Ask HN: Do you have experience with school bullying? - <AUTHOR> In the last hour a few HN threads came to my attention [0][1][2], from which it seems that the overt kind of bullying that is known from movies and television series is actually a real thing. I am talking about repeated physical abuse from peers (but if somebody has deeper insights about bullying in general, I would not mind hearing about that too), because that is the thing that I thought mainly existed on TV.
If you have witnessed or, especially, suffered from bullying; I would like to read about it, at what education stage did it happen and where it happened. The last part is because my first thought about the beatings being real was that it is something that is exacerbated in USA schools.
As for my own experience (since I am asking others about it, I feel obligated to share my own experience); I was a socially inept introverted kid with little confidence and an outsider who could not really connect with other kids (and quite an annoying little prick, as I understand now), but despite those circumstances I was not repeatedly beaten (although a troublemaking kid that was shortly in my  school during the lower education stage once tried to beat me up with two other people from my class, they failed). In high school there was even less bullying.
Now, I may have been lucky, it is possible that my schools were uncommonly nice ones in Croatia, and the fact that I was encouraged to stand up to beating attempts (on me or my friends) after reading the "Ender's game" (because of Ender doing the same ...); but really my understanding is that beatings do not happen in Croatian schools as described in those threads. Is it because of the Croatian nondemocratic socialist government heritage? Or is it an European thing? That is why I am asking this question.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212587
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5284664
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21447459 <comment><USER3> Bullying is definitely a real thing, but I think limiting your definition of bullying to only physical acts is doing a disservice to the victims.

I've been bullied for a long time, and am glad that that's in the past now. I've never been physically harmed, I have no scars or hospital visits or even bruises.

I've been affected mentally though. Turns out that being told you're ugly or weird or stupid 15 times a day really takes a toll on your mental health. How are you supposed to be a normal kid if no one will even talk to you? How are you supposed to learn to socialize? How are you supposed to have a positive self-image if you get told you're shit at every turn? How are you supposed to focus on learning if people are constantly trying to get your attention just to say mean things? How are you supposed to play if everyone just runs away from you? Sure the adults tell you you're smart and beautiful and worth having around, but how believable is that when they don't lift a finger to stop the name calling? How are you supposed to lead a normal life if you're carrying all that baggage and there's no one who will help?

I've linked the "To this day project" video in the comments of HN often enough when the topic of bullying comes up. For me seeing that video was a real turning point. It was the point where I stopped believing all the things that mean little shits said about me years ago. I still cry when I listen to it every single time. So I'll link it again, in the hopes that it'll help someone else too:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY)

"I'm not the only kid

who grew up this way

surrounded by people who used to say

that rhyme about sticks and stones

as if broken bones

hurt more than the names we got called

and we got called them all"

\-- Shane Koyczan

<comment> t-h-e-chief Wow. Thanks for sharing Doxin. The 'Shane Koyczan' video is beautiful. I honestly feel that reaching out to someone being bullied is the most selfless act a person can do. I hope that everyone reading this can remember that and one day, when the need arises, can step forward and just be there for another person who needs someone.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for taking the time to have a look. That video is probably the one and only time I've thought "this guy gets it". There's a lot of people in the world unaware of bullying. It gets stereotyped to this thing where people are hung from their underwear in the showers, while that's a thing that happens too I bet, it's not what happens most commonly. Most bullying is invisible. It happens when no one who cares is looking and leaves no physical marks.

I just hope to show as many people as possible this video in the hope to create awareness of what bullying is, and not what the media portrays it to be.

For those unable to watch the video for whatever reason you can find the text here[0] but it's much more powerful when spoken by the author, You can tell it impacts him deeply to tell these stories.

[0] [https://genius.com/Shane-koyczan-to-this-day- annotated](https://genius.com/Shane-koyczan-to-this-day-annotated)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, throughout High School. At that point I had become socially disconnected and didn't have many friends. There were a few people who stood out from the usual put-downs and idiotic comments.

The problem is that even when something physical actually happened, for example, the time when someone sucker punched me in the face at my locker in front of an entire full hallway of students, everyone blamed me because of my size. I'm 6'10" (was probably 6'2" to 6'6" throughout High School) and the school administration always assumed I started it because I was the big and intimidating one.

It was to the point where one time, someone who routinely attacked and insulted me actually punched me right in front of the main office, where there were giant bay windows so the secretaries and administrators could see everything. I barely retaliated by pushing him away and the ROTC teacher broke it up, and because the one who attacked me was in ROTC, I was blamed and suspended.

There was literally never a single time I was attacked like this that the principal didn't assume I was the cause. I'll admit I was a troublemaker and did a lot of stupid shit in High School, but I never initiated any of the fights I got in or the situations I was put in.

The constant put-downs from people and the fact that my home life wasn't much better affected me academically to the point where I stayed back twice and the administration shuffled me off to an alternative school where I didn't actually learn anything of use because they didn't want to deal with me anymore.

I was in High School in the mid-2000s and should have graduated 2007, so it's not like this was in the 80s. The administration was just terrible and didn't care.

But hey, 10+ years later and I have a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and things have gotten a lot better. High School is a temporary, shitty time, and it won't have any bearing on your life afterwards unless you let it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose, based on the term "High school" that you live in the USA?

<comment><USER5> "High school" is probably the most common term in English, even for people from non-English-speaking countries (i.e. it gets used as a translation). It's the main term in some other English-speaking countries too, e.g. New Zealand (we also use "secondary school").

Edit: ["High school"] gets me 2.6e9 Google results, and ["secondary school"] only gets 1.9e8.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I experienced lots of bullying. It messed me up real good emotionally. It also greatly informed my worldview (for better or for worse).

So the details about the bullying:

public north-eastern grade & middle school: physical bullying during school hours (punched, shoved, tripped etc). The occasionally roughing up outside (never anything truly violent, just some bruises and black eyes). Teachers always took the "punish both sides". Later on I was lucky to both join a group and endear myself to one of the scariest kids around. This protected me from 80% of instances and things got much better.

private all-boys school: more emotional, getting called lots of names, people ignoring you, calling you weird, laughing at you, etc. It made it very tough to be confident and as a result, I spent the first 2 years by myself.

What can be learned from these experiences? Confidence and patience are necessary in developing and managing relationships. I heavily discount the ideology of truly being an "individual" when it comes to the perception of your peers. I'd rather have them think of me as your average nice person, and then we can build our relationship past that if the opportunities arise. The current kids have it rough with Social Media, and I would imagine it adds complexity making it more difficult. You are effectively making a bet with your public-facing persona, and some of us bite off more than we can chew.

</comment><comment><USER7> (In United States, high school, north-east, small town of 25k, early 2000's)

Got bullied, was the only girl in computer classes. Cliche, I know, but actually happened. Dead bugs on my notes when I left my desk, awful things direct messaged to my computer, shoved around, had my computer unplugged while trying to work, gum shoved over the lock on my locker... one time a guy wiped his wet hands on me and said "Don't you hate it when you go to the bathroom and get piss all over your hands?"

I stood up for myself a lot, but man, the piss on the hands thing made me cry. I did not have friends in those classes.

I was singlehandedly the reason why the computer lab got rearranged and policies were updated twice. I still ended up deciding to go for a different major in college because I never wanted to have that happen again.

Ended up always being in an IT role anyway because I learned so much from the teacher. He was my favorite, and went to bat for me a couple of times. I still send him Christmas cards, nearly twenty years later, because he was such a good teacher and I still use the stuff he taught.

</comment><comment><USER8> I had to deal with some alpha-kids at school, but at the time, nobody called that bullying. I also never viewed that as a problem, because I was never heavily beaten and I would also hit back, I hit once a kid so hard that I broke his jaw and nobody ever touched a finger on me and I made very lasting friends after that episode. That made me grow as a person as well, but it wasn't very necessary. I'd rather have not went through this.

Other kids on my class didn't fight back and have been abused, which is quite bad. School has very similar dynamics to prisons and the earlier a kid finds it out(or has parents that explain to them), the better. I also helped a lot of kids that got bullied on school, but there is much more kids willing to bully than kids willing to help. At least that made me also long-lasting friendships.

I think those "bullying" dynamics happen similarly when you become an adult, where police is there to hit minorities and displaced people. Where those alpha-kids with good backgrounds fare very well while bullying employees and doing their own schemes, and when things go south, their banks get bailed out.

Meanwhile you as a working class have to keep pushing forward, accepting to do overtime and so on. Getting bullied forever is something humans just accept as a fate.

Some kids, just as some adults, really fail to fight back and find their own space in that system and end up in a bad position. I'd say that those who failed to fight back at school also end up failing to fight back as adults. At least in the adult world things are a bit more civilised at a times, which gives the impression "that is just life and it's working as expected". But it is still there.

My mother, even though we were very poor, since I was very young, used to tell me how it is important to have an edge/advantage over people and how society is basically made of that. The more I can get away with, the better I'm positioned and that I should pay attention to that and use that to guide me. It took me a while to understand that, but I'm very glad she took the time to teach me that.

<comment><USER9> > I'd say that those who failed to fight back at school also end up failing to > fight back as adults.

