The announcement by America's Finest News Source: https://theonion.com/heres-why-i-decided-to-buy-infowars/
Alex Jones response: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857058831135645739
Alex Jones response: https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1857058831135645739
(in fairness, those people tend to hate the Civil Service in the UK too. And they're elected hereditary Lords, albeit via a franchise consisting entirely of other hereditary Lords)
An indirect democracy is you voting for a representative who votes for policies.
The EU is a doubly-indirect democracy: you vote for local politicians who appoint commissioners who vote for policies. Each layer of indirection adds a new way for popular policies to be subverted. Hell, even in the US, the single layer of indirection is already sufficient to kill things like right to repair.
The EU Commission is the executive, not legislative branch. Though it does hold the initiative to create proposals, they have to be approved by the Council, which is where the real power lies. The Council consists of members of national governments. Also there is a directly elected, but much less powerful, European Parliament, that has to approve the legislative too.
I do not think they are the same people. The majority of votes were to leave the EU, the majority of people want to get rid of hereditary peerages.
> And they're elected hereditary Lords, albeit via a franchise consisting entirely of other hereditary Lords
The appointment is formally made by the monarch, in practice by the Prime Minister, with some recommendations coming from a commission that is not part of the house of lords.
You obviously haven't read the Telegraph or listened to many Conservative MPs recently. I don't blame you tbf!
> The appointment is formally made by the monarch, in practice by the Prime Minister, with some recommendations coming from a commission that is not part of the house of lords.
Those are life peers. Hereditary peers are, as the name suggests, people who get their access to the House of Lords by accident of birth rather than Prime Minister. But since Blair cut a deal to get rid of all but 92 of them, they have elected the 92, from a franchise consisting exclusively of people who had hereditary titles that had previously entitled them to a seat.
This is not always the case, although I guess it depends how you define bureaucrats. As an example, in France, most of the administration is not nominated. You become a public worker through exam, and the representative usually have no power over your nomination, raises, etc. It does make sense in a lot of cases. For example, in a city, only the mayor and its advisers are elected, and they do not have any control over the administration of the city. But the administration cannot refuse to work with a specific mayor. If they do, they would need to be moved elsewhere, or simply be fired for not doing their job. On the other hand, they are also bound by the law, so they also act as a counter power to crazy mayor who wants to do illegal stuff. Meaning, if the mayor ask the administration to do something illegal, they can absolutely say no with no fear of repercussion for their job.
It also makes sense for other counter-power office, where having the currently elected representatives being able to choose who control the office would go against its whole purpose.
Who else would have power over "nomination, raises etc" of anyone, if not elected representatives? Other public workers? At this point would they not be a sovereign group distinct from France, untouchable by the french people?
I guess the elected representatives have indirect power over everything in the end, if France is still a democracy. May be lots of layers of indirection, like the need to pass or change a law, but still.
Who defines and administers the exam you mentioned? Other public representatives? Can they decide to pass their relatives?
Yes, that's how the civil service works in most countries, more or less. The US is an outlier in that the executive appoints about 4,000 civil servants; most places don't work like that (even in the US; _most_ civil servants (about 2.8 million of them, federal) are hired, promoted, disciplined etc by other civil servants; the president doesn't sit in on every interview or anything.)
> I guess the elected representatives have indirect power over everything in the end, if France is still a democracy.
The elected representatives pass laws. The civil service implements them.
Separately, at least in many countries, not sure about France, you have the concept of power devolved to the minister, where the legislature passes a law allowing the minister to make orders in certain restricted areas, a bit like a scope-limited version of US presidential executive orders.
This occasionally has amusing repercussions if the original devolution legislation was insufficient or unconstitutional; for instance in Ireland nearly all drugs (morphine, heroin, cannabis and possibly cocaine remained illegal) were accidentally legalised for a day, when the supreme count found that the legislation used to enable the Minister for Justice to ban drugs was insufficient, thus legalising everything which had been banned since it was passed.
This is one of the concerning parts with the incoming administration.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/25/project-2025...
> Project 2025, which is backed by the rightwing Heritage Foundation thinktank, has proposed to “dismantle the administrative state”, while Trump’s official “Agenda 47” calls for “cleaning out the Deep State” and “on Day One” issuing an “executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats”.
> That executive order would set up a system, known as Schedule F, that would revamp the federal bureaucracy so that far more jobs could be filled with political appointees rather than through traditional merit rules. Trump’s supporters say Schedule F would cover about 50,000 federal employees, but unions representing federal workers say it would cover many times that. Currently, approximately 4,000 federal positions are subject to presidential appointment. Trump’s allies are said to have compiled a list of 20,000 loyalists who could quickly move into federal jobs in a new Trump administration.
---
That 4,000 is looking to become 20,000 and potentially increase up to 50,000 (and beyond depending how far reaching the reclassification is).
Best to be aware of this, not deceive ourselves that public servants are untouchable. Some people might get the idea that voting for a very bad politician would just send a message and not have much real effect, as the civil servants are the same and will do the same job and cannot be removed. They can. Even in Germany.
Possibly. They’d need majority control of the legislature (not merely the sort of plurality control that seems within the bounds of possibility on some countries) and control of the courts. They’d also potentially need to be able to change the constitution; in most countries the Lisbon treaty is either implicitly or explicitly above local law. They’d need to be ready to face sanctions from the EU. I think Germany in particular also has some regulation of the civil service actually in the constitution. But ultimately, yeah, if the far right successfully took over the government (rather than just leading a coalition or something) they could probably do this; the Nazis did, after all.
The courts? If you have majority in the legislature, you can pass any law you want, and the courts are obligated to follow the law. You think they would just rebel and disregard laws that they consider not-ok?
In any case. The courts need to get paid, and need offices and electricity and computers and support from police and other branches. And judges need to be appointed, and sometimes leave. One way or another the courts would get converted to the cause. All the courts in a country are a lot of people. There are always some who would betray. Just adjust the laws and the salaries and everything you can (which is a lot if you own the legislative) to advantage those on your side and disadvantage those who oppose you. Prosecutors are typically under the executive, so start some made-up investigations against the most prominent judges that oppose you. No need to do it for all, set a few examples and the others will see the error of their ways. No need for the investigations to get convictions in court. Just place doubt on inconvenient judges, and use the media to amplify it. Your side of the media, while the other side also gets converted. Converting the media is much easier, again, using executive and legislative power.
The constitution as a document is irrelevant. The court(s) that interpret it would just get converted to the cause in the same way. This has already been done in Poland and the US, and I presume in Hungary, since there's no news about them creating trouble.
> in most countries the Lisbon treaty is either implicitly or explicitly above local law
The government and the converted courts will just start acting as if the Lisbon treaty does not exist. Who or what can enforce it? Look at Hungary. Look at Poland before the recent change. Look at Slovakia. A treaty has no power over a country that does not whish to follow it. Look at the Budapest memorandum and soon enough we will see Trump ignore the NATO treaty.
In my country the constitutional court routinely says our constitution (and therefore their decisions, which always favor a certain party, and corruption in general) are above the Lisbon treaty. The EU pretends nothing happened (presumably due to the war).
> the Nazis did, after all
Exactly.
In some circumstances, the plan would be to fire everybody and then just sit there and do nothing (except fire more people). The idea that all this is towards any kind of functional system, is an assumption. They could be looking to dismantle the entire administrative state and just collapse immediately to feudalism.
1. The law. For example, public worker salary's are explicitly defined on a public grid, which depends on several factor (exact position, how long you have been in the job, the national public worker salary index, ...).
2. Their boss / future boss. Promotion it partly a matter of law, but also partly at the discretion of your boss. Same for a lateral move. If a position open, and you are qualified to fill it, you have to have interview just like a normal job offer.
There is a bunch a caveat and details, but that's the gist of it. So, technically, representative do have power over this. Some representatives can change the law, and some are technically more or less the boss of the top officer at some administration. But it still make a lot of things difficult if not impossible. A mayor cannot change national law, only Deputé of the national assembly can, so he has no power over the salary of his administration. He also has no power to fire someone from the local administration unless he can prove that they did something that the law consider a fireable offense. The same would go for a minister.
Of course, in effect, they do yield a lot of influence. While public worker are very, very rarely fired, they can be moved to another position, which is easier to do and what usually happen when someone powerful want them gone without having the actual power to do so directly.
In many countries that is done based on laws describing career progression process.
In Germany most administration workers are "career" folks, who study at the university of administration and then have a career paths, where levels at are relatively clearly described. Only heads of different authorities are "political" positions, which are nominated by ministers and can be fired/retired relatively easily but even those in most cases stay across administrations. Only ministers and their direct staff change.
