Isn’t this approximately equal to what level the bigco will agree to bring them in at? Which in my experience they usually have their thumb on your head.
They were notorious for having extremely bad working conditions. While they've supposedly made an effort to improve them, their notoriety won't go away quiet as fast
I guarantee you that if the guideline documents in TFA came to the attention of Twitter, they'd already be dated, and somebody would start righteous-indignation-tweeting to get their personal army to boycott Nature until they change it to say what the mob wants it to say. And I'm not being flip. For once.
Everyone's gonna tell you this is fully explained by nostalgia and various cognitive biases, actually, cuz that's what we do hyea. But I'll back you all day. I know they literally can't hear it, but I always have the urge to tell Gen Y and later that for a minute in the mid-late 90's we had this shit mostly, not totally - that'll never happen - but mostly figured out. And then they blew it all up, and damned us all to hell. And they'll never, ever know that it happened.
> I know they literally can't hear it, but I always have the urge to tell Gen Y and later that for a minute in the mid-late 90's we had this shit mostly, not totally - that'll never happen - but mostly figured out.
I disagree. We didn't have it figured out - it just did not get on many folk's radar because of the differences in network effects prior to the internet. If you were a lonely kid in a farming town who wanted to dress and act like someone from the other biological gender you were shamed or shunned or cut-off. You were the weird one in your town. And that was something that everyone - EVERYONE - else in your town, no matter how empathic or sympathetic, would agree upon.
People who were "odd" just didn't know they could expect a better world. If you were coloured you just sucked up the jokes. If you were gay you hid - or you ran away to places where the network effects were more beneficial. You just dealt with it, and left the normal people to the belief that shit was figured out.
Except for us spectrum types - from about 1997 onwards EVERYONE wanted a piece of us.
Yes, outcasts used the internet to find and support each other online. And we noticed this great thing quite a while ago. But it seems only more recently did we also become aware of the other side... it similarly boosting toxic communities, isolated echo chambers, etc.
If someone wanted to, lets say, "make love with toasters", he'd be looked at weird and gotten over it in the days before the internet. Now he'll find supporting communities and guidance on how to do so...
So yeah, we didn't "have it figured out" and in many aspects, online communities do provide great benefit. But i wonder, if they still are, once all is added up.
This post here is still engaging in armchair psych diagnosis. No behavior, regardless of what it is, is regarded as clinical pathology if it doesn't harm others or the individual.
Someone living a functional, happy, fulfilling life, while having sex with toasters as their main sexuality is a functional, happy person. There is no problem there.
Whereas someone doing this and say, neglecting other life functions, or injuring themselves, or reporting it as a compulsion they would like to stop, has now met the very base level criteria to be regarded as having a mental pathology.
But that's the bar: going through the DSM and matching symptoms doesn't make for a diagnosis if the symptoms don't cause the person unhappiness, or those who interact with them danger or harm.
I would go further and say we actually do have quite a bit of hard evidence that societal disagreements were more civil several decades ago. Bipartisan legislation, violent threats against public figures, mass murders, and attempts to violently overthrow an election have all gotten objectively worse since the rise of the internet.
I don't know how much the internet has caused this deterioration, but it is strongly correlated.
Just looking at the 90s to today is ignoring an awful lot of context about what political tensions in the US actually used to look like.
Just over 100 years ago, political disagreements in West Virginia over unionization led to a full-scale paramilitary battle at Blair Mountain [1], with upwards of 13,000 people involved and complete with the anti-unionization side bringing in private planes as improved bombers.
You say objectively, so where's your data? I must be very hard to measure pre-internet violent threats. I know someone who personally told me he'd kill George Bush if he had the chance. That won't be in your records, so how can you measure it?
Which is a weird phenomenon in and of itself right?
The amount of political violence pre-internet is just an order of magnitude higher than today’s. Most young people (millennials, Gen Z) are completely unaware - unless you studied this stuff - that e.g. the Senate building was bombed in 1983 by a bunch of leftists upset over the US’s involvement in Lebanon.
This is to say, I’m skeptical of the argument that the internet has made things worse. Definitely not better, maybe not worse.
I think it depends how you look at it. The intensity of the conflict has diminished, but I think the scope of the conflict has increased. There are fewer bombs going off, but there seems to be a lot more family estrangement due to political differences.
The partisan lines in my extended family haven't changed for as long as I can remember, but there are fewer get-togethers and more political arguments at the dinner table when they do happen. The aunt and uncle that once were my god parents have now stopped talking to my parents; nobody's political opinions changed but differences in opinion that were once barely worth mentioning are now considered actually evil.
I think it depends on what's considered political. Family estrangement due to religious differences (such as marrying a catholic) was so commonplace it was practically a sitcom joke. There was also family estrangement about potentially dating outside your race.
Heh, my family is mixed Lutheran and Catholic, but that's not the line it split along. My mother and her sister are Lutheran, while their husbands are Catholics. I'm aware of this social schism only in the academic sense; it's not something I've ever personally seen or experienced.
