14 ms·

Chatham House Rule is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area

• lysace 2y ago
  Well duh.
• more_corn 2y ago
  So people feel free to speak candidly?
  • Arainach 2y ago
    This isn't about people speaking candidly. It's about not hurting the feelings of people who do and work on bad things and allowing them to still get invited to events without fearing any consequences for their actions. It's the same reason Kissinger still got invites to Manhattan social events (and, bizarrely, Clinton campaign events) long after it was known that he was a traitor and a war criminal.
    • khazhoux 2y ago
      No, I think it’s about not having to fear being retweeted publicly for what you intended to be private discussions.
      • sneak 2y ago
        No. The Chatham House Rule only bars the attribution of the statements, not the sharing of the statements or the things they contain. It’s not simply for privacy or nondisclosure. You are free to disclose, the discussions are not private.
        • khazhoux 2y ago
          That's what I said: it's to prevent people from being quoted publicly.
          • sneak 2y ago
            People can still be quoted verbatim publicly.
            • khazhoux 2y ago
              Maybe I'm confused then. So one would be permitted to post on Twitter: "khazhoux said yesterday: 'Megalopolis is the greatest film of the 21st century'"? I thought the point was you can't attribute -- no names. And without a name, it's not actually a public quoting...
              • deleted 2y ago
                [deleted]
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > not hurting the feelings of people who do and work on bad things Yes, the Chatham House Rule is practically designed to exclude people who have an immutable black-and-white worldview.
      • mmooss 2y ago
        How so? It would seem to encourage people to say thoughtless, shallow things, among more open things.
        • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
          > would seem to encourage people to say thoughtless, shallow things, among more open things Based on what? If anything, baseless grandstanding is incentivised by an audience.
          • mmooss 2y ago
            Generally, lack of consequence results in people behaving less responsibly, but ... > baseless grandstanding is incentivised by an audience ... the dynamic you cite has been far more influential in humanity's new social medium, social media. Arguably, though, that is due to a lack of consequence for their actions. Zuckerberg says these things and there are no serious conequences (possibly; we'll see). When there are conequences, it does stop people - look at the effectiveness of the anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ mobs in silencing people and organizations.
  • mmooss 2y ago
    Or irresponsibly, ignorantly, stupidly, recklessly ...
    • falcor84 2y ago
      As social animals, we think, learn and grow by interacting with others. It's absolutely ok to say stupid things you aren't sure about, and I think it's generally better that people do so in smaller personal settings rather than broadcasting to the internet at large.
      • mmooss 2y ago
        I agree completely. I meant - and I should have been clear - people saying stupid things to be loud and disruptive, not because they don't know and are trying to explore something. The latter is great and should be encouraged.
• givemeethekeys 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • laidoffamazon 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • bawolff 2y ago
      Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the grandparent's views, i think this comment demonstrates why the gp might feel cautious about giving their honest views on the subject.
      • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
        I've always just given my honest views online under pseudonyms. Like that I think gasoline should cost more.
        • spencerflem 2y ago
          I'm willing to say that under my real name ;)
      • laidoffamazon 2y ago
        [flagged]
    • khazhoux 2y ago
      Any opinion which is even slightly critical of MeToo and DEI programs.
    • Temporary_31337 2y ago
      How about South Africa not doing so well currently? It could be viewed through a racial lens but it means you can’t objectively discuss and hopefully help the situation. IMO this is exactly an example of where such closed rules may legitimately help. In the process of brainstorming you are bound to say something stupid or illegal but that’s the whole idea of brainstorming- to throw ideas and see what sticks
• aliasxneo 2y ago
  People are not bound to follow this rule, correct? As in, there's no legal consequence? > Instead, his groups have moved to signing NDAs or explicitly stating that conversations are not to be shared externally. This seems a bit better, albeit with more work.
  • bawolff 2y ago
    Not everything has to be legal. The consequence is you don't get invited back and some people might think less of you. Legally enforcing every social norm is dystopian.
    • aliasxneo 2y ago
      > Legally enforcing every social norm is dystopian. But I didn't say that? I was genuinely unsure of whether this was something that could be taken to court if someone violated it. If it's socially bound, and the purpose is to increase free speech, I find that less compelling in today's culture.
      • ghaff 2y ago
        Anything can be taken to court. I expect, in general, people get mad at the person who broke the rule, they don't get invited back to future iterations, and they suffer reputational damage. When I've been in that sort of situation, the rule is made clear and no one breaks it--at least publicly.
    • manquer 2y ago
      Only if they associate their name with the disclosure ? anonymous sources to media is pretty common way to share information.
