14 ms·

I Stand With Trolls

157 points by dionidium 14y ago

hartman 14y ago
"I’m personally willing to cut a Microsoft employee a lot of slack on his personal time." Microsoft was willing to cut a Microsoft employee, too.
ronnier 14y ago
Alright, what did the guy from Microsoft say on twitter to get him fired?
- swanson 14y ago
  http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative-director-insults-non-cities-to-defend-always-on-digital-rights-management/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
csmattryder 14y ago
There are time when split personas just cannot be justified. The Microsoft guy was their Creative Director for Xbox Studios, and he made a comment about his employer's product to a very large audience under the said persona. For people like me, the OP, it's fine. We don't have high ranking positions in multinationals. Our opinions are unlikely to matter (but of course there are exceptions) when tweeted, blogged or emailed. There's a time, place and persona for everything, Adam Orth decidedly chose the worst of the three to use.
potench 14y ago
Orth was a Microsoft employee discussing rumored Microsoft decisions. I doubt he would have been fired if the discussion were about Playstation decisions.
tptacek 14y ago
Saying unpopular things on Twitter isn't trolling. You stand with people who speak their mind in public. I'm not sure you mean to stand with the trolls. Those people usually aren't speaking their minds.
- shardling 14y ago
  Apparently Orth later stated that: >“[That was] just the normal daily back and forth I have with Manveer,” Orth wrote on Twitter later. “Apologies for offending non-cities. I was trolling him personally.” http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative-director-insults-non-cities-to-defend-always-on-digital-rights-management/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative...
  - andrewljohnson 14y ago
    Unfortunately for him, what his words meant in context is irrelevant. He gave the public a hint that Microsoft might feel like people should just put up with the always-connected nature of consoles, and that Microsoft intended to steamroll the naysayers. That's just bad PR no matter what anyone meant to say or who they meant to say it to.
    - shardling 14y ago
      I was explaining why the author chose the "with trolls" part of the title. What you say is already understood.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  This is a reasonable distinction, because there are people who actually troll with malignant intent, and then there are others who are perceived as trolls because they make important points in a socially unacceptable way. The former are a blight on society; the latter are necessary to get anything done because most good things start out being socially unacceptable.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  Speaking as a massive troll: If they actually believed it, it wouldn't be trolling by definition. If it's an inflammatory/racist/whatever opinion, and they actually believe it, it just turns out they are an asshole, not a troll.
MechaJDI 14y ago
While it's true that you shouldn't HAVE to hide behind a persona in order to speak your mind, the Microsoft guy was free to do so. Why couldn't he just as easily say what he had to say under his 'randomMicrosoftEmployee' account instead of his public one? Simple. He wanted an audience. This is very reminiscent of the high ranked guy of some company who went off on a random chick-fil-a employee in the drive thru, posted it on youtube for the world to see and got fired over it during the whole 'supporting a anti-gay organization' thing. No one is saying you can't have or share your opinion but use common sense and decide HOW you'll share said opinion as well as the possible consequences.
chrisrhoden 14y ago
> Now he’s been fired, do you think that means that anyone with his opinions is going to be fired as well? > No. As much as I agree with the rest of your thesis, you can't argue that a very strong message hasn't been sent to the people making decisions at Microsoft - on this issue, there is an extremely vocal group who disagree with this position. It's dishonest to suggest that this will not have an effect that the people who disagreed with this man will appreciate on the final product design. It will.
zacharyvoase 14y ago
Just an anecdote, which I know is not the singular form of 'data', but still: I respect Mozilla as a company, but have no desire to work there (despite there being a lot of technology fit) because the CTO, Brendan Eich, made a donation of $1,000 to support Prop 8—a 2008 California ballot measure which banned gay marriage. Sure, I understood that his views were not those of his employer. But that doesn't make it easier for me to want to work for/with the guy. See, I don’t think it’s about the public message that companies send to their consumers. It’s about the message they give to potential hires: you’ll be working with these people on a daily basis. Depending on the dispensability of the employee in question, a company may choose to fire someone rather than potentially rule out a large number of future employees. It’s an economic decision.
- sodomizer 14y ago
  I think it's a terrible idea to judge other people's political decisions until you've walked a mile in their shoes. If you are a professional, you should be ready to work with anyone, not just the people who agree with you. Your view is not objectively correct. To insist otherwise is fascism.
  - geuis 14y ago
    I dislike your name and sense that we would probably disagree on most things. However, your statement about being able to work with others is true. One of the most important things I learned early in my career is that some people have horrible personalities but are really good at what they do. As long as personality conflicts aren't interfering with the purpose of getting business done, your beliefs and mine don't have to interact.
    - sodomizer 14y ago
      "I dislike your name" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAZOZ5hNN9g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAZOZ5hNN9g Feel differently about it now? I can't think of a better way to illustrate my point about walking a mile in someone else's shoes!
  - 14y ago
zacharyvoase 14y ago