I'm just that kind of person, I'm having hard time fighting back, because typically everytime it made situation worse. I can't think of good response in the time where that response is required, and trying to respond just with violence does nothing good. From what I've seen, bullies typically try to anger someone and steer them towards making actions that hurt or disgrace bullied person, sometimes even making them look like original attacker.

<comment><USER8> Yep. I wouldn't say you ARE this kind of person, you just need to practice more and understand what works. For instance, I'm no way perfect in that art. But it's a subtle thing that many kids don't even notice that exists... and unfortunately end up being just prey for dominant people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are you kidding? On paper I should have been a school shooter. I was bullied relentlessly on a near-daily basis by other students and even some teachers. Physically assaulted, verbally harassed, things stolen.. they even loosened the lug nuts on my car. I gave up complaining halfway through ninth grade because the only support I got was "move away from people bothering you" and "tell the teacher". By telling the teacher I became the annoying problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which country?

<comment><USER10> USA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> USA.

In Kindergarten I punched a kid on the bus for taking "my seat." I remember being surprised I had done it. I wasn't thinking about it or intending to do it. The bus driver wrote me up, and I had a talk with the principal the next day. The talk was confusing for me and I was a "good kid" so it was a little traumatic as well. What I took away from it was that it was never okay to hit.

Well, that meant I didn't hit back, either. I was bullied a little in elementary school after that, always physically; mostly by one guy who was older and bigger by virtue of being held back a year. There was one older girl who tried to verbally bully me when she saw me but I didn't understand what she was saying so it never really bothered me.

Things were really bad in middle school. My parents divorced, which was devastating to me, and I was in a new school district with all new kids. And I didn't hit back. I was bullied constantly on the bus by a big kid and his toady. I had a few more bullies at school as well, and when I moved again (same district/school) I had bullies in my neighborhood so I got bullied by some of the same kids even away from school. Everything combined put me in a place where standing up for myself wasn't possible emotionally, and the few times I tried it made things worse.

There is a lot of truth to "just standing up for yourself" to end bullying, but that just shifts it onto the next victim; and it wasn't something that could help me at the time.

For no reason I understand, maybe school policy, the bullying stopped being physical in the ninth grade, and for the rest of high school it stopped completely.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was beaten up repeatedly in school. The school did nothing to stop it. This is during 8th and 9th grade. I was also stabbed with some kind of homemade knife, a pen with a nail in the tip. It hurt but the injury wasn't serious. I finally decided that I'd rather go down fighting, and I started beating up my bullies, or at least fighting back. I found that mostly these kinds of people like easy targets, so they started leaving me alone. I haven't been in school for many years, this is in the 90's. I don't know what it's like anymore but I do know there's been an effort to bring more attention to bullying.

</comment><comment><USER13> I mainly learned about it watching Hollywood movies but didn't think it was real at all until recently. There's no bullying theme where I'm from.

I'm from Algiers, Algeria and I haven't seen bullying. Kids _do_ fight but it's "organized". They give each other a time and a location after school (no need to involve school staff), other kids cheer the fight, make predictions, and ensure it doesn't go too far. Kids get excited by fights, and when it's done, the opponents dust it off. There is also a break-down after the fight by each kid's friends on what they should have done.

 _However_ , if the fight is unfair or one of the opponents is too weak for the other, other kids would step up and prevent it from happening. If the stronger kid insists, one or more kids would protect the weaker, and tell the stronger kid to get lost. If not, there's a fight between the stronger kid and the one preventing him from beating the weaker one. There's nothing of the sort of someone repeatedly picking on someone else, humiliating them, taking their food/money, putting them in locker rooms, etc. If a kid did that, they would be beat up usually by some other kid who becomes a sort of body guard. Kids did it for sport but would intervene as soon as something was not "fair" (either one party unwilling to participate or too weak). Even psychological abuse would get stopped by other kids (if a kid mocked another's physique, or economic condition, others would never let it slide and would go to physical violence to correct a perceived tort: like "Call him that one more time and I'll fuck you up" and they did).

That's primary school. Fights become rare in middle school and quasi inexistent by high-school.

</comment><comment><USER14> What irks me that physical assaults, when done at school, become "bullying".

If something is not OK between adults, it's not OK between children and should be treated accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER15> I moved around a lot and as a result was targeted by the bullies at every new school. I learned early (grade 1) that the best way to deal with them was to fight back, quickly, viciously, using every dirty trick you can think of (I almost took one bully's eye out with a rock, for example). It doesn't matter how much of a beating you take in the process, so long as they think twice about trying it again. Bullies look for easy targets, so make yourself as hard as possible, and make sure there are witnesses.

Worked every time (6 in total), but it got me into a lot of trouble with teachers and principals who disagreed with my methods. If I were a kid today, I'd be a lot sneakier, because the things I did would get you juvie nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is something I need to write about, I was born with a cleft-pallet and was heavily ridiculed and bullied throughout my childhood.

This had serious ramifications which prevented me from finishing high school with my class, and I started using drugs and alcohol when I was 14 to cope with the verbal and physical abuse.

This was over 20 years ago though and schools today are much better about addressing these issues - however, I am in a much better position mentally to talk about it now.

<comment><USER17> I'm glad you're out of the woods. Do you think kids can be raised to be strong enough to befriend those with differences rather than pile on and abuse them? I'd like to think yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes I was bullied (UK, middle class). The teachers were powerless to do anything if they didn't see, and few bullies are stupid enough to assault you when teachers can see.

Nobody _ever_ taught me that I had a right to defend myself. That is what is missing from bullying education. If you have kids, teach them that they have a right to hit back!

This was in primary school. By the time I got to secondary school I had learned to fight back and although some bullies tried to mess with me, ultimately they went looking for softer targets. Sadly I later found out that one of my friends was getting very badly bullied in secondary school - <USER2> your kids to tell a reliable friend if they are getting bullied, I would have been able to help if I had known.

<comment><USER14> "Never start a fight, but if one starts, don't lose." is what my father taught me when I started getting bullied.

Worked both times I was physically bullied, people stopped pretty fast when they saw that I didn't fight "fair", I fought to win. Eyes, ears, genitalia was all fair game from the start with no regard for "fairness".

<comment><USER19> > "Never start a fight, but if one starts, don't lose."

That's really good motto. Don't lose doesn't mean win, just make sure to show you are not a victim and they will have to pay some price for fucking with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> With due respect, HN is likely the world's most concentrated nerd community.

Nerds are bully targets. Asking such questions here is not going to give a response that is representative of the general community.

My guess is that many of the people here on HN got bullied.

My kids have been doing boxing since age 5 and are forbidden to stop taking classes. This is specifically so they can deliver hard lessons to the bullies who will appear in teenage years.

<comment><USER21> Unless they themselves become the bullies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Guy from Germany here. I were with my twin (both guys) in the same class. Im also a Christian who really belives in the Bible (Really rare in my area). In short: I were an outsider (but together with my brother). Nonetheless bullying wasnt really a thing. In the beginning some kids gave it a try, but the achieved nothing. Generally the time was really great, we had a lot of fun. Our class was awesome and stood together. We had the typical Groupes and often little figths, but it never got physical. If a new kid came in class he had some starting problems, but generally new friends were made quickly. Bullying happend, but on a minor scale and never physical, just the stupid stuff kids say if they want to be cool.

</comment><comment><USER23> I grew up in eastern Europe in the 90s and 00s - the whole conversation about bullying is really foreign to me and it really stands out how common it seems to be in the US and to a lesser extent in the UK.

<comment><USER24> So you never ever witnessed bullying while growing up? I doubt it. I also grew up in a post-Iron Curtain country and have a vastly different experience than yours. I was bullied since kindergarten right to the end of my education. I've seen people bullied both in a small city and a bigger one. Both verbally and physically. Most times it were the poorer kids who did it.

<comment><USER25> No, bullying is just a US (and UK) thing. Everything in the US and UK is bad. Everything in Europe is good. We don't have bullying, or smart phone addiction, or family breakdown, or populist leaders, or racial tensions or drug and alcohol problems. We all live harmoniously in Europe, you guys (Americans) can learn a lot from us. </sarcasticcomment>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Got bullied in high school because I was "the slim tall guy" and because my mother was a teacher in middle school of some of these bullies so they thought they could try their revenge on me.

They heavily verbally bullied me but never tried physical contact. Going back I think I would physically react early to stop the abusing because it prolonged for a very long time (3~years, until I was big enough that they probably thought risking my physical reaction would end very very bad for them)

As some other users said: teach your kids they have the right to defend themselves.

</comment><comment><USER27> I attended a small primary school (ages 4-11) and witnessed no bullying.

Whilst in secondary school (ages 11-16) I witnessed various attempts at bullying of the psychological kind- very little if anything physical. It only came to my attention recently (thanks to a former teacher) that I had avoided bullying because they had "tried" and I didn't realise and didn't care about them, which is a death knell for psychological bullying.

Whilst in 'sixth form' (16-18) I observed significant bullying of the TV/film kind. A kid who associated with the "high performing idiots" group was thrown into a hedge outside the school practically every day. The staff were aware but never witnessed it, and the student being assaulted never reported his 'friends'. He was also repeatedly the butt of psychological bullying.

In my view this occurred because the school repeatedly failed to disrupt the friendship group that had an unhealthy dynamic. After talking to teachers I found out that a common technique is to ensure the friends aren't in the same classes, and when they are to disrupt their seating. Their friendship should dwindle and they will form relationships with others.

