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React adopts new code of conduct

40 points by jchanimal 7y ago

Nextgrid 7y ago
Maybe the solution is to just leave that cesspool that is Twitter? Seems like the harassment has less to do with being a minority and more with angering the Shitter mob which can happen to anyone.
- Grue3 7y ago
  The solution is to leave the cesspool that is JavaScript. For some reason these sorts of "scandals" only happen with Node.js, React and other JS libraries.
  - pmlnr 7y ago
    LOL. - https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-drama https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-... - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-apologizes-for-years-of-being-a-jerk-takes-time-off-to-learn-empathy/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-apolo... - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/freebsd_code_of_conduct_controversy/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/freebsd_code_of_con... It's everywhere. The problem is ultra sensitive people from mainly the US.
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      And implementing a COC is basically a cease-and-desist declaration now. I would never agree to any of that.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Not just JS, any sort of webdevs. You don’t get this in communities where there are actual technical skills required to participate. When was the last time a scandal rocked the ASM world? Never.
    - ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
      That’s because no one uses it.
      - goatinaboat 7y ago
        Long may webdevs go on believing that!
- csmattryder 7y ago
  I wish more people would take this advice. When you leave the site after deleting your account, and happen to revisit it (via clicking the OP), you realise that everyone is incredibly furious about so much - brexit, sexism, someone clumsily articulated a point in 280 characters. Being amped up to 11 for a good chunk of your day is definitely not healthy for you, and probably makes you lose sight of the actual problems going on around you.
  - eej2ya1K 7y ago
    I follow about a thousand people on twitter, all of whom I met IRL. Not a single person tweets about brexit, sexism, politics or ideology.
- matwood 7y ago
  Agreed. It's also impossible to have any meaningful conversation on Twitter. Nuance is completely lost. A joke or sarcasm? Forget about it. I may check Twitter once/week, but never post. It's honestly too stressful to try and figure out if what I post can be misinterpreted in some odd way because of the enforced brevity.
- hoorayimhelping 7y ago
  I think there was a marked improvement on my mood when I left twitter in like 2013. I'm way less irritated at small things, and way less annoyed at what appears to be pure ignorance and pure hatred over minor things. Reading some of the responses in this thread, I feel my emotions rising like they used to on twitter. I want to respond to a lot of these comments. But when I start typing out a response, I take a step back and say to myself, "what the fuck are you doing, man?" You're arguing some micro point on the internet. You're not going to change this person's mind, you're just trying to make a jab to get some karma so you can feel like your viewpoint is at least justified and makes sense to other people." Then I realize what a dumb waste of time this is - I already know that my viewpoint isn't all that radical and may people share it. There's no sense in getting upset about this, or trying to assert what I think. I've done it a thousand times before. So I'm gonna leave this thread and go play some video games instead. Hopefully that isn't too bro-y a thing to do.
- eej2ya1K 7y ago
  If you stay away from the anglosphere, twitter is pretty nice!
raxxorrax 7y ago
Sounds like the usual crybully story again. Nazis, sexists everywhere, etc. pp. The usual assertions without evidence are presented. Bad journalism in my opinion and people I basically view as crazy persons were proved to be correct again. Nice work.
pmlnr 7y ago
#GatersGonnaGate On a more serious tone: this level of "I'm offended by []" is actually becoming counter productive. It's pushing talented, good people, with controversial lifestyle/opinion out of open source, out of the very thing that, in theory, should welcome contributions from anyone as long as it's technically sound and clear. (Related read I found this morning: https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-drama https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-... ) Can we please go back to the nobody knows you're a dog times with pseudonyms and everything? EDIT: "nobody knows you're a dog" requires the one behind the pseudonym to stay faceless and the community accept that anyone can be behind a pseudonym and approach the contribution/work/etc without assumptions. It's hard. It's never been properly done, but maybe it's time for this.
- algesten 7y ago
