Their approach to moderation is unusual in that they don't even pretend to be a neutral platform and as such it's a powerful differentiator to businesses that are rooted in a "free speech" culture.
Shadow-banning individual posts ("Visible to self") is relatively unusual and acts as a demotivator to publish controversial content because such content doesn't drive engagement, as is actively demoting entire classes of content (like critical commentary on politics) from the start.
This approach seems to help ensure that there won't ever be a subculture on their platform that grows, becomes controversial and at some point considers it their right to use the platform for their controversial content, avoiding all the outrage that late introduction of moderation brings with it. (see Twitter)
I mean I’m as much a fan of free speech as the next guy, but there are some pretty key differences between the concepts of “free speech in the culture” and “a giant collection of unmoderated user generated internet content”.
I mean actual free speech would just be an endless collection of penis videos. Nobody is actually advocating for free speech.
I don’t think every app has to be about political issues. Where did that premise come from, just because it has Chinese origins?
It’s ok for there to be an app for kids to make dance videos, and to keep it light and positive.
I mean, unmoderated, anonymous contents might have more penis vids than you want, but it doesn't mean that you have to watch them; a user sponsored moderation / rating would ensure that.
If that wasn't possible, who would use the app except for penis enthusiasts?
> ... a user sponsored moderation / rating would ensure that.
I think that would be good, as long as nobody is forced to use it who does not want to use it. Other things also help such as categorization, meta-moderation, etc, but all such things should be ignorable by users who do not want it.
Vine was mostly penis videos at the beginning. I think its original growth was due to the random clips of nudity until Twitter decided they needed to clean it up.
>I mean actual free speech would just be an endless collection of penis videos. Nobody is actually advocating for free speech.
I disagree.
*chans are some of the best places for discussion, especially regarding unpopular topics, as the posters reputation isn't on the line when expressing an opinion, and (I think more importantly) every post is weighted the same - there's no upvotes to tell you what you're supposed to think.
There is a downside of sifting through pornography, but it's not a big issue to not click links you don't like. Minimal moderation on SFW boards also works pretty well.
>I mean actual free speech would just be an endless collection of penis videos.
I agree with the main thrust of your post, but to nitpick, American free speech jurisprudence is not so daft. Where some restrictions are necessary, the principle of “viewpoint neutrality” still works to prohibit censorship. So, where the government allows pro-abortion expression, it must also allow anti-abortion expression. And this applies even where its more general obligation to allow all expression does not hold.
But like it’s fine for Flyertalk.com to be about frequent flier programs, and for Woodweb.com to stick to discussions of router bits and edge banding.
It seems to me that the reason people are applying some kind of double standard to Tik Tok is because it’s Chinese. But like it’s fine to make an app for kids to share only positive light hearted videos and keep it focused on that.
But of course the more interesting question being raised here is if the other model —- the extremely moderated some kinds of “free speech” but not others Facebook model — is in fact better.
It's not hypocritical to look at a Chinese app and question the motives of the censors there. Obviously their censors are controlled by the CCP. I dont have children yet but if I did they would not be allowed on TikTok, period.
But then, I also think the free world shouldn't do business with the Communist Chinese. So that's just my opinion.
> I mean actual free speech would just be an endless collection of penis videos.
I disagree. There may be some such videos, but if anyone will write anything, then there will also be a lot of other stuff too, including other videos, and also stuff that isn't videos. There might also be worthless messages such as "kljsdljlaregj lkejgl ekjrg", but there will also be some good stuff too.
There are simple mechanisms to prevent "penis flood" without censorship: categorization (18+/SFW categories), and sybil attack prevention/popularity ratings (just because 1 guy wants to upload his penis 1000 times, doesn't mean it must appear 1000 times in the global feed. Trolls can attract a lot of attention, but most people aren't trolls).
I think this is actually a pretty good model. I still dream of that perfect federated network that allows as complete autonomy as possible and finally kills both email and facebook messenger, but until then at least some people can have some joy in life.
I used "complete autonomy" half-facetiously. Actually, I said "as complete autonomy as possible," implying, as complete as possible given other, say, existential or intersubjective constraints.
Step 3 is an interesting thought experiment for sure though. Can't say I've thought too much about data structures and algorithsm that might survive me.
A theoretical company could theoretically lobby for literally anything, including for the moon to be replaced with a wheel of cheese. Whether their lobbying would be productive is another matter.