In the sixth form case these students had persisted as they were all high achievers - schools are incentivised not to move children out of "top set" classes, and to let them stay together as they were more disruptive to other students apart.

</comment><comment><USER28> USA

"Good" Public Elementary School (ages 6-11): Little to no bullying

Small Catholic Middle School (ages 12-14): a decent amount of physical/verbal bullying. I escaped most of it by being a bigger kid. But it definitely seemed like an issue in the Catholic schools in the area (I saw the same pattern at a summer school at another school).

"Progressive" Private high school (ages 15-18): Little to no bullying. But lots of pressure to succeed. We had a pretty bad suicide problem, considering the size of the school.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not at all surprised that bullying is real. I'm not sure if my own experience counts as bullying; I have been targeted at times: teased, called names, excluded; once even by the guy who I up to that point thought was my best friend. But in my primary school there was also a very awkward boy one year older who was definitely universally bullied, and I regret to admit that I once wrestled him to the ground, which won me some temporary respect from other kids (and private shame later in life).

In secondary school, there were two kids who kept picking on me for years, but I eventually learned to ignore then and feel sorry for them. When I was somewhere between 15 and 18, a girl who had been in my class in primary school and apparently knew me as a potential bullying target called me a crybaby out of nowhere, and I was mostly baffled that someone would be so incapable of growing up. I'd grown pretty much immune by that time.

But what I often wonder is whether the stereotypical American TV-show bullying is something that really exists: wedgies, stuffing people in lockers, that sort of thing. On American TV, it seems to be the universally accepted standard form of bullying, but it sounds a bit too outlandish to me to be based on anything real.

</comment><comment><USER30> I was lucky enough to not suffer much from bullying. I was introverted and nerdy, but I also liked sports and was lucky enough to look athletic enough that people wouldn't start fights with me. I'd get the occasional bit of verbal bullying, but again I've been lucky enough to be able to brush it off and not let it bother me. Sadly, a lot of my friends at the time didn't have the same luck, and I watched a lot of people get picked on for years.

Not standing up for them was one of my biggest regrets as a kid, because I watched it destroy some of them. The common stereotype of nerds growing up to be successful and having character, while the bully rots in some run-down area is far from the truth. It might happen, but I've seen plenty of assholes from my school days have decent lives while old friends from school have gone from zero confidence as a kid to zero confidence as an adult.

It's one thing that I shared with many of these kids. I had very little confidence in myself as a kid, but thankfully I've managed to find some thanks to a mixture of a decent career, keeping fit, and being involved in combat sports. For the past few years I've done BJJ and some MMA, and despite being an adult that hasn't had a "real fight" since I was a kid, the confidence I feel from being able to defend myself enough to run away/escape is life- changing.

It's probably the kind of advice you'd get from a boomer, but I'd recommend enrolling a kid in a combat sport like BJJ or Kickboxing, if not to teach them to fight, then to instil some confidence in their ability to defend themselves from someone attacking them or their friends. Confidence in something/anything is key.

</comment><comment><USER31> While it's been 20 years since Columbine, I recall that Jon Katz started a discussion on Slashdot that generated thousands of personal reports from across the country (and led him to publish the book 'Voices From the Hellmouth'. The school's state was far from unique (going back a long time before it). I wonder whether that widely-reported tragedy resulted in much change.

>"Voices from the Hellmouth is a sensitive and brutally truthful account of the pain and alienation teenagers go through when deemed "different" by their high school classmates. [0]

[0] [https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2000042001806pr](https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2000042001806pr)

</comment><comment><USER32> (I'm from U.S) I was bullied from 6th grade to 12th grade. I didn't experience physical bullying only mental bullying. Due to anxiety & depression (Diagnosed by psychiatrist), it was reinforced/made worse due to my assumptions. I'd always assume people were thinking a certain way about me, which did make me upset. Throughout school we had all forms of anti-bullying mediums shown/broadcasted throughout the school (On TV's, as well as literature). The only time there was physical bullying was when kids were doing things they weren't supposed to be doing (Going to class, not provoking others, etc). Over the years of being bullied, I've found multiple ways to cope and I "grew thicker skin." One way, was to skip cafeteria and head to the library and read/browse the web. I always thought it was kind of insensitive to tell a victim of bullying to grow thicker skin. This doesn't apply to everyone, but I feel if I wasn't bullied/put through mental torment during school, I would be a lot weaker mentally. It shaped me into becoming a stronger person. Best way to combat verbal bullying is to not show any emotion towards the bully and they won't gain any satisfaction. Plus, it's best not to value what they say if they're just insulting you to insult you. I've felt insulted while in my early teens for constructive criticism, which I should've used to improve myself, instead of ignoring and taking it as an insult.

</comment><comment><USER33> Yes, in elementary school, relentlessly. Lots of verbal abuse, being excluded but also regular physical abuse. Fist fights were a daily occurrence at my elementary school, often to the point of real injury (i.e. bleeding). Fights didn't just involve bullies and people being bullied either.

All this was in the Netherlands. Past elementary school I haven't seen much bullying. My elementary school was particularly bad but friends who went to different schools also confirm that this kind of thing wasn't unusual.

</comment><comment><USER34> I live in Italy.

Being a giant all my life (190cm now, 188cm age 16), and a taciturn good boy, I was continuously bullied until say 18 years old.

This guy I want to talk about, kept teasing, challenging, bullying me for three years until I just snapped, lost control of my actions, and woke up 10s later holding him by his neck 40cm above the floor against a wall.

We became friends a couple hours later.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am curious if there are people who _don 't_ have experience of some sort of school bullying.

</comment><comment><USER36> PSA: if your kid is being bullied in school, it is totally OK to knock the shit out of the bully exactly once (after gathering sufficient evidence of bullying). It will resolve 99% of your kid's problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope you meant for your kid to do it ...

I imagine parents roughing up minors would have a host of bad results, possibly including prison time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I used to routinely get beaten up by the Principle of the schools, Jock son.

My self defense process was to laugh at him for it. "Just what do you think you're proving beating up a the class nerd?", Are you so insecure that you'd beat me up for talking to your girlfriend?" etc. Probably made things worse for myself but its how i coped.

Jokes on him, he grew up to be academically successful (briefly) hit drugs hard then die in a fiery drug fueled car crash in his low 20's.

I'm mid 40's decent job, house 2 awesome kids and fantastic wife.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've been on both sides of bullying.

In one context (school), I was somewhat of a bully. I was bigger than the rest of my class, and I often attempted to assert my dominance, usually by making jokes at people's expense. In another context (competitive sports outside of school), I was typically the primary outsider who was bullied in just that manner.

I don't know where (or if) to draw a causal line, but I do know that memories of both sides of that equation seem to involve deep-seated insecurities and feelings of inadequacy.

<comment><USER39> I remember somebody who hassled me often at high school met me by chance in the pub in later years. I told them what a wanker they were to me at school and this made them agitated. When they asked. What they could do to make amends they didn't like my verbal response. So suddenly they got aggressive and the aggro started right there. Some never change when they're mask slips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Really depends on the school, luckily the public high school I attended was high ranking and it was in sort of a company town. Despite that, I recall one week in 9th grade when two upper-class football players tried to shake me down for lunch money several days in a row. Since I played dumb and told them that I brought my lunch (a lie) they lost interest after a few days. I didn't report it, and I'd been exposed to enough stuff in middle school that I didn't dwell on it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yes,mostly older kids picked on us younger kids on the bus ride home. My school was pretty strict though so someone was suspended for couple of days from school for such activity.

</comment><comment><USER42> Dutch guy here. Yes I was bullied in primary school and secondary school but not physical. It was just because I wasn't wearing the "right" shoes, etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> Coming into year 7 I went to school with a bad atmosphere and some really bad people it. Management also had some idea that they'd break up all the prior groups, so I got placed with only one guy that wasn't really a close friend for classes. For the first year it wasn't very personal. Senior students would loudly mock me, and a lot of non-aggressive pupils, usually for some thing to do with personal style or alleged sexual perversion, in front their peers, sometimes someone would sweep my leg, or break stuff, mostly like expensive mechanical pens or textbooks/notebooks. The younger jackasses in my cohort would do things like light spray deodorant on fire and use it as a flamethrower and sweep laser pointers against peoples eyes (and at the time it was still rumored that can give permanent eye injuries). Year 8 I had dirty pond water thrown at me and a classmate by a group of bullies blocking a path. They scattered and ran when I started towards them, but after that it was personal. I guess rumors travel quickly in those circles and I had about a year and a half of personal hell as they marked me (always in groups, the fucking cowards) in recess and lessons with weak teachers. First followup I got soaked through with water the assailant said she'd taken out of the toilet. Not too long after two guys cornered me with a clear aim at breaking my musical instrument and beating me up. They didn't succeed, I evaded, but the ringleader was known to have beaten a guys face bloody against a brick wall, so the threat wasn't idle. In practice the physical violence was limited to getting pushed roughly into lockers and getting hit i the back of my head once when one of them managed to catch me unaware. They broke my vehicles twice, one of them in a way I'm just lucky didn't kill me in a traffic accident. But the constant threat of much worse violence and their ever- present jeering about my alleged sexual deviances, mocking my dialect, calling me crazy, and so on, that really took its toll. I had days when I couldn't hold any food. I'd just throw up frow the stress. As for the crazy, they were just being assholes then, I was simply a sensitive kid with too much belief in pacifism and going through the system. But that one they kind of managed to make come true. I have struggled for decades now with depressions and a sense of hopelessness. I can't connect with friend groups, I've been in to shitty shape to get a partner and I am fighting the suicide impulses less and less for my sake and more for the effects on my relatives. And I won't say the bullying alone did that, but it was an indispensable beginning for it.

