There is real value in reading about the same topic from differing perspectives. Not all writing is or aspires to be purely fact-based journalism, and that's okay.

It's reasonable that The Markup wants to hire group of people with diverse viewpoints on how "powerful institutions are using technology in ways that impact people and society". I would be surprised and underwhelmed if they had e.g. only software engineers or only consumer rights activists writing.

The issue is their assumption that only non-white, non-males have interesting things to say about how "powerful institutions are using technology in ways that impact people and society".

If you want to hire people with diverse viewpoints, then look for people with diverse viewpoints. It's incredibly easy to fill a room with people who look like a Benetton poster but who all read the same books in the same colleges and all rigidly adhere to the same dogma. It's incredibly easy to use tokenism to justify your own prejudices. It's difficult to build a genuinely diverse collaboration based on profound and meaningful differences of perspective.

In fact, the whole thrust of my comment was that it's sometimes desirable to have "a genuinely diverse collaboration based on profound and meaningful differences of perspective", and the last paragraph of my post calls out the "nice looking poster" approach.

What point are you trying to make? It sounds to me like we're largely agreeing.

US Supreme Court jurisprudence more or less. No one actually cares about diversity as a goal. The political coalition that passed the Civil Rights Act looked around, saw they’d won and wanted more stuff for their constituents. Affirmative action was one of the ways to get more stuff. It’s also illegal under a plain reading of equal rights. For reasons I’m unqualified to opine on a quota system is too blatant legally (also explicit points based systems with group X getting Y extra points) so the Supreme Court went with diversity as an acceptable workaround to get to the desired goal of getting more stuff for the desired interest groups. This all happened in the context of university admissions and the buzzword spread from the case law.

Same as free speech or state’s rights people who genuinely believe in them are rare compared to those who use them as talking points when convenient and drop them when not.

In under a generation people go from arguing that everyone deserves equal rights and dignity to campaigning for explicit racial privileges for their side, or from supporting the right of the federal government to seize slaves who escape and travel to a free state to yakking about state’s rights to justify Jim Crow, or the one we’re in the trailing end of right now, the transition from free speech being a left wing value to a right wing one. When the right had the establishment the left was all about people’s right to speak and be heard. Now that they’re in charge it’s safe spaces and hate speech. Or look at the collapse of the anti-war movement once Obama was elected. Bush bombed Muslims for eight years, Obama bombed Muslims for eight years. Bush destroyed Iraq and had no real effect in Afghanistan as it comes pre destroyed. Obama destroyer Libya and cape quite close with Syria before his good sense overcame the presence of Hilary Clinton in his cabinet.

Politics is overwhelmingly about sides, coalitions and spoils. Insofar as it’s about ideology most people have 1-3 things they really care about and the rest they’re pretty happy to modify to fit in with their coalition.

They are dangerous to ad revenue.

Maybe they are also dangerous in other ways, but those discussions are a red herring.

Danger to ad revenue is the only danger large publicly traded internet companies actually care about.

FB/YT/Twitter are not fundamental to modern life.

They aren't even fundamental to gaining an audience. Lots of businesses[1] manage to turn handsome profits without advertising on those platforms.

[1] And that's what infowars/milo are -- businesses looking for make a profit by producing social commentary and then selling ad space / books / videos / merch for more than it costs to produce the commentary.

Neither are cakes. But people on left celebrating Facebook for doing what they want on their platform - seem quite similar to the people on the left also trying to get a baker forced to make a cake.

Can't have it both ways.

(edited for clarity)

Your position is a bit like saying "Some people claim they're OK with the US/UK having nuclear weapons, but not North Korea. Can't have it both ways." or "Some people want charities to be tax exempt but not businesses. Can't have it both ways." or "Some people want gun control for civilians but not for the military. Can't have it both ways." Yes, many policies apply differently to different people for different reasons! That's a good thing.

All your examples ultimately boil down to force and have little to do with what ought to be.

And no part of this statement strikes you as a problem?

That's just doing business in the current economy. You either have to ignore it or actively deal with it. Neither option will totally eliminate it.

Your case more about he-said-she-said than 'our own eyes lying to us'. Completely different issues.

I'm sure what was meant was 'victim and his wife' though.

Not sure if this is a reason for or against.

Ecuador has quite strict computer crime laws. E.g. distribution of hacking tools is illegal.

The law he is being charged with violating reads: "Diseñe, desarrolle, programe, adquiera, envíe, introduzca, ejecute, venda o distribuya de cualquier manera, dispositivos o programas informáticos maliciosos o programas destinados a causar los efectos señalados en el primer inciso de este artículo."

which google translates as: Design, develop, program, acquire, send, introduce, execute, sell or distribute any malicious means, devices or programs or programs intended to cause effects indicated in the first paragraph of this article.

Laws that criminalize creation/distribution of "hacking tools" are dangerous and scary because there's really no bright line as to what constitutes a hacking tool; e.g., it's even possible that Ola's work on JOpenSSL or OTRv4 could be construed as a "hacking tool" under this law :(

A good if unfortunate reminder to anyone who works in computer security to check local laws before traveling and especially before emigrating.

It's crazy how easy it is to learn how to pattern match well enough that you can build really useful stuff while still not really understanding what you're doing. Human brains are amazing.

The argument is being able to look at some court house built in 1925 is not more important than people in 2018 (and forever into the future) having more affordable places to live.

I tend to agree that the "no historical preservation" viewpoint is way overblown. E.g., there are lots of monuments and buildings in Boston and Philly that should always be preserved because they are integral to telling the nation's founding story. But there are lot of "historical landmarks/buildings" in the USA that are really only significant to the handful of people who pushed to make them "historical" (and are probably now dead anyways).

A compromise can be converting the court house into apartments or offices, so that it can have contemporary use but at the same time some aspects of its historic appearance are preserved (such as its façade). Of course, other parts of its historical value are going to be lost – it is likely impossible to maintain the historical integrity of the actual court rooms in the process of converting the building into offices or apartments – but it is still better than knocking down the building entirely.

I used to live around the corner from an old water pump house converted to offices. When they switched from coal-fired pumps to electrical ones, suddenly the amount of space consumed by the pumps shrunk dramatically. So they removed all the boilers and turned it into office space instead. Part of me wishes the boilers had stayed, but it is better than knocking down the building entirely.