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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Considering Peter Thiel is on the list [1] of most hated person on HN and Silicon Valley, I am kinda surprised this reached front page.

Does Peter Thiel still does VC? I thought he left YC and Silicon Valley.

[1] Mark Zukerberg, Larry Ellison and Peter Thiel.

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I can't speak for Silicon Valley, nor for the majority of HN, but my (obviously biased) sample of approximately 20 HN-reading friends are all massive Thiel fans. Myself included.

So perhaps there are more of us than you think, we're just not keen to speak up in the comments section because it just invites a flame war?

If your 20 friends are all "massive fans" of a given person, I agree, that's a pretty solid indicator of significant bias. Well, maybe not if that person were the Dalai Lama or something like that, but Thiel is not the Dalai Lama. (Even a regular llama would be strong competition.) I should add that the same would very much apply if all your 20 friends felt the opposite way - that would be closer to the norm, but still implausibly unanimous.

> If your 20 friends are all "massive fans" of a given person, I agree, that's a pretty solid indicator of significant bias.

I'm glad you agree.

Would you say that the tone of your comment reinforces, diminishes, or is neutral with respect to my comment about starting flame wars?

Well, how do you define a 'flame war'? Specifically, what besides the fact that someone is challenging your view?

Which of my views are you challenging?

Your approval of Thiel. I agreed with your view that your sample was biased.

Your comment didn’t challenge anything about my approval of Thiel. In fact, your comment didn’t add anything substantive whatsoever apart from a tone of disapproval - hence my question about starting flame wars.

Usefully, your comment has demonstrated the exact phenomenon I was referring to.

Yeah, most people I know have a lot of respect for Thiel (myself included) even if they have serious political disagreements with his trump support.

>So perhaps there are more of us than you think, we're just not keen to speak up in the comments section

May be. But I certainly know he is extremely unpopular on twitter, HN along with pretty much all mainstream media. You just have to look at some of the comments in this thread ( some of them are filtered as dead )

To the point I think it is extremely courageous to admit you are a big fan of him.

I dont want flame wars. But I certainly want balance of opinions. Whenever something is extremely one-sided I tends to get wary. But then I also understand why replying may start a flamewar. Discussion is hard.

I don't hate Peter Thiel but I feel compelled as an American to say I believe that we should find ways to improve our democratic system, not get rid of it. Thiel seems to believe democracy doesn't work and presumably technocrats such as himself would be better running things. Perish the thought.

A rapidly growing opinion on HN that's approaching majority status is that tech titans should be able to tightly control what information people see in order to control their votes because otherwise they will vote incorrectly. This might not be your view, but it is incredibly common here and in the tech sector. Guess it's still technically a democracy if everyone votes after having their information highly curated by the tech industry but it certainly isn't one spiritually.

> should be able to tightly control what information people see

You don't say what you mean by this so I don't know how to respond. Some say the tech companies lean left, some say they lean right, but HN is not the place to discuss politics. I will say most of the posts and comments I see are aligned with the hacker's ethos of opposing censorship. Banning Rep. Greene for vaccine misinformation or former President Trump for inciting violence is not censorship.

It’s a speech issue and the ability for private companies to exercise their own moderation is the free speech position.

A government forcing private companies to implement policies around speech is a violation of their speech.

My take on this is more nuanced and I think private companies wielding speech restriction is high risk, but people saying the government should step in are wrong imo.

https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...

Another aspect is that companies like Twitter or Meta have legal exposure in various jurisdictions around the world. The libel laws in the UK are different than that those in the US, etc... They're responsibility for what is on their sites is an ongoing question. They have to have the ability to moderate their sites to comply with local laws, or they have to be excused from liability.

I think you might be ascribing too much nuance into such a broad indicator as an upvote. Might it be an interest in where big chunks of VC cash are being thrown, rather than a popularity poll of the man behind it?

> Does Peter Thiel still does VC? I thought he left YC and Silicon Valley.

They've recently legalized doing venture capital in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Boston and dozens of other cities (including those outside of the US too).

What do you mean legalized? Was it not legal before?

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