The Dying Art of Disagreement - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/24/opinion/dying-art-of-disagreement.html <comment><USER2> >Yes, we disagree constantly. But what makes our disagreements so toxic is that we refuse to make eye contact with our opponents, or try to see things as they might, or find some middle ground.

This bothers me so much. In my social circle (and I expect many of yours) simply understanding the other side is demonized. It's a sin to admit that, despite their conclusions being terrible, these human beings have some sense somewhere.

When you hear a view you disagree with, instead of disagreeing, first try to understand. These are intelligent human beings who will surprise you. Most often, it turns out the point they are making isn't quite the one you thought, or at least it has some nuance and the truth is somewhere in between you.

It's bad even here on HN. There was a post last week about using genetic algorithms to solve jigsaw puzzles. It looks like this: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nemanja-m/gaps/master/imag...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nemanja-m/gaps/master/images/lena.gif) .

One commenter was disappointed at the test image used, because:

> At best, it's crass and tasteless. At worst, it's openly disrespectful and > hostile to women.

Another commenter asked:

> Why is it crass and tasteless? And why is it openly hostile and > disrespectful to women?

The response was:

> If I need to explain to you why using a nude image of a model (taken from a > pornography magazine, no less) is hostile and disrespectful, then I suspect > you are part of the problem.

As typical, treating your "opponent" as an intelligent moral person, trying to understand them first, applying the slightest bit of empathy, then even if you agree that the picture is crass/hostile/whatever, it's much more respectful and likely that the asker simply did not know the history of it, rather than the asker being immoral (from that POV).

Jumping straight to "you are part of the problem" is an extreme version of what happens in most of these disagreements. There's no respect or effort towards empathy and it makes me really sad.

<comment><USER3> I generally agree with you, but:

 _applying the slightest bit of empathy, you 'd immediately realize that the questioner simply didn't know the history of the test image (the original uncropped image was from playboy)._

You are implicitly agreeing that with the idea that naked pictures of women are fundamentally _crass, tasteless, openly hostile and disrespectful to women._ I think this is not really a good thing to do, though I realize it is politically correct and the safe route.

I'm female and occasionally rant about how fashionable misandry (or the demonization of anything hetero male) has become, a la: [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/11/having- sad.h...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/11/having-sad.html)

I have a lame hypothesis that if a woman makes such comments, maybe people will see the logic. Experience seems to not support that hypothesis. Haters keep on hating anyway. Sigh.

<comment><USER2> I'm trying not to implicitly disagree or agree with either side. The point here regards the meta discussion about disagreement and arguers not respecting and trying to understand the other side before jumping on them.

I'll try to clarify what I meant more concretely. The parent commenter in that thread seemed to think that any good person who knew the context would understand why it was bad. The next comment didn't see why it was bad, so the first person decided the next must not be a good person. Had they examined the other premise (context), they would have seen that lack of context is more likely. Of course there are other buried premises and assumptions, and all of those are more likely in some way imprecise or something rather than the next commenter simply being a bad person. Even in the most extreme cases, miscommunication happens all the damned time. Fixing those instead of deciding you're better/smarter/whatever is where I think those discussions should go.

The point is how the disagreement looked from the point of view of the person making those comments. I figured my own point of view isn't relevant to the meta-discussion.

<comment><USER3> One framing that would avoid the implication:

"Even if you agree that the picture is crass (etc) due to being from Playboy, a much more likely and respectful explanation is that the asker simply did not know the history of it."

There may be others. It is incredibly hard to sidestep the wider cultural framing that women exist solely as sex objects, they are prey and men are predators. It is a problem space I have thought long and hard about. I think my statement that your statement implicitly agrees with certain things is accurate.

However, it wasn't intended to accuse you, personally, of anything. The degree to which it does so is an error on my part. It is late. I am tired. Etc.

I wholly agree with you that jumping to accusations was poor form. I did not witness that particular discussion of the Lena test photo, but I have seen such discussions before on HN. They tend to be incredibly uncharitable. This is really common when anything vaguely related to sex enters discussion.

I do my best to respectfully critique it. I am aware sex is a very sensitive subject. But the subtext of most such derails is that all heterosexual sex is inherently abusive of women. I really think that needs all the gentle, kind push back humanity can muster. I do what little I can.

Best.

<comment><USER2> That's fair. Communication is hard. I edited my original comment along the lines of your suggestion. I hope that it's still clear and concise and now does a better job of not taking sides. I think sometimes I go overboard in trying to empathize with the side I disagree with and end up appearing to agree with it.

<comment><USER3> :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've posted this quote a few times before, and I find it fully relevant to this discussion:

> He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons > may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is > equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so > much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either > opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries > from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what > they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who > actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and > persuasive form.

― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

A few months back I read "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion", by Jonathan Haidt. I'd highly suggest reading it for anyone seeking to improve their understanding of the ideological landscape in modern America. From the publisher's summary: In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.

The biggest problem I'm seeing with many online communities is the unwillingness to engage with others. There's no discussions, they just tell you that you're wrong and evil, and then they ban or block you. That's no way to change people's mind; it just makes people more likely to dig in their heels. If you want to change people's views you need to engage them calmly and with respect. One of the greatest example of this that I can think of is Daryl Davis, a black man who converted ~200 people from the KKK just by befriending them.

<comment><USER5> This is a very high-minded concept, but I just can't see how it would work in practice.

To take an example less divisive than politics, I'll use religion (yeah–go figure).

Say you're an agnostic biologist. One Sunday, you meet your new neighbour, who happens to be an Eckists ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckankar#Teachings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckankar#Teachings)). After a few weeks of infrequent small talk, he becomes dead set on helping you find you way to God's graces through a series of 25 two-hour rituals of singing the 'Hu'. He's also really excited by having someone to share his theory of the spiritual fluid "yam" that separates the living matter from the dead, and he considers "DNA" to be a hoax perpetrated by the Christadelphian Conspiracy.

You make what you believe is a very good case against any God existing, give an even better overview of the basics of molecular biology, and point out some of the most glaring inconsistencies in his theory of life.

But he comes back at you with the full force of someone spending about 500% as much time thinking and reading about religion and "yam" than you do. He always has an argument, and sometimes it takes a sleepless night to figure out where his argument actually breaks down.

Through no fault of yours, his internet connection starts developing the ugly habit of showing rather immoral photos of all genders where he would usually expect to see completely wholesome photos of the Eckankars' last Day of Celebrating Celibacy and Celery. He finally moves out.

You new neighbour is Frances. He is excited to tell you everything about his Christadelphian faith, and how the walnut is actually the most intelligent brain on the planet. He also has all the answers.

Now imagine there's an endless supply of these people, and they start showing up at work, starting to make legislation to cut your funding, and march across campus with their "Torches for the Glory of Walnut Yam". Do you actually belief your study of mitochondrial diseases will be improved by debating every single one of them? Remember: they don't operate by your standard of reasoning: whenever you find the missing link between hamster and opossum, they just see it as two new missing links in the chain of evolution.

<comment><USER6> While everything you said is true, I think it misses the point. It's clear that in order to have a reasonable discussion, we need to have two reasonable people who are willing to discuss. And you may just include "is not a conspiracy theory nutjob" or "is able to express his/her point of view in a clear way" in your definition of reasonable (of course, you _should 'nt_ include "agrees with me" in your definition of reasonable").

The point is that you should try it out to see whether they're "reasonable". And if they are, then you're supposed to have an open, genuine discussion with them.

<comment><USER5> In that case, we do indeed agree. Except, probably, where exactly those lines get drawn. There is obviously a grey area, and we probably have more nuanced options to react, rather than just a binary engage/ignore.

I believe my argument was based on those culture war examples of the last months–most notably Charlottesville, where this idea of debating ideas on equal footing was frequently invoked. But it may be my German schooling that puts the ideas aired at those rallies firmly outside the Overton Window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sadly, the piece does not actually seem to model the behavior it advocates. I wish it were more well written.

It is a really hard problem space to address well. But, I think a good place to start would be to acknowledge that with 7 billion people on the planet and the existence of the internet, humanity has an unprecedentedly challenging circumstance that makes it inherently harder than ever to find common ground with people with whom we disagree. Then challenge people to up their game.

This piece is guilty of the very sin it decries: Being not genuinely respectful and empathetic to the people it criticizes. I think acknowledging the unique and extreme challenges of modern life as a starting place is the only way out.

First, admit that agreeing to disagree is fundamentally harder than it has ever been before in human history because there is so much more opportunity to interact with people whose views and choices are utterly alien. Then, invite people to rise to the occasion.

Otherwise, you are merely pissing on people and provoking them in the exact way the article describes and decries as a bad practice. Most of this article merely slams parents, educational institutions, etc for their failures. There is zero acknowledgement that these failures might amount to crumpling under extreme stress.

