How Google Handles IT for Its Workers - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-does-google-handle-it-for-its-workers-ask-cio-ben-fried-1413751227 <comment><USER2> When I started at Google I was immediately impressed by the way IT is managed.

Need a new mouse or keyboard? Go and grab one from a nearby tech stop. No need to ask, just swipe your badge and take it. Need something more esoteric? File a ticket and they'll make it happen. I've never had an equipment request denied at Google. The worst that's happened is I've had to wait a few weeks for a particular item to come in stock.

<comment><USER3> Why is this impressive in 2014? This seems normal to me and I never worked for a company like Google.

<comment><USER4> As an employee at another one of your generic bigCOs who at one time was a googler, it is very difficult to get e.g. another monitor in a reasonable size, or new hardware on short notice or without manager buy-in. You typically have to "steal one" from another employee who is moving/leaving. The process at G was a breath of fresh air.

<comment><USER5> Yep as soon as someone announces they are leaving the vultures come in. We are actually not even "approved" to have an external monitor based on my title.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To chime in with contrasting experiences at other companies:

Where I used to work RHEL was used on all of the servers. I was part of a team developing some new software using Mongrel2, MongoDB, ZeroMQ, Perl, and Imagemagick ( among a whole collection of other esoteric small pieces ).

The plan for the project was approved and development underway. We encountered problems getting everything to work properly with modern versions of the various parts in the distribution of RHEL provided.

The company was mirroring RHEL, but only the core. They were not mirroring the updates, nor were they mirroring the latest released version of RHEL. Outside access was forbidden on the servers, so we could not fix the problem ourselves without going around network policy.

We requested virtual machines; specifically to use Virtualbox on our desktops to do development until the policy people could figure out how to give us a server with the software needed. We were denied and told we had to requisition a server to run VMs, that VMs on desktop were forbidden.

A $13k server was purchased for this purpose, and root access was denied to it. We couldn't configure it as needed, and IT refused to help. It was basically useless. The main department head approved going ahead with VMs regardless of the network admin and head of software development saying we couldn't.

In the end the project flopped; ultimately due to inability for any of IT to get along or provide what was needed.

<comment><USER7> We are currently facing a situation where our data center guys only allow us to use RHEL in production but since we standardized on PostgreSQL (moving off MSSQL) we've been devving on 9.2/9.3. RHEL's officially supported version of PostgreSQL is still 8.3/8.4. The devs are up in arms about being "forced" to use a major version behind just because the DC team won't let them install and self-support the latest stable version. Ridiculous.

<comment><USER6> RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora are all basically the same thing.

The difference is which package versions are approved for use.

For the most part, you can add the yum configuration for CentOS or Fedora to RHEL machines, and install newer packages without breaking it.

Note that some packages will end up pulling in a ton of other dependent packages. By adding a Fedora repo to a RHEL machine, the following things will happen: 1\. You will likely lose official support from RHEL. Anything that goes wrong is your fault. 2\. Your OS install will start becoming Fedora; as you install more and more stuff. 3\. Your setup could break entirely because RHEL packages are not tested to be compatible with Fedora ones. The core configuration is different in places, and generally you should not start updating the core components as this will break things.

My recommendation is to setup the CentOS/Fedora yum repos on your RHEL box. Run yum install for new PostgreSQL and see what yum wants to install. Eyeball the results intelligently and take some guesses as to whether it will break things. Cross your fingers and approve it, then disable the CentOS/Fedora repos you added. Carry on with your life and don't tell IT what you did.

If you can't connect your RHEL machine to outside network, repeat the process somewhere else to figure out what RPMs are needed. Download them elsewhere, and stick them on the RHEL machine and install manually.

As an additional note; I have setup a Fedora repo on a RHEL machine and changed the flag in the system to change the distribution ( there is a core package everything depends on... ). We then updated all, and the resulting system still functioned. Very evil, but it didn't explode. Also; it took quite a while to install all the packages. It essentially is converting the whole system from RHEL to Fedora in place...

<comment><USER8> This isn't a good idea. Why? Because it takes IT from the position of being a roadblock, which is something you can push to get fixed and puts you in the wrong instead.

IT has valid reasons using RHEL and older packages, you presumably have valid reasons for using newer packages. If newer packages are needed work with IT to get those newer packages. This also means that they are back in the position of being a roadblock if critical projects really can't go forward due to their policies.

Sometimes the way to fix what is broken is to make your department stop being a crutch for failed IT policies.

Also, randomly changing system packages in production is a dick move. That sort of shit is (rightfully) going to result in getting your access revoked at the minimum.

<comment><USER6> Multiple hour long meetings with all of the internal authorities were involved. They all refused to allow new packages to be installed. Additionally, they were not even providing the proper update packages from RHEL due to system misconfiguration. EPEL was additionally forbidden. Regardless, the powers that be essentially said "You are not allowed to use the software that your project specification states that it needs."

It was either use other components or circumvent IT. The head of the department got fed up with the red tape and told us to circumvent. All proper discussion was done before that, and as a result nothing I did was a "dick move". The system was additionally not in production yet, so no changes in production were being done.

Shame on you for making too many assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Asshole IT staff at my employer have banned Linux workstations from the network, even though we need it for running Cadence and other intensive simulation tools. The solution is for them to run a Linux server into which one will VNC to do graphic intensive IC layout.

We all get a sanitized windows 7 shitbox, because a IC deign engineers needs are the same as a secretary (not that we have secretaries anymore).

<comment><USER10> > The solution is for them to run a Linux server into which one will VNC to do > graphic intensive IC layout.

Why VNC? NX or just plain x11 window forwarding.

Maybe they want all their IC data on a server that gets backed up, etc as opposed to littered on a bunch of random desktops that might or might not be backed up.

<comment><USER9> I forgot to add, it's actually worse, in that it's Cadence running on Linux under a VM on some Windows server, which itself is probably a VM. Remote Desktop is allowed to the host running the VM, but not into the VM itself.

We had a centralized Linux server and tape system backing up all the Linux workstations, but they fired the guy who ran that server due to stack ranking; i.e. firing 10-15% of you staff yearly, even though he was a really sharp guy.

IT rules the roost around here, even though we are an engineering company that produces physical items; not software. It's supposed to be the other way around; IT is supposed to provide a service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know 4 years is ages in Internet time, but didn't it make international news when they changed the policy from "Use whatever platform you want" to "Use whatever platform you want as long as it isn't the one that corporate IT is basically built to manage."

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2f3f04e-6ccf-11df-91c8-00144feab4...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2f3f04e-6ccf-11df-91c8-00144feab49a.html#axzz3GrMQOfkU)

<comment><USER12> I was hoping that Google will be able to push Linux into the mainstream. One of the big problems with Linux is getting commercial software. For example, getting Photoshop and Illustrator working natively on Linux would be a big win.

<comment><USER13> Google actually maintains their own fork of Ubuntu for internal use.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobuntu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobuntu)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm starting to see a trend in Google PR.

I've read the latest book from Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, where the main argument is "we are the best because we have the smartest people on the planet working for us". That's the main point to explain many of the things that they do.

This article seems on the same line.

<comment><USER15> I'm an IT lead at a much smaller company, and I run the same kind of setup. We're not the smartest people on the planet either.

But I do hold every hire to the standard of "will this person increase our average capability?" And I think smartness or motivation does have something to do with that. (We also have system administrator level people as our first level support)

However, most companies don't put that level of effort into their IT org. This article is worth reading because it says that your company can benefit by holding the front-line support to a high standard, and paying to attract talented people to that position. That is a radical proposition to most companies. The only thing that could shake up the industry more is if they said they required IT leadership to have technical ability and insight.

<comment><USER16> >it says that your company can benefit by holding the front-line support to a high standard, and paying to attract talented people to that position.

Doesn't that just apply to any position?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most businesses don't hire googlers and they will have a bad time if they implement Google's policies. It's not "cultural." There's quite a difference between someone who had been programming since they were 15 spending nights reinstalling linux and someone who "can use technology" where that means MSO and facebook.

How many people here serve as tech support for their families? And how many of your relatives are otherwise successful professionals?

<comment><USER18> Exactly. It works at Google because their engineers know their shit. Meanwhile, at your average corporation... That might not be the case, and you might spend loads of time trying to figure something out because your colleague uses some semi-random tool 'because hey it's cool!'.