This is pretty tame and actually sounds pretty pragmatic and well-organized in a non-threatening manner, especially given the target audience (kids). Moderating for different countries’ rules is a requirement unless you want to get kicked out of lots of markets.
The real concern I have is in the fact that things below 50 views don’t get much moderation attention, which is the same across all platforms, and where we see the most risk for these platforms to be used to bully people within small social groups (such as at school).
Anyone who thinks Facebook doesn’t similarly optimize the content within Explore etc is delusional. It would be interesting to compare the information these companies offer national security organizations.
Calling this censorship rather than editorial curation implies that content distribution platforms are somehow expected not to have an editorial line. I find this very odd and a misuse of the term censorship.
"America's got talent" is a great show too, and they certainly select who gets onstage from all the people they audition. Is that censorship? I don't expect that TV show to give me info about protests any more than Tiktok.
Censorship is when the powers of government or the marketplace are such that nobody could, if they wanted, get their message out. Yes there is actual censorship in China that filters anything from group messaging apps to movies, but isn't Tiktok here just defining an editorial line of non-controversial content?
>Censorship is when the powers of government or the marketplace are such that nobody could, if they wanted, get their message out.
No, that's not the definition of censorship.
>censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
It's funny how many people are trying to redefine the definition of censorship in recent times; since Big Tech has grown more powerful than governments in their ability to control information flow. Though I'm glad it seems we have moved past the "only the government can do censorship" psuedo definition that many on HN were so frequently asserting.
Did you miss the section about Hong Kong and the blanket ban on political/protest content?
The latter is very Brave New World-esque in that it both “keeps the app fun” and acts as a means to suppress dissent. If they have the capability to identify political/protest content, why not label and allow filtering instead of blanket removing all of it from the app?
I think it's very reasonable for a content platform to enforce some kind of norm on speech including against protest content. Back when Tiktok was musical.ly, ie more explicitly devoted to music-based content, I suppose it wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.
Sure, I might be okay with that for a niche community. But social networks tend to be monopolies or oligopolies due to network effects and general audience social network apps (which TikTok is) empirically appear to be the main for platform for large-scale organized protest movement in the internet world we now live in.
I don’t judge it as worthwhile to get rid of such a platform for capitalistic soma reasons. I’m even more suspicious when the company is from a country with close government-business ties where the government has openly demonstrated it uses such apps to suppress political dissent.
It's not clear to me that Tiktok is, or wants to be, a general audience social network. In any case I really haven't seen it used to advertise or organize protests... And let's be honest it is by itself in no monopoly situation...
> I’m even more suspicious when the company is from a country with close government-business ties where the government has openly demonstrated it uses such apps to suppress political dissent.
I agree it's a reason for heightened suspicion but I feel like in this and a lot of stories around Tiktok, the suspicion is close to the only thing there is.
What I don't like about this argument that all platforms, even privately-owned, should be open to political or protest speech, is that the same argument can be used to criticize the moderation of hate speech, conspiracy theories, recruitment for fundamentalist religious terrorism networks, and other toxic social forces. In the US, the law prevents the government from getting involved, so we are dependent on private actors to moderate speech online.
Now if there's something in these policies about Tiktok censoring differently videos of HK protests or criticism of the Chinese communist party vs those of unrelated protests in the US, that would be different. It's not what I've seen though....
I can't see how TikTik censors more than facebook or most other social platforms. This seems only to be a concern since it's the "other" side (Chinese in this case) doing it.
> the search for keywords controversial from the point of view of the Chinese Government [...] did not yield any or only very few fitting content
Yeah I could give you a nice list of words that results in an similar results page from Google, Youtube or Facebook.
The difference is important on the level of individual users, but it's not important for this discussion. As TFA demonstrates, it's possible for diligent researchers to reveal unpublicized policies through their research. Users can assist researchers by pointing out what content they've had banned.
I haven't seen a reason to suspect that TikTok have been any more open about their moderation policies than Facebook or indeed any other social media platform have been.
> it's possible for diligent researchers to reveal unpublicized policies through their research
It's possible to reveal __some__ policies (like trivial one with breastfeeding), but I think that reverse-engineering of non-trivial policies is really hard.
Like moving some type of content to the bottom of the feed for some category of users. It may not look like a ban, but who is gonna scroll to the bottom of the feed?
Or 25% bias in news priorities of one political party over another for some users.