In some ministries there sometimes is the saying "we don't care who is minoster below us" but if a some minister with an agenda is appointed they still can be very effective.
But since the law is written by elected representatives, to say that the representatives have no power in this case seems wrong, to me. That's all.
If the voters will vote for the "fire Joe" party 20 years in a row, I guarantee Joe the civil servant will eventually be fired, even in Germany, France, anywhere. Well, maybe not in China, but that's different. Anywhere where votes still matter. Solutions would be found, laws changed, exceptions provided, and so on.
Have you watched the British documentary series "Yes, Minister"?
Civil servants are people like you and me, and have as strong will as anyone.
Building upon economic theory, public choice has a few core tenets. One is that no decision is made by an aggregate whole. Rather, decisions are made by combined individual choices. A second is the use of markets in the political system. A third is the self-interested nature of everyone in a political system.
As if it's not made of humans. This view is in grave error. Nobody is perfectly rational, nobody is beyond bias or subjectivty, nobody is beyond human emotions.
For certain classes of politician, this might actually be a problem.
However: Yes, who you vote for impacts government. If you vote for a party which sets priority in building bike sheds, the authorities will move staff to the required departments, while Joe remains in the department nobody cares about anymore and thus can't meet the promotion goals. (While he will still receive the regular raise for the job level he is in) And if one truly wants to get rid of Joe there certainly is a way to find a reason for demoting him ..
But it's way different from the American system which sweeps thousand of jobs, according to [1] about 4,000 jobs directly, where then many of those bring in their assistant, advisor etc.
[1] https://presidentialtransition.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/...
This goes also further: Many offices which are elected in the US are appointed in Europe (I'm not aware of a European country where population elects state/district attorneys, sheriffs, judges, school boards, etc)
> And before you say “constitution,”
I have zero idea why I would say "constitution" or anything really. My entire point is that nobody is beyond the reach of elected representatives, and that is by design and a good thing too.
That’s just stating the obvious.
> that is by design
No, it’s not. It’s just a fact of life that governments can control every aspect of a person’s life if it chooses. It’s always been this way and always will be.
This is why your statements are absurd.
When people refer to a civil service as being “apolitical” or “not politically appointed,” it’s obvious that they’re not referring to absurd cases like “a government can outlaw them from having a job.”
That’s why I said you’re reducing the argument to absurdity.
Yes, in the end of course. But these layers of indirection are extremely important. In my country right-wing politicians are currently rallying against prosecutors they think are "too lenient" with criminals. If it weren't for the indirection those prosecutors would have been replaced with the politicians' yes-friends long ago.
> 60 politicians of all colors stand for election in the 15 countries of the European Union: unimaginable benefits and positions of influence await their power brokers, for it is these Machiavellian lobbyists and self-appointed “leaders“ who hold the real power in the palms of their hands.
And from the rules:
> The player with the most total votes played in a given party is the party representative. If a player has two cards in the same party, their value is added. If two or more players have the same vote total in a party, the one with the highest single card is the party representative. Remember that a doubler card, if played, will always be considered the highest card. Also, note that it is possible for one player to control two parties.
> If Gaudino is played in a party in competition with another politician valued 7 in that party, he is considered to be the higher card.
> The green-leaf party is a special case. If two players tie for total value in green cards, it is possible that they will still tie for highest single card value. In that case, the two players are given thirty seconds to agree on who will be the green representative. If they do not agree in that time, each player with green cards may negotiate separately.
As long as we (and I mean the left side broadly) are talking about the government not being legitimate as we shoot ourselves in the foot, we won’t learn how to reverse this. Talking about stolen power is a weak argument when we’ve just been outmanoeuvred. And it makes us look like sulking children and in the end it just helps conservatives and fascists.
“If Gondor, Boromir, has been a stalwart tower, [those who work at public bureaus] have played another part. Many evil things there are that your strong walls and bright swords do not stay. You know little of the lands beyond your bounds. Peace and freedom, do you say? The North would have known them little but for us."
The mayor can still dictate policy and the administration have to implement it if it is not illegal, right?
The above is of course satire. We have idiotic regulations that require a good understanding of culture to get through. People are like the rest of the population: average. There are good ones send bad ones.
For the exam - it completely depends on the administration and your level.
We hate our administration because it is either complicated, or contacting them is a nightmare (or simply impossible)
That's also the case in the UK.
By the same argument you could say UK or US or any other solidly democratic is not democratic, because some commission or organisation is not directly, by the people, elected.
(If you go for the direct election argument, the UK fares pretty badly BTW.)
In theory the Commission is mostly made up of civil servants who answer to commissioners, who are themselves nominated by each country's own government or civil service. Each commissioner has one area of responsibility only, and they answer to the head of the Commission who is their boss. So someone in the UK votes for a politician, who votes for a party leader, who appoints some ministers, and those ministers may or may not have much of a say in whoever gets nominated to be a commissioner - one of many. But there is at least a path there, even if long and indirect and the person your vote ends up influencing doesn't do anything important to your country or needs.
In practice it doesn't actually work that way. In practice, the head of the Commission has veto power over the nominations. They aren't supposed to according to the treaties but the treaties are ignored. This means that in reality it's the head of the Commission who picks the Commissioners, because they can just reject anyone who isn't sufficiently aligned with their own agenda.
So that leaves the question of how the head of the Commission is picked. Once again there is theory and practice. In theory, it's a decision of the heads of each state that they take together to select some candidates, and the Parliament then gets to vote for their preferred candidate. In practice ... nobody knows how the head is picked. Ursula von der Leyen was recently re-appointed despite being plagued by scandals and having a long career of failing upwards. Parliament was sidelined by giving them a voting list with only one candidate on it (her). Seek out an explanation of how she got this job and you won't find one because:
1. The heads of state don't talk about how they decide as a group. Is it a vote? Some sort of horse trading? Do they take it in turns? Are they even all able to take part? Nobody knows.
2. There's no record of which country voted for who, or why.
3. The process by which someone even becomes a candidate is unclear.
4. Because no head of state has any control over who gets onto the candidate list, they never talk on the campaign trail about how they will "vote" (assuming that's how it works) for who runs the EU.
In other words, the process is entirely secret. The potential for corruption is unlimited.
So when critics say the EU Commission is a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, they are right and those who argue otherwise here on HN are wrong. People who got their jobs via a process so opaque and indirect that how it functions can't be explained, not even in principle, cannot claim to be democratically selected.
You can also even just observe the following litmus test of democratic legitimacy: what percentage of people have even heard of Ursula von der Leyen (or most of her predecessors) before her appointment to the most powerful position in the EU? Contrast that with their country's president or prime minister and you will see why one is democratically legitimate and the other is not.
People dislike changes of party leadership by the party in power between elections because they get someone they did not vote for.
It is also only one layer removed from the people directly voted in. The EU Commissioners are another layer or too removed from who people voted for.
If politicians can engage in horse trading they will.
> Parliament was sidelined by giving them a voting list with only one candidate on it (her).
This implies that the parliament has to pick on who is on the ballot, which it doesn't: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240710IP...
She was elected with a majority - albeit not a huge one. Still: elected. This is an example of "there is at least a path there, even if long and indirect".
How about another counterexample: In the US the members of the Federal Reserve are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate (so an indirect path, but fairly short), for 14 years! The Supreme Justices are appointed for life. To take this to a hypothetical extreme, image now calling a country "democratic" where you just hold elections once per lifetime.
That doesn't really strike me as democratic, as the "demos", the people, change their minds more often than once in 14 years, or once per lifetime.
Of course, the EU I'm sure also has appointments that go beyond the standard 4-5-ish years. But my point is: the EU isn't as undemocratic as you make it to be and the US/UK isn't as democratic as you may think. Both are muddling along, and probably neither reach Swiss levels.
> The process by which someone even becomes a candidate is unclear
Your points 1.-4. apply to many appointments in the US and UK that are similarly undemocratic: To take an example from the UK: The Governor of the Bank of England is appointed by the Chancellor+PM. Again, no one knows who or why they made the decision the way they made it. Were they friends with the future Governor? Did their party engage in some horse trading with the opposition to secure other benefits in turn for nominating a particular person? No one knows.
But people certainly do know how that position is selected, by whom and for what reason. The current governor of the BoE has a long history of running government financial institutions, including in the central bank itself. He is a civil servant and is thus picked by the Chancellor, who is himself picked by the Prime Minister. No mysteries there. He is eminently qualified for the role.