<comment><USER19> "because your colleague uses some semi-random tool"

For extra fun combine that with not invented here syndrome and retired in place. "Git? whats git? never heard of it. Besides don't you know RCS is the industry standard for version control?" (which was actually pretty much true in 1985) And no this wasn't in '06 this was last year. I'm glad I don't work in that particular team!

And add some inter group politics for extra extra fun.

<comment><USER20> Not to hijack the thread but here's a fun story, the place I'm working at now actually considered 'version control', to be making a copy of the file before you started making changes. There was no version control. This is a software company that has been in business for ~20 years. I guess that's just part of what happens when you land these big contracts, and hire the least common denominator.

<comment><USER21> I think many HN readers would be amazed at how often this is still true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In advance of the inevitable and one sided 'IT is crap' comments. Consider that your company may have different goals and expectations of IT. If a google engineer screws up or can't get his BYOD kit to work, it's not on google IT to explain themselves. In <bigco IT> the expectation is different. Where anything that is permitted to run must work provably and IT must explain any deficiences.

</comment><comment><USER23> It is ironic this chap waxes lyrical about how great it is to let the staff choose their IT equipment when he came from a bank previously, where they make even the Unix SAs use the hideous corporate Windows desktops to try and do their job.

Yeah, unless you are Google, IT equipment sucks donkey balls in the big corps. Especially the banks. Still stuck on IE7 at our one. Sigh.

<comment><USER24> I suffer this fate every day. It is made worse by being locked down so hard I can't even use PowerShell. All I have is Notepad++ for development, searching, mass text manipulation...

<comment><USER25> How come you are not looking for a new job then?

It's one thing having to use Windows for development. I've done it, you can work around lots of issues with Cygwin and other separate tools that enhances the development unfriendliness of Windows. If you are developping in Java, it's even less of an issue as Java itself and most of its IDEs are cross- platform.

But being so locked down that the only thing to do development with is Notepad++ (you can't even run vim or emacs?), that's actually so far beyond that even a complete non-tech person should be able to see that this is harmful to your productivity.

<comment><USER24> I started less than a month ago, and it pays really well. I will stick it out and hope to convince management to let me have admin rights to my machine.

<comment><USER26> You don't need admin rights.

What you do need is a reasonable set of tools to be installed and a quick (under an hour) way to get items installed or updated.

What about a VM ?

Approach it from the tools use, do people use pads and pens or do they use Word?

<comment><USER27> The bigger the company the more difficult this is. Where I worked our workstations were locked down and required a package request to install software. In addition, they would not bother packaging a new tool if it served the same purpose of other tools; i.e. text editors. Doesn't matter if you prefer Vim/emacs/Sublime Text 2/Notepad++, we already have a license for a text editor you've never heard of before.

Depending on the company's hardware VM performance could be a real issue. You'd be surprised how many developer jobs are done on old Windows XP boxes. Big companies typically do upgrades in multiyear cycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The IT at the company I work for is odd. I work for a smaller subsidiary that manages most things for itself but we're still required to have a parent company approved workstation alongside our main development computers.

So I have this dinky little HP with a 15" monitor just to do the HR computer "training" stuff related to our industry and then I have a full size workstation with dual 24" monitors that I develop on. They're connected to different networks, my workstation is on a Comcast business line and then the other is on an internal network that has the strictest security policies on the planet.

It's like having a weird cross between IT as it should be (as described in this article) and IT hell you expect in large corporations.

</comment><comment><USER29> > Now, what we do here at Google is really different.

> We can't afford to have technology support where there are cookbooks and > rules and every possible change is documented in advance

There's something ironic in that...

</comment><comment><USER30> They're able to be flexible with IT because no Google code lives on the laptops - they are basically SSH clients with a Yubikey in the USB port and an encrypted SSH key. All of the data that needs securing never makes it down to the laptop.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Letting Employees Choose Their Own Technology Is Beneficial, Says CIO Ben Fried" -> This!

This means that people are more productive when they have the hardware and software they are used to.

<comment><USER32> But this would mean that the majority of folks in the company are like minded. Imagine, if I choose to use a Mac (because I am hipster), and my colleague on my right choose to use a ChromeBook (because he is a cutting edge geek) , and my colleague on my left choose to use a WinXP (because he doesn't want to change.)

Interoperability would surely take a hit, and imagine the IT support required.

/sorry for the sarcastic stereotyping...

<comment><USER12> No, I can't imagine the problems. I've had Mac, Linux, and Windows machines on my home network at same time. Could you elaborate on the problems?

<comment> Brian-Puccio So your department needs a document management system that will make sure you are in compliance with all of the regulatory requirements that affect your industry as well as interface accordingly with vendors and other departments in your organization. The software has plugins with Word 2013 on Windows, Acrobat 11 on Windows and Outlook 2013 on Windows, but now people are allowed to pick whatever platform they want.

What do you tell the Mac user? What do you tell the Linux user? Boot a VM whenever you want to work on a document? What do you tell the iPad user?

In many large organizations, simple file systems won't work because they don't scale and you can't tell a legal department "oh, you need to share/version/distribute documents? just use this program called git, it's easy, let me show you and once you've got the hang of it, you call the appellate judge and tell him that he just needs to do a git pull to get your brief".

When every software package that's deployed in millions of installations around the world that's only available in the Windows/Office/IE environment is completely cross-platform, then yes, you'll have completely interoperability between Windows, Mac and Linux machines, as well as iOS and Android devices. Until, the "I've had Mac, Linux and Windows machines on a home network" line has no bearing whatsoever on intolerability of software packages an enterprise environment that needs to interface to hundreds of external organizations daily.

<comment><USER33> Use whatever you want has the obvious caveat that you have to get work done and you have to interop with other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I hope my boss reads this.

<comment><USER35> Print it out. Leave it on her desk.

Better yet, schedule a "brown bag lunch discussion" around the article, and invite your boss as well as several of your colleagues.

Your corporate culture is something you must work within, but it is also something you can change -- or at least affect.</comment></comment>


RIP Culture War Thread - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ <comment><USER2> This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top.

It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, with the internet as a means to control, oppress, and indoctrinate. Giant tech corps effectively taking over most means of communication and using their powers to openly censor things are part of the problem. IMO, a bigger part of the problem is the trend among activists that anyone with an improper opinion must be destroyed, along with anyone who allows them to express that opinion, and anyone marginally associated with anyone who allowed them to express their opinion, etc.

It seems like a well-honed process now. Cherry-pick the worst things anyone has said or posted. If nothing sufficiently bad has been posted, then make some fake accounts and post something bad yourself. Write hit pieces on the owner or author and highlight those cherry-picked things. Spread those pieces far and wide, and keep writing new ones with the same theme. Direct them at anyone associated with the target. Repeat and keep spreading the net until somebody breaks.

Is this what we created the internet to be?

<comment><USER3> What you've left out of that idyll of the early internet, though, is that its population was

\- smaller, by many orders of magnitude

\- from a highly homogeneous distribution of cultural backgrounds

\- mostly of comfortable material means

These are, and have probably always been, prerequisites for the kind of civil discourse you're talking about.

The "heavy-handedness" of tech companies is IMO less a cause than it is a reaction to the inevitable degeneration of discourse as the Internet grew up.

The techno-libertarian-utopian ideals of the early internet were always a pipe dream because they failed to recognize the role of these factors in their culture, and attributed it all to the medium itself. Which is not to say that the Internet doesn't change our communication, just that it's not necessarily in the ways they wanted.

<comment><USER2> You may well be right about the civil nature of things in the early days being due to being composed of a small group of techies whose culture wasn't all that different from each other. Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less. Maybe we're now seeing how wrong/naive we all were.

<comment><USER4> _> Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less._

The naivete of everyone is somewhat understandable because each generation lets new technology (e.g. telegraph, airplanes, internet, etc) seduce them into thinking its capabilities will help humans understand each other.

