fjabre

I don't understand Google's App store play. Just another walled garden where things like this can happen.

They were the champions of the open web for a long time. What happened?

You bring up Orwell. Both sides can get to extremism pretty easily. Both conservatives and liberals easily become dictators. Power corrupts everyone.

This has nothing to do with Orwell. Im not sure why you bring him up.

The forefathers designed the system this way. I agree with the way it was designed. It prevents big states like California and New York from calling all the shots.

I agree with the forefathers. You do not. Simple.

Appreciate your honesty even if I disagree. I like the way it is setup. It stops the big states from pushing around the little ones too much.

Yes it was designed for this purpose. That's what I'm saying.

So big states couldn't bully around small ones.

So what? That's the point.

We are a representative democracy for a reason. It was designed that way.

You can't change the rules of the game because you're losing.

The United States was designed as a representative democracy on purpose by the forefathers. That is fact.

California has more electors than Vermont.

Was just pointing out it's quite clear that the nation itself is left leaning. That's honest by the numbers.

To say the Republicans have any kind of advantage right now except for maybe the courts is incorrect.

Reality is that the Dems own the entire congress and the presidency right now.

Reality is we are representative democracy. The forefathers deliberately designed it that way.

Reality must line up with your arguments. It does not.

If what you say is true, Trump would most likely be president right now.

Dems own entire cities with the largest population centers. Dems have better organized grassroots. Dems have California and New York, the main stream media.

What advantages you speak of are moot compared to those ones.

We are a representative democracy and we always have been.

Amazon also has monopolistic power and has destroyed many industries.

If that's true then pretty much every social media platform today should be banned from AWS.

I agree with this completely. You just send them further underground.

There is no 'but' as people would have you believe here. But they are Nazis. But I don't agree with them. But they cause riots and violence. There's always a 'but'.

Only a court order should have the power to shut these sites down and that's only if they present a clear and present danger.

This is clearly a cultural cleansing of sorts. I remember other such cultural revolutions. China comes to mind.

This is false. The left now has the Senate and the Presidency.

The electoral college does not matter. They go the way their states go as was made quite clear in the last election.

EDIT: Of course it matters how the voting system was designed. The EC votes the way their State votes.

The forefathers intended for states to have some say in the matter. We are a representative democracy. That is how the system was designed.

Paying your mods. There's a novel idea!

Absolutely agree these systems can work when designed the right way. Reddit has designed its system as punitive.

Perhaps the underlying system is flawed in some fundamental 'unfixable' way. Maybe there's a better way.

I agree. This is volunteer work. And despite the bad apples there's quite a few good mods out there! I just wonder about the ways in which Reddit motivates its moderators. It certainly isn't positive.

As I said I don't believe in the wisdom of crowds. I think we become a herd easily and forget the crowd.

I think the entire system of upvoting/liking is flawed. It encourages our worst behavior. At least the way PG and friends have designed it.

It only works for tight use cases like HN. It doesn't work for Reddit IMHO. It's too big. It's become a herd.

We are not witnessing the wisdom of Crowds. We are witnessing the chaos of herds.

This is what happens when we divide people. People congregate form tribes and fight each other.

We keep calling each other Nazi's and Socialists - every social network online today.

I appreciate that you've framed a logical argument. There is definitely some sound logic in what you are saying.

I think of it a bit differently.

Reddit could have its 10 commandments and adhere to that. That would be clear and transparent and it should apply both to mods and users alike. There should be no cider house rules. A community is given power by its userbase. Mods should respect their userbase more than they do.

Mods can simply not be trusted to be good faith actors. They constantly abuse their power and Reddit enables it. They are encouraged by the (cult)ture there.

Every mod is free to act as they wish and Reddit will support it. They act like bullies is more like it. Do as I say not as I do.

I then take a step back and wonder. Are crowds truly wise? Or are we simply watching groupthink play out at massive scale?

The crowd is not a crowd anymore. It is a herd.

And the robo mod? The auto-ban?

They have zero access to IPs too right?

Mods human or otherwise is what I'm referring to.

Ruqqus.com but unfortunately still small. And also infected. I've been on Shroomery lately and I really like that forum.

I think the concept of Karma points is bullshit and punitive. It makes people negative. PG should know that by now and so should Reddit. Karma is inherently toxic.

Anything that encourages vanity is. And karma encourages it more than anything. As do likes / dislikes. Numbers of votes. Numbers of likes. It's all the same. People competing for attention.

And justified by an angry mob because Karma.

It's pretty terrible they would go these lengths to ban an individual for disagreeing with them politically.

The punishment does not fit the crime. I think it's disgusting that they are sniffing out IPs for such low level offenses.

