Since Musk's acquisition of Twitter, it has increasingly become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote conspiracy theories. And Alex Jones' InfoWars and Elon Musk's Twitter are both likely to show you advertisements for supplements of dubious effectiveness and other generally scammy products.
So on the one hand you had Twitter, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to win the election.
On the other hand you had most other platforms like Reddit, with relatively heavy-handed moderation, where the impression you would have had in the first few days of November is that Trump was probably going to lose the election.
So when you want to make a prior judgement on an extremely consequential outcome, which a posteriori was not even close, and one information ecosystem gives you the right answer, and most of the other information ecosystems give you the wrong answer, which information ecosystems do you classify as "echo chambers"?
It's possible that this was just a fluke, but it should certainly make you update your priors on which ecosystems provide a more representative sample of base reality.
If I confidently declare ahead of time the result of a coin flip, I may turn out to be correct, but my confidence was still unjustified. And furthermore, my getting it right would not necessitate a “fluke”.
I’m on Reddit a fair bit and while it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what I see individually, I don’t have a lot of trouble believing that there was a bias toward a particular desired result. But, I honestly didn’t see much in the way of a bias one way or the other in the expected result. I mostly saw a lot of anxiety over not knowing what result to expect.
I disagree. The media makes it seem like a coin flip, but the prediction markets where people are focused on making money was accurate.
This is compared to the media who are more interested in pushing lies and ideology.
Personally, I don’t care what the “media” was saying. I care what the polling data and the election models based on the polling data were saying. They were saying pretty consistently that this could go either way, but that at the same time the result may not turn out to be actually that close. Those two aren’t incompatible.
If any other profession was as consistently wrong as pollsters are, would they be taken seriously?
I think the main job of pollsters is to provide content for corporate media (the closer the polls the better for attracting eyeballs for advertisers).
And they do this job admirably. It just has nothing to do with the election.
You don’t value polling, ok. No use continuing to go back and forth about it. Instead, maybe you’ll feel like responding to one of the other commenters that replied to you about prediction markets…
Polls are twisted to return falsehoods from gray information. It’s hard to fathom that you don’t notice neither the methods nor the results. It’s a bit like living in Beijin and saying that Tiannenmen is conspirationist storytelling, or a coin flip on whether it happened or not. It did. 100% chance.
“It’s 50% probability. Either it’s true or it isn’t.” — what meddlers pretend when they’re not happy admitting the high probability of their enemy candidate being elected. It wasn’t a coin flip.
Assuming that random factors like "it rained" or "voters got in car accidents and couldn't make it to the polls" aren't a significant factor, there's always a 100% probability of one specific candidate winning since everyone has made up their minds before the day of the election. What polls do is not telling you the real-world probability, it's telling you the likelihood of a given outcome given known data.
Polls always need to be skewed in some way to be accurate, since not everybody will vote. You can't just get a random distribution of the population's preference and assume the more-preferred candidate will win. Polls can never be truly accurate because people will lie about which candidate they're voting for and whether they're planning to vote, and sometimes people who genuinely intended to vote never make it to the polls. There are a huge number of variables to consider when trying to predict the outcome of the election, but it's important enough that it's still worth trying.
The polling was pretty darn close though, overall. Same as in 2016. The thing is, there's enough polls out there that people can pick the outliers and decide themselves into a narrative that makes them feel good.
It's an incredibly small number of voters in the key swing states that actually decide the election. It's under 1% of the voters to swing the election. Winner take all + electoral college will give you that.
Not true. PredictIt was predicting Trump for 3 weeks prior up until 27th where it took a dive. This is likely due to over-reacting to the Puerto Rican island garbage joke at MSG on the 27th. Not saying prediction markets will be perfectly accurate but they will certainly be better than pollsters.
I didn’t say it always predicted Harris the winner. I said that it was predicting her to win just before the election. She was also leading during the entire period between August 17-October 10, and likely somewhat earlier (I can only see the 90-day history on my phone).
The point here is that there is no “the prediction markets” one can speak of as a cohesive unit.
> I’m on Reddit a fair bit and while it’s difficult to know the overall biases of the greater community based on what any one person sees
Left. Censored media leans left. Censored forums, news, communities are censored to give credit to left ideas. Symmetrically, left ideas only thrive by hiding information.
Moderated media leans left. At least some of the reason it ends up that way is that many of the people who violate incredibly reasonable rules are conservative. Certain groups of hard-right people will say some incredibly bigoted shit that's absolutely out of line and makes it impossible to have a civilized conversation, then they complain about getting banned and drag a bunch of moderately-more-reasonable people with them when they leave. Once those people leave, normal everyday non-asshole conservatives realize the platform has less conservative content and leave in search of spaces that they feel respect their viewpoints more. In some cases entire topic-groups get banned (/r/the_donald is a good example) for legitimate reasons that frequently involve a small extremely-active group of members, and the rest of the members will also leave the platform because all they see is that a group they were part of got banned.
People who lean to the left tend to believe that it's bad to do some of the things that get you justifiably banned (such as intentionally using language that demeans people based on immutable traits). Because of this, it's much easier for them to avoid being deplatformed.
