Generally, it seems to me that a lot of people are saying, basically, "I don't want to engage in a social network that isn't and echo chamber of my beliefs."
I find it incredibly sad. But it does feel like the direction society is moving toward.
How would you feel about, multiple times a day, being required to defend your core beliefs that you find trivially true? Or even being constantly exposed to folks who you tangentially know presenting a constant barrage of ideas that you find stupid and mean in ways that explicitly target you and yours?
After many years of being around that (I'm a queer/non-binary, an atheist, and politically far left) I stopped enjoying it and just started blocking folks.
I still seek out contrary opinions- that is why I regularly look at HN.
However, in my daily feed of stuff like "pictures of my nieces" and "birth/death announcements from my larger community" I don't really feel like I need to be confronted by folks who consider me to be literally demonic.
And, for the record, I don't expect those same people to be constantly subjected to my own opinions.
So it doesn't feel sad for me: if you consider places like "churches" or "chambers of commerce meetings" to be "safe spaces" for particular kinds of folks, then it just seems "normal".
Secondly, I find it so interesting that you come to HN for "contrary opinions" from your self-described "politically far left" viewpoint.
I hold a politically right viewpoint, and I come to HN for the same reason - it feels far left of my own world view.
I think it's pretty cool that HN can serve as a more neutral safe meeting place of minds.
I’m left, but I can listen to people that identify as right on HN and not roll my eyes, because they have good points as well.
If you pick a random person off the street (left/right), your chances aren’t nearly so good.
So? I have never seen instances where YC's organizational viewpoint controlled the overall discussion, and I think dang is probably the best moderator on the planet.
Sure, HN has a focus around the "tech startup ecosystem", and that may attract a certain type of viewpoint, but I've never seen that viewpoint pushed from an institutional perspective.
I suspect that because a huge portion of the HN crowd are educated IT workers / would-be founders, overall there's both a strong support for capitalism mixed with progressive social views. That doesn't really connect well with the political landscape in most of the western world and typically gets you labeled a centrist, regardless of how important those particular issues are to you.
A lot of folks I know find all kinds of things "left wing". A lot of my liberal friends think they are leftists, though most of my leftist friends would disagree. My conservative friends don't really draw that distinction between liberals and leftists, and at the same time my liberal friends often think my anarchist friends to be about on par with literal Nazis, horeshoe-theory wise.
I suspect a lot of the Dem establishment neo-liberals (who are rapidly becoming neocons ala Rumsfield/Cheney) who make up a lot of this site see themselves as slightly left. Rationally left, but not part of the "revolutionary" left.
Which, from my position, puts them fairly close to the Reagan conservatives, if you overlook some issues about gay folks and are took the 80s conservatives at their word rather than their deeds when it comes to race issues. However, I don't find this place to be a meeting of the minds.
I find that HN is a place where I can observe what the sociopaths who have real capital and thus material political power think about the world, or at least what the their sycophantic mandarins work for those folks might think.
I listen to what folks say here because I am genuinely curious about what their alien-to-me understandings of technology and political ethics will do in the larger world.
I listen to folks here for the same reason I listen to left-wing folks digest nazi propaganda, read a lot of history, and try to hear what conversations are happening at the red neck bars and at gun shops I hang around.
Cause that's who has no problem fucking with my world, and fuck with my world they have indeed.
HN is not a place where I think any of my actual politics will find an audience.
Though I am (likely unwisely) communicating now, I mostly just shut up when I am here, unless someone has something worthwhile to say about music.
I honestly had no idea that anyone "left of center" felt they couldn't openly share here, as I have always mentally categorized HN as a leftist echo chamber (hopefully that's not too blunt - it's just my honest perception).
I naively assumed that it was only those more right-of-center that felt their worldviews and opinions were unwelcome here, judging from the instantly dead posts I see of anything remotely right-aligned.
From your short share, I see that the echo-chamber is unwelcoming to a much broader sphere of humans than I realized. I find that super helpful to understand - so thank you for sharing.
It's a problem amplified by Murdoch type media outlets who have weaponised the us-vs-them worldview for clickbait outrage and spread that dumbing down as far across the world as they are able.
For those of us not within that mindset such views seem very childlike and unsophisticated, there's a slew of nuance to the world that doesn't easily reduce to L v. R, "woke agenda" and all that et. al. jazz.
