Why is the second sentence of this article about how the CEO of Gab used a Transphobic slur? It kind of seems like the author threw that in there to make sure the reader agrees with their political views, but the article doesn't say what the slur was, and I don't think the author would defend the idea that being transphobic makes it okay to hack a person's website, but it kind of feels like that's the point implicitly being proposed.
It feels like yet another injection of politics into what was previously a tech-focused website.
Isn’t DDoSecrets basically working with the hackers by hosting/evangelizing/distributing their illegally acquired data? It’s also amazing to me that all those involved with it and the prior Parler hack are allowed to remain on Twitter without even a label on hacked materials, let alone a ban for clear illegal activity. Double standards.
I think all censorship should be deplored. My position is that bits are not a bug. That we should create communications technologies that allow people to send whatever they like to each other. And when people put their thumbs on the scale and try to say what can and can't be sent, we should fight back - both politically through protest and technologically through software. - Aaron Swartz
I spent a number of years living in America in the past, and made friends with people across the political spectrum there. And what has always stood out to me is how much hatred and animosity the American right and left have for each other. Talk with someone over beers long enough and they really open up about it, probably because I'm an outsider.
As far as political orientation goes, by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans), but there are many confounding factors due to their society being forced into the mold of one-of-two parties. Indeed, the choice of ideologies and political tactics are downright bizarre, even contradictory to the outside norm of left and right when viewed by a foreigner.
What always surprises me is the rabidity of the comments left on sites such as these (both left and right oriented). Although you belong to different tribes, your words are remarkably similar: It seems that you really do see the other party as made up of terrible people, misguided at best, inhuman monsters at worst, unfeeling and callous, perhaps even extermination-worthy in some extreme cases. This is not how politics work in the rest of the world.
> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world.
Weighted by population, and including the places where that attitude has been taken to it's logical extreme by the dominant faction actually suppressing it's opposition, it absolutely is how politics works in the rest of the world.
It's not how politics works in healthy, multiparty democracies, but those are, globally, rather more the exception than the rule.
> by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans)
OhBoyHereWeGo.jpg
It's stupid to try and condense the political ideology of the US (or almost any nation) down to one spectrum and then try and map that onto the rest of the world when we (and the rest of the world) have a lot of ideology based on "well party X took position Y because party V had position W back in year Z and they needed to be opposite and it stuck around". What's left and right is mostly a figment of historical coincidence, not any sort of ideological consistency across a party.
Shall we do a survey of immigration and gun control policies across Europe to drive the point home? If you don't like that option we can survey the social safety nets and freedom of expression in Asia.
> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world.
Between radicalised parties it looks like that everywhere. When people have only two choices, by necessity each choice contains radicalised fringe elements. For some reason societal factors in the US give these elements a huge presence, which I don't really understand.
> As far as political orientation goes, by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans),
Does anyone have a good global breakdown of political ideology?
What we call the west (North America, Europe, Australia, etc) is about 20% of the global population. These are the sources I usually see. I’m curious about this stuff globally
Politics are the same everywhere. There's always an enemy and they're always dehumanized. It's always about empowering yourself and your group at the expense of everyone else.
"The specific political distinction to which political actions and
motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content. Insofar as it is not derived from other criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on anyone antithesis or any combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be confused with or mistaken for the others. The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party.
Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. Emotionally the enemy is easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political, as the strongest and most intense of the distinctions and categorizations, draws upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonomy of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse is also true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically beautiful, and economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend in the specifically political sense of the word. Thereby the inherently objective nature and autonomy of the political becomes evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and comprehend the friend-enemy antithesis independently of other antitheses."
—Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. [emphasis mine]
I disagree that Democrats are center-right. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are definitely left wing, even for European standards.
But you might be partly right. One of the reasons for that are rules of political marketing (rarely politicians have enough courage to ignore them). One of those rules says that you need to differ and polarization is good. You want to win? Show how different you are.
Another rule is that people don't vote with their brains but with emotions. So stirring emotions is needed. Humiliating your opponent is a good recipe for high emotions.
Social platforms are magnifying differences, emotions, so there is no much more left.
As a result democracy is not in the greatest shape now, some would even argue that it resembles more democracy of Roman Empire from triumvirate times (it was only a facade for the mob that was manipulated by those with power) than system that John Stuart Mill or Alexis de Tocqueville had in their minds.
In the US, a majority of GOP voters believe that Democrats stole the election, and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Here is a pollster that is respected by US conservatives:
Many also believe that patriotic violence is acceptable to protect the legitimacy of democracy. What kind of conversation do you have when people believe their democracy was stolen from them?
There is no way at this point for the GOP to safely retreat from the position that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. To do so would be political death.
“ America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans”
Calling democrats center right by worldwide standards is a bit of a stretch.
If you are comparing to worldwide, please remember a large majority of the world are still socially far right by American standards, take women’s rights and gay marriage for example.
If you are comparing to the West, democrats are far more left wing than much of Europe’s parties (apart from maybe Sweden), most social justice movements originate from the states and these are in-line with the democrats policies.
