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> a few years ago a lot of prominent Silicon Valley technologists started intermingling overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets among their otherw

> a few years ago a lot of prominent Silicon Valley technologists started intermingling overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets among their otherwise interesting and insightful tech Tweets. Example?

ralusek 4y ago
It will be something like "I don't think California should repeal civil rights legislation in order to allow overt hiring on the basis of race and gender." "I think we should perhaps reconsider our non-enforcement of property crimes due to the fact that nobody can park on the street, the stores across from me are boarded up, and two pharmacies in my relatively affluent neighborhood just closed due to theft." "I didn't find it appropriate for the protestors to tear down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant or rename a school from Abraham Lincoln." "I don't think it should be part of the school curriculum to be talking to preschoolers about gender and sexuality." "Asians are disproportionally denied access to schools and employment due to arbitrary ethic and racial targets." Other such hateful things.
- nullc 4y ago
  I don't think the sarcastic response really contributes to the discussion. There is enough toxicity on twitter that if someone digs hard enough they could find examples that aren't twitter-political-bubble-strawmen.
  - switchbak 4y ago
    I disagree. I find their examples a good collection of the kind of viewpoints that get caught in the crossfire and disallowed when content moderation goes too far. To be clear: there is often a lot of gray area and some middle ground to be taken in complex debates. When one side (eg: far-right American trollish behaviour) goes too hard in to the paint, the (over?) reaction by the opposing side(s) often loses perspective and it's the more reasonable opinions in the middle that get squashed in the well meaning attempts to supress troll like extremist influence. I think the above post highlights exactly these kind of opinions that get steamrolled away, even though many of them are within the realm of sensible debate.
    - nullc 4y ago
      I think that highlighting would have accomplished that better without sarcastically presenting them as "bad views". All the sarcasm accomplished was an indirect criticism of the prior poster who asserted without evidence tech figureheads were tweeting "overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets". It's pretty uncharitable to assume they were referring to stuff on that list (many of which aren't just in the realm of sensible debate, but are actually majority views-- e.g. #1 we can look to the results of the ballot measure). I don't think anyone seriously doubts that with enough searching we could find a couple examples that would make their claim technically true, at the very least... without delving into comments within the realm of sensible debate. We shouldn't need to be so cynical, but if we must we don't need to do it at the expense of other participants here! Twitter encourages hot-takes. Because of that all sorts of ill considered crap shows up there-- and that includes both inappropriately tarring views as racist as well as racist views that most people would agree are racist.
      - switchbak 4y ago
        That's true, it probably would have helped had the original poster provided some examples of the supposed racist behaviour to save us the trouble of speculating.
        throwaway894345 4y ago
        It really isn’t germane and had I posted examples the thread almost certainly would have devolved further since this stuff really brings out the trolls.
- politician 4y ago
  > Other such hateful things. Would you identify which of your examples is speech that you find objectionable? The last statement about discrimination against Asians seems particularly well-supported by evidence, so it's not clear to me and perhaps others which statement(s) you intend to highlight as the example of "hateful things".
  - nullc 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  This isn't what I had in mind (I tried to signal that by using "overt"). I don't want to drill into details because it seems like it will only invite flame. If there was a DM feature on this site, I'd link you to some stuff to show you what I'm talking about.

ralusek 4y ago

It will be something like "I don't think California should repeal civil rights legislation in order to allow overt hiring on the basis of race and gender." "I think we should perhaps reconsider our non-enforcement of property crimes due to the fact that nobody can park on the street, the stores across from me are boarded up, and two pharmacies in my relatively affluent neighborhood just closed due to theft." "I didn't find it appropriate for the protestors to tear down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant or rename a school from Abraham Lincoln." "I don't think it should be part of the school curriculum to be talking to preschoolers about gender and sexuality." "Asians are disproportionally denied access to schools and employment due to arbitrary ethic and racial targets." Other such hateful things.

nullc 4y ago
I don't think the sarcastic response really contributes to the discussion. There is enough toxicity on twitter that if someone digs hard enough they could find examples that aren't twitter-political-bubble-strawmen.
- switchbak 4y ago
  I disagree. I find their examples a good collection of the kind of viewpoints that get caught in the crossfire and disallowed when content moderation goes too far. To be clear: there is often a lot of gray area and some middle ground to be taken in complex debates. When one side (eg: far-right American trollish behaviour) goes too hard in to the paint, the (over?) reaction by the opposing side(s) often loses perspective and it's the more reasonable opinions in the middle that get squashed in the well meaning attempts to supress troll like extremist influence. I think the above post highlights exactly these kind of opinions that get steamrolled away, even though many of them are within the realm of sensible debate.
  - nullc 4y ago
    I think that highlighting would have accomplished that better without sarcastically presenting them as "bad views". All the sarcasm accomplished was an indirect criticism of the prior poster who asserted without evidence tech figureheads were tweeting "overtly racist and otherwise hateful political Tweets". It's pretty uncharitable to assume they were referring to stuff on that list (many of which aren't just in the realm of sensible debate, but are actually majority views-- e.g. #1 we can look to the results of the ballot measure). I don't think anyone seriously doubts that with enough searching we could find a couple examples that would make their claim technically true, at the very least... without delving into comments within the realm of sensible debate. We shouldn't need to be so cynical, but if we must we don't need to do it at the expense of other participants here! Twitter encourages hot-takes. Because of that all sorts of ill considered crap shows up there-- and that includes both inappropriately tarring views as racist as well as racist views that most people would agree are racist.
    - switchbak 4y ago
      That's true, it probably would have helped had the original poster provided some examples of the supposed racist behaviour to save us the trouble of speculating.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        It really isn’t germane and had I posted examples the thread almost certainly would have devolved further since this stuff really brings out the trolls.
politician 4y ago
> Other such hateful things. Would you identify which of your examples is speech that you find objectionable? The last statement about discrimination against Asians seems particularly well-supported by evidence, so it's not clear to me and perhaps others which statement(s) you intend to highlight as the example of "hateful things".
- nullc 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
throwaway894345 4y ago
This isn't what I had in mind (I tried to signal that by using "overt"). I don't want to drill into details because it seems like it will only invite flame. If there was a DM feature on this site, I'd link you to some stuff to show you what I'm talking about.