FWiW IMNotACommunist .. but I have an endearing love of this short interaction twixt Piers Morgan ( UK outrage talking head ) and Ash Sarkar for higlighting the pitfalls of not paying attention to what people actually think and believe in.
If I understand you correctly, you feel it's the right-leaning outlets like Fox News that have weaponized us-vs-them mindset?
The origin feels flipped to me, but regardless who started it, I see little to no actual respectful and thoughtful discourse these days - mature discourse where each side is willing to listen and acknowledge the elements of truth and assume positive intent in the other side's positions.
As you say, the media on both sides, including social media, feels extremely childlike and unsophisticated.
This, with Murdoch, harks back in a lesser way to his father, then to his expansion into the UK Fleet Street and eventual transition in US media, in Canada with Conrad Black, in the US pre Murdoch with Hearst, Pulitzer, Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick, in the UK pre Murdoch with Alfred Harmsworth and the like.
These are people who have all had large significant media outlets that have engaged in extremely partisan positions with respect to wars, the economy, favoured political candidates and dumbing down discourse.
> I see little to no actual respectful and thoughtful discourse these days
In the 1890s the fierce competition between his World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal caused both to develop the techniques of yellow journalism, which won over readers with sensationalism, sex, crime and graphic horrors.
Murdoch is more than Fox News. Just ask any Australian or Brit .
It's from the late 80s, but it is still relevant (and it also helps it feel a little above the current political hot-topics of today.
It is certainly the case that many well-meaning, Dem-voting Americans don't seem to know what leftist politics is (having never been exposed to it), and don't seem to realize that they are right-wing. It's an interesting phenomenon, but quite alarming when the consequences for the rest of the world are Not Good.
Strange, because I've noticed over the past few years that HN has been sliding further to the right. Or at the very least it's susceptible to brigading. To be clear, it's not "right winger equals brigade[0]", it's "oh gee someone posted a story about EU external immigration and now the comments are full of people angry about asylum seekers who think the correct solution[1] is to shut down international law and start retroactively deporting citizens".
For the sake of full transparency: I'm an open borders maniac, which makes me left wing by American standards and basically persona non grata in Europe.
[0] I live with right-wingers, so I kinda have to be tolerant of them
[1] If this had been anticipated and dealt with ahead of time, the correct solution would have been to invest in integration and have generous family visas. That's why the US doesn't have a migrant integration crisis like the EU does - we know how to welcome and inculturate people. The EU doesn't really do integration, it assumes everyone is a self-motivated tech worker who will do all the integration work themselves.
The EU consists of welfare states. Thus the incentive structure for an immigrant is totally different than in the US. Further more MENA immigration which is what Europe has most of is not the same kind of immigration that the US enjoys. The amount of state expenditure on facilitating and integrating immigrants in western Europe is insane.
Western Europe has bendt over backwards the last 50 years to accommodate people of cultures that have pretty much nothing in common with European culture, values and historically has been the enemy both culturally and religiously - the world did not start in 1945 as many on the left in Europe thinks.
That's a stretch... those welfare states aren't that universal and realistically most people in such situations would be barely above subsistence level.
But yeah, Europe generally gets people who can't get into US with all the outcomes of that.
Also even the illegal immigrants that come to the US is easier to integrate than the immigrants from MENA in Europe. Culturally they are much closer, even though there has been a influx of illegal immigrants from other places than Americas last couple of years.
This is a very deep difference in immigration in EU vs US that is quite foreign to many Americans.
Suppose you have a fairly open border policy. Lots of folks get to contribute to the economy, there’s some cultural exchange, it’s pretty okay.
What if there isn’t a good plan in place for making people integrate with the local culture and you end up with large groups of people whose beliefs and behaviour are incompatible with those of the local population, e.g. calls for religious rule in an otherwise democratic country and increased violence? Not the blown out of proportion election claims in the US, but rather the real question of what happens to people after they cross the border? If that detail is unaddressed then people might grow to desire more closed borders, even if the issues lie elsewhere.
It’s a bit similar to the self-described “pro-life” movement, except when you look past those strongly held beliefs, things get more complex. For example, if children are born in families that can’t really afford them, will there be enough government assistance to school and feed them? What about daycare? What about neither of the people being mature enough to be good parents? That’s setting the personal freedom argument aside for just a second, it’s like they care about the births but don’t have the rest figured out, similarly to the discourse about borders.
I think you’re correct that the right solution would involve focusing on integration.