Some examples of previous naive forecasts:

 _> "telegraph [...] would end international hostilities [...] the telegraph wire, the nerve of international life, transmitting knowledge of events, removing causes of misunderstanding, and promoting peace and harmony throughout the world."_[1]

 _> "With the perfect development of the airplane, wars will be only an incident of past ages."; "The Wright Brothers Invention Should Prevent Further Wars And Insure Peace"_[2]

 _> "the internet will help us connect with each other and let us discuss our differing viewpoints!"_[3]

And no doubt that if some future 22nd-century technology of brainwave- telepathic device is invented, those future people will think _that_ magical thought-communicator will enable peace and harmony. Why would there be any wars if 10 billion of us could just magically send thoughts with universal language translation without even speaking or writing?!? (Don't worry, humanity will figure out a way to use the device for spreading hate.)

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=4y2UAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=4y2UAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=telegraph+%22removing+causes+of+misunderstanding%22&source=bl&ots=bIljc12MmG&sig=ACfU3U246wJWBB3RyWdMtmyCuEFCjzg7Vw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZitbxpNDgAhUNG6wKHa_nBvQQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=telegraph%20%22removing%20causes%20of%20misunderstanding%22&f=false)

[2] [https://wrightstories.com/wrights-perspective-on-the-role- of...](https://wrightstories.com/wrights-perspective-on-the-role-of-airplanes- in-war/)

[3] today's internet users

<comment><USER2> Those are true and good points, and the overall argument may be true too. But if so, what are we to do? Don't bother trying to make the world a more peaceful place because we are doomed to failure?

<comment><USER5> Stop looking at improvements in a "breakthrough" model that becomes equal parts breathless and mindless with each new toy. Start looking at long term, systematic improvements thst raise standards of living, improve education, and reduce conflict. While people are busy fantasizing that they're changing the world with their latest scooter or delivery app, there are actually groups and individuals who slave away at the coal face of making the world a better place... usually while the Astro Tellers of the world sneer at them from their rollerblades.

Find something that has a proven track record of yielding to intervention, and then intervene there. It's not sexy to prevent parasitic worm infections, but it does more good than all of SV combined. It's not sexy to sit in rooms with a bunch of politicians and diplomats and struggle to make microscopic improvements, but it adds up.

The problem is that people in places like this don't _just_ want to save the world. They want to save the world in their lifetimes, while getting filthy rich, and in no way compromising their ideals. Nobody wants to sacrifice anything, they want improvements to be universally beneficial and personally gratifying. They don't talk about carbon taxation or cutting down consumerism, regulation or compromise; it's talk of self-driving electric cars and fusion plants and living on Mars. The only seriously entertained notions are the ones that somehow make the world a better place without making you miss a beat in your lifestyle.

<comment><USER6> You sound like you've seen/read Kentaro Toyama's "Ten Myths of ICT4D" [0]

[0] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/10/toyama-tenmyths-june23.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I'd never seen that, but wow... I love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I enjoyed the culture war thread. It was a place on the internet where there was a radical toleration of ideas, so long as they were given in good faith. Bans were frequent to those who broke the rules, and some ideas were morally repugnant. But when people made them, you were able to read a discussion, debate, and often refutation of their points, that focused mainly on ideas.

You had some weird people, with weird ideas, who found this to be a nice home. Often they were very smart, but had strange ideas on humanity, race, religion, politics, and knew they couldn't share them anywhere else. I, personally, enjoy trying to look through the world of all different types of filters.

In fact, I think it's important. While the mistakes of history are so obvious now, at the time plenty of smart and good people supported terrifying and cruel policies. The first step, in my opinion, to not making those mistakes, is to formulate a deep empathy for why they made them. For why you might have made the same mistake without the benefit of hindsight.

My best defense against this is to inoculate myself by reading and understanding a wide variety of strange ideas on the world.

</comment><comment><USER8> What really hit home was this passage:

> I acknowledge many people's lived experience that the thread felt right- > wing; my working theory is that most of the people I talk to about this kind > of thing are Bay Area liberals for whom the thread was their first/only > exposure to a space with any substantial right-wing presence at all, which > must have made it feel scarily conservative.

I moved from Western Washington where I grew up to the Bay area. I lived in a liberal area in WA, but conservatives existed and more importantly were visible. The congressional district I lived in flipped between Republican and Democrat twice while I was a kid. Some of my parents friends made cases for conservative viewpoints, and in retrospect I really respect my father encouraging me to listen even if I didn't agree.

When I moved to the Bay area it felt like I stepped into a world where conservatives might as well be foreigners, or even a different species given the way some people talk about them. Even though I usually agree with the positions they hold, I've become alienated from much of my co workers by the way they openly express disdain for conservatives in a way that demonstrates a clear lack of experience in talking with people on a different end of the political spectrum as normal people. It's jarring to see people simultaneously patting themselves on the back for being inclusive and welcoming at the same time as they exhibit disdain for half the country.

I also worry that this is a positive feedback loop of exclusion. Fewer non- left people join Bay area tech companies because of the liberal monoculture. Then the liberal monoculture becomes stronger as there are fewer people calling out ways in which the company is being exclusive towards non-liberals, this leading to an even bigger monoculture, and so forth.

It's probably the second biggest thing that is makinge consider moving away from the Bay Area, after cost of living. Sure, I prefer to hav mostly like- minded (liberal) friends, but consider this: in close to a decade of living and about 6 years working in the Bay area I have met exactly one co-worker that openly expressed conservative views. I just don't think that kind of extreme political segregation is healthy.

<comment><USER9> I have determined that I am far too liberal for Alabama, yet too conservative for California_SFO.

The feedback loop of exclusion works for a lot of monocultures. They just have to be offensively fanatic about _something_ , and the zeal will drive out anyone foolishly moderate enough to disagree.

If you wouldn't enjoy assigning the Christian apostles to football team positions, you will feel like an alien somewhere. If you think veganism is nonsense from both ethical and nutritional stances, you will feel like an alien somewhere.

The ideological monocultures have to be intentionally upset, or they progress into self-reinforcing shielded bubbles, that are even tougher to crack.

I'd like to be able to live somewhere that I might hear people discussing open borders at the gun range, or misogyny at the gym, or military budgets at the coffee shop. I'm sick of people suffering "downvoted for disagreement" in real life. It's like the awful clique-caste system from high school has metastasized into (un)civil adult society, and no one can eat at anyone else's lunch table anymore.

<comment><USER10> >I'd like to be able to live somewhere that I might hear people discussing open borders at the gun range, or misogyny at the gym, or military budgets at the coffee shop.

There's a gun range in the Santa Cruz mountains that's about a 20 minute drive from downtown Mountain View where I've had just those types of conversations. I had a discussion on military budgets, _with sailors_ , in a bar in SF months back during Fleet Week. I literally had a conversation about misogyny at the gym with my friend today, because for once we were outnumbered by women there.

I think SF is an ideological monoculture in that you aren't really allowed to be racist or misogynistic or homophobic here, sure. But you're certainly allowed to be conservative in the "old" sense of the word. Tons of the new rich here are.

<comment><USER11> Problem is, relatively benign viewpoints are labelled as racist, misogynistic or homophobic when they aren't. And it's done in an effort to silence "undesirable" opinions.

What I've noticed the most about SF are it's inhabitants being shocked (shocked!) to learn that people have views different than them. It's as if their entire world ends at the city limits.

<comment><USER12> I think it's interesting to see all the people talking about the Bay Area here. I've never done anything but pass through California, and yet I tend to mostly share the views of these "liberal" Bay Area folks. I grew up in southern Virginia.

You should remember that we're not all from the Bay Area.

<comment><USER8> If you've "never done anything but pass through California" then you should probably refrain from saying that you share the Bay Area views.

For example many people in my workplace will genuinely call you racist if you say "employment decisions should not be made on the basis of race or gender." Threats of violence towards Trump voters varying degrees of subtlety are made on public channels with no apparent repercussions, and these were positively received by much of the company.

Are these views and behavior that you agree with? Sure most liberals probably agree with Bay area liberals on national issues, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can only describe Scott as a paragon of intellectual honesty and a true proponent of fair and unbiased discourse. So it saddens me to see him [partially] silenced by trolls and people who are dishonestly pushing their agendas.

I can imagine how many discussions and people have been silenced in a similar manner, especially when things are more muddled.

<comment><USER14> +1, I don't always agree with him but I don't think there's another blogger who can touch him for niceness, thought-provokingness, and intellectual courage. He's like a walking, talking manifestation of the HN submission/commenting policy.

