The accusation of virtue signaling is completely non-falsifiable, at least until such time as an organization has documents leaked showing that they actually ha

The accusation of virtue signaling is completely non-falsifiable, at least until such time as an organization has documents leaked showing that they actually hate whatever group but are going to openly signal that they love them to increase sales, which hasn't yet happened. Instead what does seem to happen quite often is that virtue signaling as an accusation is deployed against a very minor and token gesture of vague social progressiveness or some other ethical position on the part of an entity, usually a business, and the charge is levied at them by people who disagree with whatever stance has been taken. It's not hard to draw a line from this back to the rhetoric around various social issues in recent memory, going back to Nixon's famous "silent majority" concept; that most people agree with the thing you think, as a reactionary, but are "afraid" to say it; it's literally the same thing, the leadership of whatever org is criticized for acting in bad faith and invoking whatever cause, because they couldn't possibly just actually believe in it, it obviously must be a ruse. I apologize if this is more political than HN likes to get, but it's simply not possible to disentangle the phrase "virtue signaling" from specific kinds of reactionary politics. As to why it's now being deployed in a discussion about AI, I don't particularly think it's a 100% rock solid link to it, but it's one of those things, if one sees smoke, one isn't found wrong if they assume fire. Anyway that was a lot to say it's pointless culture war bullshit, please keep your innocence.