from Hacker News

Show HN: Watch fascism unfold in realtime – an AI-powered tracker

by visekr on 2/6/25, 5:02 PM with 52 comments

• by cootsnuck on 2/6/25, 5:16 PM

  Slick design, I like it.

  Could just be me but with characteristic-level severity levels it's not immediately clear to me if they're referring to like the categorical severity (e.g. "when labor power is suppressed that's a critical sign of encroaching fascism") or the present-day severity (e.g. "recent news points to there being critical levels of labor suppression happening right now").

  I can suss out that it seems to be the present-day severity, but it wasn't intuitive (for me at least).

  And how does your scale/algorithm work in terms of time-dependence? If there isn't any news indicating signs / intentions of labor suppression for a couple weeks then does that drop the severity level (both at the characteristic level and/or the overall level)?

  Cool project at the very least for keeping track of recent alarming news. I hope we never have to find out how accurate your tracker really is...(Then again that opens up the can of worms of "when does fascism arrive?"...with the answer always being earlier in retrospect than predicted in present.)

• by delichon on 2/6/25, 7:51 PM

    The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable" ― George Orwell, Essays
  

  So this is a "something not desirable done by the current US administration" tracker.

• by porcoda on 2/6/25, 6:54 PM

  Cool site. One thing I wish we had were rich, open archives of news that could be fed into something like this so we could see not just the live updating perspective, but a retrospective time series of the fascism-o-meter over a long time. Especially seeing how the different contributing categories change over time, and how you likely would see some of them start ticking up earlier than people might expect.

• by KN3LL2K on 2/6/25, 8:08 PM

  Wow love this. But also terrified?

  Would be interesting to see how filtering by different news sources of different political biases affects the ‘severity’?

• by macintux on 2/6/25, 5:07 PM

  Technically impressive, deeply sobering, and I'm going to stay away because by the end of 2020 I was barely able to sleep, and this is so much worse.

• by ChrisArchitect on 2/6/25, 7:29 PM

  Nicely done. Little design & branding details/style on point. Can you talk about what tech you used more? Are there really that many headline APIs for all those sources available freely?

• by c420 on 2/8/25, 7:04 AM

  On Firefox Mobile I'm unable to scroll the What Is This pop up. It vanishes if I try.

  Also, almost impossible to click the Additional Resources as it's obscured my the bluesky button.

  Great appreciation for what you've created!

• by andrewinardeer on 2/6/25, 7:54 PM

  The terminally online are handing over their minds to others and being subjected to a current and sustained adverserial nation state psyop of foreign influence.

  If one chose to unplug they would realise in short time how easily and how often they are being programmed to buy into rage-bait through mis and disinformation campaigns.

  It's got to the point where a significant number of people are easily triggered by beige and mundane topics such as what brand of car a stranger has purchased to how someone identifies sexually and if someone lists two basic pronouns on an email.

  Until people realize they actually control so very little in their day-to-day lives I fear it will only get worse.

• by rayemkay on 2/6/25, 7:06 PM

  impressive! so much good journalism exists on substack. wondering what criteria you're using for allowed sources and if you'll expand to different journalists' substacks.

• by brokenmachine on 2/7/25, 2:44 AM

  Great idea and very well executed, bravo!

• by 9283409232 on 2/6/25, 8:14 PM

  Fraudulent Elections is at low threat level. Might want update that since Trump just abolished the FBI team that was fighting election interference.

• by spstoyanov on 2/7/25, 3:42 PM

  cool idea!