26 ms·

I personally think this is awesome. I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn'

• neonate 7y ago
  Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company. If I call you up and I say something horrible to you on the phone, the phone company doesn't get in trouble. But the moment they started taking stuff down that wasn't illegal because somebody screamed, they basically lost their right to be viewed as a carrier. And now all of a sudden they've taken on a liability. They're sliding down this slippery slope into ruin, where the left wants them to take down the right, the right wants them to take down the left, and now they have no more friends, they have no allies. Traditionally the libertarian-leaning Republicans and Democrats would have stood up in principle for the common carriers, but now they won't. So my guess is, as soon as Congress (this day is coming if not already here...)... the day is coming when the politicians realize that these social media platforms are picking the next president, the next congressman. They're literally picking, and they have the power to pick, so they will be controlled by the government."
  • padraic7a 7y ago
    Being a publisher might get you off in the States, but in a lot of countries publishers are held to be legally culpable for material they publish. So publishing nazis, online abuse, illegal content etc is a legal issue.
    • weberc2 7y ago
      > If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it.
      • kelnos 7y ago
        What about jurisdictions where the act of allowing something to be published will trigger a fine or other bad consequences? Doesn't it make sense to pro-actively remove things then?
    • mch82 7y ago
      This is also true in the US. See my reply to the parent. The Naval quote is wrong.
      • anm89 7y ago
        He's exactly right on it. Facebook is not a court. If certain speech is illegal, how would they even decide? If certain speech is illegal, have a court label it illegal and send them an order to remove. That concept exists within our system.
        • mch82 7y ago
          Naval is exactly wrong. Facebook must choose between being a “platform” like a phone company and being a “publisher” like a newspaper or broadcaster. The rules are different and the accountability is different, which is why Fb lawyers spent years and millions arguing for “platform” status. Edit: my main goal for posting my comment is to prevent some startup on HN from reading the parent & deciding to classify itself as a “publisher” only to find later that was a huge mistake. I’m not a lawyer & they shouldn’t take my advice, but hopefully they’ll at least double check with someone who is.
• jtms 7y ago
  I would advocate for Joe Rogan, he is a voice of openness and willingness to talk about things rather than just shutting down conversations because you might not agree. He is also a great listener. The world needs more people like Rogan.
  • anm89 7y ago
    Actually I generally agree with this. I think he has some distinct flaws too. I just didn't want this to become a referendum on Joe Rogan.
  • midnighttoker 7y ago
    You should shut down conversations with nazis and the far right figures he regularly has as guests. Joe Rogan platforms these people for profit. Joe Rogan is not a good person.
    • hayd 7y ago
      What "Nazis" and "far right" figures are you talking about? Can you give examples of both? Thanks.
  • Brakenshire 7y ago
    What he does is allow someone to explain their beliefs, but he makes no real effort to establish evidence to support or oppose that. It’s actually perfectl content for the internet especially for the really out-there interviewees, because people inside the relevant filter bubble can watch and feel their beliefs are being validated, and someone outside can watch and be entertained by a freak show. Each person can watch the same content and be entertained for their own purposes. I’m not sure how healthy it is for society though.
• pnw_hazor 7y ago
  Yes. I agree that companies shouldn't become adhoc moral arbiters. beholden to social media campaigns, or the like. However, the bigger problem is that companies with international presence are going to have an increasingly difficult time navigating legal sanctions or directives from the various countries they may sell to or operate in. The challenge comes when a company is faced with being closed out of a large market if they don't comply with another country's legal directives. While, the best/right answer might be to ignore those countries, the reality of having to withdraw from valuable markets would be challenging. Though, while it may seem like new problem, non-digital industries have been dealing with this kind of thing for a long time. Maybe the WTO, or the like, will develop fair trade/IP regime to guard against enabling a country to block or sanction international digital/media companies for violating local laws. But I wouldn't expect anything like to happen soon because countries are not to keen on giving up sovereignty. Maybe spontaneous digital trade wars will become a thing. edit: typo as usual
  • BlueTemplar 7y ago
    That's what Google did with China.
