Comment by hsuduebc2
6 hours ago
Can you be more specific? This is heavy moderated environment and I would say it's one of the most pleasurable places on public internet to be.
6 hours ago
Can you be more specific? This is heavy moderated environment and I would say it's one of the most pleasurable places on public internet to be.
It’s not heavily moderated. This is the usual link dang/tomhow give when they explain why their moderation is necessarily inconsistent:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
This is not a criticism of their moderation style, this is simply reporting how they describe it.
It's largely self-moderating
> it's one of the most pleasurable places on public internet to be
I think we have different definitions of pleasure.
This is a relatively dry place for any kind of conversation other than hyper logic conversation devoid of empathy or humour.
On certain tech topics, it can be very informative. On anything where there is a conflict between the topic and how the base makes money, there's a lot of down voting and sad rhetoric. As a result, you rarely get to discuss the harms of AI or certain oligarchs, e.g. musk, zuck, bezos, Russia, Israel.
This is a place mostly for reinforcing your own beliefs, rather than finding new ones, unless it's around a very mild topic.
I understand. As you said, it's a rather dry, mostly technical place, and that's exactly what I like about it. I appreciate that it's largely free from the suffering, injustices, and ridiculous political debates that dominate so much of the world around us.
I despise these people as much as any other decent human being should, but unfortunately, they're everywhere. Just not so much here.
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Try to criticize the US' war machine as it relates to the US' tech industry, for example. You will incur the wrath of a thousand HN fascists.
Compare the actual human rights records of the Western sphere (war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of human rights at massive scale) with those of the nations we are being taught are inferior: same effect.
Or for any of us who were around for the Snowden/Assange chapter of HN, who supported the effort to expose the US' heinous crimes - there are still massive sections of western culture who are fundamentalist in their superiority. You can find them in the downvoted and dead-flagged comments section.
This works the same way irl too. The US is one of the most heavily propagandized populations in history. You have to be talking to a very progressive, very politically savvy group to not constantly run into the usual knee jerk canned responses the second you bring up any criticism of military spending, foreign policy, or the panopticon. Probing of those responses in family or social settings for actual justification shows there’s no first principle reasoning behind them, just a vague unease about discussing the topics, like they’re sacrilege.
Yes, the frothy-mouthed ideation of the US cultural identity is just as frustrating to have to contend with as any other ideology. I've met great Iranian folks and great American folks, and great Russians too - and what they all have in common is the ability to reflect on the limits of their own cultures.
>The US is one of the most heavily propagandized populations in history.
I see this statement repeated often with no supporting evidence. Seems a little ironic!
Is this claim falsifiable?
Would you be able to name the 2nd or 3rd most propagandized populations, in your view? Do you know anything about propaganda in e.g. the USSR or North Korea?
"Historian Sergo Mikoyan claimed that decades prior to the early 1960s, offices and stores had to submit papers with examples of their typewriters' typeface to local KGB branches so that any printed text could be traced back to the source, to prosecute those who had used the typewriter to produce material deemed illegal. With the introduction of photocopying machines, the KGB's Fifth Directorate and Agitprop Department required individuals to get authorization to use printing office photocopiers to prevent the mass production of unapproved material, though restrictions could be bypassed by bribing employees."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat
That's what an actual heavily-propagandized population looks like. Meanwhile, I can open up any social media app and be greeted by a sea of anti-American slop.
Not really, because a generic observation cannot be expressed specifically. So that's a weird question to begin with.
It is true that this is heavily moderated and that this is one of the more pleasant spaces, but it is also precisely the moderation style that is being weaponized.
As I said, the toxicity gets hidden in layers and layers of jargon, misdirection and plausible deniability. It gets a veneer of civilty applied, which, somewhat surprisingly, makes it hit even harder, because fighting back is a lot harder, as there is nothing immediately visible to fight back against. It just stings.
It's not just attacking but simultaneously gaslighting. Which has been what the whole internet has been doing since everything became twitter fwiw.
What I said is also not to be understood as "HN bad", because if I would feel that way, I would not be commenting here.
There must be some logical fallacy here where, reduced down to human existence, all toxicity is hidden under layers. This is both an ultimately true statement of any suspiciously viewed human interaction and it kind of makes the argument moot.
Reminds me of the recent thread about LLMs controversial take on humanity: we are all terribly cynical, hallucinate importance, and we are all bad/good deep down inside.
I guess they are saying people argue/comment in bad faith. That they don't really mean what they say, and at least, they say it not to discuss it but for some hidden agenda.
The problem is that outside of "where's my keys? what are we having for lunch?", most language is a symptom of people's agendas. Its a rarefied elite environment that takes things literally, and acts in good faith.
I don't think this is psychopathic, as much as we're apes -- and speaking literally and in good faith about relatively abstract topics takes a considerable amount of training and is, in general, psychologically fragile (ie., its easy to be tilted).
If you’re having to look through layers and layers of jargon, misdirection, and plausible deniability to find the toxicity, is it possible there’s a roarscach element to it?
> If you’re having to look through layers and layers of jargon, misdirection, and plausible deniability to find the toxicity, is it possible there’s a roarscach element to it?
Are we going to play "prove me right" here? :D
Come on, this is just a direct personal attack. Go play better. Hide it with a more elaborate construct.
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Unlikely. Plenty of anti LGBTQ rhetoric is permissible here by mods, for example.
However, it often uses queer lingo - words that folks might think aren't notable, but queer folks will instantly recognize as an attack.
Refusing to call a gay man's husband a husband, but subsisting in friend or partner. Calling someone biologically male. Etc.
These get deployed quite subtly here, and because none of the words are slurs, they don't get moderated. (Though HN also permits overt slur usage -- search for the r-slur and you'll find plenty of cases.)
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