  It's not a simple as that. Good open source collaboration often requires team work. Peoples' beliefs manifest in how they interact with other people. The code of conduct moderate that interaction. It's not uncommon to see arguments that start in disagreement around technical details escalate into full blown ad hominem attacks. This happened also in the olden days (linux kernel dev comes to mind), and it was never ok.
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  The problem isn’t pseudonyms, it’s assholes. People have worse behavior with pseudonymous accounts. Part of the problem with open source, or any large project or group, is that toxic personalities can “poison” the project and reduce overall output even if the toxic person is high performing.
- koolba 7y ago
  It’s difficult to parlay work done under a pseudonym into a paying gig. Personal branding becomes particularly difficult as getting paid becomes two steps short of a money laundering operation.
  - pmlnr 7y ago
    pseudonym != anonymity It's like a stage name, a face, a persona, for a specific purpose. Under that persona one should keep focused on the topic, within the guidelines, etc. but outside they could be their own person. Simple example: if the current trend continues, soon listening to certain music will become a problem. If someone listens to nordic black metal in their free time, outside of work communities, including online ones, so be it, because it has nothing to do with work communities. This would require communities to respect and realize the need for this.
javagram 7y ago
This guy was attacked for having a picture where he used the OK sign a year ago? Everyone knows what the OK sign means and it isn’t “white power” except in a 4chan meme. And only people who are heavily plugged into politics know about that meme, normal people keep using the symbol for what it’s always meant. Context is key with any hand symbol. I read the whole article and there didn’t seem to be any evidence of white supremacy either? Just an assertion that “move fast and break things” is somehow connected and similar other vague statements.
- matwood 7y ago
  > Context is key with any hand symbol. I was about to write that context is critical with all these secret hand signs. Apparently people who think any ok sign is some secret symbol have never watched a basketball game before.
  - fernandotakai 7y ago
    or played the circle game when they were kids/pre-teens. i mean, even malcolm in the middle had a whole episode dedicated to it[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glTOFPECNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glTOFPECNI
- Illniyar 7y ago
  As far as I can tell there wasn't any. Evidence of white supremacy I mean. The "instigating event" apparently opened the floodgates of people who felt marginalized and ostracized by the react community. I couldn't really figure out who those people are, and what events/situations they were referring to. I think it was mostly about women and misogyny after the initial blowout. Though I can't really pinpoint anything. This is actually quite frustrating as someone looking from the outside - no one is really saying what it's about but everyone is acting as if it's a very big deal.
  - barrkel 7y ago
    Performative outrage is a social currency. There may be something there, but outrage can easily become an end in itself. (I have no dog in this hunt, haven't looked at it at all, it's just a social dynamic that I've seen playing out several times, especially in Twitter pile-ons based on limited or misleading quotes.)
ativzzz 7y ago
While we should generally just be nice to each other and we should discourage harassment, this article doesn't seem to present much in the form of evidence of harassment and is mostly tweets of people apologizing for things, and as someone who is not a member of the React community, I'm not sure what for.
yummybear 7y ago
I wonder if other industries ever experience the same thing - like a carpenter convention that veers off into an argument about whether the screwdriver community is a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy?
- Grue3 7y ago
  Well, anyone who happens to include a picture of a screwdriver on a slide is obviously a fan of the neo-nazi rock band Skrewdriver.
lfarroco 7y ago
What's the actual instance of prejudice, harassment that is being reported? I saw a lot of very serious accusations in the article (the kind that is capable of ruining a carreer), but no links or screencaps of the actual wrongdoing.
- FlorianRappl 7y ago
  I fully agree. I also did not see any evidence. Very confused about this whole thing now...
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  The Mac girl gave a talk about how she doesn’t feel able to contribute well in tech due to people’s implicit biases and existing power systems, some people online pointed the finger at two leaders in the react community as examples of that. Over the weekend, the person who gave the talk experienced a ton of online harassment (par for course for being a woman online unfortunately) and some of the accusers really escalated what they were accusing the react devs of. I think there is likely good support in the girls original talk, an implicit understanding in JS land that the react community is has some deep bro encoding (bro meaning weightlifting, video games etc, not politics and hatred), and a misunderstanding that a deep bro encoding doesn’t mean you’re alt right trump supporters but it does mean that a “non bro” might have a hard time fitting in and experience relatively more harassment in that community than in others.
