Pretty sick of anything seemingly critical of the current administration getting flagged here. The right loves to cry about censorship, but the censorship is coming from inside the house.
Bollocks. Politics is endemic to tech. It’s impossible to discuss tech without politics.
What some folk want to squash is very particular politics which they don’t want to confront. It violates everything it means to be a hacker in the true sense of the word but I have realized a long time ago that these types of people wear the badge of hacker for their ego only
For me personally, I only want to see politics that are directly tech-adjacent here. I have many other channels for political news that have a much better signal-to-noise ratio. Diluting the tech focus here with average mainstream politics attracts the wrong crowd and adds little of value.
The fact that it was a social media post is not an interesting part of the story - he could have just as easily said the same thing on TV to the same result. They aren't trying to censor social media as a result.
The article did not make it clear that this was related to social media at all. It just said he “released a video” over and over again. I guess it is related, but it’s a terrible article for not including that fact or linking to the original post.
Thanks for adding context. No thanks for the “mental gymnastics” snark.
> Diluting the tech focus here with average mainstream politics attracts the wrong crowd and adds little of value.
Flagged stories are some of the most active stories on HN. If the goal is to act as a filter on the kinds of acceptable topics to discuss or the kinds of people to attract to HN, it's a failed one, because the "wrong crowd" is still being attracted and commenting on those stories.
If anything, I see far and away the most amount of bad faith flagging/downvoting and throwaways on those threads. Are people getting their flagging privileges taken away? Are the throwaway's main accounts being banned? Who knows...
The wrong crowd includes organized astroturf groups, bots, trolls, and political junkies who all probably have feeds set up looking for those posts. Can’t escape it anywhere on the internet where general political posts are allowed.
At least the flagging keeps the noise off the front page and discourages an excessive number of general political/news posts.
> Can’t escape it anywhere on the internet where general political posts are allowed.
You actually can. I have political discussions with people who disagree with me in many social spaces.
What you can't do is have there be zero friction to join the conversation and be overly reliant on user moderation tools to do the hard work of moderation for you.
MAGA and their ilk love to claim a warrior/strong man identity while simultaneously whining about censorship and persecution and accusing their political opponents of being overly sensitive snowflakes.
This is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation, ergo, paradoxical.
No, it's not sedition. Reminding service members about the law is not an act of sedition. Encouraging them to disobey the law could be, but that's not what he and the others did in that video. This is just more pettiness.
> Encouraging them to disobey the law could be, but that's not what he and the others did in that video.
The issue is that service members already know this very well, so when you tell them what they already know, it does seem like they are being encouraged.
I wonder what you would have thought if it was a bunch of "maga" republicans releasing this video about military service members "had the duty to refuse unlawful orders" when Biden was president. Be honest with yourself.
I'd have no problem with it. It's a factual statement, it is their duty to refuse unlawful orders. Now, if they said to disobey specific orders that were in fact lawful that would be another matter, but that didn't happen with the video in question.
> Be honest with yourself.
So far you're the one pushing into dishonesty here, or at least disingenuity. The video did not amount to sedition, even though you suggest it did. You can't point out any actual sedition, only hint at the possibility of it and throw out some whataboutism bullshit. Your comments don't speak well of your character.
Yes hopefully Congress gets the basic training they desperately need.
But seriously. Should soldiers be refusing to murder civilians on boats? If the law is clear (which I think it is) and they should be refusing why aren't they?
The answer of course is that they're being put in an impossible situation. Pinning the responsibility on them, because they took basic training, to interpret the law and go against the majority of the US govt at huge personal risk is just absurd.
Maybe instead the government should get their head out of their ass and do something themselves beyond trying to pass the buck via a stupid tv ad.
If an order is legal, yes. Not if an order is illegal. If a superior officer orders a private to shoot unarmed civilians or commit some other war crime, the private is supposed to refuse the order. They are not protected by a "just following orders" defense.
"And doesn't their pay and their family's healthcare depend on them remaining employed?"
Sure. But that does not excuse committing war crimes or otherwise knowingly following illegal orders.
Most of the time, the presumption is that illegal orders will be issued infrequently and by rogue elements in the armed forces -- so disobeying may have unpleasant immediate consequences (say, get thrown in the brig) but long-term they should prevail.
Right now? Well... that's the problem. But if significant numbers of the armed forces refused illegal orders, there's little that the administration can do. Which is why they've been cleaning house to kick out anybody at the top who might push back.
They're only required to obey lawful orders. An order to massacre a village would not be lawful, to pick an extreme (but historical) example. Following such an order is a crime in itself, they should disobey it.
Yeah, no. He (and others) said what's already officially in the military rules. People are freaking out because of when it happened and what was implied... but good luck proving any of it was illegal.