These are people who more or less believe the same sort of thing, but disagree about which party will best implement it. It's a difference that used to not matter very much; my cousins were raised almost identically to me and my siblings. There is no real difference in social or economic class, lifestyle, or community. Simply partisan affiliation.
I should clarify that I'm inquiring whether or not not dating based on religion or race is considered political, because if it is, it brings into question the idea that estrangement for political reasons is a relatively new phenomenon. It might be better to suggest estrangement for political party affiliation might be relatively new.
I mostly agree with this. I think we can describe it as: vertical conflict has decreased (kinetic action up and down the political spectrum), while horizontal conflict has increased (passive action across the political spectrum). Things like actual assassination attempts against major figures in government (Justice Kavanaugh's assassination attempt notwithstanding) are not as common today as they were 40-50 years ago, while separation from peers for political reasons is much more common.
See also the pro-Puerto Rican independence terrorists who in the 1950s a) invaded the Capitol (!) to try to assassinate Congressmen, and b) invaded the temporary White House to try to assassinate Harry Truman (!!). Completely forgotten about in popular memory, despite their murdering law enforcement in the process.
In my case you'd be off by at least an order of magnitude. You like variety, eh? I mean.. I can get any kind of cuisine at all that can be found in a big city... Not sure what suburbia has to offer on top of that. I mean, you do you. Just saying your argument could maybe use an accuracy adjustment.
That's fine. It's fine to own a car and use it for those things. What is absurd is using a 4000lb hunk of steel to go 2 miles down the road to get a gallon of milk, which is how the bulk of car centric america operates. The vast majority of the energy spent is just to move the vehicle.
The op was suggesting removing this infrastructure altogether so we could walk everywhere. I'm saying that is unrealistic because I like to go places I can't just walk to.
Whether I walk to the grocery store or not isn't super relevant.
I agree with everything you've said wholeheartedly. Personally I could never live in the city again - been there done that. It seems to be very popular here on HN though.
Probably going off on a tangent here, but I grew up surrounded by hundreds of acres of farmland and woods to get lost in the minute I walked out the door, which I still escape to as much as I can, whether it's family owned rural property or state parks/mountains. Working in tech early in my career made that escape harder to get to, but I wouldn't trade rural life for any amount of restaurants, social gatherings, or whatever else within walking distance.
Your experiment is the first interesting argument I've found in this whole accursed thread. As someone who gets triggered by child abuse, thinking about it forced my mind past the Cloudflare issue to what is my real issue, and the whole reason I take any interest in the KF situation in the first place. Because I can't bring myself to say Cloudflare should host your thought experiment, in spite of them not wanting to host it.
But as much as I hate it, and I do hate it, your example should be allowed to be on the capital-I Internet. Because the only reason this is an issue is that WE ourselves have long since lost our innocence / ignorance of pedophilia and fetishes, and we're imagining how they would see it, and it's nauseating. But like we always used to say, if you see something dirty it's because you have a dirty mind. And as much as it's sickening, what goes on in other people's minds and how they view the world, as long as it stays in the mind, is none of anyone's god damn business except their therapist and maybe their spouse, if they're interested.
If anybody thinks the girls are being abused, the site should be investigated by the FBI or equivalent. I have no idea but I hope to God there's a law somewhere that says the site owners can be convicted for their intended purpose, for example if there is no evidence that there's a legitimate explanation like pageantry (ugh) or fashion. Or if they're using a known porn payment processor, or if they require payment in BTC or something. But ultimately the law is the (changeable) law. Samantha Fox's mother put her in real softcore porn when she was 16 and it was shot, bought, and sold in the open, legally. Yup. Her mom.
But my issue that I'm trying to get to is this. The real problem is that it turns out that the Internet, from an architectural / engineering standpoint, ain't quite so amazing as we thought it was back in the 90's. It turns out the Internet can't route around shit, because way too much of its infrastructure is privately owned, and there may not be sufficient or well-written-enough legislation and regulation to prevent these private pieces of the network from acting unilaterally when they should not.
Here's an article another HNer posted the other day. It's called Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Death of the Internet, it's written by the admin and owner of Kiwi Farms, and it explains the problem way better. It also explains exactly why Josh won't back down for anything.
My interest in this, in addition to just as a concerned netizen, stems from my own attempt to solve a much harder version of Kiwi Farms' problem. I failed. Josh hasn't failed yet. I wouldn't stop rooting for him no matter WHAT was on his site, legally. All these people on a forum centered on internet tech, who can't see past doxing and swatting and think they're better people than those monsternaziterrorists, and meanwhile I have more respect for this Josh kid right now (I was online and coding before his parents met, probably) than anyone in this industry right now. I don't care about the content. I care about the censorship at the scope of the whole planetary Internet, as well as free speech in the U.S.
If people make things up, they're doing so against the written rules. I'd link to it, but the site is under a DDoS attack being very proudly and loudly organized by an individual they believe fits said narrative. The gist is: "[Stick to what you can document, that's more than funny enough.] Misinformation is not welcome here." The un-bracketed part is verbatim if memory serves.