Just an anecdote, which I know is not the singular form of 'data', but still: I respect Mozilla as a company, but have no desire to work there (despite there being a lot of technology fit) because the CTO, Brendan Eich, made a donation of $1,000 to support Prop 8—a 2008 California ballot measure which banned gay marriage. Sure, I understood that his views were not those of his employer. But that doesn't make it easier for me to want to work for/with the guy. See, I don’t think it’s about the public message that companies send to their consumers. It’s about the message they give to potential hires: you’ll be working with these people on a daily basis. Depending on the dispensability of the employee in question, a company may choose to fire someone rather than potentially rule out a large number of future employees. It’s an economic decision.
tixocloud 14y ago
I think that regardless of what employees say, if it has the potential to negatively influence the company's business in any way, there's likely to be repercussions. Even if we choose to disassociate our statements from employers, I think the general public will think something along the lines of "Some MS employee said X" = "MS said X".
- sodomizer 14y ago
  I think his point is that if we encourage that mentality and don't fight it on twitter etc, soon no accounts will be associated with the employers unofficially, and thus we won't get any of the news that leaks out that way. Our loss.
andrewljohnson 14y ago
The OP isn't siding with freedom-of-speech or honest dialog - he's standing with people who accidentally say the wrong thing in public.
michaelochurch 14y ago
Troll (mostly white-hat, these days) here. Had a gray-hat trolling habit as a teenager and in early 20s. Now I try to direct any hypergraphic tendencies to worthier causes. Denouncing idiocy is charity work that I do. However, I've "trolled for good" quite a bit and have really suffered for it, as the world unfortunately knows. The guys at the game company didn't deserve to be fired. They were engineers having a (somewhat obnoxious) private conversation. Adria Richards did. I can't defend her, because her job was PR and she condescended to a mean-spirited, name-and-shame attack on people she didn't know. (She didn't deserve the onslaught of horrible things said about her, clearly, but she fucked up and deserved to lose her job. I've lost jobs over less.) I hate the private-sector politician life more than anyone, as one can tell by my railing against it, but if your job is to be the public face of a company, then you choose not to have the same rights to public/private separation as most people, just as elected officials can't let their guards down. So that's why I can't stand with Adria. That does not apply to people like Aaron Orth. CEOs are public faces; almost everyone else is a public individual. Orth being fired over that tweet is just ridiculous. This is why I hate 99+ percent of corporations. If you turn your back on someone just because he becomes unpopular, then you are of no use to anyone. Corporations with no moral fiber deserve to be dissolved, and their resources reallocated to the public interest. I am all for private enterprise, but only if it stands for something. If you fire someone because an off comment gets negative attention, then you don't have any moral constitution anymore and there's no reason to allow you ("you" being a company; I'm not advocating killing people) to continue to exist.
- VLM 14y ago
  It makes sense to fire Orth. No one other than MS employees, a couple console game programmers, and their hired astroturfers wants an "always on" console. Therefore firing him means we're talking about Orth instead of a very unpopular decision by a monopolist. The moral constitution and all that should be outraged at closed gardens and monopolist providers and assymetry in the market between a couple providers and a lot of consumers blah blah. Its not a "do no evil" company, and firing him is pretty small potatoes compared to their other issues. You're dealing with a criminal organization. Don't bother busting Al Capone for jaywalking, or in this case firing a crony.
- 14y ago
rdouble 14y ago
None of these people were fired simply for their Twitter comments. Their employers wanted to let them go but needed an excuse.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  Then those companies are run by idiots. If you really want to fire someone, swallow your pride and write a decent severance package, but do it same-day. If things are really at that point, then waiting does no good.
socrates1998 14y ago
If you are fired for something you said outside of work that doesn't really affect your job, it means you weren't very valuable to the company. This is my criteria for understanding if I actually worth something to my company/organization/team. How much can I screw up and still be a part of this organization? That is value. If you are one stupid meaningless tweet away from being fired, you should be looking for another job.
h2s 14y ago
People use each other's employers to beat each other into submission. When that PyCon 2013 shitstorm went down, the Righteous Male Anger crew were very vocal about their plans to end all their business relationships with SendGrid in retaliation for Adria Richard's actions. It was a calculated move intended to get her fired for what she did. Presumably the dude who got canned for his remarks earlier in that sorry saga was the victim of similar pressure from her supporters. Sometimes this happens because people force it to happen.
- yuhong 14y ago
  AFAIK Anonymous tried to threaten SendGrid with a DDoS.
aredington 14y ago
He got whacked because he was being dismissive of people's objection to a business decision. He compared the business decision to engineering limitations (vacuums need AC out of plugs, mobile phones need cell towers in range), and was snide about people objecting to the business decision to have a console that only works when it is connected to the internet. He wasn't having open an honest dialog, and he wasn't conducting that dialog politely. I think most folks on HN know of some marginalized political philosophies such as anarchism or libertarianism. These political philosophies aren't popular, but there are polite and intellectually rigorous ways of discussing them, and there are immature and inconsiderate ways of discussing them. You can discuss marginalized or unpopular things without being an asshole. But Orth was discussing them while being an asshole, and was doing it as a representative of Microsoft.