  - cpr 7y ago
    Please don't perpetuate lazy SJW "alt right" = "Trump supporters" memes.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    She wasn't getting abuse because she was a woman, she was getting abuse because she's a feminist picking fights with all men, and engaging in nasty witch-hunt behaviours. Literally, "men are biased against women even if they say they aren't and even if nobody can prove it". Men who promote that sort of hard left identity politics get lots of abuse too, which is fair game because it's about their opinions and not their identity.
leftyted 7y ago
I am skeptical that the "React community" is a hotbed of white supremacy. It seems wildly inappropriate to have a talk titled "White supremacy Capitalist Patriarchy" at a software conference. Is there a way to criticize that without being called a white supremacist? edit - here's the talk that led to this controversy (I got the title wrong): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQq_gZiZ-jg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQq_gZiZ-jg You be the judge. My understanding is that implicit bias tests are controversial among experts [0]. I also think that the talk is extraordinarily inappropriate (given the venue) and I'm not surprised that there was backlash. As always, the line between "criticism" and "harassment" is blurry. But, again, is there a way to criticize that talk without being labeled a harasser or being accused of "minimizing white supremacy"? [0] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/07-08/psychometric https://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/07-08/psychometric
- hyperdunc 7y ago
  There's little point in trying to avoid being called such things. The term has been redefined to be more encompassing and is used as a political weapon by those with an agenda.
- matwood 7y ago
  > But, again, is there a way to criticize that talk without being labeled a harasser or being accused of "minimizing white supremacy"? The technique of labeling your opponent or ascribing some extreme position to your opponent is as old as debating. What Twitter has done is make the technique more effective. Disagree with how antifa does things? You must be a nazi. Dislike Trump? You must be a USA hating communist. But you can also see this happen in the small scale. Disagree with a business partner about a business idea? You must just want to close down the business. It's all ridiculous posturing, and unfortunately seems to be used much more today. I also think it provides a smokescreen for when someone really is a nazi or racist.
FlorianRappl 7y ago
Sorry I'm too stupid for this one. Who wrote (or said) something about what or which person? Was the indicated talk the target here? Was the person giving the talk the target here? Who was attacked and why? On the surface that just seemed that the majority of the people contributing to some project (in this case React) are white people which presumably ends up in joining together and dismissing opinions coming from people associated with other groups. Was this the case? Where is the evidence for that? Is / was the discussion completely unrelated to this? Really - I don't get at it all. Maybe a language barrier. Don't get me wrong - if something like that occurred then a CoC / actions from the project leads must follow, but I just don't see it. Maybe the article is not clear about it. Thanks for helping me out on this one!
- Traubenfuchs 7y ago
  What happened? Actually a whole lot of nothing. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/cwvbsh/whats_going_on_with_reactjs_being_racist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/cwvbsh/whats_...
- wolco 7y ago
  Someone associated with react gave a speech on white supremacist capitalist patriarchy at a tech conf. Someone said this is a swf topic. People agreed. Orginal speaker cries Racism/male power and has other people back her up. She says she is leaving community. React leader turns off twitter for a few days and comes back with new racism react behaviour code. Most devs just keep thier heads down and keep coding.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Someone associated with react gave a speech on white supremacist capitalist patriarchy at a tech conf I’m curious - on what basis was this speaker given a slot to present this material at a tech conf?
    - username90 7y ago
      The conference focused on the tech environment and its people instead of technology itself.
gedy 7y ago
From reading the article, is the issue a React conference presenter showed a slide with "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy", and people tweeting about that negatively are seen as evidence of white supremacists, etc in the community?..
skrebbel 7y ago