Their non-trivial policies may also change over time, so it would be hard to prove any of them. They had years to optimize their news feed.
And who will have time and knowledge to do statistics? With millions of eyeballs we still have tons of trivial bugs in open source software.
> I haven't seen a reason to suspect that TikTok have been any more open about their moderation policies than Facebook or indeed any other social media platform have been.
I don't know any of big news players who have open editorial policy, but TikTok is new in the industry and I think they don't have knowledge and technologies to develop non-trivial policies like Facebook, Twitter, NYT or any other big player.
The idea that TikTok is newer and therefore likely to have less baroque policies is at least plausible (not necessarily likely, given China's millennia of bureaucratic praxis), unlike every other response to thread parent's question of how they are different from any other networked social service.
People have been punished here for answering a very similar question to yours (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945640). Even mentioning Alex Jones is very risky. And depending on the answer to your question might actually get you sued, at least in europe.
It's become impossible to say things you're legally allowed to anywhere but very fringe places on the web. [inb4 "private company etc etc": Sites can police speech as they want. Still it's a shame.]
His account has been removed, but there's still lots of content on Facebook discussing him and his ideas. There are also still lots of people on Facebook who discuss similar ideas. TikTok, on the other hand, has banned/deplatformed certain classes of ideas.
I recently featured in a music video of a friend who is a rapper. We posted a clip of it on a new tik tok account he made to promote his music to the youths. it was deleted within seconds. presumably due to feauring a realistic prop gun. the audio wasn't a problem (lyrics include "fuck the police" and "acab") as I could post harmless videos with the same track on my account. But that clip with the prop gun gets deleted instantly, even if you heavily filter it (crop, duotone, colorshift). so their ai detector seems pretty good.
I'm surprised that they moderate every video with over 50-150 views, that seems quite unique in this market. This is probably largely a good thing though given the target market of kids/teenagers.
It's already very interesting seeing how this is playing out.
TikTok is, as the title says, a social network for cheerfulness and fun. I don't use it, but I can understand they outright ban politics: 1) they avoid becoming the vile cesspool Twitter has become, 2) they avoid being asked by governments around the world to take down posts, 3) they avoid being targeted in propaganda campaigns.
I'm sympathetic to the argument for banning politics outright.
However, this would imply making sure that all politics is banned in practice, and not that the platform has the right to selectively ban politics.
I'm not convinced tic toc does that.
Yes you have a point. As I've said I don't use it, so I don't know how it goes. What I'm saying is that a politics-free social network is not only possible, but desirable.
I can understand excluding politics, but why are we drinking if it's not to lubricate our complaining about work? In what context is it acceptable for the Irish to complain about work?
I've seen at least a dozen pro-Trump videos in my For You timeline since I joined TikTok a few weeks ago. Haven't seen any dissenting views or posts, and I have stayed away from politics myself.
Actually, replace with 'google'. Facebook did say they would permit political advertising without fact checking. Whereas google said they would enforce factualness
Facebook will let you broadcast lies in secret (ie targeted at specific small groups so you and I don't know what lies are being told) just so long as you pay facebook to propagate those lies. Nazi party propaganda targeted at those showing mental health problems, sure, just pay facebook and they'll do that for you. They've said so.
I really think this is the right way to think about what facebook are and what they do.
TikTok has already been surviving it for 3 years. In China the short video battle already happened and Douyin (TikTok) came out the victor. Kuaishou is still around in rural areas and amongst the working class, but Douyin is king.
Twitter has got to be kicking themselves that they had Vine and didn't do anything with it.
I fail to see why every platform has to become a fucking idealogical battleground. If I’m in the market for a social network myself (HN notwithstanding) I’d probably choose a politics-free one if possible.
Did you just call Hacker News apolitical? I feel even Reddit is better when coming to political debates because on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns to your political ideology.
On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable. It doesn’t matter if the view was free from strong language, it will be treated like it contains strong language.
At least on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns with your political and ideological views. Unlike here where you have to understand that your political views will be suppressed if it doesn’t align to the majority.
Every social network has a political agenda. If you don’t notice that agenda, know that it is because it aligns with your own political agenda.
> avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative
Comments on most topics skew negative. If you agree with something, that's not much reason to comment, but if you disagree, one angry comment coming straight up. That's not limited to the geographical regions you list; most threads on those have a subthread devolve into a discussion of US politics at some point.
> and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable.