</comment><comment><USER7> > We express our disagreements in radio and cable TV rants in ways that are > increasingly virulent;

And Tweeter. I never signed up, but from the posts and tweets I've seen, I can't imagine a worse platform for sharing ideas or views. I don't see a stream of 140 character insults or smartass comments ever resulting in someone saying "Hmm, that's a great point, maybe I'll rethink my position. I guess I am a dumbass just like you described. Thanks".

> Then we get to college, where the dominant mode of politics is identity > politics, and in which the primary test of an argument isn't the quality of > the thinking but the cultural,

There is an element there were colleges have started to treat students (and parents who pay for the tuition) as customers. Don't offend anyone, build clubs for every need and hobby, luxury dorms. My university last I heard built a huge rec center with a pool and a lazy river going around it. Oh the irony. Tuition has risen dramatically and the idea is anyone who pays that much is not going to tolerate being inconvenienced, or challenged in any way. If they do, they'll "demand to talk to the manager" so to speak. Take their money and go some other place. And maybe mentality extends to ideas and what is taught and so on, not just rec centers and facilities.

> This is the baroque way Americans often speak these days. It is a way of > replacing individual thought — with all the effort that actual thinking > requires — with social identification

Another thing I noticed as an outsider, that maybe people from America haven't noticed because they are immersed in the culture, is that just as much as there are victims and oppressed groups, there is an equal and greater amount of those who want to gain an upper hand by either identifying as a victim in some way or claim to speak for some victims "My heart aches for the struggles of group X and I'll go on a Tweeter rampage to support them". And yet they've never interacted with that group in any meaningful way to understand them, and are simply doing this dance to brag and gain some kind of status. Can't tell how many times I've heard people trying to one up each other concerning how many minority group they know. "Oh you're friends with X and Y. Aha but I have a friend who is X, Y, and Z. And everyone gasps, oh wow, that's really cool you're such a good person". Once you see it a few times, it's hard to miss it.

<comment><USER8> > ever resulting in someone saying "Hmm, that's a great point, maybe I'll > rethink my position. I guess I am a dumbass just like you described. > Thanks".

Because there is no magical system that does this, and expecting it is slightly silly.

<comment><USER9> Discussion alone suffices to enable people to regularly change their views. The problem is that Twitter is specifically built to inhibit reasoned discussion. It's meant for one liners and zingers. This tiny post is now at 315 characters, well over twice as long as any thought capable of being expressed on Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Socrates quarrels with Homer. Aristotle quarrels with Plato. [..] These > quarrels are never personal.

This, like many of today's rosy views of the golden past, is slightly misleading: while Socrates many have high-minded intellectual quarrels with Homer, one can't just ignore that he was murdered ("sentenced to death") by his fellow Athenians for supposedly corrupting the youth.

In comparison to drinking hemlock, the criticism today's divisive figures have to endure seems manageable.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's worth knowing the context to this. The author was invited to present a prize in memory of Mark Colvin, but the Colvin family took offence to the arrogantly foolish things he has said about the greenhouse effect. There's an element of knowing when to stop digging here.

 _Socrates quarrels with Homer. Aristotle quarrels with Plato. Locke quarrels with Hobbes and Rousseau quarrels with them both. Nietzsche quarrels with everyone. Wittgenstein quarrels with himself._

If only Newton and Boltzmann made the reading list.

</comment><comment><USER9> Excellent article.

However, there is one glaring issue. I completely agree that part of the increasing radicalism among younger Americans is coming from an increasing sensationalistic media that will say anything and do anything for clicks. [0] Unfortunately, there is a reason for that. Another absolutely phenomenal article that was written by a 50 year veteran of the news industry is "The Bad News About the News." [1] It describes more in detail precisely why the media has become what it has become. And the answer can be summed up in one word: money.

For many decades a small handful of media organizations had an effective monopoly on news, and access to information in general. That entailed a practically endless stream of money. Ethics and integrity cost nothing in a world where money is no concern. But then enter the internet. It, as a competitor to traditional news outlets, started very slow. And that slowness led traditional news media to fail to appreciate its potential. In short order the internet not only showed its potential but turned traditional media outlets borderline obsolete. They died from a fatal case of myopia. And we replaced them with social media which has shown that negative news, partisan news, emotionally charged news, and sensationalized news is what gets clicks. Even better when you combine them together.

And in the end, if you can't beat them join them. This has likely only been urged on by the ownership of the news media today. Time Warner owns CNN. Comcast owns NBC. Disney owns ABC. These are not exactly the first names you think of in altruism, which is what valuing an informed public over profitable quarters comes down to. The BBC is a peculiarity. They have ostensibly no profit motive, but I'm not familiar enough with their funding/directives/etc to even try to hypothesize why they've also jumped on the bandwagon. I can say something about ostensibly not for profit organizations in the US like NPR. NPR has been struggling. In the past 10 years alone they've had to buy out contracts and downsize multiple times. The only way they keep afloat is by donations, and mostly large donations. With them barely staying afloat if they publish anything that might cause a corporate donor to pull their support, it would be enough to put the company back in crisis. The company itself ends up beholden to special interests in a way that's even more insidious than Time Warner owning CNN. That's a direct and visible line. The line between donor interests and 'not for profit' organizations is less apparent to many.

I'm in no way defending what the news media has become. But like the article emphasizes, I think the first step before judging a group is to try your best to try to genuinely understand why they behave/think the way they do, in lieu of just attaching a label to them and calling them evil.

[0] - An image that sums up the state of the media today. [https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg)

[1] - [http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/bad-...](http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/bad- news.html)

<comment><USER5> > [0] - An image that sums up the state of the media today. > [https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg)

I see maybe one or two people in that crowd that could be professional photographers or cameramen. It just shows how people in general may prefer whatever sin is implied.

And while TV probably gets more attention today, real journalism has always and still does happen mostly at newspapers. The WSJ/NYT/Economist/New Yorker of today are no worse than they ever were. In fact, it's not that long ago that almost all publishers were unabashed propagandists for some cause or party.

But it's true that changing economics have roughly halved the revenue journalism has available, and contrary to all the armchair publicists everywhere, we have yet to find a way to stop the profession from further deterioration. Those large organisations above may survive by virtue of their size, and the goodwill of people enamoured with what they represent. But at the local level, many communities will soon have to function without any good sources of news. And voting without information means all the incentives, and the mechanisms, of democracy will seize to function.

It's en vogue now to disparage all journalists as hacks of similar low caliber, differing only in the name that signs the cheques they get for pushing their benefactors' viewpoints. But that really doesn't help, because it removes all incentives to do good work. If some journo at The Economist gets "You're a lying puppet sucking Wall Street's dick" on twitter every morning, they'll soon run out of any remaining idealism.

So I'd wish people would be as appreciative of good work as they are critical of shoddy work. Highlight the excellent shows on NPR just as often as denouncing the drivel at MSNBC. Note how CNN fires staffers that approved a story they ultimately couldn't prove just as often as reminding everyone how wrong the NYT was about Iraqi WMD 16 years ago.

<comment><USER9> Here [1] is the New York Times on Watergate, just before the 1972 election and shortly before Nixon would genuinely be impeached. It clearly explains the entire situation without speculation or judgement. It provides all information necessary and pertinent to the issue at hand, nothing more - nothing less. Nearly all statements of fact are well sourced and verifiable. There is the most bare minimum usage of anonymous sources. That is journalistic excellence.

Consider their articles today. For instance the first non-opinion article I received when searching specifically for their site and Trump Russia was this [2]. The following 7 statements are the leads to 7 different paragraphs in that story.

\- "The tactics reflect some of the hard-charging — and polarizing — personalities of Mr. Mueller's team"

\- ""They seem to be pursuing this more aggressively, taking a much harder line, than you'd expect to see in a typical white-collar case,""

\- ""They are setting a tone. It's important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled,""

\- "The moves against Mr. Manafort are just a glimpse of the aggressive tactics used by Mr. Mueller and his team of prosecutors "

\- "The tactics reflect some of the hard-charging — and polarizing — personalities of Mr. Mueller's team"

\- "Admirers of Andrew Weissmann, one of the team's senior prosecutors, describe him as relentless and uncompromising"

\- "Some lawyers defending people who have been caught up in Mr. Mueller's investigation privately complain that the special counsel's team is unwilling to engage in the usual back-and-forth"

The piece reads like a trailer for a new low brow crime TV show. There's practically 0 valuable information, but it creates drama and starts building up characters to get readers ready for the next exciting entry. If you didn't get it - this prosecutor, he's a serious hardass - wow! Isn't that incredible!? In case you somehow missed it, they also added a picture of him looking like a hardass with the caption: _" Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I director, is known to dislike meandering investigations that languish for years."_ What a cowboy! The sheriff is in town boys!

