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Here’s the tweet you claim is racist — I know bc it’s the only time anyone has called me racist. I complained that Etsy w searches were dominated by mass produc

by amyhoy 5y ago

Here’s the tweet you claim is racist — I know bc it’s the only time anyone has called me racist. I complained that Etsy w searches were dominated by mass produced goods from China. Not a slur on Chinese craft or people, but dismay at the amount of AliExpress-type items. https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/407618941742510081?s=21 https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/407618941742510081?s=21

kragen 5y ago
Yup, that's the one, https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/407618941742510081?s=21 https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/407618941742510081?s=21. I'm obviously not in a position to know how often people call you racist, but clearly I wasn't the only one the tweet sounded racist to; Star Simpson also commented: https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/407619548846649344 https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/407619548846649344 Before that conversation I had enjoyed reading some of the things you'd written, but the way you responded showed me what kind of a person you really are.
- amyhoy 5y ago
  Yes she also willfully misread “mass produced goods” and asked me why I didn’t think Chinese artisans should use etsy for their handmade goods, a classic loaded question and a position I have never taken. The mass produced goods — that didn’t belong on Etsy — were literally from China. Calling something Chinese doesn’t make it racist.
  - kragen 5y ago
    As I said at the time, I don't think she was willfully misreading you; I think she was suggesting you might be fallible. Because I said that, you've had me blocked on Twitter for eight years, which kind of amounts to conceding Star's original point. I'm sort of puzzled about where you think the mass-produced artisan goods on AliExpress come from. Like, presumably we're not talking about goods like "one ton of calcium chloride" or "1MW supercritical steam generator", right? We're talking about the kinds of goods that Chinese artisans hand-make en masse and sell on AliExpress, things like furniture and decorations, right?
    - detaro 5y ago
      Etsy (certainly back then, afaik they've sort-of given up on that by now: hard to police and bad for growth - turns out mass-production gives more turnover) was very much about things hand-made by seller. The promise was that you don't get people selling stuff they bought from factories on Ali[baba|Express] and claiming it's something they've handmade - in 2013 they had just allowed outsourcing production steps for the first time, if you documented who did exactly what step, so no buying things (handmade or not) and just reselling them. Nevertheless, that's what you get, X shops selling the exact same thing they supposedly made (or selling them with small customizations done, which was OK according to the rules but plenty people still disliked), and Etsy was pushing "integrity updates" and promising to better police this. And that wasn't in any way about Chinese people, because obviously if people are reselling massproduced stuff the problem is not the worker who made them. Nor are Chinese artisans selling their own product a problem, but I don't think that was a large group on the market anyways.
      - kragen 5y ago
        Of course nobody should resell things on Etsy that they merely bought, but there was nothing to suggest that Hoy was complaining about reselling; instead, she seemed to be suggesting that Chinese artisans who mass-produced things shouldn't sell them on Etsy. My reading of Hoy's reasoning at the time was "artisan = white person", so I tried to provoke some questioning of that assumption, and got blocked for my trouble. Certainly she had the opportunity to clarify at the time if that wasn't what she was talking about.
        mcphage 5y ago
        > so I tried to provoke some questioning of that assumption, and got blocked for my trouble. Certainly she had the opportunity to clarify at the time if that wasn't what she was talking about. What would be the point of clarifying to you if you jumped in with those assumptions? She doesn’t owe you anything. Blocking someone like that seems like the right call.
        5y ago
  - mkishi 5y ago