> This is not how politics work in the rest of the world.
Actually, it is. It's just in places that you probably don't want to live in:
> Donald Trump’s Republican party has become more illiberal and retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years, a study has found, with its rhetoric shifting closer that of authoritarian parties ruling in Turkey, Hungary, Poland and India.
> The research by Sweden-based V-Dem Institute highlights what it calls a “global trend” where “the median governing party in democracies has become more illiberal in recent decades”.
US animosity (i.e. firings for utterances of a word, lambasting any org. that doesn't meet certain criteria as 'White Supremacist', politicians blatantly lying about the election and running procedural coup attempts, lying on every Tweet) - is not really a left/right thing.
It's mostly raw pathetic populism, incited as much by the press as any other group.
It is the media and short election cycles. The politicians who serve long terms(senate) generally get along with each other because they have to work together, while members of the house and the president must keep media frenzy since they are constantly in election mode. Also, if you pay attention - it is no longer left vs right, more like localism vs globalism. Of course media portrays localism as nationalism, and globalism as progressivism
This type of anti-American sentiment is boring and old-hat. I often hear it made by Europeans who still insist EU countries like France and Germany are so much better. In reality EU is a polarized racist political swamp.
Earlier when I was looking for what backend stack they used (I had forgotten they forked from Mastodon) I found an article from last November about their new CTO, and had a lol moment: "its newest CTO…former software engineer who spent more than seven years at Facebook…Gab is happy to introduce our new CTO…With 23 years of industry experience, he brings extensive backend infrastructure knowledge and insights from across the stack…worked as a “production engineer and developer advocate” at Facebook"
Based on some of the tweets around this, I got the impression the vulnerability was introduced by Gab devs.
EDIT: Plus this:
> Just to reiterate in relation to Gab getting hacked, I’m not aware of any vulnerabilities in Mastodon at the moment and based on what I have seen in their code modifications the vulnerabilities they have are the ones they themselves introduced (along with never porting security patches from us)
I've been following Hacker News for over a decade and my sense of the community is that it has always been overwhelmingly pro free speech at any cost (even in the cases where it would protect something outright illegal). Now I'm hearing from many in the same community that free speech has been "weaponized" and must be controlled for the greater good. What happened? Seriously.
I don't know anything about this situation but in general you're absolutely right. Unfortunately when you have thousands of people trying to become the next @donk_enby, 'pretty uncommon' becomes just a matter of time.
I wonder if two party system is really so different from one party system since it's the systems of bureaucracy is what dictates lives of people and those pretty much stay the same and evolve very gradually in the direction of profit for the wealthy.
Maybe it's more stable because it gives each half of the population their own enemy to hate, and periodical "wins" over that enemy?
Maybe China will learn this trick eventually and split into two fractions that will periodically swap the highest positions between themselves?
Alabama technocrat checking in to say I have no involvement with national US politics whatsoever and echo OP’s “wow what the fuck sentiment”. I do sometimes interject myself into local politics but even that is distasteful due to the left vs. right mentality.
Born and raised in the US of A, can’t wait until it implodes and the dogs kill each other. Cannot fathom what just happened in this country other than the power of celebrity.
This increase of extreme assault on free-speech platforms should be worrying to everyone. Not too long ago, we were hailing the "internet" as a free fair space. Now it is a free fair space ... for everyone but some kind of people.
I'm for free speech but this specific kind of targeted attacks is getting out of hand.
Idk, if we are gonna be more libertarian with speech, why not do the same for hacking? It's really not much of a crime compared to a lot of other things and is arguably a form of speech.
[+] [-] ignoranceprior|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghostpepper|5 years ago|reply
It feels like yet another injection of politics into what was previously a tech-focused website.
[+] [-] throwawaysea|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timsayshey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kowlo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstenerud|5 years ago|reply
As far as political orientation goes, by worldwide standards America actually ranges from center-right (Democrats) to far-right (Republicans), but there are many confounding factors due to their society being forced into the mold of one-of-two parties. Indeed, the choice of ideologies and political tactics are downright bizarre, even contradictory to the outside norm of left and right when viewed by a foreigner.
What always surprises me is the rabidity of the comments left on sites such as these (both left and right oriented). Although you belong to different tribes, your words are remarkably similar: It seems that you really do see the other party as made up of terrible people, misguided at best, inhuman monsters at worst, unfeeling and callous, perhaps even extermination-worthy in some extreme cases. This is not how politics work in the rest of the world.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|5 years ago|reply
Weighted by population, and including the places where that attitude has been taken to it's logical extreme by the dominant faction actually suppressing it's opposition, it absolutely is how politics works in the rest of the world.
It's not how politics works in healthy, multiparty democracies, but those are, globally, rather more the exception than the rule.
[+] [-] throwaway0a5e|5 years ago|reply
OhBoyHereWeGo.jpg
It's stupid to try and condense the political ideology of the US (or almost any nation) down to one spectrum and then try and map that onto the rest of the world when we (and the rest of the world) have a lot of ideology based on "well party X took position Y because party V had position W back in year Z and they needed to be opposite and it stuck around". What's left and right is mostly a figment of historical coincidence, not any sort of ideological consistency across a party.