It's sad that we now find this sort of journalism acceptable. And it's certainly not the reporters' doing it. That article carries no less than 3 names on the byline with 3 contributing reporters as well. It's like blaming developers for a shoddy piece of software. They create it no doubt, but the conditions and direction of which they are operating within are outside of their control so long as they continue to retain their employment there. That Watergate story was phenomenally interesting and informative, but it wouldn't hit the lowest common denominator. For that you need that emotional attachment - the characters, the story, the sensationalism. And so that is what the NYTimes today delivers.

I hope that the NYTimes new paywall push is a resounding success. So long as they are a slave to clicks, their quality will continue to deteriorate.

[1] - [http://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/01/archives/the-watergate- mys...](http://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/01/archives/the-watergate-mystery-the- watergate-mystery-after-19-weeks-of.html?mcubz=1)

[2] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/mueller- russi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/mueller-russia- investigation.html)

<comment><USER5> This seems to just be examples of two different styles. I can't help but notice that the Watergate article would probably get ripped to shreds by today's critics on the internet: it makes judicious use of unnamed sources, it includes a lot of hearsay and speculation, and even the title ("Mystery") would today be construed to be a partisan attack.

Here's a different story on Mueller from todays NYT, which I believe is much closer in style to the Watergate article: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/us/politics/mueller- russi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/us/politics/mueller-russia- senate-judiciary-committee.html)

<comment><USER9> Look at what the article is doing. Let me ask you a few questions that would seem relevant to the bill itself:

\- How many members are on the senate judiciary committee? How many have stated they would vote for the 1st bill? How many have stated they would vote for the second bill?

\- How often do bills that leave committee become law?

\- Why, specifically, are the lawmakers sponsoring the bills uncertain if their legislation would end up on the senate floor?

\- Why do the senators feel that these are bills that Trump would not veto (or do they feel they can achieve a veto overriding supermajority)?

\- What, specifically, are the constitutional issues these bills face?

Very basic questions I think that all seem like they'd provide critical insight to what's going on. Most are completely ignored, or answered in the most unbelievably lazy ways possible. For instance the final paragraph actually mentions a concern that these bills could simply be vetoed by the president. The final sentence: "Other legal scholars disagreed." So is the NYTimes suggesting that legal scholars are saying Trump can't veto these bills? That's certainly what they seem to be implying. That is completely incorrect and certainly deserves vastly more than a 4 word sentence.

The rest of the article back to the theme of character building, drama, and salaciousness. I may have no clue what's going on, but did you know that some politician on the council just said 'They have concern about the president's respect for the law'? That quote is also a misleading nonsequitor. The entire point of this is that it would be completely lawful and legal for Trump to dismiss the investigator. The committee's goal seems to be to try to change the law to prevent this. I would add that quote was not only within the article itself, but also attached to an image as well. Again, character building and drama.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be really amazing if those who choose to comment in this thread would try to do their best to disagree with each other thoughtfully, charitably, and respectfully.

<comment><USER12> I would love to, but those _others_ are just spouting thoughtless nonsense that is impossible to argue with. /s

But seriously, thoughtful comments take time; and are often formed by trying to explain why the thoughtless comments are wrong.

<comment><USER11> Indeed they do take time. Aren't we (HN in particular and our fellow humans in general) worth it? Figuring out what each other means and why we ourselves are misunderstood makes us better people. Like so many things, that does take effort, and does get easier with practice.

<comment><USER12> Maybe, but most people want to see that the article (and therefore) there comments will actual get read before investing the time. Combine this with the fact that thoughtless comments simply get written faster, and you have a trend where you get a disproportionate amount of low quality comments at the beginning of a thread's lifecylce, and high quality comments show up later.

<comment><USER11> Sure. I'm having a hard time figuring out what you see as a good way forward for HN should be if the goal is to have substantial, constructive discussion. Or at minimum, civil discussion. The low quality, incendiary comments degrade discussion and can deter those who would otherwise engage in quality discussion.

Edit to add: What's motivating me continuing this discussion is that I feel like you're pushing back on encouraging people from doing better, from improving how they engage with others. I'm not sure if that's really what you intend, so please do elaborate on that point. Clearly this is important to me, so I appreciate that you're taking the time. (Though, with that, I'm signing off fir the night. It's late :)

<comment><USER12> First, big shoutout to dang and team for culling the worst of the comments and maintaining a culture of relatively thoughtful comments. Practically speaking, effective moderation is the only way forward I see

As an empirical matter, I would note that most threads (both here and on simmilar sites, such as reddit) seem to follow a predictable life-cycle. An initial wave of low quality posts gets down voted and gives way to more thoughtful discussion. In less trolly topics, the "low quality" posts are actually ok, but still give way to much higher quality posts through upvotes.

We can argue about the cause of this lifecycle. I think the general effort calculus I explained above is a part of it. However, I think that often times having low quality posts to respond to can be an effective prompt for high quality posts to respond to; or for a poster to consider why the thoughts expressed in them are wrong, and write a better top level post. Of course, this would be better done with high quality posts, but those take more time.

Put another way, the best way to get a good answer is often to give a bad answer and have people correct you.

edit for your edit:

I am pushing back because: A) I think you initial post _is_ low quality. As such, it has led to (in my opinion) fruitful thinking on my part, and hopefully a fruitfull discussion. and B) Underlying your initial post is, in my opinion, a fundamental misunderstanding of how these threads work. I don't like you insulting everyone who comments on this thread just because you saw the thread at the ugliest part of its lifecylce.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for taking the time to respond and detailing your take on my initial comment. Commenting as I did early in the thread was deliberate because of what I've observed in threads. I agree with your take that thoughtful comments tend to come later and can rise to the top. Another behavior I've observed is that an early hot comment can stick at the top, acting as a defacto root and coloring the resulting discussion.

I also think that one of the reasons for low-quality comments is due to people reacting reflexively and emotionally rather than reflectively and thoughtfully, and the intent of my comment is to remind people to take a beat before commenting. It's not motivated by the idea that the commenters are "bad" in some way, or to insult them. I get caught up often as well: I've certainly written posts that I then decide not to submit, or delete soon after submitting. As mentioned above, it takes effort to do this, but I think that many people _do_ want to comment well and constructively, and that for many a reminder is useful.

One of my goals here is to minimize the initial period of low-quality comments and hopefully quiet the more heated subthreads. My comment wasn't a response to the comments that were already there: I hoped to get in early enough that those early commenters might see my comment and reflect a bit before posting something thoughtless and incendiary. I understand that this isn't going to stop all low-effort/low-quality/less-thoughtful comments. If we can shift the default towards more reflection, I think this can have a net positive effect on discussion quality overall, as well as perhaps encourage people to refrain from responding to the less-thoughtful comments, or responding in a way that can guide the discussion back on track. I know this isn't a novel idea, and it might be fruitless.

(As an aside, I had read this particular op-ed before it had been submitted to HN. I think it has some interesting points, and some that I disagree with, which is fine, and could be improved, but it is one worth discussing. I thought about submitting it, but had a pretty good idea of how the discussion would go on HN and decided not to.)

I _think_ my thinking is consistent with how you understand threads like this work. Would you agree? Perhaps one difference between your position and mine is whether or not we can do anything to improve the sutation. Like you, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the work 'dang and 'sctb have done in moderating HN. Whatever quality has been maintained here is in part due to their efforts and those in the community who respect the place HN is. One point I do disagree on is the utility of low-quality comments. I'm glad you can see some positive effect from them. I'm a bit chagrined that you felt my initial comment was of that variety, but admit that it might have been better. The few times I've attempted this type of comment before have been longer, and I can see how "It would be really amazing if" can be read uncharitably. It reiterates to me the importance of the effort of all participants in communication.

You mention in another comment "This thread would seem to be a counter- example." Do you think our discussion may have played a role in that? It's impossible to ascertain this definitively, of course, and I chose the word "may" deliberately. Perhaps a better posing of this question is do you think discussions of the kind we're having _could_ play such role? If you think it's possible, what is a better way to craft such a comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure how you're supposed to respectfully disagree about someone like Kissenger who got hundreds of thousands of people killed through his ideas.

<comment><USER14> Karl Marx's ideas have been responsible for the deaths of about 100 million people (and counting), yet they still seem to be granted plenty of airtime at our universities.

<comment><USER5> Marx wrote books, and he died in 1883. The split between Marxists/Trotskyists/Stalinists is well-documented, and reading Das Kapital, you'll see it takes as much of a twisted mind to go from his ideas to Stalin as it takes to get from the bible to the Westboro Baptist Church.

