Yet another Hacker News

435 points iamnothere 4 hours ago 129 comments

smalltorch 4 hours ago | parent

It's a great write up thankyou. I propose we build and distribute easy to use services designed to run on our own devices, in our own homes, to take full advantage of 1st and 4th amendments, then distribute these services widely with billboards so that people have alternatives and can take advantage of these protections.

Joker_vD 3 hours ago | parent

You mean the 3rd amendment, right?

theandrewbailey 3 hours ago | parent

Third Amendment is about not quartering troops. Fourth Amendment is protection against warrantless seizures.

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-3/

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/

edoceo 2 hours ago | parent

Gotta take the "not" out friend.

05hundred 2 hours ago | parent

I'm pretty sure 1st and 4th are the ones GP meant.

The 1st amendment (free speech) in order to protect the right to host the service in the first place and the 4th one (unreasonable search and seizure) to protect against surveillance.

Not sure how the 3rd (lodging of soliders in peacetime) would be relevant.

tacomagick 2 hours ago | parent

We are trying, but the interop of these self hosted services currently suck. Fediverse is hard to get in to unless you have many users or you just have to join a popular instance. Who knows what they do in this instance, and it turns back into a loop.

convolvatron 2 hours ago | parent

I just don't think it's gotten to the point that anyone is interested. I wonder if we did do a better job that the aggressive filtering and monitoring wouldn't naturally move down the stack.

for example we could completely obviate Facebook by having a standard mechanism for something like an rss feed. individuals or organizations could publish my stream(s) from their own leaf connections, set up cloud instances, or pay someone to host them. there could be a whole ecosystem of readers with various UIs and policy filters. people/organizations could add value by aggregating trusted streams or filtering them for content some people might find offensive. and at the end of the day it doesn't require people who just want to use it to set up persistent networking and storage.

in any case we just got suckered into handing the keys to the internet to companies like Meta and Google, which make vast amounts of money to control the discourse in corrosive ways. all because we bought into the notion that nothing is real unless someone is making a buck off it.

having a standard and a whole space of compatible programs doesn't preclude people from making lifestyle money selling filters and aggregators and content, but it kind of removes the Meta-style leverage over the whole system.

module1973 53 minutes ago | parent

How about this, but also send them usb sticks with loads of data available on them that they thought was "private" including surveillance footage taken from flock cameras etc. That might be good motivation to be more aware. Not sure about the legality of this though lol

YCisFlock 6 minutes ago | parent

Flock is a YC company

ReptileMan 3 hours ago | parent

Mate I am afraid the world governments are just starting.

N_Lens 3 hours ago | parent

Surveillance and totalitarian control is a downward spiral of misery and suffering for everyone, even those in power.

It reminds me of some quotes from the Tao Te Ching -

Restriction breeds the disorder it's meant to prevent (ch. 57) The more prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people become. The more sharp weapons, the more the state falls into confusion. The more laws and edicts are posted, the more thieves and bandits there are.

The world isn't a thing to be managed (ch. 29) The world is a sacred vessel; it cannot be manipulated. Whoever acts on it ruins it; whoever grips it loses it.

api 3 hours ago | parent

Yet there's incentive structures that push it forward.

It's a classic example of us being dragged along by incentives and emergent patterns against our individual wills and better judgement.

People think it's a conspiracy of the elite, but the last part of your message is true and it makes me wonder to what extent everyone is being dragged along by everyone else and nobody can stop because nobody can stop.

I mean if I were a multi-billionaire, I'm not sure I could do anything. I could piss into the wind with a somewhat larger amount of piss.

I've come to believe that our lack of agency over emergent behaviors in our own societies and economies is a central problem of the human condition.

N_Lens 2 hours ago | parent

I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

datsci_est_2015 1 hour ago | parent

And yet they still hold immense power to make our lives shittier. It is far easier to destroy a functioning system than it is to build one from the ground up

hkpack 2 hours ago | parent

Well said, I have exactly the same thoughts.

However, overcoming these forces is something people did successfully in the past. I think right now we are just in a cycle of mass confusion caused by the technological revolutions, which prevents us to see clearly (as it happened in the past as well).

Without alignment we just drift by natural forces of a system in place in whatever direction. When we adapt and if the world survives, this should not be an issue.

The problem of billionaires is that they are one level below from the top in abstraction of a society. They are required to play by the rules of the state designed by someone else, and they lack the knowledge and experience to go one level higher and think about the policies and rules for society itself - and this is much harder than doing business, and requires completely different skills.

Because of these factors, we see them being able to hoard wealth but unable to influence the system in any positive way, except for the ones which the system was already designed for (create jobs, innovate, etc.)

Varelion 1 hour ago | parent

Hold on. Panama papers. Epstein files. CointelPro -> NSPM-7.

There absolutely, without a reasonable doubt, is a conspiracy of the elite -- the billionaire class.

RajT88 2 hours ago | parent

> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.”