The comments that get downvoted until they become unreadable are mostly dissenting, but that doesn't mean dissenting views collect more downvotes than upvotes on average. When dang bans someone for making a single-purpose account for ideological battle, they usually have positive karma, often in the hundreds: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
>On HN, if you are from China, India, Russia, African country, the best thing you can do is to avoid articles about those geographical locations because comments will be mostly negative and any dissenting view will be downvoted until it becomes unreadable.
I agree that downvoting for disagreement is bad, but have you considered you might simply be wrong? I strain to believe that anybody attacked you simply for being from Russia/China/Africa/whatever. They are attacking the regimes of those countries, not their population. These are two distinct things, and it's ridiculous to think that disliking a dictatorial government somehow means hostility towards the people themselves.
Uh-oh sorry the distinction is so not obvious in many thread. Consider some meme of the following: “We shouldn’t do any business with China and we should even sanction them. Do not buy anything Chinese made. Oh btw Chinese people it’s not against you guys just your government. I’m sorry if you don’t get any benefit or lose your income source”
In what universe does those views not mean hostility towards the people themselves. If you say that to any Native Chinese they’ll tell you it’s bullshit.
Nonetheless, when defending the CCP, one is often wrong. CCP literally has rape-and-torture camps where people die suspiciously and graciously donate their organs.
With regard to african countries, it kinda matters which ones you're talking about: there's a world of difference between the DRC and Ghana.
My comment is on andrepd's meta topic of: “I don't like that HNers tend to focus on negative or critical things about China, Russia, or Africa when these topics arise.”.
My comment is "new" in that, in this thread, what I've said was not yet said in response to this specific complaint. My comment is related to the thread, and not generic (it mentions the characters introduced by the parent thread [China, Africa, criticism thereof] by name). My basic point is that it's not surprising that HNers recall an apparent genocide in progress when talking about its location.
I have read those guidelines front to back at least ten times, Dan. I still can't predict how to predict what passes and what doesn't.
When people hurl personal abuse at me; they emerge unscathed.
When I criticize a political party's policy of genocidal prison camps, without criticizing any nation/people; it's deemed to contribute to "nationalistic flamewar". I take special care not to make a value judgement about any nations, and it's deemed to contribute to "nationalistic flamewar".
Strictly speaking, given that most things that people do occur inside, or relating to, nations: what criticism or affirmation of anything doesn't contribute to "nationalistic flamewar"?
I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond to this in depth. I hear the questions. There just isn't always time to give an in-depth response everywhere. You're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com, as long as you don't mind unpredictable response latencies.
I feel a downvote must only be used for a comment that has vulgar, strong language or anything that isn’t in the good spirit of a good debate. Downvotes must be used only to flag comments violating guidelines, not as a way to silence those who share differing views. If you disagree, write a comment. I realised most people use downvotes powers to silence those who disagree with them.
There's a flag button to flag comments violating guidelines, which actually silences people (unless you have showdead on). That downvotes exist as a separate, more easily accessible feature is a strong suggestion that they're intended to be used for more than just rule-violations.
I excluded Hacker News from social networks I'm in the market for. HN is political as hell, and yes, whenever I make a niche (on HN) political comment I'm always prepared to burn karma.
Thanks for clarifying. I am in the same boat. Whenever I go against ideologies of HN, I am always prepared to lose some karma also. I refuse to use a throwaway account.
As it should be. Politics done right means we can agree or disagree with each other, but otherwise still coexist in peace. As for burning karma, you can lose it when arguing either way, and in my experience, whether you lose or gain points depends primarily on a) the quality of your comment (as separate from contents), and b) whether it's the US or Europe that's awake at the time you post it.
What I like on HN is that, unlike some other communities I've observed, you can still gain votes when reasonably arguing on either side of the issue. The hive mind isn't as strong yet to defy all reason.
Eh. I commented that "Chinese people are people too" the other day and got pretty heavily downvoted.
Are those downvoters expressing a reasoned belief that Chinese people aren't people? Or are they just reduced to a set of tribal motor reflexes with up and down arrows?
I'm actually kinda hoping it's the 2nd one rather than the first.
Oh come on now - don't pretend that comment was some neutral statement of fact. It was a clear implication of moral failure in your opponent's argument. And it's not really persuasive to then double down on a false dilemma (is my out-group evil, or just stupid?).
I said "can", not "you always do". That said, context matters, and in the wrong context, a terse factual statement will be taken by almost everyone at anything but face value.
