Hacker News Reader

Comment by zmgsabst | Hacker News Reader

@dang has been explicit that they deem certain topics “inherent flame wars” and ban discussion because it upsets people.

Certain ideas aren’t allowed here — even when calmly stated and cited with evidence.

For example, citing the clip of the BLM founder saying she’s a “trained Marxist” would get you banned: HN was in flat out denial, even though it was her own words on film [1]. She is literally answering a question about the ideology behind BLM.

Unfortunately, that kind of censorship enabled BLM to commit the fraud they did [2].

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw

[2] - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/amazon-boots-black-l...

View on HN

What's hilarious is that this is still up three hours after posting with not even a reply. So much for censorship. You're totally allowed to post that here, even while conflating one charity with a continent-wide protest movement, one leader's out of context quote with the goals of that movement, and one enforcement action by Amazon Smile with an accusation of "fraud".

For those interested in whether there's any truth in those links (there is! though maybe not nearly as juicy as promised), Wikipedia has a great overview as always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter_Global_Netw...

It was flagged and dead almost immediately then zmgsabst made another post [1] linking to the dead post and someone vouched for the dead post you see here.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32432791

Ignoring or de-facto shadow-banning is also a form of censorship.

I’ll keep saying it. Nobody has a right to an audience. Ignoring something isn’t censorship.

Shouldn't I get to decide what I ignore?

Again, ignoring and censoring aren't the same thing.

Part of the reason I come to HN is that I know there are entire classes of content and ideas that I will not be exposed to at all so I don't have to waste brain cycles on sorting them.

Similarly I use a spam filter on my email.

If I wanted to provide a similar experience, targeting a different narrative, and then worked to create my own safe platform, would you disagree with that?

"Ignoring" is just choice. And that concept can either promote or extinguish fair and free communication.

I assume you and I share similar political beliefs. Call it censorship, or call it "choice", it ia clear today not all people have fair and free access.

If the government uses its power to extinguish speech (or to burden channels through unfair promotion of counter ideas), then that is censorship. And that is a problem we should all want to fix.

Maybe because it's relevant to the discussion in the thread.

How many other times do you think it'd be appropriate to bring up the same topic? Probably very few, and it would get deleted if not.

The "trained Marxist" phrase is so strange to me - how does one become 'trained' in Marxism? Trained in guerilla warfare, perhaps. But to be trained in Marxism has the same meaning as being "trained in Platonism" or "trained in Hayekism". The other answers she gave in the interview also indicate to me that she doesn't really know what she's talking about, and is using this language either as a LARP to claim some theoretical legitimacy or basis, or as a way to attract on-the-fence old school Marxists.

At no point did any of this 'trained Marxism' show other than in a small handful of the organization's goals, generally the most neglected ones.

To add to that, stating the fact that one of the tech titans of today, Bill Gates, was in cahoots with a convicted pedophile is either met with "this is just hearsay!" or "you're jumping to conclusions", when it's not ignored and down-voted altogether.

Even more important (not that many of us receiving our wages and dividends from probably pedophiles isn't important), the strong connection between Silicon Valley of days past, and, most importantly, from today, with the Military and Security Complex is also shunned.

> the strong connection between Silicon Valley of days past, and, most importantly, from today, with the Military and Security Complex is also shunned.

Whole valley at one time was off limits to anyone from the Soviet Block.

And of course that The Economist just published this article in their latest issue: "After a long break-up, Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex are getting back together" [1] . Maybe I should submit it as a dedicated post.

[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2022/08/08/can-tech-resha...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com