On 3 June 2019, it was reported in The Times that Bailey was the favourite to replace Mark Carney as the new governor of the Bank of England.[9] Sajid Javid had also intervened in support of Bailey.[10][11] According to The Economist: "He is widely seen within the bank as a safe pair of hands, an experienced technocrat who knows how to manage an organisation."[12]
Previously he served as the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England under Mervyn King from January 2004 until April 2011, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England for Prudential Regulation under Mark Carney from April 2013 to July 2016 and Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority from 2016 to 2020.
It's a matter of degree rather than a binary. Representative democracy is a little less democratic than direct democracy. Elections every 20 years are a bit less democratic than elections every 5 years. Having the elected representatives appoint a head of state is a bit less democratic than electing one directly. The more layers of indirection you add, the more it becomes a bureaucratic oligarchy.
It seems here that because the EU likes to regulate more, people somehow perceive it as less democratic.
A bit; mostly as you say, but also it's a kingdom and has the House of Lords whose seats are partially heritable, partially religious appointments from the state religion with the monarch at the top, in addition to those appointed by the elected government.
There are also, in practice, a number of other religious appointments made to provide other religious groups with representation.
> in addition to those appointed by the elected government.
Those are the most problematic IMO. Businesspeople (because the rich do not have enough influence on politics and cannot get their voice heard?), and former politicians.
I think how it works is nicely summarised by the fact that at least one of the founders of an ecommerce website (lastminute.com) is a peer but no-one like (for example) Tim Berners-Lee is.
Alexandra Freeman [0] or Lionel Tarassenko [1] might fit your criteria as technocratic appointments to the peerage - just how "like" TBL do they have to be? Sir Timothy seems like the kind of character who could reasonably be appointed, too, if that's what he really wanted.
I agree with your point that it's dominated by businessmen and aristocrats, but maybe not quite as badly as you think.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Freeman,_Baroness_Fr...
Freeman, has spent most of her career as a science in science communication (director and producer of BBC documentaries, then a "communications" role at Cambridge).
I like TBL as an example partly because of his interest in the broader consequences of technology, and the contrast with people who have made money from the technology her inventented being peers.
So they are employees of their departments and don't change when a minister changes. Ministers are almost always a member of Parliament and appointed by the Prime Minister, so they can change at any time.
Usually a government will have some changes at the top of departments (the "Permanent Secretary") and high level executives, but that's also a "change of government to another party" event.
A big part of the "project 2025" idea was to reduce career employees and make everybody effectively a political appointee.
Sir Humphrey Appelby often explains to the Minister Jim Hacker how the Minister sets "policy" and it is the "humble public servants" that carry out that policy, having attended to the details that are required when dealing with the heavy business of government across departments, while leaving the Minister to concentrate on the "big picture", and doing his job, which is:
1. Defend the Ministry in Parliament
2. Make sure that the Ministry's budget is defended in Cabinet
It has a parliament, a flag (adopted - its the flag of Europe originated by the Council of Europe), a national anthem (likewise adopting a well known piece of music) and a de facto constitution (it was essentially PR move to drop plans to call it a constitution - the substance did not change).
Having a majority of countries recognize you as a country is pretty much all that's required, if that.
A Disney fan club can pass legislation?
None elected.
Unelected people are tasked with defending the free world. how about that?
I mean, one outcome is the obvious collapse of the Pentagon. But it seems like an oversight to have those people, now with a bone to pick, running around loose. Do they propose to take all the bad Pentagon bureaucrats and confine them in some way? I wouldn't want to be the Sgt. Shultz in charge of being those guys' jailer. Seems like it would be a tall, tall order.
It has the same soundbites, and the narrative same structure, and the gullible still takes it.
Now the true question: are they gullible people, or just people pretending to be gullible to push an agenda?
Unless you’re going to go for Best of the Worst. Then I might actually watch the movie itself too.
Based on what previous in-real-life examples is this a realistic worry? AFAIK, "EU bureaucrats" haven't broken up a single US-based company before so seems like a weird thing to be worried about.
Can you spot any problems with their plan for the supplement inventory?
> we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal
as a regular reader of infowars and a happy customer of their supplements, i cannot see any flaw in that logic and can only hope that i, a successful business executive, will be the person they choose to give immortality to.
My interpretation is that the post you replied to was 100% satire.
His tweets were soaked in that glib faux-distinterested mid-2010s hyper-online style (but he would still tweet four times an hour, carefully calculating the most likely-to-trend level of ironic detachment for his 'epic' dunk on whoever Twitter's victim of the day was). He had a memorable feud with Nate Silver, in which he (Collins) demonstrated utter ignorance of elementary math, to farm likes off of the then-'out' Silver. Collins treated Twitter like he was the starring character in a high school melodrama.
For almost any 'bad Twitter take' cliché you can think of, there's a Ben Collins tweet (which, to be fair, is still much less bad than the worst of the new Twitter).
The Onion is a good landing point for him.
I think this is generational rather than decade-al. That's just how Gen X/early millenials talk about everything, and it's why Bluesky is still like that.
The other big example is that awful Cory Doctorow babytalk word "enshittification" - they love dropping in the occasional swear but only to make things sound even more smarmy.
Glorious.
It would be a massive undertaking but wouldn't it be funny if the savior of modern media turned out to be a student newspaper from Madison, Wisconsin?
Not a chance; they just flee to other outlets. Even Fox News saw huge numbers of people jump to NewsMax and OANN and whatnot.
I can't articulate what you're admitting to exactly, but it's an interesting admission.
On a more serious note, most of the readers of these kinds of outlets aren't stupid in this specific sense. They go looking for confirmation, rather than new information. This is why they're hard to untangle.
This applies to most readers of most things, not just fringe content on the Left or the Right.
Most people are stuck in their confirmation biases, and few make an intellectual effort to look at topics from multiple angles and via multiple media outlets on various sides of the political spectrum.
The hate remains the same today, except now the “sin” is being gay, or getting raped, etc.
How the parents of the Sandy Hook victims use their compensation is their business but I feel supporting advocacy for better mental health facilities in the USA would be a better use of the money.
I don’t think they expected anything different. I think they saw the brand for sale at firesale prices, and decided they could use it. In fact, they’re one of the only ’mainstream’ outlets that can use the InfoWars brand, since it’s funny. Perhaps they will set up a ‘competing’ ‘right-wing’ satire site ala Colbert Report vs Daily Show.
He seems surprised. I guess losing a multi-year court case, being fined $1,500,000,000.00 by a jury, and going through bankruptcy court wasn't enough of a warning?
Why not call it one or the other?
new X is when your feed what Elon wants you to see and react to.
At the top of the feed, there are two tabs: "For you" and "Following". If you select "Following", then you only see people you follow.
- cannot disable/hide For you
- always default for you, and no way to default to Following2. This effectively makes everyone see whatever Musk personally likes/retweets
3. It is soft of correct that there is more freedom of speech due to slashing/nonexistent moderation
4. But because algo promotes whatever Musk retweets, it makes Musk chief in charge of the algorithm. Whatever Musk likes - will be shown to everyone.
5. Because the rest of the feed is noise and garbage, this effectively makes Musk inject a strong signal to a feed and makes him a moderator. If censors previously would censor by deleting posts, he censors by throwing garbage and noisy posts and sprinkling signal in a few places
Same thing happens with competitors though. That's all Threads is. I enabled Bluesky's occasional algorithm posts in the following feed and it will not stop trying to show me hardcore gay porn I very much didn't ask for.
Very much except FB.
I see more hate content on FB (which i have to use because of other people) than I do on Twitter on the rare occasions I look at it.
When I see "X", I think X Window System.
I saw your comment and thought, "I bet this guy is a Windows user." I was right! LOL.
https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&sort=byDate&query=autho...
So yeah, Jones fits right in there.
To me, as a casual user of the platform, that has been the trend. I've been visiting less because of it.
there are both in-depth studies and anecdotal evidence that suggest hate speech has been growing under Mr Musk's tenure.
Data Shows X Is Suspending Far Fewer Users for Hate Speech
On the other hand you had most other platforms like Reddit, with relatively heavy-handed moderation, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to lose the election.
So when you want to make a prior judgement on an extremely consequential outcome, which a posteriori was not even close, and one information ecosystem gives you the right answer, and most of the other information ecosystems give you the wrong answer, which information ecosystems do you classify as "echo chambers"?
It's possible that this was just a fluke, but it should certainly make you update your priors on which ecosystems provide a more representative sample of base reality.
