[JayHost]

I quit Facebook 1 to 2 years ago. I suppose that's one of the reasons I didn't understand the hatred during the election towards the other side.

I don't have a feed of "He's evil" "She's evil". I saw two bad candidates and I understand where people are coming from with their votes.

I'd like to see most independents / democratic people unite under a real progressive platform next election and stop the extremist cycle of social issues vs fear mongering.

[jaredtking]

I'm in a similar boat as you having quit Facebook several years ago after the revelations about the emotion manipulation experiments they were running. At first I did not understand why people were so polarized about the candidates. Now I'm attributing this mainly to being cut off from Facebook.

EDIT: By polarized I mean intense hatred, coming from both sides

[burkaman]

Were you also cut off from all forms of media? Even the most neutral sources had stories about how both candidates were the most disliked in history, protests and violence at rallies, etc. Even if you personally didn't have any strong opinions, anyone who even casually followed the news should have understood the general sentiments of the country.

[losteric]

I'm not that poster, but I try to stay well informed while avoiding any kind of spam and mass media. I understood the general sentiment of the country, but I didn't understand why we'd regressed so much. Classic media always promoted some amount of fear, but now it's competing against digital media... a world filled with pandering and blatant lies. There's no more journalistic integrity or accountability.

If knowledge is the life-blood of democracy, America is suffering from leukemia...

[personlurking]

It is possible to (use FB and) steer clear of news about the candidates while still consuming media (including HN & Reddit) on a daily basis. I successfully did it for the entirety of the run up to the election (including the night of). The most I knew were a few headlines about Hillary's email scandal and that Trump wanted to build a wall.

That said, I happen to live abroad (which doesn't stop local media and locals from trying to talk about it).

[duaneb]

> I'd like to see most independents / democratic people unite under a real progressive platform next election and stop the extremist cycle of social issues vs fear mongering.

There's virtually zero chance of this happening without another party collapsing first.

Hell, even then, independents are harder to herd than cats.

[fixxer]

Because very few of them are truly independent.

[duaneb]

I don't necessarily disagree, but how does this follow from what I said? I'd argue people are TOO independent to reach a third party consensus.

[fixxer]

Independent white men are generally Republican voters, for example. Big difference between being independent and not identifying with a party.

Hence, they are hard to herd because they are actually already decided.

This isn't conjecture. I've seen the base files.

[duaneb]

I'm gonna need a massive citation here.

> This isn't conjecture. I've seen the base files.

Until you share, it's conjecture.

[dlp211]

http://themonkeycage.org/2009/12/three_myths_about_political...

[fixxer]

DNC base files (back when I worked for that side), but based on how shit their polls were, feel free to question my claim.

The name of the game isn't changing hearts and minds (generally), but turnout. 2016 isnt an outlier. Look at county level returns.

[vacri]

It's more because 'independent' is a simple description, not a political manifesto.

[zanny]

Its impossible to happen under the system as it is established, but you just needed to push for a constitutional amendment and / or state compact like the one to overturn the electoral college to change the voting system to support either proportional (doesn't work when you elect a single seat like the president) or STV (ie runoff voting).

The chance of that happening in the next four years? Really low. About as unlikely as it has been since the Internet established itself as a place to talk about how to fix the voting system. But unlikely doesn't mean you don't try, and don't talk about it where you can.

[fixxer]

Changing from electoral college to pop vote also means the nature of campaigning will change.

California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter. I don't think Trump did any non military focused rallies there.

I am in Illinois. I didn't vote in 2008 or 2012 because I knew my vote would have no impact. Give me a popular vote and you might have Romney... Be careful what you wish for.

[rhblake]

> California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter.

And at the same time votes from Democrats in California would also matter more. I'd assume a number of people who'd vote Democrat in CA don't vote because they know the Democrats won't lose anyway.

[fixxer]

Maybe. My point isn't partisan, but more along the lines of "you don't know how this will play out."

I'm all for a popular vote, but I don't think you're going to see a swing to the left necessarily.

[serge2k]

It would drastically reduce the voting power of several red states. Only recently (since 2000) has the EC being different than the popular vote been a problem. Both times it's gone in the republicans favour.

