There are people in this thread claiming that Wired "doxxed" these engineers working for Musk dismantling things they don't understand; however didn't Musk publicly mock individual federal employees on his twitter account, drawing the eyes of millions onto random government functionaries for no other reason than to capriciously taunt them about being fired?
I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.
How exactly is this doxxing? When you're backchanneling cabinet-level access to a sizable chunk of the country's personal data (and a nontrivial amount of classified information to boot) you're now essentially operating as a public figure.
This is reporting in the public interest. Nothing they revealed isn't available already as verifiable public information.
It's still doxxing because these are not elected officials.
But then again... these are people outright breaking the law and I sure do want to know who's potentially tampering with my data. If the courts won't do it, someone has to put names and faces to this.
It is legal to make a federal government employee’s name, role, and salary publicly accessible because taxpayer-funded positions fall under the scope of public interest and open-records laws, which promote transparency and accountability in the use of government funds. You can find this information on official databases like the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) website, which routinely publishes data about federal employees’ salaries and positions, as well as on other government websites that provide access to public records.
U.S. Code § 1924 - Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material
U.S. Code § 371 - Obstructing or Impairing Legitimate Government Activity
Executive Order 14117 of February 28, 2024, “Preventing Access to Americans' Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and United States Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern” (“the Order”) (though this may be rescinded by Trump)
If any of those BS Crypto plans[0] have any weight to them That's a straight out constitutional overstep
Article I, Section 8, Clause 5: "The Congress shall have Power . . . to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . ."
I'm probably only scratching the surface here. I'm not surprised if there's a dozen other laws with legal ledger around this. You don't want any one man messing with the economy.
>Now, as fears emerge Trump’s administration is “dangerously” undermining the U.S. dollar, Musk has confirmed he wants to put the U.S. Treasury on a blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies—including Musk’s pet project dogecoin.
Whether trump can legally create a whole new government department by executive order is up for debate, but he did it and hired these people into roles within it. By my math they have 0 right to hide from the expected scrutiny of any other public official.
What government organization in the US federal government hides the names of their leaders? Can you name one? Even our security agencies make those names publicly known.
I don't see what that has to do with anything in the discussion so far?
It looks like you can't believe that there are bad arguments for good causes; and instead want to keep arguing that the cause is good, and thus all arguments must be good?
Journalists reporting on people abusing government power is good. These people should be deeply scrutinized and shouldn't be able to hide while they destroy the machinery that hundreds of millions of people depend on.
> ...the doxxing _might_ be entirely justified and be in the public interest. I don't know.
No, you did express an opinion. Reporting on people carrying out unconstitutional and illegal orders is clearly in the public interest and framing that as "doxxing" reveals that opinion.
People who work at the highest levels of our government are public figures. It is the job of reporters to report on who they are and what they're up to.
It’s relevant here that “doxxing” here just means “exposing their names and internet posts”, right?
In that case, yes, the OPM already “doxxes” most federal employees, even making their salary data public. It’s seen as a worthwhile tradeoff to give taxpayers transparency into how their money is spent.
> It’s relevant here that “doxxing” here just means “exposing their names and internet posts”, right?
No, it quite obviously does not. "Doxxing" specifically involves information that was not intentionally public to begin with. If you write "John Lee Ratcliffe works for the CIA", that's obviously not doxxing, because he's the director of the CIA, which is a public title.
> In that case, yes, the OPM already “doxxes” most federal employees, even making their salary data public.
...which is clearly and categorically different than anything happening here, as OPM is the agency responsible for part of the management of said employees, and the rules that constrains it are decided by the President and/or Congress. That is categorically different than an individual, whether it's Elon or a Wired writer, going out of their way to publish private information that was not already intentionally made public, and who is not in a position of authority to have rightful custody of that information and has the ability to release it - especially if the intent behind publishing the information was to cause the individuals harm out of a political agenda, as in the Wired case.
I really hope we can all agree it is an extremely shitty thing to do for the worlds richest person, somehow entrusted to go in and supposedly save the government some money, to publicize random individuals information he stumbles across in the process because he personally doesn't like their job title. Fuck off with whether it is 'legal' or not, that isn't the issue.
These 5 people are our employees. We pay them with our tax dollars to assist in delivering services to ourselves and our fellow citizens. Unless secrecy is a distinct function of the service they deliver, I expect their names to be public. Transparency and accountability is owed to the taxpayer, if that's not acceptable to people then they are free to lend their talents to the private sector instead.
Part of the problem is we're not sure who is paying them and who ultimately they report to. Are they doing what's best for Musk and his business interests or what's best for the US? Even Altman has called out Musk in a similar fashion.