Integration is primarily a numbers game. Most people don't integrate into the local culture unless they are cut off from their own. If you have so many immigrants that you either need to build immigrant housing or fill up entire towns with them then you don't get immigrans assimilating into the local culture but rather them bringing their own culture no matter what other measueres are implemented. So yes, a good implementation of immigration needs closed borders at least for foreign cultures - these things are not independent.
I believe you got this other way around. The US doesn't have a migrant immigration crisis like the EU does, because it's a big isolated island with relatively strict immigration policy. The people who immigrate to the US are exactly the kind of self-motivated workers who do the integration work themselves.
Many here believed that investing in integration will magically make open borders policies work, and the countries did. Less people in Europe believe it now.
Another thing is, how much immigration does US get? In Europe, many countries can have a significant fraction (a few percent) of their population immigrate over a few years (for example check how big UA immigration was). That makes integration much harder.
To be clear, I'm not against immigration, but it's a complex topic and I believe you're a bit too optimistic and extreme about it.
>For the sake of full transparency: I'm an open borders maniac, which makes me left wing by American standards and basically persona non grata in Europe.
I don't get dividing people into two neat categories (left and right). And you're welcome in Europe, it would be great to have you and I'm sure you would do well here!
1. A lazy attempt at seeming impartial while holding a subtle, elitist anti-republican opinion.
2. A not-so-subtly marxist or socialist outburst.
Under each comment the top 3 direct replies are an agreeing sentiment that pretends to add some nuance to the discussion. The fourth might be a contrarian (either right wing or conservative) opinion that gets barraged by downvotes and angry responses.
Of course, the ones that cannot tolerate any dissenting opinion will either whine or leave.
The truth is that this sentence is believed by every audience ever convened.
> The audience here skews towards those the truth.
The truth is that this sentence is believed by every audience ever convened.
This site definitely skews towards objectivity.
Other side promote engagement. This site still rewards discourse.
Do you have to defend, or can you just ignore. I assume those statements are still being made, even if you don’t read them. So why not just ignore and move on?
FWIW, Twitter (not saying Twitter is the best or only site) allows you to have a feed of only people you follow. That probably approximates going to another site of only people who share your core beliefs.
It doesn't matter if you interact only with people you follow, given that anyone with a bit of an audience gets plenty of hateful replies.
There's a concept of "background radiation" expressed in social spaces. Dealing with a constant barrage of people who hate you or your existence[1] is tiring.
[1] Or perhaps they claim they don't hate you in particular, just, you know, anyone like you who they don't know in particular.
No ads?
On Twitter, I have a make an active effort to not click on the "For you" tab because I'll be bombarded with posts about Trump or "woke" games, which I simply don't want to see. On Bluesky, I can actually discover new content without having to think about my mental health when using the "Discover" feed.
The issue with Twitter and a lot of social media is that you don't often encounter opposing views that are nuanced, thoughtful and constructive, but rather hot takes, rants and memes. Even when those share your same worldview they can be tiring, but when they don't, they can drain your mental energy quickly.
Perhaps people do want to live in their own bubble, but I wouldn't say we can judge that based on Twitter just because of how toxic it can be.
Fortunately I do have a few other smaller hubs for a more "diverse" (in the original sense of the word) conversation, while not allowing bigotry.
The sad thing is you could be referencing the left with Covid vaccines or the right with abortion.
When people don't vaccinate themselves they become a walking vector that affects society as a whole. Yes, personally, they might be healthy. But there's people out there who can't take the vaccines and should they get sick of COVID they could die. There's people out there who, even after being vaccinated, are still at higher risk should they get the disease (the vaccine doesn't prevent you getting sick, rather it makes it more difficult for the virus to transmit and lowes it's effectiveness and how dangerous it is for you). So people not vaccinating puts the whole of society at risk.
On the other hand, abortion is very much a familial issue. It affects the woman that is pregnant the most. The rest of the people around her are affected only tangentially, yes, the parents might want to become grandparents or the person that got her pregnant might also want to have a child. And those are inputs that are necessary when coming to the decision of performing an abortion or not.
Now, where does "your body, my choice" come into play? Do abortions cause the societal harm that vaccines cause? I don't think there's any evidence to this, it's all moral standings. But we legislate for everyone, we don't legislate for a group of people that happen to have a particular religious view of the world. Now, these people have a lot of power and influence and that's why their view is imposed on most of society.