Kissinger was an active politician, and he's criticised not so much for his ideas as his actions. I seem to remember that quite a few people during the Charlottesville brouhaha were keen to insist that people should be judged by their actions.

There's also a difference between a study of Marx/Kissinger, and attending an event that has them as guests. A famous speaker's attendance is an honour for the host, but it also honours the speaker. I'm sure there are scores of left- leaning researchers and students who have read Kissinger's work or studied his actions while being highly critical of him.

The obvious example is that it's just as common to read Hitler's book and speeches as it is to read Marx when studying history.

<comment><USER14> > The obvious example is that it's just as common to read Hitler's book and > speeches as it is to read Marx when studying history.

I'm sorry, that is not "obvious" at all. It's trivial to name dozens of academics who are self-admitted Marxists, and who give Marxist ideas fulsome praise in the classroom. They outnumber self-admitted Nazi academics by thousands to one, at a minimum (I can't think of even one example of the latter, off-hand, but I suppose there might be one or two out there).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jim-jim-jim Speakers are compensated handsomely for their engagements, no? I don't see anything wrong with students refusing to see their tuition bankroll the likes of Kissinger or Rice--people with blood on their hands.

<comment> aaron-lebo The article is talking about something more than protest.

 _Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm to shield him and to make sure we stayed together, the crowd turned on me. Someone pulled my hair, while others were shoving me. I feared for my life. Once we got into the car, protesters climbed on it, hitting the windows and rocking the vehicle whenever we stopped to avoid harming them. I am still wearing a neck brace, and spent a week in a dark room to recover from a concussion caused by the whiplash._

That's basically mob violence. Respectful protest and disagreement is to hear someone out, not intimidate and violently stop them from speaking. It's just an odd mindset. You're at college, so presumably you are there to be educated, to experience different points of view, to learn.

edit: Asked if modern media or some other factor was the biggest cause of this, saying this so the reply makes sense.

<comment><USER15> > Or is there some other change in society that is a bigger factor?

Tribalism. We seem to be hardwired for it, to seek it out. As the immediate bonds in family/religion/neighborhood/etc are being torn down by modern individualism, so new tribal bonds are formed.

In the age of the internet, as you said, you can find a voice that validates any belief. A community forms around the smallest nugget of common belief.

And so tribes are formed.

Mind you we also seem to be living in a society that increasingly believes that anything you think, you immediately believe to be true. That to hold opposing beliefs, or at least to inspect and consider thoughts that are "wrong", immediately makes you ... I dunno. Almost like thinking something immediately makes it your sole belief.

So it becomes impossible, dangerous even, to allow opposing beliefs to even be expressed lest they take you over.

Thought police basically.</comment></comment></comment>


7 lessons Soccer taught me about management - <AUTHOR> http://berzniz.com/post/126661697501/7-lessons-soccer-taught-me-about-management

<comment><USER2> Regarding [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066392): yes that (your other) account got hellbanned [correction: submission banned since older posts are still displayed]. Most likely because you ask for posts to be upvoted. Any "please upvote if..." doesn't work on hackernews.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi had a decent Karma of 299 at that account. One day I noticed my posts to HN aren't bringing any traffic at all. This seemed odd so I checked and learned about hellbanning. I never asked to upvote my posts (until the final post in that account to check if I was hellbanned).

Wish my other account was brought back to life. I will continue with this one, be more strict with what I post.

<comment><USER3> I think the main problem is this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9937710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9937710) "Can this entry be upvoted to the HN front page?"

You can try contacting the moderators. From the guidelines:

> _If you want to say something to us, please send it to firstname.lastname@example.com_

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally forgot about this one. Just wanted to test an idea... I guess I should be be banned according to the guidelines.

thanks for providing the email to contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You were submission banned with your previous account, likely because you were posting content-less submissions like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just trying to submit a post from my website. If it's not to the point, just let me know. I'll delete my submission and stop sending in. Not trying to ruin this place.</comment></comment>


Uber Eases Screening Rules in California - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-eases-screening-rules-in-california-1452668401 <comment><AUTHOR> You can also see this summary by the TheVerge: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10759688/uber-relaxes- driv...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10759688/uber-relaxes-driver- screenings-california)

</comment><comment><USER2> Best way around the paywall on WSJ?

<comment><AUTHOR> try this: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjAmI- qkqfKAhUK4GMKHf-BCKEQqQIIHTAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fuber- eases-screening-rules-in- california-1452668401&usg=AFQjCNGQZdfBmpLr4piNYClc8tEjJB6oiw&sig2=KoBSeWYjrc6RZYxPwiAepQ)

<comment><USER2> That does it. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html?smid=fb-share&mtrref=www.facebook.com&gwh=33C77FEF9BAAE4D337E0A3852A8F702A&gwt=pay <comment><USER2> "there's none so blind, as them that will not see"

Nobody who believes in a higher authority to self control and self actualised (is libertarian) views is willing to accept or believe this evidence.

I personally believe the last sentence says it all: the pro gun lobby has decided to rationalise and accept the death toll.

It's not that they don't know: they don't care.</comment>


Why I Canceled My Facebook Account - <AUTHOR> http://primevector.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/why-i-canceled-my-facebook-account/ <comment><USER2> I would love for a company that collects personal information and shares it or makes predictions or generates advertising based on it to expose ALL of it to me.

Don't just tell me what you're collecting, and what you do in abstract terms, show me exactly what you have and how you use it. If you have data on the frequency with which I visit friend's profiles, I should be able to see it. If you have data on external links that I've followed, I should be able to see that too. I should be able to see the amount of time I spend logged in, if they track that.

Everything. There should be not one thing that is not available to me through the basic interface. It doesn't have to be on the front page, but there should be an interface and you shouldn't have to be a developer to know how to use it.

I would always favor a company that was open about every piece of data that it held about me, AND everything it did with that data.

<comment><USER3> There are laws to that effect, that they should disclose what they have on you, for instance, in the Netherlands there is a law that is called the 'wet bescherming persoonsgegevens' (law on protection of personal information), which gives you the explicit right to request _all_ information that is kept on you, and to request deletion of such information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes FB is definitely becoming less useful. For example, it used to be that if I listed my employer and set it to "friends only" then that was that. Now, if you visit my profile, it's still friends only - but if you go to my employer's public page, my name is (actually was) listed there! Same with all my previous employers, the colleges I attended, my interests, etc etc. Hometown too maybe! So I have removed all of that.

I can't help but think this will backfire for FB. Their long-term value is being deeply embedded in people's real lives. The real value of FB for me is that my friends merely need to keep their profiles up to date and I have a self-updating address book and birthday calendar. If no-one lists that then FB is merely as sticky as Twitter which is to say, not much.

<comment><USER5> FB also seems to get less useful over time as you add more people.

Initially, when you have a few people you know really well and get on with, you can post quite freely knowing that it's unlikely to come back and bite you.

Later, as you gain a truckload of acquaintances you have to be much more measured and it winds up feeling like you're running some sort of discount PR agency.

<comment><USER6> This is an interesting departure from Metcalfe's Law [ the value of the network is proportionate to the square of the number of nodes in the network ].

Perhaps Metcalfe's Law applies up to a certain size, and then tails off thereafter.

There is a limit on the number of people that us humans can reasonably be expected to have friendships with. I have a feeling that it is substantially smaller than the number of 'friends' that facebook attracts.

<comment><USER5> For FB I suspect that the ideal would be a network with lots of nodes but few connections; I want to be able to find my friends but I don't want them to be connected to so many that they have to sanitize their posts/thoughts.

<comment><USER7> I sanitize my posts (and I post very little), and I would no matter how few connections I had. Given their history of privacy flaws, it's not what my friends see that I worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I perma-deleted my account several weeks ago. I was fed up with watching the not-so gradual erosion of privacy which has been occurring since I first opened my account in 2006.

My problem is that the contract, whether legal or implied, that I had with Facebook offered me a certain level of privacy, and protection of data. This is what Facebook built their reputation on. Because of this contract, I uploaded a lot of personal photos, notes and information and generally became deeply involved in the service.

Every time Facebook have a new API release or re-design, however, I became familiar with the uneasy awareness that another slice of this personal information was about to become available to businesses, friends of friends, the general public and goodness knows who else. The final straw for me was the realisation that my friends list was going to be made public, and there was nothing I could do about it. There is no way I want the list of my personal friends and acquaintances being made public: it is just beyond the pail. In hindsight, I should never have put that information on the web at all, but there you have it -- I trusted Facebook to look after that information, and Facebook repeatedly broke my trust, and that's why I've left.

