When the western nations got more assertive about regulating the internet then they give ideological justification for more authoritarian governments wanting to do the same. And so the corporations will stop resisting in order to do business with the more authoritarian governments.
No judgement. It's a very difficult situation for all involved which include the governements worried about their citizens information being all in the US, western nations worried about disinformation, and corporations that just want to do business.
Tangent: is it recency bias or some other unstated bias I may be unaware of, that there appears to be an increase in completely reasonable, and in-no-way inflammatory comments being downvoted for no ascertainable reason going on in the last few weeks?
I haven't really noticed an increase, but I've definitely noticed this happening at least over the past year or so. I get the feeling that many people up/down vote based on whether they agree with the comment, rather than whether it's substantive or not. I find myself wanting to do this when I see comments that offend my sensibilities, so I understand the desire. I wish people would stop doing it tho. I think it stifles discussion because most people eventually stop talking.
I frequently see comments where I'm not sure how to vote. Examples:
A) The statements/arguments/facts in your comment are incorrect, but your conclusion is correct based on $something_else.
I don't want to vote up because if someone is factually wrong, or making their argument based on faulty logic, it can dilute a legitimate discussion. But can't deny that I have an emotional desire to vote it up.
B) The statements/arguments/facts in your comment are correct, but your conclusion is incorrect based on $something_else.
I don't want to vote up because someone can have and understand all the facts, but still be wrong. But I also want to encourage a healthy discourse with accurate facts.
C) Although I disagree with your overall conclusion, I think your argument is still worth considering.
I want to vote up, but also down
D) You are technically right, but you are being an asshole.
I want to encourage civil behavior, but if their argument has merit, I don't want to downvote.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: A simple up/down vote is a leaky abstraction. I'm not sure that adding more voting options is a good idea, but I'm also not convinced that a single up/down is good enough.
This also depends on the voting/commenting guidelines of the site you are on, obviously.
I very rarely downvote a comment. I sometimes upvote two comments that disagree with each other because I feel both of them offered interesting evidence or insight.
OTOH, I often upvote comments because they are polite, reasonable and I agree with them. So, in that sense, my use of voting is asymmetric.
Sometimes I think I should downvote more often just to use voting consistently. But, it seems extremely negative to do that to someone.
Someone had an opinion and they expressed it. It can just sit there. Why should I try to suppress it? Maybe other people should be able to see it and react to it?
If my post is an inaccurate or unfair portryal of what Google is doing, Daniel, then perhaps you and your co-workers who have been downvoting (and I assume flagging) me can enlighten me as to what Google's actual goal is here?
You don't know who has been downvoting or flagging, and making insinuations about this is explicitly against the HN guidelines. Trotting out someone's given name in that confrontational way is also a cheap bit of incivility. If you continue to break the site guidelines, we will eventually ban you, so please https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules from now on, regardless of how you feel about Google, China, or any other topic.
So, let's look at this, for example.
You've made a lot of assumptions in this set of two sentences with simply nothing to back them up. That's not helpful or kind, and contributes precisely nothing but noise.
I think what he's really doing is downvoting you and being snarky toward you because you're a Google employee. Maybe what he's doing is immature, but a growing number of people feel that Google is bad for society and that aiding and abetting it is immoral. I know personally I wouldn't work for the Google of today.
I wouldn't either (though not for any of the reasons anyone on this thread have brought up, which are, um, stupid) but we are all required to be civil on this site. Accusing someone of brigading for their employer is uncivil. Also, in this case, stupid.
When the western nations got more assertive about regulating the internet then they give ideological justification for more authoritarian governments wanting to do the same. And so the corporations will stop resisting in order to do business with the more authoritarian governments.
No judgement. It's a very difficult situation for all involved which include the governements worried about their citizens information being all in the US, western nations worried about disinformation, and corporations that just want to do business.