Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

You are right. No one person can know everything about everything. Heaven's know I defer to experts if I know I can trust their opinion. The issue is trust.

And US has about only one institution left that people seem to trust. Military. It does not bode well for the fate of the republic.

> Unfortunately, in social media, everybody gets to be an expert! How can the average person tell?

Good book by Tom Nichols:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise

Not anything recent:

> There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

* “A Cult of Ignorance” by Isaac Asimov, Newsweek, January 21, 1980, p. 19.

* PDF: https://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_...

'Special' thinking has been part of the American DNA since the beginning (Jamestown, Puritans/Pilgrims):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasyland:_How_America_Went_...

> I think I’m smarter than the average person, and can discern the truth from multiple conflicting claims. But a little introspection shows me that no, this isn’t really true. I’m not hunting down original sources for everything I think I know, I’m mostly relying on gatekeepers (experts) to tell me what is true.

The least thing Twitter could do is allow us to see who started a specific hashtag. Hashtags can be pushed using Tweetdeck through private accounts.

In 2016, @jack asked which feature we want to see https://twitter.com/jack/status/814537990366228480

I replied with "ability to see who started a specific hashtag" https://twitter.com/maram5e/status/814720800024621060

@jack thought it was interesting and mentioned VP of Product at twitter. https://twitter.com/jack/status/814721829273292804 I got excited, but nothing happened.

I got excited because I thought I would in no time be able to, not discern the truth, but identify whether I can trust the source. After all, there is a name for content which does not identify its source: Grey propaganda.

What you're referring to as "gatekeepers," I would see as one of many sources of evidence. Others include direct experience, non-expert opinion, data from experiments/studies, and so on. Ideally we'd weigh each source of evidence by how trustworthy and reliable they are, and then we'd use our brain to make sense of what may be true based on that evidence.

Society does not "work better when gatekeepers decide what the truth is." That's especially the case when the "truth" is political, and people have ideological incentives to report what they see as the truth in a certain light. Instead, society works better when individuals are free to look at the evidence and think about it for themselves. This is because in this case, you're treating the members of that society with human dignity.

The thing that makes society work better is accountability, which lets us cooperate at ever larger scales without cheaters. The book "The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations" describes how the advent of double entry accounting meant that you could detect fraud, and suddenly you could do things like give your goods to a naval merchant who will sail away with them and bring you back the money and it works because you can detect any cheating and this is the foundation of capitalism (textbook version). You can think of the arrow of progress as pointing in the direction of increasing accountability . So, the problem with social media is that people lie, always have, and it's like we are just noticing this for the first time ever, and now we are responding to that. Social media is making us more accountable, not less! See #MeToo, etc

The trouble is that our gatekeepers inevitably go beyond being neutral arbiters of truth and allow their personal biases to color their analysis. And they might even believe that they're doing the right thing by guiding society in the "correct" direction. But audience members with opposing views pick up on those inconsistencies and then disbelieve everything the gatekeepers say, even the unbiased truthful stuff.

> Our current technology allowing any kind of garbage to be amplified to the masses is making things worse, not better.

By "our current technology" you mean social media. If you need evidence that it is time to do something about social media, consider this:

28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people - with the figure rising to 44% among Republicans. See: https://www.bbc.com/news/52847648

Before social media these kinds of nonsense would never spread, but now so many people believe this kind of nonsense that it has become a huge threat to society.

> Unfortunately, in social media, everybody gets to be an expert! How can the average person tell?

It's pretty obnoxious and exhausting to read about "Oh yeah, I know that's X, because..." on Twitter. Like the whole "It's Antifa ambushing the Capitol", because "the Antifa sign is to wear your hat backwards", "those are Antifa helmets", or just a screenshot of a photo of some guy with the text "phillyantifa.org" next to the picture is enough to convince some people that, "Yeah, it's Antifa".

It's a cheap grasping for evidence to reaffirm your views/world belief though, to fix your cognitive dissonance. Because trying to find the whole truth would mean confronting yourself and maybe figuring out you've been dumb enough to be lied to. That your "team" are the ones who are ready to be violent towards members of the government. Or that maybe your views are based on your fear of the other...

Also, written 5 years and a month ago https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/the-donald-and-... :

> I would, however, add a casual observation: at this point Trump has been the front-runner for long enough that it’s very hard to imagine his supporters suddenly losing faith, because it would be too embarrassing.

> Bear in mind that embarrassment, and the desire to avoid it, are enormously important sources of motivation. [...] Nobody likes looking like a chump, and most people will go to great lengths to convince themselves that they weren’t.