    I don't know where to dm you, so I'll do this here: I really shouldn't have posted this submission. Ghost is a relatively big platform that I've always kept in consideration for projects. I was so shocked by the situation and the discovery that something similar happened in the past that I went "people need to know this!" disregarding how out of place it'd be to blast the thread here. Thankfully it was flagged quickly, but it shouldn't have been up to begin with. I'm sorry.
    - amyhoy 5y ago
      I really appreciate you saying that. Don’t worry about it, it’s not causing me any distress and I’m too sick to do anything productive right now anyway. But this place is a cesspit. This is actually a better experience than I would’ve expected from years before, and it’s still terrible. Just something to take away from the experience.
      - kragen 5y ago
        > But this place is a cesspit. This is actually a better experience than I would’ve expected from years before, and it’s still terrible. Interestingly, this is something we agree on; it's causing me a great deal of distress.
- detaro 5y ago
  I'm not sure someone misframing the tweet with a loaded question is what you want to cite as "support" for your argument...
- untitaker_ 5y ago
  I see Star misinterpreting/extrapolating from the original tweet but (sort of) backpedaling or backing off relatively quickly, and you escalating and derailing the already tense situation with "interesting topics" Amy clearly doesn't want to discuss, then being whiny about this block 8 years later. Check yourself my dude. Amy does sound pretty annoyed in that thread from the start, but you were just pushing it further.
  - kragen 5y ago
    A thing you can't see is that she blocked Star too, my dude. It's unsurprising that she "didn't want to discuss" her implicit racist assumptions, of course (unless that isn't what they were, in which case presumably she'd have been delighted to clarify the misunderstanding). Until today.
  - untitaker_ 5y ago
    Just caught up on this thread, but just to reiterate what Amy said elsewhere and to refute your response that I can't reply to because it's flagged like basically everything else: She did not block Star.
- amyhoy 5y ago
  Dude are you mad I deprived you of my tweets for 8 years, or are you mad I’m supposedly a racist? You can’t have it both ways. This is weird. You should stop.
  - kragen 5y ago
    I'm sure most of the people who have had bad experiences with you are "weird", but at some point it's time for us weirdos to stop being silent about how you treat people when you think you can get away with it. This seems like a good time to name the broken stair. Did you ever apologize to Star for speaking to her like that? Do you still have her blocked, too? You should stop treating people that way, and you should stop trying to silence people who tell others about it.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    IMO moderators (@dang) should step in on the issue of a prominent HN account (kragen) claiming that Amy Hoy is racist against the Chinese people.
    - kragen 5y ago
      (I'd certainly be interested in dang's take on the situation. Perhaps he can tell whether Hoy is using her other HN account to flag my comments.) (Edited to add: mysteriously, within a few minutes after I posted this comment, a large number of my other comments suddenly got unflagged...)
      - jaf656s 5y ago
        I don’t think it’s in good faith to accuse someone of using multiple accounts to flag your comments without any basis and I believe this type of behavior is directly in violation of the guidelines of HN.
        kragen 5y ago
        She's been posting in this thread using two different accounts, "ahoyhere" and "amyhoy", which is why I mentioned it; that, plus the chance that someone might look at the issue who actually had the ability to do so. So I don't think it's "without any basis". I agree that my suggestion that she might have been using that mechanism for flagging might qualify as "insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like"; at any rate, in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28893741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28893741 she claims her reputation is so low that she's not allowed to flag. Since her "ahoyhere" account has 7448 karma, that claim of hers is probably false, similar to many other claims she's made in this thread. Perhaps that's an honest mistake. However, my suggestion was certainly in good faith; your implicit accusation of dishonesty definitely violates the guidelines of HN.