What's happening now is the exact opposite of transparency and accountability.
Federal employees working at the level these guys appear to be currently working are always ripe to have their names and photographs in public reporting, yes. This is not "doxxing", it is just reporting on the government. Even if there was an effort to keep this information secret, it would almost certainly be subject to FOIA requests. These aren't spies, they're public servants.
> Federal employees working at the level these guys appear to be currently working are always ripe to have their names and photographs in public reporting, yes. This is not "doxxing", it is just reporting on the government.
It absolutely is doxxing according to the dictionary definition[1] of "to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge".
These are also not high-level senior officials or elected officials or those with public-facing personas - these are technical engineers whose positions do not mean that they are "always ripe to have their names and photographs in public reporting".
> Even if there was an effort to keep this information secret, it would almost certainly be subject to FOIA requests.
This is just factually wrong. Exemption 6 to FOIA[2] is "Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individual’s personal privacy." - which in practice means personnel names, among other things.
Are you referring to this Wired article as "doxxing", or to something else?
I think the article we're discussing only reported their names, right? That is not "private information" about people who are public employees. And it is the role of journalism to report on public employees, not "a form of punishment or revenge".
They are high level officials! That's exactly the problem. They probably thought they were just taking technical roles, and I'm sympathetic to that, but that's not what they are doing, by the reporting in, again, the article we're discussing. (Did you read the article?)
They are reportedly joining high level meetings and have high level clearances in the agencies where they're working. Again, I'm sympathetic if they got there and were thrust into this stuff and are thinking "this isn't what I signed up for! I'm in way over my head!", but if that's the case, they should have said that and bowed out of this as gracefully as possible. Again, I'm sympathetic that this is a very difficult thing for a very young and ambitious person to have the wisdom to do, after taking what appears to be a dream job with a person they have probably looked up to their whole lives. But that's both exactly why they shouldn't have these high responsibility roles, and exactly why they are such useful patsies for the powerful people using them. This is why powerful people like to use young people (especially young men) to do their dirty work!
Your link on FOIA contains the quoted text, but not the claim that it "in practice means personnel names, among other things". I don't believe that is accurate, but would be interested in further citation.
The issue isn’t whether or not their names are public.
The issue is that Elon Musk is highlighting them specifically in a negative way that will lead to very predictable, very personal, very negative outcomes without any recourse.
It depends if you think there's a difference between a self-formed likely illegal group, doing likely illegal things for ideological purposes getting reported on by a reputable news source, and a civil servant who has been doing their assigned job getting picked on personally and publicly by one of the most powerful people in America who owns the media site he is using to attack them.
I see those as different in reality. We can argue that semantically they can get twisted around as the same thing (government employees getting publicly named in a critical way), but that ignores extremely relevant real-world circumstances.
So, to be clear, I do think "who people in government are and what they do" is appropriately public record.
But yes, there is a difference between media reporting on what high-level government officials are doing and government (or quasi-government) officials singling out low level employees for ridicule. It's the difference between punching up and punching down.
But this is not among the worst things Musk is doing, and if it were a right-wing magazine doing reporting on employees in the federal government rather than someone using their role within the government itself to do it, I might find it distasteful but would have no real qualms about it.
I mean, I don't want to claim to be an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure who works for the government and what they do is public record.
I do think it's bad to "doxx" people in the sense of sharing their addresses and phone numbers. But that's not what the article we're discussing does.
This article simply strikes me as normal reporting that is no different than "Treasury Secretary Bessent has hired so and so as an undersecretary for such and such, and this is what so and so has done and said in the past". These people seem to be working essentially at that undersecretary level. We always know who such people are, and we should.
- Public figures are public by influence; public servants are employees and can/should have their information revealed when necessary.
- Revelation of information of employees under public pay is not 'doxxing'. Making it seem as if it's 'doxxing' is stretching the definition, like saying someone merely touching you has committed 'violence'. Your intentional use of a more serious concept for a less serious one is misleading.
- Your private employer has no duty to the public, they answer only to the end stakeholders. In contrast, public servants must be accountable and known to the public - it's literally in their name, 'public' and 'servants'. Why you should confuse your status with that of public servants is bewildering.
So if an administrator in a school district allegedly violates policy all their employees are open season? (We are also talking about no trial to determine whether your claims are true)
It has nothing to do with whether they are doing anything wrong. They're high level federal employees. Hundreds of years before anyone invented the word "doxxing", newspapers would have printed their names and likenesses. They have chosen employment which puts them into the public interest. No more no less.