Ultimately though, these issues are different and shouldn't be treated as mirrors of each others. I think that's a mistake.
If you're comparing walking into a store or concert (both private establishments) to your state telling your doctor thru cannot operate on you, you clearly don't understand or won't understand how freedom works.
Private businesses can place whatever bans on whomever they want, for all I care.
Where? I've yet to hear of a court case where the plantiff is arguing that they were forced to take a vaccine by a government. Bodily automomy has plenty of case studies and it'd be an easy slam dunk if any federal entity tried doing that.
There was an executive order:
https://oversight.house.gov/release/wenstrup-opens-investiga...
>the Biden Administration implemented Executive Order (E.O.) 14043. This E.O. required federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by November 8, 2021, or risk removal or termination from their federal employment.
But I believe the precedent for political discrimination in the workplace is thin, at best. I don't think the Hatch Act would have much ground here. You're not owed a job for your political nor religious beliefs if it puts others in danger (there's a lot of case law on the latter with regard to rituals).
----
EDIT: Oh yea, there was the overreaching argument of the president. That one was swiftly shot down:
https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/feds-for-medica...
>Finally, our brief argued that Supreme Court precedent supports the president’s broad authority to regulate federal employees, including their out-of-office conduct, when such regulation is justified by the government’s interest in the safety, effectiveness, and security of government facilities. In one case, for example, the Supreme Court sanctioned Reagan Administration regulations requiring drug testing of government employees and prohibiting drug use outside of the workplace
Although now that you’re making my argument for me, it’s not cool that tax payer funded jobs would be terminated over that.
They would be replaced, not terminated. We lost a few million people in COVID, cso firing a few people is better than the government basically having a class action launched at the United States.
I didn't mean to fear monger or construct a straw man. I didn't directly address anyone's argument, I stated my own opinion on this subject confidently on this message board that's meant for just that.
Welcome to the free market. If you would prefer a larger government to enforce this lack of ostracization, perhaps a change to the first amendment as well, feel free to advocate for that.
Companies are risk averse. They don't want to deal with people getting sick and the PR nightmare of their employees not wearing masks. So that's that, and from a business perspective it's by far the best choice. You're always free to quit your job and go work somewhere that aligns with you more ideologically.
Wherre is this story on a person forced to take a vaccine?
> I find it incredibly sad. But it does feel like the direction society is moving toward.
It's not that I don't want to engage. I just don't want to be submerged there all the time. I want to spend most of my time surrounded by 'my people' and only once in a while peek outside.
Let me recommend an article by Noah Smith where he argues (IMO convincingly) why he thinks that the internet works better as a fragmented thing https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-internet-wants-to-be-fragm...
The premium account system where comments are not sorted chronologically but where paid accounts post first (on top of a poorly moderated platform) leads to drive-by toxicity, not intelligent discourse.
I really don't. I know you mean this as an insult, but like, it gives this weird reverence to social media that I don't get. I am all sorts of interested in long form media that explores striking/dangerous/novel ideas that really expand my mind and help me to see the world in a whole new way, or interviews with people who have a set of beliefs that are different from mine.
I am not interested in 140 character hot takes that just pounce at my amygdala, just like I wouldn't want my Thursday night football game to cut away to a five minute diatribe on the pros and cons of abortion access, or my video games to lecture me on free market economics.
Engaging in as social network that isn't an echo chamber of my beliefs is like being interrupted every five minutes during dinner time to be yelled at by a different evangelist. Church is on Sunday, thanks.
I just want to post and interact with people without getting bombarded with wishes about my death for posting that I biked to work. There is no discourse there anymore, only loads of hate.
Painting people that leave as people that enjoy echo chambers is just dishonest.
I guess we just follow different people.
It's not about who I follow. It's about the replies I get when I participate in discussions around my interests.
It's a bit of an overreaction which, ironically enough, is the kind of engagement Twitter thrives on.
If that pure noise, a litany of uninteresting ad hominem attacks at best, which drown out relevant conversation, is "diversity" that's required, what is gained? If not wanting to be subjected to uninteresting insults is an "echo chamber" is that so bad?
Twitter was interesting because you could have on-topic conversations with world experts and random people. By protecting the uncivil, and even elevating it with for-purchase blue checks, people find better uses of their time.