So, Democratic candidates who are looking like they will win a seat this midterm cycle are going to get arrested for "domestic terrorism".

chinathrow 2 hours ago | parent

That's inline whit some of the goals of the people behind Project 2025 are calling for.

criddell 2 hours ago | parent

Can you be more specific?

asaddhamani 2 hours ago | parent

As a trans woman, enough is enough! I’m tired of us being made into the scapegoat while literal pedophiles and sexual criminals not only walk free but gain ever greater power and idiots keep blaming us for their problems as they close their ears and stomp their feet’s on the ground

ToucanLoucan 2 hours ago | parent

As a fellow trans woman, we've been the scapegoat for reactionaries, at least documented, since the rise of the Third Reich. And if we're honest, probably before that.

Fixing society-scale problems is really hard. Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside is easy. People reliably choose easy.

cik 2 hours ago | parent

I'm not going to pretend to understand your stuggle, but I will echo it through my lens. I am not trying to hijack your point, inasmuch support it with my view.

I uses to think that it was about fear of the unknown, or as you've said "Being angry at people who make you feel a bit weird inside".

I now firmly believe that it's a modern form of tribalism. Having an "other", whether as a scapegoat, a fear inducing device, or a target is simply too convenient to ignore. Whether or not one is a globalist is orthogonal to the fact that people ultimately decide, or evolve to see through a different lens.

RajT88 2 hours ago | parent

I would say it slightly differently: humans themselves are tribalistic, and politicians are looking for ways to tap into that to gain and hold onto power.

voakbasda 1 hour ago | parent

One look no further than Vietnam for how the government learned to use intranational xenophobia to manipulate different slices of the public into identifying as separate groups that could then be played off of each other. Since then, there has never been as successful a political movement, because we have been turned against each other by state-driven manipulation. AFAIK, this is well-documented policy intended to “maintain civil order” (i.e. prevent the revolution that is so richly deserved).

mschuster91 2 hours ago | parent

but... but the bathrooms! and the children's sports! /s

it's still baffling to me how incredibly irrelevant niche cases dominate the entire discourse.

ToucanLoucan 2 hours ago | parent

Because Republicans get fucking dog-walked on any issue of any importance. The only things they can ever even come close to claiming "victory" on are irrelevant nonsense that no serious person gives a fuck about.

There are now more bills attempting to "solve" the problem of trans girl's in sports (and it is girls, to be clear, trans boys are never an issue) than there are trans girls in sports. It's fucking pathetic.

RajT88 2 hours ago | parent

The funny thing about that is - it's a solved problem. The reason you heard about it for a while is that they hadn't tightened up the rules yet. As with anything, problems are highlighted, they are studied, and new rules are put into place to account for what was learned. Right wing media of course discovered a boogeyman that was so useful they will be using it for years still, even if it doesn't exist.

asaddhamani 2 hours ago | parent

It wasn’t a problem to begin with. Meta studies recently showed trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT, certainly nothing than cis women don’t have biological variation within anyway. All the rule updates did was exclude and further marginalise an already marginalised extreme minority. There are very few trans women to begin with, fewer of us still are competing in sports. Nothing was studied here, the people who made the rules aren’t scholars, they’re bigots. They’re using us as a distraction from their poor governance.

ToucanLoucan 1 hour ago | parent

And as a fellow enjoyer of HRT, I assure you it didn't enhance shit for me, beyond what I was hoping to get: longer, more full hair, boobies, and smoother skin.

My muscles are gone y'all. Like I've had to buy more breaker bars and larger tools so I can keep working on my cars, otherwise I simply could not break bolts anymore.

asaddhamani 1 hour ago | parent

I used to be able to do 12 pull-ups, and I did get de-trained but now I can barely manage a single one. I lived and did cardio in the mountains for years and now I get winded up way easier. Maybe the politicians making these rules should go on HRT before making unsubstantiated claims.

asaddhamani 1 hour ago | parent

Btw, feel free to reach out to me I love connecting with fellow trans women in tech :)

ToucanLoucan 1 hour ago | parent

Emailed!

intrikate 8 minutes ago | parent

I've had to explain to people that lifting something as simple as a case of bottled water can be genuinely difficult after eight-ish years of feminizing HRT.

It's gradual, it's not all at once and I am still slightly taller and heavier-set than the average American woman, so I do have an advantage through having more mass, but anyone that's larger than the average American woman will also have that so it's not really an advantage, just a fact of having a larger body.

TheCoelacanth 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah, you have to conjure a really weird scenario for there to be any advantage.

Something like waiting until male puberty is already pretty far along and doing extensive strength training and then transitioning and competing immediately in a sport that puts a heavy premium on strength. I think most sports already have rules that would prevent this.

For someone following a more normal transitioning trajectory, there would be zero advantage; probably a significant disadvantage.

A blanket ban is just pure bullying, especially for childrens' sports (which are primarily a social activity, not a consequential competition). Individual sports can have rules to prevent the (primarily hypothetical) abusive cases without preventing children from participating in normal social activities. No one is saying that someone who's 200 lb of solid muscle and started HRT a month ago should be able to compete against girls in football or powerlifting, but pickleball, sure go for it.

mschuster91 40 minutes ago | parent

> A blanket ban is just pure bullying, especially for childrens' sports (which are primarily a social activity, not a consequential competition).

That I think is the core issue. Way too many people try to live way too hard through their children. Wherever you look, either in the US or (where I'm from) Germany... you'll find absolutely absurd behavior from completely unhinged parents. Just yesterday, that was a topic discussed here [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686134

fragmede 38 minutes ago | parent

Except for in Norway, apparently. https://www.ft.com/content/0fe0455d-8633-4e1a-ab8f-f8cd94d60...