> People are freaking out because of when it happened and what was implied
No, certain people are freaking out because those people are grifters with no motivating beliefs whatsoever other than to enrich themselves, and who will do and say literally anything from one day to the next as long as it benefits them at someone else's expense.
... and the story is at least temporarily flagged away from the front page. I guess it's a brand risk or worse for YC, in the brand new hyper-american world.
Yes, I understand that the system is designed for YC to let some people flag posts and to let YC later unflag posts at their privilege.
BBC article related to technology (legality of video content and government censorship) is clearly antithetical to hacker culture and interests, I guess.
Lots of asshole "might is right" apologists from the homeland on HN lately, yes. They have no moral standing. Interestingly they do seem to desire one.
It's not 2018 anymore, the NRA doesn't have any money to make guns an election issue, and America will have way bigger problems than guns, trans people and abortion in 2028.
Is he? I thought he'd always claimed to be a democratic socialist. What has he said or done that makes him a communist? I only see a lot of other people labelling him as one as a lazy adhom.
It's not communism to support public-owned public services, even public-owned competitive services where no commercial competition exists. Capitalism in tight spaces, creates monopolies and market quirks that harm consumers, harm renters, harms tourists. These harms are toxic to NYC. He's right to address them.
Like Joe Biden? Pro-cop, anti-union DA who deported people more aggressively than Trump?
Or Kamala Harris, who doubled down on support for Israel's genocide, said she wanted the most lethal military in the world, and courted Bush era neocons?
What does a "sane" Democrat look like and why do I suspect it resembles a Republican in all but name?
Should go without saying, but since the media is doing a terrible job of reporting this, it's not at all clear what authority OSD/SecNav has to do this, given that even if there were something objectionable under the UCMJ about his statements he made those statements after retiring, and they aren't recalling him to active status (probably because a court martial would go very badly for the Navy and OSD).
It's exceedingly unlikely that this survives any administrative or legal scrutiny (and if it does, there's a whole lot of former active-status Trump allies, including GOFOs, who are more than vulnerable under these same standards); the main result, I think, is to elevate Kelly's political profile while turning most of the Pentagon even more against Hegseth and Phelan (the former being an over-promoted PAO, and the latter not even having that experience, having spent his career managing Michael Dell's money).
I think this may be intended not only as a punishment but as a warning to scare all dissidents. This is something I've never seen done in the US, this admin is changing all the rules is seems but, it may backfire pretty badly.
Reasonable discussion is preceding your comment. Discouraging discourse around factual, legal information is how we arrived here. Your reflex to question its relevance as a means to reduce discovery, with or without agenda, is why it is relevant.
I think it's interesting that political discussion is removed because it's off topic, then when it's topical, it's "too far gone to have rational discussion". Disappointing.
> Discouraging discourse around factual, legal information is how we arrived here
> Your reflex to question its relevance
That's a lot of projecting.
There is only really one thing to be said here: the Pentagon and the current administration continues its campaign of blatant corruption, scorning its enemies with absurd doublespeak and blatant abuse of the court system, enabled by a Congress which has fully abdicated its duty as part of its loyalty to the current President King.
What is there to talk about? How we wish that was different? How the media being captured by oligarchs is a main enabler of the current oligarchy? How what Mark Kelly said was clearly not sedition and that use of this term is yet another example of "flooding the zone" and other disinformation tactics by the administration, to deflect from their own crime and rile up their base?
Seems like you had some valid gripes then closed the door behind you complaining that no one else has a perspective. Notwithstanding, the good news is that there wasn't successful deplatforming of the video (no idea if there was a takedown request). There's room to discuss Mark Kelly's service bonafides, whether or not there was precedent, potential copycat petty tyrants, the attention management away from other outstanding scandals, and that this is yet another international embarrassment published by state media of an ally. But it's not a web framework clone nor a dusty, naval gazing essay by pre-cryptofascism pg so off to oblivion goes this post.
I am not complaining no one has a perspective, I am complaining that they are both rote and uninteresting.
This site is to foster curiosity and learning. Sure, [the action discussed in the article]* is a bonafide master class in fascism, and we could all learn about the futility of checks and balances when sufficiently corrupted by money and propaganda and outside influence.
But none of that will happen on an article merely describing an instance of fascism. Instead, some people will say "wow, this doesn't make sense", others will say "it is nakedly corrupt", and maybe a few from the cult will pop by to start a flame war.
Can you really disagree? The discussion is incredibly uninspired. Not a single interesting link or new mode of thought is posted in 59 comments.
No one is making you engage with uninteresting content anymore than they are making you moan about the quality/actionability of discourse -- or complain about anything for that matter. In fact, you can even click the more link to see the 2nd page to find your favorite form of escapism while the grownups talk.
You saw a thing, it made you feel feelings, you decided you wish it wasn't presented to you, and you interpreted that scenario as a call to action to urinate in the swimming pool because you didn't like the temperature of the water.