> Now think about someone who has been supporting Trump since the summer. For the Trump bubble to burst, many people like that would have to slap their foreheads and say, “Wow, he’s not a serious person! What was I thinking?”

> And very few people ever do that sort of thing. Someone who has spent months supporting Trump despite establishment denunciations — which means something like a third of Republicans — will go to great lengths to avoid conceding that he has been foolish. At this point such people will insist that any negative reports about Trump are the product of hostile mainstream media; Trump’s very durability so far is likely to make him highly resilient looking forward.

>> I have to admit that society works better when the gatekeepers decide what the truth is

There are people out there who know exactly what to use you for.

> Our current technology allowing any kind of garbage to be amplified to the masses is making things worse, not better.

And now our current technology owners have decided to only let one flavor of garbage be amplified to the masses.

> I’m not hunting down original sources for everything I think I know, I’m mostly relying on gatekeepers (experts) to tell me what is true.

Very honest!

> As much as it goes against my grain, I have to admit that society works better when the gatekeepers decide what the truth is, even though we know they don’t always get it right.

No! They don't always get it right?! They are literally there to ensure you get it wrong! They really are. They are part of the governance structure - they will not tell you the way out of this situation, or give you good information.

All I would say, is that you need to ensure that you act on what you know. Not on what you believe. Verify everything you accept as true or discard or assume it but be prepared to be corrected if you get better information. And if it turns out that you don't know a whole lot - that is fine! At least you're not acting incorrectly and causing problems!

At the end of the day if you are acting on stuff that you don't know, you can inadvertently cause more harm, even though you mean well. You can be manipulated (easily) to go along with the crowd.

All the best.

> We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional.

You're partially right. We have at least two sides. One side is CLEARLY delusional. Fueled by conspiracy theories and lies. We also have other sides, but the two sides that get the most attention are the only sides that matter. We have one side that is most definitely delusional, other sides maybe have members who might be, but one side is DOMINATED by delusion.

What is the two sides exactly? There is a group that has produced no evidence for their claims and is threatening and acting out violence - is that one of the sides?

There is a point in which a particular group is no longer acting in good faith, and is taking advantage of the tolerance and ability to have discourse.

https://kottke.org/17/08/the-paradox-of-tolerance

I think the problem appears much worse on twitter than it really is. It rewards narcissists and trolls. The far right and far left love fighting online, but in reality most people are somewhere in the center of the two, watching quietly. There is still some good, if not perfect, discussion on HN and other places. I havent seen people calling for public executions here at the very least. The sun will burn out before the twitter mobs learn to be decent to each other, it's best to just disregard them.

This dance never ends. Soon enough people's behavior will evolve and the groups will start calling themselves the same ways PACs do ( you know, American Roads, Appleplie And Flag for Orphans Foundation ). We already had an indication with Bogaloo group ( although for them it the name was something of an inside joke ). This is why censorship is effectively self-defeating.

If 50% of US population, apparently, thinks that hashtag is valid, you can rest assured it will either surface in some cloaked form ( say, bunnies for adoption ), or worse, it will disappear from the radar where LEOs will not be able to easily track it ( and boy can they easily track it now ).

I may be coming across as a free speech fundamentalist, but that is the problem with actual rights. You tend to defend assholes since they are the ones who tend to push the envelope.

I don't want to dance this dance. Its trajectory tends to end somewhere around Xi banning Winnie and number 8 ( ie. shit getting ridiculous ). It is not fun in the meantime.

> We've got these two sides.

No, we don't have two sides.

We've got, to reduce the complexity quite a bit but identify some factions with very distinct (though overlapping in various combinations) current interests: progressive Democrats and corporate neoliberal Democrats and moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans unequivocally appalled at the MAGA insurrection and those overtly supportive of the MAGA insurrection and mostly-conservative Republicans overtly opposed to the MAGA insurrection but eager to push it off the radar.

> How can we have a meaningful discussion as a nation, when there is no apparent common ground? No set of agreed-upon facts?

It's worse than this. Even just presenting facts that are inconvenient or go against the desires of beliefs is enough to make you an enemy / part of the other side, no questions asked.

> No set of agreed-upon facts?

That's just not true.

There are good statistics on the number of deaths and positive tests for Covid.

There is a reliable and agreed upon process for counting votes in the states, and plenty of avenues to dispute those counts, and a court system that has heard every single complaint from the losing Presidential candidate and made clear rulings based on the evidence.

What is abundantly plain from this week, is there is a very large number of people who clearly just wanted to bash some heads and break a lot of stuff and threaten more violence. They felt untouchable and that no rules applied to them.

