tipping point.
Don’t agree with latest woke idea. Perhaps thousands of rabbis youth attacking you will change your mind.
This may be a problem with personalized autocomplete.
The primary goal is to make personal identity politics more important than national allegiances so that we rot from the inside out.
We're not in the cold war anymore.
We are in the Ice War.
It's still not in mainstream but there's a growing resentment against this phenomena in some intellectual/political circles.
Not really. The psyops is run by insiders.
Trump was undermined by Democrats, FBI and American media.
The “lab leak” theory was censored by big tech and ridiculed by US media.
Russia and other “adversaries” are mainly just a convenient scapegoat.
Edit: when you want to change behaviour, do you hire professors? Or Influencers? Regular people do what Footballers and Pop Stars say to do, not what they read in journals.
I am an American professor at a Japanese university. When I came to Japan, nearly forty years ago, I thought that the American influence was indeed strong, because, at first, all of my media consumption was in English and most of the Japanese people I interacted with spoke English and had some connection to the United States. After I learned Japanese and broadened my social contacts, though, I realized that I had received a distorted view and that most Japanese people live their lives with little influence from or thought about the United States.
I'd like to see America that takes a solemn look at social justice issues and provides appropriate remediation for them, but at the same time I don't want the entire media sphere taking over the discourse with their wokeness (see NASA's PR channel, Github master branch naming debacle, etc.). Twitter and Instagram are a cesspool of social justice issues without any nuanced and objective discussion. If this continues, 2024 elections are going to see a huge backlash. This is coming from a liberal who voted for the democratic party for all elections so far.
Aside from political power, the thing that worries me the most is the Academia. Universities have become so deeply entrenched in issues that professors and academic professionals are afraid of speaking out, conducting research that could offend someone and constantly in fear of being cancelled, losing their jobs and reputation. This bothers me deeply.
I am curious how this is viewed internationally, especially in Europe. Most countries in Europe were in lock-step with US during the BLM protests.
Funny
The reason it cannot be discussed is because the us president decided to politicize the issue front and center. That inevitably forces the heavy hand censorship. Because any rational people see the danger of fueling the political crusade that was used purposefully by the most powerful individual on earth, at the crucial juncture when the unified national movement is critical to prevent large scale casualty.
That's exactly the right use of silencing certain topics.
As for what's happening now. I am all for root causing, as a person feeling positive to China's handling of covid 19.
But boy, once the first bad guy started this political drama. No one can proceed objectively any more. China will resit all the steps for carrying out investigation in China. Not because they know something bad would be found. But because they are feared that someone is going to manufacture the evidence one way or another regardless any findings.
In the old Chinese saying: one drop of rat dropping ruined the whole pot of porridge. (一颗老鼠屎坏了一锅粥)
Flip that around: hundreds of thousands died because it was more important for the media to attack Trump than to report truthfully. We weren’t even supposed to discuss HCQ for example, because Trump suggested it, despite all the mountains of scientific evidence about its effectiveness.
I pray that you're right, and that this accelerates. The penetration of extremist sj ideology into all spaces has been some of the most corrosive behaviour I've ever seen.
Its more of a nuissance than a danger imho. The herd has the attention span and power of fruit flies and the powers that be on all sides know it.
Yeah, right. Except that Trump, Johnson, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte etc. etc. are increasingly looking like they just might be the new Mandela, Gandhi and Lenin. Isn't democracy great?
Is this account real?
The last 10 minutes were domestic issues.
Really amazing.
Also, watching journalists go after Trump for the wrong reasons was quite an eye opener. Especially when the many valid reasons to go after Trump were often not pursued deeply enough. Same applies to Hillary.
And Obama. Just wow. Plenty of things Trump was attacked for promoting were in fact Obama-era initiatives. Journalism in the US is fundamentally broken. They aren't holding power to account.
I don't think its any better elsewhere. Was it ever? Its possible. Its just more obvious when you look outside your own patch.
