I think without some weight of newsworthiness, this synopsis is incomplete.
It's awesome that a pumpkin patch 2 counties away raised $52.40 but it doesn't serve me as well as learning my legislator passed laws that harm me - in trade for fat campaign donations.
This is a distraction and diversion from the original comment.
Hollywood is not at the scale of the internet. Some privileged people got cancelled in Hollywood, who cares. When a hard working person gets cancelled by saying something stupid, the consequences are back breaking.
While I agree that ordinary people being cancelled for saying something stupid is a bad thing that should be condemned[0], I'll play devil's advocate: however unfair these events may be, are they truly statistically significant? Or is concern about "cancellation" of hard working people itself a moral panic amplified by the nature of modern media?
Sure, we've all heard of donglegate, or about that guy whose hand did an "OK" gesture on his car door and was accused of "far-right" symbolism, or about that teenaged girl who once said the И-word in a video celebrating her driver's licence which resulted in her rejection from university, and many many more. Yes, these things are injustices and they should not happen, and they should be stopped. But on the large scale of things, does saying something stupid really pose a significant risk of disproportionate public shaming to a normal person?
The online hatemob only has so much attention span to dedicate to its latest victim(s), and there is only so much airtime and tweets to be dedicated to the latest outrage. And, in the meantime, hundreds of millions of people live their lives as normal, with more-or-less online presence, saying, doing and posting things which may well be "cancellable" according to this or that neopuritanical value — and yet, nothing happens to them. And this is good.
Don't get me wrong, I do think that fear of "cancellation" inhibiting people's openness to express themselves and their mental well-being is itself problematic, however statistically irrational this fear may be. However, focusing attention on these rare events, even if it is to criticise the phenomenon, may only make the problem worse.
If you'll forgive the somewhat melodramatic analogy, it's a bit like terrorism. Just like disproportionately instilling fear of terrorism only serves to help the terrorists' objective to instil fear, so does disproportionately insisting on the unfairness and disproportionate consequences of "cancel culture" only serve to help the cancellers themselves in their desire to influence society.
[0] For a given meaning of "cancelled" and "saying something stupid", that is.*
I don't think it matters whether its that statistically significant. You can increase expected-value by increasing likelihood of occurrence, or increase the value of the outcome.
Take a loan shark, for example. You don't need to take a leg every time a loan is late. You just need to do it to enough of them, visibly enough, that everyone gets the message -- you can miss a payment, and maybe get away with it... but you also might get seriously fucked up.
And suddenly, no one's missing payments. Because the % chance of failure might be low, but the damage done is dramatically high (potentially infinite, if you escalate from taking legs to taking heads) -- giving you a very a high expected-value.
You only need to expel a few people from society for espousing wrong-think, to get most people to fear speaking wrong (accidentally, or intentionally). And it's perfectly rational.
Regarding terrorism, it's the same thing. You don't need to have that many terrorist events for it to be rational to defend heavily against them -- if they do enough damage (e.g. 9/11), they've made up for their rarity. The problem with defense-against-terrorism is that it's used to justify things that have nothing to do with it, or very weakly related (eg invasion of countries, elimination of security protocols, invasions of privacy, etc) and is used as a scapegoat for all sorts of nefarious activity.
The part that's irrational is not the fear of terrorists, but rather the mindless interpretation of anything that claims to help resolve that fear.
Forget Hollywood. Imagine trying to build the career of your choice as a black person, or a woman or an out gay person in that same era. Society was casually blacklisting the literal majority of Americans from most professional realms.
Yes, but that was the case for most of history, and America (and the world) at the time did it progressively less and less (first the abolition of slavery, then women right to vote, civil rights, de-seggregation, and so on).
Whereas today it's a new phenomenon, that gets progressively worse even though the problems you've mentioned (regarding blacks, women, gays, etc) are at their historical lower point.
So while America was progressing then, this is a regression now.
And it also affects blacks, women, gays, lesbians, republicans, demoracts, old-style lefties, and so on -- all of those categories have had members cancelled or mob-attacked for wrong opinions... (even someone like Dave Chappelle, who is a comedian of all things, has been attacked on such grounds).
> (even someone like Dave Chappelle, who is a comedian of all things, has been attacked on such grounds).
Dave Chappelle, with his recent $8-figure deal with a prominent pop-culture/FAANG company, who keep publishing and promoting his specials, seems like he's actually a counter-argument to your point.
Lot of discussion around here is knee jerk and not nuanced. Criminal law is complex and there are areas where it should be reformed and other areas where we need better enforcement.
Punishment has been shown to be ineffective and ignorant of ancestral/intergenerational trauma being passed epigenetically. This is a way we're societally creating trauma and poisoning our gene pool. It's literally suicidal, from a long-term perspective.
This was the first thing that came up when I searched google for "epigenetic markers of trauma." It highlights childhood trauma. I'll go ahead and note that one aspect of incarceration culture is numerous children losing the presence of a caregiver. This is for sure a traumatic experience for many and a singular way the government is suicidal.
That’s an interesting conclusion to draw. Aren’t the SF DA and SF police in active conflict, with police refusing to respond to lots of issues in protest of the reforms and change in priorities of the DA’s office that they disagree with?
