Comment by SiVal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SiVal | Hacker News Reader

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I don't for a minute think the people running HN are against me. And there is no "community at large". There are what you describe as people with a variety of opinions, among whom are probably thousands of Big Tech employees.

Many of them and people like them are using the powers of trillion-dollar corporations, Hollywood, mainstream media, agencies like the CIA, universities that are gatekeepers of employment, etc. to aggressively employ the unprecedented powers at their disposal to suppress information that they want to keep hidden. Every time they justify why they do so, "Surely you can't expect us to allow opinions that people like us label as 'misinformation'", they admit that they do so.

And the ultimate irony is that they insist that this biasing of information is necessary because they speak for the voiceless who don't have power. If they are correct, it is the critics of the most powerful organizations in history whose voices actually need to be amplified. If they are incorrect, all voices should be allowed with none allowed to be silenced.

They, not you, will flag any attempt to report on the things they want to hide until your algorithm silences it for them. And they will flame as much as necessary until you learn to treat anything they want to silence as "flamebait". They have endless techniques for limiting the distribution of information that doesn't support them.

I'm just hoping that your policies will not be such that they can silence criticism here, as everywhere else, by flagging and flaming as necessary until your reasonable-sounding "substantive" and "new information" and "no flamebait" and so on are properly trained to self-censor what they don't want people to hear.

Ok, I hear you. The positive way to deal with this would be to submit better (for HN) articles about it, i.e. ones that provide a good basis for substantive, thoughtful discussion. Then we at least have a chance to moderate the threads. With hellish flamewars there's little we can do.

You seem to be making up a story, though, about who's flagging those articles. How do you know that it's Big Tech employees? I haven't seen such a pattern. No doubt some are, but whether they're anything close to the majority is a different question.

In my experience, it's important not to jump to the mind's preferred narrative about what/who are producing the phenomena you don't like on HN (and maybe elsewhere too). It's a huge Rohrschach diagram—people see what they read into it (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Of course we all do this kind of thing, these biases are built into how the mind operates, but it's important to get more conscious about it, because it's not harmless - it fuels polarization, for one thing, and even paranoia. For example when you write this:

> And they will flame as much as necessary until you learn to treat anything they want to silence as "flamebait". They have endless techniques for limiting the distribution of information that doesn't support them.

... I think you've entered the wilderness of mirrors, at least in an HN context. I haven't seen evidence of this.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I don't want to take even more of your time, sorry, but you asked a question, so I'll answer and then leave you in peace.

"...who's flagging those articles. How do you know that it's Big Tech employees?"

It doesn't matter whether they are employees or not. I'm talking about the subculture of people who dominate the Big Tech companies. When seen from China or India or Middle America, the subculture dominating Big Tech is just as culturally distinct from the rest of humanity as the equally self-reinforcing, compliance-demanding subcultures that dominate Japanese Big Auto makers or the Southern Megachurch industry.

The difference is that Japanese auto makers can only enforce their cultural preferences on their own employees, not on all car drivers. Imagine if Megachurches made so much money that they ended up owning almost all TV & radio, which they then extended to all entertainment: streaming, Hollywood, the news, and used their cultural agenda for "codes of conduct" and "terms of service". Fundamentalist Christians wouldn't have to actually be employees of a Megachurch to participate in the anti-"hate speech" enforcement.

If there were reports of what the Megachurches did in secret, it wouldn't matter whether the Christians who flagged such reports to get them hidden were church employees or not. They would simply be members of the same subculture using the unprecedented powers uniquely available to their group to silence their critics.

If this were a Japanese-language forum for discussion of the auto industry, I would expect it to include an atypically high percentage of people who were members of the salariman subculture. Likewise, if it were God Talk, we would expect an unusually high percentage of people who would flag and treat as flamebait all criticism of megachurches. But it's Hacker News, so it is heavily weighted with people who are fully on board with the Big Tech companies' enforcement and information hiding policies. They are of the same subculture and will cooperate in whatever ways they can.

HN being a worldwide forum thankfully means it is less dominated by that subculture than Big Tech itself, but there is still so much overlap that Big Tech will have as many allies flagging and flaming here (whether employees or not doesn't matter at all) as Big Church would have on a God Talk forum. But unlike other world subcultures, the one that dominates Big Tech has enormous power to promote their social agenda and silence opponents.

So, I think that here on HN, reports that Big Tech would want to hide ought to be regularly in full view and difficult for their allies to constrain.

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