Given the large amount of information that Twitter claimed that turned out to be false, one correct claim doesn't really change much. It goes from around 0/1000 correct to 1/1001 correct. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
The vibe on other platforms was that it was going to be close, not that Kamala was going to win, which is the correct even handed judgement, and now all the votes have being counted, was correct.
The idea that I stopped clock is right twice a day but because it's twitter that means it's always right is a bit... come on. Hackernews commenters are supposed to be better than that.
They were censoring leaked pictures of Hunter Biden's penis.
You can't run a service where it shows every single post that someone wants to put up, even if they're "legal". It'd get full of spam, offend everyone so much they leave, or just force everyone to see Hunter Biden's penis.
> it has increasingly become a right wing echo chamber and place to promote conspiracy theories.
In what way? I still only see the very same industry-focused information that I first started using Twitter for. If anything, X has improved in pulling in information from more industry players than I was seeing before, so I consider it to be an even more compelling product now.
But perhaps that same algorithm improvement is what you ultimately mean? As in, that X has become better at finding the information you want to see, so if you have an interest in "right wing" or conspiracy content then it is a greater likelihood of it exposing you to that than the Twitter of yore did?
Interesting that they felt their content added to right wing conspiracies. Good on them for realizing and backing away, I guess, but won't they still feed other platforms? It does not appear that they are willing to halt production on that realization. Not to mention that this encourages others to still share their content on X, defeating the whole intent of no longer posting... The story doesn't add up.
On second thought, this is clearly an advertisement disguised as news trying to latch onto searches for Twitter/X. They are no doubt backing away, but only because nobody wants to read widely published news on X in the first place. X's niche is in providing a place for everyday people to get their own personal news out, like the aforementioned industry practitioners sharing what they are doing in industry.
> Interesting that they felt their content added to right wing conspiracies.
This is not an accurate characterization of The Guardian's reasoning.
> They are no doubt backing away, but only because nobody wants to read widely published news on X in the first place
This is your claim - presented without evidence. You are also making multiple claims, also that The Guardian is publishing (essentially only) news on X and not also reactions, commentary and other content to X.
> X's niche is in providing a place for everyday people to get their own personal news out
The changes in the algorithm seem to have shifted this. News is difficult to convey when an algorithm suppresses it or is drowned out by loud voices. The null hypothesis here would be that X is a place for nothing and beyond that - "maybe, or maybe not". I'm curious what evidence there is for X being an effective vehicle for 'personal' news distribution over time. Without that evidence, we should not accept any such claims.
> This is not an accurate characterization of The Guardian's reasoning.
Go on. There is no logical association with "right wing" conspiracies in their decision unless they believe they are contributing to it. But as they are not backing away from producing the content on the same concern, the association doesn't add up at all.
> This is your claim - presented without evidence.
Of course. That's what a discussion forum is for. If you want someone else's claim naturally you'd go talk to them instead. But as you have chosen to interact with me, logically you are here to hear my claim as I give it.
Is there some additional pertinence to you pointing out the obvious here? Because if so, I am afraid I missed it.
> News is difficult to convey when an algorithm suppresses it or is drowned out by loud voices.
Most importantly, the news is difficult to convey when the users aren't there for news from a news organization. Let's face it, X is not well suited to conveying long format news in the first place. While the character limit isn't what it once was, the entire format of the service remains not particularly amenable to that kind of content. It is really only good for individuals sharing small tidbits of information, like something they did at work.
There are much better services for news publishers. That is where the users are. That is where publisher effort is going to be best spent. Of course you are not going to waste your time posting news on X for that reason.
>There is no logical association with "right wing" conspiracies in their decision unless they believe they are contributing to it.
>but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise... (from your child comment)
One can choose to leave a group/platform/party without believing they are contributing to the negative direction the group has taken. If I go to a social club and find that new leadership and new members changed the focus from sports to anti-immigration, I might not want to be associated with them anymore. That has nothing to do with feeling like I was "feeding it" or "contributing" to it.
> One can choose to leave a group/platform/party without believing they are contributing to the negative direction the group has taken.
It is true that one can make up any arbitrary reason for leaving, sure. They could have also said they decided to leave because the moon crossed into their zodiac. But when you get down to it, that's never actually the reason.
Undoubtedly the real story is that there is no compelling economic reason to post on X. It is not a service for long-form news content. Nobody goes there to read that kind of content. It is like trying to post cat photos on HN. Soon you're going to realize that you are wasting your time. There are places for cat photos, as there are places for long-form new content, but HN and X, respectively, are not it.
> If I go to a social club and find that new leadership and new members changed the focus from sports to anti-immigration, I might not want to be associated with them anymore.
With material impact, perhaps. But posting on X is a solitary activity. This is more like giving up on Solitaire because you thought the Queen of Hearts looked at you funny. Which, no matter how much you claim it to be, doesn't make much sense. More likely you were just bored of the game and made up an expiation to not have to admit that you were bored.
"X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse." [1]
"Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences but at this point X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there" [1]
> There is no logical association with "right wing" conspiracies in their decision unless they believe they are contributing to it.
Could you define more precisely what you mean by "contributing to it?" I think my understanding there might differ from what you meant. I don't want to talk past nor at you.
> Of course. That's what a discussion forum is for. If you want someone else's claim naturally you'd go talk to them instead. But as you have chosen to interact with me, logically you are here to hear my claim as I give it.