These people have zero interest in finding objective truths about the world. They just enjoy the feeling of power over other people and they use words in whatever way thinks will increase that power, regardless of any connection to the truth.

I don't know what to say to people who want someone else killed...

Try to steer people to the media outlets that are still mostly balanced? NPR comes to mind. Or encourage people to read a leftish and a rightish source? And encourage people to think for themselves?

It would also be nice, albeit maybe very hard, to encourage even the less balanced media to try to speak to everyone and to write critically and honestly. For example, I personally lean left, but I find the New York Times to be increasingly vapid and unthinking.

In general, if you’re reading news (or Twitter!) just to find people who agree with you, you’re doing it wrong. This is true regardless of political party.

We do not have "two sides." Many on the two dominate groups believe there is only "the other side" but there are people that believe facts, science, etc. are more important than either side. It would be naive to believe even those that value truth highest are without bias, but it would not be naive to conclude that we are better off trying to combat polarization, and avoid simplifying our labels into "us vs. them", "right vs. wrong", "fact vs. fiction" because these labels are too simple, too broad, and ultimately inaccurate.

I do believe that the arguing, the battle... it's a distraction, in a sense. It's an amplifier. It's a self-reinforcing polarization engine.

Maybe I'm just saying what you said, but I think it's important to break down the concept of "two sides" if you want to have any hope of finding common ground.

How many of you (in the U.S. if not abroad) want the best for the United States? Who among us want it to be a strong nation full of employed, educated, healthy citizens? Who wants to revisit the tenants of our founding fathers, learn lessons from the past while being willing to try new things and accept changes? Who wants this stark divide to be behind us?

Who wants to deescalate from violent rhetoric and focus on proven methods of finding and sharing truth?

For the last twenty years I thought things would eventually just come back to center. I’m not sure anymore. It’s possible it’s as follows: One side will win. History will be written by those winners. Pick your side and fight for it?

There are more than two sides.

To me it looks like the issue is lack of "perceived respect" (more complex than that, but I use a simple word to describe whole thing) from the "other side". Now, one side would need to somehow get the other side convinced that yes, we respect you as human beings even if we disagree on some things. And that respect does not just mean nice words, but also actual policies which make people (not their opinions) thrive. Bad news is that it is not an easy task - for either side.

Due to the election results, it is now Democrats' turn to see how they can start to heal the nation. It is imperative that they see that the reason for Trump's success is not racism or misogyny of Trump's supporters. The real reason is that there are lots of people who think that their life is not good. And that needs to be fixed. Bad news again is that it is not easy. Even worse is that if you fail, escalation continues and at some point you are looking at breaking the country or even civil war.

There are most certainly more than two sides.

I think the idea that the "sides" are roughly equally balanced is a false narrative pushed by the smaller side. Obviously "hang Mike Pence" isn't an appealing idea to anywhere near 100% of Republican voters, and I would wager it's appealing to just about 0% of non-Republican voters.

What you're seeing is that the amount of yelling is roughly equally balanced, but you can't extrapolate from that to what all people actually believe. Obviously you won't find common ground for every single person, but there is common ground for 80-90% of them.

A few more bits of information:

- There's Mike Pence himself, the actual vice president of the United States, and his unwillingness to go along with the worldviews of those who have by now concluded he needs to be hanged.

- Mitt Romney, the actual Republican presidential candidate in 2012 (who won 47% of the popular vote), has been pretty strongly opposed to the idea that Trump secretly won / would have won, to the coup, etc. Previously he marched in Black Lives Matter protests and voted to convict the President in the impeachment trial last year. (Romney also created Romneycare, the model for Obamacare, even though if you listen to how loudly people yell, it seems like half the country opposes it.)

- Georgia elected two Democratic Senators. More generally, the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013 and several states are actively engaged in gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts. The fact that you see Republicans roughly tied with Democrats doesn't indicate that Republican policies are equally popular.

And, again, the "side" that advocates for "hang Mike Pence" is hardly the totality of the Republican Party.

So what can be done?

I think the highest-impact thing is to help out efforts to re-enfranchise Americans and end gerrymandering. The work coordinated by Stacey Abrams in Georgia is a good place to start, for instance. Regardless of what party or policies you support, if you believe in democracy, getting elections to be more representative can only be a good thing. And in particular, if you're right-leaning but worry that the Republican Party is going too far, making it so that the party has to compete by convincing centrists instead of being able to rely on extremists will be good for the party.

>How can we have a meaningful discussion as a nation, when there is no apparent common ground? No set of agreed-upon facts?

I think that's the important thing right there. Echo chambers and identity politics have divided the USA greatly.