I believe that there is very good reason to protect the basic tenets of our privacy online, and Facebook have shown themselves singularly incapable of doing that. As well as that, I am highly unimpressed with the direction and quality of the product, particularly the UI which has devolved from one of the best on the web to a cluttered, unpleasant mess.

I haven't missed Facebook once. Nowadays, I stick to Twitter, where the contract is clear. Everything is public, and we all know where we stand.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think, Mr. Zuckerberg is a more evil exploiter with weak ethics than I'm willing to accept.

<comment><USER10> Money has proven to be very effective in bending ethics. Many people would do worse for a fraction of Mr. Zuck's money. I think judging him as a _evil exploiter with weak ethics_ is a little harsh.

<comment><USER11> > I think judging him as a evil exploiter with weak ethics is a little harsh.

Why? Doing something bad doesn't become OK just because you got paid a lot of money to do it. Indeed, a reasonable definition of ethical behaviour would be doing the right thing even when faced with significant incentives not to.

<comment><USER12> I have never been forced to choose between becoming a billionaire and holding onto my ethical convictions, and I suspect you haven't either. I'm not comfortable with either of us standing in judgment of someone who has.

<comment><USER13> I've also never been faced with the decision to torture someone or not, that doesn't stop me from making moral judgement about those actions either. The point of an ethical system is to help you make judgements about decisions, if your answer to every ethical question is, "I've never had to make that decision" your ethical system is useless.

<comment><USER14> There's a difference between saying "what John did is wrong" and "John is a bad person." I think the OP was saying we should be cautious in making judgments of the second sort.

<comment><USER11> > There's a difference between saying "what John did is wrong" and "John is a > bad person."

I disagree. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. If John repeatedly does bad things, then John _is_ a bad person. How are we to judge a person fairly, if not by how they conduct themselves?

<comment><USER14> Surely it has to be possible for a good person to do bad things (at least occasionally). I think it would be going a bit far to eliminate the distinction entirely.

>How are we to judge a person fairly, if not by how they conduct themselves?

That is kind of the point. Arguably, you just _can't_ judge people fairly, because you never know what's going on inside. That doesn't mean that you can't criticize people's actions, just that you should be cautious about making more fundamental judgments about their character.

<comment><USER11> I find myself acknowledging that we all make mistakes for the second time in as many posts...

Sure, someone's moral character isn't a black-and-white question. People aren't really "good" or "bad" in absolute terms, so in a sense calling anyone a "good person" or a "bad person" can only ever be a generalisation based on the balance of what they do.

In this case, however, if someone _repeatedly_ does _very bad_ things, they'd better also be doing even more very good things to make up for it, or I think it's fair to apply the "bad person" label.

<comment><USER14> The point is that people have an inner life which isn't necessarily reflected in their actions. Someone might do "good" things all the time, but if you could read their thoughts and see their motivations, you might not necessarily consider them to be as good as they appear. Similarly, someone who's done a lot of bad things might not seem so bad if you knew their inner motivations. Actions only give you half the picture (if that).

You also seem to be making a terminological point about when it's ok to apply the term "good person" or "bad person", but that's a red herring. You can use those terms however you like, but it doesn't have anything to do with what I was saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm malicious, so I wouldn't actually delete my account. I'd just gradually falsify all my information. That way they don't get any data mining benefit from my account, in fact, their data collection is being confounded by it. ;)

<comment><USER5> With the possible drawback that anyone who you're connected to thinks that you're becoming a Belgian monk with a goat fetish.

<comment><USER16> If my friends don't know enough to recognize the blatant falsehoods, they aren't really my friends, now, are they?

<comment><USER17> For now but in the future, facebook will be the only way to communicate with your friends once they are placed in this little entertainment box with no window and only copyright safe media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I closed my FaceBook account because they keep changing the privacy settings. They also made the new settings more complicated than it needed to be and it seems to me that they are trying to trick people into sharing more information than they might want to.

Additionally, I find the Facebook CEO's view on privacy disturbing.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think the rise of 'free' services and websites presents a set of quite dis- empowering problems for users.

Previously, after buying something, if we were unhappy in anyway we'd always be able to 'vote with our cash'. It was recognised that we deserved to be compensated if our experience of a company fell short.

Modern (free-to-access) sites obviously aren't free, we pay for usage by giving attention (via eyeballs or behaviour). However, this exchange of value isn't as tangible as it once was when we had to pay money for a service.

Maybe moving to a paid-for model might actually be better for consumers / participants - because we'd be able to make more explicit demands?

At the moment we can stop using the service - but the assessment a user makes is probably quite often weighed up against this illusion of 'zero-cost'.

<comment><USER20> Like the quality of service and customer response you get with paid for cellphone and cable TV services?

<comment><USER19> Well, maybe I'm in the minority - but when I'm not happy with something I pay for, I make damn sure it gets changed. It takes a bit of effort - and usually involves a bit of time, but it works.

What can we do with a company like Facebook or Google when we're no longer happy?

<comment><USER21> We can stop using it, and create or support alternatives.

We're used to the cost of a service being its monetary price, or more recently, the demands it makes on our attention. Perhaps a new type of model is being developed in which the price of a service we desire is not in the form of money or attention, but our data. And in this case the way a company uses our data is a real "cost", rather than a mutually beneficial outcome.

I think that threatening to withdraw and withdrawing payment, whether monetary or otherwise, will prove to be a significant balance on the actions of companies. If the changes are significantly detrimental, consumers will take the actions they consider necessary to address those concerns.

<comment><USER19> Thinking about potential situations which might involve FB users showing discontent, brings striking factory workers to mind.

I suppose when we use FB - we are actually participating in a kind of factory, so perhaps the analogy is apt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Scary story about the Pandora thing. Since I am not an active FB user, I have not yet experienced this brave new world. So hearing such stories about "the Facebook experience" is actually interesting.

I have a FB account to be able to see the occasionally linked page on FB, but the interface was too complicated to me even before all this privacy mess.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good for you. I deleted mine a little more than a year and a half ago, when rumors started appearing they would change their ToS and privacy policies in a way that would make me uncomfortable using the service.

I've tried to explain to friends why, but the only response I got from them was "I've got nothing to hide". In any case, with cheap/free hosting, I can host my profile page, with information I want to give away.

Some random quote from a comment (slashdot, perhaps?):

"People fail to realise that Google's and Facebook's customers are the advertisers, and the users are in fact the product they sell."

</comment><comment><USER24> I have never joined facebook, and am thankful for this. But I was suckered into joining linkedin, and when I saw they had uploaded my contacts list from my gmail account, I had to leave.

Still not quite sure how they did that.

<comment><USER25> As you may know, they send all of your contacts who aren't members messages saying '<person name> invited you to join their network on (linkedin|facebook|twitter)'. Sometimes they even mail to 'remind' you again a month or two later.

I don't think users necessarily realize these messages are being sent ostensibly on their behalf. In my view these large, successful companies are growing their user bases through spam.

<comment><USER24> I know - I had family members asking me 'what this linkedin thing was'.

That's when I quit.

(I don't remember giving them my password, however the link to send someone an invite is actually a link to send EVERYONE and invite, and apparently that includes the contact list they uploaded (or from my point of view, stole))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here's the catch. I have gotten in touch with a lot of old friends via Facebook. That is actually all I use it for - communications with old, non- local friends. I fully admit that my communications with them is sporadic and superficial, but it is better than nothing.

I'm cool with deleting my account - but not at the price of losing contact with many "friends".

Is there a middle ground? Or a replacement service?

Maybe we can build an app to 1) Copy basic Facebook data, 2) Delete the Facebook account, and 3) set you up on a new system that does respect privacy.

</comment><comment><USER27> The main issue from this and other similar articles about facebook which I've read seems to be the lack of control that users have over how their information is used and who it's given to. I still believe that the solution to all of these problems would be an open source peer-to-peer version of facebook, where you have complete ownership and control over what information you make available and who gets to see it.

<comment><USER28> checkout <http://www.tonido.com>.

<comment><USER27> Looks nice, but I'm not sure how open source this is. It appears to have an SDK under Apache, but the rest is vague.

This also raises alarm bells:

[http://www.tonido.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=548](http://www.tonido.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=548)

If there's a version of this which is completely open source and on a plug, I'd buy that as a facebook replacement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How long before account deletion becomes an event for friends to view? "X is deleting their Facebook account. Tell them to reconsider!"

<comment><USER5> Never, because they wouldn't want the negative social proof that publishing deletions would cause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The whole privacy setup was never really about people's privacy -- it was about keeping them locked into Facebook. I think in their bizarre eat-the- world rampage thay've lost sight of this.

Which is fine, because with the new tools they're coming close to the position where an app can get so much data that it'll be possible for a competitor website to allow you to authorise it to import everything from Facebook -- friends list and all.