For your statistics, this was Sweden.

<comment><USER44> I'm really sorry to hear what you had to go through. Thank you for sharing your experience (and to the many others who have written here). I wish you all the best in finding friends and a partner, which you definitely will. Please be good to yourself! Your nuanced writing shows your sensitivity is still there, and that's a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm Polish, from a small city of 100 000 people in the north. To me bullying and violence was such an almost everyday occurrence, that I'm surprised that someone could think that bullying is not part of school life.

I wouldn't be able to recount how many times I have witnessed bullying. I witnessed bullying of people who were just not good at responding to bullying. That included not only other kids, but teachers as well. One of primary school catechesis teachers (catholic teacher before baptism) was bullied. People would throw paper balls at her, laugh in her face etc. I don't know what happened to her. Then on my very first day of junior high the teacher responsible for my class had a mental breakdown and started to cry because of a conflict with one of girls in the class. She, the teacher, beefed up after that and tried her best to make anything out of the class. I think it was her last class assignment before she retired and I'm really grateful to her for trying. In the same junior high class, bullying didn't spare even "alpha males". One of alpha males and bullies was reduced to an underdog, because he was suspected of cooperating with police. He would be beaten if he tried to wait for classes in physical proximity of a classroom. After some time he was moved to some other school. The same happened to another guy.

I was myself on reviving end maybe 4 times. I was humiliated for example by pouring a soda on my head. Although, one time when I was in primary school, it was more an assault with pneumatic rifle than bullying. I had no money, nor anything really valuable, so those two guys stole from me a knoppers (snack- bar)... Brothers of these two guys ended up in the junior high class with me.

Twice I ended up being part of a group that was bullying. Once in primary school, I wandered off after school with group of my class mates and they ended up bullying our another class mate. I was never very social so if I recall correctly I didn't even register that we were not just wandering around, but that they were planning a "setup". Another time I was at a birthday party. It was when I was in high school. I more or less knew what could happen, because certain guys were bragging about similar things. What happen was that colleges of my classmate decided to randomly assault pedestrians just for the thrill of it; they were not trying to steal anything from them, they just literally wanted to beat random people for fun. Me and the birthday guy had to force one guy to let this random guy escape. He was kicking that poor guy around head while the guy was on the ground. But again, bullying is not a good term here, it was a brutal assault. The guys should have ended up in prison. I should have reported it to police. But as I wrote, bad things were happening to people who were getting involved with police.

Mind you, I don't think I was in bad schools. My primary school was very much an average school. The junior high was in the same building, with the same classrooms, and with the same teachers as the best high school in the city. My high school was not the best, but the third best in the city out of maybe 20 other schools. Although, I think, my junior high class was an exceptionally bad class.

<comment><USER46> I went to a school in south-west Poland. My experiences were not too dissimilar to those described here, so I think this account is entirely plausible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Yes. Went to a Catholic school. Was horrific and life altering.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm afraid to ask, but is it possible this is more common as a U.S. phenomenon?

<comment><USER24> I have seen and experienced bullying in both small and large cities in Poland. It gets worse every year, especially nowadays with social media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> For me some bullying received and some shitty behaviour intended to secure other than the lowest rung on the dominance hierarchy... I was for the most part withdrawn child through high school...

Today I have sons I have watched them go through beginning adolescence. Noted that there is a fair amount of friction that builds up when boys (and sometimes girls) hang out and play. When it is ok we call it "rough housing" when it crosses a line bullying. Even with each other there is a kind of play which starts as a tickle fight and ends up with WWA moves. Aggression is a natural behaviour and in itself is not bad. It seems crucial to focus it and give it an outlet. In their grammar school they would get week long bullying programs but nowhere in that is what to do for exploding energy they feel inside.

I thought of BJJ, they idea was if they were going to act like young Randy Coutures they should know how not to hurt each other. It wasn't really for self defense or confidence. After a few years in it I am happy in a number of ways. One is that I followed them in - it looked like so much fun I started about 6 months or so after them. It is not a striking discipline so there are no punches or kicks. It comes out of judo but there is less standing and throwing. And after a good class you feel wrung out. Like most of the muscles in your body have been activated. It's weird to say this but there is something about nonsexual contact with others. It is relaxing. I have noted when I am on the NYC subway after class - I do not mind the jostling and bags jammed in the back quite as much. (A lot of the joke names for BJJ note this: "involuntary couples yoga"; "pajama wrestling"; "the art of folding clothes with people still in them".) You break through a barrier with strangers that you would not normally breach. And afterwards you are not strangers.

I think my boys are calmer and more relaxed. Also around girls as there are a few girls in BJJ that can legitimately kick ass. When I watch their classes I see how the teacher actively pushes them to take care of each other. The general idea is you don't hurt your training partners so they will be around tomorrow to do it again. Train hard and safe. It can be done and is a core ethic in BJJ. My younger son came home in tears as he had one ofhis stripes taken off his belt. He was submitting another kid and they refused to tap. My son continued and hurt the kid (luckily nothing broken). Teacher yelled at my son insisting he understand how to stop before the opponent gets hurt.

I realized that BJJ might be good for bullies. Not the 0.01% of actual budding psychopaths but the rest of us full of energy needing to be expressed. We think of martial arts for the bullied - and they can be. But something like BJJ might help some folks not be bullies.

I would never say "everyone should do BJJ" nor anything for that matter. But I wonder how much excessively bottled aggression and energy could be focused into something like BJJ that teaches you how to express it in a way that is not about humiliation and dominance. BJJ is humbling. There is someone out there that is 50 pounds lighter and a few inches shorter and they can put you in difficult positions. Then you scratch your head and try again and maybe get a little better. These are good lessons for kids to learn. Wish I had learned them.

</comment><comment><USER49> Yeah, but pretty mild. Left some, but no significant effects.

</comment><comment><USER50> Some tried but it didn't went as they expected.

</comment><comment><USER51> It seems that not everyone grows out of that role.

</comment><comment><USER52> I was a victim of many serial bullies, and worse, from grade school through high school.

While I experienced numerous traumatic experiences during my early childhood the worst bully was my school. My school refused, repeatedly, to take any action whatsoever against a child in my grade that would reenact or act out in regard to beatings, rapes, and murders, he witnessed in his home country, on me and the other poor souls stuck in the project with this tortured soul. His parents refused to acknowledge his bad behaviors publicly, but in private they would beat him worse than I was beat. When I acted out in school I was put in solitary confinement in a room resembling a prison cell. My memory is foggy but it feels as if I spent more time in that prison than in class. The school couldn't bring themselves to deal with a broken migrant family straight from a war zone. in their weakness they caused immeasurable harm to me. They're lucky my parents moved me to a different district before this kid could kill me. He came close a few times.

The next school wasn't any better. Again, there were multiple perpetrators in this time period, but the most egregious was the school and their refusal to clean their house. I experienced years of daily physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of a woman a few years older than me, until again I was moved away from these perpetrators. School social workers dismissed my experiences and blamed me.

In late middle school I started acting out in ways that the school could not ignore. I distinctly remember reporting directly to school administration that I was being bullied at recess and being laughed off. The next day I struck the bully. At first the planning officer (detention teacher) was talking expulsion, no tolerance, blah blah blah. When I told him that I reported the bullies behavior the day prior and no action was taken I was let off with a warning. This incident bought me a relatively healthy amount of peace and quiet for the rest of the school year. Though things quickly escalated out of control in high school once I realized I could stop many bullies in their tracks with my greater strength. At the time I didn't realize that these bullies parents could strong arm the administration into overlooking their children's terrible behavior while punishing me.

Not long after this all blew up I started filing dozens-hundreds of official reports outlining virtually every abuse I suffered with the help of social workers happy for the hundreds of billable hours and a long list of diagnoses to bill against. Not a single ______* one was investigated by child protective services. Then I finished school and spent years and years bouncing around, vainly looking for community, and a place to heal my wounds and come to terms with what I 've experienced.

I'm obviously still pretty raw about these parts of my life, but if I can help shed some light on how shitty it is to grow up with constant abuse, from peers, neglect from caretakers, and parents completely unable to stand up against the organized incompetence of small city education then feel free to ask me questions. I'll put my email in my profile in a bit.

Sorry if my thoughts are disjointed or the formatting is bad. On my phone.

</comment><comment><USER53> I have been the bullied, and the bully, in US elementary schools during the 90s. Never on a consistent basis, like you hear about in US popular culture.

All my memories since 3 years old are of feeling like an outsider. Strong cliques were present even in kindergarten. I suppose this is because my elementary school was in a dense neighborhood, so kids from there were more likely to share social bonds both in and out of school. The further away your home was, the more socially disconnected you were, and the outsider feeling was probably a consequence of that.