The concentration of power in media organisations into a few large conglomerates has likely made things worse.
To that end, it logically tracks that things were better before consolidation, as there was a greater diversity of opinion / perspective being pushed by distinct media organisations.
Many were similar, but less by leadership design, and more by virtue of simply sharing similar views.
The complete apathy we show towards domestic politics is shocking, the average Australian can probably name more American politicians than Australian. I have friends who actually complain that they're forced to vote, purely because they can't be bothered to vote. People (including members of the Victorian Liberals) are more concerned with conspiracy theories about Dan Andrews getting bashed than debates on policy.
The weirdest part is - the stronger someone is influenced by American political culture, the more they'll tell you about how awful America is.
High self-criticism is what I admire about US.
In my country, the check and balances and freedom of speech are not strong enough. People are somewhat reserve about criticizing their own countries. And you can pretty much guess what is happening...
I have never noticed much self-criticism in Americans - too many have no clue about other countries so have no point of comparison yet tend to be rather one eyed (overly patriotic) about their own country. By no means all: many travellers tend to be more open minded.
My other favourite trait of poms is they recognise and encourage wit at every level of their society.
May be its just me. Never really seen anything like that from Americans.
Yes, they don't seem to understand their point.
QAnon/BLM would always have made it out pre internet, just it would have taken years.
Things now are quick. Even early internet ie 2000-2010 it was much slower.
The turbocharge really is how quickly it changes and mutates. The feedback loop is what's different.
Even BLM might not have a chance. In that case you don't even have to guess. You can see to what degree previous black protest were important because BLM is just latest occurrence of something that happened in USA multiple times already.
The thing is I am from Europe. I think BLM is a very worthy policial movement, as do I also think there are injustices in palestine and the with Uyghurs etc, but we are going to end up with most of our Readme filed with political statements at that rate. What to me as a Euro gives extra merit to US politics than that of the rest of the world?
In my company we had some people trying to get this stuff into our corporate mail, thankfully there was enough pushback to keep the corporate mail corporate.
Also, I'd rather worry about stuff in my country than american internal affairs.
I brought this same point up in a discussion once, but the response was that BLM is the number-one pressing sociopolitical issue in the world today, and it was offensive that I would even suggest that other examples of oppression in the world are comparable to the greater oppression that African-Americans face.
https://blacklivesmatter.com/help-us-fight-disinformation/
I have no idea if that's the case here. I've also known over-zealous supporters of movements to do the same thing.
I'd just caution you to be skeptical about apparent misbehavior. Our existing animosities are being amplified, sometimes for lulz and sometimes for political gain. This person was, undoubtedly, a jerk, but exactly what kind of jerk may not be quite so clear as it might seem.
Of course, that's generalized: It will play out in different ways, in different places, among different people, in different times. In the U.S., it's different in Mississippi and Chicago, different today and tomorrow.
> radical progressivists
Are they really "radical", or is that merely a pejorative attached to 'progressive'? In what way are they radical? Lots of groups want change, many want big change; the progressives aren't even the leaders in 'big change' these days.
The police officer is institutional power. The organization which issues him a gun is institutional power. The prosecutor who will decline to prosecute him when he murders a black man is institutional power.
In my example, the fact that the person is a police officer has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they are also discriminating. Certainly issues arise when the two intersect (having institutional power and discriminating) but don't conflate the two as the same.
Also this whole argument rests on the fact that power is some binary thing which isn't true at all. Power imbalances exist in every facet of life and sometimes, traditionally "oppressed" classes of people have more power than "oppressor classes" in some situation or another.
That's a hypothetical that you created, it's not a fact: The fact is that civilians do not oppress police officers. They very rarely kill them, imprison them, stop and frisk them, etc.
> I can be a penniless, poor homeless person and still be a racist piece of shit. I don't require power for that.