Shall we do a survey of immigration and gun control policies across Europe to drive the point home? If you don't like that option we can survey the social safety nets and freedom of expression in Asia.
[+] [-] krageon|5 years ago|reply
Between radicalised parties it looks like that everywhere. When people have only two choices, by necessity each choice contains radicalised fringe elements. For some reason societal factors in the US give these elements a huge presence, which I don't really understand.
[+] [-] arethuza|5 years ago|reply
A lot of the debate around Brexit in the UK worked exactly that way - on both sides.
[+] [-] frr149|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swiley|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mfer|5 years ago|reply
Does anyone have a good global breakdown of political ideology?
What we call the west (North America, Europe, Australia, etc) is about 20% of the global population. These are the sources I usually see. I’m curious about this stuff globally
[+] [-] mbeex|5 years ago|reply
On the contrary, a strengthening of this very pattern can be observed everywhere.
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] arianon|5 years ago|reply
Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. Emotionally the enemy is easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political, as the strongest and most intense of the distinctions and categorizations, draws upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonomy of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse is also true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically beautiful, and economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend in the specifically political sense of the word. Thereby the inherently objective nature and autonomy of the political becomes evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and comprehend the friend-enemy antithesis independently of other antitheses."
—Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political. [emphasis mine]
[+] [-] piokoch|5 years ago|reply
But you might be partly right. One of the reasons for that are rules of political marketing (rarely politicians have enough courage to ignore them). One of those rules says that you need to differ and polarization is good. You want to win? Show how different you are.
Another rule is that people don't vote with their brains but with emotions. So stirring emotions is needed. Humiliating your opponent is a good recipe for high emotions.
Social platforms are magnifying differences, emotions, so there is no much more left.
As a result democracy is not in the greatest shape now, some would even argue that it resembles more democracy of Roman Empire from triumvirate times (it was only a facade for the mob that was manipulated by those with power) than system that John Stuart Mill or Alexis de Tocqueville had in their minds.
[+] [-] skinkestek|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] threatofrain|5 years ago|reply
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ele...
Many also believe that patriotic violence is acceptable to protect the legitimacy of democracy. What kind of conversation do you have when people believe their democracy was stolen from them?
There is no way at this point for the GOP to safely retreat from the position that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. To do so would be political death.
[+] [-] dangernous|5 years ago|reply
Calling democrats center right by worldwide standards is a bit of a stretch.
If you are comparing to worldwide, please remember a large majority of the world are still socially far right by American standards, take women’s rights and gay marriage for example.
If you are comparing to the West, democrats are far more left wing than much of Europe’s parties (apart from maybe Sweden), most social justice movements originate from the states and these are in-line with the democrats policies.
[+] [-] msla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101a|5 years ago|reply
Actually, it is. It's just in places that you probably don't want to live in:
> Donald Trump’s Republican party has become more illiberal and retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years, a study has found, with its rhetoric shifting closer that of authoritarian parties ruling in Turkey, Hungary, Poland and India.
> The research by Sweden-based V-Dem Institute highlights what it calls a “global trend” where “the median governing party in democracies has become more illiberal in recent decades”.
* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...
* PDF: https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/b6/55/b6553f85-5c5d...
By 2014 it was the GOP that had become more-right and the median with the Democrats hadn't change much from preceding decades:
* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-pol...
However since then it appears that Democrats have become more-left.
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
It's mostly raw pathetic populism, incited as much by the press as any other group.
[+] [-] AzzieElbab|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shrimpx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerrilla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busrf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jach|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hadrien01|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bostonian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bogwog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anfogoat|5 years ago|reply
EDIT: Plus this:
> Just to reiterate in relation to Gab getting hacked, I’m not aware of any vulnerabilities in Mastodon at the moment and based on what I have seen in their code modifications the vulnerabilities they have are the ones they themselves introduced (along with never porting security patches from us)
(https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/105819655956170794)
[+] [-] timsayshey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FDSGSG|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmiles74|5 years ago|reply
With all of the tools available today I would have thought this kind of attack would be pretty uncommon.
[+] [-] tim333|5 years ago|reply
Easy to make mistakes I guess. Little Bobby Tables strikes again.
[+] [-] jcims|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|5 years ago|reply
Maybe it's more stable because it gives each half of the population their own enemy to hate, and periodical "wins" over that enemy?
Maybe China will learn this trick eventually and split into two fractions that will periodically swap the highest positions between themselves?
[+] [-] throwaway69123|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rndgermandude|5 years ago|reply
So gab was hacked, not scraped, unlike parler which was scraped.
[+] [-] jcpham2|5 years ago|reply
Born and raised in the US of A, can’t wait until it implodes and the dogs kill each other. Cannot fathom what just happened in this country other than the power of celebrity.
[+] [-] sneak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawei369|5 years ago|reply
I'm for free speech but this specific kind of targeted attacks is getting out of hand.
[+] [-] throwawei369|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] o_p|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Miner49er|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrew_|5 years ago|reply