I think there are some fairly minor functional changes that could be made to HN in order to address this problem. At very least it should not be possible to downvote a comment without replying or upvoting a reply.
If it's against the rules, flag it. If it's against your view of the facts, refute it.
I can tolerate HN's political stance because it fits into a predictable larger story. American tech company is obviously going to be very pro certain topics and against others. That's predictable and reliable.
The subreddit tyranny of anonymous moderators and punishingly overwrought hivemind is a less pleasant experience. Combine that with more extreme content in general than HN and it feels fundamentally less trustworthy and more manipulative.
This part made me to ask that question -> “HN notwithstanding”. it made me think he is excluding Hacker News from Ideologically/politically biased social networks.
Respectfully disagree about Reddit. I am not at all ideologically aligned with HN people, but somehow the ones I'm supposed to be aligned with on Reddit are so much more annoying, because of all the reasons that I usually critique as facile: echo chambers, complete lack of anything resembling objectivity, etc.
>At least on Reddit you can find a subreddit that aligns with your political and ideological views. Unlike here where you have to understand that your political views will be suppressed if it doesn’t align to the majority.
Maybe I'm seeing different things than you are, but when I see "alternative" view points being downvoted, it's not because their viewpoints are "wrong" it's cause the comment is pure shit, and contains logical fallacies and personal attacks out the wazoo.
This particular comment wags a finger at the community, and is essentially making the point that "nobody here listens to alternative viewpoints, and if you disagree with my comment, it's cause your own political agenda is biasing you." It basically dismisses offhand anyone who isn't completely on board with its ideology:
>Unlike here where you have to understand that your political views will be suppressed if it doesn’t align to the majority... If you don’t notice that agenda, know that it is because it aligns with your own political agenda.
I mean look at how the comment starts:
>Did you just call Hacker News apolitical?
Yes. We all read it. This whole, "your comment is so absurd that I have to question it," is condescending bullshit. Not everyone comes into the discussion with the same context as you, and condescending to people who may not see the world the same as you in this way turns off a lot of people here who are trying to be open minded to other view points.
You definitely get dinged a _point or two_ of karma when you have radical viewpoints (anyone who comments here knows this). But huge downvotes turning the comment invisible come when the comment is trash, not when the message is just so offensive to the community that everyone has to silence it.
> Not everyone comes into the discussion with the same context as you, and condescending to people who may not see the world the same as you in this way turns off a lot of people here who are trying to be open minded to other view points.
I’ve definitely seen people trying to share context, and they are called government-sponsored trolls by some and downvoted to oblivion. Then they get frustrated and make more sour/coarse comments and now they’re accused of not sharing context. It’s a negative feedback loop.
Just because you may not have engaged in it doesn’t mean certain opinions aren’t suppressed. (Now some will tell me those opinions are simply wrong and deserve to be suppressed. To which I have no answer. You can’t convince someone who’s already made up their mind.)
I’m not directly using TikTok but r/TikTokCringe is one of my favorite. People just seem to have fun and share their videos, it’s so lighthearted and refreshing.
The "there's no such thing as apolitical, apolitical = supporting status quo" meme needs to die. It's just a slightly smarter-sounding variant of "if you're not with us, you're against us". It purposefully conflates two groups of people - people who don't engage with an issue because they like the status quo, and people who don't engage with an issue because (within reasonable bounds) they don't care which side wins. For any given issue, the latter group is usually the majority of the population - and conflating them with status quo supporters is just a malicious attempt at recruiting people for your cause.
Think of it this way: under this view, McDonald's is supporting the status quo on $whatever-issue, because it does not give out political pamphlets with Big Macs. Sitting in a toilet alone and thinking is supporting the status quo, because it does not enable others to voice their view. Etc.
I think the problem here is that you're not seeing that 'politics' encompasses an incredibly broad spectrum of things, and the only time that something is labeled 'political' is when it reaches a certain level of controversial for the relevant society.
For example, selling a hamburger would have been an obviously political act in the Soviet Union. We don't see it as such because vanishingly few people believe that commercial transactions between private parties should be forbidden. But whenever someone advertises a hamburger, depicts the purchase of one, or leaves a review of one on a website, they are engaging in an act that we only view as apolitical because of the status quo that we inhabit.
I do see "that 'politics' encompasses an incredibly broad spectrum of things", but I also see the motte-and-bailey argument being presented. The "politics" of everyday life is quite a different thing from the "politics" we're talking here.