> Certainly issues arise when the two intersect (having institutional power and discriminating) but don't conflate the two as the same.
I didn't call them the same; they are certainly different. The point is that it doesn't matter too much if there is discrimination without power. The penniless poor person will have little effect on the passing African-American's life; the police officer can easily ruin their life.
> this whole argument rests on the fact that power is some binary thing which isn't true at all. Power imbalances exist in every facet of life and sometimes, traditionally "oppressed" classes of people have more power than "oppressor classes" in some situation or another.
I agree, I actually thought about that, but I left out that nuance (I can't write a dissertation on HN; something must be left out). But since you bring it up: Yes, anyone can suffer discrimination on the micro level. But that is much less of an issue; it doesn't rise to the level of a society issue for two reasons:
As an example, I was going door-to-door for a political campaign and one person said to me, 'get your [deleted] ass off my porch': They were in a vulnerable group and I wasn't.
First, I wasn't feeling threatened because, again, they lacked power. They couldn't call the police and have me arrested; their neighbors wouldn't beat me up. It was just one person being jerk. Think of it this way: I've knocked on doors after dark around elections (which are in November in the U.S., and polls usually close after dark). Doing that in a white neighborhood, I've thought - what if I was a black man? It would be dangerous for me.
Second, it's just an isolated event and not a macro, society-wide problem. African-Americans have been suffering widespread discrimination by almost every institution and large sections of the population, creating great harm for generations. I had a bad experience for a few seconds. While the person shouldn't have acted that way, it wasn't a big deal; it doesn't rise to the level of a major society issue requiring legislation and Constitutional amendments. It also didn't evoke a lifetime of abuse and threat; it was just annoying. I said 'ok' and went to the next house.
The problem is to assume that dominant political actors cohere to constitute a group, a conspiratorial evil one at that. Hypotheses of evil conspirators played out so many times throughout history and it never ended well.
We all have a not-so-high-precision heuristic of detecting agency, therefore we sometimes ascribe agency where there is none. This unchecked unfortunately leads to Gnosticism-like belief structures where there are assumed demi-gods and demi-demons playing over us. Proof is any news feed, which will deify or demonize the character-du-jour. (And to be consistent, I am not making media into another conspiratorial force; if we are watching news like that it is only because we've been showing demand for it.)
But to the concept, which we can learn something from: How do you reconcile what you say with the fact that people do have group identities - not as their complete identity, but part of it - and act as a group and treat others as members of groups? They clearly and explicitly do: People will openly discriminate against people based on skin color, sexual orientation, etc. As I said, ethnic nationalism has exploded, worldwide.
> How do you reconcile what you say with the fact that people do have group identities - not as their complete identity, but part of it - and act as a group and treat others as members of groups?
This has evolutionary roots in kin selection; we as primates do have some machinery that makes us favor the survival of individuals that fulfill some definition of kin. I want to make it very clear, this is a proposition of "what is" and not "what ought". Just because we do have the machinery doesn't make it right, as it can escalate all the way up to genocide. But acknowledging it is a good first step. No one is pure, no one is inherently innocent about it, but also no human is only a primate.
> That's a conceptual question but doesn't call into question the practical reality: People clearly have some identity as a group, and act against other perceived groups.
This is where the definition of identity becomes pivotal; we must not conflate an ontological identity (x is an x and only an x), and a categorical identity (x belongs to the category y). Group identities are the latter. The problem with categorical identities are the certain amount of frivolousness we are allowed about it;
Let's suppose an object a has n attributes, and object b has m attributes. For all objects n and m are infinitely many. Therefore whenever we make a comparison such that "a and b mutually share a subset between their n and m attributes, therefore they are similar" we are excluding infinitely many attributes that they do not share. Conversely, by only selecting a certain subset of those infinitely many attributes, we could claim any two objects to be in the same category. This makes categorical identity by definition a purpose specific, subjective construct. Its key function is relevance; that the attributes we chose are relevant to our goal.