I’m on Reddit a fair bit and while it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what I see individually, I don’t have a lot of trouble believing that there was a bias toward a particular desired result. But, I honestly didn’t see much in the way of a bias one way or the other in the expected result. I mostly saw a lot of anxiety over not knowing what result to expect.
“It’s 50% probability. Either it’s true or it isn’t.” — what meddlers pretend when they’re not happy admitting the high probability of their enemy candidate being elected. It wasn’t a coin flip.
Polls always need to be skewed in some way to be accurate, since not everybody will vote. You can't just get a random distribution of the population's preference and assume the more-preferred candidate will win. Polls can never be truly accurate because people will lie about which candidate they're voting for and whether they're planning to vote, and sometimes people who genuinely intended to vote never make it to the polls. There are a huge number of variables to consider when trying to predict the outcome of the election, but it's important enough that it's still worth trying.
It's an incredibly small number of voters in the key swing states that actually decide the election. It's under 1% of the voters to swing the election. Winner take all + electoral college will give you that.
Imagine taking any of that seriously. Didn't they give Hillary an 80% chance?
PredictIt was predicting the opposite outcome up to the day of the election.
https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-t...
The point here is that there is no “the prediction markets” one can speak of as a cohesive unit.
Left. Censored media leans left. Censored forums, news, communities are censored to give credit to left ideas. Symmetrically, left ideas only thrive by hiding information.
With complete transparency, people lean right.
it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what any one person sees.
People who lean to the left tend to believe that it's bad to do some of the things that get you justifiably banned (such as intentionally using language that demeans people based on immutable traits). Because of this, it's much easier for them to avoid being deplatformed.
4 swing states were decided by a 1% difference. this election was close.
Trump won all 7 swing states and the popular vote by a few million. it was not a close election whatsoever. even Clinton won Nevada
The idea that I stopped clock is right twice a day but because it's twitter that means it's always right is a bit... come on. Hackernews commenters are supposed to be better than that.
The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they can "combat misinformation with more information". (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better information, not more. On second thought, he may have said it both ways.)
Has anyone discussed why the right believes this can work, and the left doesn't?
By the time Community Notes has appeared, tens or even hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people will have seen the misinformation.
Even once Community Notes have appeared, many won't read them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_asymmetry_principle
If they’ve internalized/amplified it, they’ll believe the source, and disregard the contradictory information.
This has been well-established over the last, oh, 10 years. Facts are irrelevant if you can choose your own sources.
But if you can prove it wasn't, I'm interested
These are recounts, audits, and security guards. No recounts deviated by that much, even the massive Arizona recount found no significant deviation.
> It is not difficult to find historical precedent of election fraud
Please provide that. The evidence AFAIK is counted as essentially "parts per million", it is so small. Meanwhile there are a variety of safeguards, audits, verifications & recounts.
The null hypothesis in this case I don't believe would be "fraudulent election", so it is a claim.
In the scientific world, a hypothesis that has no evidence is treated with skepticism.
In the rest of the world, it gets treated as fact, even as evidence against the claim pours in.
In the aftermath of this clearly deceptive behavior, they've maintained the support of Republican voters who still believe the lie despite none of the evidence ever being released.
It's one thing to claim something is true and that you have evidence, then release the evidence and find out that it's insufficient to win in court. It's another thing entirely to make a claim, say you have overwhelming evidence to support it, and never release any evidence at all. In the former case, maybe you got overzealous or maybe you were dealing with an unsympathetic judge. In the latter, the only rational way to interpret the situation is that you were intentionally misleading your audience.
If you have a substantial response, cast it forth.
Eventually, yes, but until it happens, bodies are piling up.
EDIT: Also, FWIW, the truth is often exposed nearly immediately, yet for some people, once they have chosen to believe the lie, they can't be convinced of the truth.
Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
And I imagine the owners of Comet Ping Pong would have greatly preferred that adults didn't read lies about Hillary running a child sex ring in their basement. [0]
Haitian immigrants in Ohio certainly weren't fans of Trump claiming that they're kidnapping and eating pets.
Speech has consequences.
> Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source.
...have you been living in a cave for the last 10 years? I just can't fathom how someone can be so naive to actually think this.
If there was any truth to this, Infowars would have been damn near been dead on arrival. Fox News would have been bankrupt before Obama even began his second term.
Or maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and operating under the assumption that people will accept when they're wrong.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
So the misinformation didn't affect your decision making. Instead, the misinformation you were exposed to was corrected by your exposure to more, better information.
As for libel, it has always existed and always will. There are laws against it to protect people if they suffer any damage from it. It's not without consequences.
What you're proposing is so much worse. Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose. How will you protect yourself from the goverment's false accusations?
You're straw-manning. I never proposed anything like government enforcement against misinformation.
I don't think misinformation should be illegal, for the reasons you touch on: You certainly don't want government deciding the truth.
Who gets to decide what is misinformation is an entirely different issue. But I can at least hope you can agree that misinformation as a concept is unethical, right? People are literally dying because of misinformation. Again, set aside the question of "Well, who decides what is misinformation?" and consider just the mere concept of it.
Tyranny is the only alternative to free speech. I just don't see it ending in any other way.
> I don't think misinformation should be illegal, for the reasons you touch on: You certainly don't want government deciding the truth.
Awesome! Then we can stop making such a big deal out of misinformation and protect free speech.
> But I can at least hope you can agree that misinformation as a concept is unethical, right? People are literally dying because of misinformation.
Yes lying is unethical it's been established thousands of years ago.
As long as misinformation is costing people's lives, I will make a big deal out of it.
I recognize that I am raising a stink about a problem without proposing a solution.
> Yes lying is unethical it's been established thousands of years ago.
It took us way too long to realize that we agree.
Absolutist free speech would allow you to publicly plot the assassination of whomever you wanted to, or permit insider trading, etc.
Speech is a tool. It's utility and morality depends on the weilder of it.
In particular, it's been shown that people with dogmatic beliefs strengthen those beliefs when shown evidence to the contrary rather than questioning them.
How do you explain that there are smart people who have known about these very disadvantages for many years, and still respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"?
I don't suppose you know of a solution (to a problem that I admit I haven't fully specified) that has no disadvantages. The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
Someone can be intelligent and still have misplaced hope for humanity to the point where I would consider them to be outright naive.
All it took was an hour or two on social media back in 2020/21. You could easily find someone who insisted that Ivermectin cured COVID, point out tons of studies showing that it's worthless against COVID, and yet they would reject all those studies as lies.
> I don't suppose you know of a solution
Nope. :-(
Kids are taught the scientific method, but that doesn't seem to be enough. They learn enough to pass a test and then forget about it all.
> The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
Agreed, though be careful to not read words that aren't there. Elsewhere in this thread, someone accused me of being in favor of government enforcement against free speech despite me saying nothing of the sort. Arguments that misinformation is bad is not an argument that it should be legally enforced!
In other words, yes, some leftists believe that misinformation should be illegal, but not everyone arguing that misinformation is bad is arguing that it should be illegal.
Say something happened, they'll say you don't have proof.
Show proof that it happened, they'll say it isn't a big deal.
Demonstrate a negative consequence, they'll say it's an isolated incident.
Show that it happens a lot, they'll say the victims deserve it.
And so on. Of course I don't have any proof.
So when you have people like Musk constantly posting by the time a note is added the value of it has long since diminished.
Also your left/right wing argument is entirely something you’ve invented.
Unless there's a more specific example you can think of w.r.t rewriting.
Apparently children's books can't use the word "black" or "white" any more. And in the children's book "Witches", a witch posing as “a cashier in a supermarket” now poses as “a top scientist”. It's blunt-force rewriting by patronising leftists. Witches are not meant to be role models for little girls. It doesn’t matter where they work.
Of course it's scalable. Community notes are written by people, so increasing the amount of people writing notes means it's scalable. Users find the added context helpful, so more notes are rated by more people more often. That's the definition of scale.
> the value of it has long since diminished.
No. The note remains forever on the tweet. There is no "diminishing". Anyone who has interacted with that post in the past is notified about the note. Our own Prime Minister here in Australia has had a few of his posts community noted. Politicians love to make bold claims about how awesome they are. They are note magnets. It's not a perfect system, but it's a good system.
Having read or seen a post seems to be the most important part. That is not defined as part of "interacted". AFAIK, most X posts are viewed once and then never viewed again. It is a tiny fraction that actually "interacts" with a post. Hence, the value is diminished since the majority of people that read a post are never informed of the community note.