I use React and I lift weights (badly), yet this particular drama went by me. The article doesn't clarify matters much, can anyone try to tl;dr the situation in an objective way? I mean, I just read apologies from people I respect (Ken Wheeler and Dan Abramov) but I'm not sure what they did wrong and the article doesn't really say.
- literallycancer 7y ago
  They must have forgot the daily Two Tweets Hate.
wolco 7y ago
A lot to parse here. "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" tech topics at tech conferences are probably not the best venue. Feels a little like false advertising if I expected to learn something about react. Mac describing the react community as bro-code break things.. male energy as awful and something to be changed. 90% of the community is male and their energy made the react community what it is today. Exclude them and react has 1% of the market. So many other programming languages have conferences that focus on the language.. why is react different. Mac leaving the community sounds strange. What does it mean? She won't use react and will switch to vue? She will never code again (there are other libruaries/languages) What is a code of conduct for react and how does it affect a normal developer. Can someone still use react or do they need to be vetted first?. Will they change the licease so if someone breaks these rules they will not allow react on any sites they developed?
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whalesalad 7y ago
Whenever events like this happen there is rarely an unbiased account of what was said. I still have no clue what was said by any one of these parties. It would better serve the community at large to be able to interpret their own conclusions from the behavior than read these inflammatory click bait posts. I’m reminded of the bullshit “dongle” incident from a few years ago.
mcintyre1994 7y ago
> Another user, designer and writer Heydon Pickering, tweeted a joke suggesting that users in the React community were obsessed with lifting weights, guns, Trump and free market ideals. ...What.
- AimForTheBushes 7y ago
  None of this makes sense.
eej2ya1K 7y ago
The peculiarly American coalition of political extremists, liars, con artists and mentally ill people wins again, and the longer they keep winning the worse the backlash is going to be when it comes. Just say no to codes of conduct. Say no to victim-ideology. Say no to politics. And most importantly, say "fuck you" to anyone who dares make the claim that everything is politics.
jpdb 7y ago
I always see "both sides" participating in HN comments, but I overwhelmingly see people shooting down CoC's (and similar documents) here as opposed to supporting them. Here's my personal take as someone who is very socially liberal. I would enjoy living in a world where these sort of documents are not necessary. However, people are absolutely discriminated against in open source projects and these documents aim to alleviate some of those pains. This sort of rule is necessary as an unregulated expectation of kindness isn't working (eg "be excellent to each other"). The prospect of anonymity could help, but cannot be expected. People shouldn't have to hide who they are as a person in order to contribute. People also make a weird claim that people are more offended by things and I don't see how that's a bad thing. I would prefer society that calls out these intolerances instead of them just dealing with it. If gay people "just dealt with" the adversities they faced then we'd still be persecuting them. Part of "being offended" is being vocal about people doing and saying terrible things in order to put societal pressure on them to change. There are some legitimate concerns around CoC's and the like, but the people protesting them aren't attempting to help solve those issues, they're doing so to get rid of these rules and maintain the status quo. Hope this at least exposes some people on the fence to some of the reasons people support CoCs. I can't speak for every socially liberal person but I'll happily engage in some back-and-forth if you disagree with any points I made or just want more information.
- pmlnr 7y ago
  > People shouldn't have to hide who they are as a person in order to contribute. Hiding - no. Compartmentalize - yes. Some topics have nothing to do with others and this should be respected just as much as "who they are". Political views vs code qualit and contribution is like this. The point is to always apply the proper compartment. If someone is an a*hole in life, but not in work, nobody should approach the problem from the work angle.
- username90 7y ago
  Reading the CoC it seems like it would forbid these kinds of witch-hunts so maybe it was added to protect them against identity politics?
- finnthehuman 7y ago
notus 7y ago
This is insane.... attacking Abramov for using an Ok hand? attacking Wheeler for sticking up for react developers when someone implied they were a bunch of tech bro meathead gun toting trump supporters? I'm irritated they even apologized
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robimusprime 7y ago
and this is why Twitter gives me cancer.