RE your hamburger example, yes, it's apolitical within the context of society where hamburgers aren't political. Free trade or democracy isn't required, a hypothetical restaurant in the Soviet Union wouldn't have a problem selling grilled chicken breast. And if ever the Party decided that grilled chicken is a symbol of capitalism and therefore banned, the restaurant would just switch to serving fried chicken, or something else. Living in the status quo is not the same as endorsing it.
To me, the "not fighting status quo = supporting status quo" view is anathema to civilization. It's the peace-time equivalent of treating civilians as enemy combatants just because they live in the country you're at war with. It's an attempt to get other people to fight in your war, and suffer the collateral damage for you, and most people rightfully oppose it. If you want someone to support your cause, your strategy should be arguing that your cause is just - and not trying to get them to switch by making them believe not supporting you means supporting the enemy.
I don't buy it. There are certainly times when things get politicized; when circumstances or culture invest things with political connotations they wouldn't ordinarily have. But the normal concept of "political" is, like, rants about how suchandsuch politician is evil or suchandsuch party is stupid. I'm confident most people in any culture could identify the difference between that and selling a hamburger.
Yes, being politically active all the time is not something we generally expect from most people / companies. Especially of the latter, since after all, their primary reason of existence is to make money for the investors.
> don't care which side wins
This is a valid political position. Probably the one I'd take for most realpolitik of small incremental changes based on occurring issues. But also one hard to justify in divisive times with diametrically opposed sides becoming highly popular, thus those extremes having an increasing chance to actually & drastically affect our lives.
That is, obviously, only if you live in a democracy were shaping politics is one of our civic duties. By the way, that doesn't mean everyone has to become experts in lots of topics. Delegating this is quite the responsibility as well.
> But also one hard to justify in divisive times with diametrically opposed sides becoming highly popular, thus those extremes having an increasing chance to actually & drastically affect our lives.
I think it's especially easy to justify in our times, and it's arguably the sane position to take. Polarization and extremism we see in politics today is dangerous to society and democracy itself. Disengaging from various small changes that are orthogonal to you and your community is advisable, because the cost of engaging is increasingly the deterioration of individual relations with people. It's blowing up your own country from the inside.
A lot of political disengagement, including my own, boils down to this: we don't want to fight someone else's war, and we'd preferably like they didn't fight that war, because all this fighting claims a lot of collateral damage.
> By the way, that doesn't mean everyone has to become experts in lots of topics. Delegating this is quite the responsibility as well.
Delegating in modern democracies is actually one of the reasons people disengage even when they do have a stake or opinion on the topic. It's very hard to make any impact on an individual issue (not "it takes some effort hard", but closer to "winning gold on national championship" hard).
Say, for example, that I want my country to invest in nuclear power, or institute carbon taxes (both are things I currently believe in, and to make it less difficult, I'll use "or" in this example, even though I want "and"). There's literally no party in my country I could in good conscience vote for, or work to support. Not a single one. With the one party that seems to share my views on those two topics I have enough disagreements on other things that I feel reluctant to vote for them. And even if I were to put aside our differences for the sake of pushing the two issues I care about, and even if they magically won the next election, I'm very sure (based on historical experience) that they'd successfully change one or two things for the worse (from my POV), while making exactly zero headway on the issues I voted on them for.
I think more people realize this than not, hence the bad election turnouts in most established democracies worldwide. People don't believe their voices will be heard, because there's enough distortion in the middle.
Divisive times will cause damage. Either as the collateral you mentioned when trying to stop it, otherwise when the winning side will change society. Ignoring problems generally increases the damage they cause, so not tackling it earlier might be the bigger fault.
Sure, we can hope this will all blow over, but I don't see reliable mechanisms encouraging this outcome while I really don't want to risk another 1930s germany to repeat itself. Thus I don't see any other way than fighting for (the important parts of) the status quo. Even if it won't be easy.
> Delegating in modern democracies is actually one of the reasons people disengage even when they do have a stake or opinion on the topic.
I was rather talking about using appeals to authority/expertise when forming & defending your opinion. "I'm a for Positions A, B & C cause Person X I respect on some podcast is for it" is fine as defense. You now only have to defend choosing X instead of A, B & C individually.