What Musk is doing with DOGE is the most unconstitutional power grab any US Citizen has tried is a very long time. The normal rules do not apply anymore.
Actually, the point is that the normal rules _do_ apply, and the normal rules very much encourage the publication of the names and likenesses of civil servants.
I'm kind of surprised that no one has made the argument that there is something special about these individuals, the work they're doing, or the circumstances of their work. There are, after all, exceptions to the "normal rules." But the fact that no one is making this argument is, at the end of the day, quite telling.
Do I need to remind you that Elon Musk has gained unauthorized and illegal access to the federal payment system? It is very possible he will be arrested for doing this if a democrat gets elected unless Trump pardons him. But then his US citizenship can be revoked.
EDIT: "Wasn’t he authorized by the President, the chief executive?"
The President doesn't have the authority to do that.
It's an interesting question. The president's powers are supposed to be limited and checked. That was the whole point of the American Revolution.
One of the ways the president is limited is that the he can't authorize people to commit crimes. e.g. he couldn't instruct his AG to open an investigation into his political opponent under false pretenses in order to hurt his electoral chances. If the AG were to do that, it would be a crime. So the question isn't whether the president has authorized Musk to do something, but whether or not the president even has the power to do the thing he delegated.
And what is the power in question? It's control over spending appropriated by Congress. And that's where separation of powers comes in. Congress is supposed to control the purse strings, and the president is supposed to make sure the money is spent on the priorities of the people, taking care of prosecuting fraud and abuse. The point of giving Congress this power is to give the people a mechanism to set their priorities on how their own money is spent. It shouldn't be the case that one guy comes in and then gets to decide how to spend all our money.
But that appears to be what they are trying to do, in claiming that their cuts are all under the guise of reducing fraud and abuse. But really what they're trying to do is do an end-run around Congress. They want all the money, but they don't want to have Congress vote on it, because they don't actually have the votes to implement the agenda they want to, since Congress is so divided. So instead they're just taking the funding they have and allocating it in ways that support only the agenda items they want to see implemented.
>>One of the ways the president is limited is that the he can't authorize people to commit crimes. e.g. he couldn't instruct his AG to open an investigation into his political opponent under false pretenses in order to hurt his electoral chances. If the AG were to do that, it would be a crime. So the question isn't whether the president has authorized Musk to do something, but whether or not the president even has the power to do the thing he delegated.
ok, but since the investigative (FBI) and the prosecutorial (US Attorney) apparati are under the control of the executive, if the local USA goes along with Trump and against the law, the remedy is....what exactly?
Impeachment, followed by conviction and removal-from-office, in theory.
In practice this is extremely unlikely because the threshold for the vote in the Senate is high enough that you'd need bipartisan consensus, and the US Constitution wasn't really written expecting the party system to exist.
The thing that makes revolutions fail or succeed is whether or not they take control of the money. Trump isn't doing that. He appears to just be auditing for fraud and corruption. If he was trying to control the money, then he'd need to march doge into the federal reserve. But he can't because it's not organized under the executive branch. They claim they're not even part of the government.
" He appears to just be auditing for fraud and corruption."
The constitution gives Congress sole authority to control spending and any payments Musk stops is a extreme violation of the Constitution. I really hope this ends with Musk either in prison for life or with his US citizenship revoked and him deported back to South Africa.
If Musk stops any payment that Congress has approved he is breaking the law. and the US Constitution. Considering he is an immigrant he could have his citizenship revoked and be deported.
You still believe the lies that con artist Musk tells you? He isn't ever going to Mars. Tesla is never going to have FSD so good they are willing to take legal liability for accidents the way Waymo does.
2. The rule of law is not a magical thing that enforces itself, and many people seek to undermine it for their own enrichment, so those of us who believe #1 is correct (which is most people in the US) must understand the levers of power and use them to maintain t
it.
Despite the current struggles, I think we have some real advantages in this fight. One of those is actually just capitalism. We have financialized trust in the US government, via the bond market. That trust is not entirely downstream of the rule of law, but it is to a fairly large degree. We have already seen once that an effort by the administration to squelch on its contractual obligations was quickly reversed, which was this basic mechanism at action. The worst things DOGE could do with this (illegal) control over the Treasury would be unworkable for this same reason.
There are still horrible outcomes that aren't subject to this constraint (and in my opinion, we need to reform the pardon power in order to maintain the rule of law moving forward), but it's not true that there are no constraints.
