Incidentally, some of the users flagging the story are people who, I know from their usernames, are sympathetic to the cause of the protestors. The flagging is therefore not exclusively ideologically driven. Seasoned Hacker News users often flag threads that they feel are bad for the site (e.g. because the thread is a flamewar), separately from their own views on the topic. That's community stewardship, not ideological suppression.
Edit: also, is it really a mystery what's happening here? The article linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867746 seems to explain it pretty well: the feds have sent police to Portland and there's a strong disagreement between the federal government and the state and local governments about whether they should be doing that. If those are the facts, it's not surprising that the threads are flamewars, because there's really not much for commenters to comment on other than to repeat the political commitment they already have.
HN has never been a site to shy away from political flamewars. You can look back through the various posts we have on China here where people rightfully claim the government in China has been responsible for various atrocities. Those threads fall along similar political lines and there's no real debate to be had, yet they still survive [1]. Hell, we can even talk about the recent threads on Trump [2] to see similar threads explode in popularity and make it through unflagged.
But we have a very obvious instance of something that all sides should be able to agree on, which is the feds picking up people off the streets without identification or recourse. This shouldn't even have political contention because both the left and the right should be able to agree it's a Bad Thing. Especially here on HN where there's a running trend of anything that involves censorship or rights being taken away [3] [4] [5] [6] gets massive amounts of traction but a story of very obvious government overreach ends up getting flagged.
This isn't to say that I think all topics are driven like this. As you've linked before, there are various discussions on police brutality made here on HN. But I've noticed those threads also go through significant periods of being flagged or pushed off the page until there's enough users to vouch for it or vote it up to bypass those flags. Which is to say I firmly believe stories nowadays are being flagged not on the basis of discussion but because of ideological reasons even if there are a few users using flags as it is intended. Otherwise why do those other stories explode in popularity considering they have the same levels of political flamebaiting?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547
People make generalizations about HN based on what they see, but they see what they notice and are far more likely to notice what they dislike and weight it more heavily (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Basically that means your image of HN is likely to fill out as an inverse image of your own views. In other words, HN will seem to be full of your enemies. That explains why the other side sees the forum as being made up of their enemies.
Everyone here needs to accept—because it's reality—that the forum is simply divided on divisive topics. It's divided roughly the way that society at large is divided in the many countries whose citizens participate here. No doubt there is some skew (because of factors like education and class), but with the exception of a small number of issues like, say, software patents, it's likely not a major skew. Perceptions of major skew on HN are overwhelmingly rooted in cognitive bias, which explains why they're so contradictory and all over the place.
One reason this is so important is that when someone perceives HN as being dominated by enemies, they are much more likely to go into battle mode. If instead you perceive it as being a more-or-less representative sample of the world, that's still rough—the world is not as we would like it to be—but there's at least a greater possibility of openness. I wrote more about this here, if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
They have also been allowed to throw bricks, molotovs, bats etc on law enforcement and people. They are destroying the peaceful protests to turn them into violence. Local law enforcement hasn't been doing anything to stop it because the mayors have been useless. That's where the feds intervene - especially because most of these people who are getting arrested are crossing state lines and therefore federal.
If you're one of the pro-freedom people here on HN, how could you ever rationalize this sort of thing? In what world is it ever OK for the feds to do this sort of thing? This is something both the left and the right should be able to fully agree on!
I'm incredibly disappointed this got flagged, but not surprised. It is somewhat ironic though, since on HN any threads about perceived censorship gets massive amounts of votes such as when Twitter added the disclaimer to Trump's tweets. But then you have someone quite literally being abducted without cause and here come the flags and the 'it's too political' signs coming out.
The border patrol, DHS, and Portland Police Bureau are purposely terrorizing the citizens of Portland for political motives every single night. Portland is a lightning rod for right-wing animosity.
A lot of previously passive citizens are becoming radicalized by these events (similar to wartorn countries) and it kind of feels like a foreign occupation at this point.
I don't think I can ever go back to trusting police or the federal government the same way.
Start at 9:30 timestamp:
https://youtu.be/3ptD6koTknw?t=570
People sharing videos of this share either selectively edited videos without context OR they only share the ending part where they are arrested and not the part where they were instigating violence in the peaceful protests.
Also they are not unidentified. They have Police on their chest.