The destruction of value in the transition of Twitter to X is something to behold. The person who bought it had no clue about the value of what he bought and what drove the value. Social networks are about the people; Twitter in particular was about the specialists, the journalists, the exchange of ideas, far more than any other social network. And that was all destroyed so that more bots can spam people and so that personal attacks can be left up.
The problem to me is more that whenever you have a centralized platform that's associated with a single owner, it inherits all the issues of that owner, good and bad. It's inevitable. I'm not sure it's an issue with people not wanting to hear other viewpoints, it's more so people have decided they have had enough of, say, Musk, and don't want to support him. With Facebook stuff came up about that. The other stuff, about feeling like they're drowning in abusive right-wing stuff is also part of it but I think if it were just, say, like the web, they'd say "well this is the web" like people say "this is the news". Once you can point to, say, Musk, and say "he made it this way" or "I don't want to support a person like this", regardless of whether or not it's true or whatever, if enough people feel that way, they're going to want an alternative.
This won't really go away until there's a decentralized open system that's easy to use, and not associated with any given "owner". Mastodon/AP is close but things there are so closely associated with hosts that the host starts to become a dominant issue (see Threads), as does figuring out where to go, and transferability of accounts across servers.
As for "why Bluesky"? Probably because it looks like Twitter and a lot of journalists and politics people were complaining about Threads rules prohibiting things they wanted to post. Not because it's left or right wing, but because of links and political content period. I don't know enough about Threads policies but independently lots of journalists on Bluesky were saying they just couldn't post content on Threads even if it was fairly neutral, or that it wouldn't get any visibility?
Bluesky is easy to sign up for and fairly open. Once you get the journalists and news organizations on there, and a critical mass it grows.
Personally from a technical standpoint I'd like to see Nostr take off but that community currently is very heavily crypto-focused. Network effects and feedback loops are a pain.
The momentary Banning of twitter in Brazil, provided the impetus for a large amount of normal people there to look for a close alternative. And BlueSky is a more normie friendly.
Now a simple network analysis will show you that a lot of "tech-normie" people, but heavy user of social networks, in the US have an extended network that touches Brazil, especially for people of color and blacks. their social contact primed them for changing to Bluesky. In a sense it was the dry powder.
Now came the election, where Elon Musk took a central role and where more than 80% of black voted against his prefered candidate. It just gave the sparkle inside an implicit network that was already playing with BlueSky.
"B-but they believe these morally reprehensible things!" So what? Have we not all hurt people and been the villain in someone else's life? People get lost along the way. Show them grace. We can't force people into different ways of living, but we can show them.
Maybe somebody being patient with them will change their mind, but that’s not what I want to spend my time online doing.
Most people don't think of themselves as [insert negative trait].
The internet for a while was a big melting pot, probably because there was an inherent IQ filter to using the early/medium web.
But once the stupids came on, then came the stupid-manipulation companies chasing them, and everything went to hell.
Usenet was kind of like this too, until tools made usenet more accessible.
I've been too busy to look at Mastodon/Bluesky out of laziness. I never did Twitter. Mastodon may require some technical work to make use of, which may be a wonderful long term thing.
This is partly true. But also - life is too short. There isn’t enough time in the day to engage socially with people you don’t have a connection with.
Sounds great to me, if its true. Prior to social media, "echo chamber" was the status quo, and I think everyone can agree things were a lot more peaceful during that time.
If people think I deserve AIDS what the hell am I supposed to do with that? That's not useful information, and I don't understand why you're demanding people have to put up with it. They can leave, and evidently, they are.
Anyway, I don’t want an echo chamber for my beliefs. I just want to be able to discover and discuss scientific articles and watch sports highlight clips without being bombarded by a bunch of bullshit.
It’s just a lot. Twitter will be awful. Bluesky will be a little over the top. I don’t know what’s happening in threads these days…
People want to yell into the void and don’t want to think about more than 140 characters… and there really isn’t a place for just easy going goofy fun
Life is political. Believing that it’s not only means that someone who is also pretending that life is not political will make the rules.
Out of 245 million eligible voters, only 65% voted.
For many people politics is an abstract concept in a faraway place.
If the political alignment of those posts resonates with you, it isn't as annoying.
It's noteworthy that with AI, so far we will just get more / louder / more awful posts, rather than a potential for superior moderation and appreciation for nuance.
After all, the busted metrics that AI will be aligned to are the same old flawed ones that reward sociopathy.