We added a trillion dollars to the balance sheet a few years back. The USD is not backed by trust, it's backed by power. Power that is enforced through military might and resource control over vassal states like most of Western Europe. If you want to understand how power really works understand that Trudeau just threatened a tariff on maple syrup until one of his wiser advisors pointed out that all Canadian oil pipelines make a pitstop in the good ol' USofA for, checks notes, "refinement". Dunno, sounds important.
Checkmate, Justin.
Meanwhile, in the nursery the rule of law is quietly taking its afternoon nap.
No, the executive branch absolutely does not have the power to just refuse to spend money that Congress has approved or spend money that it has NOT approved. This is the basis for The Iran Contra Affair.
The power of the purse is the authority of the United States Congress to levy taxes and control government spending. It's a key part of the separation of powers in the Constitution and a check on the executive branch.
What Trump and Musk are doing with DOGE and the federal payment system is in blatant violation of this separation of powers.
I can look up every single public employee in my area, and find out what they make. It's not hard to find out where they live. It's called government transparency.
Indeed. One of the highest paid people in my local school district is a librarian who teaches no classes and gets paid 275k. Do you think it would be a good idea to get a wired article published with his name address, and 4 similar teacher profiles?
Are you suggesting that the article we're discussing is "weird"? Does it list anyone's address? I feel like it just says their names and provides some basic bio info. Seems like pretty normal reporting on an important story at the top levels of the federal government.
Yeah I’m not suggesting anything weird either. I just think the community might want to know which teachers are really well paid. They have chosen employment in the public interest. Are you with me?
Yo there’s literally articles regularly published on the names and pay of all local city employees in my city with specific call outs to the top paid ones.
While it seems you are implying that is not cool, it’s actually unremarkable and common government transparency.
Yep. I feel like we should probably be taking more of a "you're one of today's ten thousand!"[0] approach to this thread. I think this person is probably just actually unfamiliar with the history of public interest reporting on government.
Federal pay is already supposed to be public knowledge and is highly regulated based on role https://www.federalpay.org/. Although who knows if that's true anymore. Seems like all precedent is up in the air nowadays
I mean, I don't love it because of my political ideology, but it wouldn't strike me as weird if I saw this kind of story in my local paper...
I got all pissed in college when I read a magazine article about how the football coach at the state school I attended was the highest paid state employee that year. There was nothing weird about that article, and I think it's very similar to your hypothetical.
I do, ideologically, think that it's much better for reporters to focus on powerful people near the top, but I don't think it's weird to report on government employees, in general.
That sounds like a job better suited for your local paper. The scope of national politics is far greater.
But even if Wired did, it still wouldn't be "doxxing", which used to imply publishing not just names but addresses and other PII (like SSNs) for non-public, non-governmental figures.
New stories routinely come out about the highest paid people in colleges typically being the head football coaches. The conservative media has been railing on academic administrator salaries for years.
Public servants name and position and pay are already generally public; major media have published entire state databases of this.
That's not doxxing, that's accountability of the government to the people. Doxxing is when a person is doing a participant in an online discussion group and information they haven't made public about their real world identity, etc., is made public, it is not when people are performing high level government management functions and their identity is attached to their actions.
The hypocrisy of Musk once again in full effect. Anyone who still thinks Musk is out to help anyone but himself, I have a bridge to sell you. It's sitting right next to 'free speech'.
When it comes to these people specifically, they need to be publicly called out. What's happening is unprecedented and possibly illegal. I know most of the press has been bought off or strong-armed to look the other way by the new administration, but at least someone is still doing reporting.
Imagine if this was a male journalist snooping through newly appointed young, female engineers' histories, e-stalking them the same way and writing an article of his findings. You can justify it as "it's technically still reporting", but it's very creepy that they thought of this and then continued to think this was a good idea throughout the process.
is Asmongold wrong? the WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit is now banned for 72 hours.
"This community has been banned
This subreddit has been temporarily banned due to a prevalence of violent content. Inciting and glorifying violence or doxing are against Reddit’s platform-wide Rules. It will reopen in 72 hours, during which Reddit will support moderators and provide resources to keep Reddit a healthy place for discussion and debate."
Reddit banned it because they were threatened by Elon. And the 'doxing' everyone is talking about is the naming of Elon's rightwing goons who took over federal systems lol. He said the same 'tHeY aRe cOmMItTinG a CrImE' bullshit against wired and other outlets who reported on his goons.
As for violent content on reddit lets be real please. If you want to talk about violence open a Israel-Palestine thread not /r/whitepeopletwitter lol..
there's a whole lot to unpack here, and none of it is good. at the end of the day, you can consider Musk an outside contractor. how exactly is that treason? also, in which part of the constitution does it say anything about the federal payment system? that's not an article I'm familiar
The power of the purse is the authority of the United States Congress to levy taxes and control government spending. It's a key part of the separation of powers in the Constitution and a check on the executive branch. If Musk actually stops any payment that was authorized by Congress then he is violating the Constitution.