by amyhoy 5y ago

kragen 5y ago

Yup, that's the one, https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/407618941742510081?s=21 https://twitter.com/amyhoy/status/407618941742510081?s=21. I'm obviously not in a position to know how often people call you racist, but clearly I wasn't the only one the tweet sounded racist to; Star Simpson also commented: https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/407619548846649344 https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/407619548846649344 Before that conversation I had enjoyed reading some of the things you'd written, but the way you responded showed me what kind of a person you really are.

amyhoy 5y ago
Yes she also willfully misread “mass produced goods” and asked me why I didn’t think Chinese artisans should use etsy for their handmade goods, a classic loaded question and a position I have never taken. The mass produced goods — that didn’t belong on Etsy — were literally from China. Calling something Chinese doesn’t make it racist.
- kragen 5y ago
  As I said at the time, I don't think she was willfully misreading you; I think she was suggesting you might be fallible. Because I said that, you've had me blocked on Twitter for eight years, which kind of amounts to conceding Star's original point. I'm sort of puzzled about where you think the mass-produced artisan goods on AliExpress come from. Like, presumably we're not talking about goods like "one ton of calcium chloride" or "1MW supercritical steam generator", right? We're talking about the kinds of goods that Chinese artisans hand-make en masse and sell on AliExpress, things like furniture and decorations, right?
  - detaro 5y ago
    Etsy (certainly back then, afaik they've sort-of given up on that by now: hard to police and bad for growth - turns out mass-production gives more turnover) was very much about things hand-made by seller. The promise was that you don't get people selling stuff they bought from factories on Ali[baba|Express] and claiming it's something they've handmade - in 2013 they had just allowed outsourcing production steps for the first time, if you documented who did exactly what step, so no buying things (handmade or not) and just reselling them. Nevertheless, that's what you get, X shops selling the exact same thing they supposedly made (or selling them with small customizations done, which was OK according to the rules but plenty people still disliked), and Etsy was pushing "integrity updates" and promising to better police this. And that wasn't in any way about Chinese people, because obviously if people are reselling massproduced stuff the problem is not the worker who made them. Nor are Chinese artisans selling their own product a problem, but I don't think that was a large group on the market anyways.
    - kragen 5y ago
      Of course nobody should resell things on Etsy that they merely bought, but there was nothing to suggest that Hoy was complaining about reselling; instead, she seemed to be suggesting that Chinese artisans who mass-produced things shouldn't sell them on Etsy. My reading of Hoy's reasoning at the time was "artisan = white person", so I tried to provoke some questioning of that assumption, and got blocked for my trouble. Certainly she had the opportunity to clarify at the time if that wasn't what she was talking about.
      - mcphage 5y ago
        > so I tried to provoke some questioning of that assumption, and got blocked for my trouble. Certainly she had the opportunity to clarify at the time if that wasn't what she was talking about. What would be the point of clarifying to you if you jumped in with those assumptions? She doesn’t owe you anything. Blocking someone like that seems like the right call.
        5y ago
- mkishi 5y ago
  I don't know where to dm you, so I'll do this here: I really shouldn't have posted this submission. Ghost is a relatively big platform that I've always kept in consideration for projects. I was so shocked by the situation and the discovery that something similar happened in the past that I went "people need to know this!" disregarding how out of place it'd be to blast the thread here. Thankfully it was flagged quickly, but it shouldn't have been up to begin with. I'm sorry.
  - amyhoy 5y ago
    I really appreciate you saying that. Don’t worry about it, it’s not causing me any distress and I’m too sick to do anything productive right now anyway. But this place is a cesspit. This is actually a better experience than I would’ve expected from years before, and it’s still terrible. Just something to take away from the experience.
    - kragen 5y ago
      > But this place is a cesspit. This is actually a better experience than I would’ve expected from years before, and it’s still terrible. Interestingly, this is something we agree on; it's causing me a great deal of distress.
detaro 5y ago
I'm not sure someone misframing the tweet with a loaded question is what you want to cite as "support" for your argument...
untitaker_ 5y ago
I see Star misinterpreting/extrapolating from the original tweet but (sort of) backpedaling or backing off relatively quickly, and you escalating and derailing the already tense situation with "interesting topics" Amy clearly doesn't want to discuss, then being whiny about this block 8 years later. Check yourself my dude. Amy does sound pretty annoyed in that thread from the start, but you were just pushing it further.
- kragen 5y ago
  A thing you can't see is that she blocked Star too, my dude. It's unsurprising that she "didn't want to discuss" her implicit racist assumptions, of course (unless that isn't what they were, in which case presumably she'd have been delighted to clarify the misunderstanding). Until today.
- untitaker_ 5y ago
  Just caught up on this thread, but just to reiterate what Amy said elsewhere and to refute your response that I can't reply to because it's flagged like basically everything else: She did not block Star.
amyhoy 5y ago
Dude are you mad I deprived you of my tweets for 8 years, or are you mad I’m supposedly a racist? You can’t have it both ways. This is weird. You should stop.
- kragen 5y ago
  I'm sure most of the people who have had bad experiences with you are "weird", but at some point it's time for us weirdos to stop being silent about how you treat people when you think you can get away with it. This seems like a good time to name the broken stair. Did you ever apologize to Star for speaking to her like that? Do you still have her blocked, too? You should stop treating people that way, and you should stop trying to silence people who tell others about it.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  IMO moderators (@dang) should step in on the issue of a prominent HN account (kragen) claiming that Amy Hoy is racist against the Chinese people.
  - kragen 5y ago
    (I'd certainly be interested in dang's take on the situation. Perhaps he can tell whether Hoy is using her other HN account to flag my comments.) (Edited to add: mysteriously, within a few minutes after I posted this comment, a large number of my other comments suddenly got unflagged...)
    - jaf656s 5y ago
      I don’t think it’s in good faith to accuse someone of using multiple accounts to flag your comments without any basis and I believe this type of behavior is directly in violation of the guidelines of HN.
      - kragen 5y ago
        She's been posting in this thread using two different accounts, "ahoyhere" and "amyhoy", which is why I mentioned it; that, plus the chance that someone might look at the issue who actually had the ability to do so. So I don't think it's "without any basis". I agree that my suggestion that she might have been using that mechanism for flagging might qualify as "insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like"; at any rate, in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28893741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28893741 she claims her reputation is so low that she's not allowed to flag. Since her "ahoyhere" account has 7448 karma, that claim of hers is probably false, similar to many other claims she's made in this thread. Perhaps that's an honest mistake. However, my suggestion was certainly in good faith; your implicit accusation of dishonesty definitely violates the guidelines of HN.