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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

I've learned the mob, no matter their political beliefs, doesn't know a damn thing as a group. If there is a technical answer, it used to be possible to get a correct answer, but that is almost always through the view of some political leaning. Frankly, given the utter sh?t-show of YouTube content warnings[0], I have no faith in this crud. This just seems like a bots paradise to influence opinion and ban people.

0) the number of videos that have no mention of COVID that have COVID warnings is just staggering. Along with the Moon Conspiracy warning on a video of the X-15 is just brain dead.

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I have never in my entire life expected the truth from the crowd. Why on earth would you do that if truth was truly your concern?

These proposals seem to ignore this basic reality. They also presume that peoples primary desire in communication with one another is truth. Our entire system of language belies that idea entirely.

The condescension of it all gets to me as well, as if you give everyone the unvarnished truth that they would all make the same decisions based upon that information. It's a parochial desire that could only be held by government agents or embarrassed billionaires. It has no true purpose for society as a whole.

"Wisdom of the crowd" used to be one of the big selling points of the internet. Like most early optimism, it collapsed on contact with reality as the internet grew.

> "Wisdom of the crowd" used to be one of the big selling points of the internet.

I don't think this was true until sometime in the 00s when voting systems were popularized. I don't recall anybody talking about crowd wisdom and hiveminds in the context of IRC chatrooms, mailing lists, or geocity pages. There was an understanding that whoever you were talking to might be smart or might be stupid; there was no crowd mechanism to put false trust in.

> They also presume that peoples primary desire in communication with one another is truth.

Maybe. Or maybe it means that these sites don’t like people abusing their networks to spread garbage.

> Or maybe it means that these sites don’t like people abusing their networks to spread garbage.

Is that based upon the desire of the users, or the desire of the owners? Why do we talk about the concerns of the owners as if they were the concerns of the users?

It's an odd sleight of hand.

I’m speaking specifically of the owners, given they’re the ones instituting these systems.

If the mob is so dumb, why do we let them elect our government?

The mob doesn't elect our government. Individuals go into a booth and pull the lever. In a fair election, their is no interaction between people when the vote is cast. Sure, there are campaigns and such, but the voting moment is one person at a time inside their head. Mobs become a thing unto themselves and group into a dangerous thing. Their are numerous studies about how people act differently as part of a mob.

Ok yes this is the true meaning of mob referring to in-person groups. But 'mob' in this discussion was being used with respect to groups of people in a more general sense like people on the internet whom all act individually from their own houses.

replying to a group conversation (reddit thread, hackernews comments, twitter chain, etc) is closer to a mob than an individual activity.

The purpose of voting is to deflect responsibility for failures of governance to the governed. After all, they're the ones who put those people in charge, so they're responsible. It's also to take away much of the historic reasoning for revolutions. Who is being overthrown when it is the people who elect the government? The fun trick with representative democracy has been the weaponization of psychology to control the possible outcomes of the public electing their leaders.

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