This is exactly where the combination of the machinery for kin selection and inherent flexibility of categorical identity exposes us to hijack. You can convince anyone that they belong to a group by defining a group with the attributes that you find most useful for you. But that doesn't mean it was the best category to approach to the problem with. E.g. just as ethnic nationalism has exploded in Europe, racial essentialism has exploded in the US while very peculiarly missing class identity as a solid alternative that could actually address a good proportion of the grievances. Is this because the flexibility of categorical identity was (ab)used by those who wouldn't find discussions around class identity favorable, or because there was a true essence to those initial categories? My vote; it is more #1 than not.
To sum up; group identities are self-fulfilling, overly flexible and most importantly purpose built constructs. Wrongly choosing the category could as well ossify the problems it is trying to solve than to help people break free of them. I'll even one up; the meta-group of "belonging to a group" is even bigger of a problem; to convince people that the fact that they can be group-things is more important than them being individuals creates a greater host of framing issues for them.
To give an example of what you describe, many white Americans used to choose identities over where they emigrated from: Italian vs Irish vs Polish, etc. Now many identify around being white Americans, against people with other skin color and against immigrants.
> Is this because the flexibility of categorical identity was (ab)used by those who wouldn't find discussions around class identity favorable, or because there was a true essence to those initial categories? My vote; it is more #1 than not.
There's no true essence to it; that's an assertion by people trying to protect their power against the inevitable flexibility of groups. But also, some of it is not intentional either - it can be just incidental - and I suspect much is the artifact of prior intention: Their grandparents refused to associate with black-skinned people, and so now they don't know any black-skinned people, so they don't identify with them, and black-skinned people become the unknown.
> To sum up; group identities are self-fulfilling, overly flexible and most importantly purpose built constructs. Wrongly choosing the category could as well ossify the problems it is trying to solve than to help people break free of them. I'll even one up; the meta-group of "belonging to a group" is even bigger of a problem; to convince people that the fact that they can be group-things is more important than them being individuals creates a greater host of framing issues for them.
While I agree, we must still solve the present(and past) harm done to people for being identified with certain groups. I'd always work to leave the door open to what you are saying, but that doesn't help black people (and LGBTQ and others) who are threatened and harmed today.
But generally, I'm with you. ;)
The distribution of power isn't binary, all or nothing. African-Americans have gained some power, but if you look at photos of Congress, the courts, the executive branch, governors, Fortune 1000 CEOs, powerful people in Silicon Valley, etc., it will be apparent who has most of the power.
I took a quick look into the African American stats you mention from https://www.statista.com/chart/18905/us-congress-by-race-eth.... It appears ~14% of the house is African American - the same as the reported percentage of the population. In other words exactly what you'd expect if the house was draw at random from the population.
In the senate, it looks like only ~3-4% is currently African American. The senate of course is composed of two senators from each state, thus over representing the sparsly populated states that have very little ethnic diversity (most of the country by area), so a more thorough analysis would be necessary to argue something about skin color having an effect/how much of an effect on senate races.
At a glance, it doesn't look too different from what I would expect given the assumption skin color/race aren't important (my experience everywhere I've lived in the USA). But, the US varies so greatly between regions it may as well be a few countries mashed together in many respects. My hunch is that the house/senate will continue to become more ethnically diverse given the current climate - being from a minority group seems more beneficial, if anything, politically.
This kind of attitude is a big problem with US cultural export. You have to realize that the US has a unique history with unique problems. Slavery, segregation etc etc. Majority-minority relations in other countries will have different histories and many different nuances. A straightforward application or translation of US discourse will therefore often be very inappropriate.
Doesn’t that seem like a good reason to be rid of racial essentialism?
