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Comment by amiga386 | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. People seem so worried about governments controlling public discourse for their own nefarious ends, that they don't even seem to be aware that private individuals are controlling public discourse for their own nefarious ends.

And if well-connected geeks can massage their online profiles, call in favours from unelected moderators, hide pertinent facts about themselves... what's to stop all manner of awful behaviour from being covered up? What's to stop petty business owners from destroying their rivals?

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There's also the issue when private companies just do what the government expects of them, or even pressures them to do. There was a brief controversy (canonized by CBS news) when the current administration ordered social media sites like twitter, youtube, and and facebook to remove posts that they thought were false or painted them in a bad light. What is the point of placing restrictions on government if they can just have a private company do it?

I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." I don't know why the average person is so enthusiastic about the idea of getting taken for a ride by huge corporations.

> I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want." I don't know why the average person is so enthusiastic about the idea of getting taken for a ride by huge corporations.

It's especially humorous when you see those same people claiming that talking out the other side of their mouth about the danger of fascists.

> What is the point of placing restrictions on government if they can just have a private company do it?

"Perception is reality".

- Lee Atwater (GOP Consultant)

> I'm also tired of seeing people say "It's a private company, they can do what they want."

A lot of people (many of them smart) don't realize that there is a distinction between the first amendment and the general principle of free speech, which precedes the first amendment.

They realize it, they just don't want it to exist, and have a vested interest in muddying the waters of discourse such that most people remain unaware of it, or mistrust it in principle. For a few years they've been actively campaigning to have protections like Section 230 repealed and have all social media platforms (with some arbitrary number of accounts) be taken over and regulated as utilities by the government.

I disagree: I think people genuinely do believe their own opinions, and politicians are also human....thus delusional, and corrupt, necessarily. But they ain't stupid (or at least their PR folks aren't): a well done (mis)representation of reality is well known to be more than adequate to fool most people most of the time, and misrepresenting reality is at the core of "successful" (depending on your perspective, I'm talking electoral and financial success) politics.

It is nearly impossible to make a man understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.

Under conventional approaches, agreed!

When someone says "It's a private company, they can do what they want" in defense of a company doing something, it's probably because in that case they like what the company is doing, and they're probably not being "taken for a ride" by them.

Not your average private individuals either, but incredibly wealthy and well-connected private individuals.

Keffals, mentioned in the article, is close associates with and supported by Deviant Ollam and his wife Tarah, who was a senior director at Splunk and Symantec and is a fellow at Council on Foreign Relations.

> Keffals, mentioned in the article, is close associates with and supported by Deviant Ollam and his wife Tarah, who was a senior director at Splunk and Symantec and is a fellow at Council on Foreign Relations.

As someone familiar with all three, this is extremely disappointing to hear about.

I have a lot of respect for Deviant, I can only hope he isn't very close to Keffals, or at the least isn't aware of the sheer number of scummy things they have done.

Folks in the hacker community have a long history of being too forgiving of what should be hard-avoid character flaws.

That's a big part of why these reputation-erasing, behind-closed-door censorship networks exist to begin with.

One of infosec's biggest twitter cancel-brigade queens was also the most prolific troll in GNAA and had a long, public history of grooming underage males but everyone looks the other way and celebrates her accomplishments. She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it.

> Folks in the hacker community have a long history of being too forgiving of what should be hard-avoid character flaws.

Maybe, and while most are definitely quite progressive, I would hope most of them (including Deviant) do what they truly believe is the right thing. He has since deleted all his posts relating him to Keffals, so it's possible he just didn't realize how deep the rabbit hole went and has since chosen to cut off ties.

> She literally got a job on Biden's campaign and yet barely anyone talks about it.

Do you have a source for this?

> Do you have a source for this?

I'm not talking about Keffals here. What I am talking about was reported in a newspaper but is common knowledge to longtime NYC2600 folks.

A couple podcasts on the person they are referring to:

https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-164-the-torture...

https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-165-the-torture...

Oh, and the real Torswats allegedly turned out to be a California teenager: https://www.wired.com/story/torswats-swatting-arrest/

When you know, you know. :)

Also, I can only rely on memory here, but I believe that Ollam only deleted his tweets with Keffals in the previous few months since Mutahar announced publicly that he was investigating Keffals for a video.

Not in the wake of other less visible creators voicing literally the exact same concerns. Not the doxxing campaigns, not the Catboy Ranch stuff and not the DIY hormone website stuff.

I get it. He's a very busy guy...but if you're going to engage in activism you need to be extra guarded about who your associations are with.

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