> Some of the labeling heard today
What do you have in mind, in particular?
What do you have in mind, in particular?
Not only from them, other groups are doing it too, but since they are not writing in English, no one cares.
They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
From the man who is now the president of the country with the world’s largest economy and military. I’m sorry if this bothers people because it’s political, but it’s a fair answer to the weak question asked.
Ok, I can accept that. How did I screw up?
I'd go so far as to suggest that those who deliberately try to conflate the matter of judging people based on their immutable vs. chosen characteristics are themselves contributing to the problem. If you force people who have problems with the legality of certain immigration procedures to also get themselves declared "racist" or whathaveyou, you shouldn't be surprised when people decide to accept the label instead. "Racism" and other similar labels has lost its sting in large part because it got horribly, horribly overused in places where it was not applicable, and now, surprise surprise, we find ourselves living in a culture where people care less about that label. It was not a good choice to try to spend the political capital the labels had that way.
Also, people aren’t being called racists because they’re against illegal immigration. They’re being called racist because their stance against illegal immigration is obviously racist (for example, ignoring white illegal immigrants).
Given that they appear to be motivated by emotions, and portray themselves as victims, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if a small handful of such people spent inordinate amounts of time managing a bunch of sock puppet accounts just to amplify their downvoting power. If so, it is a strange and ironic phenomenon.
Peter Thiel is a avowed Trump supporter, and a billionaire who was a YCombinator partner from 2015-2017.
Combine it with this article
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...
and "In 2016, Sam Altman, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential entrepreneurs, revealed to the New Yorker that he had an arrangement with Thiel whereby in the eventuality of some kind of systemic collapse scenario – synthetic virus breakout, rampaging AI, resource war between nuclear-armed states, so forth – they both get on a private jet and fly to a property Thiel owns in New Zealand."
I think this is pretty straight-forward that these hidden/flagged posts isn't some sort of bot army, but instead having a button on the mod-switch at the root console for this website. To me, it's clear that Thiel was the one who put his head out espousing Trump support, to see how the tech community would take it. But I think at least in the elites in SV, they're all Trump supporters.
Regardless it's just a website. If anyone wanted to manipulate opinion, manipulating hn of all places is unlikely to do much. And hey, even if they are, they've succeeded in manipulating a bunch of people who might have money but seriously have little power.