Hacker News: scaredtobeme

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Is there still room for debate?"

scaredtobeme — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 19:55:39 +0000

This part seems true and seems to be easier for non-Americans than Americans to see, which I suppose is not surprising.

Americans have always been good at policing uniformity by and among themselves. The puritanical streak of shaming and stigmatizing and threatening runs deep. This is the country of extraordinary political and cultural freedom, but it is also the country of religious fanaticism, moral panics, and crusades against vice. It’s the country of The Scarlet Letter and Prohibition and the Hollywood blacklist and the Lavender Scare.

The "puritanical streak" is making one of its periodic historical comebacks right now.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Is there still room for debate?"

scaredtobeme — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 19:14:53 +0000

That's not much of a counterargument. The question could be phrased as "How much room is there still for debate?" and the answer is clearly: less and less, and dwindling rapidly.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague"

scaredtobeme — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 19:02:31 +0000

Public shaming and the invocation of a mob against you?

New comment by scaredtobeme in "The Police Data Accessibility Project"

scaredtobeme — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 20:15:46 +0000

For sure, but why would the Wisconsinites be behaving any differently in terms of violence, looting, etc.? I suppose it could be selection bias. Maybe it takes a higher level of anger to drive a couple hours than to go someplace local, and that's more correlated with violent behavior.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "The Police Data Accessibility Project"

scaredtobeme — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 00:55:35 +0000

What's so different between Minneapolis and Wisconsin that hordes of Wisconsinites would come to town to do things that Minneapolans would never do? That seems implausible, at least to a know-nothing outsider like me.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”"

scaredtobeme — Sat, 30 May 2020 08:31:07 +0000

He isn't competent enough to pull that off. He can't even get his own staff to do what he wants most of the time.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”"

scaredtobeme — Fri, 29 May 2020 20:12:01 +0000

The argument is that it's getting there. It's the leading platform for public debate in the US right now. Journalists spend their days refreshing their Twitter feed, so the effect isn't just in the size of Twitter's platform but its influence.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”"

scaredtobeme — Fri, 29 May 2020 17:24:40 +0000

It has as least as much to do with not fact-checking the claims of people you agree with. Politics is replete with lies. Remember "all 17 intelligence agencies"?

The idea of neutral just-calling-balls-and-strikes fact-checking in politics is a fantasy. The only thing that actually works is debate.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies"

scaredtobeme — Thu, 28 May 2020 22:14:40 +0000

It's a public space because it's become the dominant platform for political debate.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Trump signs executive order targeting protections for social media companies"

scaredtobeme — Thu, 28 May 2020 21:19:02 +0000

That's because these companies function in a way that is between the private and public sectors, and are getting more so. There are plenty of precedents for this, e.g. utilities, and the way we generally address such gray areas is regulation. It's interesting in this case that the side that usually calls for regulation is citing the arguments of the side that's usually against it, and vice versa. (Corollary: no one actually has any principles about this. People care only about their side and pivot like a weathervane depending on its interests. Is there even a single example to the contrary? That would truly be a mutant.)

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter fact-checked Trump’s false voting claims"

scaredtobeme — Thu, 28 May 2020 21:18:51 +0000

Maybe I used that word wrong. I just meant someone who's strongly on one political side. Those things mostly go together in a two-party system though.

New comment by scaredtobeme in "Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter fact-checked Trump’s false voting claims"

scaredtobeme — Thu, 28 May 2020 06:51:30 +0000

It's exactly the opposite. People are going to cringe at their hamfisted and obviously partisan interventions and their transparently hypocritical justifications for them. I don't agree with the opposing side politically but this is a losing move. The fact that their "head of site integrity" is an extreme partisan is icing on the cake. I'm surprised to say this, as someone who despises Facebook, but Zuckerberg seems to be playing this smarter, trying desperately to appease both sides. It reminds me of a guy standing with a foot on each of two diverging trains, but at least he isn't shooting himself in the foot.