So, bottom line: Eich was forced out by an astroturf campaign led by professional boycotters (waving the gay rights flag this time) and sleazy opportunists/publicity addicts like Yagan.
If Eich is a homophobe, I would like to replace the rest of the world's homophobes with him. While he may have disagreed in private, his public persona was inclusive and friendly. There are multiple testominies from people that never knew he harbored wishes to limit their rights before the controversy came out. Even the LGBTQ* Mozilla employees/volunteers spoke up to say this. Meanwhile, in Montana/Utah, if the CEO learns you're gay, you're likely to be found dead in the middle of the night.
But the mob had already formed, and they wanted blood. Blood is what they got. And the Mozilla project suffers as a result.
The Eich story, and the lynch mob that followed it, permanantly reduced my respect for HN. While I would not ever donate to a campaign (let alone one that denied equal rights to human beings), this made the gay community of HN (and their supporters) look like easily-influenced livestock. I used to click on the HN comments link before actually clicking the story it was about, because I could rely on the spin being kept to a minimum. I no longer have that guarantee. Similarly, I no longer have the guarantee of fair discourse, and fully expect future comments to be downvoted to oblivion (much like reddit) when one has a dissenting opinion. If someone says you hate gay people (correctly or not), the HN community has proven they will prosecute before a proper inquiry has been made.
Even more disturbing, I have now learned that the militant LGBTQ* members in Silicon Valley are just as easily-influenced, and as easily driven to boycott, as members of Stormfront, or the AFA, or the PMRC. This seems to be such a big issue in the Silicon Valley that I'm now solid in my decision to stay out of SV for any new startup ventures. Intolerance (even intolerance for bigots) is not something I want to immerse myself in.
(disclosure: this pseudonym is owned and operated by a lgBtq*)
It really irks me when people conflate calling for someone to step down from a CEO role with "lynching", "blood", or "militant". As you know, actual LGBTQ people are actually lynched, and our blood is actually shed. Your metaphors are, frankly, offensive.
(disclosure: I am also a member of the LGBTQ community.)
right. ignore the validity of my comments. just take offense to the words.
Whilst living in Montana, I have been harrassed multiple times for my sexuality. I have been beaten to unconsciousness by people I didn't even see approaching me, left with a sign saying "HOMO" on my body. I have had a rope around my neck, and three men lift my drugged body to a tree so I could die. Thankfully, a less bigoted person scared them off with a shotgun and got me medical attention. It's why I left the states and moved to Canada.
I know the words I'm using. I feel entitled to use them, as I'm fully calibrated to their meanings.
Now, perhaps you haven't learned that a "Political Lynch Mob" is a thing. And that angry mobs are often out for blood, literally AND figuratively. Perhaps you haven't seen any political lynch mobs in the past, and never seen them literally go for blood. Allow me to inform you that they do happen. I invite you to crack open a history book. Perhaps start with the Boston Tea Party, which, while not a literal lynch mob, did in fact irreparably burn a politician with hot tar, and then cover him in feathers as a sort of public mockery. because of Taxes on Tea. If you think that is somehow more justified than a group of people that (I completely believe) would beat Eich in the street if a group of them found him alone, for donating money to a cause they found abhorrent, I don't know what to say to you.
if you think I'm exaggerating about how groups of angry citizens almost always lead to senseless violence, you should probably crack open that history book again.
>if you think I'm exaggerating about how groups of angry citizens almost always lead to senseless violence
If you're saying that groups of angry people always lead to senseless violence, you're wrong, and there's no history book that will back you up. Yours is the typical argument against the concept of anger in defense of of a person who has inspired anger. Completely empty.
To say that a particular reaction isn't justified in a particular case is one thing. To say that to react to anything in anger makes one dangerous and therefore bad is silly and an argument that can be directed at everyone on every side of the argument with equal vacuity.
Was the lynch mob the one that decided not to use or support the use of a particular product, or was the lynch mob the group of people all over the country who combined forces to help defeat an element of gay rights in a single state? Answer: neither. No one was lynched, people weren't prevented from expressing themselves, and people weren't prevented from expressing objections to those expressions through their own personal choices: Eich got to donate money to help keep gays from getting married, and people stopped using Firefox because they didn't want the company that makes their browser to be run by a homophobe.
If you wanted to use Firefox twice as much to show your support for people being able to express any view (or even just the views you like) without personal consequences, you were always free to - Chick-Fil-A, Duck Dynasty, Cracker Barrel, Hobby Lobby, and Paula Deen still do good business.
You have set up a straw man by omitting the "almost". You're right, though; if I had said they always led to violence, everything you said would be true, but I didn't. So it isn't.
You seem to have set up a straw man for each paragraph. And they're all unique.