• anarchodev 7y ago
  > I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product Refusing to serve a customer when you disagree with that customer's goal is pretty far from being a "moral arbiter for society." Keep in mind that anyone is free to use other services (or roll their own) and gitlab can't do anything about that. Neither would it be overreaching for the workers building that product to request a say in how it's used. > If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal means. Refusing someone a service you provide is a completely legal action. This has never been illegal afaik. In many cases I can think of the users wouldn't be actually breaking any laws, which isn't the same as saying that their actions aren't immoral. > The tech unicorns screwed themselves over BIG TIME, the second they stopped claiming they were just infrastructure and platforms and got into content moderation. They will now forever be a pawn of whoever has some power and has some agenda. In this last sentence, who are you claiming has power? It seems to me if I had power I wouldn't bother trying to persuade my boss not to do business with certain agencies, I'd just make it illegal and force them to change. Does that seem like a course of action available to gitlab employees?
  • madrox 7y ago
    > Refusing to serve a customer when you disagree with that customer's goal is pretty far from being a "moral arbiter for society." This sounds really good until someone refuses to bake a wedding cake for a couple because they're gay. The supreme court ruled in favor of the baker. You're advocating for a world where that's ok. Is that the world you want to live in?
    • kelnos 7y ago
      I think these bakers suck, but I do agree with the Supreme Court. A private business should be allowed to refuse to serve customers for whatever reason they choose. The only exception should be legal monopolies; they shouldn't be allowed to discriminate, because there are otherwise no other options.
• graeme 7y ago
  You'd be surprised at what is "not illegal". Every community moderates. You can make an argument that some sites have moderated too much, or been too overtly political. But every community moderates, and has to. This can be demonstrated with a simple example. Guess what isn't illegal? Spam! It should be obvious that FB and Twitter etc have to take spam down though. Then there's abusive behaviour. Stalking, harassment, etc. Often not illegal, but hurts a platform. Better take that down. What about propaganda? They should let it all go? That sure sounds like a....phone network. Actually wait, it sounds more like the news media, which has been regulated for decades. A zero moderation policy would likely have led to demands for regulation, too. And then there's the massive category of topics which are not illegal, but horrifying. Have zero moderation, and you end up as 4chan or worse. -------- I'm generally in favour of keeping politics out of things, but your "we take stuff down only for a court order" is a naive view. Literally every forum moderates, they have no choice.
  • clairity 7y ago
    good point, but from a tactical perspective, not moderating might have made sense, to force lawmakers' hands in passing stronger laws about spam, harrassment, propaganda, etc. they'd have a regulatory shield and probably retain carrier status, rather than sticking their necks out by selectively moderating content. a moderate amount of moderation is my preference, but i see the value in freer speech zones on the internet (that i can mostly ignore).
    • graeme 7y ago
      They do have a regulatory shield though. Section 230 allows platforms to moderate their sites, while leaving them not liable for any content they do leave up. It's considered speech of the user. This has come to a head as plarforms have grown larger. Note that even if some platforms were strictly neutral, they'd still be affected by the changes the government is proposing. It would have been very unlikely that none of the major platforms would have moderated beyond legal minimums. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communica...
• p4bl0 7y ago
  That's one part of it. The part were employee cannot discuss politics at work is very problematic however. What about unionizing?
  • journalctl 7y ago
    It is ostensibly illegal to prevent employees from unionizing in the United States.
    • p4bl0 7y ago
      Then the requirement to not discuss politics at work must be illegal too.
      • journalctl 7y ago
        No? You can’t forbid people from forming a union, but you can forbid things like arguing about the president.
        • drewbug01 7y ago
          Discussing things you may want to unionize over are often connected to the larger political realm, and cannot be severed. Here’s an example: should a group of unionizing employees be able to say “vote for candidate foo, because they support legislation that aligns with our unions goals?” Courts have said yes, and I agree.