40 points by jchanimal 7y ago

Maybe the solution is to just leave that cesspool that is Twitter? Seems like the harassment has less to do with being a minority and more with angering the Shitter mob which can happen to anyone.

Grue3 7y ago
The solution is to leave the cesspool that is JavaScript. For some reason these sorts of "scandals" only happen with Node.js, React and other JS libraries.
- pmlnr 7y ago
  LOL. - https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-drama https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-... - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-apologizes-for-years-of-being-a-jerk-takes-time-off-to-learn-empathy/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-apolo... - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/freebsd_code_of_conduct_controversy/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/freebsd_code_of_con... It's everywhere. The problem is ultra sensitive people from mainly the US.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    And implementing a COC is basically a cease-and-desist declaration now. I would never agree to any of that.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Not just JS, any sort of webdevs. You don’t get this in communities where there are actual technical skills required to participate. When was the last time a scandal rocked the ASM world? Never.
  - ulisesrmzroche 7y ago
    That’s because no one uses it.
    - goatinaboat 7y ago
      Long may webdevs go on believing that!
csmattryder 7y ago
I wish more people would take this advice. When you leave the site after deleting your account, and happen to revisit it (via clicking the OP), you realise that everyone is incredibly furious about so much - brexit, sexism, someone clumsily articulated a point in 280 characters. Being amped up to 11 for a good chunk of your day is definitely not healthy for you, and probably makes you lose sight of the actual problems going on around you.
- eej2ya1K 7y ago
  I follow about a thousand people on twitter, all of whom I met IRL. Not a single person tweets about brexit, sexism, politics or ideology.
matwood 7y ago
Agreed. It's also impossible to have any meaningful conversation on Twitter. Nuance is completely lost. A joke or sarcasm? Forget about it. I may check Twitter once/week, but never post. It's honestly too stressful to try and figure out if what I post can be misinterpreted in some odd way because of the enforced brevity.
hoorayimhelping 7y ago
I think there was a marked improvement on my mood when I left twitter in like 2013. I'm way less irritated at small things, and way less annoyed at what appears to be pure ignorance and pure hatred over minor things. Reading some of the responses in this thread, I feel my emotions rising like they used to on twitter. I want to respond to a lot of these comments. But when I start typing out a response, I take a step back and say to myself, "what the fuck are you doing, man?" You're arguing some micro point on the internet. You're not going to change this person's mind, you're just trying to make a jab to get some karma so you can feel like your viewpoint is at least justified and makes sense to other people." Then I realize what a dumb waste of time this is - I already know that my viewpoint isn't all that radical and may people share it. There's no sense in getting upset about this, or trying to assert what I think. I've done it a thousand times before. So I'm gonna leave this thread and go play some video games instead. Hopefully that isn't too bro-y a thing to do.
eej2ya1K 7y ago
If you stay away from the anglosphere, twitter is pretty nice!

raxxorrax 7y ago

Sounds like the usual crybully story again. Nazis, sexists everywhere, etc. pp. The usual assertions without evidence are presented. Bad journalism in my opinion and people I basically view as crazy persons were proved to be correct again. Nice work.

pmlnr 7y ago

#GatersGonnaGate On a more serious tone: this level of "I'm offended by []" is actually becoming counter productive. It's pushing talented, good people, with controversial lifestyle/opinion out of open source, out of the very thing that, in theory, should welcome contributions from anyone as long as it's technically sound and clear. (Related read I found this morning: https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-drama https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-... ) Can we please go back to the nobody knows you're a dog times with pseudonyms and everything? EDIT: "nobody knows you're a dog" requires the one behind the pseudonym to stay faceless and the community accept that anyone can be behind a pseudonym and approach the contribution/work/etc without assumptions. It's hard. It's never been properly done, but maybe it's time for this.