The way forward is not to divide more. For example Biden inferring that Trump is hitler and calling Senator Cruz Goebbels the nazi propaganda minister is not going to heal the divide.

>Now I of course have my own very strong opinions and I'm sure I have a good comprehension of the truth. But that isn't going to convince anyone on the other side anymore. To people on one side, the other side's minds appear to be just poisoned.

Imagine this for a second. Say you are going to spend all your waking hours reading the news. You could read every major source. You could review videos, pictures, you could have a good knowledge of what's going on in a small part of the world. You wont know what's going in 90%+ of the world.

The problem is that you cant do that. You dont have the time to do that and so you only look at a few sources. We then have the problem that the news cant be trusted. It's beyond clear that they publish outright lies.

That's why we have these delusion vs reality issues. To fix this problem isn't to give people more time. It certainly isn't to remove opposing viewpoints.

When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say. -George RR Martin

I have absolutely no idea what can be done. I think the best thing that could most realistically happen is that things "cool off" in the months after Biden is inaugurated and the world continues to spin.

Street Epistemology is the kind of thing I think can ultimately be successful. Instead of yelling at people or telling them their wrong and you're right, discuss with them how and why they come to their beliefs in a non-confrontational way. The hopeful result is that you both come away thinking about how better to examine what you believe.

> No set of agreed-upon facts?

This is the core problem. Who do you trust? Fox news or CNN.

The answer for me is I trust no one. They are all liars. I verify for myself. All governance (government, legal, media, military, education, etc) is there to foster a divisive situation as that makes us easier to rule. When people are divided they will not see the plans that are being executed and how they are pawns in a larger game.

You can call it delusional or conspiracy, but there are plans - you can very easily see these on the WEF's website, or read about them in Klaus Schwabb's book. If you don't want to see what is in store for you, what can I say? Switch the news back on, and have a good life.

The truth is that there are a controlling group of people that are entirely unaccountable - governments and voting provide them with a buffer from people - they enact their plans regardless of all that. And further to that, most of us are in an impossible situation that we can do very little about. BLM or MAGA protests - its all the same.

If you want to talk about solutions, the only answers are disengagement from the system. And if you go deep into that, the only answer is disengagement from the legal system. If there is one thing that causes the issues we have, its that we believe we are the legal name that we have a birth certificate of. And on it, it says 'this certificate cannot be used as proof of ID'.

The only law 'they' are happy for us to break, is the one where we use the legal name. You are not the legal name. You may not know who you are, but you are not that..

It is illegal to use the legal name. When we do so, we are acting with dishonour. And that is where our problems begin. And also where they can end.

This is a perfect example of why social media is a total disaster and no one should be trusting it for anything at all. There are many, many things that seem to be taken as fact on social media that are impossible to find on any reputable media source. Maybe the crowd was chanting hang Mike Pence, maybe not. I'll wait until a credible source reports it. The AP had reporters in the crowd (getting assaulted [1]), presumably many other organizations did as well, I expect them to report what they heard.

There are many other examples (both from this incident and others) already prevalent, including on HN, which is really depressing.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/01/09/he-was-docum...

Is it enough for other news organizations or even more small time / personal sources to mirror the videos? Possibly something that can convey more context than 280 characters allows?

Even in a low level sense, this is an inherent calculation to the doing of moderation. If you let a hot button issue be spoken of freely, it dominates the timeline. If you cut it out, something else becomes the topic in its place, but that can actually help with discussing the issue by forcing it to be addressed only indirectly, linked into a larger narrative, instead of with reactive side-taking.

Blocking the trend, in this instance, is different from blocking the speech.

It was more about documenting what happened a few days ago and what intentions the rioters had. That context is lacking and should have been provided by Twitter right away when making it "trending".

I think what makes it murky is that it was trending because people were likely mostly critically quoting Wednesdays insurrectionists, not endorsing their words.

Cop Killer is a great tune though

I don't think I agree. Me tweeting "it's bad to say 'hang mike pence'" is still letting the concept of Mike Pence being hanged propagate. I mean, we're talking about it right now on Hacker News, even!

Toxic ideas are like a virus, and even well-meaning opposition can serve as a host, allowing them to spread rapidly rather than die out.

That's an interesting comparison. A generic death threat seems very different than one directed at a specific individual.

Whataboutism is a slippery slope. We can't justify action being taken by looking at the times it wasn't taken.

What about the idea that the tweet you've linked to was not after a sudden mob of violence was mobilised?

It is interesting that this comment is written in a specifically vague way so no one can tell if the "extreme position" you are talking about is hanging the sitting VP or censoring social media. Therefore lots of people are going to upvote this thinking you are on their side and it is the other side that uses "poorly reasoned arguments" to defend their "really extreme positions."