It was always after school, when hordes of kids went mostly unsupervised on the campus, when the bullying happened. I was usually alone. I liked to draw pictures. The bullies called me names, stole my papers and pencils, and hit me when I wouldn't give them away.

I had friends at school, but most of them were picked up by their parents soon after school ended. I had to wait on campus in "after school" for hours until one of my parents drove from work to pick me up. Maybe it was my fault for not wanting to join in with the other kids. Maybe it was because my parents told me all the time that I was special that I thought I was better than everyone else, and couldn't waste effort on being with them.

Eventually, I figured out that bullies leave you alone when you hit them really, really hard. In halls where no teachers watched, there were fights. By the end of Elementary School, the kids who all bullied me were shorter than me. I began to play rough. I confronted one member of the in-cliques in the middle of the cafeteria, knocked the wind out of him, and just walked away. No one stopped me, and no adults were present to intervene. I wanted people to believe that I was dangerous, and succeeded at that.

Some time after that, during after school, there was a kid who seemed smart and interesting to me. Learning about him, he mentioned that it was dangerous to hit him on the head, because he was "epileptic." I had never heard of this "epileptic" thing before. I wondered, what would happen if he was hit on the head? So I hit him. He exclaimed something like "Noooooo! Don't hit my head! Don't do it!" To which I thought, "Hah. You had better try to stop me then." So I hit him again, and again, and again. He didn't do anything to stop me physically, so I kept doing it. After a dozen times, it started to bore me, so I finally left him alone. Later that afternoon, I felt guilty about what I'd done. I don't remember if I apologized to him or not, but I hope I did, because I'm pretty sure this counts as bullying.

It's an incredibly intoxicating feeling to put your own amusement above the needs of others, especially when you can justify it. ("Oh, I was just trying to learn about epilepsy, and he's also weird.") Exploiting the perceived weakness of others to be in control of the situation makes you feel powerful, even more so when you've already experienced the same thing the other way around.

Becoming comfortable as a dangerous outsider gave me a reputation of being an annoying ass who nobody wanted to be around. Socially, I was stunted, and it's taken a lifetime of personal development to break through some of that.

To address your question "Is it because of the Croatian nondemocratic socialist government heritage? Or is it an European thing?" I cannot speak to Croatia, but I did go to the Netherlands for a few summers as a kid. It seemed like the kids on the playgrounds there were consistently mean to me too, and sometimes I would act threateningly to show them that I wasn't to be trifled with.

</comment><comment> non-entity Dealt with some bullying, always verbal, mostly in elementary school (I was a weird kid, I suspect from lack of socialization) and in middle school, although at that point I start fighting back and ended up getting in lots of trouble and often finding myself at the other end of bullying.

High school was different. By high school I just wanted to keep my head down and do what I had to graduate. Didn't have a whole lot of friends, but wasn't bullied either. I was mostly amicable with everyone I interacted with.</comment>


We're All Hypocrites About Online Privacy - jack-r-abbit http://time.com/3319605/online-privacy-hypocrisy/ <comment><AUTHOR> _Whoever is responsible for this hacking crime robbed these actresses of a lot more than a few pictures; they were robbed of the very basic ability to control what confidential and personal information was shared publicly._

This ability never really existed--it was just harder for it to be circumvented before the 'net.</comment>


SF Restaurant Sign Calls Yelp 'Bully,' Integrity of Reviews Questioned - <AUTHOR> http://foodbeast.com/content/2013/04/22/sf-restaurant-calls-out-yelp-for/ <comment><USER2> The problem with these claims is that they all confuse ignorance with malice. These rumors are persistent because they make a sexy story, but they aren't true -- Yelp doesn't manipulate reviews based on advertising.

Citing what a Yelp sales rep is alleged to have said to a business owner _sounds_ like compelling evidence, but it's really just garbage: Yelp sales reps have no ability to influence anything, anywhere, no matter what they say or don't say. They're part of a huge team doing a low-pay cold-calling gig -- they make a sale, ring a little bell, and hand in a piece of paper documenting the sale for the bean-counters. That's the extent of their influence with anyone.

What's really going on here is some combination of business owners mis- interpreting what a sales rep says, businesses trying to transparently game the system (and whining when it doesn't work -- business owners are _amazingly stupid_ about this!), sales reps saying dumb things (I'm sure this happens occasionally, despite best efforts to control what they say), and the somewhat random nature of an automated review filter. There are tens of thousands of businesses being called by Yelp sales reps every day. Even if 1% of those businesses have reviews _randomly_ filtered on the same day, that's a lot of opportunities for people to see patterns where they don't exist.

<comment><USER3> So sales reps say that your good reviews will stay and your bad reviews will disappear, but what they say is untrue?

I don't know about the Thai restaurant owner, but I certainly trust JWZ. <http://www.jwz.org/blog/2009/02/yelp-shakedown/>

<comment><USER2> OK, you trust JWZ, but did you read what he wrote, or did you just glance at it and make a snap judgment because you think he's cool? Here's what he says in easy-to-consume bullet points for the TL;DR set:

1) The linked post is four years old. Yelp used to sell a "featured review", but hasn't done that for years because it was controversial (duh). So that part is true, but no longer relevant [1].

2) Stupid people with bad taste write Yelp reviews. This is definitely true (hello, internet), but again, irrelevant [2].

3) He links to the tired old East Bay Express article that started the whole "Yelp extortion" meme, and which has been definitively debunked. Repeatedly [3].

So, fine. Trust JWZ. He's a good, smart guy. But in this case, you're "trusting" a mix of his opinion (which is valid), and out-dated, second-hand information (which is not).

[1] [http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/yelp-kills-featured- reviews/...](http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/yelp-kills-featured- reviews/3073/)

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEdXhH97Z7E>

[3] [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020450530457700...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204505304577002170423750412.html)

<comment><USER4> So.... you're saying that it's a bad idea to trust what people say about businesses on the internet, because it's often outdated and lacking detail?

What does Yelp do again? I forget.

<comment><USER5> It's bad to indiscriminately trust what completely random people say. That's different from not trusting at all. There's a reason why Yelp displays friends' reviews before other random reviews, and why Yelp goes to significant effort to get people to write textual reviews rather than just leaving a star rating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A conversation I had with Friend 1, a successful business owner, and Friend 2, a less successful business owner:

Friend 1: Have you tried getting some positive reviews on the internet? People really trust them, it really helps to drive business.

Friend 2: Oh, really? How many reviews do you have?

Friend 1: About twenty.

Friend 2: How many of them did you write yourself?

Friend 1: (Laughs) About nineteen of them.

<comment><USER7> I'm not surprised by this. Writing reviews or mentions yourself or getting others to astroturf for your product is essential to getting started nowadays.

<comment><USER8> False, and it's opinions like these that let people justify their own dishonesty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you build a business model that knowingly showcases the worst ignorance of an anonymous Internet public, and ask for money to help mitigate the inevitable damage, how is that any different from a protection racket?

<comment><USER10> The algorithm also exists to protect a business from the worst ignorance of an anonymous internet public, it requires participation to avoid being filtered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the claims are true, it's a big deal. Losing half a star on Yelp can translate into 20 percent fewer people coming to your restaurant on a busy Friday night, according to a study by two UC Berkeley economists: [http://www.dailycal.org/2012/09/06/online-customer- reviews-a...](http://www.dailycal.org/2012/09/06/online-customer-reviews- affect-restaurant-business/)

<comment><USER12> The article says that _probability_ of a restaurant being sold out at peak hours changes by 20 percent, not number of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not the first, second, or third time such allegations have been raised, but they always devolve into he-said/she-said.

Restauranteurs, when you're calling Yelp to ask about missing reviews, RECORD THE CONVERSATION! One recording of a Yelp rep saying something like that is game over.

<comment><USER14> Just remember that California is a two-party consent state when it comes to wiretapping- if the other party does not know and understand that you are recording the conversation, it will not be admissible in court proceedings.

<comment><USER15> Chiming in to remind people that Oregon is a one-party consent state -- which means so long as you say the conversation is being recorded at the beginning, everything is good. This does not go across state lines, however.

<comment><USER16> Yelp doesn't have sales offices in Oregon. They do in California and Arizona.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Yelp's reviewing process, noting that the company favors consistent reviewers over first timers, in part, to avoid "fake" reviews"

Well, this is how it works more or less

I've never had a comment on Yelp taken down

Well, as other comment says, the problem is the 'idiots'.

There's always someone that thinks McD is the epitome of gourmet food and thinks anything that's not overspiced/overMSGd is "bland"

There's always someone that thinks that a place with tacky decoration and a queue in front and rude bouncers is "the place to be"

So it's really like herding cats.

<comment><USER18> Cats that love writing reviews that trash a place they don't like, regardless of how quirky their preferences are.

<comment><USER19> I write bad reviews sometimes, but usually include concrete reasons why the place sucks in my review. I find the bad reviews generally are more specific than the good reviews.

<comment><USER17> And that's totally ok, after all, not all places are great.

But it's one thing to write "OMG this place sux", another is to be specific as you say, like "we waited for 10 minutes until the server appeared and he was rude and the food was chewy"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looking at their yelp page, they do have 5 star reviews, and they also have 1 star reviews. There are few filtered reviews, but they aren't universally high ratings or anything, and I think Yelp does filter out users with a single review that is 5 stars because they are usually fake.