Per X: "Community Notes sends notifications to everyone who has replied to, Liked or reposted a post after a note starts showing on it." [1]
[1] https://communitynotes.x.com/guide/en/contributing/notificat...
Are you claiming we're in "information danger" because community notes isn't there to watch people post things in real time? Exactly how much of a pre-school do you want the internet to be? Do you want a school teacher looking over your shoulder as you type?
As you should know, interaction with a post by liking or replying, means the post had the most impression on that reader. The people you're worried about who don't interact, you have zero data on. You don't know whether they disagreed with the post, disbelieved or otherwise unaffected by the post. In fact, we do have some data. The post made such little impression that they didn't bother liking or replying.
People are not damaged goods after reading an untrue post online. The internet contains endless examples of disputed information, corrected only after the first post is read. For example, right here on HN. This place historically contains the following pattern:
"I think X should Y because Z"
Later that day or week, someone counters:
"actually, you haven't considered A or B in your reasoning of Z, which points to Y being inadequate".
Twitter is right wing because your country (and the world) are shifting right. Sorry.
You can't run a service where it shows every single post that someone wants to put up, even if they're "legal". It'd get full of spam, offend everyone so much they leave, or just force everyone to see Hunter Biden's penis.
In what way? I still only see the very same industry-focused information that I first started using Twitter for. If anything, X has improved in pulling in information from more industry players than I was seeing before, so I consider it to be an even more compelling product now.
But perhaps that same algorithm improvement is what you ultimately mean? As in, that X has become better at finding the information you want to see, so if you have an interest in "right wing" or conspiracy content then it is a greater likelihood of it exposing you to that than the Twitter of yore did?
I suspect those who complain it is a "right wing" echo chamber are using longstanding accounts and actually engaging with "right wing" content, which trains "the algorithm" of their preference to see more of the same. Anecdotally, those I know who complain of "right wing" echo chambers are also the first people to gorge on "right wing" media to see what "they" are up to.
https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/13/the-guardian-n...
On second thought, this is clearly an advertisement disguised as news trying to latch onto searches for Twitter/X. They are no doubt backing away, but only because nobody wants to read widely published news on X in the first place. X's niche is in providing a place for everyday people to get their own personal news out, like the aforementioned industry practitioners sharing what they are doing in industry.
This is not an accurate characterization of The Guardian's reasoning.
> They are no doubt backing away, but only because nobody wants to read widely published news on X in the first place
This is your claim - presented without evidence. You are also making multiple claims, also that The Guardian is publishing (essentially only) news on X and not also reactions, commentary and other content to X.
> X's niche is in providing a place for everyday people to get their own personal news out
The changes in the algorithm seem to have shifted this. News is difficult to convey when an algorithm suppresses it or is drowned out by loud voices. The null hypothesis here would be that X is a place for nothing and beyond that - "maybe, or maybe not". I'm curious what evidence there is for X being an effective vehicle for 'personal' news distribution over time. Without that evidence, we should not accept any such claims.
Go on. There is no logical association with "right wing" conspiracies in their decision unless they believe they are contributing to it. But as they are not backing away from producing the content on the same concern, the association doesn't add up at all.
> This is your claim - presented without evidence.
Of course. That's what a discussion forum is for. If you want someone else's claim naturally you'd go talk to them instead. But as you have chosen to interact with me, logically you are here to hear my claim as I give it.
Is there some additional pertinence to you pointing out the obvious here? Because if so, I am afraid I missed it.
> News is difficult to convey when an algorithm suppresses it or is drowned out by loud voices.
Most importantly, the news is difficult to convey when the users aren't there for news from a news organization. Let's face it, X is not well suited to conveying long format news in the first place. While the character limit isn't what it once was, the entire format of the service remains not particularly amenable to that kind of content. It is really only good for individuals sharing small tidbits of information, like something they did at work.
There are much better services for news publishers. That is where the users are. That is where publisher effort is going to be best spent. Of course you are not going to waste your time posting news on X for that reason.
"X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse." [1]
"Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences but at this point X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there" [1]
> There is no logical association with "right wing" conspiracies in their decision unless they believe they are contributing to it.
Could you define more precisely what you mean by "contributing to it?" I think my understanding there might differ from what you meant. I don't want to talk past nor at you.
> Of course. That's what a discussion forum is for. If you want someone else's claim naturally you'd go talk to them instead. But as you have chosen to interact with me, logically you are here to hear my claim as I give it.
Hacker news discussion has a culture of discussions based on supported claims. Unsupported claims are often challenged as being unsupported. The culture war topics often degrade as it gets more of the Reddit & X style crowds that are more interested in winning discussions rather than having discussions. I believe the culture of hacker news in this regard sets it apart. In essence, this guideline: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
> Is there some additional pertinence to you pointing out the obvious here? Because if so, I am afraid I missed it.
I want to drill into the substance of your claim, and/or better understand it. I think my first interpretation might have actually been off-base. (So please, do define better what you mean by "contributing to it.")
> Most importantly, the news is difficult to convey when the users aren't there for news from a news organization. Let's face it, X is not well suited to conveying long format news in the first place.
I largely agree and is a major criticism I have X and lots of social media (eg: reddit, facebook, instagram). I would go further and say that none of those forums are all that well suited for sharing truth, nor discovering truth. I am passionate about truth (it is why I love math, logic, science & programming so much. There is very little in life that is black & white, true or false, correct or wrong.)
> It is really only good for individuals sharing small tidbits of information
I agree. On the other side of the coin, tidbits of misinformation too. The culture on X I do not believe is to reward sharing true viewpoints. Instead, dunking & hot-takes are rewarded (AFAIK, my impression, particularly so for Reddit as well).
That may be true, but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise...
> "X has become a cesspool, our work no longer belongs there."
That doesn't really make any sense, but even if we accept the irrationality of it, they claim to still want others to share their content on X, so apparently their work does belong there. A curious contradiction.
> The culture of hacker news is to present evidences based discussion. Unsupported claims are challenged, very frequently with "citation needed." This is something that sets hacker news commentary apart from Reddit or X.*
I have to disagree. "Citation needed" is stupid Reddit nonsense (that sometimes creeps into HN, but thankfully infrequently; it is not acceptable behaviour). On Hacker News, there is an expecting of being smart enough to carry on your own conversation using your own words without needing to outsource to an arbitrary third-party. If bringing in data helps with your comment, so be it, but if all you can offer is something like "citation needed", you contribute nothing and are participating in anti-social, bad-faith behaviour.
Logically, if a comment is so poorly prepared that you can't figure it out on its own standing, you either:
1. Work with the author in good faith to understand what they are trying to say. If you find value in reaching for external resources to accomplish that, then fine. Offering something like "XYZ says this, which contradicts what I think you are trying to say. Was that your intent?" would be reasonable, but "Go do my homework for me!" is uncalled for.
2. Accept it as a lost cause and ignore it. Those who cannot string a worthwhile post together will soon grow bored with being ignored and leave. Don't feed the trolls, as they say.
(Why did you remove the rest?)
>> That may be true, but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise...
To be clear, the first quote is a direct quote from the Guardian article. Not my words. Does that change your response? I suspect it would, since their words would seemingly not be "irrelevent to the Guardian."
> I have to disagree. "Citation needed" is stupid Reddit nonsense
Interesting. My perspective is that this is more a wikipedia phenomenon. Reddit enjoys responses like "Sir, this is a Wendy's." The HN guideline that discussions should get more substantive I think means discussions should become more grounded in facts as claims are challenged and discussed.
> On Hacker News, there is an expecting of being smart enough to carry on your own conversation using your own words without needing to outsource to an arbitrary third-party.
Can you link this expectation back to the discussion guidelines? The first part of what you wrote here I could be convinced of. The second part, the "needing to outsource" part, I disagree with. Either a person on HN is an expert in the field, and if not, they should very much "outsource" their claims (AKA provide evidence) to show that those claims are supported and are not just random thoughts. Random thoughts are not truth, our perception and gut instincts are often wrong. What we think is generally kinda worthless, what we know via data & facts OTOH is information.
> but if all you can offer is something like "citation needed", you contribute nothing and are participating in anti-social, bad-faith behaviour.
If someone is making claims that are unsupported, potentially incorrect. Is pointing that out and asking for the basis of the claim completely without value? I agree it is a bit anti-social, but this is not improv where the best response is "yes, and...". In contrast, the alternative is to let bad info just sit, unchallenged, and IMO be perpetuated. So, is there no value in saying "hey, wait a minute, there is no data to support your claims; please back up and give that data, or make it clear that you're spouting pure opinion." We disagree seemingly that HN comments is a place for pure opinions (which is okay to disagree).
