Hacker News Reader

"Someone reported this to the FBI, it's not actionable on a criminal level, but it breaks your TOS, heads-up" versus "we have deleted the encyclopedia for religious reasons". Yep, definitely comparable scenarios.

Blasphemy carries the death penalty in Pakistan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_in_Pakistan

Yep, definitely comparable scenarios.

I think it is. Pakastan can create whatever laws fit its culture. I would never dare to imagine imposing my values or beliefs on them. They should create their own Wiki alternative and make it popular within their nation.

[Edit] Or if their people see fit change their laws, overthrow their government or whatever they deem appropriate for their culture. But that is entirely on them. Now if they want to ask how to bypass censorship, I would be happy to provide a myriad of methods just as I did for the Iranians that posted here in the recent past.

> I would never dare to imagine imposing my values or beliefs on them

As I get older, I realize that while this may be idealized values - this works very poorly in the "real world". At some point, you realize that your arbitrary morals are simply better - better for everyone. Death penalty for blasphemy would be one of them - the world would simply be a better place if this did not exist.

The death penalty is abhorrent and indefensible, and religious freedom and the right to free expression are both included in the universal declaration of human rights, to which Pakistan is a signatory.

>The death penalty is abhorrent and indefensible

Believe it or not, but some places don't have the resources to hold people in jail for decades.

If there was a murderer and the place had no way to actually keep the murderer away from the general population, what would you recommend? Just ask the murderer to not murder again?

What countries don't have the prison capacity for murderers?

Even the bankrupt Taliban manages to keep 14k people in their prisons. https://www.voanews.com/a/taliban-refill-afghan-jails/693518...

Burundi's the last on the list of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... and manages prisons, as well.

They're not opting for executions for the cost savings.

"Even the bankrupt Taliban manages to keep 14k people in their prisons"

Yes, but if they actually jailed all criminals the number would be far higher.

Afghanistan's murder rate is approx 2800 people per year (6.7/100k, population 40 million). Assuming only a 10 year sentence for murder they should have twice as many people in prison -- assuming no other crimes whatsoever, which of course isn't the case.

"They're not opting for executions for the cost savings."

Don't be so sure. I agree with the above commenter - maintaining jails can be prohibitively expensive for undeveloped countries.

To be clear, I was just using murder as an example. You have to add in rape, terrorism, and other crimes that the Taliban executes people for.

We have no clue how many people they are holding in jail and how many are executed. Do you think they could actually hold thousands of additional prisoners who are amongst the most violent?

We also don't know how many of the guards agree with the terrorists. It probably wouldn't be a good thing to have a prison full of terrorists where the guards agree. They likely would "accidentally" let some of them escape.

The problem is that you cannot ascertain with certainty that someone is, in fact, a murderer. Countries with the death penalty will always execute innocent people. Roughly 5% of convicted persons are estimated to be innocent, and an execution makes the possibility of appeal or exoneration moot. At least 190 people in the United States have been sentenced to death and were later found to be innocent.

I don't think anybody is denying that innocent people will be killed by the death penalty.

Which is worse: 100 innocent people being killed by the death penalty or 100 innocent people getting killed by murderers? This is the calculation that many underdeveloped countries have to look at.

Allowing a murderer to live in a country that doesn't have the means to support them will lead to additional suffering of the prisoner (due to less resources), additional suffering of those not in prison (due to additional taxes), and an additional risk to additional murders by the murderer (if they kill other prisoners, guards or escape).

It is easy for people in the first world to say we don't have the need to have the death penalty, but to tell the poorest they are too stupid to know better is kind of arrogant.

Other comments addressed your (ridiculous) argument so that I don't have to, I encourage you to read them instead.

I encourage you to talk to some people in extremely undeveloped countries about the problems with detaining people for decades.

I would especially recommend talking to people in the most remote areas of the underdeveloped countries. They literally are unable to keep people in prison.

Over the past few decades, most areas have been solving these issues, but there are still a few areas where there is no alternative.

Not at all, unless the FBI can drone strike you for posting something they don't like.

Deferring blindly to any government is a dumb strategy.

There’s plenty of room to criticize both

What I’ve realized is that people in general are largely incapable of nuance.

- Things are either bad or good.

- Only one side can be right which means the other side is automagically wrong.

- Multiple things can’t be true at the same time.

- etc.

I think it's also worth remembering that this isn't just some random quirk but something actively cultivated by many social groups. Many religious encourage that us-versus-them divide because it's a very effective mechanism for keeping people from leaving (my experience with this was fundamentalist Christianity where shunning was practiced so anyone breaking with official doctrine was going to have to give up most of their friends/family and possibly even a marriage), and the Republican Party relies on the “help, we're being oppressed!” mythology to keep people riled up and donating/voting no matter who the candidate is.

In both cases, tolerating nuance would make it harder to control the message since disagreement could lead to power shifting away from the current top of the hierarchy. Unsurprisingly the people who benefit from that are strongly opposed to sharing.

I don’t think it’s limited to religious people or republicans. I see it on both sides.

I do agree that it’s partially due to programming. If you look at movies for example you’ll see this black and white thinking. There’s a good guy and a bad guy and it’s all very simple.

It’s not exclusive to those groups but it’s quite noticeably stronger there. I think that’s because those groups push positions which are unpopular with a majority of the population, so you have to link that to things they do want or think they must do and push it as a package deal. “We’re under attack constantly by deceptive forces” is an effective way to prevent the culture of questioning any part of the package — e.g. someone who notices that Jesus didn’t actually say they have to shun their gay kid is is almost certainly going to wonder what other doctrine is like that.