Hacker news discussion has a culture of discussions based on supported claims. Unsupported claims are often challenged as being unsupported. The culture war topics often degrade as it gets more of the Reddit & X style crowds that are more interested in winning discussions rather than having discussions. I believe the culture of hacker news in this regard sets it apart. In essence, this guideline: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
> Is there some additional pertinence to you pointing out the obvious here? Because if so, I am afraid I missed it.
I want to drill into the substance of your claim, and/or better understand it. I think my first interpretation might have actually been off-base. (So please, do define better what you mean by "contributing to it.")
> Most importantly, the news is difficult to convey when the users aren't there for news from a news organization. Let's face it, X is not well suited to conveying long format news in the first place.
I largely agree and is a major criticism I have X and lots of social media (eg: reddit, facebook, instagram). I would go further and say that none of those forums are all that well suited for sharing truth, nor discovering truth. I am passionate about truth (it is why I love math, logic, science & programming so much. There is very little in life that is black & white, true or false, correct or wrong.)
> It is really only good for individuals sharing small tidbits of information
I agree. On the other side of the coin, tidbits of misinformation too. The culture on X I do not believe is to reward sharing true viewpoints. Instead, dunking & hot-takes are rewarded (AFAIK, my impression, particularly so for Reddit as well).
> "X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse."
That may be true, but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise...
> "X has become a cesspool, our work no longer belongs there."
That doesn't really make any sense, but even if we accept the irrationality of it, they claim to still want others to share their content on X, so apparently their work does belong there. A curious contradiction.
> The culture of hacker news is to present evidences based discussion. Unsupported claims are challenged, very frequently with "citation needed." This is something that sets hacker news commentary apart from Reddit or X.*
I have to disagree. "Citation needed" is stupid Reddit nonsense (that sometimes creeps into HN, but thankfully infrequently; it is not acceptable behaviour). On Hacker News, there is an expecting of being smart enough to carry on your own conversation using your own words without needing to outsource to an arbitrary third-party. If bringing in data helps with your comment, so be it, but if all you can offer is something like "citation needed", you contribute nothing and are participating in anti-social, bad-faith behaviour.
Logically, if a comment is so poorly prepared that you can't figure it out on its own standing, you either:
1. Work with the author in good faith to understand what they are trying to say. If you find value in reaching for external resources to accomplish that, then fine. Offering something like "XYZ says this, which contradicts what I think you are trying to say. Was that your intent?" would be reasonable, but "Go do my homework for me!" is uncalled for.
2. Accept it as a lost cause and ignore it. Those who cannot string a worthwhile post together will soon grow bored with being ignored and leave. Don't feed the trolls, as they say.
> "X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse."
>> That may be true, but irrelevant to the Guardian – unless they feel they are feeding it. That would deserve action, but otherwise...
To be clear, the first quote is a direct quote from the Guardian article. Not my words. Does that change your response? I suspect it would, since their words would seemingly not be "irrelevent to the Guardian."
> I have to disagree. "Citation needed" is stupid Reddit nonsense
Interesting. My perspective is that this is more a wikipedia phenomenon. Reddit enjoys responses like "Sir, this is a Wendy's." The HN guideline that discussions should get more substantive I think means discussions should become more grounded in facts as claims are challenged and discussed.
> On Hacker News, there is an expecting of being smart enough to carry on your own conversation using your own words without needing to outsource to an arbitrary third-party.
Can you link this expectation back to the discussion guidelines? The first part of what you wrote here I could be convinced of. The second part, the "needing to outsource" part, I disagree with. Either a person on HN is an expert in the field, and if not, they should very much "outsource" their claims (AKA provide evidence) to show that those claims are supported and are not just random thoughts. Random thoughts are not truth, our perception and gut instincts are often wrong. What we think is generally kinda worthless, what we know via data & facts OTOH is information.
> but if all you can offer is something like "citation needed", you contribute nothing and are participating in anti-social, bad-faith behaviour.
If someone is making claims that are unsupported, potentially incorrect. Is pointing that out and asking for the basis of the claim completely without value? I agree it is a bit anti-social, but this is not improv where the best response is "yes, and...". In contrast, the alternative is to let bad info just sit, unchallenged, and IMO be perpetuated. So, is there no value in saying "hey, wait a minute, there is no data to support your claims; please back up and give that data, or make it clear that you're spouting pure opinion." We disagree seemingly that HN comments is a place for pure opinions (which is okay to disagree).
> Accept it as a lost cause and ignore it. Those who cannot string a worthwhile post together will soon grow bored with being ignored and leave. Don't feed the trolls, as they say.
Interesting. My view is there are plenty of trolls, they are legion, and they can "win" through sock puppetry and sheer volume. For example, this article is about The Onion & Infowars, yet most of the discussion is back to X. Most HN discussion of Elon Musk usually go off-topic and become dominated by very tired and familiar discussions. In part, it is not about the trolls but the other readers. It is clear when people cannot support their claims vs when they can.
> (Why did you remove the rest?)
My apologies. I was hoping you would not react quite so quickly. After getting a coffee, I think I may have profoundly misunderstood what you wrote and deleted my first response. The second response needed a little cleaning up to read well (my intent was not to alter the substance, but enhance clarity).
