zlacker

>>dang+(OP)
I live in Northwest Washington, D.C. I am a technologist, a government contractor, and an HN member for many years under various accounts since 2008.

I respectfully disagree.

Yesterday someone motivated by the "Pizzagate" story, spread and enabled by the social media systems we designed, fired multiple shots from a semi-automatic weapon into a crowded restaurant near my home.

My partner and I passed the crime scene shortly thereafter on our way back to our apartment.

The new National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, endorsed the totally false rumors that led to this shooting. He will soon be empowered by the full force of the nation's intelligence agencies.

I want you to very carefully consider the implications of what he could do with access to that power, and the potential result of blocking discussion of such issues, particularly at this moment in time.

>>s_q_b+gd
I empathize with your view, but I very much disagree with you.

1) It's an experiment, there should never be any disagreement with an experiment unless the experiment itself can cause harm to someone/something. The results of this experiment should be evaluated closely, and if they make new guidelines for HN I'm fully onboard. But it's an experiment.

2) The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this is a fair assumption. I'm not saying no one here could shoot a gun in public, but they wouldn't come here as anything but a complete troll and shoot a gun based on some crap story like that. If I'm wrong in this then the experiment is terrible and stop it now. But I very much doubt it.

3) The issue is that news in general has degraded. This degradation of journalism has led to many of the issues we experience today. If experimenting on HN can lead to some sort of anecdotal evidence that Politics = bad for communities I'm all for it. I believe part of the issue is pointed to in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4 24 Hours news is the issue. 24 Hours politics is the issue. Taking a purge is a great idea.

4) HN should not be where you get your news about politics.

>>bargl+fg
"The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I feel this is a fair assumption"

The systems on which that person read the false information that drove them to shoot the gun were built by people who read HN. That may sound like a lot of levels of indirection, but to ignore politics for a week seems like a symptom of pretending that we are not a part of the problem.

I think the technology running the web needs to be thought of as a part of the fourth estate. We are not separate from the media which we have restructured.

>>gibrow+si
While I think that we should use every tool at our disposal to work to mitigate disasters like the one you mention, I also don't think it's on Technology to fix this issue itself. Facebook isn't the cause of people being stupid, people are. This is not a new issue and it is not something that the people who read this site are responsible for.

It is also an experiment. I'd like to emphasize that. It is an experiment. It is OK to not get politics on HN for a week. It will not be the cause of a global meltdown in society.

I'm also pretty confident that if some ground breaking news broke about Donald Trump wanting to launch a nuclear weapon that dang would allow that, but the current noise that is happening can be removed for a week is a good experiment.

>>bargl+nl
As an experiment it is interesting, and there certainly community management is hard. Also, I think that better community management is maybe some of the problem on Facebook and Twitter, so there is quite a bit of irony in me arguing against it.

But...

The media and technology revolution that we are both living through and shaping with the technologies that we deploy should be something that we actively discuss and wrestle with. I've recently been reading more history of the impact of the printing press (scientific revolution, monarchy => democracy, reformation, and a lot of war).

"This is not a new issue and it is not something that the people who read this site are responsible for."

I could not disagree more strongly. The web is quite new, and we don't understand its impact on society. Certainly the people on this site are not entirely responsible for it, but I think that we should feel some responsibility for it. I certainly do.