There's also a theory (can't confirm this) that these are undercover operatives being extracted as they have been infiltrated Antifa.
What rights do you have resisting being grabbed from the street by somebody who isn't identifying themselves as law enforcement? They just have a "police" patch, they could be cosplayers.
[1] https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072
[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/128345258594...
And the general theory that America is some sort of police state. Undercover operators during a protest (of any sort) is an entirely logical supposition. No, it is not a blatant one; I am not being dramatic. However, the current social turmoil is revealing the oft-ignored dark side of the police to "white America" and I think that is a good thing.
I live in the UK now and the atmosphere in general here is different, I've interacted with police a few times, and no issues - but I am white. If you're in London and black... it is different. Yes, there have been stories of undercover police doing all sorts of shite with respect to environmental protesters aka "terrorists"... and lists of undesirables aka leftists...
But even then, it is still nothing like America. This is just my experience and gut feeling - the Robert Peel theory of policing still lives on here - in the States, the theory of policing is more like police are the occupying force. Cutting the budgets of police departments will help go a long way towards controlling the problem - here, the police have a limited budget (and manpower) and so have to be smart in not wasting money and dealing with avoidable hassles.
Though I was aware of the general concept of policing by consent.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Peelian principales of policing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles is commonly known as policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
In this model of policing, police officers are regarded as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.
I'm not sure the video that you've linked is any better. It's basically someone dismissing it saying they were bad people who deserved it. It adds zero information.
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618
This is a literally subversive movement. I'm not exaggerating or choosing a side. Watch the livestreams yourself - these people explicitly seek to subvert, dismantle, and replace modern "power structures" (intentionally left vague).
Whether you agree with what these people think they're fighting for, the system has safeguards against such insurrection.
It doesn't matter who they're arresting and for what reason. They should announce who they are, using marked vehicles and properly arrest them if they have actually committed a crime.
Because otherwise, what's stopping someone from dressing up in military garb and straight up abducting someone? How do you know they're even part of the federal law enforcement and not actually someone taking advantage of the situation to commit crimes as well?
Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.“
That's misleading. They are being recorded while they are being violent within the peaceful protests. They are being arrested when they leave because Feds don't want to disrupt the peaceful protests - so they arrest them when they leave the area. I have watched a few videos of this happening and all of them have the person in not just all black but also with a helmet, tools to break windows and baseball bats.
Here's one example where the dude who got arrested has a helmet on. Why's that needed in peaceful protests? Also note the thing he has on his left side. That's an attachment to break car windows:
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618
But I’d like a sincere response: What difference does it make what they did if they were apprehended by unidentifiable officers? That’s the topic at hand - the fact that police are apprehending people in ways that are not identifiably different from kidnappings.
That's not what I meant when I said:
rioters (not the protestors)
I meant to say that a few violent people are sneaking into the protestors. By "not the protestors", I meant "I am not referring to the protestors".
By local government, I meant the mayor, the governor and the DA. Portland, Chicago has been this way for a long time.
This point is a factual one though. People's perceptions of skew on HN are massively distorted by cognitive bias, and that includes your perceptions if you think that HN is "made up of primarily right wing users".
Please don't underestimate this phenomenon. It's probably the most significant one that I observe here and it's incredible how reliable it is.
For example: you're reacting to two police-related submissions getting flagged and seeing that as a sign of right-wing users dominating the site. (Actually, I can tell you for certain that some of the users flagging these are left-wing users who must have other reasons for flagging it.) Meanwhile you're not counting the many major threads that HN has had about police brutality in the last couple months. There was one yesterday, in fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860829.
If you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962, you'll find an analysis I did a few weeks ago showing how George Floyd-related topics, including police brutality, were by far the most-discussed topics on HN in the previous month. That's a fact—and yet it doesn't stop people from claiming, not just that the topics are underrepresented (which would already be completely mistaken) but that they are being completely suppressed! ("aggressively removed from discussion", one complaint said.)
That is the bias I'm talking about in action. You simply can't go by what you notice and dislike (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If you do, you may well end up with a picture that it is the exact opposite of what's really going on here. Needless to say, I'm not talking about you personally, but about all of us.
On the contrary, thousands of protestors have been actually charged. Meanwhile police officers are still virtually never charged, even in cases of obvious brutality or obvious murder.