I made no threats. I simply disagreed with the wrong person on r/politics.

I'm obviously not arguing for zero moderation. You would trade one Nazi for another. I believe you are incorrect. That's what the downvote button is for.

What good is karma is it's not adhered to? If you can just remove things because you disagree with them?

Perhaps you should read Aesop's fable: The Wind and the Sun. I believe you would have something to learn from this fable about motivating people in the right direction.

I created another account. Logged in. Forgot I was logged in on another account. Forgot I got banned in that sub ages ago.

But not Reddit. Reddit mods don't forget. Reddit gives them the tools they need to sniff you out.

Kinda creepy reddit has become.

Yes there maybe some common sense approaches to curating things but Reddit has gone too far IMHO.

I think HN is a separate use case than is reddit. Which is why HN will never become Reddit nor does it want to. It's always been a niche site. Even though it's gained quite a bit of notoriety in the last decade. Most people outside of tech circles have no idea what HN is.

But America is special.

We are a melting pot of thousands of different cultures coming in and out all the time. There are not many other countries like America. Certainly not on our scale if they are similar.

Of course we were going to get a bad case of Covid.

Could the response have been better? Of course.

But we are uniquely special in this way. Our diversity is usually an asset. In this case it was a detriment.

I disagree. Giving them too much power puts them into power trip mode. And defeats the purpose of reddit: curated content from the userbase.

If I wanted to be told what articles to read by a bunch of mods I'd go to CNN or Fox news.

Reddit mods should let their communities decide and have most of the power. This is the spirit of reddit. Not auto-bans and IP sniffers. They should only be responsible for removing illegal or threatening content such as doxxing.

Mods are very clearly abusing their power. Reddit is alienating some of its core most loyal userbase.

And RPAN also sucks while i'm on my soapbox.

I couldn't agree with this more.

As someone who has gotten to the top of Reddit front page twice with my free (no ads) web app I now cannot. It's all but impossible.

Mods are so over protective they will ban you for practically nothing.

If you attempt to evade the ban even innocently they will sniff you out.

I think Reddit's mod tools are disgusting and foster censorship and make Reddit a more negative and critical place.

A new post type as the OP suggests like IMGUR? This point is laughable OP. Good luck getting passed mods. They don't let you do shit like that anymore.

Mods rule with an iron fist on Reddit even to the chagrin of their communities. Shame on reddit and its handlers for taking Reddit in this direction.

I have since left reddit and only very casually browse it from time to time. Lots of group think. You will get banned simply for disagreeing with mods in some extreme cases.

Reddit didn't used to be this way. I had been a user there for over a decade. They so casually banned me it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Reddit has gone to the dogs or in this case the mods. It's embarrassing how far Reddit has fallen.

I met Steve and Alexis at MIT startup bootcamp. They were awesome. The reddit they created is no more.

Who is 'us'? I'm speaking directly to you.

Seems like you're just interested in name calling. When people resort to name calling it usually means they've lost the argument.

But I'm sorry you're having a bad day.

I'll leave it that. Thank you and take care.

When OP said that we are not 'real' engineers because we have not built a bridge is when I stopped reading. For how could anyone take him seriously after that?

'Real' engineers are not judged by whether or not they can build a bridge as if it's some rite of passage to being a real engineer. That's ridiculous on the face of it.

That he used this example as some kind of proof to justify his argument is where he lost me.

This is just silly. Lots of hubris here. It's also silly to spend much time thinking about this.

Of course we are engineers. OP uses "building a bridge" as an example of 'real' engineers. This is patently ridiculous on the face of it.

The one thing that unites us is we like to build. Whether it's the great pyramids or the latest social network, engineers are the ones who get it done.

We build. That's what engineers do. We build something to solve some problem whether it's with bits and electrons or with larger physical mediums like slabs of concrete. Engineers are builders and they build to solve some particular use case.

"Scientists build to learn. Engineers learn to build"

Yes they are.

You didn't lock people up for giving your Grandma the flu even though it may have killed her.

That you think you can enforce or shame people into giving up freedom of movement (what's more fundamental then being able to leave your house?) is beyond reasonable or rational.

You could extend this reasoning to all viruses that are deadly to some population of people, including the flu and the regular old cold virus.

Where do you draw the line? Even government officials can't keep to their own policies. Look at Newsom dining out.

"Do as I say. Not as I do" that's the message.

You are free to shut yourself in your basement for the next two years but you can never hope to force other humans inside and shame them into doing so.

It won't work. It's absolutely impractical in a democracy. And if you try to make it work you will do so at great costs.

Fear. What a great motivator.