Comment by zzzeek

Comment by zzzeek 4 days ago

33 replies

View on Hacker News

hacker news has a lot of ideological community problems but HN is not "massively centralized", it's just a narrow window into the US tech scene with a relatively small community of people.

I think there's a great argument that says the first amendment is not a suicide pact. The social media environment right now is having an unprecedented destructive effect on US democracy. I think TikTok is right there as a key player in spreading weapons-grade, state-sponsored mush to younger people.

refurb 4 days ago

I recall similar arguments about the printing press.

“But the masses will be able to access the scripture without guidance! Society will crumble!”

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  • intended 4 days ago

    You know, I think lots of us on HN, can at least be the people who can and should go to next levels of this discussion.

    So yes - we should definitely agree that all new technology for publishing (publishing? COntent creation?) result in issues of free speech.

    I will say that each of these, have had different issues, and that from Radio onwards, we are dealing with several issues (side effects ?) that become more intense with each new media developed.

    I'll jump to the end, but Social media is definitely different from the printing press.

    We certainly get new and improved benefits, such as the distribution of publishing power to individuals.

    At the same time, we are getting issues with an abundance of content, that people need content to be eye catching, in order to gain an audience.

    Theres also a tendency for networks to consolidate over time, so at the start of the radio era, or TV era, you have a bunch of cable networks, then over time they start collapsing into larger groups, which are better able to survive.

    Fully admit that these are highly generalized, I am just thinking of what others can chime in with.

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  • daveguy 4 days ago

    To be fair, scripture doesn't actively change to increase obsessive engagement at the expense of all else.

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    • refurb 4 days ago

      But the argument was that your average peasant would not be able to understand the scripture and be deceived.

      Not that different from arguing that your average American can’t see through propaganda on TikTok - I think they can.

      And if the argument is that it’s addictive, I mean ok? Lots of things are addictive that aren’t severely harmful. We tolerate those as well.

      The argument about teens is an entirely different one, I’m talking about adults.

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    • whimsicalism 4 days ago

      it does, just more slowly - modern religions are absolutely the result of natural selection for virality and fervor in the field of ideas

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      • daveguy 4 days ago

        I'd argue the two are like comparing apples and oranges. Yes, there is a competition of ideas, but accepted scripture is changed so much more slowly than society itself that it cannot exploit the zeitgeist of any one trend. More importantly, it doesn't change differently to each individual to maximize addictive interaction. The slowness is a feature. I'm not saying there aren't some problems with religion being exploitative, but the responsiveness is what makes social media a much more effective manipulator.

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  • BryantD 4 days ago

    Not entirely inaccurate! Martin Luther's 95 Theses propagated from Germany to England in a matter of weeks, thanks to the printing press. I think society got better but it sure did change a lot.

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  • zzzeek 4 days ago

    the government of China is a hostile adversary and they dont just spread gobs of misinformation and pro-CCP propaganda on TikTok, they also heavily censor topics the CCP does not like. This is not about free expression so much as where the public square should take place. Having the US public square take place in a tightly controlled, deceptive environment controlled by our worst enemy presents an existential risk to the US.

    think of the printing press as invented and controlled by your worst enemy and only printing what it deems to be acceptable.

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whimsicalism 4 days ago

every generation thinks they’re the first to argue that there are negative effects of free expression.

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  • TheOtherHobbes 4 days ago

    It's not free expression when someone else chooses what everyone sees.

    Threads is notorious for de-boosting posts with external links. This is a deliberate choice which filters facts and external references out of the conversation.

    Or you can just delay the feed of posters you don't like. They arrive at every debate a day late, while your favourites go through immediately. And to more people.

    And so on.

    There's nothing free about any of this. It's covert behaviour and sentiment modification.

    With a newspaper you get an editorial angle, so you can choose it if you want it.

    Social media pretends to be a neutral conduit. But it's carefully curated and manipulated, and you don't know how or why.

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suraci 4 days ago

TBO, TikTok and Twitter are far more diverse than HN, which is merely an echo chamber, only slightly better than a subreddit.

Although I like HN more than TikTok, it's so funny

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  • AlexandrB 4 days ago

    What matters is not the diversity of the overall userbase but the diversity of what gets shown to you. From my (limited) experience TikTok is hyper-targeted and will narrow in on your interests/biases quickly and keep you in that bubble.

    HN (and reddit) generally lacks this hyper-targeting. Obviously, just the act of going to HN is selecting for a certain cross-section of opinions, but once you're there what you see is determined by the community and not by your own personal preferences.

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    • gcr 4 days ago

      It sounds like you’re saying that personalized feeds are the key problem?

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      • AlexandrB 4 days ago

        Absolutely. In two specific ways:

        1. There's often little or no visibility on how this personalization happens. People with often try to guess and steer the algorithm but the reality is you don't know. This means that unpopular opinions can be quietly suppressed with no detectable censorship. On the poster/creator side this presents as constant paranoia about "shadow banning" and the like.

        2. The personalized feeds are effectively endless. This allows for repetition that really amplifies any biases/fears. For example, suppose you're worried that the roads are getting more dangerous and you go on Instagram and start looking at car crash reels. Instagram will happily feed you as much of these as you can stomach and it starts to affect your perception of reality. Never mind that you're looking at incidents captured over a period of years from all over the world, seeing them all back to back will probably give you anxiety the next time you go to cross the street. Now apply this same logic to any political topic...

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    • suraci 4 days ago

      Tiktok(or other algorithm-suggesting platforms) provides echo chambers for each user

      HN/subreddit provides a single echo chamber for everyone

      that's why I like HN more, I don't want to be in my echo chamber, I perfer visiting your chamber

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      • dang 4 days ago

        You're welcome here, and you're welcome to express contrarian views—that's an important part of an intellectually curious community, which is our goal with HN. However, we need you to do it while sticking to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You've unfortunately been breaking them in various places already.

        I know how hard it is to be in the minority on a contentious topic without getting provoked (and then becoming provocative oneself), but that's what we need commenters with minority views to do. Otherwise we end up having to moderate the accounts, not because we want to suppress minority views but because we have to enforce HN's rules.

        I've written about this extensively because it's such a consistent phenomenon. Here's one post if you (or anyone) wants a fuller explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948722. There are plenty more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

        It's in your interest to do this, because then you maximize the persuasive power of your comments. Conversely, if you succumb to the pressure to be indignant and/or snarky and/or flamey and so on, that ends up discrediting your views, which is particularly damaging if they happen to be true: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

        (p.s. I'm an admin here in case that wasn't obvious)

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  • jkestner 4 days ago

    "Echo chamber" is a tautology by this point. What's bad about a narrower focus? It's good to cross pollinate on occasion but you're not going to ever get to deep discussions when you have the same arguments over and over with people who share little common ground. I don't come to HN to read what flat earthers think about that gorgeous photo of the Earth's curve taken by an astronaut, and I can have productive disagreements with other technologists.

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    • suraci 4 days ago

      > I can have productive disagreements with other technologists

      Only for tech topics

      Things went ugly(but fun!) for political/geopolitical topics, 'unpopular' opinions will be grayed out, opinions survived coalesced into the essence of the Anglo-Saxon spirit

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tempworkac 4 days ago

but HN is centralized, so you agree if HN exceeds some arbitrary amount of users it should be banned? how ridiculous. tiktok is not any better or worse than facebook, youtube, or the mainstream media.

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  • lenerdenator 4 days ago

    Hell, I'd make that arbitrary amount 300.

    That's about the number of social connections the human brain is really meant to handle.

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  • spencerflem 4 days ago

    Its worse for the US Govt in that they cannot secretly ask them to control what gets seen

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