AFAIK, the "defund the police" chant was supposed to be in response to American police forces buying army vehicles and gear. That is not a thing in Canada. I also get the general impression that whoever came up with "defund the police" has anarchist inclinations. It's basically doublespeak. They keep saying that "defund the police" only means "reform the police", but what they actually want is to dismantle the police, which is exactly what "defund the police" sounds like.
It's true that many first nations people struggle. Canada is taking steps to help them (see accelerated vaccination of native communities) and I sincerely wish them all the best. However, dismantling the police probably isn't going to undo things that happened several centuries ago.
In fact, I am no sociologist, but I would surmise that telling cops that all of them are bastards and exposing them to budget cuts will probably make them behave with less kindness, not more. ACAB is the opposite of constructive. In my opinion, it's a toxic message with the potential to make things worse for everyone, first nations included.
All of that being said, I'm 100% in favor of body cameras that are always enabled, and stricter limits on weapons use by police.
Consider that your viewport is small enough that the rougher parts of Canadian life for minorities are invisible to you.
Canada has some major problems with racism, and a lot of news media (particularly in the PostMedia family) is fanning those flames.
The First Nations have more recent and direct issues with the police than the founding of Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_deaths
They think the whole world is an extension of America, while also denouncing American imperialism and the American idea of looking down on the world, while also screaming at anyone who questioned the idea of dragging American problems into a country that didn’t exist.
People here, more than anything, were pissed that they had a gathering in the middle of a pandemic and called them irresponsible. Which they were.
In the UK they scream “don’t shoot” at unarmed police, whom they call “Feds”. It’s surreal, like they don’t even know what country they’re in.
In America, we get subjected to a bunch of these people saying loud and clear, "Yes, we really do mean abolish the police." And yes, a large number of them have anarchist inclinations.
All good emerges from the white European but anything bad is a universal problem.
Europe barely exports any culture or media - especially in their own languages. Most things EU are regionally locked and if they aren't, they are behind paywalls or accessible through American networks. Were I to try and watch Polish TV shows, it would most likely happen over Netflix or Amazon. It's barely possible to browse their shows in English nor can most services be paid for using non-Polish payment means (except maybe VISA&Mastercard).
That's just Europe. I'm sure China has some great shows and movies, probably Russia has too but finding them and accessing them is entirely different issue. Even knowing what exists is difficult.
The U.S is at the top of their propaganda game while the rest of the world is acting like a bunch of amateurs.
The thing is that english is lingua franca, and there's quite a lot of people in the anglosphere who's aware of this fact and actively tries to influence foreign countries. In the past it was mostly leaning towards free-market ideas, nowadays is mostly this american social-liberalism brand.
There's intellectual feedback between Latin-America and Spain for example, but it's nowhere near in volume nor intentions.
Let me try to explain my reasoning. In some countries, explicit colonialism was done away with successful independence movements, but was replaced by softer forms of influence and propaganda that lingered on. For example Western education systems (with textbooks from Western publishers) or significant influence from churches or the introduction of multinational corporations have led to generations of children of former colonial states hearing/experiencing/living one version of history and culture, which isn’t their indigenous history and culture. Because national resources and people’s time are consumed by these structures and influences, there isn’t space for any other influence. This is especially harmful to cultures where their traditions are passed on orally or through daily multi-generational living. Social media takes that further because it is addictive, and is another time sink and intervention into the “information stream” people would otherwise receive.
If people living in some country persist but are stripped of their indigenous values and culture and worldviews through these soft mechanisms, they aren’t really the same people that they replaced any longer. Think of Tibet for example, where more overt re-education efforts have changed younger generations and disconnected them from their traditional Buddhist culture. Sure they may be the genetic descendants and inheritors of the past Tibetan people, but they increasingly reflect Han Chinese culture, and not just politically. These cultures go away, potentially for good, when this happens. The culture being replaced by outside powers is what leads me to apply phrases like “cultural colonialism” or “cultural genocide” in these instances.
No resentments, but thanks. US gone too far, Russia gone too far.
We don't do politics any more.