> Aren’t the SF DA and SF police in active conflict, with police refusing to respond to lots of issues in protest of the reforms and change in priorities of the DA’s office that they disagree with?
No. The DA has made it clear that he will not prosecute these cases, period. Trying to change the subject to "well, don't the police disagree with the no-prosecute policy? And due to this disagreement are they not creating the crimes?" is not a logical response to the situation.
The crimes are increasing because the perps know they wont get prosecuted. How the police feel about it is not a factor.
The DA has said they won’t prosecute quality of life crimes. The police are choosing to not respond to smaller scale crime. This is a PR battle between the police Union and the DA.
Yes, the DA did say that. But that is not the only thing he said. He also said he would not prosecute property crimes, because they were due to "poverty".
When 84 year old Vicha Ratanapakdeen was killed by Antoine Watson, who was sitting in his BMW when he noticed Vicha, ran up behind him and assaulted him, and then ran back to his car. After he got back to his car, he saw Vicha wasn't moving, so he ran over to the body and did a touchdown dance over it and took a selfie of himself in front of the body with his cellphone. Boudin said this was "a temper tantrum" and shouldn't be prosecuted as a hate crime. Vicha's girlfriend, who was sitting in passenger seat the whole time, was not charged with anything at all, even though she was arrested as an accessory after the fact.
He also released a car thief named Troy McAlister who had 73 felonies and 32 misdemeanors just in San Francisco, and when later McAllister stole another car, ran a red light, and killed two people, he refused to add any vehicular manslaughter charges to the indictment, charging Troy only with unlawful driving and other lesser charges.
His office also tried only 23 cases during his tenure. During the same period, the police referred over 6000 cases to his office.
His office also has a 40% dismissal rate even for those charges that have been brought to him.
When Jerry Lyons was arrested for stealing a car -- I guess that's just a "quality of life" crime -- Boudin refused to prosecute. Six months later, Lyons stole another car, caused an 8 car pileup, and ran into Sheria Musyoka, killing her.
When Tyjone Flournoy was arrested for murdering Ronisha Cook, Boudin also refused to prosecute, saying he needed "more information". A few months later Tyjone murdered another man, trying to steal his camera.
When Teaunte Bailey was arrested for child endagerment, robbery, and destroying evidence, Boudin also said "there wasn't enough evidence" and released him. A month later, Bailey murdered 75 year old Pak Ho.
When Ali Mustafa Hudson was arrested for robbery, Boudin instead of charging him actually had him transported to a different county where he was wanted on a lesser crime that would not require holding him in detention. Hudson then murdered his mother in Sacramento and wounded a deputy in a police in a shootout.
After 22 year old King John Baylon kidnapped 13 year old Sienna Carter and was arrested for kidnapping, possession of child pornography, and human trafficking, Boudin released him with zero bond. Babylon is now sitting in Jail in LA on a charge of causing great bodily injury.
When Zion Young was arrested with 11 firearm felonies, Boudin reduced that to a misdemeanor and released him. Three months later Young murdered Kelvin Chew as he was walking in the park.
He also pled down Stephanie Ching and her Douglas Lomas that had the dismembered remains of Ching's father in their refrigerator. They fled to China but were extradicted back to the US. Boudin pled Douglas to only six years in prison and the wife pled only to desecrating human remains and was released on parole.
And yet you keep talking about how terrible it is that the police don't like him -- as if this was about P.R. and not the trail of bodies that Boudin has left behind. As if him saying one irrelevant thing somehow excuses all his terrible policies.
That's been my general observation. I see the following hypocrisy: Murderers and violent crimes should require rehabilitation, better lives in the prison and discussion here tends to be more around pro-forgiveness ideology; whilst I also see liberals suggesting that politicians and corporate leaders should be punished by prison terms.
Apart from my own observation, non-punishment of non-violent crimes is a cornerstone of liberal criminal justice reform (Prop 57, 20, etc.).
I am sorry I wasn't more clear. When I suggest prison time I mean in a rehabilitative facility. And that should be for all crimes that we demand prison time for. I am not for retributive justice.
IMO this argument isn't all or nothing. Sure, popular things are hated but Node is especially eggregious. There is more to it than "its just popular".
In my experience, the entire JS ecosystem does not respect robustness, stability, backwards compatibility, correctness, testability, and learning from other ecosystems. It continues to erode itself with emojis in the package manager, childish schzophrenia of frameworks, complete disregard for proven methodologies and extreme indifference to maintainability.
My understanding is that the scope of Facebook ads and surveillance is not limited to Facebook properties. The Facebook pixel and SDK are pretty ubiquitous.
Twitter is actually useful if you limit who you follow to the right people. My experience of Twitter is a bunch of academics promoting their articles. Lior Pachter trashing tSNE and UMAP is about the spiciest it gets.
I know very few people on Twitter. Facebook, on the other hand, is nearly a requirement even to have a social life. I don't use FB, but I definitely miss out on general invitations.
It is strictly not possible to participate in local Burning Man events here in Finland without a Facebook account, for instance. They flat out refuse to promote through any other platform or channel.
