14 ms·

I honestly don't know why people use "post what you're thinking" style social media at all at this point. With employers being so sensitive, how can the cost/be

• banana_giraffe 6y ago
  I always suspected there's a little bit of survivorship bias (? not sure of the best term here) going on. If you haven't suffered the hoards, or had someone you know suffer them, you're likely to think some combination of "it only happens when it's justified" and "no one will care about little old me" I've witnessed it happen to a colleague early on in my career. He posted how trivial it was to cause an IoT device to reset because they had a reset password only protected by hashing an English word that they changed every update. There are multiple security lapses there, and he didn't even mention the really scary ones, this one was almost silly. Turns out the parent company of the IoT device and his parent company were the same, and calls got made, his post misunderstood by management, and he got told to find a new job somewhere else. Still makes my blood boil, and I'd name names, but neither company exists anymore. It did teach me to be _very_ careful what I post online, even when I'm anonymous.
  • kruxigt 6y ago
    Yeah, that sounds mostly really unlucky :(. I mean, anyone can understand that a company fires an employee that publicises a security weakness in a product instead of clearing it internally. However, when the employee doesn't understand that he is an "employee" of that company... Sounds like an unfortunate mistake.. you can be fired for those.
  • andrewclunn 6y ago
    So you internalized the censorship? Sadly pragmatic lesson there.
  • jdhn 6y ago
    If neither company exists, why not name names anyways?
  • Chris2048 6y ago
    To be fair, sometimes things happen, and it can be good (I think JP said something like that). something like "never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake" - if people demonstrate their shittiness, help them. It would just be your friend that got an (admittedly mandatory) wake-up call - other employees would too. The best remedy is just a totally neutral post/tweet detailing what happened, with no judgement at all - 3rd parties will get angry on your behalf, and a lack of initial anger will only motivate that moreso.
• paperwasp42 6y ago
  I have literally seen NYT bestselling authors talk about how they're super excited to publicly heckle an author at his next book signing. And join in on conversations promoting burning his book. His crime? Writing a female character who goes on the run, has limited food, and trains in martial arts--which leads to her losing weight. This was, apparently, fat-shaming and deeply sexist. The authors involved in these threats and book-burning talk had literally no punishment. None. Just a bunch of new followers who gushed about what "strong women" they were. (As a woman, I can't think of anything weaker than threatening to burn a book and harass someone, all for internet points.) The thing is, Publishing Twitter is super safe if you're on the far left. You can talk about harassing people, burning books, and purposely destroying careers. Zero consequences at all. But if you're so much as a hair right of center left? Forget it. Your career is gone.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • common_crow 6y ago
    I assume you're speaking of the Scott Bergstrom debacle? Yeah, I remember that one. Link to Scott's interview that infuriated those authors is here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/68782-ya-debut-gets-six-figure-deal-sold-to-16-territories-and-jerry-bruckheimer.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/child... Don't want to dox anyone and post which authors had such horrible behavior, but I will say I personally witnessed those tweets discussing book burning, stalking, and public harassment.
    • scoot 6y ago
      Linking to someone's public posts isn't "doxing". Publicly sharing their personal details (private email address, home address, phone number, etc.) or other private information as a form if direct or indirect harassment is.
      • Vinnl 6y ago
        It could still result in a mob piling on them, which is exactly the behaviour they're arguing against...
• throwawayboise 6y ago
  Never could see any positives from the "stream of consciousness" type of particpation in social media. I myself have gone farther and have never participated at all on Facebook, Twiter, et. al. Closest thing I've ever had to a social media presence is here on HN, where I deliberately remain anonymous.
  • iSnow 6y ago
    I actually like Reddit as well. You can remain pseudonymous there if you so choose and still have meaningful interactions with people. And (depending on the sub) people don't form mobs as easily as on Twitter/Facebook. Social media without moderators was a really bad idea, as we learn now.
• asdfsfkwqe 6y ago
  Isn't 'Speaking Freely' a core American spirit?
• roenxi 6y ago
  Technically; people can't post to thedonald.win either. It has been closed down too.
  • deadbunny 6y ago
    It was closed due to their single financial backer pulling out, not due to being "cancelled" though.
    • yters 6y ago
      Supposedly he was being pressured by the media, so it was a cancelling of sorts. The reasons are documented at the rebranded site.
  • iSnow 6y ago
    Only technically. They moved to another domain to dodge the FBI investigation post-Capitol. It's just a rebrand.
  • istorical 6y ago
    it moved to patriots.win and there's apparently an even crazier group at greatawakening.win
• jcun4128 6y ago
  I was lucky I became "self aware" in that sense. Granted I never posted anything that attacked people but I did clean up my FB that I haven't used for years to post/browse. Deleting stuff, hiding images, etc... Also try not to be doxable in general but sucks like when YT forces you to use your actual name in comments otherwise changing it would change it in email. Can make another account too. At least the comments I don't think are indexed publicly. That's always fun finding dumb things you posted online as a kid.