Oh no, we enjoy interacting with each other. Just segment us off from the Americans and we'll be happy. /s
On social media : what do you make of algorithmically selected content ? Thought bubbles ?
It is being policed? What do think algorithmic feeds are?
What I wouldn't want is some government agency telling me I'm not allowed to use Twitter for my own good. Or that the content I enjoy on [insert social media network] must change because HN finds it objectionable.
Besides the choice of what platform to choose, people’s lives destroyed by Twitter mob whether they have a Twitter account or not. This is just not right. Activism by cancelling people. If you’ve got issue with someone, go through the proper channels and not publicly. There are cases when that’s needed and that’s why we have whistleblower laws. But, destroying someone’s career because they don’t share progressive views!?
At least now you've got your choice of platforms, just because some movements on some of the popular ones don't align with your personal views doesn't make the platform the problem.
That's quite an assumption, one that is frequently called into question on this very site. The very largest social media sites have growth strategies unavailable to smaller competitors - "the rich get richer". People who want to participate in any social media are forced to join the largest ones purely to follow the crowd. When I'm out and about in the real world and I see small handfuls of social media icons plastered on things, it doesn't feel like a "free marketplace of idea" - it feels like society intentionally facilitates and encourages the use of a select few services.
And yes, when they get large enough to be de-facto infrastructure - like Facebook did - absolutely there should be a council of acceptable algorithms. We can't let for-profit companies decide the terms of discourse of society at large.
These are natural human social structures being extended by technology. Celebrities existed long before they were posting their butts on Insta. And just like you could choose to not engage with celebrity culture before the internet, you can choose to not engage now. That's the definition of free association and the free market of ideas.
> absolutely there should be a council of acceptable algorithms
Ya we're on completely different wavelengths about how governance works then. That's insanity to me. If I don't like facebooks content I just log off facebook, I wouldn't never think it appropriate to dictate in law what speech can or cannot be produced.
Please. Nowhere in my comment did I even remotely hint at that. It's disappointing to spend time on a nuanced comment and be met with such a ridiculous strawman. People are nudged towards Facebook and other social networks in all sorts of ways, but not generally violently, no.
I could spend more time replying to the rest of your comment, but honestly I'm not inclined to after that.
I’m only slightly exaggerating.
Let me spell out the problem more clearly, it’s not as simple as your boss not liking you.
1) Coworker gets to find out someone doesn’t share their political beliefs.
2) They try to get moral superiority over the person … because disagreeing with their wokeness is immoral and it’s escalated from a minor disagreement to full blown moral superiority campaign.
3) Publicly denounce them. Unleash the Twitter mob.
4) Eventually it gets to the top management chain and they’re gonna fire this person who just a few years ago would have just been involved in a minor disagreement about politics in the coffee room.
If hope you can agree this is a problem, IMO has profound implications for the society.
I agree, people are shitty, but trying to legally limit the speech of people you don't like is exactly opposite the values of free ideas that we usually try to support. Or at least the ones that I support.
I honestly don’t think it would. The Twitter mob is a bunch of loud voices, that’s all. A bunch of people using online. I doubt they could arrange an actual effective boycott.
I do wonder if anyone has put together stats on this to show that once [any-twitter-outrage]-reaches X number of tweets/retweets - then some companies act, with y number os tweets/retweets Y number of companies react..
To discern, how many people you need to become a twitter mob for thing Z - to get a public statement/apology.. firing.. whatever cancelling.
I started to research this a bit some time ago and have not found a memorable chart or anything - surely someone has done this (?)
I've been seeing some trends of vocal minority cause change - even when majority don't even know there is a discussion of said changes - and it's often more powerful than it should be imho.
My local tennis club only publishes to Twitter. They do not operate a mailing list anymore.
I want to play tennis, be notified of same day court cancellations, be notified when new classes are available to book.
I don’t want to use social media.