DOGE also has no legitimate need or legal right to access the federal payment system. He is in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and should be arrested and put on trial along with any other DOGE employee who has accessed the federal payment system.
If the employee exceeded authorized access or acted without authorization to manipulate the payment system, they could be charged under the CFAA, which criminalizes unauthorized access to computer systems.
Obstruction of Federal Proceedings or Official Duties - 18 U.S.C. § 1505 or § 1913:
§ 1505: Obstruction of agency proceedings or congressional actions.
§ 1913: Prohibits using appropriated funds to lobby or interfere with government decisions, though applicability may depend on intent.
Interfering with congressionally mandated payments could constitute obstruction of lawful government functions.
Theft or Conversion of Government Funds - 18 U.S.C. § 641:
If the payment was lawfully owed and the employee’s actions deprived the recipient of funds, this could be seen as theft or conversion of government property.
False Statements or Fraud - 18 U.S.C. § 1001:
If the employee falsified records, submitted false information, or lied to justify stopping the payment, they might face charges for making false statements.
Conspiracy - 18 U.S.C. § 371:
If others were involved, conspiracy charges could apply to defraud the U.S. or commit other offenses.
Malfeasance or Misconduct in Office:
While not a specific federal statute, general misconduct or breach of public trust could lead to charges under broader provisions or administrative penalties (e.g., termination, fines).
You will need to do some mental gymnastics to find a criminal statute that could be used to prosecute that and it does not appear the US Attorney for DC is at all interested in doing that.
Musk and DOGE employees could be arrested and tried by the DOJ if a democrat wins the next Presidential election. These are the crimes they have broken.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) - 18 U.S.C. § 1030:
If the employee exceeded authorized access or acted without authorization to manipulate the payment system, they could be charged under the CFAA, which criminalizes unauthorized access to computer systems.
Obstruction of Federal Proceedings or Official Duties - 18 U.S.C. § 1505 or § 1913:
§ 1505: Obstruction of agency proceedings or congressional actions.
§ 1913: Prohibits using appropriated funds to lobby or interfere with government decisions, though applicability may depend on intent.
Interfering with congressionally mandated payments could constitute obstruction of lawful government functions.
Theft or Conversion of Government Funds - 18 U.S.C. § 641:
If the payment was lawfully owed and the employee’s actions deprived the recipient of funds, this could be seen as theft or conversion of government property.
False Statements or Fraud - 18 U.S.C. § 1001:
If the employee falsified records, submitted false information, or lied to justify stopping the payment, they might face charges for making false statements.
Conspiracy - 18 U.S.C. § 371:
If others were involved, conspiracy charges could apply to defraud the U.S. or commit other offenses.
Malfeasance or Misconduct in Office:
While not a specific federal statute, general misconduct or breach of public trust could lead to charges under broader provisions or administrative penalties (e.g., termination, fines).
Again, none of those directly applies to what DOGE is doing. You have to really stretch the meaning of those laws to try to make it fit. Prosecutors do this regularly, but the current US Attorney is unlikely to.
Widespread defamatory allegations and calls for violence aren’t common everyday life but they are routine on reddit.
Banning users with moderate opinions is not normal in everyday life, but is routine in many subreddits. Including users sharing opinions held by moderate democrats.
It used to be that way, with high diversity of opinions between subreddits.
These days, all the default subs are left leaning, most are far-left leaning, which means most users have a partisan experience. This then impacts the overall makeup of the site’s userbase which cascades this bias through every other subreddit.
Sure, there are a small number of relatively low traffic communities that have held out, but they are now an insignificant proportion of the content on the site.
It’s a natural artefact of the voting systems it uses for recommending content. These tend to result in echo chambers because political extremism results in more engagement, and thus more extreme users vote more and have a larger influence on what is shown.
This is then amplified by the echo chamber effect, which distills the user base into ever more extreme positions as the moderate users find their opinions outside the evolving fringe of acceptable opinion.
The reason I class it as far-left now, even though I wouldn’t in the past, is two things:
Firstly, it is now plagued with extremist content, including calls to violence, which are tolerated by users and moderates alike.
Secondly, the opinions expressed have a left bias relative to other members of the left. There are plenty of moderate democrats, including people like Obama, who would quickly find themselves banned from many default subreddits for their more moderate tolerant opinions.