      • bawolff 2y ago
        Given the chatham house rules specificly allow that, its kind of a moot point.
• bawolff 2y ago
  Seems pretty obvious why in a world where if you misspeak or say something ill considered it can be all over twitter and have serious personal and professional ramifications. Regardless of how well meaning people are in their desire to hold people to account for bad views, it does have a chilling effect, and you can't learn if you don't have a safe place to make mistakes.
  • MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Isn’t there a danger that if the rule is selectively enforced, for whatever reasons, that it will actually decrease the credibility of the participants/organizers?
  • cmdli 2y ago
    Alternatively, it’s a way for bad faith actors to spread their beliefs while not having to worry about their reputation. Many people with power are only hurt through public opinion, so this is the way they try to gain control over that.
    • throw112312 2y ago
      This is not what I observed in the last 8 years. People with power (both D and R) get away with anything while individuals suffer for the slightest infractions. Any given senate hearing or political speech would lead to dozens of expulsions in a standard censored software company. It is the small people who need protection.
      • AlexandrB 2y ago
        Yup. The most obvious example is Donald Trump himself. Instead of suffering consequences for any of the things he's said, he has been elected to president of the United States. Twice! Meanwhile if you repeated what he says verbatim in your workplace you might find yourself gone by next week.
        • inglor_cz 2y ago
• 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  > there’s a liberating and freeing quality to the idea that this is a safe space for me to say unpopular things and not get labeled as a conservative or racist,” Lederer said. Tantalizing, now I really wonder what he said.
  • davidgerard 2y ago
    looks like he just told us
    • ryandrake 2y ago
      Exactly. "I really want to say conservative or racist things but don't want to be considered conservative or racist by the public!"
      • flappyeagle 2y ago
        Do you think people on social media should be required to disclose their names?
        • llamaimperative 2y ago
          I would love a real-names only network. There should be other networks as well, but this should be an option.
          • echelon 2y ago
            We already have a few: LinkedIn and the real world.
            • llamaimperative 2y ago
              LinkedIn is a professional network. It's not designed to facilitate the same types of conversations that happen e.g. on Twitter (and no, I don't think the presence of anon accounts make Twitter what it is, at least not in the circles I care about). "Real world" is umm... okay. Thanks for the contribution.
• JSTrading 2y ago
  Are Chatham House Rules just a way for people to hedge their bets? If they say something controversial, rude, offensive, or downright dodgy, they can hide behind anonymity. But if it’s a hit or something clever, insightful, or widely praised—they’re quick to claim credit. Convenient, isn’t it?
  • falcor84 2y ago
    It is indeed convenient, not just for individuals, but for society at large. People keep their most "controversial, rude, offensive, or downright dodgy" only to be said amongst friends whom they trust to not "out" them, while keeping their utterances in the public sphere more self-censored, in order to avoid offending people and being rebuked. I'm pretty sure that this is how it's always been, and I'm quite happy with it.
  • wlonkly 2y ago
    It doesn't have to be controversial, even. It might just be a little bit private. I'm on a social tech Slack that uses the CHR. It means if someone asks a question about, I don't know, how my company does something, I can say "ah, yeah, we used to use vendor X, that didn't work because of Y, and now we're with Z instead" without worrying about a blog post showing up that says "wlonkly from company Foo says that Foo used to use X but dropped them because..." but they can definitely use the information I gave them to help solve their problem.
• addicted 2y ago
  I have no idea whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but this is not freedom of speech, for the obvious reason that its based entirely on the limitation of speech, in this case, the freedom to truthfully state who said something. I’m not a free speech absolutist, so that’s not a negative for me, but it’s extremely annoying to see a lot of people pretend to be pro free speech by policing what others might say about them.
  • rlpb 2y ago
    "Free speech" is normally about a government restriction on speech. Most people don't take it to mean temporary restrictions during specific private events. For example, at a funeral, the norm is not to speak ill of the dead (or any other time, for that matter), and if you break that rule, you might find yourself socially excluded. But that has nothing to do with the concept of "free speech". The same goes for some kind of proceeding where you are not permitted to speak, or some situation where you are given information in confidence, or your signing of an NDA.
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > "Free speech" is normally about a government restriction on speech No, this is the First Amendment. Free speech as a value is much broader [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
    • bawolff 2y ago
      In the usa context yes, but i think its wrong to hold that the concept in general is soley about governments. E.g. if someone beats you up due to a view you expressed, i consider that a free speech issue.