> Accept it as a lost cause and ignore it. Those who cannot string a worthwhile post together will soon grow bored with being ignored and leave. Don't feed the trolls, as they say.
Interesting. My view is there are plenty of trolls, they are legion, and they can "win" through sock puppetry and sheer volume. For example, this article is about The Onion & Infowars, yet most of the discussion is back to X. Most HN discussion of Elon Musk usually go off-topic and become dominated by very tired and familiar discussions. In part, it is not about the trolls but the other readers. It is clear when people cannot support their claims vs when they can.
> (Why did you remove the rest?)
My apologies. I was hoping you would not react quite so quickly. After getting a coffee, I think I may have profoundly misunderstood what you wrote and deleted my first response. The second response needed a little cleaning up to read well (my intent was not to alter the substance, but enhance clarity).
[*more edits, to enhance clarity]
No. It was understood to be of their origin. But X being a toxic platform has no bearing on the content The Guardian might post, unless they think their content is also toxic. Recognizing that would justify no longer posting toxic content, sure, but otherwise there is no reason to stop posting.
I mean, aside from the obvious: That nobody is reading the content anyway, not fitting X's niche on the internet, so it is a waste of resources to post. I can understand why they are no longer going to do so. Frankly, I'm surprised they ever did.
> My perspective is that this is more a wikipedia phenomenon.
That is where it originated, as far as I know, yes. But it actually serves a purpose there as collecting quotes around a subject is what that service is largely about, and quotes benefit from citations.
But if you are writing comments on HN made up of quotes from others, why...? Why not let the authors of those quotes speak for themselves? This is, as far as I can tell, not a wiki, it is a discussion forum. Do you disagree? Surely we're here to read what the first person has to say? If I want to have a discussion with a third-party, I'll go talk to them instead. No need for a pointless middleman.
Furthermore, a citation by its very nature requires a quote, but any time I have seen "citation needed" here a quote is nowhere to be found. The HN comment being replied to with that saying is literally the citation! So, not only is it in bad faith, it doesn't even make sense. Fine for a tired Reddit meme, I guess, but has no place on HN.
> Can you link this expectation back to the discussion guidelines?
I don't know. I'm not about to read it. It has no relevance here. The expectations of a service like this come from the users, not some arbitrary guideline document.
Do you want this service to be anything else? Surely we don't need another Wikipedia? I, for one, come to HN because users here actually know things and are willing to talk about it. They don't have to rely on some other person to feed them information. That's the value proposition.
Wikis are fine for what they are, but Wikipedia is right there. Do we really need another one? I say no, but if you think otherwise?
> My view is there are plenty of trolls, they are legion, and they can "win" through sock puppetry and sheer volume.
They only "win" if you react to them. That's what they are here for: Attention. Ignore it and they'll quit wasting their time.
I mean, think about it: If you kept posting and nobody ever replied or pressed one of the vote buttons, wouldn't you get bored of being here too? You may as well write in a private journal if you want to write for no audience. The value over and above a private journal is the audience.
One thing is for certain: You are not going to chase them away with "citation needed".
I want to emphasize a bit up front that (after having sat on it a bit), I really reject the framing of "outsourcing" thought when giving citations. 'Sourcing' is giving evidence to why a thought might be correct, without it - it's navel gazing, frankly worthless. I go into a bit more detail later in the below responses.
--------------
> I mean, aside from the obvious: That nobody is reading the content anyway
I find that quite doubtful. X does have a large user-base. I suspect the number was tens of thousands (but I don't rightly know).
> But if you are writing comments on HN made up of quotes from others, why...? Why not let the authors of those quotes speak for themselves?
The authors are not omnipresent and clearly won't respond to every random discussion forum. On the other side of the coin, personal opinions are not worth a lot - particularly here on HN.
Which reminds me of your "outsourcing" framing". Backing statements with facts and data is not outsourcing, but instead it is evidence, data, reason. When a person is forced to provide data, to think about why they think they know things - two things happen: 1) quality of statements relative to being truthful goes up (ie: you say more things that are actually true). 2) you realize how much you think you know turns out to be completely wrong, that without data or evidence, you're probably wrong and don't actually know (ie: we think we know a whole hell of a lot more than we actually do, and we are wrong quite often when speaking without facts and without data).
This is something I learned very deeply at Amazon, a place with a culture that is data driven to the max. The saying is there are only three answers at Amazon: "(1) Yes, because of this data. (2) No, because of this data. (3) I don't know, I will get data for that soon."
Working in programming, at those jobs, just stating stuff and being right 90% of the time gets you fired. You have to provide data & reasoning why you think something is true. You can't rely on just how you feel or your intuition. The latter is a poor methodology for finding truth. It goes to why we use science to find truth and not intuition. Science is a powerful way to find truth, intuition is not. We can see what science has done for the last 200 years, vs intuition that turns out to be wrong so often (but seemed like it must have been right).
> not a wiki, it is a discussion forum. Do you disagree?
To my previous point, discussions not grounded in truth are largely going to be incorrect, navel gazing. Having a reasoned discussion is different from a wiki. A person is able to very well make multiple points, backed my multiple sources to provide well founded conclusions. It is the difference of talking to a scientist vs someone else that spouts a series of unfounded conclusions. Now, we don't all have to be 'scientists', but we can use the same methodology to support what we say. Even experts would provide citations of why they think certain things - their benefit is largely that they have already read most of the material and can draw from a much larger knowledge base to connect facts together. In contrast the lay person needs to be concerned of the Dunning-Kruger effect and would do well to remind themselves they are approaching a topic as a novice.
> If I want to have a discussion with a third-party,
Except you're not. It is akin to me saying 'I am saying X, because of Y data and Z reasoning'. That gives a much greater probability of actually saying something meaningful. Rather than simply saying "X" without reasoning. As I mentioned earlier, without any type of backing, that is truthiness, not truth. It goes to methodology of deciding what is correct.
> Furthermore, a citation by its very nature requires a quote
People often give a link to where data comes from, or where a conclusion comes from without a direct quote. There is risk of mischaracterizing the source, but no direct quote can be needed when the conclusions or data from a source are amalgamated. Sometimes a person can give multiple sources to back up a single statement. I don't agree to this framing.
> "citation needed" here a quote is nowhere to be found
This is bad framing. 'citation needed' is another way to ask for evidence, data - more than just an opinion that is based on what you think and feel. It is an ask to move away from truthiness, to truth. It is a way of saying "that is your opinion, please provide data so we can decide if there is a basis in reality, or if you are just communicating your own truthiness."
> Fine for a tired Reddit meme
I have never seen that as a reddit meme, and have an opposite perspective. I've found the bar for truth on reddit is essentially non-existent, nobody cares about evidence there (my impression). Reddit is almost more entertainment than it is a place to learn something.
> but has no place on HN
I respectfully disagree, HN asks that we get more substantive when discussions go on. To me, that means the conversations should become more rooted in fact, data & truth - rather than back and forth with more truthiness claims aimed "at each other" rather than discussed with each other.
> I don't know. I'm not about to read it [HN discussion guidelines]. It has no relevance here.
Everyone is expected to read the discussion guidelines before posting here. AFAIK it is asked that you do. The guidelines of the discussion forum where you are discussing are of course relevant.
> The expectations of a service like this come from the users, not some arbitrary guideline document.
Agree on the former, but the latter does follow from the former. The guidelines frame the expectations of users.
This article is actually something to be flagged. The discussion here is largely an aberration. Notice how we have yet to mention once "The Onion" or "Infowars". Overall the article is not a good fit for HN.
> They only "win" if you react to them. That's what they are here for: Attention. Ignore it and they'll quit wasting their time.
In some cases I would agree. In other cases though, trolls seek to dominate conversations. The 'Seattle Times' discussion threads became completely unreadable. Any comment was followed by 30 responses that veered away to some other talking points and was a noise that drowned out all other conversation. I call it akin to an intellectual DDOS. Trolls don't have to be right, just loud in order to dominate the discourse and prevent the truth from being heard by obscuring it in noise. I feel HN is well enough moderated and has a particular community where that is not tolerated and there is therefore often a good bit to learn form the discussion. The discussion is not just noise of people talking at each other, ignoring what the other has written and just waiting to write platitudes and endless truthiness of their perspective.
> I mean, think about it: If you kept posting and nobody ever replied or pressed one of the vote buttons, wouldn't you get bored of being here too?