There is no arbiter for the median set point, as you know. I think the problem latent in both the point you respond to, and your response is the lack of desire amongst us all to agree the position of the left-right needle. It's just much more useful to be able to fling the terms/directions around as a pejorative, than to be particularly factual.
It's a very odd time. The USA is emerging into a combination of a Kleptocracy, a Kakistocracy, Autarky and Technocracy. It's like somebody's dream pivot fractured into every ocracy under the sun.
I don't have to subscribe to a belief in a conspiracy to advantage Russia, to beleive the SITUATION will advantage people who benefit from an unstable US polity.
I also don't have to subscribe to a belief it was "the plan" to believe the super-rich will ride over this wave, and pick the cream off as it floats upward. Thats what they do, all the time. This is just a particularly active milk churn and there's going to be a LOT of cream.
I agree on most parts of your respnse, but I was aiming at precisely at how the commenter I responded to tends to make absolute claims for what, it seems to me, are relative to their position and attempt to instate as more common and common-sense than it really is, and betrays a certain blindness to a simple psychological fact that people usually react more strongly to things that pressure them more (a relative phenomenon) and ascribes to this reaction some political valuation (an absolute).
I myself do not find left-right divide that much useful, at least to describe this melting pot of our time.
I enjoyed the question you posed immensely because it goes so strongly to the perceptual bias we bring to the table. I know I look with outrage at how strongly my left wing government has swung right, not for a minute believing I might have got more left wing as I got richer, older, and less exposed to the risks. "Of course I've always been left" I mutter, putting decent french butter on my croissant.
I've been on Reddit since at least 2007. I've not seen any swing in political views. I think it's just that the sort of people that use Reddit are the sort of people who are typically more left-wing.
I'm just glad we have social networks which are left-wing to bring balance to the system.
Reddit has been in a state of hysteria for the past couple of weeks. You’re right that the overall leaning hasn’t changed much, but it was never this crazy, even during Trump’s first term.
It’s a nonstop barrage of nazi labels, overblown news, and comments that “hint” at more direct involvement and violence.
It's so weird that I've even started to doubt whether most of those comments are from real people.
I'm not sure why you're surprised. Reddit has always been left leaning and progressive, and they were making a lot of noise about Trump his first term, especially with the Mueller investigation.
Now you have a huge trade war going on, he keeps threatening the soveriegnty of multiple long time allies, a billionaire has extensive access to government data (the same one that did that nazi salute), along with ICE being ramped up all in the first couple weeks of his term. Our president also ran a crypto scam that made him billions right before his term started. He also keeps joking about running for a third term and is challenging a 150 year constitutional law on birthright citizenship with an executive order. Even you have to admit that this is a lot going on compared to anything we've seen before.
I think that the issue with what's happening on reddit is that it's hard to know what's real or what's not. I think that there is a lot that this administration could be criticized for but the criticism has to be precise and targeted, such that most of the energy goes to the topics that are important.
A lot of comments and energy were expended there. Everyone talked as if it were the end of NATO and that the U.S. was abandoning Europe. In reality, it was just a 20% reduction in force (which was the first sentence in the linked article).
On the flip side, the trade war with Canada deserved heavy criticism—and luckily, it was well covered (I count that as a win).
From the list you just shared, I don't really have a good sense of the relative severity of each and I think it's because there is no place where these topics could be discussed (even HN isn't immune as you can see from one of the comments below)
An alternative take on this is that the opposition doesn't really believe that anything extraordinary is happening and hence there is no strong response outside just some press releases.
I personally tried to follow all the news for a week. I tried to read the articles and research what was shared on reddit. Oftentimes my interpretation of these news wasn't nearly as dramatic as what reddit was aligning on. At the end, I figured it's too much work to double check every single piece of news, so I just stopped using reddit for some time.
There are more ways to get news than reading reddit tho. I still get exposure to the "big" events through HN or simply by talking to my coworkers, and those conversations tend to be a lot more meaningful and nuanced than what I'd normally get on reddit.
Not getting every single detail of a story as it develops isn't really a big deal to me and, I'd also argue that following these news on reddit won't really make you more informed (I already shared one example where the news was discussed but the conversation was entirely off from the reality). Reddit only makes you feel more informed, but that doesn't mean that you actually are.
That's an understatement. Death threats aimed at these young DOGE tech nerds flooded Reddit and Bluesky. Reddit even shut down a popular subreddit to stem the tide.
This is simply incorrect. There was no "flood." There were a very, very small number of isolated comments that I spotted and they were removed and/or downvoted.
I truly despise people who gaslight the way you are right now. Musk did two very blatant Nazi salutes and us right now illegally accessing the US federal payment system. These are unprecedented actions and a strong response to them is hardly "hysteria".