      • rlpb 2y ago
        > E.g. if someone beats you up due to a view you expressed, i consider that a free speech issue. If the police beat you up, then that's a freedom of speech issue (as well as police abuse, etc), since one might argue that the government is suppressing your speech. If a private citizen beats you up, then I disagree; it's merely a matter of assault. That's illegal anyway and your speech had little to do with it. If someone beats me up for looking at them the wrong way, I'd hardly argue that it's a "looking the wrong way" issue. I appreciate that you consider otherwise, and of course it's subjective so your view is as valid as mine. I'm just identifying that I think your concept is "creep" that has occurred over time for some subset of people, spawned by a principle that never originally included what you now include in the concept.
• michaelt 2y ago
  > [At] an intimate dinner party in Los Altos Hills, Brex Supper Club salons, [...] the rules of the house are increasingly Chatham. What a strange comment. If after attending a dinner party people are repeating everything they heard, in public, with attribution - then that dinner party absolutely was not intimate.
  • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > If after attending a dinner party people are repeating everything they heard, in public, with attribution - then that dinner party absolutely was not intimate It's still helpful if you're bringing together groups of people who don't know (and thus may surprise) each other to lay the ground rules. I'd be quite upset if I held a birthday party, which may go to 30 or 40 people, and learned that something (possibly quite inappropriate) that had been said was being tweeted or whatever.
    • tom_ 2y ago
      Right, but if these groups of people don't know one another - that's basically the definition of not intimate.
      • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > if these groups of people don't know one another - that's basically the definition of not intimate Different definitions of intimate [1]. Webster's gives an intimate club as an example. I'd also suggest an intimate dinner over which e.g. in-laws meet. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intimate https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intimate
  • ryukoposting 2y ago
    I agree with you. I've never lived in SV, and after interacting with a lot of folks in the bay, I'd prefer to never live there. It's seems like a weird Twilight Zone place where everyone is a business contact and nobody is just a friend. Even the concept of "intimacy" can be tacitly warped around that social framework.
• motohagiography 2y ago
  It means don't front, slander, or gossip about the people who welcomed you, and especially on social media. not sure why it's hard to act like they're going to be invited back. just try not to be the one who has to be told.
• mmooss 2y ago
  It's nothing impressive. It's secrecy and corruption; it's the modern trend of power grabs and exclusivity (withholding information) over efficiency, productivity, intelligence, and all the benefits of an open, free society. It just has a fancy British name to give it legitimacy. You want liquidity and lots of exposure in any marketplace, including the one of ideas. Ideas without sunshine tend to rot and fester. That might be why there are so many obviously stupid ones these days.
  • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Ideas without sunshine tend to rot and fester. That might be why there are so many obviously stupid ones these days. This was the thesis behind e.g. Twitter. I’m not sure it’s panned out. Ideas need sunshine, but a seedling also does better in a nursery.
    • mmooss 2y ago
      Interesting point. While I agree that the outcome has been bad or really catastrophic, I'm not sure it's the same cause. Certainly ideas from positions of power need openeness and sunshine, speaking very generally. The problem on social media is the flood of crap that buries everything else, and nobody can keep up - the sunshine effect is overwhelmed.
      • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > ideas from positions of power need openeness and sunshine, speaking very generally Very generally. Transparency also incentivises grandstanding; you're always speaking to the audience, never to your counterpart.
        • mmooss 2y ago
          Are you saying it's better for powerful people to make plans and develop ideas in secret? What about government? At least to some significant degree, the grandstanding has nothing to do with the actual ideas and plans; it's part of the coverup; it's a distraction while the real plans are made. Grandstanders like Trump and Musk often say things they have no intention of following through on. To the grandstanders, who are really propagandists, words are weapons and not information. And of course, everyone's words are some of each, but the grandstanders are far over toward one endpoint or axis on that graph.
• mmooss 2y ago
  > Last year, Stanford University floated the rule as a policy to protect students from harassment, with violators facing penalties like lower grades. Won't that enable harassment - enable people to do it without consequence?
• TheBruceHimself 2y ago
  I think it’s just a way to stop the reporting of an event turning the event into an opportunity for people to gain media coverage and propel their careers, or their interests that may not be related to the discussion at hand. Public debates are swamped with characters who want to make a name for themselves by holding views, having a particular style, or catering to certain demographics. At this point, the debate ceases to ne a way of discussing ideas and opinions. It’s just a way to sell the participants. Likewise, there are many people who want the opposite. They hold opinions but really don’t want to be part of the wider social debate . They don’t want to be public figures defending a particular point. They just want to contribute in some way.
• scyzoryk_xyz 2y ago
  More like stupid is suddenly everywhere in the Bay Area. The one fine piece of good journalism in there is that SFSU professor: humans have a hard time separating the ideas from the speaker. Done. Now, I might be wrong, but it sure does sound like tech folks in the Bay are getting ready to take advantage of MAGA madness, and paranoid about AI / surveillance. If anything, it’s this orange website that’s closer to untangling identity from the content, but that’s nothing new and Web 1.0 news.