stmartin 14y ago
"I don't speak for my employer" is equivalent to "Don't think of pink elephants" By all means, continue NOT speaking for your employer.
1337biz 14y ago
Anonymous and Wikileaks might get ahold of Google’s entire email database and start publishing stuff. Speaking of which ... is there any tool to swipe clean an Gmail inbox? Due to to the recent changes I finally got ready to switch over to my old pop3s. I plan on slowly fading out my Gmal account, so I would start by deleting all the past mails, etc. Any recommended way to do this?
- prg318 14y ago
  I would be honestly surprised if deleting messages from your gmail account actually removed them permanently from Google's databases.
  - disgruntledphd2 14y ago
    Well then if you live in the EU, complain to the Data Protection Commissioners in Ireland. http://www.dataprotection.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocID=18&UserLang=EN http://www.dataprotection.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocID=18&UserLa... It appears that you need to have deleted your data already, and then contacted Google and asked to have it permanently deleted. There's an online form and everything.... I vaguely remember that when people complained about Facebook, they were forced to ensure that data had been deleted.
    - prg318 14y ago
      Thanks for the info! I was unaware of that. I live in the US; I wonder if there is similar jurisdiction here.
lubujackson 14y ago
Love this post. If we want an open and transparent world, which we are headed toward at breakneck speed, we need to ALLOW AND ACCEPT when people are stupid, say racist things when they were 15, say harmful things on Twitter, insult people and generally be the asses that people are at times. It isn't endorsement, it is a readjustment of cultural norms - these are some more Internet growing pains for everybody. When EVERYTHING we say is attached to a megaphone, people either start to say a lot less or we need to accept a lot more. Personally I want to accept more and not be self-muzzled. I think we have to go in that direction, if no other reason than to accommodate that poor generation that grew up online and have a whole embarrassing history attached to their future lives before anyone understood that their history will no longer fade away from sight. If one off-the-cuff personal comment can get you fired from a job, does that mean it should prevent you from getting hired too? Ever again? It is an easy decision to fire someone in the 5 seconds of Internet heat that these sorts of things can generate, but we need to consider what that is costing us all.
- anxx 14y ago
  Totally agree. People are probably saying a lot of stuff in daily conversation that, if transcribed, could get them fired. Thanks to social media, these conversations stop happening between two people and include me on the other side of the globe, too. I like that. I want to hear people's real opinions, get a sense of their real personality, from the internet. Firing someone over their tweets sends a powerful message to everyone to filter what you tweet.
gonzo 14y ago
as an aside, one does not "stick" one's .signature file in a NNTP feed. Author likely wasn't there, back in the day.
edw519 14y ago
...but we are moving more and more to a transparent society... This key issue isn't whether or not things are changing (they are) or whether it's good or bad (that's debatable). The key issue is who gets to decide. If I want to tell the world a million things about myself, that's my business. But if someone else wants to tell the world things about me (especially if they know it's personal or private), then that's definitely not cool. It's not that much different for institutions, companies, or any group in general. None of us should be surprised at the reaction of another whose digital cherry we popped on-line. This reminds me of the old tale about the man with a gossiping problem who went to a sage for advice. The sage told him to slice open a feather-filled pillow, shake it outside his house, then come back tomorrow. The next day the man asked the sage what to do about his gossip problem. The sage said, "Go gather those feathers."
- supercanuck 14y ago
  For those like me who didn't understand the feathers reference, the analogy of the sage is that gathering up those feathers is the equivalent of taking back what you said. Once it has been said, it is out there forever, the damage has been done.
  - WilliamMayor 14y ago
    I think it also means that gossip spreads really far and you never know where all those feathers end up. Even if you could take back what you say, it's hard to find where the gossip has spread to. I'm reminded of the Friends episode where Ross sleeps with the copy girl.
  - cdmoyer 14y ago
    Hmm. I also took from it that the man should just go spend time doing something other than gossiping. Say a task that would take a long time, like gathering the feathers. (ie. you can be less transparent by spending your time doing rather than talking.)
xradionut 14y ago
"But I would like to live in a world where people might disagree with Reg Braithwaite but buy Raganwald’s book." I wouldn't judge a person based solely on their published content, especially those authors that write fiction. But there are works I'll never buy or recommend because I will not knowingly support the actions/attitudes of the author. (SciFi examples: Card, Hubbard, Rosenberg...) My choice.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
doobius 14y ago
He chose to speak his mind, and I believe his opinion was mean-spirited and unnecessary. Sometimes, employers fire people for that, and that's the way the world works. I don't see it as a problem.
MrMcDowall 14y ago
Executives shouldn't be trolls. If you're an executive, and you say or do something in public that tangibly affects the market perception in a negative way, you should have known better, and you deserve to be fired.
summerdown2 14y ago
Reminds me of this talk from LongNow: http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-always-die-and-life-gets-faster/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-gro... One difference as to why cities keep going and corporations die: "Cities tolerate crazy people," West observed, "Companies don't."