I can see that as being the case. On the other side, do you not think there are people who are simply ideological? That want to be sure if there is a conversation about a topic that they care about, that they want to be sure the conversation concludes with 'their points', and 'their truthiness?' In a way, it's defending an in-group.
> You are not going to chase them away with "citation needed".
I agree. Though, sometimes conversation threads are not intended solely for the other party. HN is read by many, having read such threads myself as a third party - it becomes clear when one side is talking in bad faith. Not answering questions, not responding to points, not providing data. It reveals their argument to be bad; sometimes that is the strongest form of persuasion IMO when someone is so clearly making bad arguments. Again, the persuasion is not of the troll, or necessarily the other person, but the thousands of readers. Sometimes it's more the readers who are the audience than the intractable mind of someone that is wanting to die on some hill of truthiness without a shred of evidence.
[edits: clarity]
-----------------------
[edit, added this section]
Now, there are still places where citations are not needed and are useful and interesting for HN IMO. To this extent I think we might agree. Namely when additional perspectives are raised, and questions asked. That is very different from making unbacked claims. It is very easy to change an unbacked claim into a question - and that keeps the dialog more open IMO and away from incorrect rabbit holes. For example: "Nobody reads the Guardian on X", vs "how many readers do you think they engaged with on X? Do we think that was a significant number?" Staying away from assumptions of what you don't actually know I think gives a lot of healthy space in a dialog, so long as the questions don't go into a bad faith & leading territory (eg: gish-galloping).
----------------
[additional edit, added this section]
Backing up a bit - I think The Guardian layed out their motives very clearly. I believe you ascribed additional motive incorrectly. To which my response is: "show us", and otherwise gave key quotes so you can argue with the motive as written by The Guardian itself. Ascribing the additional motive IMO is incorrect and/or borderline conspiracy theory. To which I want to know why you think that, what you are basing those beliefs on. That is why a response that was largely just quotes from The Guardian was appropriate, it was a "here are their words, here is their exact reasoning."
>but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise... (from your child comment)
One can choose to leave a group/platform/party without believing they are contributing to the negative direction the group has taken. If I go to a social club and find that new leadership and new members changed the focus from sports to anti-immigration, I might not want to be associated with them anymore. That has nothing to do with feeling like I was "feeding it" or "contributing" to it.
It is true that one can make up any arbitrary reason for leaving, sure. They could have also said they decided to leave because the moon crossed into their zodiac. But when you get down to it, that's never actually the reason.
Undoubtedly the real story is that there is no compelling economic reason to post on X. It is not a service for long-form news content. Nobody goes there to read that kind of content. It is like trying to post cat photos on HN. Soon you're going to realize that you are wasting your time. There are places for cat photos, as there are places for long-form new content, but HN and X, respectively, are not it.
> If I go to a social club and find that new leadership and new members changed the focus from sports to anti-immigration, I might not want to be associated with them anymore.
With material impact, perhaps. But posting on X is a solitary activity. This is more like giving up on Solitaire because you thought the Queen of Hearts looked at you funny. Which, no matter how much you claim it to be, doesn't make much sense. More likely you were just bored of the game and made up an expiation to not have to admit that you were bored.
Before you could just filter out that stuff as it was fairly rare. but its just everywhere.
That's all I ever read. I only follow a small number of people who produce high quality content related to my industry, though. Perhaps that is what primes the "For You" page to say within the same realm and not go off the rails as you suggest?
I'm sure you are right that garbage in, garbage out applies. But why feed it garbage?
In the old times, you could see _why_ a tweet appeared in the stream (as in x follows, y liked, z replied) so curation could happen. But that's gone because musk finally figured out that him liking porn tweets was public.
Before I could say "I don't like edgelord content" and that class of tweet disappeared.
Hence the utility of lists for me. It allows me to follow people who regularly like content that I hate, but allows me to see what they tweet.
So, you are indeed right. I think I follow more than one subject, which causes the issue.
Alex Jones is such a big name and has other channels (x.com, Joe Rogan etc.) that he can easily build a similar site/business under a new domain name.
Perhaps The Onion should ask - who gets most promotion of this?
I believe he's been doing some half-ass scheming to create essentially the same company but in his parents' name, and I doubt he has a problem getting listeners back.
They ranged from insane horse bone dust stuff to plain overpriced vitamins; https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-sent-a...
Behind the bastards also has a few that are good summaries if you want something shorter, with the Knowledge Fight guys as guests.
(Yes, this is the one rightwing joke).
/s
Supplements are a good alternative for podcasters. They’re like merch is for musicians etc. but usually run as a recurring revenue stream.
Scratch the surface of any of these people and you’ll find they are like this: huberman, Bryan Johnson, they’ll all have a DTC business.
Which, you know what, tracks.
He does it pretty much out of habit. He literally did an ad pivot while on the stand in his court cases.
| As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.
My lego builds from when I was 5 were a scam?
If I EVER go so crazy as to buy one of THOSE trucks
the plate is going to read 'LOPOLY'
I don't even care who gets it, or doesn't.
Some are dominated by reverse mortgages, supplements, buy-gold ads, Franklin “mint”, and, if online, crypto scams.
This happens to be a convenient way to quickly tell when you’re headed deep into a particular part of Bullshit Country.
[edit] point is I find it unsurprising they had a supplement business. It’s probably the easiest of the above to break into.
Re: "who gets the most promotion", IDK I think it's definitely the new owner of the Onion. Personally speaking, I think we're past the "don't give them attention" stage of fascism, and "they were bought by a satire company" isn't exactly a better rallying cry than Jones has already been spouting during the entire litigation. Plus, I trust them;
The anti-violence organization Everytown for Gun Safety said it will be the exclusive advertiser in The Onion’s new venture as part of a multiyear agreement. John Feinblatt, the group’s president, said in a statement that he hopes to “reach new audiences ready to hold the gun industry accountable for contributing to our nation’s gun violence epidemic.”
It means Onion sues Jones will likely be in the headlines a fair bit.
I believe that the current state of play is that Jones has to pay $1.1bn damages even post bankruptcy so maybe any future successes will lead to money for the Sandyhook families. I certainly hope so.
Ironically he may live longer to earn more for them - he'll never be able to afford a cigar again.
- Collins buys InfoWars
- Auction money ends up going to SH victims
- SH victims have an anti-gun organization set up
- This org enters into a long term ad deal with Collins
- Some of the money therefore flows back to Collins, effectively helping with the auction buy
Well, we’re all talking about the onion. And I, personally, haven’t read onion content in a long, long while. So this kind of put them back on the radar for me.
But I could be one of only a few people who fell out of onion readership?
More likely is that they believe the next four years will provide them a lot of comedy fodder and they’re setting their pieces early. For them the election is likely to be pretty good for business.
The onion was kind of dead for a while under various shitty owners, but was bought this year by Jeff Lawson of Twilio and is now being run by former NBC reporter Ben Collins. The new stuff since the acquisition has been a bit hit or miss, but at least they're trying again.
Maybe but the judgement was for 1B USD. So any profits would probably be garnished away.
Basically, lawfare was used to censor Alex Jones. I wonder if this is a case for the Supreme Court and First Amendment rights?
How is censorship?
How does he make future money, you know for living?
The judgement basically means the courts get to garnish his wages until the judgement is paid.
Jones is a goof to me and I like seeing him rant and rave and wear foil hats. But I don't think anyone should have their livelihood taken from them by censorship of the courts. EDIT: remember all judgments and penalties cut both ways. Today Jones tomorrow someone you follow in the media.
Lower the judgement to 1M USD (EDIT: or something reasonable) and let's move on.
He can go get all sorts of jobs. Yeah his wages will be garnished, but that doesn't mean his whole paycheck - just the lesser of 25% of the paycheck or 30x minimum wage. He can make money and a living with that just fine. Same as I'd expect for anyone intentionally lying and hurting people for money - whether I "follow" them or not.
Perhaps you should find some reputable sources for information, instead of relying on the proven liar to tell the truth about his situation?
Anyone who knowingly spreads lies about a person and causes them harm should face legal consequences.
Christ. As a non-American, this comment says a lot about the hilariously broken state of your political landscape.
“It could happen to one of your guys, and that somehow makes it bad!”
Anyone that does what Alex did deserves his punishment, and I’d be against anyone that did what he did, even if I previously “followed” them.
I don't think defamation law is unconstitutional, but, no it doesn't.