On that day there'll be a huge opportunity for someone to start a site offering to be what Facebook used to be: a truly private yet still social network.

A few pledges not to ever force you through hoops to try and retain your privacy, to never make your baby pictures public by default, and to never share your data, and there will be more than enough switchers to get the new place up and running.

Can't wait, tbh.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, Facebook has to do something to pay for the servers and the programmers.

They're estimating $1B or so in revenue for 2010, that sounds like a lot of money, but that's an ARPU of about $2 or so -- most real businesses do 50 times that.

I don't begrudge them finding some way to get value out of their community, otherwise they'll be a day when they can't afford to run it, or decide to scale it down to something much smaller but much more profitable.

Any alternative offering is going to face the same problems; it's tough to monetize social traffic; I know sites that have incredible user engagements for communities in the 50k user range, but can't scratch together $800 a month to pay for the servers, never mind to pay for anybody's time to develop and maintain the system.

</comment><comment><USER32> If I had written this post, it would have been titled: Why I never created a facebook account. Anyone who is crying now, should have known better.

</comment><comment><USER33> FB is ingenious in how it leverages three amazingly powerful forces: Advertisers, individuals' Ego, and Group Psychnology (put more bluntly, herd mentality).

FB and the Advertisers are harvesting value from the herd, day after day. Brilliant (I'm not being facetious....this time).

<comment><USER16> It _is_ brilliant, but that doesn't make it right. Facebook needs to recalibrate its moral compass. There are a lot of really good people working there, so I don't think it's an untenable problem; facebook hires good people regularly (I don't think I know anyone at facebook that I don't consider a good person, actually). But, there seems to be a disconnect about the badness of chipping away at users privacy for the benefit of advertisers and facebook. Facebook has definitely done enough things to make me mistrust them as a company since I've been a user...so, I don't share a lot with facebook, and I'm moving toward sharing less. My pictures are at flickr, and will remain there, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> That graph amuses me. Notice the benefit to users continues to climb, even if the benefit to "facebook and other companies" happens to climb faster. So even though it benefits you more and more, you will deny yourself that benefit because it happens to help facebook too?

Of course, it's just a made-up graph, and his very first sentence implies the line is really trending downward in his opinion, but I'm always intrigued when an instance of the Ultimatum Game happens in real life:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game>

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm a little bit confused over what appears to be a mass hysteria about privacy problems for Facebook. I guess I really don't mind if Facebook tells company X that I listen to Modest Mouse, or lets advertisers know that I play disc golf.

Facebook is still the best communication tool out there for sharing everything (pictures, videos, messages, etc.). If, in return for using an excellent and _free_ service, Facebook sends out a little bit of trivial information about me then so be it. It's really not that different from AdWords.

<comment><USER36> Don't you think _you_ should be entitled to earn some of that money that Facebook is making off of your information?

I think that's what pisses me off about FB the most. This entire website was built on the backs of hundreds of millions of eager users. And sure, the users get some benefits (meeting old friends, finding a new job), and some downsides (affairs, posting that picture of you drunk for the boss to see). But all in all, we've all made Zuckerberg a millionaire for doing very little, in the big picture.

<comment><USER37> "Don't you think you should be entitled to earn some of that money that Facebook is making off of your information?"

Out of curiosity, do you hold AdSense to the same standard? After all, a pixel and a cookie on 70% of websites by hit is being used to infer your interests, location, demographics, and purchasing history, all so ads can be better targeted at you. Why is it more shady for Facebook to do this with information you explicitly provided, under terms that Facebook disclosed, than for Google to do so with 99.9% of the web having no idea it's happening?

Sorry, I forgot: it's not evil when Google does it.

<comment><USER29> If I'm reading a magazine that has advertisements that is fine. They help cover the costs of production. If I join a club and they sell my information (where I live, who referred me, what actions I perform in the club) to another company that is an entirely different matter.

Tracking via cookies/pixels,etc is getting pretty invasive too. When google does it, it is just as bad. Look at Buzz, have we already forgotten the outrage when it came out?

<comment><USER37> "If I join a club and they sell my information (where I live, who referred me, what actions I perform in the club) to another company that is an entirely different matter."

I agree, and it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand: facebook does not do this, and never has.

<comment><USER29> Perhaps I don't understand what they do then? If they sell screen time for advertising and bundle it with my information how is that any different?

<comment><USER37> Facebook sells targetted advertising: advertisers can direct ads at various demographic groups, like age ranges, genders, and geographic locales. Advertisers do not get any identifying data about users who see or click on their ads as part of the package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of my friend is canceling his FB account this Saturday on similar grounds. [http://kumarbhot.blogspot.com/2010/05/decision-to-move- away-...](http://kumarbhot.blogspot.com/2010/05/decision-to-move-away-from- facebook.html) FB is becoming the big brother of Internet day by day.

I left similar sounding comment on the blog above. I wonder why the article's owner removed that comment! Looks like he hasn't accepted any comments. Why enable have 'Leave a reply' if you don't want to accept any comments?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was asleep when all of these replies came in. And I had it set for me to approve all comments because I had been getting spam. I approved your reply just now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I like charts that don't have any numerical basis.

You've just arbitrarily illustrated their trend towards fewer privacy restrictions in a way that will certainly sway people to your argument but only represents your sentiments and nothing concrete about the actual situation.

While I agree with your argument, this really bugs me, particularly in dealing with the audience you've chosen to address and the false authority it might lend you to those outside of it.

</comment><comment><USER40> I also have a personal domain name, and have been rather disgusted with Facebook's changes over the last few years.

I've thought of maybe doing a small redirection, in the style of Class.cpp/ClassImpl.cpp, where my FB profile just says "see my 'real' profile at myname.com," from where I can serve a static page with any information I like.

This way I could still expose whatever data I like, on my terms, and keep all the friend requests I've made.

</comment><comment><USER41> So you're mad they're basically turning from a free model to a freemium model? The whole "privacy" thing is just ridiculous. When is Facebook's selling of your info ever going to impair on your real life? The information they sell is never going to lead to someone knocking on your door and calling your house. It will impair your visual Facebook surfing experience, at worst. And impair is a strong word.

Flipping out over some weird privacy details is ridiculous. There may be small leaks, but they don't/won't last. Patch it up. Move on. Keep talking to your one-off acquaintances.

We need to be OK with people making money. Facebook provided me (and you) $1000s of dollars in value over the years. I have not given them a dime. Facebook, gladly take 5-10% of your visual mind-share back. You earned it.

<comment><USER5> This is rubbish. My privacy is important to me because I enjoy it. I enjoy being able to do things/have thoughts/express opinions that are not universally popular. I enjoy not having my interests analyzed by potential employers. I enjoy not having my details handed out to marketers. I enjoy all these things far more than having a free way to keep in contact with one-off acquaintances.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Co-founders vesting: Is 25% per year on an yearly basis common? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The common (aka YC promoted) scenario would probably be 25%/yr with monthly vesting after a one year cliff.

<comment><USER3> AKA "4 years vesting with 1 year cliff".

This is pretty standard.

Quora if anyone is interested: [https://www.quora.com/What-does-4-years- vesting-with-1-year-...](https://www.quora.com/What-does-4-years-vesting- with-1-year-cliff-mean?search=1)

<comment><USER4> Please, no 1-year cliff for co-founders. And the ceo should have the exact same terms as rhe other co-founders.</comment></comment></comment>


Venture Voice-- The podcast for entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturevoice.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Go back in the archives-- there's some amazing interviews with some pretty high profile entrepreneurs and executives.

One of my favorites is the interview with John Vogel of The Vanguard Group. Pretty insightful guy.

</comment><comment><USER2> Pretty interesting :-)

Can any of you recommend other good tech- or startup-related podcasts?</comment>


Show HN: Your online WYSIWYG editor is broken - <AUTHOR> http://snapeditor.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Online WYSIWYG editors have frustrated us for a long time. We were fed up so we decided to scratch our own itch and build one from the bottom up. We talked to over two dozen developers to weed out the top problems and then implemented a solution. The result is SnapEditor.

We're still in beta but we believe we're stable enough to release a version out into the wild. It's better to release early and be embarrassed right? Please let us know what you think.

<comment><USER3> Congrats on the launch! Your product looks like the Aloha editor - how are you guys different from them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Aloha is purely an in-place editor. However, there are times when you need an editor in a form. You either have to fudge it, or use two different editors. SnapEditor provides both, an in-place and form-based editor.

Aloha is currently sitting at over 1mb. I know that there are talks about cutting down the size, but SnapEditor is already small, coming in at around 180kb.

We have the utmost respect for the Aloha guys for making an open source editor, but it is still quite buggy. SnapEditor concentrates on providing a predictable experience with clean HTML. We built it from scratch to do this right.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Aloha was unusable for me (because at some point it breaks the HTML), and working with designMode is a PITA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> \- Can't actually provide link text (link text).