No. It was understood to be of their origin. But X being a toxic platform has no bearing on the content The Guardian might post, unless they think their content is also toxic. Recognizing that would justify no longer posting toxic content, sure, but otherwise there is no reason to stop posting.
I mean, aside from the obvious: That nobody is reading the content anyway, not fitting X's niche on the internet, so it is a waste of resources to post. I can understand why they are no longer going to do so. Frankly, I'm surprised they ever did.
> My perspective is that this is more a wikipedia phenomenon.
That is where it originated, as far as I know, yes. But it actually serves a purpose there as collecting quotes around a subject is what that service is largely about, and quotes benefit from citations.
But if you are writing comments on HN made up of quotes from others, why...? Why not let the authors of those quotes speak for themselves? This is, as far as I can tell, not a wiki, it is a discussion forum. Do you disagree? Surely we're here to read what the first person has to say? If I want to have a discussion with a third-party, I'll go talk to them instead. No need for a pointless middleman.
Furthermore, a citation by its very nature requires a quote, but any time I have seen "citation needed" here a quote is nowhere to be found. The HN comment being replied to with that saying is literally the citation! So, not only is it in bad faith, it doesn't even make sense. Fine for a tired Reddit meme, I guess, but has no place on HN.
> Can you link this expectation back to the discussion guidelines?
I don't know. I'm not about to read it. It has no relevance here. The expectations of a service like this come from the users, not some arbitrary guideline document.
Do you want this service to be anything else? Surely we don't need another Wikipedia? I, for one, come to HN because users here actually know things and are willing to talk about it. They don't have to rely on some other person to feed them information. That's the value proposition.
Wikis are fine for what they are, but Wikipedia is right there. Do we really need another one? I say no, but if you think otherwise?
> My view is there are plenty of trolls, they are legion, and they can "win" through sock puppetry and sheer volume.
They only "win" if you react to them. That's what they are here for: Attention. Ignore it and they'll quit wasting their time.
I mean, think about it: If you kept posting and nobody ever replied or pressed one of the vote buttons, wouldn't you get bored of being here too? You may as well write in a private journal if you want to write for no audience. The value over and above a private journal is the audience.
One thing is for certain: You are not going to chase them away with "citation needed".
I again appreciate the respectful dialog, thank you. I think we might be coming close to talking in circles though and would do well to wrap up soon.
I want to emphasize a bit up front that (after having sat on it a bit), I really reject the framing of "outsourcing" thought when giving citations. 'Sourcing' is giving evidence to why a thought might be correct, without it - it's navel gazing, frankly worthless. I go into a bit more detail later in the below responses.
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> I mean, aside from the obvious: That nobody is reading the content anyway
I find that quite doubtful. X does have a large user-base. I suspect the number was tens of thousands (but I don't rightly know).
> But if you are writing comments on HN made up of quotes from others, why...? Why not let the authors of those quotes speak for themselves?
The authors are not omnipresent and clearly won't respond to every random discussion forum. On the other side of the coin, personal opinions are not worth a lot - particularly here on HN.
Which reminds me of your "outsourcing" framing". Backing statements with facts and data is not outsourcing, but instead it is evidence, data, reason. When a person is forced to provide data, to think about why they think they know things - two things happen: 1) quality of statements relative to being truthful goes up (ie: you say more things that are actually true). 2) you realize how much you think you know turns out to be completely wrong, that without data or evidence, you're probably wrong and don't actually know (ie: we think we know a whole hell of a lot more than we actually do, and we are wrong quite often when speaking without facts and without data).
This is something I learned very deeply at Amazon, a place with a culture that is data driven to the max. The saying is there are only three answers at Amazon: "(1) Yes, because of this data. (2) No, because of this data. (3) I don't know, I will get data for that soon."
Working in programming, at those jobs, just stating stuff and being right 90% of the time gets you fired. You have to provide data & reasoning why you think something is true. You can't rely on just how you feel or your intuition. The latter is a poor methodology for finding truth. It goes to why we use science to find truth and not intuition. Science is a powerful way to find truth, intuition is not. We can see what science has done for the last 200 years, vs intuition that turns out to be wrong so often (but seemed like it must have been right).
> not a wiki, it is a discussion forum. Do you disagree?
To my previous point, discussions not grounded in truth are largely going to be incorrect, navel gazing. Having a reasoned discussion is different from a wiki. A person is able to very well make multiple points, backed my multiple sources to provide well founded conclusions. It is the difference of talking to a scientist vs someone else that spouts a series of unfounded conclusions. Now, we don't all have to be 'scientists', but we can use the same methodology to support what we say. Even experts would provide citations of why they think certain things - their benefit is largely that they have already read most of the material and can draw from a much larger knowledge base to connect facts together. In contrast the lay person needs to be concerned of the Dunning-Kruger effect and would do well to remind themselves they are approaching a topic as a novice.
> If I want to have a discussion with a third-party,
Except you're not. It is akin to me saying 'I am saying X, because of Y data and Z reasoning'. That gives a much greater probability of actually saying something meaningful. Rather than simply saying "X" without reasoning. As I mentioned earlier, without any type of backing, that is truthiness, not truth. It goes to methodology of deciding what is correct.
> Furthermore, a citation by its very nature requires a quote
People often give a link to where data comes from, or where a conclusion comes from without a direct quote. There is risk of mischaracterizing the source, but no direct quote can be needed when the conclusions or data from a source are amalgamated. Sometimes a person can give multiple sources to back up a single statement. I don't agree to this framing.