It used to be very libertarian (big on free speech, etc) but has since shifted substantially liberal, including much warmer attitudes towards the use of violence.
In 2010 Reddit was center-left, with a high degree of variance between subreddits.
Today it is a far-left echo chamber in most large subreddits.
The process of change was gradual. Like all echo chambers it is a result of distillation, with marginal moderate users progressively leaving in response to seeing the shrinking frontier of acceptable discourse.
Early Reddit had a philosophically libertarian majority (or at least, a significant percentage) and a demographic of mostly STEM-oriented, bookish, nerdy dudes from 18-40. Ron Paul was a popular political candidate. "Socially liberal, fiscally conservative" was a common refrain, although in 2008 that usually meant supporting gay marriage and wanting legal marijuana. People were skeptical of big corporations and big government alike, but had genuine belief that technology was changing the status quo in positive ways (remember when Google was a startup and "Don't be evil" felt earnest). The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unpopular, but a big chunk of the criticism focused on ways the PATRIOT act invaded individual privacy and the wastefulness of DHS spending. Open source software and filesharing were discussed as philosophical stances and acts of resistance against entrenched powers. Race and gender were rarely discussed as being particularly important.
Writing this made me realize not just how different Reddit was, but also the issues of the time and the ways they were thought of and talked about. It's almost hard to map onto contemporary parties, policies or issues.
>I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.
Why? Its ok when our betters engage in such behavior and who could be better than the rich?
When some poors like "journalists" try to do this, they're just upending the system for their own gain. It would really be tolerating corruption if you just tolerated them ripping up our current system of governance just because they preferred a different set of rules. Elections have consequences and its just gauche to ignore the results like this.
I mean "mr free speech absolutist" has already tweeted that anyone complaining about the government would have their account suspended. Kind of on brand for a nazi.
These are not "individual engineers". They're government officials with seemingly vast powers which aren't yet fully understood by the public. As the article details, they seem to have the authority to demand access to most if not all of the government's computer systems; we don't yet know which of them have this authority, or what limits there are, or what review processes are in place.
That doesn't mean it's OK to call for violence against them! But Wired isn't doing that. It does mean that news outlets need to report on who they are and what they're doing, even if they fear (even if they know) that third parties might issue death threats.
I've seen that argument, but I don't understand it. The President has decided that executive agencies should operate according to certain new standards, charged the USDS with enforcing that, and put Musk in charge with a new meme name. Perhaps one or another of those standards is unlawful, but it's hard to see how the entire idea could be. What extra step is required to make DOGE legitimate?
The president is allowed to set standards for executive agencies. But his job is to faithfully execute the laws, and in doing so, he can't just shut down executive agencies by trying to fire everyone, and take them over with random people he appoints as advisors. Those agencies exist not for him to wield power over, but to implement our priorities as authorized by the Congress.
The way it's supposed to work is the executive sends an aspirational budget to congress that embodies his policy agenda, our representatives vote on the budget, the congress appropriates the money that we send the government to the executive branch, and then the executive branch spends that money, again, faithfully. That's the oath he took. What that means operationally is that he can't just defund things we voted for in the budget that doesn't match his political agenda. Doing so should be impeachable, because it would represent a breach of his oath. It doesn't matter that he has a different agenda, he's the president for everyone.
Since he's not doing it this way, that's why people are pointing it out as unconstitutional, and illegal.
For DOGE to be legal what it needs to operate in just an advisory capacity. It should recommend things to cut, but there has to be reasons, an auditable process, transparency, and meaningful oversight. For starters, Musk has a massive conflict of interest in that he's a recipient of government contracts. So he himself shouldn't even be part of this process without first answering to that. If we keep going down this path, the people advocating for it now will not like being on the receiving end when that level of capriciousness is directed against them.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever dealt with the US government, but people that work there are famously unmotivated. This isn’t about replacing people with AI, it’s about people that can be replaced with grep. I’m not sure what you mean by people advocating for reducing government spending being on the “receiving end” of reducing government spending.
Finally, this is not capricious, this is absolutely well considered. If you haven’t realised the government has spent vast quantities of money, printed advanced quantities of money to do it, and caused record in inflation.
It's created by renaming U.S. Digital Service that was created in 2014 by President Obama within the Office of Management and Budget. So it's a part of executive branch.
The other child comments are responding with how to obtain this in a way that is of questionable legality, which I think is not what you are asking. The officially blessed Microsoft way is essentially not available to non-enterprise customers, and it's only available to some subset of enterprise customers from my understanding. And that the cost to acquire the license is quite expensive.
