I've banned this account because you've been creating various accounts to troll HN (or borderline-troll, which still isn't ok). Can you please not do that? We're trying for more thoughtful conversation here.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Sorry, what exactly do you think is wrong with shutting down cranks and conspiracy theorists?
You may hope we live in a happy world where everyone can evaluate information fairly and detect nonsense perfectly but I'm afraid we don't. Go and have a conversation with my aunt who thinks that the government (there's only one I guess) created Covid in order to kill all the old people and save money on state pensions. Guess where she learned that.
It takes orders of magnitude more effort to counteract bullshit than it does to produce it. Your opinion doesn't scale and not only is it easily exploitable by bad actors, it's happening in practice all over the place these days and is a huge, huge problem.
> If it's a crank conspiracy theory it should be easy to disprove.
Have you never spoken to conspiracy theorists? Go and watch one of the Flat Earth documentaries. If Flat Earth is a crank conspiracy theory then it should be easy to disprove and the conspiracy would die out, right?
"If it's a crank conspiracy theory it should be easy to disprove."
I might have agreed with that a few years ago, but crank conspiracy theories have gotten mainstream traction like I have never seen previously.
"Prove" and "disprove" are never fully black and white. It isn't easy to disprove the theory that the Chinese engineered Covid (i.e SARS-CoV-2) and its spike protein RNA so they could insert arbitrary genetic code into non-Chinese people via the inevitable mRNA vaccine they knew would be created (which itself contains genetic code directly copied from the virus itself). Maybe they want to control our minds, or make us susceptible to some future engineered virus that will take out everyone on the planet that was vaccinated.
I can't disprove that. Maybe someone can.... but whoever they are, they will hardly be able to communicate this to average internet users and YouTube consumers being as it is extremely technical.
But I can make a rational, reasonable analysis of this, and conclude it is unlikely enough that getting a vaccine is a good idea.
And by the way, it's not a matter of determining that you are the "smart guy in the room," it's really more a matter of determining what is the general consensus of many smart people in the room. Obviously that is getting harder to do.
Just one of many analyses that have showed how the right in the US has majorly gained from being able to share misinformation and live in filter bubbles by platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The idea that Twitter/FB have political enemies is not supported by how they’ve been used, and is inviting an over-politicization of American life. They’re private businesses… not political affiliates.
It is though. Imagine if every online forum was forced to promote government propaganda. That's not free speech. So to some degree, forum discretion is speech.
Just imagine if every telephone companies was prevented from discriminating on the basis of the speech....
Oh wait, that is literally how common carrier laws work. They are basically, forced to sell to everyone, and have to allow anyone to make speech over their network.
Instead, I am pointing out the ridiculousness of saying that every single instance of the governement "enforcing" speech, in the context of powerful platforms, is somehow some huge infringement on free speech.
Because clearly, we are OK with the government requiring phone companies, which are platforms, into allow most people to make phone calls.
Therefore, you cannot come out, swinging very hard, with this free speech stuff, when, if I were to guess, you are totally OK with phone companies being covered under common carrier laws.
So you need to either chill with this whole "free speech" argument, or you need to instead come out and say that common carriers are some horrible, really evil thing. Pick one.
You can also think about the larger scale. We could open coal mines and gas/oil pipelines to create jobs, it would help your "community" in the near future but if we all continue to do that there won't be any community to care about in the distant future.
Also, with 5% of unemployment Germany is hardly in need of God Emperor Musk and his humanitarian help
The factory was built in east Germany which is in need of more well paying jobs. Most existing German companies have set themselves up outside of east Germany and they aren't going to move for the sake of solidarity.
> Business Insider also reported on "undignified working conditions" at the construction site. Several Polish workers were quoted as saying they have to work 12 to 14 hours per day, Monday through Sunday. Despite corona contact restrictions, up to 350 workers are thought to be housed in a small hostel, with up to three people sleeping in small rooms. Furthermore, the research revealed that labourers at Tesla in Grünheide are allegedly being paid only €8.70 per hour, under Germany's €12.85 minimum wage for construction workers.