(For anyone who's just learning about him, there's a "About/Top Posts" on the top menu. He's probably most well-known for writing on contentious political topics with unusual civility and insight, but he also has a ton of stuff on psychiatry (how various psychiatric drugs work, analyses of drug studies he does/doesn't agree with, etc) and on science generally that's quite useful, e.g. [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of- one-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/) )

<comment><USER15> That's a great article, thanks! I'll have to read more of his stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As to the "no comments section" policies, I'm gonna be honest: I don't blame them one bit. No one owes anyone a platform, and considering how easy and cheap it is to host your own content, why should anyone be forced to broadcast someone else's opinion?

The truth of the matter is there _are_ more trolls these days - see especially "The Card Says Moops" ([https://youtu.be/xMabpBvtXr4](https://youtu.be/xMabpBvtXr4)) as to one reason why. If you say "get your own website and post there" it raises the bar _just_ enough that trolls won't do it. I think this is a good thing.

Note that I am firmly in favor of Net Neutrality and __carriers __(eg ISPs, registrars, etc) banned from having tiers or otherwise hampering access. What I oppose is people crying censorship when big name sites kick out the despicables. As I pointed out above, anyone can get a website and domain name.

<comment><USER17> > As I pointed out above, anyone can get a website and domain name.

I wish this were true, but I don't think it is anymore.

If you post or host anything remotely controversial, expect to have your site DoS'd off the internet. How can that be avoided? Well, mostly through the help of one of the big boys (Cloudflare, Google Project Shield, etc). What happens if they decide you're a despicable, e.g. Stormfront? You're pretty much SOL.

Sure, there are plenty of other mitigation services, but they generally get pricey - not only pricey, but asymmetrically pricey. When your detractors know that they can burn through your war chest by expending a fraction of what you lose, that's clearly an unsustainable position.

The same is true for DNS. When every registrar can be pressured into denying you service, you don't have a lot of recourse.

That's not to mention the well-worn argument that, in a hypothetical era where the vast majority of traffic is via one of the big name sites, going off on your own is basically analogous to having your soapbox relocated from Hyde Park to the industrial wastelands. Are you still technically able to speak publicly? Sure, but the original intent of protections on speech is nowhere to be found.

I don't have an answer to the subsequent question of what to do about it, beyond supporting decentralized technologies. That's a tough one. What I do know is that the idea that anyone is able to provide their own platform if deemed undesirable may be comforting, but doesn't really hold up.

<comment><USER18> With the way corporate control of the internet is further consolidated every single day, I fully expect (and hope for) a parallel mesh internet to be established, completely open source based, no corporate or business interests involved.

As the DRM and content filtering noose tightens, it becomes more and more annoying to be a freely moving and freely acting person online. Encrypted channels on the current internet are only a stopgap measure, far too many people have their traffic sniffed by proxy servers and the like, if not outright spyware on their devices or in their routers.

I envision a global mesh network, built on open standards, fully encrypted, resilient against DDOSing and similar attacks, with no central control, no central points of failure, an uninhibited flow of information, for the people, by the people. Warts and all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The idea of capturing the best commentary from that thread really stuck out to me. It would be great to do some kind of annual anthology, internet-wide. The best insights rounded up, year after year. You could break it down by topics or region, and publish each year.

The historical value of something like that would be really excellent, as time goes on. You could really capture the mood of each society for a given year or time period, in a very accessible way for future generations.

I'd read the everloving crap out of that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a long piece.

I am submitting it because particularly the second section, about comment moderation, seems to have wide-reaching implications for tech and conversations.

<comment><USER20> Thank you; it was quite illuminating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the internet is just an awful place to have a "national discussion" honestly. Arguments you encounter are not representative of opinions actual people hold, both because of bad faith internet trolls & because of vocal minorities. I think people have started learning this, which is why so few people care about social media censorship and the lack of open debates on the internet. Most people have probably had enough 30 comment threads with trolls on facebook to not give a shit about internet debate by now.

Nowadays if I want a good debate or a debate on a truly controversial topic, I would only do so in a closed chat room with people I know. The internet is only for advertising my opinion rather than debating it, although I am as guilty as anyone of occasionally getting derailed into a full argument.

<comment><USER22> In my experience, actually having conversations about meaningful and controversial subjects is impolite and a good way to lose friends.

At least on the internet, the other party can just stop talking when they're done. They won't feel like they're cutting off or abandoning a friend.

<comment><USER18> If you can't have conversations and even discussions about meaningful or controversial subjects with your friends, I would say they were never actually your friends.

I am friends with some people whom I wildly disagree with on a number of subjects, especially politics. But we have common ground in shared interests (music and whisky), and we use that as a basis for civilized discussion. We might disagree wildly and be political "enemies", but we are still more alike than we are different.

<comment><USER22> I have some friends I can talk about anything with.

I have some friends that aren't capable of doing that, at least not with me. If I expect my friends to be perfect, _I 'm_ not a very good friend.

<comment><USER18> That's exactly what I mean, it goes both ways. If you can't respect each other, either one or both of you aren't an actual friend.

<comment><USER22> I can respect someone and consider them a friend without discussing, for example, my sex life with them. It's not a matter of respect necessarily. Sometimes it's propriety. Sometimes it's disinterest. Sometimes it's insensitive to dig into certain subjects with that particular person. Sometimes it's a time when _they_ have bigger needs than I do and I'd rather not focus on my problems when I'm around them.

There is such a thing as discretion. It is healthy. Even with friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What happened here is that people who have "extreme" opinions have found a platform to express them, and people tend to remember or focus on the outliers instead of the nuance (hence skewed perception). Whereas some or most within inside the community learned to listen to each other and respect having different opinions on controversial matters, _outsiders_ did not respect this, and actively harassed a leader of the community (moderator) in a campaign for change (getting rid of the community).

Having been a moderator in multiple communities, I know a sure way to burn out is to be one. It is also a perfect way to get rid of your opponent: suggest they become a moderator. I've been burned by that multiple times. I still moderate communities, and I'm good at it (also because of my background, e.g. technical; other people have other qualities), but only small ones. Even if it has exactly the same signal-to-noise ratio as a large community, you end up with less noise and therefore it takes less time. People know each other better.

A very good (but specific) analogy comes to my mind: World of Warcraft. Nowadays, you can swap your character to another server (called "realm") and faction (red being Horde, blue being Alliance), etc. Back in the days of early WoW (Vanilla and TBC) you invested in your character and were therefore bound to realm & faction. These were relatively small worlds where different guilds (akin to "clans" or "teams") existed. People knew each other because of the size; akin to a small town with communities. Fast forward post TBC and you had the later expansions where with the click of a button people were in a group of random players of the same faction (regardless of realm). Playing together with 4 or 24 strangers whom you will likely never meet again. This decreased the relevance of reputation among peers and allowed for so-called toxic behaviour.

WoW is just one simulation of that phenomenon (for which I don't know the name). I'd say the problem, summed up, is that people get away with harassment on the Internet because of the sheer anonymity/pseudonymity and physical distance.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think part of the reason for this is just the period of dislocation that we're living in. I mean if the culture war thread was around in 1967 what kind of things do you think you'd find in it? It would have been much worse than what people write today. 7000 buildings burned in the city of Detroit and the president had to send in the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions to put down the rioting. What would those people have said on reddit? Now, things are changing again, and people are dividing into camps. In other words I think that the external situation is driving the online discourse rather than the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER25> "On the last SSC survey, I asked who participated in the thread, and used that to get a pretty good idea of its userbase."

I think this is worth drilling into. Scott's data shows the user base, but he slips into "I took some random surveys" when he addresses the question of comment frequency. That data is not as high quality.

If I had the survey data, I'd use the Reddit API to figure out comment frequency by respondent type, and see if there's anything interesting there.

<comment><USER26> Why is it 'worth drilling into'?

What's the relevance?

<comment><USER25> If there are 10 right wingers and 10 left wingers, but the right wingers post 10x as many comments, that's a rather different scenario than if they're posting equal numbers of comments.

<comment><USER26> Even if that's the case, so what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a really over the top one sided presentation.

The thread being mourned was continually full of really shockingly horrible stuff. Straight faced technobabble laden arguments for genocide and such. A reliable go-to for "oh-shit,-humanity-is-screwed" porn.