I don't think it does. I think too many people are trying to short circuit real discussion around this issue by either calling people bigots, or taking offense to the term "bully".
hdishn's comments expressing the same are dead, but it is utterly ridiculous and immensely offensive to claim that it is likely a homosexual will be murdered by the CEO of their corporation if he works in Utah or Montana.
Yes, the world would be a better place if all anti-equality people had donated $1000 to fund constitutional amendments preventing gay marriage. Please.
You can't pretend to be a good citizen for equality while donating $1000 to a cause whose only purpose is anti-equality.
And look, he could of just apologized and he would have been fine. He didn't. That is why I find this backlash backlash to be just "mob justice" the other way. His actions brought the backlash upon himself, and he didn't do any of the common sense things he could have to fix it. He shouldn't be treated like a martyr.
What a fantastic strawman you've constructed! Give me a minute to marvel at it. You do excellent work.
Okay, now that the dazzle has worn off, perhaps you could tell me when I said that Anti-gay activists donating money to fund constitutional amendments would be a good thing? because I really don't remember saying that.
However, I agree with your second paragraph. You can't be a good citizen for equality while donating money to a cause that is anti-equality. I appreciate your condemnation of Sam Yagan for doing exactly that.
What a fantastic strawman you've constructed! Give me a minute to marvel at it. You do excellent work.
Please don't use aggressive sarcasm on Hacker News. It adds no information and corrodes civility.
Consider how much better this comment would be if one deleted everything before "Perhaps". Editing out inflammatory language is the low-hanging fruit of optimizing for signal/noise ratio.
> Editing out inflammatory language is the low-hanging fruit of optimizing for signal/noise ratio.
I'd like to gently suggest that you put that, or something to that effect, in the HN guidelines.
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
> Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
By my assessment, your observation adds information that is not currently covered. "...calling names..." is a facet of the inflammatory language that hacker news could do without. But blatant name calling is a relatively small (and obvious) portion of the noise generating language that actually occurs. The other more insidious forms of inflammatory language are either less obvious or more likely to be rationalized.
I feel like some hacker news commenters* are more likely to add inflammatory language if they feel like the rest of their* comment(s) is/are otherwise high signal.
It's kind of like dipping into a savings account to break (the spirit of) the guidelines. They* rationalize the [sarcasm, incredulity, overt disdain, indignant rage, mockery, etc.] because they* feel entitled to the luxury and misjudge the consequences of it.
* Weasel words: I know I've done this. But I suspect I'm not the only one.
Gentle suggestion gently received. We're definitely going to do something like this. It'll to take time for the pieces to fall into place, though. It's trivial to edit the guidelines; what's not trivial is to think until you see the next good thing to do.
You and me both, by the way; it took me a long time to realize that the sarcasm I used to put into my comments (mainly because I wanted them not to be bland) was amplifying the wrong things. And I still have to consciously catch myself.
On another topic, this might be the best moderation I've ever received on any forum ever. So thanks for that. This restored a little faith I had lost when I was convinced HN had eternal-septembered.
He was asked repeatedly, over and over, privately and publicly. He consistently demurred, leaving the only thing to go on being his past actions and his lack of repudiation of them in any manner.
If Eich is a homophobe, I would like to replace the rest of the world's homophobes with him. While he may have disagreed in private, his public persona was inclusive and friendly. There are multiple testominies from people that never knew he harbored wishes to limit their rights before the controversy came out. Even the LGBTQ* Mozilla employees/volunteers spoke up to say this. Meanwhile, in Montana/Utah, if the CEO learns you're gay, you're likely to be found dead in the middle of the night.
But the mob had already formed, and they wanted blood. Blood is what they got. And the Mozilla project suffers as a result.
The Eich story, and the lynch mob that followed it, permanantly reduced my respect for HN. While I would not ever donate to a campaign (let alone one that denied equal rights to human beings), this made the gay community of HN (and their supporters) look like easily-influenced livestock. I used to click on the HN comments link before actually clicking the story it was about, because I could rely on the spin being kept to a minimum. I no longer have that guarantee. Similarly, I no longer have the guarantee of fair discourse, and fully expect future comments to be downvoted to oblivion (much like reddit) when one has a dissenting opinion. If someone says you hate gay people (correctly or not), the HN community has proven they will prosecute before a proper inquiry has been made.
Even more disturbing, I have now learned that the militant LGBTQ* members in Silicon Valley are just as easily-influenced, and as easily driven to boycott, as members of Stormfront, or the AFA, or the PMRC. This seems to be such a big issue in the Silicon Valley that I'm now solid in my decision to stay out of SV for any new startup ventures. Intolerance (even intolerance for bigots) is not something I want to immerse myself in.
(disclosure: this pseudonym is owned and operated by a lgBtq*)