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maeil commented on NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester   thecity.nyc/2025/07/18/ny... · Posted by u/dataflow
reverendsteveii · a month ago
>bypassed ban

Broke the law is the phrase we want here. They did an illegal thing. They didn't just scoot past a barrier, they violated people's rights.

maeil · a month ago
Wanna go bypass some burglary laws to take expensive things out of people's houses?

Assuming you're a cop of course, otherwise we'll go to jail.

maeil commented on U.S. will review social media for foreign student visa applications   npr.org/2025/06/19/g-s1-7... · Posted by u/BeetleB
nwienert · 2 months ago
You’re right, but a large part of the reason many come here is to participate in a strongly left wing idea reinforcement operation. HN skews left and votes in brigades to enforce that.

So many times I’ve opted to not refute things because I know it’ll be downvoted to oblivion, and because the community at large doesn’t care to change their views in the slightest.

It’s good for tech news.

maeil · 2 months ago
(I'm the person you're replying to, in case you might get confused)

It's very unfortunate that all I received was downvotes, without a single substantial reply as to what would be particularly incorrect about the observations I made. This does indeed seem to stem from infallibility tribalism: "I identify with group A, so literally anything that can be taken as pointing out a flaw of group A is an attack on me as a person".

At the same time, this isn't a particular hallmark of the left; it's even worse on the right. In any right-dominated space, my comment, if the roles were swapped, would simply have been instantly removed rather than just being downvoted. r/conservative is a very prime example. Twitter is another one, having become much more eager to instantly abide by requests from foreign autocratic regimes to remove/ban accounts that oppose them after the Musk takeover.

I do wonder if you're going to downvote me for this comment, reaching a new "irony level" world record :)

maeil commented on U.S. will review social media for foreign student visa applications   npr.org/2025/06/19/g-s1-7... · Posted by u/BeetleB
consumer451 · 2 months ago
> The left opened the doors of academic and internet censorship

This was almost entirely an astroturfed campaign, which very effectively worked to whip people up into believing that they were being censored.

Whenever it came up in the last few years in online conversations, I would ask "OK, so what are you being censored from saying?" Dozens, maybe a hundred times, of me asking that question, and it was nearly always crickets in response.

What is the evidence of "the left" censoring academia? Whenever I dig into that, it's sloppy science, fringe theories, or straight up crackpots who couldn't get published in a journal, who then found popularity on youtube and podcasts doing the "I am being censored by Big Science" grift.

If anyone would care to educate me on this, with evidence, I am here for it.

maeil · 2 months ago
To prevent premature downvotes, preface: this comment is not about the merits or demerits of the censorship, just that it took place. Whether it's good or bad was a different question, but it very much happened. One might say that it wasn't "the left" behind it, but if you'd take approval ratings of this censorship at the time across left/right, the latter would've been strongly opposed with the former mixed at best, if not broadly in favor.

> If anyone would care to educate me on this, with evidence, I am here for it.

Sure, happy to. I'll focus on the "internet" part. There was mass censorship on the major US social media platforms during COVID in the name of "preventing racist attacks against East-Asians". This is widely documented and admitted.

Yishan Wong, ex-Reddit CEO:

> Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic

That Meta and Twitter banned accounts for discussion of it is easily verifiable, Wikipedia also banned discussion of it.

In Twitter's case, they even had a CCP figure on their board of directors during this time [1][2].

[1] - https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/3940206

[2] - https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2020/5/25/twitters-new...

maeil commented on IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites   haaretz.com/israel-news/2... · Posted by u/ahmetcadirci25
throw627004 · 2 months ago
As a German, I think you should cut your colleague some slack.

There's 8 billion people in the world who aren't German. If there's one topic that Germans don't chip in on, it won't move the needle.

Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!

It super sucks, but I too will leave it to others to voice strong opinions in this matter. And there's no shortage of that.

maeil · 2 months ago
"Not chipping in" is very different from "Award ceremony set to honor novel by Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled “due to the war in Israel," and unwavering support. "Not chipping in" implies neutrality.

> Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!

Do you think this does not apply to others? Especially the antisemite thing is extremely commonplace in the US and UK.

If Germany had learnt, then yes, they would be voicing strong opinions. That's the thing - fine, do whatever you want, but don't claim to have learnt.

maeil commented on Open letter accuses BBC board member of having a conflict of interest on Gaza   theguardian.com/media/202... · Posted by u/mhga
gruez · 2 months ago
>https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...

The tagline is "As many question BBC’s coverage, three academics tell openDemocracy why they don't think the broadcaster is impartial", which I think sums up the article accurately. That doesn't seem to add much aside from proving that there are outsiders (impartial or biased, we don't really know) that agree with one side. It shouldn't be surprising that with any culture war issue, than you can find some academics to be on your side.

>https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...

Skimming the article, the methodology used is very questionable. For instance:

>Despite Gaza suffering 34 times more casualties than Israel, the BBC ran almost equal numbers of humanising victim profiles.

If you think 1 death = 1 coverage, then clearly BBC is biased. However, 1 death = 1 coverage is clearly not how anyone expect the media should operate. How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias? Moreover should each death really merit equal coverage? Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?

>It was also found to have attached “Hamas-run health ministry” to Palestinian casualty figures in 1,155 articles – almost every time the Palestinian death toll was referenced across BBC articles.

Why is this an issue? In the Russsia-Ukranie war for instance, if you cite casualty figures from Russia, it's pretty obvious that it's from the Kremlin. The Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas run, and that fact isn't readily apparent.

There are other serious allegations made in that piece that I don't have expertise to comment on, but the above two snippets don't inspire much confidence.

maeil · 2 months ago
> However, 1 death = 1 coverage is clearly not how anyone expect the media should operate.