> "citation needed" here a quote is nowhere to be found
This is bad framing. 'citation needed' is another way to ask for evidence, data - more than just an opinion that is based on what you think and feel. It is an ask to move away from truthiness, to truth. It is a way of saying "that is your opinion, please provide data so we can decide if there is a basis in reality, or if you are just communicating your own truthiness."
> Fine for a tired Reddit meme
I have never seen that as a reddit meme, and have an opposite perspective. I've found the bar for truth on reddit is essentially non-existent, nobody cares about evidence there (my impression). Reddit is almost more entertainment than it is a place to learn something.
> but has no place on HN
I respectfully disagree, HN asks that we get more substantive when discussions go on. To me, that means the conversations should become more rooted in fact, data & truth - rather than back and forth with more truthiness claims aimed "at each other" rather than discussed with each other.
> I don't know. I'm not about to read it [HN discussion guidelines]. It has no relevance here.
Everyone is expected to read the discussion guidelines before posting here. AFAIK it is asked that you do. The guidelines of the discussion forum where you are discussing are of course relevant.
> The expectations of a service like this come from the users, not some arbitrary guideline document.
Agree on the former, but the latter does follow from the former. The guidelines frame the expectations of users.
This article is actually something to be flagged. The discussion here is largely an aberration. Notice how we have yet to mention once "The Onion" or "Infowars". Overall the article is not a good fit for HN.
> They only "win" if you react to them. That's what they are here for: Attention. Ignore it and they'll quit wasting their time.
In some cases I would agree. In other cases though, trolls seek to dominate conversations. The 'Seattle Times' discussion threads became completely unreadable. Any comment was followed by 30 responses that veered away to some other talking points and was a noise that drowned out all other conversation. I call it akin to an intellectual DDOS. Trolls don't have to be right, just loud in order to dominate the discourse and prevent the truth from being heard by obscuring it in noise. I feel HN is well enough moderated and has a particular community where that is not tolerated and there is therefore often a good bit to learn form the discussion. The discussion is not just noise of people talking at each other, ignoring what the other has written and just waiting to write platitudes and endless truthiness of their perspective.
> I mean, think about it: If you kept posting and nobody ever replied or pressed one of the vote buttons, wouldn't you get bored of being here too?
I can see that as being the case. On the other side, do you not think there are people who are simply ideological? That want to be sure if there is a conversation about a topic that they care about, that they want to be sure the conversation concludes with 'their points', and 'their truthiness?' In a way, it's defending an in-group.
> You are not going to chase them away with "citation needed".
I agree. Though, sometimes conversation threads are not intended solely for the other party. HN is read by many, having read such threads myself as a third party - it becomes clear when one side is talking in bad faith. Not answering questions, not responding to points, not providing data. It reveals their argument to be bad; sometimes that is the strongest form of persuasion IMO when someone is so clearly making bad arguments. Again, the persuasion is not of the troll, or necessarily the other person, but the thousands of readers. Sometimes it's more the readers who are the audience than the intractable mind of someone that is wanting to die on some hill of truthiness without a shred of evidence.
[edits: clarity]
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[edit, added this section]
Now, there are still places where citations are not needed and are useful and interesting for HN IMO. To this extent I think we might agree. Namely when additional perspectives are raised, and questions asked. That is very different from making unbacked claims. It is very easy to change an unbacked claim into a question - and that keeps the dialog more open IMO and away from incorrect rabbit holes. For example: "Nobody reads the Guardian on X", vs "how many readers do you think they engaged with on X? Do we think that was a significant number?" Staying away from assumptions of what you don't actually know I think gives a lot of healthy space in a dialog, so long as the questions don't go into a bad faith & leading territory (eg: gish-galloping).
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[additional edit, added this section]
Backing up a bit - I think The Guardian layed out their motives very clearly. I believe you ascribed additional motive incorrectly. To which my response is: "show us", and otherwise gave key quotes so you can argue with the motive as written by The Guardian itself. Ascribing the additional motive IMO is incorrect and/or borderline conspiracy theory. To which I want to know why you think that, what you are basing those beliefs on. That is why a response that was largely just quotes from The Guardian was appropriate, it was a "here are their words, here is their exact reasoning."
On further reflection, I don't think I liked some of the examples I gave. I'll finish with stating that those making claims should be expected to also provide evidence for those claims. Otherwise, it is truthiness. Going back to the original disagreement, I see no reason to not take The Guardian's word for their motivation, it seemed clear - and I see no reason to ascribe an ulterior motive (at least without providing evidence for it).
Implying that is how people use X? Continually creating new burner accounts, not giving "the algorithm" what it needs to provide what they really want to see? Seems unlikely.
I suspect those who complain it is a "right wing" echo chamber are using longstanding accounts and actually engaging with "right wing" content, which trains "the algorithm" of their preference to see more of the same. Anecdotally, those I know who complain of "right wing" echo chambers are also the first people to gorge on "right wing" media to see what "they" are up to.
If you use lists, then you probably won't notice that much. However if your looking at the "for you" page, shits just kept on getting more extreme. Just wildly off the deepend scams or abuse.
Before you could just filter out that stuff as it was fairly rare. but its just everywhere.