algesten 7y ago
It's not a simple as that. Good open source collaboration often requires team work. Peoples' beliefs manifest in how they interact with other people. The code of conduct moderate that interaction. It's not uncommon to see arguments that start in disagreement around technical details escalate into full blown ad hominem attacks. This happened also in the olden days (linux kernel dev comes to mind), and it was never ok.
0xB31B1B 7y ago
The problem isn’t pseudonyms, it’s assholes. People have worse behavior with pseudonymous accounts. Part of the problem with open source, or any large project or group, is that toxic personalities can “poison” the project and reduce overall output even if the toxic person is high performing.
koolba 7y ago
It’s difficult to parlay work done under a pseudonym into a paying gig. Personal branding becomes particularly difficult as getting paid becomes two steps short of a money laundering operation.
- pmlnr 7y ago
  pseudonym != anonymity It's like a stage name, a face, a persona, for a specific purpose. Under that persona one should keep focused on the topic, within the guidelines, etc. but outside they could be their own person. Simple example: if the current trend continues, soon listening to certain music will become a problem. If someone listens to nordic black metal in their free time, outside of work communities, including online ones, so be it, because it has nothing to do with work communities. This would require communities to respect and realize the need for this.

javagram 7y ago

This guy was attacked for having a picture where he used the OK sign a year ago? Everyone knows what the OK sign means and it isn’t “white power” except in a 4chan meme. And only people who are heavily plugged into politics know about that meme, normal people keep using the symbol for what it’s always meant. Context is key with any hand symbol. I read the whole article and there didn’t seem to be any evidence of white supremacy either? Just an assertion that “move fast and break things” is somehow connected and similar other vague statements.

matwood 7y ago
> Context is key with any hand symbol. I was about to write that context is critical with all these secret hand signs. Apparently people who think any ok sign is some secret symbol have never watched a basketball game before.
- fernandotakai 7y ago
  or played the circle game when they were kids/pre-teens. i mean, even malcolm in the middle had a whole episode dedicated to it[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glTOFPECNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glTOFPECNI
Illniyar 7y ago
As far as I can tell there wasn't any. Evidence of white supremacy I mean. The "instigating event" apparently opened the floodgates of people who felt marginalized and ostracized by the react community. I couldn't really figure out who those people are, and what events/situations they were referring to. I think it was mostly about women and misogyny after the initial blowout. Though I can't really pinpoint anything. This is actually quite frustrating as someone looking from the outside - no one is really saying what it's about but everyone is acting as if it's a very big deal.
- barrkel 7y ago
  Performative outrage is a social currency. There may be something there, but outrage can easily become an end in itself. (I have no dog in this hunt, haven't looked at it at all, it's just a social dynamic that I've seen playing out several times, especially in Twitter pile-ons based on limited or misleading quotes.)

ativzzz 7y ago

While we should generally just be nice to each other and we should discourage harassment, this article doesn't seem to present much in the form of evidence of harassment and is mostly tweets of people apologizing for things, and as someone who is not a member of the React community, I'm not sure what for.

yummybear 7y ago

I wonder if other industries ever experience the same thing - like a carpenter convention that veers off into an argument about whether the screwdriver community is a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy?

Grue3 7y ago
Well, anyone who happens to include a picture of a screwdriver on a slide is obviously a fan of the neo-nazi rock band Skrewdriver.

lfarroco 7y ago

What's the actual instance of prejudice, harassment that is being reported? I saw a lot of very serious accusations in the article (the kind that is capable of ruining a carreer), but no links or screencaps of the actual wrongdoing.