In armed conflict far away from the country in question, comparatively for each side, yes, both sides' deaths getting similar coverage is how one should expect the media to operate.

If Chile and Peru get into a war tomorrow, the expectation would absolutely be that coverage of deaths by the BBC would be similar for both.

>How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting?

The obvious key difference here is that in those wars both sides of those conflicts do still tend to get similar coverage per death; which is almost none. At the very least there's not orders of magnitudes difference. Not sure how you missed this, but it doesn't inspire much confidence.

> Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?

No, as Russia is a reasonable threat to the UK whereas Hamas is clearly not.

maeil commented on IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites   haaretz.com/israel-news/2... · Posted by u/ahmetcadirci25
xg15 · 2 months ago
I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well - the US and the EU states (especially Germany, sadly).

As horrible as the Israeli mindset is, their subjective viewpoint is at least somewhat relatable: An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.

(I'm imaging this as the universal experience of all Jewish Israelis, religious or secular, left or right. I'm excluding the religious and Zionist-ideological angles here, because those are a whole different matter once again)

What I absolutely cannot understand is the behavior of our states. We're pretending to be neutral mediators who want nothing more than to end the conflict, yet in reality, we're doing everything to keep the conflict going. We're fully subscribed to Zionist narrative of an exclusive Israeli right to the land (the justifications ranging from ostensibly antifascist to openly religious) and we're even throwing our own values about universal human rights and national sovereignty under the bus to follow the narrative.

If the messianic and dehumanizing tendencies of Israelis are answered by nothing else than full support and encouragement of their allies, I don't find it exactly surprising that they will grow.

maeil · 2 months ago
I'm Swedish. Since I was a child, for decades, I was taught and never questioned the idea that Germany had learnt from their history, in the most admirable way. That it was really ingrained into the German culture to never let anything like the holocaust happen again. That the education system there was very good in really making people understand why it happened, what went wrong, and how to make sure there would be no second one.

In early 2024, I was chatting with a German colleague of mine. Great guy, politically we were the most aligned out of anyone in our team. The genocide in Gaza was already well under way, so the topic came up. He told me, as if it was incredibly obvious "Well of course as Germany we couldn't possibly say anything about Gaza, given our history." For the rest of my life I will remember exactly that moment, where we were stood, the scene, because it came as a shock; this belief that I'd had since childhood turned out to be entirely wrong. It was the exact opposite - Germany had learnt nothing, in fact they'd learnt even less than the countries they had occupied. It was all a complete ruse, and I really lost all respect I had for how Germany has dealt with it all. A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything, and I'm not convinced that's the worse option.

I should've known the second news started flowing out of Germany such as "Award ceremony set to honor novel by Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled “due to the war in Israel,", along with stuff like designating B.D.S as "antisemitic" but I wanted to believe that was just a tiny minority of ignorant people.

Yes, I know that now "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around" but imo it's far too late, and can't possibly be sincere, being entirely fuelled by external pressure rather than any kind of actual realization.

maeil commented on New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/sva_
Simulacra · 2 months ago
I don't understand why the social media companies are not fighting this? This is ridiculous.
maeil · 2 months ago
I'm not sure how to phrase this within the rules of HN, but I don't understand how anyone on HN 1. can not understand why Meta and Microsoft aren't fighting this 2. can still be remotely surprised by any of this 3. can act this has a single thing to do with security or even with Israel - neither of which remotely factor into the reason behind this policy.

Genuinely, have people been living in Bikini Bottom? I'm so tired of this cognitive dissonance, not wanting to face the reality. As tired as I am of these developments themselves, really. I'm too tired to still be nice. I thought people here were bright.

maeil commented on New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/sva_
felineflock · 2 months ago
I will spend this weekend creating burner social media accounts for my kids as a precaution. Each one will be crafted to look like they've never had a controversial thought in their lives.

Just lasagna pics, birthday cakes, kittens, golden retrievers, baby goats, maybe an artsy photo of a leaf with #blessed.

Everything I can do so that an AI running immigration background checks might match my kids to the profile of a low threat, emotionally well-regulated, consumer-minded citizen material.

Absolutely no pictures of Winnie the Pooh to keep China travel option open too.

I welcome any tips. Someone here must have cracked the code to be completely unremarkable and "wholesome" to governments.

maeil · 2 months ago
> I welcome any tips. Someone here must have cracked the code to be completely unremarkable and "wholesome" to governments.

Don't go to the US. That's the tip.

maeil commented on New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/sva_
TZubiri · 2 months ago
I think at this point the onus is on you to provide some form of alternative. Can you provide to the officers at port of entry some proof of employment, or whatever?

If you are just going to blindly be indistinguishable from bad actors and do no effort in distinguishing yourself., then yea, don't travel to that country.

maeil · 2 months ago
It's become very hard to tell whether this is sarcasm. I sure hope it is, though.
maeil commented on Journalists wary of travelling to US due to Palantir surveillance   bsky.app/profile/alistair... · Posted by u/Kapura
maeil · 2 months ago
The title does not do the content justice. Since Snowden it's been known to the entire world, even outside of HN, that the US government has had this capability for decades now, with mass dragnet surveillance of all internet traffic.

What has changed is that now they're actually using this to a degree that even China generally does not do. If a German had written a comment in support of the Hong Kong protests on Facebook at some point in time, they're extremely unlikely to get denied entry to China over this, despite them almost certainly having even stronger capabilities and databases to easily find this out.

u/maeil

KarmaCake day2572April 5, 2021
About
I like reading about security, the Oxford comma, and bouldering.

Email: ganders at protonmail

Sweden, South Korea.

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