It was impossible to tell how much of it was actually awful people earnestly advancing awful ideas vs screwed up performance art with people intentionally posting the worst stuff they could think of just for shock value or to mock the fact that participants there responded so embarrassingly to so much of it. ... but I don't think that is a defense of it at all, it's an indictment.

I had previously believed (and people who knew Scott personally lead me to believe...) that the thread was created as a tarpit for trolls and people with absurdly repugnant views to waste each others time in a place where other people could ignore it-- rather than these discussions invading every other thread and making them useless to the majority of people who want nothing to do with that stuff-- who feel they morally can't just sit and pretend its okay to advance horrible policies but also don't want to waste their lives rehashing ethical arguments that most people considered settled a century ago. The "designated crap thread" approach is sometimes more effective than punting the sources outright (and also less harmful to false positives)...

This post strongly indicates otherwise and is causing me a vertigo inducing shift in how I perceive the author and his community.

I couldn't be more disappointed. And I'm only left hoping that the support of that toxicity expressed in Scott's post is an emotional retaliation to the despicable harassment he reported experiencing ... rather than an earnest position.

I feel like a lot of the HN commentary is essentially unrelated to the actual 'event' \-- The 'deplatforming' trend is concerning... but that doesn't really tell us much about this particular venue. Especially since it continues to exist and hasn't in fact, been subject to deplatforming or anything similar. The connection only goes in so far as some of the same pressures probably exists, but I would be a lot more interested in hearing what went on behind some actual major deplatforming incidents. (Medium killing gab.ai's post explaining why they didn't believe their actions supported hate crimes would be an interesting candidate, since it was a meta-deplatforming, so doubly removed from most pragmatic tradeoffs...)

<comment><USER28> My sampling of the posts linked in the article seem to indicate otherwise. What is your evidence?

<comment><USER29> Here's one that seems to sum it up pretty well.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/cult...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_23_2018/e31i8i3/) is a 2-part comment advocating for

> Mandatory abortions of the congenitally ill.

> Removal of tax incentives for homosexual marriages

> Corporal or capital punishment for adultery.

> Mental illness/having mental health medication prescribed disqualifying > voting.

> Paid sterilisation (i.e., trading your fecundity for a basic income).

> National genotyping and IQ scoring as part of using any sort of public > health subsidisation and education.

> Allowing insurers more room to discriminate on any quality they wish, > including genotype, education, and IQ (i.e., no more disparate impact or > genetic discrimination laws at all).

> La Sierra-style physical education in whatever public schools there are.

> Removal of all protected classes/free segregation (as mentioned above).

> Restructuring of "Free Speech" rights to include the "Right to Hate."

And so on. Basically all of the most awful things a human being could compile into a bullet pointed list, with absolutely no explanation of why any of these things would have a positive impact on the world. The second part of the comment literally just contains these, verbatim, as bullets.

These are the kinds of things one would advocate for if he wanted racism to be allowed (with a couple of other weird random points that most certainly trample on the rights of other groups). You'd have to completely ignore the rights of so many people to think arguing for any of these even approximates rational thought.

One may argue that it is acceptable to merely permit this kind of thing, in the hopes that light may find it and disinfect it. But this particular comment is blessed as a "quality contribution" by the moderators here [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/cult...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_23_2018/e31i8i3/).

So I dunno. Is this objectionable enough for you?

<comment><USER30> >Is this objectionable enough for you?

No. Most of it is objectionable to me, but none is objectionable enough to ban discussions around it.

<comment><USER29> I'm not saying this kind of discussion should be banned for how objectionable it is.

I'm saying the fact that the moderators have blessed this comment is objectionable for the many reasons I've put above.

By all means, talk about this. But promoting a laundry list of unsubstantiated ideas that are no more than a thin veneer around human rights abuses just strikes me as... irrational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I dunno why people think moderating comments is so hard. It's obvious when someone is arguing in bad faith: repeating the same stuff over and over, condescending tone, dismissing opposing side, etc. People are afraid of being accused of censorship.

<comment><USER32> The problem, as described in this article, is that some people have good faith beliefs, respectfully expressed, that are nevertheless so repugnant to others that you will be tarred for _not_ censoring them.

<comment><USER33> I don't understand why people think giving space and respect to odious beliefs is somehow virtuous. What it does is normalize those beliefs and enable them to propagate while simultaneously exhausting those who oppose them.

See Sarte's comments on Anti-Semitism; the holders of odious beliefs are generally not "playing the same game" as those who oppose them, and giving space to all ideas, no matter how awful, is actually conferring an advantage on the worst.

<comment><USER34> The counterargument is: Odious _as defined by who_? By me? Heh, eschaton, your beliefs might not come out so well by that measure.

Defined by you? No thank you.

Defined by society? Twenty years ago, homosexual marriage was an odious belief by that standard. Today, it's not (instead, _opposing_ it is now considered odious). Same with racism sixty years ago. Same with slavery 160 years ago. "Odious" is a moving target. But for your argument to have any force, "odious" has to have some real moral weight to it, not just be society's current consensus.

That leaves odious as defined by a group of right-thinking people. Problem is, there are many candidates proclaiming themselves as being the right-thinking group, and they all contradict each other. How are you going to pick one? By what you most agree with? Again, no thank you.

(Note well: This is not "no thank you" specifically to eschaton. It's "no thank you" to _any_ individual who wants to set themself up as the arbiter of what is "odious". I don't want anybody to have that power - unless it's me, of course.)

<comment><USER35> I assume you have not read Sarte's comments, then?

Whenever you participate in a community you accept that there are going to be individuals controlling the discussion to an extent and cleaning up things that affect the site in a negative way. For example no matter how kindly you might argue or how much data you may provide on how the Jewish people should be eradicated, that sort of comment would get you rapidly flagged on HN.

The definition of odious does evolve over time according to a societies standards, and I don't think it's a particularly big leap to say calls for genocide are odious. Communities do eventually need to take a stand for what they represent, for allowing people with said beliefs on their platform means those people represent the platform.

<comment><USER34> I have read Sarte's comments (at least I think I have - no link, so I'm not sure).

Look, I'm glad that racism and genocide are banned on HN, and that I don't have to wade through the garbage. CW wasn't trying to be HN, though. It had moderators, but they had a different set of filters, and they let a lot more through. That was by intent and design.

Then some people decided that, because it allowed stuff from the far right, it was supporting the far right, and that wasn't OK - any forum that allowed it at all had to be shut down, even if they allowed it from the far left as well.

From what it sounds like from the article (not an unbiased source, I know), the CW moderators were doing pretty well at their intended task, and a pretty interesting community was flourishing there. But some outside people decided that _their_ definition of "odious" should be the one enforced, and threw various increasingly dishonest hissy fits until CW shut down.

Is that really a good thing?

Is it really a good thing if more than one group figures out that they can do it?

The urge to censor viewpoints that we consider odious is strong, but I'm really not sure it's the most righteous course (especially as it was practiced here).

<comment><USER35> The problem is if you allow those comments, then by extension you do in fact support them. If HN in attempt to be more neutral started allowing think pieces from far-right authors on how bad the Jewish people are, then people would believe HN supports them (and rightfully so) by offering them a platform. This is part of the reason why HN does have banned websites (such as InfoWars) because the information from those sites tends to not only be highly disingenuous but also potentially damaging to the overall community.

Communities have to have a baseline stance of things they don't support, otherwise you can rapidly turn into the flaming heap that is Voat and other various sites. As for the actual data relating to the CW thread, the data only tells us what people self-describe as, not necessarily the frequency of their posts, the content contained within or how closely the poll reflects the actual userbase. This is before going into issues of people potentially gaming the poll and other problems with online polling.

As for the urge to censor viewpoints, that is inherently part of human nature. The internet has only made it easier because the anonymity allows for zero consequence. To fix this problem requires either destroying human nature or tearing apart the internet as you and I know it. There's always going to be a disagreement with how far it should go; some people believe Reddit should've never banned FatPeopleHate. Other people believe Reddit still fosters far too many incredibly vile subcommunities. Everyone has a line eventually. And there's always going to be people that disagree with where the line is drawn.

<comment><USER34> > The problem is if you allow those comments, then by extension you do in fact > support them.