Yeah, the US two party system seems especially bad. But I'd also look for other factors, since divisiveness seems to generally be on the rise. At least here in germany, with a fresh neo-nazi party worryingly drastically, even with more options available, some of them fitting e.g. your position a lot better than just "left vs right" of the US. Non the less do people still feel ignored and left behind.
Though while looking for more direct counter-examples, the 2019 swiss election does look very similar to their 2007 one. I don't feel confident to form an opinion on that datum alone without knowing the broader context. At the same time, articles about "these places manage to keep their divisiveness in check" would probably not do very well in current media and thus I'd probably not notice them in the first place.
Why do you think so, I am thinking for example of some on topic subreddits like r/DaystromInstitute , any post that would try to go offtopic and politicise stuff will be removed. As a non US citizen it is a breath of fresh air not to have all topics devolve into republicans vs democrats.
IMO if you have rules that current politics is off topic and moderators that can enforce the rules, a community that respects the rules and polices them themselves you can get a clean , on topic, meme free forum.
I also like single issue communities. They are indeed a great escape from broader conflicts and focus on specific interesting stuff. But calling them non-political just because it's not the place to argue about e.g. what politics this community reinforces seems wrong. People should understand those are not places to find a balanced view of the world.
But creating a general virtual spaces for people to "live" in while banning discussing on one of the most important aspect of coexisting? This will hardly result in a free society of equally empowered individuals.
What I want is not to get politics showed in my face especially if is something I don't care about. If there is an election coming in my country and I intend to vote then I will probably find all the dirty stuff about the politicans from TV,relatives and friends.
The only thing I am against is if a group creates a forum and they ban of topic and inflammatory topics to be accused of censorship if we down vote or ban off topic politics comments.
I believe the idea underlying what he said is that everything is political. If I am wrong I apologize. It's an extension of the 1960s revolution of "the personal is political."
To expound: everything is political in the sense that any action we take or decision we make or conclusion we reach rests on assumptions, norms, and values not everyone would affirm. That is, everything we do is rooted in a contestable point of origin; and since the realm of the contestable is the realm of politics, everything is political.
> any action we take or decision we make or conclusion we reach rests on assumptions, norms, and values not everyone would affirm. That is, everything we do is rooted in a contestable point of origin; and since the realm of the contestable is the realm of politics, everything is political.
The theory that everything is political may be right on a global scale but it only works locally if you let it: Have house rules that ban contesting and the contestable realm is elsewhere (even if it might debate what's going on at your place) and with it the political.
Seems like TikTok is aiming for precisely that. Let's see how it goes.
Not true. For instance it’s pretty easy to create a programming language forum that bans all off-topic content, including identity politics in programming, workplace politics, etc.
Unless you believe in the bullshit that is the absence of X == automatically siding what whatever X considers its opponent (usually “the establishment” or “the status quo”) at that moment in time.
So let's say you have a forum that completely bans all off-topic discussion.
What happens when a prominent user experiences something negative? Like for example they die, or face harassment from people either inside or outside the community. Do you ban them for breaking the cardinal rule, or allow your forum to become political?
It's not at all easy to create a forum that bans all off topic discussion. I've ran smaller forums before. If you honestly think you can do better then by all means, give it a try. You'll quickly realize that your users are human, and you'll be forced to make decisions that are intrinsically political.
Thee is no such thing as a forum that can avoid political discussion. Just one that aligns with your beliefs.
I’ve been in a managing position of a small forum (around a hundred active members at a time, plus a few thousand lurking members) before. We remove off-topic content but don’t kick anyone other than spammers and outright trolls. There have been some cases of conflict; they were handled privately. Public complaints are not allowed (see “we remove off-topic content”). Members may complain to admins and admins may talk to both sides, but since we don’t kick anyone, the most dire consequences (from us) are that one or both parties get a temp ban from a day to a week if they keep posting complaints or arguing publicly. Most conflicts go away eventually; a few members may have left due to conflicts, but that’s okay, they just blend into the organic churn.
> they die, or face harassment from people either inside or outside the community.
I fail to see why some online admins can stop any of these.
Right and what you've just admitted is that said forum is indeed political. The moderation and admin style is selecting users that best fit into the forum culture. Users leave as a result of either typical churn or because they don't align well with the forum.
Every single forum is going to grow a culture around it consisting of memes, ways of talking, interacting with others etc which are all very political in nature. The fact that you've seen conflicts and have had to resolve them is proof of this. It's just human nature and fits the very definition of politics.