I think it's just as strong on both sides, the difference is intention and outcomes. The right uses this to reinforce their own power. The left uses it to try and correct injustices but ends up creating problems because of it.

Take a look at feminism for example. It started as "hey women should have equal rights", which is good. But now we see far too many people treating men as a monolith and demonizing them. So now we have a narrative that women = good, and men = bad. I see this all the time on social media from the left and it has to stop. Male suicide rates are far too high right now, and I partly blame this narrative and the lack of nuance that caused it.

That just tells me that you follow a lot of right-wing sources. That's not a popular feminist position but it's exactly how the right-wing characterizes it to avoid honest engagement with, for example, the feminists who've written thoughtfully and compassionately about how traditional gender roles negatively impact men. The suicide rates you mention, for example, are commonly attributed to the intersection of economic declines for traditional working-class jobs and the traditional belief that men are supposed to be the family breadwinner, which implicitly tells men that if they're not married with a reasonably high income they're failures.

No that's a common far-left cop-out. I don't follow many right wing sources, I closely observe how people talk and act, offline and online, and think for myself.

In-fact I follow mostly left-wing media and I consider myself a true leftist because I think everyone should be treated equally, and power dynamics aren't as simple as man = has all power, women = has no power. But that's exactly the narrative that the left is pushing. I guarantee that if you were to post online even the simplest thing like "women have some power over men" you'll get dogpiled by people calling you a rapist because they can't handle nuance.

I also call bullshit on your explanation for male suicide. Male loneliness plays a major role, and it's partly due to the fact that we collectively put women on a pedestal in our society. Which again goes back to lack of nuance. Something like 30% of men haven't had sex in the past year, and women generally find 80% of men unattractive on dating sites. There is real data backing up my position.

I get that you believe you're thinking independently here but you're doing a paint-by-numbers repetition of anti-feminist tropes here. I would strongly recommend reconsidering how objective your baseline is and, especially, checking primary sources and thinking critically about the interpretative narratives around them.

Likewise, I hope some day you’ll be able to handle nuance instead of regurgitating what the blue team tells you.

>Something like 30% of men haven't had sex in the past year >women generally find 80% of men unattractive on dating sites.

For the first time in history, women actually have the societal, as well as legal right to not find a man. They are finally able to be choosy and say no when they don't want to do anything. They are no longer coerced by laws or societal norms to settle for a man, and can freely chose to only find a partner if that partner is attractive to them, physically or emotionally or whatever their preference is.

Of course, men who were brought up to think that women owe them anything hate this, because it means they have to be more than just a living paycheck to get a partner. It means millions of men who in older times would have found a wife who settled for them now have to compete with other men who may understand and treat women as individuals instead of sex objects to be claimed.

There is plenty of room to talk about how culture around men prioritizes sex and finding a partner, and discourages men from being themselves. There is plenty of room to talk about how plenty of women hate the current situation where logging into a dating app means 100 new messages, 5 unsolicited dick picks, and being called a slut when they rebuff someone's advances, as if that makes any sense.

None of this is putting women on a pedestal. A significant portion of the right wing here in the states is actively campaigning on the idea of abolishing all non-standard cultures, and demonizing independent women and single mothers especially as solely responsible for society's ills.

If you are hurt by a traditionally oppressed population finally getting the ability to direct their own life, you should consider what that says about your former position in the world.

[flagged]

If there is one thing that can reliably eliminate nuance from any discussion, it is politics. Alleged censorship in social media is a hot topic in the last few years amongst partisans.

This seems to be a case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And also equivocating “pressuring companies to deal with their hate speech problem which makes online communities best case unwelcome, worst case unsafe for the people and groups being targeted” and “censoring religious blasphemy to try and maintain existing theocratic power structures.”

Like when the US actually starts trying to censor ideas rather than their hateful expressions I’ll start to be worried. Because lord knows it is your god given right to be an absolute piece of shit writing think pieces about all your bigoted opinions but content like /r/c__ntown is just hate with no substance at all.

"Tu quoque" is a logical fallacy.

> Only censor things that are explicitly and clearly illegal under federal law and the laws of the state the company is headquartered in.

"Congress shall make no law"...

There are plenty of articles critical of content censoring on HN already. I’d wager that the majority of censor criticism on HN are about the US. Very rarely about any other country. What are you waiting for?

> I would love wag the finger but first I would have to clean up my own country

Your own country and its cleanliness is totally irrelevant to Pakistan censoring Wikipedia.

US Laws are why people aren't posting classic European art because one nipple and you're gone.

What laws, exactly? US Wikipedia has many images far more graphic than a nipple. We have television with full frontal nudity (both genders). Maybe you're thinking of broadcast television, which does have relatively strong restrictions before 10pm (IIRC, could be off on the exact time of day).

In Spain nudity on classical art woudln't be censored on TV. It looks plainly aseptic, not even erotic.

You can literally post nudity on YouTube if it's educational or art, and can convince the dumb ML black box of that. You can just host a website with drawings of naked people if you want. Hell, you could host a website with naked Muhammad and there's nothing the US can do to you.

For reference, I was using one of "those" sites during the 2016 election, and an actual ad next to my chosen video was one of Donald Trump doing Hillary from behind with great gusto.

It's not a crime. It was also hilarious.

There are no laws against that.

What law does that?