 _FALSE._ But _you_ do in fact support censorship (or at least deplatforming, which I vehemently despise).

Here's what your position is like. Remember that baker in Colorado who wouldn't bake a cake for a gay wedding, because he felt that he would be participating in something he didn't think was morally right? _You 're agreeing with his position._ In fact, his position is less extreme than yours, because he was willing to sell them any cake in the store, but wasn't willing to design a custom cake for them.

Yet I suspect (am I wrong?) that you think that the Colorado baker was in the wrong. But you're using his logic.

Your second and third paragraphs I think I agree with.

<comment><USER35> You're making a false equivalence here and assuming they're the same and your logic is incredibly irrational here but I'm going to try to address it in the best manner I can:

In the baker case, he decided that he would not support gay people. I believe gay people should be a protected group (as they are not harmful nor do they generally espouse harmful beliefs). You're right in that he felt that he would be supporting gay people, and my point is that he should support gay people, not that through some strange mental gymnastics I believe he's right to not support them (??). This is the reason why protected groups exist because if a person believes 'I refuse to offer service to women because I refuse to support women', we as a society believe that to be a net negative.

This is of course ignoring the context of the situation where we believe in free exercise of religion while also denying a man on death row access to his religion [1], which shows more the hypocrisy of the Supreme Court's decision on the baker case vs the Dunn v Ray case. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

Your argument is essentially saying people should have the right to discriminate on the basis of age, religion, gender etc because to not allow so is censorship. People should not be forced into supporting something they disagree with, correct? Which then ties back into my core argument in that everyone has a line; society has reason to try and shift that line (to avoid discrimination) and communities have reasons to draw their own line as well (to signal for causes they support or to limit the scope of discussion).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunn_v._Ray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunn_v._Ray)

<comment><USER34> I wrote a scathing reply last night, but didn't post it. I will try to be more moderate today.

Publication does not mean endorsement of the view. You see this in the disclaimer in all the editorials: "The views expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of [publication]". They can publish, on their platform, views that they disagree with. On that point, you are simply wrong.

But your views here (that publication equals endorsement, and that communities should shut down views they don't accept) - I find _those_ views to be odious. Contrary to the ideals of America, even. Should I be able to get you banned from HN? If they don't, should I say that HN endorses your views, and get a howling mob to shut HN down?

That's the fundamental issue here. It's not just those people out there. It's you. _Your_ views offend people. It's going to happen to _you_. Think well whether you really want odious views removed.

And it's going to be me. That's why I'm so defensive here. I already hold views that some find odious; as society moves its position, I will hold more. Within the next ten years (and maybe a whole lot sooner), this is going to be me. That's why I'm opposed to societal censorship. If a mob can shut down the alt right for being too far outside society, they can shut down you and me when they decide that we're too far outside the new norm.

Should we just accept society's definition of what is right? No. Either there is a real right and wrong, or their isn't. If there is, why do we think society will converge on it? Why do we think that society's view evolves to ever-increasing correctness? (It has, in the past, evolved to ever-increasing conformity with the current view, but that doesn't say much.) Rwanda, for instance, abruptly decided that murdering one race was perfectly good. China decided that social pressure to conform to the party line was good. (You may say that was imposed on them by the party, and you'd be right. But it still became the way the society behaved.)

On the other hand, if there is no real right and wrong, why should we treat society's current views as if they had moral force?

About the baker: If you don't like that one, try this. A print shop prints flyers for a Richard Spencer rally. Is the print shop endorsing Richard Spencer's views? How about if they design the flyer? Where do you draw the lines between what happened on CW, the print shop, and the bake shop, and why do you draw them there?

<comment><USER35> > Publication does not mean endorsement of the view. You see this in the > disclaimer in all the editorials: "The views expressed are those of the > author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of [publication]". They > can publish, on their platform, views that they disagree with. On that > point, you are simply wrong.

Publication is, essentially, endorsement. Let's say I hosted a blog, and then I decided on my blog to constantly host people whom deny climate change. I can add a disclaimer to the end of all of their posts and say 'these represent views I personally do not endorse', but if the entirety of my blog consisted of those sort of views, people would naturally question what I really believe. At a certain point it is endorsement depending on how odious the behavior is. If the Washington Post decided to publish an article on how black people are responsible for all the evils in America, that would be a blemish on their reputation even if they added said disclaimer.

> Contrary to the ideals of America, even. Should I be able to get you banned > from HN? If they don't, should I say that HN endorses your views, and get a > howling mob to shut HN down?

If you haven't realized yet, this is why flagging and voting down posts exists on HN. It exists so that the users can self-curate content and remove things that are considered particularly odious. If you consider that contrary to American ideals, then why are you participating on a site contrary to your beliefs? Posters on HN can and do shut down people espousing alt-right beliefs.

>That's why I'm opposed to societal censorship. If a mob can shut down the alt right for being too far outside society, they can shut down you and me when they decide that we're too far outside the new norm.

This is the answer from someone scared of progress or change. This was the exact argument made during the Civil Rights era by people who were afraid of black people gaining rights: They were scared of mobs shutting them down, stopping them from being racist. Does this mean the mob is always right? No, but it does mean that you should strongly consider whether or not your beliefs are truly outdated.

Society as I mentioned evolves and changes over time. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. I would hope you would agree that society evolving to give more rights to people previous deprived of them to be a good thing. And I would also hope you realize that the reason why there's such a strong reaction against the alt-right is because they want to specifically take away those rights from minority populations.

And with regards to the baker thing, you managed to miss my point entirely. My point is that your concept of American ideals is flawed and broken: Because we have not and never applied those ideals equally. The baker case was never truly about endorsement or religious liberties: It was about entrenching the right to discriminate against minorities.

<comment><USER32> > And I would also hope you realize that the reason why there's such a strong > reaction against the alt-right is because they want to specifically take > away those rights from minority populations.

I hope you would realize that the reason there's such a strong reaction to the "alt-left" is because this kind of thinking leads people to such crazy places that they would defend Soviet gulags as "compassionate." [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/11/soviet-labour- ca...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/11/soviet-labour-camps- compassionate-educational-institutions-say/)

The 20th century had horrors of Naziism and racism, yes, but it also had horrors perpetrated in the name of "progress" and "reeducation." If you have emotionally internalized the horrors of Germany and Jim Crow, but haven't done the same with the USSR, the Cultural Revolution, and the Khmer Rouge, then I can understand why ideologically-enforced progressivism might seem harmless and noble.

<comment><USER35> The 'alt-left' as people claim barely exists in any tangible form. Yes, there are going to be people that'll excuse the crimes of the USSR but to try and equate them to the alt-right is a false equivalence. Particularly because when you look at the spike in hate crimes, violence, antisemitism etc, you primarily see members of the alt-right fall within that group.

Considering how our president behaves and excuses members of the alt-right, I'll start worrying about the alt-left when and if they start holding positions of power. Before you start trying to point out further members of the alt-left: I'll just remind you that it was during that same speech that the alt-left term was invented.

<comment><USER32> > Particularly because when you look at the spike in hate crimes, violence, > antisemitism etc, you primarily see members of the alt-right fall within > that group.

Let's just go from the last week. Here is some left-wing violence:

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/22/us/conservative-activist- assa...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/22/us/conservative-activist-assault-uc- berkeley/index.html)

Here is a weekly roundup of anti-semitism, and much of it is from the left (associated with Britain's Labour party):

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/week- headl...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/week-headlines- tell-story-anti-semitism/583393/)

And for hate crimes, the news is that Jussie Smolett has been arrested for staging the "modern-day lynching" against him that has captured national attention for the last few weeks:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jussie-smollet-chicago- attack-h...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jussie-smollet-chicago-attack-hoax- empire-actor-full-timeline-live-updates/)

I'm not saying the alt-right is nothing to worry about. I'm saying the left is capable of real harm too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What a depressing read. Even acknowledging controversies are controversial.

</comment><comment><USER37> What stands out to me the most in this post, and I hope people can see this and recognize how widespread it has become, is the use of slurs to silence someone, by calling someone a nazi, or a racist, or alt-right and the like.

SSC had a fabulous post (years ago?) about Trump and the narrative that he is appealing to nazis or alt-right. And now to see the same tactic used against Scott here.

