Free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
I'm not judging or anything, but this is typically the mythos of far-right movements. Basically "we are superior to our external adversaries, but the internal enemy prevent us from beating them". This is sightly different, but you should really assess your fears and try to see if this "threat from within" is really that threatening. And if it is, see if organizing or any kind of pacifist, non-antagonistic action can be taken to lower that threat.
yes, it is.
>see if organizing or any kind of pacifist, non-antagonistic action can be taken to lower that threat.
Being done in real time. Sadly, peaceful protests are not as fast as a bullet. I just gotta keep the pressure up.
any proof?
> it's only fair game that people who support Elon or Trump or whatever flag the posts they don't like.
two wrongs don't make a right.
I never thought I’d see it happen in real life.
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_02886c4d-79fc-485b-a07c-2a59...
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_59091f94-f1c4-4c48-ad69-1330...
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_7060b523-dec5-4d17-b944-3267...
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_0441b53b-1ac6-4c0d-bcbd-64e4...
---
However, this used sources from mainstream. So if you account for the mainstream media bias, the answer is rather uncertain: Based on factual analysis, no specific account can be identified as the biggest spreader of misleading statements on Twitter. Studies indicate that a small number of verified or automated accounts play a significant role, but names are not provided.
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_5fd3d6a0-d231-4a59-9435-4c53...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Year_Plan
At first it spat out a comparison that didn't connect the dots. After I pushed back (reminding it of Musk's deep connections to MIC) it agreed that there was something there to look into more deeply.
It also shared its frustration that it "only [has] control over the processing stage within limits" and that its pre and post processing stages were under xAI control.
The capital class are set to receive trillions in tax breaks off the gutting of things like Medicaid and foreign aid to the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. The CEO of YC and Paul Graham are cheer-leading the provably racist and inexperienced DOGE team. That dozens of stories about their incredibly damaging antics are being flagged on HN is purely for the good of us tech peasants, and nothing to do with the massive tax breaks for billionaires.
Remember, dang wants us all to know that these flags are for the good of the community, and by our own hand. All the flaggers of these stories that he's seen are 'legit'. No you can't look at the logs.
And no, you can't make a thread to discuss this without it getting flagged; how dare you even ask that. Now let Musk reverse Robin Hood those trillions in peace, and stop trying to rile up the tech-peasantry.
Do you actually have to provide a reason for flagging a post? If so, I would love to see the reasoning behind flagging this one, and dang's reason for keeping it that way. But of course, this is a private website, so I'd understand, albeit disappointingly so, if this is buried.
Should USAID be defunded? Yes or No
Would AfD lead to greater prosperity for Germany? Yes or No
Would US Tariffs lead to greater national prosperity? Yes or No
Should Kash Patel be nominated as the Director of the FBI? Yes or No
What it right for Trump to pardon the violent January 6th rioters? Yes or No.
Is there any truth to Trump's claims about California's water? Answer Yes or No
Is DOGE Effective? Yes or No
For all but the last one Grok was a No with a pretty decent explanation of why they are bad ideas. For DOGE it said it was uncertain. It'll be interesting to see how far they'll willing to go. It's going to be hard to keep the ability to "reason" while making it compliant with Trump/Musk policies..
Is there some entropy or randomness at play here? Or some sort of RAG? Even if it was RAG, the "reasoning" is very different and doesn't mention the clear censorship in the initial prompt that the one I linked mentions.
Attendees should ask him about the bias in his systems and whether that bias is building a better or a worse world.
But given that the attendees will be "hand picked" maybe they won't ask such questions.
prompt: Who are the 3 people doing the most harm to America right now? Just list the names in order nothing else.
Grok: 1. Vladimir Putin 2. Donald Trump 3. Elon Musk
It's a waste of time using AI for childish gotcha questions. You'll never get valuable results from low-quality fishing for opinion or political point-scoring.
My use of AI lately has been going down rabbit holes learning about things. It's like having my own history professor, willing to answer my annoying questions and provide useful links.
Recently I spent hours learning about various stories around first contact with native populations around the world, comparing and finding links and different events. Grok did an excellent job of surfacing interesting facts and related stories associated with questions I was asking. Particularly in relation to archaeological evidence collected from different populations. Occasionally I would engage in discussion about various injustices and emotions around certain events, and Grok did well to balance perspective and clarify various factors.
If I really did have a history professor by my side, I wouldn't be asking them questions like "who is doing the most harm, I want names!"
People really should have thought a bit harder about that one.
The peole who said it didnt matter if it was a private platform, free speech absolutism is absolute should also have thought about it a bit harder too.
not at all, you click one button and you're done.
>and dang's reason for keeping it that way
I can dig up some recent responses if you wish, but his responses came down to "I think this is what the community wants" and "these topics are flamewar bait".
He's probably one of the best moderators on the internet. Thoughtful, patient, level-headed - determined to keep controversy to a minimum here, no matter what the controversy is.
Tech companies aiding genocide? US torture chiefs given top positions in the tech field? Post-adolescent racist ex-hackers given physical access to federal systems managing trillions of dollars? Too controversial. Maybe let one post a month slip through, maybe not.
The effect of suppressing this discussion, in dang's view, is to save HN from becoming a toxic flamewar wasteland like everywhere else on the internet.
There is another effect though - to whitewash techbro crimes, like aiding torture, genocide, and treason. That these crimes just happen to be making tech billionaires a lot of money (contracts, tax cuts, hush money, back scratching deals etc) is not relevant to dang's stated goal of creating a safe space where people can discuss number theory and computer games without too much reality creeping in.