I'm also sure that a restaurant feels that recent reviews should be weighted heavily, almost exclusively, and that those two star reviews from last year should be ignored.

<comment><USER21> > I'm also sure that a restaurant feels that recent reviews should be weighted > heavily, almost exclusively, and that those two star reviews from last year > should be ignored.

I agree 100% with that. It's very possible for a restaurant to get better or go downhill in a year.

If a restaurant has a rough opening but drastically improves after a few months, the early 1-star reviews can do some serious long-term damage even if they're a year old.

<comment><USER22> I agree -- recency is more important IMO. Particularly reflecting change in management, change in processes, etc.

For restaurants that aren't chains, processes may not be tried and tested -- first week jitters, hell, first month/quarter jitters should be accounted for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Link to referenced article: [http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks- yelp-20130420,...](http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks- yelp-20130420,0,7824145,full.column)

</comment><comment><USER24> It seems that Yelp is turning into something like the BBB, ultimately holding the good name of organizations hostage, whether or not that was the original intent.

<comment><USER25> I think that's a little unfair. Yes, there have been some instances of that happening with the BBB... but when one of their sales people contacted me to sign up to become a BBB accredited business, I asked if it would affect my rating negatively if I refused, and the sales person was very adamant that it would not. So I declined, but she updated my profile with how long I was in business (adding an extra 3 years), and that improved my rating from A- to A+. Which is my company's current rating, even though I have never given them a dime.. all I do is respond to customers who file complaints with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Technically speaking, there's nothing to stop Yelp from manipulating results within their search engine, just like there's nothing to stop Google.

I mean we all think Google doesn't mess with search rankings but we all know they do (see the google blog post about catching Microsoft by inserting fake long-tail search results).

In short, does Yelp do this? I don't see why not; there's basically no way for anyone to verify whether Yelp does this unless they get to dive into emails for discovery in a big trial. Then again, I have to think Yelp has enough integrity not to mess with results; but my point is you would never know except through hearsay and gossip.

There's no ChillingEffects for Yelp Reviews.

<comment><USER27> For the record - I used to be a an Engineering Manager at Yelp, and I've had my Yelp work emails searched in discovery during big lawsuits about the review filter. So did all of my colleagues. The result of all that should speak for itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How is this any different than Google selling ads and deranking spam?

<comment><USER29> The ads Google sells are marked as advertising. Spam isn't; it's usually not too hard to tell, but it mucks up the search result space.

"Featured reviews" for paying customers essentially become a form of paid advertising, but they are not clearly marked as such. That puts them closer to the spam side than the ad side.

<comment><USER5> Yelp killed off featured reviews a while ago, specifically because they were controversial. It'd be useful if people didn't keep harping on things that aren't even valid anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Don't know if the accusations are true but I would take Yelp reviews with many grains of salt. Its not the truth I question rather its the extreme subjectivity.

Some people care about service, some don't; some care about decor, some don't. Different people have different tastes as well as different price sensitivity.

Yelp reviewers are also self selecting both in who is more prone to write reviews and under which circumstances that will drive someone to write reviews.

So if you really want to figure out how good a place is for you, by all means use Yelp as a resource. But you need to review the reviewers to see what their leanings and expertise are and then read their reviews with that understanding in mind.

<comment><USER10> "Its not the truth I question rather its the extreme subjectivity."

How do you solve this problem? It's endemic to user-generated content. Of course reviews of everything aren't objective fact. They're inherently skewed by opinion by even the most professional paid reviewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Down for me now, but the Coral Cache works:

[http://foodbeast.com.nyud.net/content/2013/04/22/sf- restaura...](http://foodbeast.com.nyud.net/content/2013/04/22/sf-restaurant- calls-out-yelp-for/)

</comment><comment><USER32> While I've seen the filtered reviews issue and think the claims are somewhat true, my bigger problem is that yelp does nothing for reviewer quality.

So many times, I've seen blatantly false and misleading information tacked on to someone's reviews. The site allows both the microcomments "Food, okay. Waitresses, hot." and the long, trailing rants about how the steak tasted rotten. This is a problem, and not one easily fixed. Being an "Elite Reviewer" just means you give out more idiotic reviews than the rest.

Yelp is a joke to anyone who really cares about food.

<comment><USER10> "my bigger problem is that yelp does nothing for reviewer quality"

What do you expect from user-generated content?

"Yelp is a joke to anyone who really cares about food."

It's really not. You take the reviews into aggregate, it's very easy to screen out the idiots and fickle eaters. Don't pay attention to the ratings, pay attention to the depictions in the reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This might be a common problem. Forums that, while ostensibly democratic, are actually tailored to suit the forum-owner's agenda.

It's done by selective promotion, censorship, filtering, etc. "Boing Boing" is one famous culprit if I recall correctly.

The owners argue "it's my forum so I have the right; and besides I'm not censoring I'm unpublishing" or some such nonsense.

I'm sure it can get very sneaky. fake democracy.

</comment><comment><USER34> Another problem is that people are more compelled to write bad reviews.

<comment><USER10> Right. I don't see any problem with INITIAL reviews being held in a queue based on the user's participation level. With more participation reviews get unfiltered.

Criticizing Yelp's algorithm is fine, but people don't understand how it actually works, nor do they have the patience to figure it out. Full transparency would be nice, but that would defeat the purpose to having it to screen out the fakers and SEO spammers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is why I use Cloudy [<http://askcloudy.com/>]. They don't do any of this nonsense and it's better to see reviews from friends anyway.

<comment><USER36> That's useless to me. When I want recommendations it's because I'm somewhere other than where I live and the people I know live.

<comment><USER35> It will expand to friend of friend if it can't find friends and will show global ratings. It's been good so far for me when I travel

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would like to remind people that this is not the first or even second time that this kind of claim has flaired up regarding biased reviews, corrupted reviews, purchased reviews, and extortionary practices.

I would also caveat though that there is a plausible possibility that this is an attempt at mobbing Yelp.

I have always felt that reviews are ripe for disruption and a bit of an ethics and authority treatment.

<comment><USER10> "I have always felt that reviews are ripe for disruption and a bit of an ethics and authority treatment."

I'd be fascinated to see how someone tries to tackle this better. I post reviews there sometime and see people arguing against their algorithm, but their (imperfect) algorithm is working against a social problem, not a technical problem and that's where persons get confused.

"Ethics" is a pretty poor word to use when Yelp is working against the equivalent of or direct SEO-style review spammers. It's hard to tell a real person from a plant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> the only thing i use yelp for nowadays is directions and general info like phone number or hours of operations.

looking restaurants / dry cleaners / whatever up in google and/or apple maps is pretty much useless when you're on the go.

whereas on yelp, you simply enter the name (or ethnic category), click on the map, and there you go.

quite frankly i stopped using yelp for reviews as soon as the idiots took over. /hipster

<comment><USER39> _quite frankly i stopped using yelp for reviews_

I have too. My preferred method of searching for "good" restaurants is:

1) Viewing reviews on Opentable when making reservations (to discover which dishes are good)

2) Looking at the Zagat rating when clicking on a restaurant in Google maps (which is more analogous to a hotel's star rating and is more objective)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> They should remove the captcha to view filtered reviews.</comment>


Border agents are checking social media, but we still don't know how closely - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/31/20837448/social-media-dhs-cbp-surveillance-us-border-ismail-ajjawi-harvard <comment><USER3> I don't like this, I think it will have a chilling effect on free speech, but if you're posting in public I think you have to expect folks may pull up your posts.

What I absolutely hate is compelling folks to disclose their handles. I do not labor under the delusion this handle is "anonymous" (many, many people know who I am) but I purposefully avoid tying my legal name to it precisely because of situations like this. I'm not a criminal or a terrorist, I just want to have authentic conversations about matters of public interest. It's hard to be authentic when there's someone snooping on your posts.

 _waves to any border agents reading my post history in the future_

<comment><USER4> I don't see why this is so controversial. It seems like the proper way to do a background check in the current era.

It really all depends on _what_ disqualifies someone from entry. The worry seems to stem from a general distrust of ICE and the current administration rather than this actual technique.

I have to think that if someone bragging about criminal activity on Instagram/Twitter got through the border and murdered somebody, ICE would be criticized for not doing their due diligence.

<comment><USER5> > I don't see why this is so controversial. It seems like the proper way to do > a background check in the current era.

Because it's not normal to perform extensive background checks for people visiting your country? I'd think it pretty weird it they wanted to interview my family, friends, employer, previous employer.

> The worry seems to stem from a general distrust of ICE and the current > administration rather than this actual technique.

No... I mean I find the actual technique offensive. They can find public profiles associated with my name by googling me. Why do you need to provide them information about which handles are associated with me? If it's because otherwise they might mismatch profiles <-> individuals, perhaps they just shouldn't be using this information to profile people?

<comment><USER6> he was coming to live in the US as a student, not just visit.

It is offensive in this case because it wasn't anything he did that lost him the visa, just social media connections said.