157 points by dionidium 14y ago

"I’m personally willing to cut a Microsoft employee a lot of slack on his personal time." Microsoft was willing to cut a Microsoft employee, too.

ronnier 14y ago

Alright, what did the guy from Microsoft say on twitter to get him fired?

swanson 14y ago
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative-director-insults-non-cities-to-defend-always-on-digital-rights-management/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

csmattryder 14y ago

There are time when split personas just cannot be justified. The Microsoft guy was their Creative Director for Xbox Studios, and he made a comment about his employer's product to a very large audience under the said persona. For people like me, the OP, it's fine. We don't have high ranking positions in multinationals. Our opinions are unlikely to matter (but of course there are exceptions) when tweeted, blogged or emailed. There's a time, place and persona for everything, Adam Orth decidedly chose the worst of the three to use.

potench 14y ago

Orth was a Microsoft employee discussing rumored Microsoft decisions. I doubt he would have been fired if the discussion were about Playstation decisions.

tptacek 14y ago

Saying unpopular things on Twitter isn't trolling. You stand with people who speak their mind in public. I'm not sure you mean to stand with the trolls. Those people usually aren't speaking their minds.

shardling 14y ago
Apparently Orth later stated that: >“[That was] just the normal daily back and forth I have with Manveer,” Orth wrote on Twitter later. “Apologies for offending non-cities. I was trolling him personally.” http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative-director-insults-non-cities-to-defend-always-on-digital-rights-management/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative...
- andrewljohnson 14y ago
  Unfortunately for him, what his words meant in context is irrelevant. He gave the public a hint that Microsoft might feel like people should just put up with the always-connected nature of consoles, and that Microsoft intended to steamroll the naysayers. That's just bad PR no matter what anyone meant to say or who they meant to say it to.
  - shardling 14y ago
    I was explaining why the author chose the "with trolls" part of the title. What you say is already understood.
michaelochurch 14y ago
This is a reasonable distinction, because there are people who actually troll with malignant intent, and then there are others who are perceived as trolls because they make important points in a socially unacceptable way. The former are a blight on society; the latter are necessary to get anything done because most good things start out being socially unacceptable.
DannyBee 14y ago
Speaking as a massive troll: If they actually believed it, it wouldn't be trolling by definition. If it's an inflammatory/racist/whatever opinion, and they actually believe it, it just turns out they are an asshole, not a troll.