  • dmix 2y ago
    > but it sure does sound like tech folks in the Bay are getting ready to take advantage of MAGA madness, and paranoid about AI / surveillance. Congress is the one that regulates most of commerce and they are always slow and inept. I don’t expect much meaningful stuff to change. If anything it will be some sort of AI regulation that will benefit the top companies under the guise of ‘safety’ and probably get bipartisan support. Zuckerberg also said he was planning his moves for a long time and waited until the elections were over so it didn’t seem like he was trying to influence it and any time he announced it he’d have been be accused of doing it under political pressure. That’s also how fact checking started in the first place, with extreme pressure during COVID and federal gov employees calling meta employees, yelling at them when they declined to delete things. So technically it’s a reversion of a system created under political pressure.
    • dcrazy 2y ago
      I woildn’t trust a damn thing Zuckerberg says about his thought process.
• dcrazy 2y ago
  Denunciations of the Chatham House Rule seem underdeveloped. According to the history on Wikipedia, it was invented to let members of post-WW1 English civic society discuss and debate potential reforms, and then get as much of that discussion into the public record as desired without having individual members pilloried for things they said during the discussion, even if the rest of the group disagreed with them. This doesn’t even seem unique. Newspaper editorial boards don’t assign individual names to editorials or sentences thereof. Individual members of Congressional commissions aren’t cited for the sentences they (or their staff) committed to reports. Chatham House Rule, meet Chesterton’s Fence.
  • echelon 2y ago
    The easy solution to this in my state is to just wear a recording device. I live in a one party consent state for the recording of conversations [1,2], whether on the phone or in person. I don't know how y'all get away without it in California. It pairs really well with free speech, and it feels wrong to not have this legal feature available. [1] https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-calls-and-conversations/ https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-call... [2] https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/georgia-recording-law https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/georgia-recording-law
    • dcrazy 2y ago
      The easy solution to what? I’m saying lack of like individual line-item attribution is a feature.
      • echelon 2y ago
        It feels incompatible with how the rest of the legal framework works. You can be recorded in public. In most of the US states you can be recorded in private so long as the one recording is a party to the conversation. Why does California do this separate weird thing? It doesn't feel like my rights should go away when I cross into your state. It feels like a glitch.
• yowayb 2y ago
  Modern human life is built upon millenia of mistakes, not to mention natural selection, which is eons of mistakes. A huge differentiator for humans is vastly more powerful communication which let's us share and influence instead of having everyone make the same mistakes. Despite the vitriol that has plagued online forums and social media for decades, I find the opportunity to see others make mistakes hugely valuable to me. That includes saying stupid or wrong things.
• ghaff 2y ago
  There was a period when I was having fairly regular luncheon meetings in New York and the purpose was really so that people could talk openly about various tech issues and not have their name appear in a blog post (which I probably wouldn't have done anyway). It wasn't so people could spill dirt or say things that could get them in trouble with HR if they appeared in pront. Maybe overused today but there are some times when you hold back on things if you know they may appear in print. Certainly, over the years, I've been quite careful about what I say to journalists--even those I generally trust.
• smashah 2y ago
  Are all the contrarian lemmings having self-imposed nightmares of being cancelled for eagerly sucking on the DoD teat by backing/creating AI killer drone tech because they can no longer create alpha? Say it ain't so! Or maybe it's just another hyped trend, like reading Sapiens or calling oneself a "pattern matcher". Odds are they're not talking about saving the world in these spaces.
• nullc 2y ago
  I've seen the existence of chatham house rules events abused pretty heavily by bullshitters as an excuse for asserting things but then refusing to substantiate them.
• jandrewrogers 2y ago
  This is not new. Many of the mailing lists that dominated the discourse of the early Internet in the 1990s operated under a similar rule. The novelty is that it disappeared almost entirely for decades. The original purpose (on the Internet) was to create a space where complex ethical and moral questions could be explored and discussed in depth without risk of someone taking a hypothetical statement out of context to slander you, as people are wont to do. It would be orders of magnitude worse in this current age of people obsessed with generating click-bait for engagement, which wasn’t a thing back then. I personally found that environment to be intellectually stimulating and rigorous, I miss the standard of discourse of those days. Chatham House Rule is going back to the old Internet, which valued novel insight and reasoned discourse highly, before the masses took over the Internet. The purpose was not to enable edgelords. Rational defense of ideas, statements, and hypotheses was expected and table stakes. Related rules of that era, such as Crocker’s Rule[0], placed responsibility on the reader to address uncomfortable or offensive feedback in the most dispassionate way possible. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12881288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12881288
  • inglor_cz 2y ago
    Chatham House Rule goes back to 1927, a pre-transistor era. It seems that already back then, during the early radio era, it was recognized that people dwell on "shocking sound bites" too much, at the cost of thinking things through.