As an example, DA Jackie Lacey hasn’t charged a single one of the 330+ cops that killed LA residents during her 8 year tenure (some orgs say it’s over 600, the police disagree)
23 million in damages to federal property including courthouse:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/violent-demonstrations-in-port...
> A review of court records showed 59 people arrested during Portland demonstrations had charges dismissed, including several people arrested on felony charges.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/criminal-cha...
The person who set the court house on fire also got his charges dropped.
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23884760. As I explained there, I've held off chastising you for much, much longer than we normally do with users who are abusing the site the way you have been. This needs to change. If you want to use HN for its intended purpose, that won't be hard—plenty of users who share your ideological views manage to do so, and I'm happy to give you any explanations that would be helpful. But if you don't want to, you need to conduct your battles elsewhere. No, this is not because we secretly side with $appalling-position. It's because it's the only way to protect the commons, and the commons has to come first. Scorched earth will do no good for anyone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
The person I plainly insulted and called a liar is a great example of that sort of poster. You can literally look at his post history and see how he's been arguing and you even noticed that he's created multiple accounts to fuel that shit. As I've mentioned before flagging and upvoting only works as a preventative measure if the community can collectively deal with people who are not engaging in good faith. But when the person I was arguing with was explicitly advocating for the destruction of dissidents [1] there is no other side to be had.
But you know what, I'll go ahead and say I'm done posting here. I appreciate your restraint in dealing with me but I've said my peace. I've noticed older users start to become fed up in the same way I've been and once the people that were managing the commons leaves, who will be left?
In reality, that's just not the case. Lots of topics just lead to low-quality discussions and those are flagged. I'd be inclined to flag something with this submission's title without as much as looking at the discussion thread.
Obviously I'm already giving away my ideological slant here which is that I firmly believe the story in question is horrific. But what I find frustrating is that flagging only works if the userbase agrees to flag topics that will lead to low quality discussions. If the userbase ends up not flagging those topics, then flagging comes down to ideological divides and that's what I see.
This here should be a call for the libertarian-oriented red tribe to fight back against government tyranny. Either much of the red tribe needs to break free of their propaganda bubble misleading them into thinking this totalitarian behavior is in any way American, or things are going to continue to get uglier and uglier.
Reminds me of my response to my wife in reaction to the State Dept "pleading" for americans to come back "home"… I'm strongly in the camp of things getting worse and worse because none of the underlying issues in modern american society have been adequately addressed for a long time.
More succinctly though, there are many people refusing to wear masks, claiming it is government control rather than reasonable common sense in their own best interest. Meanwhile this is actual tyranny that must be resisted if we are to retain our remaining freedoms.
For the general trend, I want to hope that we're seeing the darkness before the light, but my cynical side tells me that's just a coping mechanism.
I’m what ways do you believe any of this justifies kidnapping people?
The officers have POLICE on their chest in big letters. People getting arrested have helmets, bats and window breaking tools on. They aren't "protestors". They are preventing peaceful protestors.
Also there's some claims of some of them being undercover agents who have infiltrated Antifa though I am not sure if that can be confirmed.
But two responses later and you’ve still ignored the question: what difference does it make what they’ve done - why defend unmarked police? I’ve taken the time to show evidence that it’s occurred, it’d be nice if you reciprocated some effort.
[0]https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sandiegouniontribune.com/ne...
Does that make me identifiably a law enforcement officer?
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-co...
Media's claim that they are "unidentified" is simply false.
The dude in the video was never told where he was or why he was arrested. He didn't know he was in the federal courthouse until after he was released.
These guys don't even have badges ffs. If someone shot these guys, I don't see how that wouldn't be considered self-defense.
Let's see what DHS is complaining about:
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-co...
A lot of broken windows, graffiti and fireworks. Real insurrection. Raise the army. Prepare the nukes.
Those are federal property and feds have full rights to do this. Also a lot of people who are being arrested are from another state. That's been the case for at least 45 days now. There's a point where the feds have to step in since the local people in that area are being terrorized. I have friends in that area and they are all planing to move out of the city because the Mayor, DA and Governor have been useless for a long time.
So tyranny of the majority is fine? I'm sure you can apply the same justification to what's happening in Xinjiang. Also, where's this "authorization" stemming from? Did we explicitly authorize it? Or was it implied by our inaction?
Perhaps it is preferable to tyranny by the minority.
