Lionsion

> Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.

Yes, it's not true because what you said is wrong. All a single issue voter has said is that single issue determines their vote. They doesn't say that's the only thing "we" should be concerned about. They don't even say that's the only thing they're concerned about.

Voting is not some kind of distilled expression of pure belief or priorities, it's a practical action subject to tactics, strategy, and trade-offs.

> Can you provide a source for this wild claim?

The commenter I responded to was so vague, that they could have been making that claim. After all, they were likely drawing parallels between the situation in the OP and the US.

But who knows what they really thought; they never clarified. I called that out at the time and in every comment since.

> It sounds to me like you have some deep-seated insecurities that I really don’t think you should have. I think you should address these before you go around whining about other people’s attempt to discuss things.

How condescending.

I have a deep-seated frustration that threads on this and similar topics become trainwreck full of derails and distraction. I'd be surprised if the majority of comments in this thread even discussed China or the situation there, rather than use it as a jumping off point derail to a US topic. As far as I can tell, I'm the only person to have used the term Xinjiang in this entire thread. This is in a post about Xinjiang.

Just to emphasize: this thread is such a trainwreck that it dropped like a rock off the front page. That does no one any good.

> It’s almost like this is one reason to read world news.

A better reason to read world news is to understand and discuss the world, not to compulsively engage in domestic topics.

> it's not, not even slightly, as far as i can tell. what makes you feel this is the case?

If there was a high level policy to explicitly imprison African Americans (rather than one that disproportionately imprisons blacks because of complicated circumstances), it's hard to believe a black president would support it or allow it to continue.

> FYI the Chinese government literally pays ppl to sit in massive internet cafes and camp out on various internet forums. They comment about how great China is and how anything bad in China is made not bad by something similar happening in the West.

They're called the "50 Cent Army" or "50 Cent Party."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

The details of the contemporary Chinese censorship regime are actually pretty interesting. It's not as simple as just banning content and keywords they don't like, even with the benefit of the great firewall.

> How would we cope with a similar situation?

I've heard China described as one of the last classical empires. All the others, such as the British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Soviet Empire have dissolved.

So "our" solution would be independence for the imperial possessions.

> I've never understood this American notion that just because a private company is doing something that makes it fine. If you can't get a loan and can't find out why, what difference does it make whether it was the government or a private entity that blocked you?

A lot, actually. It might help you to understand if you realize it's not really about the loan. It's about the political control that such opaque denials can be used to implement. A private company, especially a large public one, has a lot fewer incentives for exerting political control over its customers than an authoritarian government over its people. The private company actually has a lot of incentives for not doing so, since that kind of thing can alienate customers.

> Ineligibility for universities for opaque reasons happens in the west too. So does unaccountable public shaming - I don't think it being done manually rather than automatically makes it better. Knowing what information companies have on you doesn't actually help any - it means you know the inputs to their model, but not how they relate to the output.

In the West, are those things engineered by the government on a mass scale to coerce political support for the regime and silence dissent?

> but most of us live in the US. It makes sense that we would talk about our own country.

In an article about Chinese human rights abuses? At the most charitable, needing to make everything about the US is a form of political narcissism.

If you want to talk about US problems, post an on-topic article and talk about them there.

> i find it fascinating how to some folks, pointing at obama's ethnic background is apparently some kind of knockdown argument.

It's pretty close to a knockdown argument against someone whose position is US government policy is to imprison black people on account of their ethnicity.

The great-grandparent comment may have been suggesting that. However, she was too vague to be sure.

> It depends on who you are

Correction: it depended on who you are.

Those schools have been closed and have been repudiated at the highest levels of the Canadian government:

> On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology, on behalf of the sitting Cabinet, in front of an audience of Indigenous delegates, and in an address that was broadcast nationally on the CBC, for the past governments' policies of assimilation.[78][79] The Prime Minister apologized not only for the known excesses of the residential school system, but for the creation of the system itself. Harper delivered the speech in the House of Commons; the procedural device of a Committee of the Whole was used, so that Indigenous leaders, who were not Members of Parliament, could be allowed to respond to the apology on the floor of the House.

> Getting denied a bank account/job/housing rental/... for no clear reason and with no way to appeal is becoming increasingly common, and seems to have all the same negatives as the social credit program - if anything worse, since at least you can see your "social credit" score and have some idea of how to improve it.

You seem to be confused about the salient differences between the social credit system and Western credit scores. Focusing on the fact that you can be "denied...for no clear reason or way to appeal" to draw an equivalence entirely misses the point.

What's novel and scary about the social credit system is that political actions like criticizing the government or associating with activists could hurt your score. It's not scoped to financial activity like western systems. If I have a low FICO score, I'm 100% certain that it's not because I didn't vote for Trump.

Whataboutism is more about distraction than justification:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Methods:

> "[Whataboutism] functions as a diversionary tactic to distract the opponent from their original criticism. Thus, the technique is used to avoid directly refuting or disproving the opponent's initial argument."

> "Leading to what a U.S. commission on China last month said is “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.”" Oh the irony.

You really need specify exactly what you're referring to, otherwise there can be no discussion and your comment is content-less snark.

I'm guessing that you're referring to the high numbers of African Americans imprisoned in the US. However, the situations are clearly not comparable. These camps appear to be the result of high-level Chinese government policy that explicitly targets this ethic group. There are no contemporary parallels in the US. If you think there are, do you think Obama was in on it? The US situation is unfortunate, but it's more the result of poverty and lower-level racism, not a policy to imprison blacks.