FlorianRappl 7y ago
I fully agree. I also did not see any evidence. Very confused about this whole thing now...
0xB31B1B 7y ago
The Mac girl gave a talk about how she doesn’t feel able to contribute well in tech due to people’s implicit biases and existing power systems, some people online pointed the finger at two leaders in the react community as examples of that. Over the weekend, the person who gave the talk experienced a ton of online harassment (par for course for being a woman online unfortunately) and some of the accusers really escalated what they were accusing the react devs of. I think there is likely good support in the girls original talk, an implicit understanding in JS land that the react community is has some deep bro encoding (bro meaning weightlifting, video games etc, not politics and hatred), and a misunderstanding that a deep bro encoding doesn’t mean you’re alt right trump supporters but it does mean that a “non bro” might have a hard time fitting in and experience relatively more harassment in that community than in others.
- cpr 7y ago
  Please don't perpetuate lazy SJW "alt right" = "Trump supporters" memes.
- repolfx 7y ago
  She wasn't getting abuse because she was a woman, she was getting abuse because she's a feminist picking fights with all men, and engaging in nasty witch-hunt behaviours. Literally, "men are biased against women even if they say they aren't and even if nobody can prove it". Men who promote that sort of hard left identity politics get lots of abuse too, which is fair game because it's about their opinions and not their identity.

leftyted 7y ago

I am skeptical that the "React community" is a hotbed of white supremacy. It seems wildly inappropriate to have a talk titled "White supremacy Capitalist Patriarchy" at a software conference. Is there a way to criticize that without being called a white supremacist? edit - here's the talk that led to this controversy (I got the title wrong): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQq_gZiZ-jg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQq_gZiZ-jg You be the judge. My understanding is that implicit bias tests are controversial among experts [0]. I also think that the talk is extraordinarily inappropriate (given the venue) and I'm not surprised that there was backlash. As always, the line between "criticism" and "harassment" is blurry. But, again, is there a way to criticize that talk without being labeled a harasser or being accused of "minimizing white supremacy"? [0] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/07-08/psychometric https://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/07-08/psychometric

hyperdunc 7y ago
There's little point in trying to avoid being called such things. The term has been redefined to be more encompassing and is used as a political weapon by those with an agenda.
matwood 7y ago
> But, again, is there a way to criticize that talk without being labeled a harasser or being accused of "minimizing white supremacy"? The technique of labeling your opponent or ascribing some extreme position to your opponent is as old as debating. What Twitter has done is make the technique more effective. Disagree with how antifa does things? You must be a nazi. Dislike Trump? You must be a USA hating communist. But you can also see this happen in the small scale. Disagree with a business partner about a business idea? You must just want to close down the business. It's all ridiculous posturing, and unfortunately seems to be used much more today. I also think it provides a smokescreen for when someone really is a nazi or racist.

FlorianRappl 7y ago

Sorry I'm too stupid for this one. Who wrote (or said) something about what or which person? Was the indicated talk the target here? Was the person giving the talk the target here? Who was attacked and why? On the surface that just seemed that the majority of the people contributing to some project (in this case React) are white people which presumably ends up in joining together and dismissing opinions coming from people associated with other groups. Was this the case? Where is the evidence for that? Is / was the discussion completely unrelated to this? Really - I don't get at it all. Maybe a language barrier. Don't get me wrong - if something like that occurred then a CoC / actions from the project leads must follow, but I just don't see it. Maybe the article is not clear about it. Thanks for helping me out on this one!

Traubenfuchs 7y ago
What happened? Actually a whole lot of nothing. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/cwvbsh/whats_going_on_with_reactjs_being_racist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/cwvbsh/whats_...
wolco 7y ago
Someone associated with react gave a speech on white supremacist capitalist patriarchy at a tech conf. Someone said this is a swf topic. People agreed. Orginal speaker cries Racism/male power and has other people back her up. She says she is leaving community. React leader turns off twitter for a few days and comes back with new racism react behaviour code. Most devs just keep thier heads down and keep coding.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Someone associated with react gave a speech on white supremacist capitalist patriarchy at a tech conf I’m curious - on what basis was this speaker given a slot to present this material at a tech conf?
  - username90 7y ago
    The conference focused on the tech environment and its people instead of technology itself.

gedy 7y ago

From reading the article, is the issue a React conference presenter showed a slide with "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy", and people tweeting about that negatively are seen as evidence of white supremacists, etc in the community?..