More generally, I know that my social media is important to my wife's visa in a completely different country, and the government may interview our friends and family. (I view it as offensive, invasive; but it does normal that the government would indeed interrogate perhaps excessively immigrants, even temporary ones)

<comment><USER5> In the first case mentioned in the article. They request social media identifiers I believe for all visitors now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone created a service where you enter your social media handles and it scans them to flag posts / content / friends who should be deleted before attempting entry to the USA?

<comment><USER8> So you want me to give some random company all of my social media account handles so that it's all conveniently in one single place for a nazi run organization to access?

<comment><USER9> Precisely to which "nazi run organization" are you referring?

<comment><USER9> Wow, I got greyed out for that kind of question... I'll ask again: seeing as the nazis haven't held real power since WWII, which organization (with the possible exception of a few insignificant political parties) do they run?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> it's almost impossible to be a Muslim who knows middle Eastern muslims and not have someone on your soc med feeds who posts anti American views. I have (real, in person) friends in my soc med feeds who post anti American views. I don't agree with them, but I somehow sympathise with them since they're refugees who came here after America destroyed their homeland.

if that's the reason his visa got cancelled it's exactly a racist policy - <USER2> was punished for who he was. you could pretty much say, we want to cancel the visa of this honest young student, let's just spend half an hour on their socmed and we'll paint them as a terrorist sympathiser.

they're my friends, they're not me. please distinguish.

ah, America: once the land of free speech, equality before the law, liberty and justice. now, the statue of liberty has fallen to her knees, face in hands, her tears the only thing keeping alive the tortured souls who surround her.

<comment><USER10> I am from a small country in eastern europe. There is not way you can grow up in there without having a few acquaintances who are either Russian nuts or hold some sort of racist views.

Moreover, some of these people weren't really as bad when they were younger, so you can simply forget to get rid of them from your friendlist, too.

Besides, I keep them because it perfectly reminds me of what lack of education could do to me.

This is just like judging a person for what they are reading - does it not get to you that someone may be reading the opposite point of view just for the sake of reinforcing their own opinion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There was an operation against Chinese students around the same time: [https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona- education/...](https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona- education/2019/08/30/chinese-students-arizona-state-university-detained-los- angeles-airport/2169610001/)

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/8/27/incoming- freshm...](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/8/27/incoming-freshman- deported/)

> She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose > the US on my friend[s] list."

It's not known if the friend is an ISIS member or merely someone posting memes ridiculing US policies - which can be contradicting and capricious, why? We have discourse, we vote for people who write legal statutes and appoint officials who makes further administrative/judicial decisions. They're subject to change.

Judges regularly reject government motions and can even strike legal statutes from the books. People can disagree with the law and argue about it. Laypeople can banter, even if they don't know what they're talking about.

Of course he doesn't have full political rights in US because he's not a citizen. And if he wanted to naturalize, wouldn't he be scrutinized on his background and interviewed?

He's reached out to the news, couldn't he volunteer FB posts made by the friend so we can know what we're talking about? He has to be a big fan of USA - hopefully - if he applied to Harvard and got accepted with a scholarship!

Off topic: Did you know the student is from Tyre? It used to be an island, [https://www.ancient.eu/image/537/siege-of- tyre/](https://www.ancient.eu/image/537/siege-of-tyre/). This is the city that Alexander the Great built a causeway to attack [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkWy47ighY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WkWy47ighY)

</comment><comment><USER13> Sure wish I could've seen border agents before 2001, voice is the vibe was way more chill.

<comment><USER14> I once told a younger coworker that before 9/11 kids could actually visit the cockpit of the plane during a flight. He wouldn't believe me. A lot of things were way more chill before that yeah.

<comment><USER15> I remember doing this on a flight from Frankfurt to New York in 1984 or 1987. My mother used to be a flight attendant on the same airline so she asked if we could go, and me and my brother and my mother could go into the cockpit somewhere over the Atlantic ocean. I was in my early teens at the time and it was very cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It makes me think of Google algorithm snafus where certain words or phrases are presumed to be about some Bad Thing, so you now can't talk about sex ed or the like without getting dinged as "clearly smut."

</comment><comment><USER17> This seems bad seen through lens of "everyone should be treated fairly" but if you instead look at it as "America is a private club which accepts membership applications of people that it likes for whatever reasons" then it's quite normal. You have to show that you fit in with whatever you think they want. Some people might be permanently excluded through no fault of their own but the same is true of many clubs or gangs that have all kinds of frivolous reasons for refusing membership.

If it was a small country, that 2nd view might make more sense, but it has so much power that people everywhere are going to alter their lives to try to fit in because it's the most important club around, and those who miss out are going to be very disadvantaged compared to the lucky few who make it in.

<comment><USER18> > "America is a private club which accepts membership applications of people > that it likes for whatever reasons"

This is every nation state on earth. Of course they care about your background, skills and likelihood of naturalization. It's hardly unique to the US

<comment><USER19> > Of course they care about your background, skills and likelihood of > naturalization.

How is all that relevant when you're on a week long business trip or visiting as a tourist? Vast majority of visitors in USA are not staying.

<comment><USER20> Afaik, for nonimmigrant visas they don't care about skills, but they do care about any ideological background (preventing terrorism) and they care _a lot_ about the probability of overstaying the visa: they want to see evdence of connections and plans to return from the US.

<comment><USER21> > Afaik, for nonimmigrant visas they don't care about skills,

I am afraid they actually do. I know someone's visitor visa was rejected because the consular officer thought he works on AI. I have no idea why working on AI is grounds for rejection.

<comment><USER21> I don't know why I am getting downvoted but I have been asked to submit my CV even when applying for B1 tourist visa. So they do care about skills.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Improving the Pi Searcher's speed by moving from C++ to Go - <AUTHOR> http://da-data.blogspot.de/2013/05/improving-pi-searchers-speed-by-moving.html

<comment><USER2> Well, at least he admits the headline is a lie in the first paragraph.</comment>


Did anyone go to laracon online 2018? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I attended today and it was great. Anyone else attend?</comment>


Farmville Gets a Commercial - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBDAcOEKuI&feature=player_embedded# <comment><USER2> whoever has humor that is whack</comment>


Learn Python the Hard way Class At PyCon 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1295120282.html

<comment><USER2> This is a fantastic idea. Zed, if you want others to hang out in the room and make themselves available for when people get stuck, just say so. I would help, and I'm sure others would too.

<comment><USER3> Sure, that'd be great.

We should do t-shirts too. :-)

<comment><USER4> "i teach python ask me how!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How many pycon attendees don't already know python?

I don't think I'd drop $300 + travel to attend a conference where I didn't understand the subject matter.

<comment><USER6> The ones that don't know Python going into it are typically locals. I had lunch with two Atlanta residents last year that were big C# guys but their job wanted them to learn Python. They sent them to a few tutorials and picked out a few talks that they wanted them to learn about, then the rest was up to them.

This number is lower, but I've talked to a few newbies that travel to PyCon as an educational tool paid for by their company. They've usually done a tutorial or two on the web, but they'll load up on the in-person tutorials and then hit whatever relevant talks they can find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Showing this kind of respect to noobs is admirable.

</comment><comment><USER8> I respect that Zed is doing this but I have one question about the post.

'... so that nobody picks on you ...'

This will be my 6th PyCon and I have _never_ seen anyone being picked on. Anyone care to enlighten me? Otherwise it seems like newbies aren't welcome (not true) and can't handle it without a guide.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to concur: that's the one bit I disliked about the post. PyCon has always been very, very welcoming and friendly to me and many others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Zed is a Jedi Master.</comment>


What do start-ups spend their initial seed money on? - <AUTHOR>

How do early stage companies figure out what kind of budget they need at the beginning? <comment><USER2> The goal of every startup is to capture an asset. Spend as much money as you need to capture that asset, and act as if you have no money for everything else.

For example, if you're Gary Vaynerchuck then the asset you're trying to capture is the audience of people who want to learn about wine via video. Figure out how much that asset is worth, and then raise the minimum amount of money you need to capture that asset before anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER3> * Paying off debt

* Hardware/hosting/bandwidth

* Crappy office space

* Hiring one or two people (generalists, hopefully)

* Any essential legal stuff you need doing</comment>


Ask HN: "Business" framework around a SaaS - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I'm wondering if there exist a set of good practices for building the customer/accounts/payments framework around a SaaS product.  I imagine they tend to be similar from product to product. However, I've not personally run across them.
Regards, Paul <comment><USER2> You're going to want to roll your own customer/accounts/auth system to meet your apps needs (lots of frameworks have gems/packages to handle most of this, rails/laravel) . . . login/logout/password reset/dashboard/app specific features.

Handle payments using stripe.com, it can handle subscriptions as well. You can store your customers stripe id and pull up their invoices, next billing date, last 4 of their cc, etc via the stripe api to show in their profile. And setup stripe api hooks to keep track of any failed billings (show a reminder when they log in) and other events that happen on the stripe side of things.

There are all kinds of smart ways to set things up with regard to signups, failed billings, tracking user logins/engagement. And there are always new ideas/best practices evolving.

For transactional emails I recommend mandrill.com.

Good luck in 2015.

</comment><comment><USER3> I did some research on this before, I found that intercom.io is a must-have and can handle automated communication with your customers, Stripe is probably the best payment option and the account management will need to be home-rolled and utilize the API's of the aforementioned providers.