What do I do? Give up tennis? Move to a different district where they don’t use Twitter? Set up a gofundme to depend on strangers to stump up for private lessons? Or suck it up and be an unwilling user of social media?
So I suck it up and use Twitter.
In any case, you're not being forced to engage with Twitter's algorithm _beyond_ what you've bought into via your engagement with the tennis club. And the tennis club wasn't forced to engage with Twitter in the first place, they chose to.
Maybe not forced, but strongly encouraged. On mobile, a quarter of my screen is taken up with prompts for me to join Twitter.
Before it was made illegal in the USA and the UK in the 1930s, nobody "forced" children to work, they chose to (with the alternative of starvation). Regardless of their right to choose, child labour was seen as a harmful practice and subsequently outlawed.
That being said, I'm not equating Twitter to child labour. My point is that the fact we are not "forced" to do something doesn't mean it's right, or should be allowed.
I've seen that fbook recently made it 'possible' to export your posts to wordpress..
We need to have data export options - and any 'public' page / group - should have export auto-enabled so that regular people can easily pull in via rss or rss-to-email - or similar type of accessibility imho.
Not sure if this sort of thing is in the 'kitchen sink against tech valley' that the house is putting together, but it should be.
What if social media algorithms were biased heavily towards local content?
I don't subscribe to any channels at all on YouTube, and yet when I watch a video the sidebar recommendations are often filled with only marginally related videos on US politics and other specially American content.
On Facebook, I don't follow any American news outlets, and again, my newsfeed gets a disproportionate amount of US news stories.
Despite not actively attempting to consume Americentric content (but not actively avoiding it), it's pushed in my face.
After the US election, my newsfeed was flooded with posts about it. Meanwhile, I saw practically zero posts about the election in Myanmar and subsequent events. I haven't seen anything at all about the election in Peru.
Arguably US politics has more of an effect on me than Peruvian politics. But so much of the "news" was inane tabloid stories covering events like Rudy Giuliani's hair dye running.
I really can't see more of this failed civilization that has the power to vaporize the earth in hours. I don't want to be reminded every single day.
It’s like the internet came along, offering opportunities to build these businesses to anyone in the world at super low cost, and most countries stuck their heads in the sand and said, “nah, this social media stuff is a fad, let’s stick to car manufacturing.” 10 years later the world is somehow under the “control” of US platforms? Huh?
Did you know HN/Twitter/Reddit are websites you can just choose not to type into your address bar?
Instead of complaining about the world you helped create, why not try changing it by starting a social platform for your local market and in your local language? These are all just simple CRUD apps.
There’s about 600 “build a Reddit clone” YouTube tutorials you could follow to build the same thing as HN/Reddit/Twitter from a technical perspective.
Do you even know what it means to run a social platform?
Germany has had multiple social Platforms before Facebook.
StudiVZ Kwick
And even local ones like “Team Ulm”
They are all dead. Because social platforms live from scale.
Hacker news has added no features for like 10 years and has two moderators. TWO.
Hacker news doesn’t do “growth.” It doesn’t send re-engagement emails. It doesn’t have an official app. It doesn’t run TV ads.
Yet it’s one of the most visited sites on the web. Any below-average software engineer could build and deploy a clone within a single day.
How is there not a German, Brazilian, etc. hacker news?
It’s mind blowing to me.
This isn’t even 1% the difficulty of “building your own car.” In fact, for many software engineers, building an HN clone would be easier than changing a tire.
I’m insanely skeptical of the idea you can’t find enough demand for a German language Reddit/HN in a country of 85 million educated people.
We also have several other social networks, e.g. vk.com, which started as an exact clone of the first Facebook version (even layout and colors were the same). They're quite popular in Russia and former USSR republics.
Although all platforms with user articles and user comments are somewhat poisoned by the US propaganda from US troll factories. I've already posted some comments on HN about this.