It would definitely be radical change though.

[caf]

It doesn't matter which way the partisan advantage would run (and it most likely wouldn't be to the permanent advantage of one side anyway), if it increased turnout then that would be an unalloyed Good Thing.

[m_mueller]

Wouldn't Romney in 2012 have been better if it avoided Trump 2016?

[fixxer]

Lol. Bill Maher misses W.

[CalChris]

Romney lost 51-47 in the popular vote.

[hdctambien]

Of those that voted. I think fixxer is saying that there are alot of people that don't vote (about half of the voting population) because they are an X in a Y state so they don't think their vote will change that. But if the electoral college went poof, a lot more of the missing 50% would vote and that could change the expected value of a popular vote.

[dllthomas]

This isn't so much directed at you, but this seems a great place to note that there are races on the ballot other than president, usually your local elections will have a bigger impact on your day-to-day life than the national ones, and your vote carries orders of magnitude more weight. Pay attention down-ballot!

[matwood]

Exactly. As long as we are in an electoral system, discussing the popular vote as anything more than a novelty is a waste of time.

[twblalock]

That's not a useful fact, because both candidates would have campaigned differently if the president was chosen by popular vote rather than the electoral college. It's very unlikely that the popular vote would have been the same.

[MichaelBurge]

The electoral college doesn't need to change. The two bigger problems to me are:

* Winner-takes-all means that in any state that is %60/%40, the 40%'s votes don't affect the election at all.

* Congressmen are representing too many people.

If more states worked like Nebraska and Maine, then people in rural counties in California could decide a few seats on the electoral college. And there's an amendment outstanding to change the number of representatives:

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

Ranked choice voting is also interesting, but I think not as important right now.

[75j]

It's actually more likely to happen than ever:

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

But, ditching the electoral college is only a small part of the solution to the core problems in US politics.

[SFJulie]

The polarisation of opinions is a nasty side effect of some filters: people going in the web to be in conflict will click/trust/consume less. They are more aware of potential lies.

Thus the algorithm must provide the best un trollesque experience possible.

For this, it is better to have people feel cumfy with people sharing same believes/opinions. This way the CPC diminishes bringing more ad conversions.

Do the experience on yourself: did you prefer to go to school where diversity was greater than in your actual probable IT job, or do you prefer going to a conference on «your favorite whatever tech» it is. I have used noSQL techs because I thought it was cool after a python conf while I was pretty much dubitative. And I should have kept my doubts they had solid grounds.

Basically, conference and school are the same ; people talking thinking they share something, except school is full of conflict because of diversity whereas conference feels amazing because you feel in communion and you are more receptive. (I loved every conf I attended in the beginning until something itched me (my nosql conversion)).

That is also the secret recipe of churches, sects, successful corporate cultures, modern musical tendency to be based on genre that are caricature of themselves, even meme ... polarisation of the mass in one direction and fervor and a feeling to share something common, making you feel more likely to embrace new paradigms.

What we should fear is not facebook, algorithm or even google: it is our on Nature to feel cumfortable in uniformity and avoid conflicts.

The side effects of the algorithms is just that it turns us people in fanatics because we are not able to deal with diversity anymore. It is the experience we all wish: PEACE, shared progress and experience!

However believe it or not, since we are not always right, we sometimes need to have painfully disagreeing opinions. (real life). But in our bubble of agreement, opponents get marginalized as pisse froid.

And I know the tendency is to fight/blame the trolls, but trolls are not the problem at hand. It is a growing tendency to prefer avoiding conflicts, and I am concerned, only for one reason: it makes crappy software. Regarding politics, I don't really care that a globally skewed system towards the person rich by birth is getting unstable.

They wanted the power, no one was concerned since everyone was thinking it was a great idea: now they have it and I just grab my popcorn and sit.

The world can burn, I will rejoice myself with it but I did not bring the oil nor scratched the match that set it on fire. I am innocent, I was just a troll doing my job of trying to wake up people on the dangers coming...

One day us trolls will be given a medal for trying to save the world. Or maybe, I am still trolling...