I'm sure there is something out there, I just haven't come across it yet!

</comment><comment><USER4> Have not used it myself, but [https://www.userapp.io](https://www.userapp.io) might be similar to what you're looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Daaaaaang. It is, kind of. I was more hoping for some level of code library rather than a SaaS. Feels scary trusting my accounts to a third party!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Potatso – Proxy tool on iOS - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1239860606?ls=1&mt=8&at=1010luhP <comment><USER2> I've used Potato on iOS for quite some time, and don't know how I lived without it (as SS is the only VPN protocol that works reliably where I live). At the time, I thought it was the only SS client using the Network Extension API, but I think there's another one.

The original Potatso included some GPL code, and the author proactively and kindly made the repo available on GitHub (instead of only responding to source code requests). This resulted in at least one 'developer' releasing their own version under a different name, at a lower price. So the original developer pulled the repo and created Potatso 2.

I bought Potatso 2, but have yet to use it. A few questions:

\- is there any performance or stability reason to switch to Potatso 2?

\- does Potatso 2 contain any GPL code? If so, is the source code available somewhere?

Thanks again for creating this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow!!! Your words has lighten up my whole day!!! Thanks for your encouragement.

I would recommend using Potatso 2 instead of Potatso 1 cause it's much more stable and under heavy maintenance.

Potatso 2 doesn't contain any GPL code (that's why it's 2)

<comment><USER2> :)

Let me know if you ever visit Beijing and I'll buy you a beer or two!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very nice! A heads up. The manual ([https://manual.potatso.com/](https://manual.potatso.com/)) goes from English to Chinese — that is, clicking English, will take you to pages with headers in English, but real text in Chinese).

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice catch. I thought Potatso Lite is quite easy to use and I didn't get time to translate them. I will do it soon (probably after WWDC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I immediately bought this from thr app store - solves a very crucial use case for me.

Another app i am looking for and unsure if it exists: fiddler for ios. i want to see all external http requests that are going out from ny phone from all apps/browser/etc

<comment><USER5> About your last request: I've previously used [https://www.charlesproxy.com/](https://www.charlesproxy.com/) for analyzing all traffic from my iPhone and it works quite well (you use your computer as a proxy for the phone). There's a guide how to in the FAQ [https://www.charlesproxy.com/documentation/faqs/](https://www.charlesproxy.com/documentation/faqs/)

<comment><USER6> I prefer Mitmproxy [https://mitmproxy.org](https://mitmproxy.org) more than Charles, and it is opensource.

<comment><USER7> To each their own, but I can't imagine a CLI being more convenient than the charles / fiddler GUIs for the kind of things I did with them.

<comment><USER8> Give it a try. I was in the same boat but found it's cli interface very well done and easy to use, especially the curses based one.

<comment><USER9> mitmproxy recently introduced a web UI as well. It's still very early, but definitely something to try out!

<comment><USER10> If you have feedback regarding the web ui: We are very receptive to that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't realize you could do this on iOS. How does this work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this is really tricky. Apple has released Network Extension API since iOS 9 which only exposes IP packets. What I did is to parse the IP packets and redirect them into different proxies. (Most tough part though only one sentence)

<comment><USER11> Huh, interesting approach. Do you think Apple will allow this in the store? Did you have any trouble with the approval process?

<comment><USER12> It's already on the App Store so of course they must've allowed it.

There are several similar apps that do basically the same thing. The original one is called Surge, but it's super expensive. Potatso is one of the cheaper clones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> why no ota support?

<comment><AUTHOR> OTA is explicitly marked as non-safe and is removed by Shadowsocks official. So Potatso will no longer support it and I would recommend you change your server.</comment></comment>


Facebook may stop the data leaks, but it's too late: CA's models live on - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610801/facebook-may-stop-the-data-leaks-but-its-too-late-cambridge-analyticas-models-live-on/ <comment><USER2> The license of the data should be able to infect any model that it trains.</comment>


Ask Joyent: How do you feel about Oracle owning your toys? - <AUTHOR>

So I was sniffing around the Joyent site due to all the no.de hubbub, also riak integration, and was wondering why Joyent is different, performance wise, from other virtual providers. From what I can tell, and do correct me, they use "os level" virtualization via Solaris and also use the ZFS filesystem. Which leads me to believe they are a Sun shop.
With all the Oracle v. Sun stuff going around (latest, http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/en_US/entry/and_now_page_2), I would like to know where this leaves Joyent. How has your relationship with Oracle/Sun changed since the takeover?
Any other predominantly Sun shops like to comment as well? Perhaps anonymously? <comment><USER2> Um I'm phasing out a ton of sun gear too.

They run opensolaris, but they have A very customized version. They are all Dell baby, and as far as I know oracle doesn't have much relationship to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://joyeur.com/2010/08/16/oracle-and-opensolaris-a- kernel...](http://joyeur.com/2010/08/16/oracle-and-opensolaris-a-kernel-of- truth/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Joyent uses Dell, because Sun hardware turned to crap in the past 5 years, as confirmed to me personally by Ben Rockwood.

</comment><comment><USER5> If memory serves, Joyent has been more of a Dell shop than a Sun shop for a couple years now.

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh and Ben is right. ;)

<comment><USER6> How bad?

What I've heard is:

A) No one liked the change from 4 Intel Ethernet ports to 2 Intel and 2 Nvidia chipset ones.

B) Joyent's last straw was that Sun kept changing the management interface on them.

As of a few years ago Ben Rockwood was saying Dell's build quality was awful; did Sun's deteriorate as well? Dell's get better or perhaps became perceived to be good enough?</comment></comment>


How to transfer voicemail from the iphone to a computer - <AUTHOR> http://whyandroid.com/mobile-news/101-how-to-transfer-voicemail-from-the-iphone-to-a-computer.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this the only way? Any Iphone App Developers want to expand on this?</comment>


Ask HN: How to submit bug to HN - <AUTHOR> The voting buttons on iPhone are broken because they are so small and close together.  There also is no feedback if you upvoted or down-voted. <comment><USER2> contact address for the mods is in the footer, but the problem is obviously known already. You _can_ tell what vote you triggered by the text on the link to undo the vote.</comment>


The Secret Skill Behind Pixar's Creative Genius - <AUTHOR> https://matterapp.com/blog/the-secret-skill-behind-pixars-creative-genius/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's Candor...

Most important part of the article IMO:

"I've seen many professionals (mis)interpret this in the way that Steve Jobs was candid. In other words, they tell peers that their work "sucked" and leave it at that. That's not how to be candid, that's how to be a jerk."</comment>


How I Detect Fake News - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@timoreilly/how-i-detect-fake-news-ebe455d9d4a7#.h8w5ta6rz <comment><USER2> I find it odd that people are talking about algorithms to identify and respond to fake news, instead of simply pushing for more education and critical thought at an individual level.

In the example detailed in the article, I would think people would never even get past the headline -- a heat map for crime waves would have variances at the level of neighborhoods in large cities, and otherwise would look similar to a population heat map. The maps clearly show county data just based on the borders, not even getting into the placement of colors (seriously, northern minnesota is a hot spot for crime?), so a cursory level of critical thought applied to the headline should have caused people to reject it.

Encouraging people to just stop and think about the content they consume should be the first step.

<comment><USER3> > _I find it odd that people are talking about algorithms to identify and > respond to fake news, instead of simply pushing for more education and > critical thought at an individual level._

While people should be critical, the situation we're dealing with is analogous to megaphones becoming too cheap and a large group of people deciding to troll the rest of the world. Telling everyone to use earplugs in general, and find quiet rooms to have conversations with a small selection of saner people is not the right solution here.

Besides, no problem was ever solved by saying "people should just be better"

<comment><USER2> Media has existed for a long time. Newspapers have put out bad news for a long time. Politicians have been trolling us via TV for a long time. And some people have fell for it over the years, but less so than today. It isn't the volume of the content that matters, but how the audience receives it. So yes, helping the audience to receive it better does make a difference, because that personal filter on consumption of media is exactly what is missing.

I'm not claiming that just saying it on a discussion online suffices to make a difference. You need to actually act in real life. I do so by talking about what is going on in the media with my wife and kids, and encouraging them to do the same with their friends. It might be small, but it is something. And enough people making small changes DO solve problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is solid and helpful. Still yet, these days on Facebook it's hard to even discern the real news from the obvious fakes, even after including these tips. For example, yesterday came upon a picture of Tila Tequila doing a Sieg Heil salute in a small crowd of otherwise well-dressed upscale looking types. I did not recognize the source. So I thought a second - do I really need to spend the time to figure out what the heck is going on in this picture? Frankly, I encourage one of you enterprising programmers to make us a chrome or firefox add-in that acts as a rating system that overlays "probability of fake" on stories that look like they may be news.

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember first becoming aware of "urban legends" maybe a couple of decades ago. One of the interesting things about them, is that they give you some insight into what people are scared of. They evolve and thrive over time by hitting people's emotions in just the right way.

So the message I pick up from this "fake news" is the very real message that some conservative view Democrat voters as criminals (based on them being non- white?) Enough so that a fairly thin rumour alleging the same can go viral.

I'd be interested in a news article that farmed these things and reported back what people are believing on Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER6> Of course, this requires you to actually want to detect fake news.</comment>