> However if your looking at the "for you" page, shits just kept on getting more extreme.
That's all I ever read. I only follow a small number of people who produce high quality content related to my industry, though. Perhaps that is what primes the "For You" page to say within the same realm and not go off the rails as you suggest?
I'm sure you are right that garbage in, garbage out applies. But why feed it garbage?
I think the issue is that I follow people who had diverse opinions that were different to mine, from across the spectrum.
In the old times, you could see _why_ a tweet appeared in the stream (as in x follows, y liked, z replied) so curation could happen. But that's gone because musk finally figured out that him liking porn tweets was public.
Before I could say "I don't like edgelord content" and that class of tweet disappeared.
Hence the utility of lists for me. It allows me to follow people who regularly like content that I hate, but allows me to see what they tweet.
So, you are indeed right. I think I follow more than one subject, which causes the issue.
I take it that left wingers feel that "community notes" isn't effective or sufficient to combat right wing beliefs that are wrong?
The people on the right seem satisfied for now that they can "combat misinformation with more information". (That's a misquote by the way, I believe he said better information, not more. On second thought, he may have said it both ways.)
Has anyone discussed why the right believes this can work, and the left doesn't?
> believing 2020 was stolen (which is one I'm willing to believe)
Interesting. What forms the basis of your belief?
Personally, I think it’s interesting that over 60 lawsuits were filed across the U.S. to challenge the 2020 result, and not a single one produced any evidence of widespread voter fraud. Even judges appointed by Trump himself agreed that there was no evidence to support the claims. What do you think the simplest explanation for this is?
Well at this point there are two plausible possibilities. 1) The circumstances around covid and last minute election rules changes made it possible to cheat in ways that slide beneath the high evidentiary standards of the courts. Or 2) Joe Biden was by far the most popular presidential candidate in history; easily getting many millions more votes than Barrack Obama, Donald Trump, or Kamala Harris.
Given that we are reliably informed that significant electoral fraud is impossible, we can only conclude the Democrats made a catastrophic own goal by forcing the greatest candidate ever out of the race.
> made it possible to cheat in ways that slide beneath the high evidentiary standards of the courts
But the issue isn't that the evidence didn't meet high standards -- it was that there wasn't any evidence at all. In many cases, the plaintiffs who filed these lawsuits dismissed them voluntarily, not even trying to put forth evidence.
> Or 2) Joe Biden was by far the most popular presidential candidate in history
I think we can all agree that's not the case. But have you considered that voters often turn out to vote against the other party rather than for their own candidate? At the end of 2020, a lot of people were feeling very unhappy with the incumbent administration. In fact, that was true globally -- incumbents fared terribly after the pandemic.
> But the issue isn't that the evidence didn't meet high standards -- it was that there wasn't any evidence at all. In many cases, the plaintiffs who filed these lawsuits dismissed them voluntarily, not even trying to put forth evidence.
Similarly, there is no evidence of shoplifting in San Francisco. Prosecutors don't even bring cases, let alone bring them and then dismiss them voluntarily. Therefore we can clearly conclude there is no shoplifting at all there, let alone shoplifting at a scale that would affect commerce.
So you’re suggesting that Donald Trump and his allies had the same level of disinterest in winning the 2020 election as San Francisco has in prosecuting theft? Huh.
Well because it's obvious and I figured that you're smart enough to see that.
To spell it out for you: the set of evidence that is admissible in court is a tiny fraction of the set of all evidence that exists. Furthermore, the set of evidence that is not only admissible in court, but is actually presented to a court is an even yet tinier proper subset of the admissible evidence.
When you exclude the vast majority of evidence that a thing may be happening, you don't actually have grounds to say that the thing isn't happening.
And you still avoid my question: WHY. Why didn't those litigants even try to proffer evidence? Why does it just so happen that the only evidence available to support these claims is so weak that it's not even worth trying?
I think the reason you keep avoiding my question is that you don't have an answer for it. All I see are repeated trips around a loop of self-reinforcing beliefs that are rooted in nothing. (Or do you even believe this stuff? Here I am trying to understand what's going on in your head, and perhaps you're just going through the motions...)
Anyway, you're wrong about evidence. Most evidence is admissible, especially if it's going before a bench. What the legal process doesn't allow is "evidence" lacking any indicia of trustworthiness. And as to your claim that the evidence "actually presented to a court is an even yet tinier proper subset of the admissible evidence", well, uh, that's entirely up to the litigants themselves. As I've said, if you won't even bother trying to put up your evidence, one has to wonder why.
A third possibility you aren't considering: a lot of Democrats were bored and stuck at home and had nothing better to do, so they voted for Biden in 2020. Come 2024, they had plenty of other things to do than vote, so many of those who had in 2020 decided not to bother.
Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information? Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source. We know policing speech doesn't work, whoever does the policing introduces their own biases, this was clear as day with the hunter laptop story and how the goverment put pressure on social media companies to supress it.
This “sounds smart” and I’m sure it circulates well in conversation. In practice, no. The point of “facts” is to identify useful truths that guide decisions. When some portion of the distribution of people identify misalignment, which is inevitable—not optional—then they will true up.
4 years on and a significant proportion of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen. Just how many years will it take for that to true up?