RajT88 1 hour ago | parent

"After HRT" is the key word. The new regulations I am referring to had to do with how soon after was sufficient to remove advantages due to residual testosterone. There were other regulations which were total horse shit to your point.

I would agree that the number of people we are talking about is very small. It was to begin with a very niche issue.

maerF0x0 1 hour ago | parent

> trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT

As someone who's been into weightlifting and only casual observer-like in regards to testosterone therapy, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. After taking TRT/Steroids a person retains a good deal of the muscle/strength they gained even after cessation ... It surprises me to hear that this wouldnt carry over to sports where muscle/strength/power matter.

Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. There's a lot of people out there afraid to speak what appears to them (and their work) to be truth for fear of the backlash and career consequences.

mschuster91 41 minutes ago | parent

Quite the contrary. If you want to publish something going against "the narrative" (if something like that exists in the first place) has never been easier than now. Proper keywords and the far-right and their pseudomedia are going to give even the worst quackery a time in the spotlight - just look at RFK Jr.

ToucanLoucan 31 minutes ago | parent

> Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. There's a lot of people out there afraid to speak what appears to them (and their work) to be truth for fear of the backlash and career consequences.

Oh complete and utter twaddle.

Academia trends toward progressive views because the more educated you get, assuming you have principles and employ critical thinking consistently, the more ridiculous the positions of the right tend to look. You cannot look at the totality of climate change data and go "well clearly it's not man made" unless you either don't understand it, or cherry pick it to oblivion. You can't look at the history of Austerity politics, deployed both here and in the UK by our respective free market goblins (Reagan and Thatcher) and hold that it's good for anyone at all apart from those who are already wealthy.

This boogeyman of BIG SCIENCE holding down all the conservatives is complete and utter dreck. Show me literally one example of it. Show me one individual who's life was ruined and their career decimated to uphold ideological ends.

darksaints 29 minutes ago | parent

Also a weightlifter (masters olympic weightlifting, nationally ranked). TRT and steroids are actually the opposite. Once you go off of them, your body starts to revert, muscle mass is lost, and often by more than you started with (because the body's natural production rates change with supplementation). It does take time, which is why sports regulatory bodies typically require specific time periods of hormonal therapy before they can participate, but their bodies will eventually adjust.

Sports regulatory bodies still test for hormonal PED, but their concerns have long swayed away from them because of the fact that they are so easy to detect and have the built in disadvantage of potentially altering your life negatively outside of sport. The current concerns have shifted to peptides and other forms of PEDs, because they are much harder to detect because they are 1) often naturally occurring but in smaller quantities, 2) don't actually directly act on the musculoskeletal system, but rather trigger natural processes that act on the system, and 3) often have half-lives dramatically shorter than most drug tests can even account for, and therefore require near continuous monitoring.

vasco 33 minutes ago | parent

So the broken records are just coincidence? There's no need to study this a priori, just let them compete and see all records get broken. I don't see why people even discuss it. Just let women not win anything for a few years and this discussion would be over.

matchbok3 2 hours ago | parent

They do it because it wins them elections. It's a 90/10 issue and national democrats are on the losing side.

ToValueFunfetti 1 hour ago | parent

Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Republicans could hardly dominate the discourse with these topics if there was nobody to discourse against.

mschuster91 45 minutes ago | parent

> Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them?

Because there's about 1% of people who are trans in the US [1] and most other populations, on top of that come a further about 1.7% people who are somewhere on the intersex spectrum [2].

Democrats aren't willing to throw literally millions of people under the bus. Republicans aren't just willing to cast them aside - they are knowingly driving trans people to extinction.

[1] https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-ad...

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-ident...

smallmancontrov 31 minutes ago | parent

This isn't a fight we can avoid by retreating. They would just advance and the same battle would happen on different ground. If we abandon the trans, the culture wars will be about the gays. If we abandon the gays, the culture wars will be about blacks or hispanics or jews or god only knows. There's something to be said for picking firm ground to fight on, but there will be a fight and it cannot be won by retreating.

Balinares 10 minutes ago | parent

Because then they'll move on to the next victims and in having surrendered without even a fight you've granted them momentum for no good reason whatsoever, and you'll have fewer allies left too.

maerF0x0 1 hour ago | parent

As someone who struggles with my position on some of these topics, one of my major self criticisms/fear is the tyranny of the majority. Even if (and that's a hypothetical if) my values would reject transgenderism, my values of freedom and fairness conflict with forcing another human being onto a specific path, especially with the use of force (government). So even if 90% are cisgendered (I didnt look up the real stat), that doesn't mean we vote to make our world cisgendered... A right and fair leaning is to create the freedoms we'd want if the tables were turned.