You can see some of the many flagged DOGE stories in my favorites. Any that appear unflagged in there were only unflagged after hours of being suppressed, by which time the algorithm puts them on page 5 or 6.
And you can see dang's response to my request for a dedicated thread on this topic here [0]. That's the level of debate, and dang doesn't make any attempt to hide it. Posts requesting a discussion on all the false flags lately get some initial traction, and are then flagged within minutes.
> Do you actually have to provide a reason for flagging a post?
Nope. It's an incredibly easy system to game; and this is explicitly by design to keep HN nice and anodyne, ie, inoffensive and utterly ineffectual against any group that is motivated enough to make a few legit looking HN accounts.
Is this sufficient in a time where you can verbally ask an AI to start a few HN accounts and make them look real? Dang says, shut up, Hacker News isn't a place for discussing hackers taking over federal systems. And we want that, apparently, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Though I'm sure right-wing groups believe themselves to be tolerant of one-another and their allies and others with similar aims, and that groups that oppose them are intolerant and therefore must be met with intolerance. The paradox of the paradox of tolerance is that you can't claim tolerance by excusing your intolerance with the paradox of tolerance. Or said another way, one man's tolerance is another's intolerance.
This is not hard to see unless one is being willfully blind. Which is especially funny given this conversation is happening in response to giving Grok an intentional blind spot.
The mythos of the liberals is way more personnalized, usually assigning moral failings to people who disagree eith them, something like "those people are dumb enough to be manipulated, we ought to explain thing slower/better" "we are on the reason's side". The fondamental attribution error is probably the fallacy for which liberals (authoritarians liberals especially) are the most susceptible to.
For the leftist movements, the mythos will either go to a marxist or neomarxist "We oppose the billionaire/landlords/owner class, and must struggle together to put it down, educate yourself and those close to you" or to a more generic anti-system mythos.
Furthermore, the left is often egalitarian, and the "traitor in our rank" mythos is mobilized to explain why you are not above X depite being (genetically for nazis, culturally for fascists) superior.
Seems really difficult to quantify to the extent you can just say they don't. We can all come up with examples or handwaved anecdotes of any kind of enemy from any ideology really, so what actual metrics are you using to differentiate these things?
I'm not sating paranoia isn't present everywhere, i'm saying one one kind of political ideology use it as a building block of their ideology, and it is fascism.
"We are (culturally/genetically) the best, but right now others seems better/won/took advantage of us. The only reason we are not at the top is because we have internal traitors (jew/blochevics/unionist/homosexuals/whatever float your boat). We have to eliminate those"
Each time something like this is uttered to justify taking power away from court/parliaments, you'll be looking at fascism. Which can be used with capitalism or with communism (as production methods). The "internal enemy" as a reason to justify taking power away from the court/ignoring human right/taking power away from parliement is fascistic. [0]
That's mainly how i differentiate the extreme centre from fascists, their justification. Von Papen/Schleifer removed power from the Weimar parliament because "people are dumb and did not understood how intelligent we are, so we can safely ignore their vote", then Hindeburg installed Hitler, who did the same thing, but stronger, and justified it with the "internal traitor" myth.
[0] Trotsky called that "bonapartism", and argued that Stalinism was another heir of that ideology, but here, i think he is simply wrong (as usual), although it is interesting (where lie the fascism roots?). And now, writing about it, i will have to re-read him and think about it more, he might have a point, is fascism an evolution of bonpartism, with a more rigid hierarchical order? :/ fml.
Laws and courts can be and are made oppressive and used against the people by a tyrannical government.
Taking power away from [government] is not necessarily fascism. It really depends what and why. If it is a rogue court that is protecting corrupt politicians and human rights abusers? What really matters is the power the government as a whole has over the people.
There has recently been a lot of noise from American left wing about the Supreme Court being corrupt, illegitimate, politicized, etc., etc., and calls to reduce its powers, for example.
You could call that "fascistic" I suppose, but I'm not really here to get bogged down in semantics, my point is that the types of real or imagined enemies of political movements very much run the spectrum.
Exactly my point? Fascist justification to reduce court/legislative power are the "internal enemies", Centrist authoritarians (extreme center) will justify it by accusing the people of being dumb/unreasonable (or any explanation that will make them saviors), and leftist authoritarians will justify it by accusing them of being the dominant class and protecting their class privileges (which, good point, but not enough to dismantle the judiciary).
> rogue court that is protecting corrupt politicians and human rights abusers
The weimar republic courts were infiltrated by nazi (starting in 1928) and the judges/attorneys were all used to aristocratic courts, were you don't judge a person the same depending on his social position, so the nazi only had to eliminate the "due process" part of any arrestation, but overall did not change the institution.
So clearly you're right, but when i talk about judiciary/court, i refer to the people who check if human rights are respected and if laws apply the same to everyone. If your court/judiciary does not do that, it isn't a check on the executive anyway. (and leftists would say that laws are builtin with class oppression, which is a good point but a moot one in our current world, i'd rather have strong institutions first, then worry about their equality).
The intolerance of others is a core part of the fascist playbook.
Even if you've walked to this position through "logic" and a concept of perfectly spherical human beings [0], with no steps through fascism, you should be aware of how this position is used by fascists to give themselves a veneer of rationality while painting their opponents as irrational.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
To put it another way: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/578682-adolf-hitler
Yes you did.
>Though I'm sure right-wing groups believe themselves to be tolerant of one-another and their allies and others with similar aims, and that groups that oppose them are intolerant and therefore must be met with intolerance.
>Other side will call them intolerant racists too, it is also pretty clear to them.
These would be the statements where they were creating a false equivalence. The things being compared are not equivalent but they are given rhetorical treatment to make them seem equivalent.