I wonder at what point a slur will be called a slur, regardless of who is targeted, even when it is deployed against a white cis-gendered male trying to speak his mind? At what point can we try to promote a specific subgroup but not _at the expense_ of the perceived alt-group?

It frustrates me that these labels are cheapened and weaponized like this so pervasively. Why is it so convenient to label someone as a wrong-thinker and this is an acceptable shortcut to nullify rather than engage and grapple with their ideas?

I think there are a lot of people hoping Trump will be re-elected not even remotely because of any measure of competence or even particularly as a matter of policy, but just as a way to say, no, the culture war doesn't get to disqualify a Presidential candidate by drawing him as a caricature of a nazi or a racist.

I'm sorry to read that Scott has been on the receiving end of this kind of information warfare. I don't know what the defense is supposed to be in this age of doxxing and righteous indignation. I guess at least I'm glad his blog is still being hosted and his DNS still resolves.

</comment><comment><USER10> >A subreddit devoted to insulting and mocking me personally and Culture War thread participants in general got started; it now has over 2,000 readers.

Anyone know which subreddit that is?

<comment><USER38> [https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/)

<comment><USER39> Not sure if there's more mocking or calling out, HBD and otherwise. The forum's focus on HBD seems something worth critiquing extensively.

<comment><USER40> Let's be clear on one point: they're complete jerks.

Well, not exactly. Like, imagine your best friend is pro-conservative; he's a really nice, polite, sensitive person who's mostly willing to hear opposite viewpoints.

Then you watch his posts on r/the_donald, and he's acting like a sneering, disgusting douchebag, ranting about "libtards" and how lefties are morons bent on destroying the fabric of the country?

Sneerclub is the same. I can totally believe that most people there are reasonable people with reasonable concerns, but the community brings out the worst parts of them the same ways others like the_donald and TheRedPill do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've seen a similar outcome on some Discord rooms and occasionally on Twitter. I think a lot of it has to do with the attitude people take (and the difference based on platform, I think, tends to relate mostly to the attitude an uninitiated person would take on that platform).

</comment><comment><USER42> > People settled on a narrative. The Culture War thread was made up entirely > of homophobic transphobic alt-right neo-Nazis. [...]

> But instead it was always that the the thread was "dominated by" or "only > had" or "was an echo chamber for" homophobic transphobic alt-right neo- > Nazis, which always grew into the claim that the subreddit was dominated by > homophobic etc neo-Nazis, which always grew into the claim that the SSC > community was dominated by homophobic etc neo-Nazis, which always grew into > the claim that I personally was a homophobic etc neo-Nazi of them all. I am > a pro-gay Jew who has dated trans people and votes pretty much straight > Democrat. I lost distant family in the Holocaust. You can imagine how much > fun this was for me.

I see this happen _often_ , including to myself, and it's why I stopped talking about politics (or even interesting philosophy/economics questions except among other phil students) on Facebook. Anything deviating from the opinions of a few vocal friends would lead to muted threats, worded like: _" So you're essentially making space for Nazis by saying its OK to talk about this?"_

</comment><comment><USER43> I've been a member of the sub since its inception, and I've long defended Scott's analyses, but, as a longtime reader and (former) participant in the CW threads, I think he's grossly missed the mark here in the first section. I think if you read the first part of this article really closely, that should be obvious.

"I will be honest and admit I rarely read the thread myself." \- Scott

"For all its awfulness..." \- werttrew

"...practically ever criticism of the CW thread I have ever read is true..." \- yrrosimyarin

"Very little was solved" -rwkasten

"I think the CW thread is obviously a huge lump of positive utility for a large number of people, because _otherwise they wouldn't spend so much time on it_ " \- darwin2500

"...it does have a lot of full-time opinionated idiots squabbling, and is inarguably filled with irrationality, bad takes, contrarianism, and Boo Outgroup posturing. I agree with many of [the criticisms] of overtly racist and stupid posts in there." -c_o_r_b_a

I, too, once held a positive opinion on the thread, and so would anyone, having only the knowledge of its maxims and a bleary-eyed take on a small sample of posts. But once you dig deeper, you get what ought to be obvious from the above quotes. There are indeed many honest, well meaning, well informed people that post. They end up getting absolutely pulverized under the millstone of "power users".

The issue with the thread was never that an surveyable proportion of readers would split between left and right.

The issue was that the power users--the ones who post all the time in seemingly every thread--create an environment that drives away the the _best_ posters.

The issue was that a single person clicking "I consider myself left-wing" on a survey (especially when they _know_ the context of the survey is to show relatively even R/L split and the political milieu of the sub is hard R) is __very __different than their sheer contribution to the social "overton window" of the thread. Those "left wing" posters are the "I believe abortion should be legal, but also I will post my pro-HBD takes forever, at every opportunity". That is, it doesn't really matter what they clicked, because their contribution to the aesthetic of the thread is not accurately represented by the survey.

The issue was that actual factual experts get drowned in a sea of whataboutism and people who think they know better because they have a study to the contrary (did no one else read Beware the Man Of One Study or Epistemic Learned Helplessness!?).

The issue is that there are so few _actual_ left wing posters that they get called out _explicitly, by name_ to answer for "the left" when "they" do something that the forum deems necessary of an explanation (seriously, darwin2500 has the patience of a saint).

The issue is that people who harass (as above), argue in bad faith or seriously contribute to a negative environment don't catch bans except for extreme cases. To the moderators' credit, I've seen some really bad stuff get posters banned, but to speak of the general thread's failure, many of those posts are sitting on a well-into-the-positive amount of upvotes.

Personally, I'm _not_ sad to see the thread go. It was detritus, and it impelled many quality contributors to leave. My favorite poster on the sub (who pretty much never posts there now) wrote a fantastic bit explaining the sub ~6 months ago.

"The experience can be a little jarring because you'll have some insightful, genuinely depth hub worth comment upvoted and then another highly upvoted comments next to it will be how we should bring back eugenics and how we should limit immigration to people from high IQ countries in Europe and East Asia" \- u/yodatsracist as per below

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/comments/98jco5/uintervers...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/comments/98jco5/uinterversity_describes_the_benefits_of_street/e4h7c8v/?context=3)

And, to be clear, none of this was explicitly Scott's fault (and, to wit, anyone who harassed him personally/professionally is an utter idiot). It was simply Moloch acting on the machinery of the sub.

<comment><USER39> That is a great summary, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Was the full thread archived anywhere?

<comment><USER45> It's multiple years of weekly threads: [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/search?q=flair%3ACul...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/search?q=flair%3ACulture%2BWar%2BRoundup&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Previously, I've been following /pol/ on 4chan for some years. What have impressed me is not the content itself, but its organization, the social structure, the creation of memes, the evolution of fringe political/identity movement that is unimaginable before the Internet. To understand its associated problem with it, it's crucial to establish a solid understanding of the underlying mechanism, the underlying social and economic factors that contribute to the problem of trolling.

This is why I'm quite disappointed about the mainstream media. For example, what are the social and cultural basis of Gamergate/Dark Enlightenment/incel movement? If you can't understand the underlying social basis and mechanism, and just blindly discredit them it as "far-right troll campaign", then it is parts of the problem, not the solution.

I've said repeatedly online - this kind of cultural issue is NOT about "the liberal media", "antifa", "SJWs", "trolls", "incels", "alt-right", "fake news", or "Donald Trump", these are just the "first-order" effect - what most people have easily observed. But the underlying issue - how Internet works to produce these ideas, the larger social problems behind them, can only be understood by looking at it from a higher perspective, as a postmodern phenomena, and to study it faithfully and carefully by the best sociologists and psychologists, and by the people who understand these online community and technology, and can analyze it in a neural way, just tell us how the system works, without preexisting bias or political stance. So we can finally have some ideas to solve it. Unfortunately, the number of people who are doing academic studies on these subjects, is almost nonexistent.