\- Can't insert images, videos, flash, etc.

\- No way to set custom styling, change font size, change font itself, change the font itself.

\- Tab doesn't insert tab, but rather removes the highlight.

\- No justification.

Compared to other offerings on the market (my main comparison being TinyMCE), this simply offers a quick way to make very simple edits without necessitating the clicking of "save". This sounds like somewhat of a niche market.

<comment><USER5> Hi Eykanal,

Thanks for your comments.

1\. Providing the link text and a much better interface for inserting links will be provided before production launch. Inserting links is definitely incomplete in the Beta.

2\. Inserting images is also missing from the Beta but will be included in the production version. We wanted to show the insert image feature when it was implemented with automatic resizing of the actual image (i.e. not just changing the width/height but resampling the image as well). When it does get implemented, we also plan on releasing drag and drop abilities, auto- sharpening (if you like) and multi-image uploading. We have experience implementing all these features except drag and drop already (see Orbs.com).

3\. We have a way to do styling changes using "Named Styles" which are element/class combinations. This is already implemented but not yet exposed because we want to get the interface for it right first.

4\. Not sure which context you mean tabs don't work. Probably within the next few days though tab/shift-tab in lists and tables will work as expected. It is on our do very soon list.

5\. Justification: Based on our interviews, we found that people were unsatisfied with their editors in 3 key areas that we address. It is probably true that in its Beta state, its usefulness is not all there yet. For a better idea of where SnapEditor will be going in the months ahead, see the "What's Coming" section.

TinyMCE is definitely a major competitor to us. One of the major differences is that TinyMCE cannot do In-Place editing. We don't believe that will be a niche market in the future. Many of the new editors focus only on In-Place editing.

Thank you for your comments Eykanal. We will continue to try and provide features that make SnapEditor the obvious choice of editor. :)

TheSunny

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the replies. For #4, I mean that when I hit the "tab" key, it doesn't insert a tab, but rather acts as forms normally do... focus moves to the next element on the page, which happens to be something different than the text editor I was working with.

<comment><USER5> Oh, I see. We'll have to think about that. Since HTML doesn't have the concept of tabstops or dynamic tab positions, this may not work very well in the context of an online WYSIWYG editor.

In the context of word processors, tabbing in a list usually indents and in a table cell usually moves to the next cell so we would probably adopt those for predictability.

What happens outside of that I'm not sure what would be the best. We can probably implement anything and we can also offer configurable options as well. That said, we'll probably have a recommended default based on what we think is best.

TheSunny

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks pretty impressive. I think the cost is too much, even if it is a one-time cost.

Do you have any paying customers yet?

<comment><USER5> Hi RichF,

You're right in that it isn't cheap compared to an open source editor that you can get for free. It is cheaper than other paid competitors though and we believe it is superior in many important ways. For example, it's the only one that can do both In-Place and Form based editing. It also cleans the HTML very well: Try pasting in from Google Docs, or Word, or any random HTML page (I like using Slashdot because it's a mess of nested tags). We also fix a bunch of issues to do with browser differences. I think you will also like our roadmap which includes many more features not available anywhere else. We have experience implementing many of the things in the roadmap already so they will be coming.

If you are looking for low cost, there are a lot of alternatives. One of the goals with SnapEditor is actually to make it for people who are willing to pay for their editor. This obviously benefits us (since we want to make profit) but we believe the needs of people who are willing to pay will be different from people who are not.

<comment><USER6> I wish you the best, like I said it looks fantastic. You can definitely tell that's there's quality and substance behind the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice work! I think there is still more work to be done in the WYSIWYG world as all the current editors I've tried in my app seem to either be frustrating to use or too bloated (I love speedy scripts)

I have 2 suggestions:

1\. Could you please release a version without jQuery baked into it, I really don't like it when plugins include jQuery in their source as it's a lot of unnecessary bloat added to the application (and most people have jQuery on their site already or can include it easy enough if they don't).

2\. I'd love it if you could make each feature (additional options / controls etc) on top of this core an additional module and make sure they don't rely on each other like how jQuery-UI does it. I haven't found a single WYSIWYG editor that does this and it frustrates me because I have a need for an editor with some functionality and not others and would like the ability to not include unnecessary features to reduce file size and improve performance.

Then you could release a full version with every single feature baked in, or a minimal version which is just the core and you can add in other features by including the js files for the features you want and enabling them via a config file.

If you build the API well enough and snapeditor is popular enough you could even enlist the community help to build plugins for it for features they'd like to see, sublime text does this really well.

<comment><USER5> Hi Tim,

Thanks for the feedback. These are great suggestions and we already have plans for them.

1\. Yes, we are planning on releasing two version later. Version 1 would have jQuery stripped except for the parts that we need which would be a lot smaller (I think we mainly use the measurement and positioning routines). Version 2 would be for if you already have jQuery in which case it would use your version of jQuery. We would, of course, have to run unit testing to make sure it worked on past versions of jQuery.

2\. Actually, all of the features are already implemented this way, even fairly basic features like bold/italic and the Shutter focus. We will be creating an online Editor builder that will let you choose what you want and it will build you an optimized version that includes only those features. You won't have to do any of the work to create it. We will probably enable you to save multiple configurations under your account as well. It will also create sprites for you so that you get only one image and it will only contain the images that you need.

We already have an API that abstracts the differences between each browser but we want to make sure it is stable before releasing it.

TheSunny

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have to say, that's one of the best designed little sites I've seen. Clear answers to all my questions up front, slick, good value proposition and explanation. Great job!

<comment><USER5> Thanks LubuJackson, we put a lot of work into trying to figure out what speaks to developers. Wesley did a lot of research by interviewing over 2 dozen developers before we got really started which really helped us identify what developers needed.

TheSunny

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So I'm sitting here browsing HN with my iPad, as I often do in the morning. I click on one of the editable areas. Controls pop up, the rest of the screen dims, cool.

But how do I leave editing mode? I am betting hitting ESC would do it - <USER2> tablet and phone keyboards don't have that key.

<comment><USER5> Hi Egypturnash,

Currently SnapEditor does not support the iPad yet though it will be there before production. We actually tried it out on Friday (when we officially launched the Beta site) and everything worked except for exiting the edit mode. We haven't run our unit tests on the iPad yet though. It will probably be very little work to get it to work on the iPad.

We also found that it seems to work on Android just fine though we haven't run our unit tests on either.

Finally, we will also be having support for Opera later. Currently it doesn't run at all on Opera but we have experience with making WYWISYWG editors for Opera so it should not be too difficult.

TheSunny

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Definitely looks fantastic (assuming, of course, everything works as roadmapped).

Gotta say that the price is a bit of a turnoff (can't see paying double my yearly server cost for a text editor...), but I know you guys need to make money, so I can only say, "best of luck!"

I think you'd see a lot more traction with a much lower itch point (I'd pay $99 for the unlimited license, for instance). And what's with the users and developers thing? I'm not even sure how you'd track it, assuming it's a non- hosted script, and even then I can't see a justification for jacking the price up. Again, I know you need to make money, but c'mon....

Just my thoughts. The product itself looks fantastic. Just hope I can afford it....

<comment><USER5> Hi JFitzDela,

Thanks for the comment and specifically for telling us what you would pay. I think that is the third comment on pricing so we will continue to evaluate.

Note that there is a $1 charitable license for people who want to use SnapEditor but can't afford it. It is a charitable license and not a license for charity by the way. Perhaps we should change the name...

TheSunny

<comment><USER10> Changing the name would certainly help, but if I'm honest, I couldn't reasonably ask for a "can't afford it license..." My business could certainly absorb the cost, I just don't wanna. :-D

Thanks for the suggestion, though!

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the frank response. It will certainly help us understand our customers better.

Sunny

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have no problem paying for good software. The cost seems in the ballpark if it had all the features I need.

I would want the ability to add different classes other than just h1, h2.

Most of my projects will be using twitter bootstrap or jquery UI so it has to integrate well.

The link popup does not have the ability to add a target. For UGC, I would like the ability to force a target and add google analytics code.

<comment><USER5> Thanks Badragon for the comment.

It's good to hear that people will pay for a good product, even with the availability of free alternatives. Of course, we would have to offer a superior product.

We already have the ability to add different classes than H1, H2, etc. and we can do this very elegantly. In fact, we support something called named styles. Here's a few definitions.

Title: div.title > Subtitle

Subtitle: div.subtitle > Normal

This tells us that we have a named style called "Title" that is represented by a DIV element with class "title" and that after you hit enter at the end of it, it will end up in the "Subtitle" named class. This is already implemented but not exposed because we haven't built the UI for selecting Named Styles as a dropdown in the beta. This will be in there for the production release though.