I notice you don't make a definite claim that it wasn't stolen. You're annoyed by the fact others believe it was, based on what you feel is insufficient evidence, yes?
Surely the burden of proof is on those making a claim of election interference? Elections are designed to be reliable and there haven't been reports of previous elections being "stolen", so I would think that reasonable evidence should be provided if people want to push the idea that an election was interfered with.
There is no burden of proof required to assert a hypothesis. This is how none of truth nor science nor security operate. There is evidence gathering activity which supports or undermines, strengthening or weakening a hypothesis. Ideally, one dispositive form of evidence affirms or denies a hypothesis. It is not difficult to find historical precedent of election fraud, but in any case, other claims are weak evidence.
These are recounts, audits, and security guards. No recounts deviated by that much, even the massive Arizona recount found no significant deviation.
> It is not difficult to find historical precedent of election fraud
Please provide that. The evidence AFAIK is counted as essentially "parts per million", it is so small. Meanwhile there are a variety of safeguards, audits, verifications & recounts.
The null hypothesis in this case I don't believe would be "fraudulent election", so it is a claim.
This is true, if you're billing your hypothesis as a hypothesis. The problem is that prominent Republicans billed their "election was stolen" hypothesis as a fact, claimed to have boatloads of evidence in order to convince the public, and then never published that evidence.
In the aftermath of this clearly deceptive behavior, they've maintained the support of Republican voters who still believe the lie despite none of the evidence ever being released.
It's one thing to claim something is true and that you have evidence, then release the evidence and find out that it's insufficient to win in court. It's another thing entirely to make a claim, say you have overwhelming evidence to support it, and never release any evidence at all. In the former case, maybe you got overzealous or maybe you were dealing with an unsympathetic judge. In the latter, the only rational way to interpret the situation is that you were intentionally misleading your audience.
Why do you say something is treated as fact? For example, are either the ‘cheating’ or ‘no cheating’ hypotheses verifiable in any productive regard? There may be confusion between “absence of evidence” versus “evidence of absence.”
It is absolutely fantastic that this assertion draws ire from those who have no substantial response. It is intended to poke you directly in the eyeballs. That crowd so often favors censorship to protect the same.
If you have a substantial response, cast it forth.
Your claim is not false, but not universally true either, the counter is alex jones, the flat earth movement, religion as well, you can spend nearly an infinity believing in lies. The human brain is quite malleable to lies.
So what? People have the right to be wrong and ignorant. It's far better than having The Ministry of Tru... sorry I mean Disinformation Governance Board. Even if lies spread far and wide they always get exposed eventually. For example consider the Iraq war, a war the american public was rushed into without the free flow of information, something you seem keen on, but now that the public has access to info the same republican base that was in support of the war now hates war hawks like john bolton.
> Even if lies spread far and wide they always get exposed eventually
Eventually, yes, but until it happens, bodies are piling up.
EDIT: Also, FWIW, the truth is often exposed nearly immediately, yet for some people, once they have chosen to believe the lie, they can't be convinced of the truth.
It's well established that adults who read incorrect information frequently don't find out it was wrong and become more skeptical of the source. Some people operate that way, but it's a small minority unfortunately.
In particular, it's been shown that people with dogmatic beliefs strengthen those beliefs when shown evidence to the contrary rather than questioning them.
> Why are we so worried about adults reading incorrect information?
Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
And I imagine the owners of Comet Ping Pong would have greatly preferred that adults didn't read lies about Hillary running a child sex ring in their basement. [0]
Haitian immigrants in Ohio certainly weren't fans of Trump claiming that they're kidnapping and eating pets.
Speech has consequences.
> Once they eventually find the info was wrong they'll be more sceptical of that source.
...have you been living in a cave for the last 10 years? I just can't fathom how someone can be so naive to actually think this.
If there was any truth to this, Infowars would have been damn near been dead on arrival. Fox News would have been bankrupt before Obama even began his second term.
Or maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and operating under the assumption that people will accept when they're wrong.
Sorry but I'm not willing to live in an insane orwellian world just so your grandma gets her vaccine. It's her family's responsiblity to convince her and if she still refuses shes an adult she has the right to refuse treatment and vaccines.
As for libel, it has always existed and always will. There are laws against it to protect people if they suffer any damage from it. It's not without consequences.
What you're proposing is so much worse. Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose. How will you protect yourself from the goverment's false accusations?
> Imagine a tyrant government is after you and has control on information like you propose
You're straw-manning. I never proposed anything like government enforcement against misinformation.
I don't think misinformation should be illegal, for the reasons you touch on: You certainly don't want government deciding the truth.
Who gets to decide what is misinformation is an entirely different issue. But I can at least hope you can agree that misinformation as a concept is unethical, right? People are literally dying because of misinformation. Again, set aside the question of "Well, who decides what is misinformation?" and consider just the mere concept of it.
Hmmm... I really wonder what the said tyrants did when they got into power? Oh that's right they imposed heavy restrictions on speech and all forms of media. And it's not like there was free speech before them, the Weimar republic tried banning them as well. It's almost like challenging ideas and defeating them on an intellectual level is far better than trying to supress them.
... Yeah but they didn't do that before they were in power. They abused misinformation to get to a position to then lock it down. That's indeed what I'm saying.n I'm not disagreeing that they lock it down once in power.