> selecting users that best fit into the forum culture.
Yeah, we select users who can stay on topic and who can contain anger and resolve conflicts like adults (or rather, like decent human beings; we did have teenage users). Not a tough ask, and neither outrageous nor outlandish for a topical forum.
Sure, but in that process you have to make decisions and weigh how to punish users. You have a set of rules and ideals users have to follow, which form the governance structure of your forum.
And the definition of politics is the art or science of governing. Forums operate much like miniature societies with their own laws and best conduct. Forums might be entities targetted towards very specific subjects but that doesn't free them from being political. It just means that the forum is aligned to your specific beliefs.
> And the definition of politics is the art or science of governing.
> It just means that the forum is aligned to your specific beliefs.
Those two statements are using different definitions of the word politics. Carefully enforcing a reasonably bland and objective set of rules is not political by any definition of the term in use by the people you're arguing with here. It only becomes political if the rules themselves take a stance on current social issues.
Of course, using the other definition, the rules themselves are political because somebody could debate them and that would be a form of political action. So you could claim it's not politics free under that definition. But that's not what was actually being discussed here, so it isn't useful in this context.
It is very political because those rules are interpreted and applied to humans. We all use our best judgment to determine how to apply and govern forums we mod or admin.
But what you're doing is conflating 'political' with 'current social issues'. Those are two entirely separate things and while current social issues are political, not everything political relates to current social issues. Forums fit the use of the word political to a tee no matter the definition you use.
Which is really the greater issue I see here on HN and across the various tech communities. As I've mentioned it is impossible for your group to be apolitical because at best that just means you agree with the status quo which is a political stance in itself.
Demanding to discuss politics at all times could be the position of a vocal minority hoping to have disproportionate impact. It is derailing topics and ultimately trolling.
Many food related discussions on reddit ignore both health and animal rights considerations. Would it be appropriate to bring these topics up each time someone posts their burger? Likely not
Just saying the categories are always there. It could be the position of a vocal minority, but also of the government that seeks to change what you are doing politically, or a mass uprising wishing to change what you do.
Control will always exist, so I think it just needs to be integrated into a small order that can be managed, rather than jump into one of the always/never/any categories to stonewall it.
That is false. TikTok is a platform where people upload videos of themselves doing things like lip syncing, dancing, etc. That does not have to turn political at all. Unless you use the good ol' argument that "banning all political discussion is supporting the status quo which is also political"
If you just post some ferrets being cute clips instead of a documentary on why ferrets should/should not be illegal, I’m sure everyone (except those looking to be offended) can have a good time.
Saying this is on the same level as protest videos or political commentary is absurd.
Now, I don’t deny that some people would try to make political statements with plausible deniability. However, if it’s not their intent and their one video gets shadow banned, who cares? If it is, well, they deserved it.
> Ferrets are a weirdly political issue in some areas of the USA.
They're not political except for a select group people who want to make it political. They should not be encouraged or appreciated for trying to push that outlook on others.
I mean, that's literally how politics work. Something isn't political unless people make it political, otherwise it's just the norm of the time.
You could replace [ferrets are] with [gay marriage is] and get the description for any political argument ever. People argue X is political, others argue it isn't political and create a political argument trying to argue it is/is not political. Repeat as nauseam for topic of your choice.
Agreed, but you forget about the (large) group of people who are indifferent to an issue either way and want to be left alone, and the (sometimes even larger) group of people who may have some opinion one way or the other, but don't want to join the fight.
Facebook will probably become like this (moderating proactively rather than reactively) eventually when they become too scared of fines under governments' attempts to regulate it into being good (governments should break it up instead).
"Never before has a platform grown as fast as TikTok" - LOL that's what they all say!! I'm not interested in helping someone build out their AI stuff by freely contributing my data to their platform. But hey highschoolers might ignorantly willing to do so. I am really looking forward to a new technology coming out next year that will give power back to the people rather than a small group of people who think that they know what is best for the masses to see or not see.
Shadow-banning individual posts ("Visible to self") is relatively unusual and acts as a demotivator to publish controversial content because such content doesn't drive engagement, as is actively demoting entire classes of content (like critical commentary on politics) from the start.
This approach seems to help ensure that there won't ever be a subculture on their platform that grows, becomes controversial and at some point considers it their right to use the platform for their controversial content, avoiding all the outrage that late introduction of moderation brings with it. (see Twitter)