        • p4bl0 7y ago
          The President, the Congress, the Senate, every political instance has a direct link to labor code for example. They can make or remove laws that have a direct impact on working conditions. Unions must be able to talk about all this.
• brnt 7y ago
  'Arbiters of morality of society' is only possible because American capitalism is rigged to favor gravitation towards one or a few consolidated entities. This need not be. When Americans ask, where's Europe's Google, I smile, because the landscape, for now, seems to prevent consolidation into a handful of olicharch, and therefore no one company can arbit anything. There's always loads of choice, or there should be. Next, the bystander effect. Is it commendable a company watches as bad actors use its platform up until a court ruling puts an end to it/ Another area where Europe has history and Americans would do well to learn.
  • vlunkr 7y ago
    > where's Europe's Google Europe's Google is Google. Everyone there uses it, so why would you need your own?
• xenocyon 7y ago
  Counterpoint: many tech workers want some agency over what they are building and don't want to be forced to work on nefarious applications. I don't seek an outsized claim on society but I do reserve the right to decide what my hands will - or won't - build.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • prepend 7y ago
    That’s why I like posts like this from GitLab. They are clear what their priorities are so you can choose what to build with your hands. Lots of people don’t care or don’t have time to evaluate the thousands or millions of customers using software. The evaluation never ends so even if you shut off the really bad one, there will be another. Picking a legal limit let’s me focus on other things.
    • RavingGoat 7y ago
      Gitlab is a common whore. They'll do whatever you want as long as you are paying.
      • prepend 7y ago
        Isn’t that why whores are awesome? Who is going to frequent whores who won’t do stuff? Also, what’s so bad about common whores? Whores are people too, I try not to judge people based on their chosen profession.
  • LegitShady 7y ago
    nobody is forcing you to do anything - You're free to find a new job at any time, unless you're indentured and you didn't tell anyone. If you want to decide what to build go into business for yourself. If you're working for someone else you have the choice to either work for them and do what they want or quit.
    • 7y ago
• burtonator 7y ago
  I wish it was that simple honestly. If Google is doing business with nazis then as a consumer I have absolutely every right to boycott Google.
  • war1025 7y ago
    Consumers have every right not to do business with someone for any reason they please. Generally where things go into lawsuit territory is when a business refuses to provide service to someone based on something that has protected status.
  • gknapp 7y ago
    In this case, it's likely that Nazis would be labeled a terrorist organization, or a wartime enemy, and would be subject to federally-enforced economic sanctions. It actually would be illegal for Google to do business with Nazis.
    • klyrs 7y ago
      I'm not so sure. During WW2, Nazis enjoyed strong political support from the American Right, and the discussion is known as The Great Debate. It was the ambush at Pearl Harbor, and not a clear moral consensus, which closed the debate.
    • kevinmchugh 7y ago
      We're talking about Illinois Nazis, not 1945 Nazis. The bums who won their court case - it doesn't seem like the law is stopping them.
• jka 7y ago
  The trouble with libertarianism is, ultimately, that libertarians only care about themselves. The kind of policy that GitLab is proposing here is fine - or even aspirational, under a certain lens - until one day you wake up and find that the same software is being used to destroy your community and compatriots. How could that happen? Isn't this free speech to max utility? Isn't that flawless? No, it's free utility to anyone - and you might eventually find that the people who are using it don't have you and your neighbours interests at heart. The design of technology is _not_ ideologically neutral. It contains embedded biases and beliefs - even if they were subconscious or part of a community mindset - and those can and will be changed and overruled over time. Careless licensing of technology will lead to the overriding and subversion of those ideologies, in ways that many of us would find abhorrent. If you'd like to support that on the basis of free speech, you should ask yourself whether the worst re-applications of these technologies would still allow you to speak freely.
  • friendlybus 7y ago
    You say that like the rest of the gov does not exist. The mere knowledge that a dangerous program exists can be reported to the FBI with all relevant information without Github having to run a gestapo firewall on all content it hosts.
    • jka 7y ago
      Can everyone in the world appeal to the FBI?
