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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

We got complaints about your use of the word "rabid" and I think they have a point. That crosses into name-calling in the sense that the HN guidelines ask you not to do.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

OK, sorry for violating the decorum. At the time I wrote it, thought it was an apt term, about behavior by "my own team", but point taken, and I think I have a better sense of the rule now, thank you.

Appreciated!

(I'm a bit squeamish about the word decorum but that's me being nitpicky)

You should interpret "not being able to posit your idea" as your idea losing so hard in the marketplace that people refuse to even consider it.

The right is winning elections and your side is not. Maybe consider stop being alienating liberals long enough to build a coalition that wins elections?

Eventually the Democrats are going to recognize that hardline "if you're not with us, you're against us" progressives are costing more votes than they're worth and show them the door.

The "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality is exactly what won the current administration. People like the image of a strong man with his own opinions. Democrats have been retreating to the center on nearly every policy position, and it clearly isn't working.

The disinvitation data is so incredibly small that there's no way on earth we can call this "rabid." In Haidt and Fukuyama's "The Coddling of the American Mind" they present data on disinvitations attempts. And it is in the tens of attempts nationwide. They even have to present the data with Milo Yiannopoulos removed since he made up a considerable portion of all disinvitation attempts.

You can think that students are foolish for doing this. You can choose to stop donating because of a response by an institution. But to use this to claim that the left has "gone rabid" is ridiculous given the actual data.

The students' behavior is not what drove voters towards the reactionary right. Breathless media coverage that blew this behavior completely out of proportion is responsible for this.

The FIRE Campus Deplatforming Database claims to collect 769 successful deplatforming attempts.

My number is per-year.

The data above is since 1998. So in the last 27 years we've seen an average of 28 successful deplatforming attempts annually. The website cites 172 attempts (not necessarily successful) in 2024.

There are thousands of colleges in the US. Surely hundreds of thousands of invited talks annually. I just cannot imagine thinking that this is a substantial social problem that should justify changing one's voting behavior.

If you have been banned from running an event at every single college, every single local bar, every single local theater, etc, you still have just as much ability to get your message out as the vast majority of average people.

Nobody has any obligation to provide you a platform. That is literally their first amendment right. If you want to use the government against "cancel culture", you are attempting to suppress people's first amendment rights of association.

The founding fathers had to pay people to print their pamphlets. That option has always been available and was the very context that the first amendment was built around.

The founding fathers never expected anyone else to carry their ideas. They expected ideas to be carried by their merit.

Campus talk de-invitings are only small part of the set of behavior I was referring to.

(I was sloppy, and didn't integrate the anecdote well as I wrote the comment, so I think the anecdote confused my message more than helped.)

My general observation is that none of these things (witch hunting, attacking, or deplatforming from the left) happen at any scale to merit their coverage other than perhaps "public figures get yelled at on twitter."

And, I dunno, I feel like the fact that my friends who aren't public figures but do research on climate change get weekly death threats just seems more important than the fact that people yell at JK Rowling online for being transphobic.

That's awful about your friends, and I agree there appears to be a huge general problem with that kind of thing. I hope the FBI are able to help, on at least a case-by case basis, if they can't solve the pipeline problem.

I still think there's a large problem with a dominant mode of interaction we're seeing by much of the left-leaning (it's pervasive online, and transparent pandering and manipulation in left-appealing news shows), and that it's hurting more than it's helping.

I agree that there are people on the left who are mean online and that they shouldn't generally act this way. I just think that

1. This largely ends here (there are exceptions, and it is definitely no fun to be yelled at online)

2. The right has consistently acted in all of the same ways (plus more bomb threats) to no similar criticism

3. The political strategy of the left cannot require "literally everybody online is on their best behavior all of the time."

And no, law enforcement is absolutely uninterested in dealing with death threats sent by people who think that doing research on climate change is evil. The idea that the FBI would help out is odd to me.

Understood, though I didn't have that idea about #2. My impression was that it was a well-known problem (going back to talk radio and Rupert Murdoch properties, and then growing and being more in our face with everything the Internet enabled).

