Top all-time · #2564
Erin Kissane
Personal blog · erinkissane.comculturepolitics
Erin Kissane's personal blog at erinkissane.com covers culture and politics. Since 2023, 33 different Hacker News readers have linked it 36 times, most often “Meta in Myanmar – Full Series”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-03-23, and you can follow it by feed.
The latest entries posted on Erin Kissane's small internet website
Most-linked posts?
- Meta in Myanmar – Full Series9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2023-10-16
- Meta in Myanmar5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-09-29
- Blue Skies over Mastodon5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-05-01
- Meta in Myanmar, Part II: The Crisis3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-09-30
- Untangling Threads3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-24
- Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-29
What Hacker News says?
I imagine there will be the same problems as with Facebook and other large websites, that used their power to promote genocide. If you're in the mood for some horror stories: https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series When LLM are suddenly everywhere, who's making sure that they are not causing harm? I got the above link from Dan Luu ( https://danluu.com/diseconomies-scale/ ) and if his text there is anythi…
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-full-series
on “Enough AI copilots, we need AI HUDs”Submitted Meta in Myanmar – Full Series as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI read about that here: https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup This remains one of the best things I've found on HN.
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup
on “The disguised return of EU Chat Control”Submitted Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMore on the same for those out of the loop: https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37709284 )
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup
on “Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims”Submitted Untangling Threads as a story · 3 points
HN discussion>I don't know what's worse. It's the same thing entirely: people trusting images and signals from control apparatuses to override the signals from their own senses. Some form of that has been going on throughout history. Basic socialization involves replacing a part of how you see the world, with a simulation of others' simulation of an imaginary "everyone" expects to see things. If this sounds weird, that's because…
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-full-series
on “Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly”Submitted Meta in Myanmar (Full Series) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI don't think they should be intimidated, I'm just saying they are : https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when... But I wouldn't say it's a fully inconsequential choice, either. Your instance and how it's situated in the wider fediverse does matter to some degree. Not having a full view of the network, missing meaningful replies, at the mercy of some admin #fediblock drama, etc. Or maybe you final…
Comment linking /mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt
on “Bluesky and the AT Protocol: Usable decentralized social media”Submitted Meta in Myanmar as a story · 3 points
HN discussionReminds me of Meta mobile data partnerships in Myanmar. Same arguments and similar playbook. That did not go well for people in Myanmar. https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-full-series
on “OpenAI for Countries”Submitted Meta in Myanmar as a story · 2 points
HN discussion1. As much as I dislike the thought of law mandated overzealous moderation, you're probably right. On the other hand, if doing this will let us avoid another genocide [1] maybe it's worth it. 2. We're concerned about privacy, but ad supported businesses are as popular as everywhere else (just regulated a bit more strictly). There's probably more fear of processing too much personal data and being sued, but it's good…
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup
on “Europe needs its own social media platforms to safeguard sovereignty”Submitted Fediverse Governance Drop as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> "Meta’s Yann LeCun argues against premature AI regulation". Let AI moderation commit genocide once, shame on Facebook. Let AI moderation continue to go unregulated, and... https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup
on “I'm banned for life from advertising on Meta. Because I teach Python.”Submitted Untangling Threads as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAny social network Meta produces is not merely more terrible than you imagine, but will eventually be revealed to be more terrible than you can imagine. For example: https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-full-series
on “Threads launches for nearly half a billion more users in Europe”Submitted Benefits and Risks of Threads Federation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIn support of 3, 5, and 7 being the real drivers of the category listed separately just under them: This is a map of Mastodon instances. https://www.comeetie.fr/galerie/mapstodon/ I think it gives a good sense of proximity. From the place in this clustering where I spend my time (in the jorts.horse space, if that gets enough across), it is almost unimaginable that someone could get an experience reminiscent of Linke…
Comment linking /blue-skies-over-mastodon
on “Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t”Submitted Meta in Myanmar, Part II: The Crisis as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI think to start understanding the problem they're trying to address, you can to read this series on Facebook's role in the Myanmar genocide. https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series A LLM could easily find itself in the same situation without their 'alignment' safety system. It's hard to get a grasp on this because many of us can't imagine what it's like to be borderline literate, or from a totally diffe…
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-full-series
on “Ask HN: Is AI safety simply the thought police?”Submitted Blue Skies over Mastodon as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you’re inside China there’s a more than decent chance that there are FAR fewer “radical Islamists” in reality than your (again, state-influenced) information streams have you believing exist inside unreality, never mind far more innocent people being killed by your government than you’d like to know. Read https://erinkissane.com/ (if you even can without a state-actor standing as a MITM) and replace Myanmar with…
Comment linking /
on “Taiwan is basically Arrakis”Submitted Blue Skies over Mastodon as a story · 2 points
HN discussionA fitting rebuttal to Andreesen's manifesto is Erin Kissane's recent series about how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar. "Trust and safety" as enemies, indeed. https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-full-series
on “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”Submitted Meta in Myanmar, Part IV: Only Connect as a story · 1 points
HN discussion>I wouldn't run any kind of publishing system for anons myself. It's potentially valuable for an actual social group though. That's pretty much how it works on the federated Internet. There are large open-access services run by communities with sufficient moderation capacity (to not get themselves nuked, anyway.) Turns out many "impossibilities" are trivial when you're not trying to abuse 1 billion active users at t…
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-full-series
on “Loops is a federated, open-source TikTok”Submitted Meta in Myanmar, Part III. The Inside View as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOK, I spent ~an hour reading parts I [1], II [2], and III (TFA). My perception going in was that comment moderation is very hard, and essentially impossible at scale, and that Facebook/Meta cannot credibly be accused of literally causing genocide. Here is how my opinion shifted some after reading this series: The articles present a lot of evidence to support the notion that Facebook was well aware of clear-cut incit…
Comment linking /meta-in-myanmar-part-ii-the-crisis
on “Meta in Myanmar, Part III. The Inside View”Submitted Meta in Myanmar, Part II: The Crisis as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