      • friendlybus 7y ago
        Yes? No? I don't know what happens when an Iranian sees a hostile app on Github to his interests and then reports it to the FBI. It'll probably work for countries close to the US. Microsoft will probably make relevant info available to the UK, but obviously not Iran. I mean if your qualifying rule is everyone in the world, you've given Github the job of being world police. A role that won't make an earth shattering impact because bad actors can make those same programs offline. Why not have it in the light where we can see it coming? Being world police is the gov's job. Github should be treated as an american service and be required to respect only the gov's the US cares about and let the rest of the world use it on an "as is" basis.
• KirinDave 7y ago
  But don't you think individual employees have a responsibility to recognize when they're contributing to causes they don't like, and possibly resigning? Doesn't this rule therefore forbid employees from discussing and acting collectively over this, which in the US is a federally guaranteed right?
• ProAm 7y ago
  While I largely agree, history has shown this wont fair well for humanity either. Look at IBM and the Holocaust [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
  • eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    The flurry of downvotes is telling.
    • V-2 7y ago
      That comment didn't exactly add much value to discussion, given that this exact (and fairly obvious) example is prominently featured in the article, under a headline "Historical precedent". > If you can see how people might respond to IBM, infamous for providing technology that helped the Nazis in World War II [...]
    • ProAm 7y ago
      > The flurry of downvotes is telling. Im not sure I understand the comment?
• kissgyorgy 7y ago
  You are the kind of guy who would see a murder, would says "Not my problem." Not great. Everyone should be the moral compass of everyone else. The society nowadays seems fucking terrible.
• adamsea 7y ago
  To quote someone quoted in the article, "As a commenter identified as "casiotone" observed, "If your values aren't used to inform who you're doing business with, why do you bother pretending to have values at all? This [merge request] demonstrates that you don't have any values except 'we want to make money, and it doesn't matter who gets hurt.'""
  • prepend 7y ago
    Because values are useful for different things. I think casiotone is confusing lack of values with specific values. GitLab has values but they don’t include stopping specific companies or orgs from using their service, other than illegal stuff. They even call out efficiency as a value. That’s not the same as “we want to make money.” An artist may value art more than relationships so they are a jerk to helpers. This doesn’t mean the artist lacks values or that the artist wants to make money. It just shows specific values.
    • fake-name 7y ago
      Saying "we don't care about anything but whether it's legal" is a value. Not deciding is a decision, here.
    • trickstra 7y ago
      > I think casiotone is confusing lack of values with specific values. GitLab has values... Yes, as pointed out above, the value is demonstrated to be "we want to make money, and it doesn't matter who gets hurt". Casiotone didn't say they don't have any values at all.
• gbanfalvi 7y ago
  > The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. They built these services. They are, ate least in part, responsible for how they work and the consequences of what they built. The content they’re serving and data has a meaning to us. You can’t pretend that a social network doesn’t have a role in bringing anti-vaxxers together and enabling them to organize. You can’t pretend that an advertising platform doesn’t have a role in distributing misleading information by business or other interests. > If these users are breaking laws... Laws aren’t the ultimate arbiter of everything. There’s a reason they change and evolve over time. Personal responsibility is not a law, yet we expect everyone to have some.
  • wolco 7y ago
    Social networks bring people together. Advertising sends a message to groups of people. Roads allow people to travel by car. Roads are being uses to bring people to places where murders happen. You can't pretend that roads have no role. So many things had a role.. power, internet, the company who made the computer they used, teachers, friends (or lack of), parents.. why decidd that social media or ads is the problem. Social media has reduced the number of cults.
    • cloverich 7y ago
      A better analogy would be if you could pay the construction crews to organize all right-leaning but non-trump supporters down new, secret roads that only they see, and then to let you line it with propaganda that, again, only they see. (Replace right leaning and trump with whatever).
