So, what's currently going on to fight back against all this? Here's what I found. Does signing a petition actually doing something? It's hard to tell but if you are inclined, at least take a look at some current efforts.
-Active Petitions and Campaigns to Limit Surveillance:
End the Surveillance State (Action Network): Petitions call on Congress to permanently end the PATRIOT Act, stop warrantless surveillance, and oppose the expansion of surveillance technology.
-Ban Facial Recognition (Amnesty International & ACLU): Amnesty International is running the "Ban the Scan" campaign, while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) targets the use of face surveillance, arguing it poses risks to civil liberties and disproportionately impacts marginalized communities.
-Stop Surveillance Data Brokers (Mozilla): Mozilla Foundation is targeting major websites to stop sharing data with surveillance technology firms that track user movement and interactions.
-Protect User Data from Subpoenas (EFF): The Electronic Frontier Foundation is pressuring tech companies to resist lawless DHS subpoenas for user data.
-Oppose Localized Surveillance (ACLU/Action Network): Local petitions aim to limit technologies like Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) that create massive databases of personal movement.
-Federal Legislative Reform: Advocates are pushing for the "The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act," which aims to restrict intelligence agencies from purchasing data from brokers without a warrant.
Unfortunately, almost any phrase can become a thought terminating cliche, the phases in the Wikipedia page are just the easiest ones to spot. Counterintuitivly, I've heard people say things like "let's just think about this", "how about we take a step back", "let's pause and come back to this", etc. as a thought terminating cliches. This leads me to conclude there's something more going on here. On the surface these types of statements imply reflection, carefull consideration or a call for thoughtfulness but somehow the way they get used does the opposite. Maybe it's the tone, or maybe it's the intent of the speaker. Maybe it's when someone just wants to end the conversation they use whatever phrase is necessary to just end it, while preserving some degree of plausible deniability (not wanting to reveal that they simply want to end the conversation).
The opposite might be true as well, maybe the example you used can be a way to start a conversation and not end one.
Please revisit those bookmarked items and you will be learning. I find it hard too sometimes to get back to all the shiny new things I find but I guarantee you have a few gems worth revisiting, then you can share them on here and we can all learn something.
It's great that you're using these tools for expanding your knowledge. Share some of the highlights! Sometimes I think people who claim everything on these platforms is bad are telling on themselves, or not very savvy at getting the best out of a tool and blaming the tool.
I have been using feedly to slowly build up a good news "diet" using sources from all over the world. Anytime, I come across an article on hn from a good news source I look into that website and add it to my feed. I look for criteria like independent journalism, representation of perspectives I don't already have in my news portfolio and general quality. I do think of my news as an investment portfolio, you want a good balance of stocks, diversification, hedging, risk management.
It's pretty clear this is a misuse of antitrust. Actually the details of these deals have very little to do with antitrust, it's likely simplecorruption. Antitrust might be used as a cover for those deals, not the other way around. The prevention of monopolies is one of the few regulations necessary for meritocratic capitalism to thrive.
I would agree with you, but its pretty disturbing that the general public doesn't have a good outlet, especially to discuss unconstitutional ICE actions. It’s unfortunately very convenient that at a time when the pros outweigh the cons (open discussion vs. addiction) that some might stay offline. I would encourage you to overlook the mental poison and continue to support open communication. That's more important right now.
It looks like some are moving over to upscroll, anyone know anything about upscroll? what other apps are you using?
I remember when everyone migrated from MySpace to Facebook and I assumed everyone was going to just keep moving over to the next big thing every few years but that actually didn't happen. Facebook became an institution.
I sympathize with your feeling. All these questions are not going away, science can't do it, religion doesn't have those answers either. The religion of science offers the worst of both worlds. We are struggling to see something beyond these two options but I think there must be some other approach.
So many of the questions we all really want answers to are in the social sciences area. While some of us want to see interesting work done in physics, humanity as a whole craves some kind of answers to all those junk studies that at least attempted to apply rigorous methods. Immigration is used as an example in this article. If studying a topic like that is off the table,what are we even left with?
The foundation of science was built on a certain "political" view (the enlightenment). It's interesting that maybe science isn't exactly science without those values.
Ok, so let's think about this. If we were to make a "hacker news for politics", how would we do that? It would have to be moderated, what would be the rules? Who wants to do it?
-Active Petitions and Campaigns to Limit Surveillance: End the Surveillance State (Action Network): Petitions call on Congress to permanently end the PATRIOT Act, stop warrantless surveillance, and oppose the expansion of surveillance technology.
-Ban Facial Recognition (Amnesty International & ACLU): Amnesty International is running the "Ban the Scan" campaign, while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) targets the use of face surveillance, arguing it poses risks to civil liberties and disproportionately impacts marginalized communities.
-Stop Surveillance Data Brokers (Mozilla): Mozilla Foundation is targeting major websites to stop sharing data with surveillance technology firms that track user movement and interactions.
-Protect User Data from Subpoenas (EFF): The Electronic Frontier Foundation is pressuring tech companies to resist lawless DHS subpoenas for user data.
-Oppose Localized Surveillance (ACLU/Action Network): Local petitions aim to limit technologies like Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) that create massive databases of personal movement.
-Federal Legislative Reform: Advocates are pushing for the "The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act," which aims to restrict intelligence agencies from purchasing data from brokers without a warrant.