  • mbreese 6y ago
    > That's always fun finding dumb things you posted online as a kid. The older I get, the more I understand the push for a right to be forgotten. I wish that (most?) public sites had some kind of filter where things disappeared. There is no reason why comments made as a kid should follow you forever. Or, if not entirely removed, then maybe the authorship masked. I mean, if bad decisions fall off your credit report after 7 years, why shouldn’t the stupid tweet you posted 7 years ago? This is especially true for accounts where the person was under 18 at the time.
    • commandlinefan 6y ago
      > some kind of filter where things disappeared Well, people can delete ill-advised tweets, but it doesn't matter - if somebody else screen-shotted it, they can hang on to the screenshot for as long as they like and use it against you when you run for congress some day.
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    > dumb things you posted online as a kid I'm very, very thankful that the internet didn't exist when I was a kid. And am very worried for my own children because it did when they were - I've been counseling them since they were old enough to use a computer that whatever they write will be there forever.
• secondcoming 6y ago
  I've said it before and I'll say it again. Only use social-media as a read-only medium, or for marketing. Anything you say there can, and will, be used against you in the court of public opinion, FOREVER. On other sites, such as HN and reddit, retire your username after a few weeks / months. Your internet points don't matter.
• rjmunro 6y ago
  Do posts like this one count as "post what you're thinking" social media?
  • zests 6y ago
    Yes. Good question.
• levosmetalo 6y ago
  Blame the victims? If the majority are scared to publicly state their opinions, it's somehow normal that the ones that still do it get punished. They should just be more cautious what they post, right?
• fsflover 6y ago
  > I honestly don't know why people use "post what you're thinking" style social media at all at this point. See also: https://www.socialcooling.com/ https://www.socialcooling.com/
• throwaway316943 6y ago
  A bit of a tangent but, this is all the result of having people use their real names on the internet. I remember when there was a big push for people to create profiles tied to their real identities with the argument being that everyone would behave themselves if their real lives were connected to the things they did online. That argument is dead as discourse is now. Instead of well mannered discussion between opposing views we got media fuelled echo chambers that now extends right to the top offices of government along with political persecution by online mobs that high five each other as they destroy lives and careers. I don’t know what a good solution is.
  • rayiner 6y ago
    There’s no solution because it’s not a technical problem. Something is broken in our culture.
    • wrycoder 6y ago
      Pseudonyms and team moderation work pretty well, along with the ability to block abusive users. The HN voting system is also helpful.
      • tomp 6y ago
        I received threats through my HN account. Caused me to remove identifying information from my profile.
    • chokeartist 6y ago
      Why is something broken in our culture? Humans are mean-spirited at their worst. The internet merely allows you to turn that element up to 10, where in real life you will be shunned going past a relative 2 or 3.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • throw998 6y ago
    The argument may be dead, but the powers that be are pushing hard to make online anonymity illegal and a thing of the past, precisely because they want the kind of mob mentality that happened to the literary agent mentioned in TGGF.
• girvo 6y ago
  I post about music on my Twitter. Tech stuff here. Instagram for my hobby photography. Facebook itself is long gone. And all for the reasons you’ve stated. I use none of them particularly often. I’m as left as they come, but I don’t trust that the winds won’t change or I will make a stupid decision, and my future is too important to risk that. And honestly I’m not missing much. If I want to talk politics, I do it with my friends over a beer.
  • donny2018 6y ago
    > If I want to talk politics, I do it with my friends over a beer. As a former Soviet citizen, this is particularly funny to me. Where the safest place for political discussion was at home, in the kitchen, with vodka and couple of good friends. It was part of Soviet culture back then.
    • cpursley 6y ago
      Even then you could still end up in the gulag. My wife's great grandfather spent years in work camps because his drinking "friends" turned him in for expressing "unfavourable opinions about Stalin". While not anywhere nearly that extreme, it makes me nervous that we're moving in that direction culturally (where it's socially acceptable and encouraged to turn someone in for having the "wrong" thoughts).
      • ibejoeb 6y ago
        Victorians in Australia have been arrested for contemplating protest, and some of those originated from via "tips." It's not a giant leap.
      • kls 6y ago
        This is in no way an endorsement of the Soviet Union but it does need to be noted that the Soviet Union was in most parts of it's history, far more moderate than the Soviet Union under Stalin, Stalin has a higher body count than Hitler. Now in saying that, the Soviet Union was never a bastion of enlightenment era liberalism, free thought or personal freedoms. I agree it's not a end goal we should be striving for.
• rayiner 6y ago
  I’m not saying cancellation should be illegal or whatever, but that isn’t healthy. You can’t let a minority of extremists (and it is a minority) muzzle everyone. It turns over control of the culture to them and that’s extremely dangerous.
• sthnblllII 6y ago
  >The most reasonable people know enough not to risk their livelihoods This is literal victim blaming. US culture leaders have deep and worsening problems that need to be discussed openly.