[amagumori]

to be completely honest, having the time and energy to stay well-informed on current events from a variety of sources is a privilege. working-class and poor people have neither the time nor mental energy to peruse a variety of sources. the reason i say this is not to tell you to "check your privilege", by the way. it's to make the argument that facebook's shaping of the zeitgeist primarily affects the impoverished and working classes - the people who bear the brunt of all policy decisions, the people who need to be well-informed the most.

[bobcostas55]

The poorest people spend the most time consuming media: http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2015/the-total...

[zaroth]

Looking beyond Facebook for news and reporting on diverse topics with balanced viewpoints is a "privilege"?

On what can you possibly base this claim? This is why Internet.org and the walled garden got nuked. This is what we really mean when we talk about network neutrality. You type a URL into the address bar and press enter, and the page you requested loads.

While certainly there are populations where internet access is not readily available, that doesn't appear to be your argument. "working-class and poor people have neither the time nor mental energy to peruse a variety of sources" is a bizarre claim I can't quite get my head around.

[throwanem]

> "working-class and poor people have neither the time nor mental energy to peruse a variety of sources" is a bizarre claim I can't quite get my head around.

Consider the possibility that this difficulty lies not with the claim, but with your head.

The real value of money is that you can use it in place of time. The less of it you have, the more time you must spend on dealing with problems that you could make go away much more quickly and easily otherwise. The converse is also true.

That's why people say that it's a privilege to be able to gather a balanced view of the world. I would not say the same, because the rhetoric of privilege is inseparable from personal attack, and making people feel uneasy and defensive is inimical to worthwhile discourse. But when people use that lazy cliché in this context, that is what they mean.

[sanderjd]

> the rhetoric of privilege is inseparable from personal attack

Is this a generational point of view? I don't think that the word "privilege" is "inseperable from personal attack. To me, this very much fits into the definition of a privilege as "a benefit enjoyed by a person, beyond the advantages of most". Access to and time to read a broad variety of news sources is very much a benefit enjoyed by some people, beyond the advantages of most. I don't see how there's any personal attack implicit in that...

[throwanem]

I've observed people to respond very badly when I use it, and as best I can tell, that's why.

I speak to communicate with people - that's communicate with, not talk to, and if you're unclear on the distinction, any dictionary with etymological information will serve you.

Talking about other people's opinions, behaviors, and beliefs in terms of privilege makes communicating with them harder instead of easier. So it's not worth my while to do.

[zaroth]

> The real value of money is that you can use it in place of time.

This is true to a point, but you stretch it to an absolutism. As if, a lack of money by definition means a lack of time, which is most certainly false. In many ways, having more money increases demands on your time, and this can hold true up through even Larry Page levels of wealth.

Working-class and poor people; many often hold a much more balanced world-view than the wealthy or elite. And yes, many of them used the internet to access diverse viewpoints mixed with their life experience in order to help arrive at those viewpoints.

I think net worth is very loosely correlated with some of the things you seem to think net worth is strongly correlated with.

[throwanem]

I love Hacker News! I can't imagine where else it might happen that a Silicon Valley startup founder would explain to a mouthy unlettered Mississippi redneck what it's like to be poor or working class. Thank you for that!

[zaroth]

Aparently not enough to curb the sarcasm, ditch the personal attacks, or think twice about your preconceived notions before posting.

Now, your self-description is quite colorful, but seems to only support my claims. It almost sounds like you're saying that a diverse group of people do actually have the means to discuss complex topics and critically analyze diverse viewpoints beyond whatever Facebook's algorithm might choose for them.

And thank you bobcostas55 for bringing data to the conversation upthread.

But if this is what you call "communicating with people not just talking to them" I'll just step out now.

Sorry to say, yours is the first direct reply in years of HN I've regretted not being able to downvote.

[throwanem]

Well, I was about to write out a long and detailed reply about how having more money means also having more choices, and how I think there is a substantive difference there which you overlook. I further intended to point out that I'm actually very unusual among my cohort, and that it is inadvisable to draw general conclusions about that cohort on the basis of what I say about myself or how I say it.

Before I could get more than a few words into all of that, though, I got an email from my father, who told me that my distant cousin who nearly died when his meth lab blew up is in fact permanently paralyzed in the lower half of his body, and between that and other injuries will almost certainly require lifelong care.

I may be a sarcastic asshole of a redneck, but I am also an amazingly fortunate redneck. I have made a successful career in software engineering, which enables me to earn more in a year than both my parents combined. A lot of that I send back home. I cannot send enough. I do not make enough. In that light the perspective you express strikes me as thoughtlessly facile. I did a poor job of expressing that in my last comment, which was written in the heat of the moment. Perhaps this one, with the benefit of reflection, will make it more clear.

It's a shame you are unable to downvote that comment, if you feel it is warranted. Perhaps someone else will step up and do so.

[S3curityPlu5]

can u expand on the comment. "this is why internet.org and the walled garden got nuked" please..

[zaroth]

The bad idea that a free walled garden is better than nothing, or that it's worth sacrificing network neutrality in order to increase overall access.

And to give a little more background, Facebook was trying to get free "internet" access away in India, but it wasn't really internet access it was actually just a Facebook walled garden. The local population organized and ultimately the government rightly told them to piss off.

Because being able to access a diverse set of viewpoints on the Internet is not, actually, a "privilege" but rather the central point of the whole affair.

[Retra]

No, the people making the policy decisions need to be better informed. It doesn't much matter if you suffer them and don't have the time to go campaigning your grievances. The sword cuts on both sides: the poor don't have political power because they don't have the luxury needed to wield it, not because they are uninformed of the state of affairs.

[CRConrad]

FWIW, I read that as: The poor people are the ones who elect the people making the decisions to those decision-making posts. In that sense, the voters are the ones who need to be informed on the issues _(and_ on where the candidates stand on the issues), in order to be able to vote for candidates who know and care about the same issues the voters do.