Fbi Agents Visit Anti-Ice Protester: "your Name Was Brought Up."

There are people who think that every person on the planet should be able to immigrate to the US (or other first world countries). This is a radical position as it couldn't possibly work.

(I don't know about this person, I'm not saying it's widespread, just saying what a radical is.)

Yes, both the President and the Attorney General have been doing this openly, and explicitly citing it as the basis for their instructions to federal law enforcement. They have also been prosecuting based on false testimony of federal officers about assaults (and being forced to dismiss a stunningly high number of filed cases on that basis), and still using the numbers from those false claims as basis for asserting a huge spike in assaults on federal offficers, which also is being cited directly as justification for reallocating resources and setting enforcement prioirities.

Is the FBI being "instructed?" Yes. But it gets "instructed" every day, what has changed? (1) Republicans aren't a no-regulation thing, they are a vague regulation thing. The policies and regulations exist, they just make less sense, they're less visionary, less consistent than the ones that Democrats make. (2) There is better alignment between the tools, like a Palantir dashboard that LLM-reads social media posts, and these vague policies. (3) A list of names cuts through the bureaucratic / administrative friction of vague policy.

I'm in Canada, but what's going on South of the border has become highly concerning. It's starting to feel like Belgium up here.

Probably something similar to those “domestic terrorist” parents who were investigated by the DOJ for speaking out at school board meetings in 2021?

They're gleefully cruel fascist bigots.

So maybe this particular visit was not just about "chilling effect"?

And of course, keep your eyes peeled for any elections in your area. No matter how minor a position. If you can donate / volunteer for their campaigns, all the better. These situations will need to be fixed bottom up in the long term, so you never know what comptroller today becomes a senate tomorrow.

But legally I agree with the advice.

- Some people support the current regime and will flag any content they consider anti-establishment.

- Hacker News is designed so that it takes very few flags to stick, so as to aggressively filter signal from noise, for as greedy a definition of "noise" as possible.

There's no conspiracy here, it's just Hacker News being Hacker News. If you want to be able to discuss these things freely, find another platform. Otherwise just accept that any "political" content will very likely be flagged at some point.

Instead, it's an attitude of "I know what I voted for, and I'd prefer not to be reminded of its negative externalizes, thanks. Also, I'd really prefer it if this sort of news not filter out into the greater consciousness of Hacker News, because it might cause other people to reconsider their support."

One of the biggest lies of HN is that it's a place of open and reasonable debate and discussion. In reality, it is highly curated by the users who have access to the moderation tools in order to shape the conversation. There's no direct coordination or conversations, just a widespread unspoken agreement.

I don't disagree with their decision-making in a vacuum. There's nothing wrong with bias if it's something people are generally aware of, so it can be accounted for. On the other hand, I think that there's a significant moral hazard of a site that pretends to be unbiased but has an unaccountable cabal of users putting their collective thumbs on the scale, and HN very much falls into that camp.

Good advice but it should be any law enforcement…not just federal agents.

“I don’t answer questions without my attorney present. Leave me your card and I will have my lawyer contact you” are powerful words.

Yes. This. James Duane lays out[0] why this is so important. I strongly encourage everyone resident in the US to view this video as it makes (IMHO) a very strong case for never talking to the police -- they are not (at least in their official capacities) your friends.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

People are jumping out of unmarked vehicles with masks on and grabbing people.

We are getting closer every day to violent times.

This comment reads to me like you understand the implications and it makes you uncomfortable so you're deflecting with nonsense. Let's assume they're real FBI agents: what do you think of this action?

All this work plus the risk of a charge of impersonating a federal agent... and they didn't ask him for money. Deep grift.