I say this all to say it surprises me how many republicans I know are pro freedom until it hits certain topics... Pro 2A and anti-(an adult can choose a different hormonal profile for their own body) is an odd pairing in my mind. Pro free-speach like Alex Jones / Citizens united but anti-(choosing to wear clothes or other adornments/appearance of the other gender) is an odd pairing in my mind.

kneel25 44 minutes ago | parent

I don’t have a strong view, but I don’t think that should baffle you, you think the reaction comes from nothing at all? One side is pushing to “wedge” (sort of) into a very low level space so that it cements itself at a foundational level and there’s no repeal or return from it - all or nothing view. The other side picks up on that and doesn’t want to let big changes go unchallenged. It’s a pretty understandable process. The niche cases allow the challenging party to present evidence for a consequence or concern that’s difficult to convey.

HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing.

mschuster91 33 minutes ago | parent

> HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing.

Because in this case, we're talking about maybe a few dozen (if that) relevant cases in trans youth [1]. With police/secret services abusing surveillance... it's huge enough that LOVEINT [2] is a term, and at least 50 cases were serious enough to be brought under official investigation [3].

[1] https://glaad.org/fact-sheet-for-reporters-transgender-parti...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol...

kneel25 15 minutes ago | parent

I’m just saying the process is exactly the same and shouldn’t be surprising. I don’t think we need to go into why one is less harming compared to another and that makes it okay to dismiss concerns.

underlipton 1 hour ago | parent

It's not while, it's because. They have to create a "threat" that's of the same "magnitude" as their actual crimes, vectoring out from the subjective origin of "traditional" man/woman identity and relations. They do that by casting transgenderism not as the benign and modest personal identity that it is, but as the same kind of sexually aggressive comportment as their own; something that you do or perform willfully instead of what you are compelled by natural and intrinsic impulse to be.

The first step in defeating it is untangling the action/identity conflation.

You are: someone who is biologically non-female, but whose gender identity is that of a woman.

He is: a businessman and politician.

You do: upstanding, normal folk things.

He does: reprehensible shit like assaulting teenagers and bragging about "grabbing [women] by the pussy."

Hopefully people are able to see who in this comparison is in the wrong.

kelseyfrog 36 minutes ago | parent

Taking hormones activates the genes responsible for making someone biologically a woman. That's kinda the point of taking them.

asaddhamani 16 minutes ago | parent

Right. Hormones cause an insane amount of changes. The texture of my skin, my scent, how much oil my skin produces, the haemoglobin in my blood, the size and strength of my muscles, how much fat my body stores, and where it goes, how attraction feels, how emotions feel, what I find rewarding. Certain physical attributes do require different interventions but the vast majority of sexually differentiated traits are decided by the dominant sex hormone in the body, not by the XX/XY genes. See: XY females for instance who have non functioning androgen receptors. When we talk about biological women, it’s also ignoring intersex variations. Biology is way more complex than we make it out to be.

rickdeckard 2 hours ago | parent

Of course, because by the new definition, the leader is "peak American", so everything in collision with his view is naturally "anti-American".

The usage of the term "anti-American" by anyone in a public role should be rejected as insufficient definition and unfit for a representative to use. On the spot, immediately.

Is it anti-American to brush your teeth after breakfast? or rather before? Is both American? Neither of it?

smallmancontrov 2 hours ago | parent

When Trump calls Democrats "enemies from within," that's anti-American.

When Trump refuses to peacefully transfer power to his victorious opponent and instead plays "heads I win tails you cheated," that's anti-American.

When Trump sends the FCC chair to suppress speech "we can do this the easy way or the hard way," or yucks it up with the president of El Salvador over suspending Habeas Corpus, that's anti-American.

The "American Experiment" isn't an empty concept, but it is about democracy and law and rights as opposed to conservative cultural values, and when people in power start to argue that the former must be sacrificed for the latter they certainly deserve to be clowned on. Not because they are wrong to imagine an American Ideal, but because they have its contents exactly backwards.

rickdeckard 1 hour ago | parent

While I understand the intention of what you're saying, you're still attempting a definition of the term "anti-American", which needs no definition as the term should be rejected as a whole.

pc86 1 hour ago | parent

I mean, to pick what is perhaps the easiest example, wanting to abridge speech is anti-American by its very definition.

It is possible to have a thing that is anti-American. So I'm not sure what good it is to reject the term altogether.

rickdeckard 1 hour ago | parent

It could e.g. be "anti-democratic" by a universal definition of democracy and civil liberties which no single country then gets to fork and redefine...

smallmancontrov 1 hour ago | parent

Let's suppose you had your way and the cultural concept of America as a set of ideas and values related to democracy was erased. Would the universal non-national concepts of democracy and civil liberties have been able to inspire Mike Pence to stand up to Donald Trump on January 6th?

rickdeckard 21 minutes ago | parent

Sorry, I don't know what this conversation is about. This is not about a "concept", it is about the label itself.

When the term "anti-American" is used, it is a placeholder for "against my values". Noone is ever anti-American himself, it is only a label applied upon others.

That's why IMO it should be rejected when used by people in a public role, see original comment.

You are free to think otherwise, which I may then label as "anti-American" in passing, while quickly moving on to you mentioning Mike Pence and some random conspiracy I have /s

Again, /s/s/s/s

8note 1 hour ago | parent

its encoded in the US constitution, so its anti-american.

it can be anti-other things too, but its certainly anti-american

Joker_vD 1 hour ago | parent

Ah, I see, it's the same as "un-American", only without being a word too onerous to use (yet) due to obvious historical implications.

lioeters 7 minutes ago | parent

> The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives created in 1938. Their goal was to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties. It was abolished in 1975.

