[oxqbldpxo]

And ppl were worried about China's 1984 style use of Ai, lol. In the end it was greedy software developers that enable this.

[gehwartzen]

Some guy on X recently commented on how “dystopian” Flock’s nationwide surveillance is.

Response by Garry Tan (CEO of YC)[1]

“You're thinking Chinese surveillance

US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims”

[1] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955

[lbrito]

Amazing. I have a hard time believing that comment isn't sarcastic, its just too perfect. Its hard to tell these days

If its not, it sounds like the output of an LLM if prompted "You are a toddler. Write the most naive and illogical ideological propaganda possible. Offer no rational justification for your thoughts"

[buellerbueller]

Surveillance does not prevent victims. Precrime would, but who wants that?

[cies]

> And ppl were worried about China's 1984 style use of Ai, lol.

Came here to say the same...

> In the end it was greedy software developers that enable this.

Nope. First is a failing govt system (not upholding the constitution) that's enabling this.

Second it's not the devs but the business men (that are so much in bed in govt that they have become indistinguishable).

Look, there are software devs (and probably business men) that are equally greedy in, say, Finland/Iceland/etc. But it's not happening there: they simply have a govt that's better for the people at large.

[praptak]

GP didn't say greedy devs caused it, they (we?) are only enabling it.

Obviously there's always the cop out of "someone else would have done it anyway" but it doesn't really change the (un-)ethical side of your choices. I'm not saying it's black and white either - if the other choice is to leave your kids without proper medical care then it's a different thing than just being intentionally blind to ethics.

[stackghost]

This is what happens when one allows oneself to hide in "safe spaces" (like HN) where there's a "no politics" rule enabling people to hide and avoid being confronted with the ramifications of their actions.

The entire world runs on technology now. It's all inherently political.

[brightball]

I'm going to defend the HN "no politics" rule here.

The reason "no politics" zones exist is because there are enough people going out of their way to shout at everybody, everywhere, in every corner of the internet and enough people are tired of it that they flock to...no politics zones. In real life, a person like that confronts you...you remove yourself from the situation, because that person who can't stop shouting at everybody comes across as nuts.

[throw10920]

This comment is wrong and/or malicious along every dimension.

> "safe spaces" (like HN)

HN is not a "safe space". Saying that most politics is off-limit most of the time for very good reasons (that only either insane or malicious people would deny) does not make this a "safe space". Go look up how Wikipedia defines it and it's easy to see that your statement is literally false.

> where there's a "no politics" rule

This is false. There is no "no politics" rule.

> enabling people to hide and avoid being confronted with the ramifications of their actions.

This statement is just insane. The direct logical conclusion of this statement is that if every site on the internet is not blasting out political news all the time, that it's enabling people to "hide" from something. That's not just false - that's a deranged position that 99.999% of people will disagree with.

> It's all inherently political.

False. Deciding your backend architecture (microserves vs monolith) is not political. Picking a text editor is not political. Helping a friend install Linux is not political. Not everything is political - the fact that you is means that something is wrong with the way that you view the world.

And even for the things that are political - only a crazy and/or evil person would take the fact that emacs is made by GNU and vim is not as a reason to incite political flamewars on the internet and try to inject politics into every online forum.

People like you are the main reason that modern American culture is so toxic and politically polarized and that democratic discourse is breaking down.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_space

[integralid]

Yes, HN is my safe space. I have enough politics in my daily life, I don't need it when I'm with phone in my bed trying to wind down.

And which politics? American internal politics are foreign and distant to me. How much do you care about my country internal affairs? Probably not much. And it's OK, you can't fix every country in existence, and if you tried to care you would get insane.

[hydrogen7800]

>"no politics"

No politics is a privilege that many do not have.

[pjc50]

You can see in this threat that confronting people with the ramifications of their actions causes them to double down. They'll just come up with more and more justifications of why the victims deserve it. Same as every mass atrocity.

[dawnerd]

There’s a shockingly large amount of the population that doesn’t want politics period. And that’s how we got here.

[keiferski]

I don't think you can really blame HN specifically here. It's much wider than that; pretty much the tech industry as a whole actively discourages any kind of philosophical reflection on technology, at least the kind that says you shouldn't build something, even if it's profitable.

[dragonwriter]

> This is what happens when one allows oneself to hide in "safe spaces" (like HN) where there's a "no politics" rule

HN does not have, and never has had (except for a very brief experiment that failed spectacularly and was very quickly aborted) a “no politics” rule, and, in fact, politics is usually all over the site.

[LurkandComment]

This exactly hits in on the head. You're trying create a forum absent of politics. In fact, you're just enabling one political view over another. This hides social issues and in the end comes back to undermine your pure "technical view". It's not apolitical, it's disassociation from reality.

[plorg]

There have been some insane politics (especially "culture war" stuff) that got laundered through the HN "reasonable discussion" filter, especially from 2021 through 2024. They still come up all the time. HN loves talking about politics when the commenters can get critical mass to grind the libertarian or "anti-woke" axe.

Not to mention every leader of YCombinator has had some kind of wild politics that come from having money that separates you from any kind of consequence.

[ch2026]

[flagged]

[peppersghost93]

Has your life gotten worse in any way that can be attributed to people moving to the US?