    • gbanfalvi 7y ago
      Come on, there’s a difference between building a service or a tool that ends up getting used for problematic purposes (ISIS used lots of Toyotas, is Toyota evil?) and knowingly allow and even even enable problematic purposes (imagine if Toyota recognized ISIS as a rising power in the Middle East and started selling them trucks). We can always replace words in other peoples’ statements to make them sound silly, but I’ll roll with it. What if these roads provided, as part of the government’s offering, rest stops and gathering points exclusively for murderers? — Just like how a social network allows problematic groups people to gather and enable them. What if certain schools accepted money from anyone and in exchange taught kids any curriculum, including murder? — Just how some services bombard people with outright lies, because special interests pay them to. If your service has a massive reach and influence you can’t just say “nope, we don’t do politics”. It’s simply not honest.
• wpietri 7y ago
  "Don't discuss politics at work," is a political statement. It rules particular views in bounds and rules others out. Similarly any business ends up making moral choices. It's unavoidable. To act in the world is to have impact. To consciously act is to intend particular impact. Commerce is inherently social; you choose to serve certain people in certain ways, with particular outcomes intended. These choices are inherently moral. The notion that we should ignore that sometimes is of course a strongly political view. And when it pretends to be non-political, I think it's also incoherent.
  • hellllllllooo 7y ago
    Thank you for writing what I was thinking so eloquently. Everyone's life is effected by politics and GitLab is making a political decision as to which politics are acceptable to discuss at work. Politics will still be discussed, but only the politics that those deciding deem acceptable and this inherently political.
  • dcolkitt 7y ago
    You're stretching the definition of "political" to such a degree that it renders the word meaningless. You're basically claiming that any act that has any impact on anyone is political. That it's basically impossible for an organization to be non-political or even less political than any other organization. And that simply flies in the face of common sense. Only the most hardcore post-modernist would deny that the NRA is a more political organization than the IETF. So obviously some dimension of "politicization" exists beyond just "acting in the world". And if an organization wants to be less political, one way to do so is by relying less on political considerations when making decisions. With "political" simply meaning topics that are widely and commonly considered to be political. In the same way that the NRA is widely and commonly considered to be political in a way that the IETF is not. You can debate about whether it actually is a lofty goal for an organization to strive to be non-political. Certainly there are many counter-arguments for why organizations should be more political. But I don't think you can deny that the dimension exists in some meaningful and actionable way unless you completely throw common sense out the window.
    • 7y ago
• empath75 7y ago
  I, as a user, and as an employee am going to refuse to do business with nazis or do business with people who do business again. It’s a free country and I’m allowed to do that, and companies like GitLab can do whatever they want with that information. I’m not the only person like me, and they’re going to have a choice as to whether they want to do business with nazis or so business with people like me. They don’t get to just wave their hands and make these sorts of decisions go disappear. They have to make a choice.
  • doubleunplussed 7y ago
    If someone replies to this comment saying they are a Nazi, are you going to stop using hacker news? Perhaps you're restricting yourself to only paid services, but that still doesn't seem like a tenable plan. Nazis buy coffee from the same cafés as you, they ride the same trains as you. If you think people should be removed from society altogether, you should vote to make what they're doing illegal so they can all be thrown in jail. Short of that, I don't think it's fair to try to prevent them from participating in society. Jail is the way we prevent people from participating in society, stopping them from using their bank accounts seems like a half-measure.
    • fake-name 7y ago
      > If someone replies to this comment saying they are a Nazi, are you going to stop using hacker news? If someone from $ORGANIZATION made it clear that people that work for them and don't like Nazi's aren't welcome to be clear they don't like Nazis, I'd certainly consider dropping $ORGANIZATION. > you should vote to make what they're doing illegal so they can all be thrown in jail. What? There's a broad spectrum of things I personally don't like, or even think are odius that I'm not seeking to make illegal. The law is not a reflection of morality. I'm not seeking to impose my own value judgements on others (excepting murder, etc...), but the illegality of something has no substantial bearing on what I view as right. What do you think the laws are for, out of curiosity? I assume you don't think they're supposed to reflect morality?
      • doubleunplussed 7y ago
• LegitShady 7y ago
  I had no idea who Naval Ravikant was until I randomly read one of his tweets and thought "this dude has good thinking" and went to look up him. Interesting character.