I fundamentally disagree with Twitter's ideological position. Banning the president, allowing Taliban leaders, it is a censorship extravaganza and the selling point is ecochambered short blips of outrage. What you're pointing out is also true - there is some good stuff on Twitter just like any platform. Most political content on Twitter is horrible, left / right - both.
FB goes against silicon valley's zeitgeist and it gets disproportional hate. IMO, all social media is toxic and it has done more damage to the society than benefited ... but the biases are very much evident in how each service is perceived by the larger tech community. FB also did many eggregious things, no doubt. Election interference, etc.
Meanwhile, Tiktok is HN's darling.
Another thing is Twitter has become de facto channels for official communications of government bodies. How do you access these official channels? With a phone number of course when you try to register an account - which is required. Twitter has destroyed the world by coaslescing social media, outrage tactics, government bodies into one hot boiling soup of toxins.
Well a big part of the distinction between FB and Twitter for me is the scale, scope, and competence of their surveillance and targeted influence (i.e. ads) capabilities and operations.
Would Twitter be as evil as FB if they weren’t incompetent? Maybe. But that is not the world we live in.
One area where I think we are talking past each other is referencing the consumer facing aspect vs the money making (B2B) aspect of social media. I think of these companies as ad platforms. They exist to collect data on people and their behavior, and sell tot to advertisers so they can use it to influence decisions. The whole public square thing is incidental to that. It exists only because it helps them collect data and sell ads.
To your other points Twitter is an official channel of communication for government agencies, not THE official channel. They still maintain websites and put out press kits.
Twitter should have banned the president long before they did for his repeated violations of their TOS, as they would have any normal member of the public. Same for other world leaders. Imo, leaders should be held to a higher standard of behavior wrt to the EULA and T&Cs than the average Joe.
I can digest your take. I’d say that governments shouldn’t be on Twitter. I have conflicting internal voice - on one hand, I don't want any of these social media companies to allow populist movements to rise (that includes people like AOC that are running populist movements on Instagram and social media). On the other hand, I don't want any politician banned unless they ban all of them - on principle. President Trump was violating TOC left and right but Twitter allowed him for 4 years reaping engagement revenue, but all of sudden they were emboldened as soon as President Biden took office. These are weak companies with weak ideologies.
You may be using Twitter wrong. Switch it from "top tweets" to "latest tweets" mode, and then follow people who tweet and retweet things that are not outrage-driven. I follow a lot of interesting people and I learn a ton.
But even if Twitter were pure outrage, that is far from the most serious social media damage to society. Twitter, for all its faults, is relatively low on mis- and dis-information because people call it out. It's all one conversational space. Facebook, which is much more fragmented, enables flourishing niches of bonkers thought. Some of those niches are just wild-type insanity, but many more are gardens of crazy cultivated by people with a financial or political need for that.
I firmly believe that without Facebook, we wouldn't have a situation where thousands of people are dying per day of a preventable disease, with 95+% of those because of mis- and dis-information about the disease and the necessary countermeasures.
I suspect that Facebook has more users than Twitter, and heavier engagement. Facebook has multiple aspects that people heavily use, things like photo albums, marketplace, messenger, birthdays, etc. In comparison Twitter seems more limited.
I think the government policies for COVID which were supposed to help the poor backfired and made things worse. Those that didn't invest, got shafted as commodities are becoming more expensive but it won't be perfectly clear until the short-term shortage fog has receded.
That's unlikely. Everyone got the same amount, but taxation which (eventually) pays for it, is progressive. Someone with no income will pay aa few % in sales taxes etc when they spend the cheque. As you go up the income ladder, others will have to cover the costs with, for example, their income tax.
People with average income will have to pay back 100% of it, which is not too easy to make investing it. At the 10% pecentile, you're expected to cover for about three people.
That's known as hindsight bias and if anything, you're naively glossing over. The 2008 fiscal stimulus dwarfs COVID printing machine. Here is the actual data:
Keep in mind that "invested" could just mean owning a house. Those soared in value too.
In Canada, tons of people complain about how the pandemic is causing everything to soar in price and they wonder why politicians will not do anything and we just had an election where it was mostly an ignored topic.
What the non homeowners miss when they complain that the government's policies priced them out of the market is that for 65% of Canadians, the government's policies make them rich. That is why the politicians are quite happy about surging house values.
Yes because inflation is being measured as realized inflation instead of unrealized inflation.
Imagine someone in a basement printed 50% of the money supply; that unrealized inflation has happened, although consumers haven't yet seen it realized in CPI. But once that person starts spending it, it reverbates throughout the economy and becomes realized. Like potential energy in physics.
But different goods inflate at different rates. Bread will not inflate much at all as few are hindered in their bread consumption by money.
Housing will inflate much faster that the rate of money supply increase as you can always own more property. All excess money would go into property and stocks.
If you own a house and stocks, you now have lots more equity to spend, but regular consumption has not increased in price anywhere near as much.
If you don't own a house, your goal just got a lot further out of reach and your salary will not rise accordingly because the prices for consumables didn't rise much and demand did not rise much.
Positive facts allow us to double down on what works. Negative facts allow us to inspect what went wrong.