If someone said on the Internet said that rs999gti was a "tax-evading, pyramid-scheming, mullet-wearing, karaoke-ruining, ferret-hoarding, snake-oil-selling, cereal-with-water-eating, grammar-mangling, table-manner-less, engagement-ring-pawning, salad-dodging, traffic-cone-stealing, apology-dodger," and it wasn’t true, I think you’d probably like to sue them and take their money too.
Yes the court's judgment is so high, 1B USD, that he cannot make money without it being garnished. How does he get back to work? I personally do not think anyone should lose their livelihood over speech, NOTE: I did not say free speech. What he did is reprehensible but not enough that he is basically black balled from making a living. Penalties yes, loss of livelihood no.
"The garnishment amount is limited to 25% of your disposable earnings for that week (what's left after mandatory deductions) or the amount by which your disposable earnings for that week exceed 30 times the federal minimum hourly wage, whichever is less."
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/if-wages-are-garnish...
He was harassing parents of dead children in order to personally enrich himself. Why do you think he shouldn't have to forgo his ill begotten gains? It's only 1B USD, because he refused to stop doing it. And then he decided not to really show up for court and accept the summary judgement of 1B USD.
Most of his penalty has nothing to do with speech. He can keep on speaking all he wants. He might suffer consequences, but he is free to say whatever he wants to.
Alex Jones wasn't even subtle about it. He was getting judgements telling him to stop spouting blatant lies about victims of a mass shooting and he just doubled down on the lies. Repeatedly. The courts kept giving him more rope and he kept tying more nooses.
I think the idea is the US’ terrible gun situation
He's spent the whole time since losing the lawsuit illegally shifting assets to his parents and they bankruptcy courts haven't seemed to be able to stop that.
"Walter Cicack, an attorney for First United American Companies, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez that Murray changed the auction process only days before, deciding not to hold a round Wednesday where parties could outbid each other. Sealed bids were submitted last week, and the trustee chose only from those, Cicack said."
"“We’re all going to an evidentiary hearing and I’m going to figure out exactly what happened,” he said. “No one should feel comfortable with the results of this auction.”
An exact date of next week’s hearing was not immediately set.
After the hearing, Jones said on his show that he thought the auction was unfairly rigged and expressed optimism that the judge would nullify the sale."
I can't fault a judge for wanting to make sure everything is copasetic with the kind of numbers and personalities involved.
I'm not sure of the legal details but apparently the judge had misgivings about the procedure so here we are
In this case, the creditors are the Sandy Hook families who were wronged by Jones. It is my understanding that they had a hand in The Onion's offer. I suspect they signaled a desire for this sale to the trustee - but that is just a guess.
source:prepped personal bankruptcy cases for a couple of years
> With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal.
See also https://reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ if you haven't yet.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/not-funny-onion-buys-inf...
Perfect
Good! It should be. Alex Jones is a ghoul making money from dead school shooting victims. Anything that embarrasses him is entitled to as much glee as it wants.
But I think the right to be wrong is way more important than getting at Alexander Jones.
The precedent is bad.
I think the opposite precent would be worse. Regulating your tone around anyone with even a mediocum of power for fear of repercussion is part of the reason we're in the situation we face today.
But when you profit off the suffering and harm you've caused by being wrong knowingly and continuing to cause harm, then its a very good precedent.
The right to deliberately lie in ways that harm people is not a "right" that we want to uphold.
A good reply I found online:
The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance not as a moral standard but as a social contract. If someone does not abide the terms of mutual tolerance, then they are not covered by the contract. By definition intolerant people do not follow the rules so they are no longer covered and should not be tolerated.
Surely chairman mao agrees with free speech that doesn’t harm his society and social programs
Again, figuring out which speech is worth suppressing is a whole other can of worms.
EDIT: note that Jones did have his speech suppressed, and this was done because his speech was causing people to make death threats against the sandy hook parents. I feel like we could classify Jones's speech as intolerant against sandy hook parents, and the same logic applies as for any other type of intolerant speech.
Unlikely.
It's worth remembering that Jones was never actually tried for defamation. He instead received a default judgment. In the US, both sides of a civil case have the right to a fair and speedy trial. If there's delays, you had better have a good reason for them and they need to fit the rules of procedure.
Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, more-or-less refused to participate in the trial. The Knowledge Fight podcast has some episodes dealing with the discovery and deposition process for the suits, with actual deposition audio. I'm not a lawyer but it was absolutely brutal to listen to how ill-prepared Jones, his employees, and his representatives were. They were submitting Wikipedia articles about false flags as evidence, had a comprehensive background check on one of the parents that was in FSS records that no one could seem to explain the presence of, and generally didn't comply with other discovery requests.
The end result of this is that his life's work has been reduced to a satire and he is likely financially hobbled for the rest of his life.
For The Onion to have the same fate, they would have to basically disregard every single common-sense rule regarding what you should do when you're sued.
I believe Info Wars etc becoming big is pretty much a symptom rather than the problem. And it has escalated lately. I fear that they will be used as excuses for getting at others.
I believe the problem is how incredibly easy it is to both disseminate and consume utter bullshit. You're no longer that weird loner in town. You go online and can find hundreds and thousands of people who agree with you. Why would you go find people that challenge your views, when you can get those dopamine highs from people who love everything you say?
Get pushback from people in your life? Cut them out. They don't get you, and they're just hating.
The worst part? It's self-sustaining. Humans are really bad about going against a group. So much of our social behavior is around what others do, and the more we find out about others believing XYZ, we'll start to believe it ourselves. Unless they're from a different group, in which case it is anathema.
Combine those 2 things and you get these people who basically live in separate worlds. And social media/internet enables that.
But more importantly, how easy it is to make a lot of money disseminating it.
I don't know if Alex Jones is mentally ill or pretends to be. His targeting seems suspiciously self-aware and lame compared to how it usually sounds when people wander down that path.
But I guess most of his viewership is. But they existed on the internets in the beginning too. Plenty of them. Maybe the recommendation engines bring more people into the "self-sustaining" circle, than would be otherwise?
I think what has changed is mainly that there are more 'leaders'. I might have had the wrong conception of what it was like earlier, but apart from Alex Jones and the lizard guy (David Ike?) it didn't seem to be that many.
Something has changed. There are so many lunatic "influencers" nowadays that keep getting pushed to the top. Earlier you had to get out of your way to stumble upon them.
Obviously in some kind of minority, but I love having my views challenged. It’s how I grow. I want people to argue with me, though ideally, respectfully.
Of course, in a politicized legal context, these points may not matter since legal action could simply be an endurance trial.
To your other point, "a well-financed bad actor could ruin any business with enough SLAPP lawsuits" falls away because anti-SLAPP laws exist and award damages if you push too hard.
Do perfectly good people get ruined through litigation? Sure. Is it the epidemic that grifters trying to sway public opinion in their favor make it out to be? Highly unlikely.
There were several claims about things such as Alex Jones paying individuals to call the plaintiffs 24/7 and other direct forms of harassment.
Feel however you want about free speech but the lawsuit wasn't just Alex Jones said mean words.
* the system referring to the vast combination of peoples: politicians, legal, monied interests, lobbyists, news media, corporations, journalists, agitators, whatever, et al
Do you apply the same standard to public figures who call Trump a fascist or a Nazi? Are they responsible for the person who shot him?
>You’ve got parents laughing — ‘hahaha’ — and then they walk over to the camera and go ‘boo hoo hoo,’ and not just one but a bunch of parents doing this and then photos of kids that are still alive they said died? I mean, they think we’re so dumb.”
>“Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jo...
Re double standards on Trump, I think people are ok with criticizing power hungry politicians, less so with parents who have had their kids killed.
The Jones case was a civil case for damages. He's not going to prison or anything - just losing some assets. Trump is free to sue people who've implied he's a nazi (maybe he could start with JD) but I don't know how sympathetic a jury would be.
Whatever you think about the case, it should be decided with factual statements, not emotional manipulative accusations that bend the truth.
"He didn't present a defense therefore it has been determined for a fact that he is guilty" is not especially sound. You'd have to concede the existence of witches on the absurd end, and that everyone who makes a plea deal is guilty on the more rational end. He's guilty because he publicly made harmful defamatory statements that he privately did not believe, both of which are made clear by evidence.
Not at all - I'm saying the liability should go in the opposite direction. If worldstar fight videos incite lots of people to start fighting in the streets, then worldstar should be partially responsible unless they take actions to distance themselves from their viewers' actions.
>To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages
So probably no in that case as there was no significant damage. Sandy Hook was different in that there were ongoing threats and harassment for years.
Don't want to be sued by defamation don't make BS about people in a fragile position. It's that simple