>authorization" stemming from? Did we explicitly authorize it? Or was it implied by our inaction?
Did you authorize the taxes you pay, or where they go? Isn't this the so called social contract?
And please, my family fled true tyranny, I assure you nothing the US is doing is quite comperable to the CCP. Westerners don't know tyranny. They've grown so comfortable that they can take to the streets for weeks and complain about the very government that supports them.
Try doing that in the USSR or any Chines state outside of Hong Kong or Taiwan.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-co...
Media's claim that they are "unidentified" is simply false.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/17/police-targeting-street-...
If you are protesting the police, you should have every possible form of armour on that you have access to, even if you are protesting peacefully.
> the dude who got arrested has a helmet on. Why's that needed in peaceful protests?
Same reason why people wear helmets when riding a bike: even if they're not intending on smashing their head, accidents happen, so it's better to be protected. Protests do occasionally turn violent, so that's not too unreasonable. Also keep in mind there are protesters that open carry assault rifles, so in comparison a helmet us relatively tame.
>That's an attachment to break car windows:
It looks like a black stick to me? What's it supposed to be?
I couldn't identify what he had on his left side from that video. How did you come to the conclusion it was meant to break windows?
https://www.kut.org/post/chief-manley-says-black-man-critica...
Yeah, I don't get that, but I'm not surprised many americans are against stupidly cheap ways to slow spread to any degree. However in response to that, lockdowns (stupidly expensive) seem to just bring on more unintended negative effects while still no guarantee at all against future death from covid.
Luckily for me, I moved to place where the government isn't strong enough to enforce such a lockdown (or a bunch of other things USG and individual state govs routinely get away with the relative apathy of the public) and people already have a culture of wearing masks in public.
> For the general trend, I want to hope that we're seeing the darkness before the light, but my cynical side tells me that's just a coping mechanism.
This is nothing yet, if history is any lesson. I've long abandoned any sense of hope.
That expensive course of action should have been used to regroup and implement a sensible containment plan. Instead that time was basically wasted, which is need the real tragedy.
> I'm not surprised many americans are against stupidly cheap ways to slow spread to any degree
I've got to ask specifically why would you expect this? I mean I see the general ignorance and deference to expensive centralized solutions. But I would have thought that a pan-partisan shared threat like a pandemic would have put more people on the same page.
If the basis for such change comes from state diktats rather than understanding and willingness of the population to adopt such from their own initiatives… it's not surprising things are turning out the way they are.
> That expensive course of action should have been used to regroup and implement a sensible containment plan. Instead that time was basically wasted, which is need the real tragedy.
Short from martial law, my confidence in any government to succeed in such from the get go is nil. Bull in a china shop.
> But I would have thought that a pan-partisan shared threat like a pandemic would have put more people on the same page.
I would think the same thing to if the incentives for most people to be on the same page were there pre pandemic… they were not. Now there's a free for all of conflicting ideologies, while still being crushed under the weight of decades of malfeasance that has only been exacerbated even more.
But what I'm referring to are the high interest, high flamebait stories. Which all of the stories I've linked are examples of where the discussion largely falls down along partisan lines and the end result is poor quality discussion. Then there are stories which fall somewhere in the middle such as this one, which are high interest but end up flagged over ideological reasons. One of the ways you can tell that is specifically the case for this story is because it's been submitted a number of times now [1] with a large amount of votes and a varying degree of flags.
But this goes back to my main point is that what people think is a good fit on HN boils down to ideological reasons. That's why stories about Youtube banning someone gets a large number of votes upwards with complaints of censorship while stories like this one get flagged.
PG's most recent essay got banished off the FP (correctly, if you ask me) within a couple of hours, with zillions of upvotes and a thread made of pure HN hell. You can actually interpret that outcome N different ways to support a preferred narrative. One might be that HN is just a place for oblivious techbros. Another one might be that HN's immune system worked and deep-sixed the thing.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-co...
Media's claim that they are "unidentified" is simply false.
Since you seem to be here to reflexively argue, the only thing I have left to say is that you need to realize that the federal government deploying soldiers into American cities against the express wishes of the local governments is utterly anti-Freedom, anti-American, and straight up totalitarian. We're witnessing the destruction of our country, and you're cheerleading to the tune of Party propaganda. It's never too late to snap out of that filter bubble and come to your senses.