I'd heard of this but didn't realize it went on for decades. In a way, persecuting political enemies for being "un-American" is a very (US) American thing to do.

parineum 1 hour ago | parent

Not really. America stands for something, they wrote a whole document about it.

There is a big difference between being "American" and being something like "German" because Germany has existed for so long as different governments and the thing that ties it together is not an ethos, but an ethnicity. Being American is different, there's no ethnicity that makes one American, there is only it's ethos. The ideals written in the declaration of independence are American values.

rickdeckard 1 hour ago | parent

And that's the weak link of tying ideals and values to a location like a country:

The group elected to lead and represent this location also represent ideals and values, so THEIR ideals and values become inseparable of the location they were elected to represent.

For a certain period in the mid-1900s, "German values" meant something different than it did before and after, because Germany was represented by a different leader...

parineum 1 hour ago | parent

> And that's the weak link of tying ideals and values to a location like a country

My entire post is about exactly how this is not the case, American values are defined in a document[1].

[1]https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...

rickdeckard 1 hour ago | parent

And what I'm trying to explain is, that this paper doesn't matter if it is represented by someone who doesn't uphold its content.

Germany had the Paulskirche-, the Bismarck- and the Weymar-Constitution, all of them before that certain Leader elected into power. He got to define who is worthy/unworthy, decide how to read the document his party represents and change the definition of "un-German"

parineum 6 minutes ago | parent

The words on the paper represent the ideas of what it means to be American. Trump has nothing to do with that. His actions, when the do not align with that paper, can be described as "anti-American".

The US has had a total of _one_ government and what it means to be American is in the founding document of that government. To be German is to lay claim to a history and cultural lineage that is filled with many different governments and even different states all-together.

The US has distinct regional and cultural identities as well, to be a Texan means something more akin to being German. Texas has a history that extends beyond the US. One can be American and Texan precisely because they are describe a different thing.

To be American is to ascribe to a certain set of ideals and, as far as someone isn't living up to those ideals, they are "anti-American".

8note 1 hour ago | parent

Germany specifically hasnt existed for very long. its a younger country than the US, but it was made to combine people of an ethnicity

parineum 59 minutes ago | parent

That kind of gets at my point. To be "German" means something different than being "American".

georgeecollins 38 minutes ago | parent

It's just the idea that vague terms get misused so much I demand the specific. "Anti" anything can just mean you aren't "pro" it enough, or not pro a particular version.

So for restricting speech, you could say not honoring the first amendment or something like that.

I think about this because sometimes people or ideas are described as "problematic". Sometimes for very good reason, but sometimes you find out the speaker has trouble being specific. I like to hear the specific reason when I can to understand the facts or logic. Sometimes these classifications come third hand.

pc86 1 hour ago | parent

> When Trump refuses to peacefully transfer power to his victorious opponent

When did this happen? I didn't realize Biden wasn't inaugurated. I could have sworn he was the President for 4 years.

smallmancontrov 1 hour ago | parent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_January_6_Unit...

pc86 1 hour ago | parent

I'm skimming the "Aftermath" section and I'm not seeing where Biden's inauguration was cancelled or Trump retained power or anything else? If Trump "refused to peacefully transfer power" how was power peacefully transferred to Biden exactly on schedule the same way it's happened in every other election?

I do see this happened on Jan 7th though:

> 7:10 p.m.: Shortly after Twitter unlocked Trump's account, Trump released a video statement condemning the violence at the Capitol, saying that "a new administration will be inaugurated" and that his "focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power" to the Biden administration.

smallmancontrov 1 hour ago | parent

    The American people deserve to know that President Trump
    and his advisors didn’t just ask me to pause, they asked me
    to reject votes, to return votes, to essentially overturn the election.
    To keep faith with the oath that I made to the American people and
    to almighty God, I rejected that out of hand
    and I did my duty that day.

    - Vice President Mike Pence

This is why the Jan 6 crowd was carrying around an improvised gallows and chanting "hang Mike Pence." The crowd was there to serve as a pretext for what Trump wanted Pence to do, but Pence refused to do it so the self-coup attempt failed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

Show me where this happened in every other election.

swiftcoder 1 hour ago | parent

That the fate of our entire democracy briefly rested in the hands of Mike Pence is bad enough in and of itself

jazzyjackson 1 hour ago | parent

The peaceful tour of the capital by pro American demonstrators (sorry, peak Americans) interrupted the proceedings. They were very close to pulling off a strategy of having the senate override the vote, if they hadn’t reconvened before midnight and had Pence left the Capitol like secret service were urging him to do.

Anyway this argument has occurred a thousand times on these boards so if you saw January 6 as peaceful and harmless I can’t change your mind.

8note 1 hour ago | parent

that an inssurection was stopped doesnt make it a peaceful transfer of power.

the thing about the US system is that the president doesnt do the transfer of power. they just lose power on a certain day, and congress grants it to somebody new

knowaveragejoe 26 minutes ago | parent

What you're doing is shameful.

lux-lux-lux 53 minutes ago | parent

If you go far into the user you’re replying to’s post history, you’ll find them unambiguously referring to the Jan 6 crowd as terrorists. They are very aware.