MechaJDI 14y ago

While it's true that you shouldn't HAVE to hide behind a persona in order to speak your mind, the Microsoft guy was free to do so. Why couldn't he just as easily say what he had to say under his 'randomMicrosoftEmployee' account instead of his public one? Simple. He wanted an audience. This is very reminiscent of the high ranked guy of some company who went off on a random chick-fil-a employee in the drive thru, posted it on youtube for the world to see and got fired over it during the whole 'supporting a anti-gay organization' thing. No one is saying you can't have or share your opinion but use common sense and decide HOW you'll share said opinion as well as the possible consequences.

chrisrhoden 14y ago

> Now he’s been fired, do you think that means that anyone with his opinions is going to be fired as well? > No. As much as I agree with the rest of your thesis, you can't argue that a very strong message hasn't been sent to the people making decisions at Microsoft - on this issue, there is an extremely vocal group who disagree with this position. It's dishonest to suggest that this will not have an effect that the people who disagreed with this man will appreciate on the final product design. It will.

zacharyvoase 14y ago

Just an anecdote, which I know is not the singular form of 'data', but still: I respect Mozilla as a company, but have no desire to work there (despite there being a lot of technology fit) because the CTO, Brendan Eich, made a donation of $1,000 to support Prop 8—a 2008 California ballot measure which banned gay marriage. Sure, I understood that his views were not those of his employer. But that doesn't make it easier for me to want to work for/with the guy. See, I don’t think it’s about the public message that companies send to their consumers. It’s about the message they give to potential hires: you’ll be working with these people on a daily basis. Depending on the dispensability of the employee in question, a company may choose to fire someone rather than potentially rule out a large number of future employees. It’s an economic decision.

sodomizer 14y ago
I think it's a terrible idea to judge other people's political decisions until you've walked a mile in their shoes. If you are a professional, you should be ready to work with anyone, not just the people who agree with you. Your view is not objectively correct. To insist otherwise is fascism.
- geuis 14y ago
  I dislike your name and sense that we would probably disagree on most things. However, your statement about being able to work with others is true. One of the most important things I learned early in my career is that some people have horrible personalities but are really good at what they do. As long as personality conflicts aren't interfering with the purpose of getting business done, your beliefs and mine don't have to interact.
  - sodomizer 14y ago
    "I dislike your name" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAZOZ5hNN9g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAZOZ5hNN9g Feel differently about it now? I can't think of a better way to illustrate my point about walking a mile in someone else's shoes!
- 14y ago

zacharyvoase 14y ago

tixocloud 14y ago

I think that regardless of what employees say, if it has the potential to negatively influence the company's business in any way, there's likely to be repercussions. Even if we choose to disassociate our statements from employers, I think the general public will think something along the lines of "Some MS employee said X" = "MS said X".

sodomizer 14y ago
I think his point is that if we encourage that mentality and don't fight it on twitter etc, soon no accounts will be associated with the employers unofficially, and thus we won't get any of the news that leaks out that way. Our loss.

andrewljohnson 14y ago

The OP isn't siding with freedom-of-speech or honest dialog - he's standing with people who accidentally say the wrong thing in public.

michaelochurch 14y ago

Troll (mostly white-hat, these days) here. Had a gray-hat trolling habit as a teenager and in early 20s. Now I try to direct any hypergraphic tendencies to worthier causes. Denouncing idiocy is charity work that I do. However, I've "trolled for good" quite a bit and have really suffered for it, as the world unfortunately knows. The guys at the game company didn't deserve to be fired. They were engineers having a (somewhat obnoxious) private conversation. Adria Richards did. I can't defend her, because her job was PR and she condescended to a mean-spirited, name-and-shame attack on people she didn't know. (She didn't deserve the onslaught of horrible things said about her, clearly, but she fucked up and deserved to lose her job. I've lost jobs over less.) I hate the private-sector politician life more than anyone, as one can tell by my railing against it, but if your job is to be the public face of a company, then you choose not to have the same rights to public/private separation as most people, just as elected officials can't let their guards down. So that's why I can't stand with Adria. That does not apply to people like Aaron Orth. CEOs are public faces; almost everyone else is a public individual. Orth being fired over that tweet is just ridiculous. This is why I hate 99+ percent of corporations. If you turn your back on someone just because he becomes unpopular, then you are of no use to anyone. Corporations with no moral fiber deserve to be dissolved, and their resources reallocated to the public interest. I am all for private enterprise, but only if it stands for something. If you fire someone because an off comment gets negative attention, then you don't have any moral constitution anymore and there's no reason to allow you ("you" being a company; I'm not advocating killing people) to continue to exist.