> Because I'd much rather my grandma get a COVID vaccine than trying to find a source of Ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
So the misinformation didn't affect your decision making. Instead, the misinformation you were exposed to was corrected by your exposure to more, better information.
Those are all valid disadvantages of community notes, and free speech in general.
How do you explain that there are smart people who have known about these very disadvantages for many years, and still respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"?
I don't suppose you know of a solution (to a problem that I admit I haven't fully specified) that has no disadvantages. The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
> How do you explain that there are smart people who [..] respond positively to "the solution to misinformation is more/better information"
Someone can be intelligent and still have misplaced hope for humanity to the point where I would consider them to be outright naive.
All it took was an hour or two on social media back in 2020/21. You could easily find someone who insisted that Ivermectin cured COVID, point out tons of studies showing that it's worthless against COVID, and yet they would reject all those studies as lies.
> I don't suppose you know of a solution
Nope. :-(
Kids are taught the scientific method, but that doesn't seem to be enough. They learn enough to pass a test and then forget about it all.
> The proposed solutions I've seen appearing on the left are frightening.
Agreed, though be careful to not read words that aren't there. Elsewhere in this thread, someone accused me of being in favor of government enforcement against free speech despite me saying nothing of the sort. Arguments that misinformation is bad is not an argument that it should be legally enforced!
In other words, yes, some leftists believe that misinformation should be illegal, but not everyone arguing that misinformation is bad is arguing that it should be illegal.
I'm looking back with how much teenage edgelord/ironic/sarcastic speech that was rampant in my youth covered for people who actually held horrible views like white nationalism. I thought it was all just shock humor. I know better now, but I'm worried about that persisting in kids. I think it's always been that way. I don't know how to mitigate it.
I agree with the first part totally, and you're probably right I invented something there. I only meant that free speech / "more information helps" seems to resonate with the right, and censorship seems to resonate with the left. Not so?
Depends what you mean in regards to rewriting. If there's a position that runs counter to our current scientific consensus, I think it should be updated to reflect the current consensus, but when I was reading my history/physics books they would cover what people believed at a particular time period. I don't see any issue with that. We're always learning more about the world around us. We are not an omniscient species.
Unless there's a more specific example you can think of w.r.t rewriting.
Sounds like you haven't heard of the re-writing of books in the interest of over-enthusiastic DEI. There's non-fiction and fiction examples. Salman Rushdie described it as "absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed" [1].
Apparently children's books can't use the word "black" or "white" any more. And in the children's book "Witches", a witch posing as “a cashier in a supermarket” now poses as “a top scientist”. It's blunt-force rewriting by patronising leftists. Witches are not meant to be role models for little girls. It doesn’t matter where they work.
Neither the left nor right are monolithic enough to make those generalizations. The anti-communism suppression of the McCarthy era is a counter-example of that resonance & plenty of left wing examples of the exact idea of "more speech is what is needed to extinguish bad ideas." Those are counter examples to demonstrate it is not a monolithic group in neither time nor space.
Of course it's scalable. Community notes are written by people, so increasing the amount of people writing notes means it's scalable. Users find the added context helpful, so more notes are rated by more people more often. That's the definition of scale.
> the value of it has long since diminished.
No. The note remains forever on the tweet. There is no "diminishing". Anyone who has interacted with that post in the past is notified about the note. Our own Prime Minister here in Australia has had a few of his posts community noted. Politicians love to make bold claims about how awesome they are. They are note magnets. It's not a perfect system, but it's a good system.
> Anyone who has interacted with that post in the past is notified about the note.
Having read or seen a post seems to be the most important part. That is not defined as part of "interacted". AFAIK, most X posts are viewed once and then never viewed again. It is a tiny fraction that actually "interacts" with a post. Hence, the value is diminished since the majority of people that read a post are never informed of the community note.
Per X: "Community Notes sends notifications to everyone who has replied to, Liked or reposted a post after a note starts showing on it." [1]
> It is a tiny fraction that actually "interacts" with a post...Hence, the value is diminished
Are you claiming we're in "information danger" because community notes isn't there to watch people post things in real time? Exactly how much of a pre-school do you want the internet to be? Do you want a school teacher looking over your shoulder as you type?
As you should know, interaction with a post by liking or replying, means the post had the most impression on that reader. The people you're worried about who don't interact, you have zero data on. You don't know whether they disagreed with the post, disbelieved or otherwise unaffected by the post. In fact, we do have some data. The post made such little impression that they didn't bother liking or replying.
People are not damaged goods after reading an untrue post online. The internet contains endless examples of disputed information, corrected only after the first post is read. For example, right here on HN. This place historically contains the following pattern:
"I think X should Y because Z"
Later that day or week, someone counters:
"actually, you haven't considered A or B in your reasoning of Z, which points to Y being inadequate".
In other words, the claim or suggestion that community notes is "diminished" because it isn't correcting misinformation as it spills from our keyboards, is an irrational claim.
The reason it's increasingly an "echo chamber" is because liberals are so offended by actual free speech that they stopped posting there. To blame conservatives for this development is illogical.
Data Shows X Is Suspending Far Fewer Users for Hate Speech
And, finally: Alex Jones was unbanned. That alone is proof of rising support for hate speech. He's literally been proven to be a lying provocateur in court, it doesn't get much clearer than that