I know there’s a pretty strong norm against dragging people for their posting history here, but that’s in service of maximizing light vs. heat and I feel like pretending to be ignorant of recent events in order to relitigate something unrelated in the comments is wholly unproductive.

darksaints 41 minutes ago | parent

When a coup fails, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

caseysoftware 4 minutes ago | parent

> The "American Experiment" isn't an empty concept, but it is about democracy and law and rights as opposed to conservative cultural values, and when people in power start to argue that the former must be sacrificed for the latter they certainly deserve to be clowned on. Not because they are wrong to imagine an American Ideal, but because they have its contents exactly backwards.

From the many responses on this thread, it appears that many either don't want a defintion of "pro-American" or "anti-American" or "an American Ideal" but these are core to your point.

How would you define each?

cucumber3732842 2 hours ago | parent

While the exact point at which it becomes "anti-american" isn't clear there's certainly a category of rhetoric in which people peddle subservience to the state (usually dressed up in obfuscating words, like they'll use "society" instead of "the government") that is undeniably "anti-american" except perhaps by some obtuse technical interpretation of all the words. And I will die on the hill that those who peddle such ideals are bad people and ought to be looked down upon the same way we'd look down upon someone peddling phrenology as a basis for racism.

RobotToaster 37 minutes ago | parent

It's like the John Birth society are back in charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_C...

smallmancontrov 29 minutes ago | parent

I'm pretty sure that's the idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unhumans

vrganj 2 hours ago | parent

Heh, now as an Austrian, why does that all sound so familiar?

> The police, "suspecting the conflagration to be the first of a series of Communist acts of terrorism", have arrested a number of Communist leaders.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/1933/mar/28/leadersandreply...

Huh.

paimapi 1 hour ago | parent

another important part isn't just the ideology targeting - it's the directive for local and national law enforcement for form Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) targeting individuals and organizations in this vein. JTTFs are already mobilized and targeting people - see https://atlpresscollective.com/2026/06/12/federal-prosecutor...

I think of that poem, First They Came:

  First they came for the Communists
  And I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Communist
  Then they came for the Socialists
  And I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Socialist
  Then they came for the trade unionists
  And I did not speak out
  Because I was not a trade unionist
  Then they came for the Jews
  And I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Jew
  Then they came for me
  And there was no one left
  To speak out for me

replace 'Jews' with the current minoritized target demographic (ie immigrants of any stripe) and we're already fairly far down that list. see the case of David Huerta for the targeting of unions: https://www.courthousenews.com/los-angeles-labor-leader-arre...

antihipocrat 1 hour ago | parent

This is the outcome that every privacy advocate has been warning about for decades and being increasingly challenged by people who were fine with it as 'they have nothing to hide and do no wrong'.

32oqa9 59 minutes ago | parent

No, Dem candidates are safe. The culture wars benefit both parties and their billionaire owners.

pstuart 36 minutes ago | parent

The culture wars are explicitly a tool of the right to provoke fear, anger, and hate against others.

The left gets trapped in it because every single culture war issue (LGBQT+, racism, feminism, reproductive rights, freedom from religion, etc) are responses to the rights reactionary drive to claw back rights from everybody who is not a white male christian.

BehindBlueEyes 48 minutes ago | parent

And in the 30s germany started branding things as being anti-german, we all know where that led us. This isn't a new play book by any means. Seeing so many comments debating terminology worries me, we should be discussing the implications.

order-matters 38 minutes ago | parent

yes probably, and ive been calling this as their playbook for about a year

Make no mistake, this is not some sophisticated conspiracy. This is pure laziness and abuse of power. They have been using "domestic terrorist" as a button to slap anytime they dont want to be questioned. the phrase no longer means anything besides "this person questioned authority"

ICE has used it to label people they shot for videoing them. Note that they knew the video evidence existed and labelled them anyway, assuming they would be able to avoid court altogether and prevent the video evidence being seen. In at least one case, this didnt work and the victim was correctly identified as such.

So this isnt hypothetical. It is a playbook being used right now, and people are testing the waters for how much they can get away with.

cortesoft 36 minutes ago | parent

The red scare of the 1950s was ridiculous enough, but at least the Soviet Union was an actual threat. We are now at a point where “pro-transgender” is the new threat?

pessimizer 31 minutes ago | parent

Don't worry, after Democrats get control, they'll add alt-left, alt-right, radical free speech, socialist, anti-CIA, radical feminist, pro-border enforcement and you'll be happy with it.

-----

And I say "add," because nothing will be taken away. The transgender thing was just to destroy the DSA in 2016. 2016, the year the DSA was actually a threat. The left has historically had no relationship with the "right" of men who are aroused by performing female stereotypes to force women to participate in this with them, or the sexual mutilation of gender stereotype non-conforming children. Mainstream Democrats are finally dropping it, because it was insane.

Democrats didn't even support gay marriage 20 years ago, goddamn Dick Chaney was ahead of them. Neolibs just realized that if they encouraged the most misogynistic and narcissistic crossdressers to think that they were left-wing (although their only "left-wing" belief was their hatred for women's right to avoid them), they would ruin everything they touched. If you're interested in the absurdly conservative, homophobic, and fetishistic history of male transvestitism, read things like Transvestia.