skrebbel 7y ago

I use React and I lift weights (badly), yet this particular drama went by me. The article doesn't clarify matters much, can anyone try to tl;dr the situation in an objective way? I mean, I just read apologies from people I respect (Ken Wheeler and Dan Abramov) but I'm not sure what they did wrong and the article doesn't really say.

literallycancer 7y ago
They must have forgot the daily Two Tweets Hate.

wolco 7y ago

A lot to parse here. "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" tech topics at tech conferences are probably not the best venue. Feels a little like false advertising if I expected to learn something about react. Mac describing the react community as bro-code break things.. male energy as awful and something to be changed. 90% of the community is male and their energy made the react community what it is today. Exclude them and react has 1% of the market. So many other programming languages have conferences that focus on the language.. why is react different. Mac leaving the community sounds strange. What does it mean? She won't use react and will switch to vue? She will never code again (there are other libruaries/languages) What is a code of conduct for react and how does it affect a normal developer. Can someone still use react or do they need to be vetted first?. Will they change the licease so if someone breaks these rules they will not allow react on any sites they developed?

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whalesalad 7y ago

Whenever events like this happen there is rarely an unbiased account of what was said. I still have no clue what was said by any one of these parties. It would better serve the community at large to be able to interpret their own conclusions from the behavior than read these inflammatory click bait posts. I’m reminded of the bullshit “dongle” incident from a few years ago.

mcintyre1994 7y ago

> Another user, designer and writer Heydon Pickering, tweeted a joke suggesting that users in the React community were obsessed with lifting weights, guns, Trump and free market ideals. ...What.

AimForTheBushes 7y ago
None of this makes sense.

eej2ya1K 7y ago

The peculiarly American coalition of political extremists, liars, con artists and mentally ill people wins again, and the longer they keep winning the worse the backlash is going to be when it comes. Just say no to codes of conduct. Say no to victim-ideology. Say no to politics. And most importantly, say "fuck you" to anyone who dares make the claim that everything is politics.

jpdb 7y ago

I always see "both sides" participating in HN comments, but I overwhelmingly see people shooting down CoC's (and similar documents) here as opposed to supporting them. Here's my personal take as someone who is very socially liberal. I would enjoy living in a world where these sort of documents are not necessary. However, people are absolutely discriminated against in open source projects and these documents aim to alleviate some of those pains. This sort of rule is necessary as an unregulated expectation of kindness isn't working (eg "be excellent to each other"). The prospect of anonymity could help, but cannot be expected. People shouldn't have to hide who they are as a person in order to contribute. People also make a weird claim that people are more offended by things and I don't see how that's a bad thing. I would prefer society that calls out these intolerances instead of them just dealing with it. If gay people "just dealt with" the adversities they faced then we'd still be persecuting them. Part of "being offended" is being vocal about people doing and saying terrible things in order to put societal pressure on them to change. There are some legitimate concerns around CoC's and the like, but the people protesting them aren't attempting to help solve those issues, they're doing so to get rid of these rules and maintain the status quo. Hope this at least exposes some people on the fence to some of the reasons people support CoCs. I can't speak for every socially liberal person but I'll happily engage in some back-and-forth if you disagree with any points I made or just want more information.

pmlnr 7y ago
> People shouldn't have to hide who they are as a person in order to contribute. Hiding - no. Compartmentalize - yes. Some topics have nothing to do with others and this should be respected just as much as "who they are". Political views vs code qualit and contribution is like this. The point is to always apply the proper compartment. If someone is an a*hole in life, but not in work, nobody should approach the problem from the work angle.
username90 7y ago
Reading the CoC it seems like it would forbid these kinds of witch-hunts so maybe it was added to protect them against identity politics?
finnthehuman 7y ago

notus 7y ago

This is insane.... attacking Abramov for using an Ok hand? attacking Wheeler for sticking up for react developers when someone implied they were a bunch of tech bro meathead gun toting trump supporters? I'm irritated they even apologized

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robimusprime 7y ago

and this is why Twitter gives me cancer.