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Comment by JacobThreeThree | Hacker News Reader

>There's a problem of adversarial attack right now.

>An adversarial person can flood people with rethoric of issues, corruption, crime, against all established political powers and institutions, and position themselves as the solution to all those ilks.

Appealing to emotions and attempting to label your opponents as corrupt and soft on crime is as old as politics itself. Convincing people to vote for you is not a soft-coup.

The platforms should be the ones who should decide how their algorithms promote information and shouldn't be pressured or controlled by whoever the current party is in power at that moment. The benchmark should be - would you want a Trump DHS with the power to change their censorship policies however they liked?

If online speech should be regulated by the government, pass legislation, don't backdoor it in a risky and unilateral manner through law enforcement.

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> attempting to label your opponents as corrupt and soft on crime is as old as politics itself. Convincing people to vote for you is not a soft-coup.

From my understanding of political history, it used to be more common to talk about your policies and what you plan to do to win votes, and something related to Newt Gingrich started a new trend of being more on the attack/discrediting towards others, and it escalated from there.

But the important part isn't that piece, but what followed in what I said, it's the second stratagem to put loyalists in place that is the key to performing a soft-coup. Something you cannot do when moderates abound, it requires focusing on strong cult-like minority, that are really loyal, and slowly replacing key government roles with people you pick for their loyalty to you and not their qualifications.

It's that second part that's all the difference here.

> If online speech should be regulated by the government, pass legislation, don't backdoor it in a risky and unilateral manner through law enforcement.

I don't disagree, to be clear, I'm not saying this in favor of the DHS program, I don't know what the right defensive measures against this would be, that also wouldn't cause other bigger risks, but I think it's a vector for attack we currently are vulnerable too and I'd like to see it delt with.

Your understanding of political history is very limited and simply wrong. Look deeper at the history of 19th century campaigns. There was plenty of attacking and discrediting going on, often using language that would shock modern readers.

Thanks, I went and read about it, it's interesting. It is unclear how it stopped exactly and why it changed, apart from making ballot booths, but it does seem to be making a comeback.

Still, in any case, just to be extra clear, this isn't the issue I'm calling out, the adversarial attack is in-combination with the setting up of loyalists and the overthrow.

That a campaign can be won by crude measures of appeal to emotions and discrediting of your opponents is a bit sad, but it isn't as much a problem if it is just a method for election.

The problem I see is afterwards, are the checks in place to make sure that you cannot instate loyalists, and change the rules themselves to entrench yourself. It's this second part that is the soft-coup.

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