The goal was to have a bunch of crossdressers screaming at the DSA conference in 2016, and it was achieved so hard. Probably the only duty of feds who have infiltrated the DSA is to advocate for (male) trans inclusion and recruitment, everything else just works itself out from there.

Talerico (a bland, worthless, ambitious Democratic industry plant) is running against the most corrupt and useless possible opponent in Texas, and the only ace that they have is that Talerico was another person repeating dumbly that the state should be paying for men who want to appear more like women to get cosmetic surgery on the state's dime. That is insane enough that people are like "Paxton's totally corrupt, but he's not such a tool that he would say something like this in public just because some nonprofit told him to."

darksaints 23 minutes ago | parent

relevant username lol. I tend to agree though...establishment democrats are a major problem for americans who want to be free of the problems that trump brought to us. Their only complaint about him seems to be that he's on the wrong team and has poor decorum. That's why so much emphasis has been placed on electing non-establishment democrats this time around. But the establishment is pro-corporate and pro-israel and they have all the money.

RajT88 20 minutes ago | parent

Totally agree. Establishment Democrats are against these expansion of powers, but then when they have the opportunity to roll them back, they treat them like they got free stuff instead of inheriting toxic waste.

darksaints 15 minutes ago | parent

I'd love to see a democratic presidential candidate who vows to openly exploit all of the illegal powers that Trump did, but in a way that hurts republicans and red states, and vow to continue doing it until constitutional amendments are passed to prevent it. Republicans would jump on board because they have no real ideology that they aren't willing to abandon for more power, and democrats would reluctantly be forced to do it because they care so much about being seen as hypocrites. Maybe a silly and potentially dangerous way to solve the problem, but at this point I'd try anything.

iamnothere 7 minutes ago | parent

Be careful what you wish for, this seems to be the Newsom approach, and he may have a real chance at the presidency. California Uber Alles.

I saw a poll recently showing that close to half the country expects a civil war, and a disturbingly large portion of that group wants a civil war. Cross-spectrum as well.

Catloafdev 19 minutes ago | parent

Sometimes I wonder what goes on in someone's brain to think these things.

Then I realize I'm probably better off not.

jjgreen 3 minutes ago | parent

Phew, as an anti-American, radically pro-transgender Marxist-Leninist I should be safe; bloody anarchists.

Havoc 2 hours ago | parent

At this stage I'd settle for echelon era surveillance and consider it a win...

Ad tech/tiktok has proven its possible to deduce what people are think at scale from subtle signals, now sifting info at scale is possible thanks to LLMs and a large portion of everyone's online history is likely to become vulnerable to store now decrypt later attacks. Get rid of cash, force identity verification for every online service, sprinkle some flock cameras on top and you've got a complete surveillance state. Oh and of course you need some goons to scare people into compliance & later in some self-censorship for good measure. We could call the group "Frozen water".

...and we're basically already there on all of it except perhaps the "decrypt later" on https (and even that has rumours).

Genuinely don't think this is stoppable anymore.

Pannoniae 19 minutes ago | parent

how not? All of this is "soft" control, if tomorrow 75% of the people in any country decided "this can't keep on going on", all relevant public buildings would be occupied everywhere and the relevant government imprisoned promptly.

On a more positive note, the fact that this doesn't happen indicates things aren't that bad right now. No amount of KYC or age verification can stop large amounts of angry people who want one thing.

People sometimes bring up China - which isn't relevant because people still remember being extremely poor, thus being grateful to the Party - or one of those dictatorships as counterexamples for this, but see the Arab Spring (food got more expensive -> revolutions), Nepal recently... etc.

FLeXMurphy 2 hours ago | parent

No Comrade Premier, it has only just begun.

_bobm 2 hours ago | parent

Hear, hear!

choonway 2 hours ago | parent

mass surveillance is like nuclear weapons.

it will never go away.

BiteCode_dev 1 hour ago | parent

> One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is the government-wide shift from targeted surveillance—such as individual wiretaps or pen register/trap and trace orders—to mass surveillance techniques—such as tapping into the internet backbone or mass collection of telephone or internet metadata.

In other words, we gave the terrorists the victory by accepting being terrorized at the country level from a single act and destroying a lot of our freedom. Yeah us.

laimewhisps 1 hour ago | parent

There’s lots of questions around who was actually behind 9/11, looking at who benefited the most is helpful. We may never know the truth but we know who the real “terrorists” are, because they’re terrorizing everyone now.

Kuyawa 1 hour ago | parent

No it is not, and it will get worse. No matter who is in power, power stays. And power by definition is the capacity to control and plunder without restrictions

All these years reading about liberty and philosophy has taught me that the only way out is to make money and disappear, be an eagle, watch the lions eat the sheeple from the top of a mountain, because the sheeple don't want to be freed and worse yet, they will point at you as if you're an outlier, a misfit, a problem that must be fixed by force, their 'democratic' force

So fly high, find your peak and watch from there, we only have 100 years to live as we please, not to spend it fighting for those who don't want to be saved

Do like Nero, let the world burn and enjoy watching, from afar...

andrewla 1 hour ago | parent

I think we have to face the fact that we cannot unring this bell. There will be holding actions against things like Flock but in the end they will fail, and at best we will have a loosening of the laws that Flock is being used to enforce and more draconian enforcement of the laws that remain.

