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The fundamental problem of tech companies is that they need to keep two groups of people happy: whoever is in power, which is the bigoted right at the moment, a

The fundamental problem of tech companies is that they need to keep two groups of people happy: whoever is in power, which is the bigoted right at the moment, and employees, who are generally not bigoted so on the American political spectrum are overwhelmingly left-wing. This is an impossible task. My opinion is that Google should support its employees and deliberately position itself against the right. No matter how much ground you concede to them, they're going to act in bad faith anyway, so why listen to them at all?

ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
>which is the bigoted right at the moment Ah yes, let's generalize ~50% of the country as bigots. That surely will lead to quality discussion.
- damnyou 7y ago
  The leaders certainly all are. Not saying anything about ordinary people. Why would you think I'm optimizing for quality of discussion? I'm optimizing for the material conditions of oppressed people, not some silly debate conducted on an online forum. It's more important to state the obvious truth than to soften it.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    The leaders? You're quite right, but maybe not the way you think. Trump said plenty of truly outrageous things, but he wasn't the one who generalized 50% of the population as "the basket of deplorables". Maybe Bernie is not overly bigoted, I'll give you that.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > Why would you think I'm optimizing for quality of discussion? You should because the guidelines for HN politely request it, its users expect it, and its moderators firmly enforce it (and thank heavens for that).
artificial 7y ago
This is an amazing comment.
KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
Well at least you're being downvoted. Where do you draw the line at bigotry and perversion? Homosexuality, transexuals, polyamory, eating meat, necrophilia, cannibalism, bestiality, pedophilia? There's people who non-ironically believe that each of the above is no worse than any of the others and should be treated as such. Unless you take a live and let live approach that I have never met anyone in real life admit to you will want at least some of those criminalized.
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please stop using this site for ideological battle so we don't have to ban you again? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 7y ago
We just asked you yesterday to stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. We ban accounts that do that. We have to, because doing that destroys the curiosity this site exists for. Would you please review the site guidelines and take the spirit of this site more to heart when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- damnyou 7y ago
  I want to understand this fully. You care more about me pointing out the obvious political context we live in than about the person downthread literally comparing being gay to pedophilia. Will you, in your capacity as a moderator for one of the most influential forums on the internet, actively care about justice, or will you just protect the status quo? Pick a side. (Keep in mind that Scott Alexander made the exact same mistake of trying to be neutral rather than choosing to be on the side of justice. Now his blog is overrun by fascist trolls. Hacker News is not far behind.)
  - dang 7y ago
    Other people's violations of the site guidelines don't justify your breaking them as well. That's not only a non sequitur, it's a fatal one. If you see someplace we didn't intervene where we should have, the likeliest reason is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases. We're not trying to be neutral in the sense you describe. I agree that it's impossible, that everything is ultimately political or at least connected to it by one or two hops, etc. But this is a hard problem with no easy answers—actually with no answers, so far as I can tell. I certainly don't have one. In particular, the answer you're offering is not an answer. Picking a side and banning the other side would explode this community. It isn't just people on the banned side who would oppose such an approach; most HN users on all sides would. The rift would kill the community. What good would that do? Another reason is that political issues are more important than most of what appears on HN. Justice is more important than Rust. Does it follow that no website dedicated to less important things has a right to exist? I don't think so. I think it's ok to have a forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity, even though justice is more important than Rust. It's fine if you disagree, but then it would be good to make clear that that is what you disagree with. So far I don't think I've ever heard anyone come out and say so. But if you do agree that it's ok to have a forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity, I think I can argue confidently that the approach we take as moderators follows from that.

ApolloFortyNine 7y ago

>which is the bigoted right at the moment Ah yes, let's generalize ~50% of the country as bigots. That surely will lead to quality discussion.

damnyou 7y ago
The leaders certainly all are. Not saying anything about ordinary people. Why would you think I'm optimizing for quality of discussion? I'm optimizing for the material conditions of oppressed people, not some silly debate conducted on an online forum. It's more important to state the obvious truth than to soften it.
- 0815test 7y ago
  The leaders? You're quite right, but maybe not the way you think. Trump said plenty of truly outrageous things, but he wasn't the one who generalized 50% of the population as "the basket of deplorables". Maybe Bernie is not overly bigoted, I'll give you that.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > Why would you think I'm optimizing for quality of discussion? You should because the guidelines for HN politely request it, its users expect it, and its moderators firmly enforce it (and thank heavens for that).

artificial 7y ago

This is an amazing comment.

KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago

Well at least you're being downvoted. Where do you draw the line at bigotry and perversion? Homosexuality, transexuals, polyamory, eating meat, necrophilia, cannibalism, bestiality, pedophilia? There's people who non-ironically believe that each of the above is no worse than any of the others and should be treated as such. Unless you take a live and let live approach that I have never met anyone in real life admit to you will want at least some of those criminalized.

dang 7y ago
Would you please stop using this site for ideological battle so we don't have to ban you again? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dang 7y ago

We just asked you yesterday to stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. We ban accounts that do that. We have to, because doing that destroys the curiosity this site exists for. Would you please review the site guidelines and take the spirit of this site more to heart when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

damnyou 7y ago
I want to understand this fully. You care more about me pointing out the obvious political context we live in than about the person downthread literally comparing being gay to pedophilia. Will you, in your capacity as a moderator for one of the most influential forums on the internet, actively care about justice, or will you just protect the status quo? Pick a side. (Keep in mind that Scott Alexander made the exact same mistake of trying to be neutral rather than choosing to be on the side of justice. Now his blog is overrun by fascist trolls. Hacker News is not far behind.)
- dang 7y ago
  Other people's violations of the site guidelines don't justify your breaking them as well. That's not only a non sequitur, it's a fatal one. If you see someplace we didn't intervene where we should have, the likeliest reason is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases. We're not trying to be neutral in the sense you describe. I agree that it's impossible, that everything is ultimately political or at least connected to it by one or two hops, etc. But this is a hard problem with no easy answers—actually with no answers, so far as I can tell. I certainly don't have one. In particular, the answer you're offering is not an answer. Picking a side and banning the other side would explode this community. It isn't just people on the banned side who would oppose such an approach; most HN users on all sides would. The rift would kill the community. What good would that do? Another reason is that political issues are more important than most of what appears on HN. Justice is more important than Rust. Does it follow that no website dedicated to less important things has a right to exist? I don't think so. I think it's ok to have a forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity, even though justice is more important than Rust. It's fine if you disagree, but then it would be good to make clear that that is what you disagree with. So far I don't think I've ever heard anyone come out and say so. But if you do agree that it's ok to have a forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity, I think I can argue confidently that the approach we take as moderators follows from that.