Maybe one of the problems is that, online, a flood of dozens of angry tweets stomping on someone, by (for the sake of argument) a small minority of people who are having a bad day... has the effect that people are routinely (almost systematically) stomped, because there's always some dozens of people having a bad day? And they all sound the same, so maybe it's a rotating vocal minority that looks like a bigger problem than it is?

Regarding death threats...

I think we have different expectations about the possibility of gov't help (I'm still a bit Pollyanna on this). Local police might or might not have the resources to take the report and coordinate with federal resources, but it's likely inter-state, so the victim could go direct to the FBI.

I'm sure I've read news stories of the senders of death threats being tracked down by law enforcement.

And, I suppose the sender just might be linked to a domestic group/network (or foreign agitators) that the FBI is already tracking.

If the researchers are under a university or NGO, are they getting support from their organization, or do they need to confront the org's administration into interfacing better with law enforcement regarding death threats?

(I'm speaking of baseline situation in recent years; I have no idea what the situation at the FBI is this week, given the various gov't disruption going on, and the keyword "climate" being targeted by some. Even if the situation is complicated at the moment, maybe lead the reporting of a crime and request for assistance with the death threat part, and then the details relevant to the investigation/analysis include that the victim is a climate researcher?)

If all else fails, an org's lawyer (and investigator they hire) might also identify doxing and egging activity (especially online) that's traceable to death threats, and be able to do more with law enforcement and/or civil courts.

It is true that basically every public figure has people screaming at them on twitter or bluesky constantly. This is probably bad in general, and I think it is worth understanding how this sort of thing can affect the opinions and behaviors of public figures. I suspect that I wouldn't respond well to waking up every day to having people yell at me online.

But this effect isn't politically aligned with the left. So it becomes frustrating when this is used exclusively to criticize the left and to excuse the right.

I'm curious if you've ever interacted with law enforcement organizations for something like this. Remember, my friend gets regular death threats. Even if somehow magically the FBI acted on the first one, will they act on the 10th?

And no, public universities do not hire private investigators via their legal office to track down death threats their faculty receive.

I've never had to deal with this firsthand.

If it's a public university, and their personnel are getting death threats regarding university work, the university had better make an effort to help -- if not for decency, then for liability. Including working with law enforcement.

One easy thing the university can do themselves (under the direction of a lawyer or administrator) is to ask IT for the Web server logs (or analytics) for accesses to the person's pages. They don't have to subpoena ISPs to see that, right before the most recent threat, there was a burst of referrers from `https://webforum.example/bobs-basement-militia?post=1232767`.

Well let me tell you very clearly: this is not how any of this works.

The FBI won't care. The local cops won't care. The university won't pull logs for network traffic, nor would the existence of this information be meaningful to anybody to take any action.

Universities can grow some of the most arrogant and unaccountable people, even worse than a bad for-profit company. But two things that can get the attention of many of the bad apples are journalists and lawyers.

This is a perfect example of the law of American politics that only Democrats have agency. Anything Democrats do is the responsibility of Democrats, and anything Republicans do is the responsibility of Democrats.

It's kind of unreal that in the comments of an article about an actual (successful!) conspiracy between ultra-wealthy tech elite and extreme right activists to undermine american democracy for their own benefit, you're most concerned about liberal campus protests. You may not be as progressive as you think!

And to add to this.

Speech is not created equal. What some students say in some college campus has very little power compared to the speech of one of the richest people __in history__.

When someone famous and rich says something fucked up, the reaction to that isn’t deplatforming but rather a basic attempt at defense.

The anecdote was my writing mistake, not what I was most concerned about. (I started writing the anecdote, then decided what was important was the much larger problem, and oopsed the writing.)

As for your point, I had some of the same thoughts about the overall article as you did. But I quoted a small piece of it, to narrow in on one point I wanted to make, which might be less obvious to people who think like us about the topic.

Of course some wealthy and powerful have been undermining democracy; but what if that quote was honest: is it a valid criticism, and can we improve the situation?

As long as we're stuck with billionaires, wouldn't it be great if more of them decided it was better to promote an informed and functioning democracy?