E.g. if there's a single article about some Russian invention/Russian car/Russian plane/Russian website/Russian whatever on Facebook, YouTube, vk.com, habr.com, any other social network, there would be hundreds, even thousands, comments with uniform reponses like:
- "It's garbage compared to the superior Western technology!"
- "It would be 100x cheaper to build this in the West because of the lack of corruption!"
- "It was stolen from the superior Western engineers and scientists. Wake up, sheeple: we, Russians, are not able to do anything, but to eat shitty soup with wooden spoon"
This is highly annoying, but it's easy for US to fund such factories, given that US can print astronomical amount of money without providing any backing material/industry output, and there're millions of people in the former USSR republics with excellent knowledge of Russian and no job, willing to work for measly $100-200 per month.
BTW, I'm also subscribed to some other countries social media (some SEA countries, India), and I guess US troll factories do their work there as well. Although it doesn't feel as targeted and intense as rusophobic propaganda that filled all the internet.
On the other hand, I would bet that both the RNC and DNC have operations that we would label as a troll factory if it occurred in another country. Certain companies do as well (we complain here about wildly overzealous policing of corporate images).
But I don't think that's actually what anticodon is talking about. I think he's just seeing the mainstream press consensus (groupthink?) working its way through the filter of the population, and regarding that as a troll operation.
Also, until 2 years ago, there were tons of identical comments posted under different nicknames on different social networks.
E.g. under different unrelated videos on YouTube about new Russian ship or airplane, you'd see identical comments saying something: "It's shit, government should stop wasting money to build inferior technology and buy it from the West and money are better spent on retired people".
I've even made tons of screenshots as evidence, with word for word identical comments under different videos from different nicknames. Sometimes there were even duplicates from different nicknames under the same video or article.
Of course, technology became more sophisticated since then.
And I'm not even starting about "legitimate" US propaganda translated non-stop by media outlets like Radio Freedom, and tons of other medias that operate on the territory of Russia, are funded from US budget (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) and the point of their existence is the same: to translate nonsense about Russia in Russian non-stop. E.g. gather all the crimes and translate them all day non-stop causing a depression in Russian listeners and viewers that nothing good happens in Russia, that it's all just a "Putin's GULAG".
You go on the street and see new roads, new houses, expensive cars, happy people, no crime, clean streets. You open Radio Freedom or any other US-funded website or magazine, and it's all depression, sadness, violent crime...
It's really annoying and I even think that people even have some kind of immunity now against this kind of US propaganda because we're bombarded with it non-stop since 1991.
That being said, I'm not really complaining, and I feel that HN has a better global distribution than most forums. If I want more international submissions and discussions, I should start posting them myself, and stop interacting with posts I don't want to see.
I always am fairly aware of the news, even abroad, but I stay off of social media (except HN). I only read actual news from formal print publications. Honestly, the lack of American foreign correspondents reporting abroad (especially in print) makes the US susceptible to a lot of uncertainty, and plausible deniability (such as with Russian propaganda being propagated on social media). With respect to that, the Financial Times does extremely well, but it is not an American news source. But, it is definitely worth getting a subscription to. They also do a lot of reporting about tech, which is typically spot-on. I have only been disappointed once when reading a tech article on FT.com.
I'm not implying an answer, by the way. I don't know; is there any research? My point is that there is no reason to believe any or all began in the U.S. We know at least about troll farms exporting rhetoric to the U.S., and that many of the ideas and rhetorical styles were more popular in places outside the U.S. before social media (such as inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric).
Possibly, whoever exported them to the U.S. also exported them to other places. There is some evidence: We can see the rise of similar politics, especially right-wing populist nationalism, in many countries approximately simultaneously, including India, China, Europe, Russia, South America, the U.S., and many more. That wasn't popular politics 20 years ago.
But I'm presenting the facts for your claims, when you should be. Do your other claims have some basis?
Also, I didn't say anything about the Russians, though they do operate troll farms and try to influence social media.