It's exceedingly frustrating that whenever there's an article about Chinese human rights abuses, there are dozens of comments that seem to just want to deflect attention from them. We never actually end up talking about China, just the US.

>> To think in such a manner can certainly be considered heartless.

> How does that follow? They're considering the needs of untold billions of individuals not yet born

Are they really considering the needs of unborn individuals, or just ignoring the needs of actual living individuals to focus on sci-fi tech stuff that excites them?

By focusing too much on the speculative sci-fi needs of future generations, you may condemn those generations to suffer through the same hard problems we have now that were left unsolved so some tech billionaires could focus on sexy stuff.

> so why would you let your vote hinge on that one issue?

Single issue voters make policy, and this is a case where the small weight of my vote could tip a scale and actually accomplish something.

Plus, I hate our current state of extreme polarization, and I value politicians who have the independence to go against their party. If he'll do that, it's another aspect I'd like to reward.

> but not a practical real world scenario here nonetheless.

That is the kind of thinking that entrenches the status quo.

Close political fights are worth fighting because there's nothing to be gained by preemptively surrendering.

> Only 35 Senators are up for reelection this year, I assume you meant the House, not "all of Congress". (Note that all of the House is up for reelection every election term, and it doesn't change very quickly anyways.)

Yes, I meant the House. Noted and corrected. The Senate already passed the needed bill, so we're past that hurdle. The Republican caucus is vulnerable next election, many of the gerrymanders probably won't hold and they know it.

> Most sane people will not hinge their vote on Internet politics.

Single issue voters make policy.

> the House is not going to vote this way

Unless you have a working crystal ball, that's a prediction, not a fact.

> and this is a largely pointless political drama thing

Not true. The repeal of net neutrality is extraordinarily unpopular (including among Republicans) and all of the House is up for re-election this year. The Republicans may lose their majority.

In my opinion, this has a better shot of getting through than most. That is, if you don't prematurely give up hope.

Time to call your Congressmen. I live in a purple district, and I'm going to make it clear to my Republican representative that:

1) I'm going to vote in November,

2) I will vote for him if he votes to keep the pre-existing title II net neutrality regulations, and against them if he does not, and

3) Net neutrality is even supported by a majority of Republican voters [1], so if he votes against it's clear he's voting against his constituents.

[1] http://www.publicconsultation.org/united-states/overwhelming...

>> Salesforce relied on things this 'privacy law' would make illegal in order to get where they are today. This law would prevent other companies from following in their footsteps.

> Are those things we want other companies to be doing, though?

Apparently if someone got successful doing something bad once, we're supposed to be OK with people doing that bad thing forever, lest we risk some "regulatory capture" boogeyman.

The solution to regulatory capture is an actual solution to regulatory capture, not a general aversion to regulation.

> ORG

What's ORG?

> Or long rope, a balloon, and a heat source ;)

Good luck if a storm hits.

If you're going through the trouble of epoxying USB ports, you could probably epoxy the mouse to its port as well.

Or just monitor connected USB devices and shutdown if something unapproved is installed, a la USBKill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USBKill

> I’m kind of doing a bad job here because the GP of the comment I was replying to bailed out and replaced his whole comment with something dismissive, so we can’t actually see the counterpoint I was trying to defend.

That point is preserved as a quotation in one of the other replies, and it seemed kinda facile.

> Honestly, this thread (and HN in total) is increasingly a lost cause

This subthread certainly wasn't good, but that happens when people double down on bad points, like the "conspiracy theory" one.

> i think there should be at least a couple additional levels between small claims and full blown court. The lack of those levels is what arbitration mostly trying to fill.

I think at this point, in most cases, arbitration is meant to fill the role of

1. keeping PR problems hidden (such as sexual harassment, etc) by keeping them out of open court, and

2. a way of practically eliminating legal liability by stopping class action lawsuits.

I don't think those entities that deploy arbitration on a mass scale really care about the efficiency of the court system at all.

Don't those nonprofits tend to focus on national issues? State and local issues still need investigation.

>> Hedge funds or services who analyze it for hedge funds is the big one. It's normal to track hundreds of millions of people a day and trade stocks based on where they go.

> Any articles/webpages about this one? Or a company name who is doing it?

Foursquare does it, there were some articles last year about how they pivoted to providing that data. They were able to accurately predict Chipotle customer declines after their food contamination scandals.

I'm not sure if they use this carrier location data, or just the data from the people who are still using their app.

Edit: here's one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/04/2...

> even though they're not as "straightforward" or "simple" as just blaming people you disagree with.

You're getting way, way off track. This whole subthread started when someone asked why lawmakers would "cede power" to arbitrators, and the response was maybe they don't mind, with examples where they sought reduced power for the government. You're the one who seems intent on making this about blaming them.

I wish the m68k architecture had beat out Intel.

> The opposite is true: Less personalized ads -> Lower revenue per user -> An even smaller budget for journalism.

I read an article recently that made a good point: personalized ads aren't advertising; it's really direct marketing, just like junk mail, spam, and telemarketing.

"Personalized advertisers" are also very mercenary, and no quality publication can rely on revenue from them. They'll use your content to profile your audience, then abandon you and target them on cheaper websites your users also frequent.

Edit: here's the article: http://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2018/05/12/gdpr/