[flagged]

> Funny how people like you never ever use the same power to force left or liberal speakers. It is ok to boycott or criticize those.

Do you know OP personally? Do you really think it's reasonable to assume that everyone in the universe (except for you, perhaps) is a hypocrite like this?

There's plenty of people that feel the administrative force of the university shouldn't be used to suppress either side. Let the gun club invite Luigi. Let the trans club invite the Stonewall rioters.

You're welcome to say you dislike the speaker. You don't have to attend. But you shouldn't have the authority to stop other people from inviting them to speak, or to stop other people from listening.

So, you’re saying basic protesting and sitins shouldn’t be allowed?

Nah I’m sorry disrupting other events is a cornerstone of freedom of speech.

I don't need to know OP personally. The knee jerk "right is the way they are because of the left" gives the game away.

Left is responsible for ehat they so and never ever excused with "right made them do it". Not even when they were 100% right in the hindsight.

Right is not responsible for what they do. They are victims of circumstances even when they caused the circumstances.

I see it not as 'right is the way they are because' but 'this is what the right exploited, and I too allowed myself to go down a crappy path'. It's a pretty brave, honest, and self reflective post.

I don't think it's at all helpful to think of political groups as monolithic stereotypes like this.

I think we got the far right reality of today by liberals completely ignoring working class pain and appearing to solely focus on a controversial minority. I say appearing because they didn’t seem to do anything else.

This allowed the current administration to step in by promising something different, with no intention of delivering anything but tax relief for the wealthy and unchaining corporations from those pesky regulations that prevent higher profits.

The majority of people on the left want M4A, higher minimum wage, less income inequality.

The politicians that represent them do not care. They get their seats secured as long as they toe the billionaire line.

We have no real opposition party in the US.

IIRC, there was an invited talk at the unversity, and some student organized people to go in to the talk and disrupt it, such that the speaker literally couldn't be heard.

That's not the student exercising their free speech. It's the student denying the benefit of free speech to their fellow students and the rest of the university.

The university apparently hadn't yet educated the student on the basics of university, and there was not yet any sign that the university was going to. Reporting followed up with the student, when they promoted their personal brand, and solicited funding to continue their fight.

(You might be happy to know that, instead of my modest donation going to the university with the student who thought a first-rate university was the place to ignore the fundamentals they teach, and instead play self-promoting influencer... IIRC, that was the year the money went to a homeless trans person, who'd been through more hell than most people can imagine, and who needed a discreet laptop so that they could practice coding job skills, but without the laptop getting violently stolen from them in whatever shelter they could get into. I'm not making this up, and the contrast was striking.)

Regarding your other comments, much of the rabid left didn't seem to be acting as the savvy political operators you suggest: a whole lot of people were mindlessly flinging their poo, and playing right into the hands of some of the worst of their adversaries. Maybe it was partly a combination of crisis mode over the best of intentions (e.g., help those who need help), and anger and fatigue from same (which I certainly felt), but there also seemed to be a whole lot of not knowing any other mode of reasoning or acting. Maybe that's not their fault -- you might blame the deterioration of popular journalism, social media sites preying upon their users, and a dearth of visible role models demonstrating anything else -- but that seems to be where we are, for large slices of the vocal population. And there's been a lot of counterproductive.

I am not saying they are super savy. I am saying they were right about the right.

They were right, because they were not determined to excuse dveryone on the right up to absurdum and because they read what right actually said.

Moderate right and center consistently and always excused far right and refused to beloeve it exists even when it was completely apparent. And consistently deployed double standards where right was excused and left acts massively exaggerated.

> Funny how people like you never ever

> people like you always

This crosses into personal attack and you can't do that here. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and edit out such swipes in the future, as the rules ask, we'd appreciate it.

Edit: this has unfortunately increasingly been a problem with your account lately:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261348 (March 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152094 (Feb 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43147710 (Feb 2025)

You've made many fine contributions to HN in the past and I don't recall your account having been involved in so much ideological and political flamewar. Could you please fix this? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

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