Hacker News Reader

Comment by soared | Hacker News Reader

This is one side of the argument. The other is that with social media, echo chambers, algos, etc we face a new risk of extremism that can cause cases like below.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2018_United_States_m...

I haven’t really defined my opinion on this topic one way or the other. But in general I look at seatbelts in cars - they are required by law because if not, many people would save the $500 to buy a new car without seatbelts. We need some regulation for the good of the people. What that looks like for politics and the internet, I don’t know.

View on HN

> with social media, echo chambers, algos, etc we face a new risk of extremism

so when is /r/politics going to be banned? There seems to be a strong bias as to which echo chambers are "dangerous".

Imagine your comment, but with the link replaced with this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shootin...

What would your reaction to this be? Would you maybe be a bit concerned about how easy it might be to claim that some speech you see as important in some way leads to violence, and must therefore be censored?

My comment would remain the same - there is extremist media on both sides.

> My comment would remain the same - there is extremist media on both sides.

But "extremist" and "extremism" aren't really neutral terms anymore. They're now also euphemisms coded to mean conservative/right-wing extremists.

Perhaps it's because right wing extremists are significantly more likely to use violence? I think it's understandable that the default image of a terrorist is someone who espouses right wing values in that case. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/08/post-911-dom...

I might be in a bubble but I very, very rarely learn about left wing attacks, while right wing ones pop up here and there.

Edit: Also, about that link GP posted above about the Congressional baseball shooting: The perpetrator attacked Republican lawmakers, who have the most power to implement right-wing policies. In contrast, the attacks mentioned in my link mostly affected random people who probably did not have much political power, and were just members of groups that are often disliked by right wing extremists.

Yo Tucker Carlson, glad to see you popped over here!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com