Personally, I'm only aware of the following people who are studying it.

o Book: _Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan 's Army Conquered the Web_, by Cole Stryker. This is probably the earliest and the most well-known one. However, its ~2007 narrative of 4chan and its politics is out-of-date, but it still covers how an online platform can popularize a radical social movement.

o Book: _This Is Why We Can 't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture_, by Whitney Phillips, published by The MIT Press. This book explores history of trolling, and studies it from a cultural and social perspective, and identifies some of the underlying mechanisms.

o Talk: _The dark side of free software communities_ , by Morgan Gangwere, at LibrePlanet 2018. The talker discovers the fringe tech culture on the wild Internet, on 4chan/8chan, characterized by hatred - where RMS was the official mascot, and quite a few people (possibly basement dwellers) who believes the Internet is controlled by the evil monopolists/Freemason/Jewish/capitalist conspiracy, free software is not an exception but it's still a powerful tool against their rule, and how SJW is undermining it. Unfortunately, the talker's research focused on building a good community, not a detailed study of fringe tech culture.

o Book: _Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right_ , by Angela Nagle, focuses on the history of the current cultural war online. I haven't read the book yet, so I'm not sure what is the perspective of book.

It seriously deserves more complete study from more people, I'm more interested in an ethnography-based approach. However, I don't have any background knowledge on sociology to make any insightful commentary on it... Seriously, reading /pol/ has almost made me wanted to change my major from software engineering to sociology, just to study it and trying to understand how the counter-cultural fringe politics works online, however, it's an unlikely career for me to pursuit.

<comment><USER46> In addition, we can ask some more serious questions.

Freedom was the ideal behind the advent of personal computing and Internet. Quote John Barlow,

> "We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice > accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We > are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, > no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or > conformity."

And people believed, once you have the Internet, it will be an inherently platform of democracy and equality, which empowered the individuals to be free from the social and political establishment. However, this narrative from the 80s has been proven to be partially correct, partially wishful thinking.

It appeared to be true, because it coincided with the economic boom of 80s neoliberalism until ~2010. When middle east politics started to become destabilized, people celebrated because the revolution was liberal, there was even the "cute cat theory of digital activism", which says when there are funny memes involved, people are more likely to join the political protest of Internet freedom. And it was seen as a good thing - a faceless dictatorial government was overthrown by lolcat. Isn't it the miracle of the postmodern Internet?

But it has been clear that ANY idea, can by popularized and supported by a free Internet. Now in the current age of deglobalization and political and economic failure, naturally, conservative, nationalistic, or even racist and fascist ideas are getting more and more support. Suddenly, the same medium (Like the social media, or the political memes) are being called hate symbols and should be banned by major platforms. It has been clear that the Internet can surely empowers "individuals to be free from the establishment", it is very true, but unfortunately, any ideas, not only ideas of "democracy and equality", as long as long as it has support, can be empowered by the Internet. Not even needed to be popular support, support from a portion of people with shared identity is enough.

When we've realizing an free and open Internet does not necessarily support liberalism, or democracy, or equality, the next question naturally arises - when the central argument for Internet freedom, that it brings democracy and equality, no longer works, should the Internet be free and open? And should we even have the right to free speech anymore, at all? I believe the answer must be yes, including those unpopular ones.

But the media, as I see it, just blindly discredit the trolls, and only solution they purposed was "don't feed the trolls", or Twitter and Facebook should ban "hate speech" and "fake news". If the mainstream cannot actually to study and understand its mechanism, and the underlying social-economical basis this conflict, of this new online anti-establishment trends and trolls, and to provide a social solution, I don't think the problem is going to be solved at anytime, and the answer to free speech, and a free, open Internet is going to be "No" soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> "Fourth, I want anybody else trying to host "the national conversation" to have a clear idea of the risks. If you plan to be anything less than maximally censorious, consider keeping your identity anonymous, and think about potential weak links in your chain (ie hosts, advertisers, payment processors, etc). I'm not saying you necessarily need to go full darknet arms merchant. Just keep in mind that lots of people will try to stop you, and they've had a really high success rate so far."

Someone from the commentor community here should do a historical study on censorship like this (not exactly like this, of course, since the internet didn't exist) under representative governments. Is it rare or unprecedented for voters to polarize into two tribes that will not communicate without the state falling into civil war? Or is it common and just feels like a coming civil war because we haven't lived a large enough sample size?

<comment><USER38> Which government is censoring people?

<comment><USER48> I didn't see the claim that there was one. Are you replying to the right comment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Url changed from [https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war- thread...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread-two/), which is broken.

<comment><USER26> its broken because the author didn't want it shared in this fashion

<comment><AUTHOR> Did the author state that? Because I wouldn't have shared it if that was stated.

Edit: the author states that the post is having technical issues. I don't believe there's any indication it shouldn't be shared/discussed.

<comment><USER26> its tagged 'Things I will regret writing'

I implied it,

maybe I'm wrong

<comment><USER50> Many posts on SSC are tagged with this; Scott Alexander sometimes indulges in writing opinion pieces on controversial Internet topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Looking at those charts, why are libertarians considered right-wing? They may be so economically, but they definitely are to the left (or even the far left) socially.

Giving that this post talks about social stuff, and not economical stuff, I believe that 51%/49% chart to be simply wrong.

<comment><USER52> They may be socially liberal as individuals, but they are all too willing to curtail the government's ability to protect the rights of minorities. That's why they get classified as right-wing by most everyone except themselves.

For example, the libertarian solution to the Christian baker, gay wedding cake problem is that the government does not have the right to stipulate non- discrimination laws for public-facing businesses. Follow that logic to its natural conclusion, and we're back to segregated restaurants. Doesn't sound very leftist to me.

<comment><USER53> > That's why they get classified as right-wing by most everyone except > themselves.

"libertarians are always classified as X" reliably identifies a person as opposite-of-X.

if you hit up the conservative forums, you'll find libertarians regularly described as dope-smoking lefty hippies, and whatever else.

<comment><USER38> That hasn't been my experience. On most conservative forums, most people-- clearly conservative--describe themselves as "libertarian". Look at elected officials: who's more likely to describe themselves as a "libertarian", Republican politicians or Democratic politicians?

<comment><USER53> you're talking about self-description. i wasn't.

<comment><USER38> What? I don't follow. Why would conservatives, who describe themselves as "libertarians", call libertarians "dope-smoking lefty hippies"? I'm saying your account of how conservatives describe libertarians rings false.

Conservatives don't consider libertarians to be "them", they consider libertarians to be "us"\--that is, they don't make a distinction between conservatives and libertarians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just speculating here...

The Russian playbook in 2016 wasn't _just_ to get Trump elected. It was to divide America. Now, we seem to be doing pretty well at that all on our own, but I wonder if some of their work would be to divide online communities, _especially_ one where people from different tribes could talk reasonably with each other.

And, reading the article, it seems like this could easily have been an orchestrated campaign disguised to look like a bunch of people just self- organizing to yell at something they didn't like because it allowed "them" to speak. (Or, it could in fact have been just a bunch of people self-organizing to yell.)

<comment><USER54> Americans hating Americans is part of our culture. There were people who didn't want to leave England. 100 years later, half the country up and split off and both sides went and killed each other trying to decide who was right. Then 100 years after that, half the country freaked out about the mere concept of equal rights for all and the North-South/Dem-Rep/urban-rural divide became solidified once more and hasn't really changed to this day.

I find it hard to blame it all on a few paid Russians commenting on twitter or reddit. If a few guys can get paid to completely divide a nation of 300+million through internet comments, either they're the most persuasive people to ever exist, or the divide was already there. It's not even hard just to read some American news and see how literally _every single site_ that covers mainstream events or political topics makes _every single thing_ into an us vs. them situation. There's no escaping it, and it drives clicks, so there's no motivation to stop.

And it's absolutely bizarre how certain parts of the internet are absolutely flooded with hatred for Russians as a whole, with someone _always_ coming in to scream about them. It reminds me of hearing people's ramblings after 9/11, except this time it's primarily "young and informed" individuals.

<comment><USER34> Oh, absolutely the divide was already there. But, well, let me put it this way: We know that the Russians' goal was not just a Trump win, but American division. They'd be idiots if they _weren 't_ trying to exacerbate these divisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> > Any fair moderation policy won't provide the moderator with any excuse to > delete [the guy who really likes pedophilia ... posting on every thread ... > followed by a ten thousand word manifesto].

And there's the problem. It's not "unfair" to delete comments like those described.

<comment><USER14> He means fair in the sense of content-neutral or objective. Obviously any forum can just delete stuff the mods don't subjectively like, that's the default option used by most fora.</comment></comment>