The extreme supporters are some of the people believing that the election was rigged, despite the inability to provide information that can convince an unbiased court.

If we extrapolate on this, can't we conclude/believe that some people who feel the system is betraying them, would see Mike Pence as conspiring with those stealing the elections?

Do some of those people value "constitutional duty" right now? If they did, they wouldn't have stormed the Capitol.

It's hard to understand people when there's a certain amount of conspiracy theories influencing their emotions. It's unfortunately one of the problems with politics. A bunch of people who make laws that mostly don't get to apply to them, get to say what they want, with little or no accountability.

Welcome to identity politics!

There is "us", and there is "them". If you are not a part of "us" then you are an enemy. Some of the most dangerous enemies are people who previously appeared to be part of "us", but have now betrayed our cause.

It's the same old extremist playbook that's been in operation in American politics since at least 2001. You're either with us or against us, no room for debate, our way or the highway, literal saint or literal demon. Then turn around and claim that your opponents don't want to hear you out or compromise, because to you compromise means getting everything you want.

One man's "just did his constitutional duty" is another man's "completed a stolen, fraudulent election".

I'm in the first camp, but the fact that an entire news/social media ecosystem is promoting the latter interpretation is a problem I have no idea how to solve.

Worth noting that sudden executions of the number two in command is a pretty common occurrence in authoritarian government situations.

Trump convinced them Pence had the power to unilaterally overthrow the election and make Trump President for a second term, so they are upset with Pence for not doing that.

> just did his constitutional duty on the 6th

That's why. They've been told the election has been stolen and (the classic cult move) that anyone who disagrees with that is a traitor out to get them.

They're Trump supporters. Not broad Republican supporters. It's a personal loyalty cult.

Of course it is, don’t trade the headlines. But it’s important to know your experience in the US will vary dramatically based on economic status.

If you’re high income/above-average educated (which you pretty much have to be to immigrate to the US due to the overly strict/broken immigration system), there’s no better place to be. You will be able to reach the absolute peak of your potential here. 10/10, would immigrate again.

If you’re middle of the road on income/education, you’d be better off in other developed countries that have robust socialized services (healthcare, pension, free education, etc) like the Nordics. Most developed countries have a better lifestyle for the average person.

If you’re below average on income/education, the US is the worst of the developed countries to live in. I’d stay far away.

Depends very much where in the US. And to some extend how you look, how you talk and what your gender is. The overwhelmingly large majority to places is safe. But every large enough city has unsavory places that need at least being aware of what (not) to do. But that is similar in a lot of countries.

> is it safe to live there?

This varies a lot depending on where you live, your skin color and your socioeconomic status.

>Is it safe to live there?

As someone who has lived here my entire life I'm not sure how the next month is going to unfold.

Historically though the United States has crime issues, a few of the most dangerous cities in the world (not in a war zone) are in the US (St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate

https://apnews.com/article/homicide-st-louis-coronavirus-pan...

It is turning into a police state and I think that the crime rates have never been lower.

"In the long term, violent crime in the United States has been in decline since colonial times."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

I doubt you can get a visa just because you want to work here. You need to be invited by a firm like google and even then, your chances are like 20%. Or you can be an exceptional scientist of some sort. Or you can be just rich and invest a million into usa. In either case, your social class will be too high to worry about personal safety.

Yes, it’s super safe. The news is playing a game of reality TV trying to control narrative in a big political struggle.

This has literally no impact on the day-to-day lives of people around the country. Even when the BLM protests were in full force, you had to go to specific downtown areas of large cities to see anything.

The only thing that happened to real people this year is covid, and that does suck. The vaccine should help though.

Do not throw away your future plans based on this drama.

You probably can't get a VISA. Trump really turned the screws to the # of available ones, only 85K H1B last year (200,000 people applied). Might want to wait a year for Biden to fix that.

LA Times story on this: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-08/black-wo...

I see a of comments like this expressing frustration, but find them confusing. They are framed as an opinion or position, but don't contain any real substance.

Who exactly are these people?

What exactly do you mean by "to be a "lost cause"?

What does it mean to be treated like a terrorist?

I've (anecdotally) observed this is the case with some trending topics. You'll go check out something like #BabyKillingIsGood (not real, I made this hash tag up obviously), thinking, wow that's crazy, the hashtag invokes an idea I find quite objectionable as would any reasonable person. And 99.9% of the tweets on that hash tag are, "Um, actually, killing babies is not good. #BabyKillingIsGood #DumbIdea #No #Disagree #Etc."