Like many on this site I'm in violent agreement with Schneier and have been ever since "security theater" entered the lexicon. But this is a hopeless fight.

feanaro 1 hour ago | parent

Are you advocating for inaction? If so, what do you wish to achieve?

maerF0x0 57 minutes ago | parent

I would advocate for a shift of power by creating greater individual rights over their data (as their irrevocable property) , and greater oversight and consequences for those in power (ab)using the data.

It's one thing for our data to be out there such that a NSA employee could stalk their girlfriend, it's another thing for said person to be allowed to gracefully "retire" rather than be put in prison.

Varelion 1 hour ago | parent

NSPM-7 is about to make mass surveillance magnitudes more oppressive and ever-present.

maerF0x0 1 hour ago | parent

I suspect that Mass Surveillance is here for good, and the real project is to regain control of who gains the power and benefits. There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life. There are also as many where it can be abused to create suffering. I think the real issue is we're trending to the latter. In order to safely continue down this path we (USA) need:

1. EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights. Data needs to be our own property that we can lend, but can never give up our right to revocation.

2. Stricter controls, and stricter still penalities, need to exist against misuse and abuse. Many of the stories of abuse of data are most stark in their lack of repercussions, some of this is police unions, some of this is "deep state" people who scratch eachother's backs and grant eachother free accesses and immunity. Some of this is a voting issue as in we need to make it known to our candidates that it matters to us, and then push real political power in their hands.

Just to help the imagination of all here's where mass surveilance could plausibly add good to society, all stemming from legitimate use:

1. Criminals like porch pirates can be caught using a neetwork of Ring cameras

2. A lost pet/child can be identified and found by drone surveillance

3. Usage data of roads can be updated in realtime

4. Trends and Sentiment could be used to guide the government intra-elections improving the way government serves us

5. Police officers can avoid risky situations using drones as eyes instead of putting their own bodies in harms way

petcat 53 minutes ago | parent

> EU style governmental pushes to defend digital rights.

No, I don't think we need Chat Control in the US or our government forcing ISPs and CDNs to block whole swaths of the internet just because a soccer game is on TV.

maerF0x0 51 minutes ago | parent

Fair points, I did not mean undermining encryption or privacy, I meant like GDPR and right to erasure.

It'd be even better if there was some form of royalty structure on our data used by companies. It'd be nice if I, at least, received a royalty check each time a data broker sold my data to the CIA.

ecto 50 minutes ago | parent

All of your positives are possible without mass surveillance.

sethammons 50 minutes ago | parent

6. who controls and accesses the data will change over time

7. authoritarians and evil men can have a one-stop shop to know where to round up political opponents

8. power becomes increasingly entrenched and concentrated

9. See 7

echelon 49 minutes ago | parent

> There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life.

There are dozens of ways living in a cage can improve human life.

You won't be exposed to dangerous ideas and you might get a calorie allowance. There's little danger of an unwanted pregnancy, and you might be given labor-related chores or exercises to occupy your time.

The danger with all of these systems is what happens when they are abused. That's not a matter of if, just a matter of when.

We are building a cage around society. It's so slow you don't realize the shackles being placed around your ankle and your neck. But one day, when it's too late to protest, the switch will be flipped.

We're already living in 1984. We are always just a few election cycles away from 1934.

seydor 58 minutes ago | parent

It isn't going to stop until it becomes a national security issue. If your can spy on your citizens , your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance and hit high profile targets.

We live in war times and will soon see it happening

ninalanyon 23 minutes ago | parent

When those in power regard the people as the enemy their natural allies are other governments with similar attitudes. So you don't need to wait until another government gains access, you offer it instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

alex1138 53 minutes ago | parent

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-election... Here's a fun little interview. They had a program that apparently worked, for much cheaper than Michael Hayden's program (I think Trailblazer). Got shelved apparently due to "not expensive enough". 9/11 happens and Binney contends his ThinThread program could have stopped it. You don't want more dragnet surveillance; even beyond the abuses, it leads to it being harder to catch things

Rover222 41 minutes ago | parent

I find it ironic that in the US, there's this social movement against Flock cameras - which have shown real results in tracking down criminals - while everyone walks around all the time with a personal tracking device in the form of a smart phone. That's wayyyy more invasive than cameras along roads.

iamnothere 15 minutes ago | parent

Don’t be That Guy please. This tired talking point gets walked out in every privacy discussion. Both things can be (and are) bad at once, but just because one problem exists doesn’t mean that others aren’t worth solving.

In any case this article is about the whole spectrum of mass surveillance, not one specific company.

YCisFlock 5 minutes ago | parent

Nice shilling for Flock (YC S17)

brandon272 40 minutes ago | parent

“Temporary” surveillance powers are never temporary.

shevy-java 39 minutes ago | parent

> One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11

I see this more as an excuse used by a small corrupt elite wanting to enslave the people. The problem is that you do not have a real democracy in the USA. The current orange clown brigade shows this best (corrupt to the core), but it is not really much better with other roleplaying administrations.

Sooner or later people will realise this too, even the not too terribly bright.

hulitu 18 minutes ago | parent

25 ? She must be new here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...