We will most likely have sets of "Named Styles" that are compatible with Twitter Bootstrap and other common frameworks at some point. You will also be able to easily create your own Named Styles, probably in an online UI that will build your editor for you.

Note that once you define the Named Styles, the editor whitelists to them so you can't get "illegal" element/class combinations which lets you (the developer) keep the HTML consistent for your needs instead of hoping your users won't break your styles.

We'll keep in mind the ability to add a target for links. We hadn't thought about the need for this until you mentioned it.

TheSunny

[edited for spacing]

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not for nothing, but if you converted your text editor into a commenting system or wiki type product for site visitors on certain pages it would make for a beautiful commenting system, but that would essentially force everyone to pay $299.

If I was you I might consider a wordpress plugin for $50 to replace the visual editor. A lot of non-technical people on wordpress would appreciate something cleaner.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the great comment,

I'm not quite sure I understanding what you mean by converting into a comment system or wiki type product. Are you saying we should implement the editor in a product and then sell it with the editor for $299?

I like your WordPress plugin idea and this is indeed something we are considering and at a similar price point. The target market for WordPress plugins is obviously a lot larger as well.

TheSunny

<comment><USER12> Just that commenting on most sites is fairly bland non-html. An option to upgrade the stock commenting on wordpress would be terrific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm currently using <http://aloha-editor.org/> and would consider moving to this one but it doesn't provide anything on top of what aloha does except it costs money and aloha doesn't.

I will checkout the Charitable license but would prefer something open source so I could give back :)

<comment><AUTHOR> SnapEditor is much smaller than Aloha. Aloha is over 1mb in size. SnapEditor sits at around 180kb. This will affect page loading times.

Aloha provides only in-place editing. SnapEditor provides both in-place and form-based editing.

We really respect the guys over at Aloha for producing an open source editor, but it is still quite buggy. SnapEditor concentrates on giving a predictable experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can it be hosted on a subdomain? Say your app is on example.com but the SnapEditor CSS and JS are on static.example.com?

I wasted an immense amount of time trying to get TinyMCE working properly on a subdomain, so don't care to repeat the experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, cross-domain loading of JavaScript is not supported at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks really good and could see us using this, but the image upload front-end is essential for our needs.

Do you have an ETA on when you are going to be releasing the image upload front-end function?

<comment><USER5> This is definitely on our short list and SnapEditor won't go to production without the image uploader. I'm going to guesstimate we'll have some sort of support in about a month along with some other got-to-have features.

We want to get this right and part of that is coming up with a great and simple server API to handle the uploads across all platforms/languages/frameworks.

TheSunny

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, great job guys!! Looks fantastic and feels very impressive. Very slick.

<comment><USER5> Thanks Sdizier

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most editors drive me crazy. Especially when the bullets get all messed up. SnapEditor looks great.

Why limit the licenses by developer though? By domain makes more sense to me.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the comments Scott,

Yeah, we wrote special code to fix cut and pasting of bullets in some browsers like Chrome; however, recent versions of Chrome seem to fix this so we removed that code. We'd like to take credit for being the only WYSIWYG editors that fixes the cut/paste bullet problem but WebKit seems to have fixed that for all editors now.

We do the pricing by developer to differentiate between small websites (with 1 or 2 developers) from companies that are building SAAS apps with perhaps a dozen or more developers.

TheSunny

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes, it seems to be, the request is timing out. The one you posted, that is.

Best of luck with fixing it, though.

Edit: it finally seems to load, but _slowly_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up. We're going to scale up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Erase everything from the inline editor and tap the backspace key, broken in latest Chrome on Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great find. We'll add that to the bug list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish I had this 5 - 6 months ago when I started working on Blueprint. Would have been awesome

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the comment. We hope you will consider us for your next project. I promise that there are many more fantastic features to come and that we are just scratching the surface.

We feel that the WYSIWYG editor has stagnated over the last 10 years and there is room for dramatic improvements.

TheSunny

<comment><USER20> Wish you guys the best of luck. It's been a problem I've given a pretty good chunk of investigation, myself. Just make sure it stays super easy to install and talk to your users. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This seems pretty great. How difficult would it be to integrate into Mediawiki?

<comment><AUTHOR> It shouldn't be too difficult. We have discussed creating plugins into things like MediaWiki, but that will be later on down the road. Lot's more to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Guys, congratz, this is one of the rare gems on it's way to become a classic.

</comment><comment><USER23> your online WYSIWYG editor is broken too. Literally. It crashes my Chrome.

<comment><USER5> Hi FisaDev,

Thanks for the info.

I've been using SnapEditor almost exclusively on Chrome and haven't had problems. It's been tested in both Windows and Linux.

We'd love it if you could provide more information so we can make sure the experience is great for you.

TheSunny

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice job guys! This is amazing!

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the compliment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good start, congratulations!</comment>


Review My App: Hacker / Entrepreneur Salon - <AUTHOR>

Disclaimer: There's no app yet, because I don't want to start coding before I get a sense of what people want.
So I have been looking into a few social networks for entrepreneurs, and they all kinda suck. I think the key is to make it super niched, i.e. hackers / internet entrepreneurs.
What I really want is a place for internet entrepreneurs to brainstorm, get feedback from each other, survey, basically things that is already happening on HN that is not "news"
Yet, hacker news is build more as a news site so some of the other usage cases cannot be fully exploited. Non-news discussions tend to get drown out in the sea of regular news (though the addition of Ask HN section has made things better).
I want to do a survey to see what features will be good. - Video chat brainstorming - Site / App feedbacks - Organizing local meetup - Ardvark-like context matching of profiles to recommend relevant discussions - Weekly group Q&A, Contest - Plain old forum
And of course the site will following a set of rules of conduct such as constructive feedback, limited self-promotion, etc. It will probably have some sort of rating / karma system.
Any suggestions? Thanks. <comment><USER2> The piece I feel would be useful is a simple link that is auto-generated from every hacker news discussion. You could hit it by going to the site from a comment link, for example: <http://blah.salon/> and it would determine based on your referral URL what post you're talking about, then let people do some sort of collaboration around it.

Think of the "AMA" thread posted by the Angel investor yesterday (i think his name was Josh).

It would be cool if you could place a simple link there which would take you to a page full of discussion points, videos, etc that people put together. Or maybe just collaborate in a different fashion than text comments?

Anyway just an idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea a lot! I'm surprised that no one has done it.

Do you code?

<comment><USER2> I dabble but I'm currently working on two different full-time projects, so no time for anything new :)

Forgot to add - I think duggmirror had javascript in place to automatically parse the incoming referrer URL and route to the proper link on the site. It might be worth trying to digg up some of their old code if it still exists.

<comment><AUTHOR> Two full-time projects?! That's dedicated. Don't burn yourself out!

Thanks. I will check out duggmirror's code.

<comment><USER2> Good luck with this jaytee, let me know how it goes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why not do an MVP and then ask for input? That's the usual advice given here on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Hence this process of figuring out MVP. Why guess what the MVP is when I can ask?</comment></comment>


Black Mirror: Smithereens - <AUTHOR> https://www.netflix.com/watch/80195724 <comment><USER2> I watched this last night. No spoilers.

What was ammusing was all the talk in the episode about how everything online was optimized to keep users addicted, and when the episode ended, the next Black Mirror episode started 4 seconds later, as of course Netflix wants to desperately keep your attention.</comment>


Making Sense of 3.7M Net Neutrality Comments - <AUTHOR> https://openstandard.mozilla.org/making-sense-of-3-7-million-net-neutrality-comments/

<comment><USER2> > Major websites like Tumblr, Kickstarter, Netflix, Etsy, Namecheap and Vimeo > ran prominent warnings of an impending slowdown of Internet speeds if the > FCC ends net neutrality.

Major props to those companies for helping the cause. While the issue is complex, it really boils down to something simple. The US government was formed with certain principles, some outlined in the constitution. One of those is free speech. Sometimes, the government has to step in and make sure corporations are respecting those principles. Net neutrality is one of those times.

</comment><comment><USER3> The net neutrality debate has been oversimplified to the point of being nearly meaningless. Being against internet "slow lanes" is like being against poverty. Everyone agrees with the goal, but the devil is in the details. It's completely possible to be for a universally faster internet for all traffic and be against many net neutrality laws just like it is possible to be for getting people out of poverty and being against many welfare policies.

<comment><USER4> > Being against internet "slow lanes" is like being against poverty.

I'm not sure that's true. While I favor net neutrality I also recognize that there are good arguments for allocating Internet resources to the highest bidder, at least to a significant degree.</comment></comment>