My favorite recently acquired pet theory about the amazon RTO is that it's driven by real estate occupancy rates in their incredibly expensive new hub offices, several of which also received massive government tax grants with strings attached(0):
> "Now consider that Amazon spent $4-5B to build its two headquarters buildings in Seattle in 2015/16. Almost certainly it will need to refinance those loans in the next couple of years.
> When that refinancing window opens, two things will determine Amazon’s real estate bill. Interest rates, and the value placed on the buildings. The latter will be driven almost entirely by occupancy rates.
> So the answer to “why does Amazon care about occupancy rates” is that by driving those rates up, it can maximize the valuation of its properties, decrease to loan-to-value ratio of its financing, and secure the best interest rate possible.
> The size of the prize is massive.
> One point of difference in the interest rate attached to a commercial loan across a 10-year term equates to $100M in interest payments. Given Amazon will need to refinance several billion in commercial real estate over the next few years, the stakes of increasing occupancy could have a billion dollar price tag. Way more than the cost of pissing off employees. Way more than hiring to replace those who quit."
This is the first I've heard that it's false; however it seems like many times in my life I've observed something suffering, seemingly from lack of ownership despite being a common good.
What do you call that if you can't call it a tragedy of the commons?
On HN I’ve seen regular claims that “tragedy of the commons has been disproven”. I’ve not yet identified which social bubble propagates this or what it is based on but there seems to be some niche in which people are being taught that it is categorically proven to be an invalid concept.
That persons argumentation is awful, however. Another patient soul took the time to challenge the idea with logic, and there wasn’t much actually supporting the idea in response.
> I am sure there are some hyper specific examples where it has happened as described, but as a “fact” about the world and as a justification for any course of action, it’s highly suspect.
You read that and understood “categorically proven to be an invalid concept”?
People cite the tragedy of the commons to discourage sharing of resources. The idea that common land should be divvied up into private ownership to prevent them falling into ruin. When really shared resources just need accountability between the people who make use of them. It’s just basic game theory:
If there is no cost to abusing your opponent, that strategy will get used. But if you’re going to be playing long term with the same people, systems will form to deter abuse.
What they said on "If Books Could Kill" is an extremely thorough trouncing of Haidt's narrative and the methodologies of the researches he utilized in that book.
The summary is this:
The uptick is adequately explained by changes to mandatory reporting requirements for screening questions of mental health for teenagers from Obamacare and increased access to healthcare for those teenagers.
So mental illness rose steeply in girls and not so much in boys since 2012, and more in liberals than conservatives, since 2012 and this is adequately explained by increased reporting requirements?
When someone speaks about business risk for a company which might not be breakeven profitable, the risk is not "we don't make enough money to chuckle sensibly into our wine goblets", the risk is "we have to lay off our engineering team and stop making software altogether".
There's nothing mealy-mouthed about trying to provide insight into their decision-making process. They don't owe anyone other than their employees, customers, and investors (in that order) a justification for their decision making on something like this, and certainly after spilling a few paragraphs of text off the cuff can't be called disingenuous.
This chorus of screeching that accompanies any reduction in commitment for a company involved in open-source is extremely off-putting to anyone who wants to try to build in the open and make a business out of it.
It's free. Gratis. Provided without warranty. Do with it what you will, but it was never yours. They didn't take anything from you by closing the repo. It's really cool that it was available, and it sucks that it's not available going forward - but expecting any business-backed OSS projects to adhere to the same behaviors as a volunteer effort is just wishful thinking.
these are good points but there are fundamentals at odds, really.. no amount of "explaining" will make a choice.. there are partisan issues and as said, company survival is related to profitability is related to survival.
also not mentioned so far is - this product has big implications for security by surveillance, with phone-home and instant-audit hooks, non-disclosed search for zero-day vulnerabilities, and more.. by closing the dev process, it appears that this product gets one step closer to a one-way mirror model that some customers will pay really large amounts of money for..
>There's nothing mealy-mouthed about trying to provide insight into their decision-making process. They don't owe anyone other than their employees, customers, and investors (in that order) a justification for their decision making on something like this, and certainly after spilling a few paragraphs of text off the cuff can't be called disingenuous.
When you say things like "we did it for the devs" thats mealy-mouthed and disingenuous. They don't owe anyone but their employees, customers, and investors an explanation, but then they start making public statements-- even if they are a few paragraphs and text off the cuff-- acting like they're doing it for _alutristic_ reasons.
Rug pull your open source once you've gotten what business ends you desire out of it and when it conflicts with your open source goals; like you said its your you own it.
I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.