Narrative is a tricky thing. Neither side of the controversy would exist without their narratives.
It's been documented by very angry, frustrated people who feel personally attacked. I don't trust people with all of their own skin in the game to tell the truth. I expect them to say whatever they have to. People have been going after Kiwi Farms for at least 8 years now, relentlessly. Why can't any of these mobs turn all of this documentation into a court order? Kiwi Farms has been sued repeatedly, close to ten times I think. They're being sued right now. Every case but one has been thrown out immediately. That other one took 3 days to also be thrown out.
The problem is, similar with 4chan, 8chan and others, that being an asshole and literally bullying people to suicide is not illegal under US laws. The only thing that will lead to consequences on the Internet even in the US is anything relating to CSAM, drug and weapons trafficking, terrorism and evading US trade sanctions and financial regulations. Everything else, no matter how morally reprehensible or how illegal it is in every other civilized nation, is a free-for-all.
The problem is, trolls always escalate their behavior if left unchecked - the best example is actually 4chan. Eventually the most notorious user base moved over to 8chan/8kun, and then Christchurch happened. Or they hound people so aggressively that they see no other option to escape than killing themselves, because the police can't help when hundreds of peopple call in pizzas, delivery services or the police themselves. Hell even moving away doesn't help, some stalkers doxxed Keffals from the linen pattern of her hotel bed, others have doxxed people based off on reflections in their window.
Ok. I don't think I disagree with anything you wrote. But you seem to just assume that "Kiwi Farms does/did such an such to so and so" is a fitting description of events that, just for example, a court of law would reach. And that hasn't been demonstrated. I'm well aware that your insinuations are considered documented facts among those on that side of the issue. But in the big picture, they're accusations, narratives, interpretations, assumptions, etc. Don't bother trying to persuade me it's fact - I've spent seven years and hundreds of hours closely and critically following many a Kiwi saga. I'm acquainted with volumes of details about how they operate over a long period of time. And I'm also well aware that my interpretation of why they do what they do will never be acceptable to at least 90% of the types of people who visit here, and the rest wouldn't get into that can of worms publicly, not even me. And just for the record, that's not me being crypto-anything. I am 100% NOT on board with the persecution of any half-decent person absolutely regardless of their identity, in the current colloquial use of "identity". But you lot would not accept my definition of "persecuted" either so there we are.
What the hell was I trying to say... Oh. Yeah I really didn't want to get into the moral side, but I had to say a bit. What I really wanted to say here is simply that you will never hear one single word of protest from me if law enforcement ever investigates Lolcow LLC, charges, and convicts. Or any individual user for that matter. The admin himself has made it as clear as anyone can to his users that if they commit crimes he won't hesitate to hand over evidence if he has it. And as I said elsewhere, do not make the mistake of thinking that's some wink, wink, nudge joke to him. The guy is already tied up in litigation constantly and he doesn't enjoy it. I'm just sick and fucking tired of mob justice on the internet and in the media, and I am neither a pragmatist nor a consequentialist so to me the ends don't justify the means unless my own blood family are in the crosshairs. Sort it the fuck out legally, preferably without trashing the US Constitution.
> The guy is already tied up in litigation constantly and he doesn't enjoy it.
Well, no one forces him to run a forum for the world's most vile scumbags. Maybe, just maybe, being embroiled in lawsuits for years is society's moderate way of telling him "hey, what you're doing is widely seen as unacceptable". If it's worth the stress and money for him, okay, but he's not in any position to whine around. He can sleep in a pig sty all he wants, but ffs don't complain when other people say he stinks like a pig.
> so to me the ends don't justify the means unless my own blood family are in the crosshairs. Sort it the fuck out legally, preferably without trashing the US Constitution.
Well, there we have the classic dispute between people from the US and partially the UK on the free-speech absolutist side and the Continental European viewpoint that some sorts of speech and actions need to be banned for a healthy society, given the learnings of the NS dictatorship and the Soviet gulags on just how depraved humans can act upon each other.
Personally, as a German I see way too many parallels between the current USA and the pre-1933 Germany for my liking, in particular the regular bloodshedding and the attempt of the far right to deny marginalized people (especially Jews and LGBT, it's disturbing how history repeats itself) their right to a peaceful existence. And platforms like the xChans, Kiwifarms, but also due to their inaction on moderation Facebook, Twitter and Youtube play a massive role in this.
> Personally, as a German I see way too many parallels between the current USA and the pre-1933 Germany for my liking
I don't have much else to say that's worth arguing about. I just wanted to say that I acknowledge that you have a perspective on it that I can't have, and if I were in your shoes I'm pretty sure I would not ignore my intuition on this. As far as what I would do about it.... That's going to take some number of sleeps to think on.
Oh and Josh doesn't whine. He's kind of the dutiful servant. I think if you read his writing you'd see he actually speaks with a consciousness of the other side's point of view that almost nobody ever does when they're embroiled in this type of war where nobody will cede an inch. But that isn't enough for people. They won't accept anything short of him changing his mind.