• mayneack 7y ago
  > The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. The size of every group's voice in society isn't a magical balance. I don't want rich people or corporations to have an outsized voice either. It's a zero sum game, so the only way to reduce that is to give more voice to other groups. Employees should try to leverage their numbers more, not less, because that's the only tool they have. Gitlab is based in San Francisco, so their votes probably don't matter either.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• 3xblah 7y ago
  Maybe they are not "infrastructure". Maybe they are actually middlemen.
• gameswithgo 7y ago
  >The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product So do you also feel that billionaires shouldn't have an outsized voice in society?
• InfinityByTen 7y ago
  Finally I read a comment on a platform and I can listen to ideas and deep understanding. Thanks for sharing that interview!! You won Naval a fan already :)
• theon144 7y ago
  >I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. Me either! The point is everyone should be the arbiter of morality for society. Abstaining from moral judgements because it's "inefficient" is just alibistic, and leaves society worse as a whole. Tech companies are participating in society just as any other company, there's no reason they should be exempt from ethical considerations. Technology is not neutral, never was, and pretending it is isn't going to change it - it's just going to pave the way for "inevitable" unethical programs and moral lapses (see: mass surveillance, Amazon->Ring cooperation, ICE cooperation...)
  • kortilla 7y ago
    Is it ethical to cut these same people off from food, etc as well when they haven’t violated the laws our society has decided should be followed? Companies and people “being moral arbiters” of everyone they interact with is just idiots making knee jerk reactions based on other people’s perceptions and opinions. An employee at a software company knows far to little to meaningfully judge if ICE should be helped. Are you even aware of the duties of the ICE?
• brianpgordon 7y ago
  Companies do not magically become exempt from needing to behave ethically just because they're participants in the economy. If, for example, some government is committing human rights violations, companies have an ethical obligation not to enable it, even if the services they offer aren't under specific legal sanctions. This idea of a company just doing business with no social or ethical responsibility to anyone other than stockholders is an ancap fantasy. And Gitlab isn't some unconcerned third party passing judgment on morality for the rest of us. We're not talking about your local Dairy Queen franchise gratuitously taking a position on Brexit for no reason. The only power Gitlab has is to withhold their own service. If you're going to argue that their service is so important for society to function that withholding that service constitutes being an "arbiter of morality for society," to the extent that's even true it only increases their responsibility to make sure its products aren't used for evil. A Dairy Queen franchisee doesn't have much power so they don't have much responsibility, but a Google or an IBM has enormous power to make a difference and therefore they have enormous responsibility. I fundamentally don't agree that corporations should be given carte blanche to use any legal options to maximize profit with no regard to the consequences. The political process and legislation/regulation is probably a better way to address companies behaving unethically, but given that in many cases our political process has failed to put those laws in place we need to hold corporations accountable ourselves.
• dwild 7y ago
  > If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal means. What if it's legal where's it's happening? Let's say that China use Gitlab to host their repo for their software that track US citizens. Would you be happy with that? > The tech unicorns screwed themselves over BIG TIME, the second they stopped claiming they were just infrastructure and platforms and got into content moderation. That's absurd, it was always true for ANY industry. You can decide not to support a company by not buying there because you don't support their moral standards. That's perfectly fine. Would you still be with an ISP that is against net neutrality while there is another one that is for net neutrality? Now replace "net neutrality" with any other moral decision and it's still valid. That's what make company decide to takes moral stands. It's purely economics. > They will now forever be a pawn of whoever has some power and has some agenda. That was always true and still is even with Gitlab decision. Even in this case, Gitlab decision makes them a pawn to whoever has the means to do business with them. They want to still be able to get the business of ICE, China, etc... and you.
  • philwelch 7y ago
    Assuming Gitlab is based in the United States, I wouldn’t expect them to unilaterally deny service to the Chinese communist regime. That’s a situation where I would advocate for Congress to impose economic sanctions.
• dominotw 7y ago
  > The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. isn't that true for all voice in the soicety though.