It's pretty clear the "kind of content" I'm referring to is the doublespeak that pervades American politics. And what is there to say about it? The comment section seems to pretty clearly align on "there is both no legal authority for this move and the action being punished is clearly not illegal", and yet we will all get to watch this slowly unravel however Trump wants, will we not?
You can go find a headline about "Trump slammed / in hot water / goes to court for Huge Problem X" from about any week for the last 10 years on Reddit, if you think considering the US a failed impotent state captured entirely by a corrupt administration is nihilism I hope you'll share your dealer's number
> we will all get to watch this slowly unravel however Trump wants, will we not?
My understanding is that they consider this part nihilistic, though it sounds more like apathy, jadedness, and learned helplessness with a dash of catastrophizing (and a hefty amount of privilege) to me.
For the record, I was born in the USSR, and grew up in Ukraine in the 1990s. I can assure you that the US is neither a failed nor an impotent state by a long shot.
Not yet, at least.
And as a Ukrainian, I can also assure you that giving up this easily, and this early is straight up silly.
You are right, as someone who has watched Trump run roughshod over US institutions for a decade, I should use my significant power as a working class non American to fight back, by… not posting comments acknowledging the reality of a US with a kangaroo scotus, absentee congress, and captured law enforcement and intelligence apparatus!
I should resist more by saying, wow guys, this fascist action described in this BBC article sure shows how immoral Hegseth is! I should believe in the power of someone arresting the Secretary of War for his crimes, and I should list all the notable examples of party members being ostracized for loyalty from the current administration to emphasize how silly any viewpoint saying otherwise is! It would be grossly apathetic to comment that loyalty is clearly the most valued “virtue” any member of the current US leadership can exhibit, and I am just so privileged to say how it seems bad the most powerful military of all time is doing nothing to stop itself from being utilized however that glorious leadership desires!
>It's pretty clear the "kind of content" I'm referring to is the doublespeak that pervades American politics
Clear to whom? You are clearly referring to the BBC article (that's the content); characterizing it as "pervaded with doublespeak" is a hot new take; particularly given that BBC isn't an American entity to begin with.
Please point out what exactly in the article you consider to be an instance of "doublespeak".
> And what is there to say about it? The comment section seems to pretty clearly align on "there is both no legal authority for this move and the action being punished is clearly not illegal"
Well that's exactly the thing you say. You said it.
It's not a controversial thing for reasonable people, so we're all in agreement. It's a good thing.
Now, if you are arguing against the "kind of content" on which "the comment section seems to clearly align", that's a point on which I disagree with you.
Since we're not in alignment on this, this validates the belonging of this content here by your own metric.
Are we good now?
> yet we will all get to watch this slowly unravel however Trump wants, will we not?
Oh, great point! We could talk about how that outcome could be avoided, or what could be done in general.
We could, for example, wonder out loud whether it's worth mentioning such acts of administration at all. I think it'd be a very counterproductive response.
> Please point out what exactly in the article you consider to be an instance of "doublespeak".
How about the part where the Pentagon, staffed by a Fox News anchor, fresh off firing the top legal heads, are now accusing a decorated American of sedition for reciting the law?
> Since we're not in alignment on this
We seem perfectly aligned.
> We could talk about how that outcome could be avoided, or what could be done in general
We could also run on a hamster wheel. Both would be equally impactful.
> How about the part where the Pentagon, staffed by a Fox News anchor, fresh off firing the top legal heads, are now accusing a decorated American of sedition for reciting the law?
So, there's no doublespeak in the article. There's doublespeak in what the article is reporting on.
I agree that the event the article is discussing is not what any of us wants to see. It is very unpleasant.
The article isn't; do you have a difficulty distinguishing the two?
> We could also run on a hamster wheel. Both would be equally impactful.
If nothing is worth doing, then that surely applies to your comment that started this thread.
> There's doublespeak in what the article is reporting on.
Right, so the interesting thing that can be discussed and inspire our curiosity that is contained in the article is supposed to be what exactly?
> The article isn't; do you have a difficulty distinguishing the two?
You are leaning on this single observation so overtly it makes me wonder if you understand what the point of an article is - are you here to discuss the author's prose or the subject the writing describes?
> > We seem perfectly aligned.
> Do we, now?
I suppose I have to agree with you now. You seem to think this type of article will foster interesting discussion; I think it's only likely to flair emotions and surface a few people who have fallen for the propaganda. Certainly, I don't think anyone will have a new and interesting observation on the topic or any adjacent ones. The content of the thread would support my stance, and the fact your only participation in it is posting meta-defense of the article staying up rather than discussing the article perfectly aligns with my point: clown politics where might makes right are inherently boring to discuss, displeasing to think about, and when they are as insignificant and absurd as this action they will bring no insights to either the reader or the commenter.