  • vr46 2y ago
    Agreed - This article is wrong at the beginning, Chatham House Rules are not a gag, they allow everyone to talk FREELY. I have been to many classes and forums under this rule, not least at Chatham House in St James Square, and it means that the speakers can speak freely, name names, without hedging or fudging or perambulating around the shrubbery. You can report whatever you like, but not who said it. I have heard so many truths in these discussions that were 15 years before their time - the behaviour of Mohammed Al-Fayed, for example - which carry much more weight when you hear them from an eyewitness, even if they do not wish to be named.
    • 2y ago
• groby_b 2y ago
  Having attended conferences under Chatham House Rule: It's invaluable if the event includes speakers that must maintain a specific public stance - politicians, people in highly visible roles/organizations, etc. There's no top secret lore handed out, it's not a secret society taking over the world. It addresses the issue that any public statement will be cut up into sound bites, and the public discussion will only focus on one or two sentences, drowning out any nuance. And, if you misspoke, the public discussion will portray you as "not being aligned with your organizations values". This allows people to set aside speechifying and talk about the actual problems. With lots of nuance. Acknowledging shared ground. Hashing out what the _actual_ disagreements are. We need more opportunities like that, not less. And the rule only works if you're running the iterated version, and it's a high-value meeting. Because losing access to that forum is the penalty for violating the social compact.
• ggm 2y ago
  Nothing wrong with Chatham house rules, stated up front. What's an embuggerance? Remembering to stick to them.
• magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
  Memetic contagion meets cargo cult when someone or a group is trying to: a. "lead" and hide attribution of a nefarious or unpopular thoughtspace or particular idea. b. control other people through coercion with arbitrary rules like a literal cult.
  • Doxin 2y ago
    You realize of course that if you organize a meetup you get to set the rules for said meetup? That's not a cult, that's normal-ass behavior. Usually it doesn't get spelled out quite this prominently, but it happens any time you visit any meetup. Try shitting in the sink at the next birthday party and you'll find out real fast that the host has set rules. It is of course your right to disagree with the rules in turn, however the mature thing to then do is to not attend. Not to shit in the sink and complain about oppression.
• Tomte 2y ago
  I‘ve recently joined a group of professionals in a compliance role that operates under Chatham House Rules. The idea is that you can sound off ideas and your understanding of legal issues without people from other companies turning around and blabbing about publically how you are wrong.
• at_a_remove 2y ago
  I wonder what the people against anonymity would make of the Federalist Papers, if they even remember them. Many of the "founding fathers" of the United States wrote under pseudonyms or other such distractions. Probably a dismissal of the "that was then, this is now" variety, which they only haul out as a defense they do not hold in any great breadth, as those same folks will gladly go on about generational trauma, reparations, and so on. Convenient only.
• EliRivers 2y ago
  It can be so very valuable. I was at a conference in the last quarter discussing the effects of the Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea. There has long been rumour that it's possible to pay a few hundred thousand dollars, funneled to the Houthis, for which your ship will be granted safe passage through the Red Sea without being shot at with anti-ship missiles, or attacked by drones. There was rumour that some of the insurers in the Lloyds shipping insurance markets were open to these negotiations. Not long ago the UN pushed out a report discussing this sort of payment. A bod there whose situation in life made him one of the most likely people in the world to know if anyone in the Lloyds markets was engaging (except anyone actually doing it), and has a long reputation of saying truthful things under the Chatham House rules in such conferences, said he'd not seen any of that and not heard of anyone doing it. It's not the same as fact, but with his long-term reputation and his position in life, it signficantly changed my working calculus on the subject. He didn't want to be professionally quoted on it, hence the CH rule. Nothing at all to do with having the freedom to be a dickhead or anything like that. Nothing to do with wanting to lie to people without consequence.
• scotty79 2y ago
  Too many secrets.
• mhb 2y ago
  Presumably I don't understand current norms, but this is some pretty bizarre stuff. So people have rediscovered the basic rules of civility and it's taking the world by storm? There needs to be an explicit statement that when you're somewhere you've been invited that you shouldn't publicize what the other guests have said in order to do them harm? Do the people who think this it is sensible to live like this even have a name for the toxic brew in which they're swimming?
• cyanydeez 2y ago
  Sounds like a convenient trait for fascism.