VLM 14y ago
It makes sense to fire Orth. No one other than MS employees, a couple console game programmers, and their hired astroturfers wants an "always on" console. Therefore firing him means we're talking about Orth instead of a very unpopular decision by a monopolist. The moral constitution and all that should be outraged at closed gardens and monopolist providers and assymetry in the market between a couple providers and a lot of consumers blah blah. Its not a "do no evil" company, and firing him is pretty small potatoes compared to their other issues. You're dealing with a criminal organization. Don't bother busting Al Capone for jaywalking, or in this case firing a crony.
14y ago

rdouble 14y ago

None of these people were fired simply for their Twitter comments. Their employers wanted to let them go but needed an excuse.

michaelochurch 14y ago
Then those companies are run by idiots. If you really want to fire someone, swallow your pride and write a decent severance package, but do it same-day. If things are really at that point, then waiting does no good.

socrates1998 14y ago

If you are fired for something you said outside of work that doesn't really affect your job, it means you weren't very valuable to the company. This is my criteria for understanding if I actually worth something to my company/organization/team. How much can I screw up and still be a part of this organization? That is value. If you are one stupid meaningless tweet away from being fired, you should be looking for another job.

h2s 14y ago

People use each other's employers to beat each other into submission. When that PyCon 2013 shitstorm went down, the Righteous Male Anger crew were very vocal about their plans to end all their business relationships with SendGrid in retaliation for Adria Richard's actions. It was a calculated move intended to get her fired for what she did. Presumably the dude who got canned for his remarks earlier in that sorry saga was the victim of similar pressure from her supporters. Sometimes this happens because people force it to happen.

yuhong 14y ago
AFAIK Anonymous tried to threaten SendGrid with a DDoS.

aredington 14y ago

He got whacked because he was being dismissive of people's objection to a business decision. He compared the business decision to engineering limitations (vacuums need AC out of plugs, mobile phones need cell towers in range), and was snide about people objecting to the business decision to have a console that only works when it is connected to the internet. He wasn't having open an honest dialog, and he wasn't conducting that dialog politely. I think most folks on HN know of some marginalized political philosophies such as anarchism or libertarianism. These political philosophies aren't popular, but there are polite and intellectually rigorous ways of discussing them, and there are immature and inconsiderate ways of discussing them. You can discuss marginalized or unpopular things without being an asshole. But Orth was discussing them while being an asshole, and was doing it as a representative of Microsoft.

stmartin 14y ago

"I don't speak for my employer" is equivalent to "Don't think of pink elephants" By all means, continue NOT speaking for your employer.

1337biz 14y ago

Anonymous and Wikileaks might get ahold of Google’s entire email database and start publishing stuff. Speaking of which ... is there any tool to swipe clean an Gmail inbox? Due to to the recent changes I finally got ready to switch over to my old pop3s. I plan on slowly fading out my Gmal account, so I would start by deleting all the past mails, etc. Any recommended way to do this?

prg318 14y ago
I would be honestly surprised if deleting messages from your gmail account actually removed them permanently from Google's databases.
- disgruntledphd2 14y ago
  Well then if you live in the EU, complain to the Data Protection Commissioners in Ireland. http://www.dataprotection.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocID=18&UserLang=EN http://www.dataprotection.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocID=18&UserLa... It appears that you need to have deleted your data already, and then contacted Google and asked to have it permanently deleted. There's an online form and everything.... I vaguely remember that when people complained about Facebook, they were forced to ensure that data had been deleted.
  - prg318 14y ago
    Thanks for the info! I was unaware of that. I live in the US; I wonder if there is similar jurisdiction here.

lubujackson 14y ago

Love this post. If we want an open and transparent world, which we are headed toward at breakneck speed, we need to ALLOW AND ACCEPT when people are stupid, say racist things when they were 15, say harmful things on Twitter, insult people and generally be the asses that people are at times. It isn't endorsement, it is a readjustment of cultural norms - these are some more Internet growing pains for everybody. When EVERYTHING we say is attached to a megaphone, people either start to say a lot less or we need to accept a lot more. Personally I want to accept more and not be self-muzzled. I think we have to go in that direction, if no other reason than to accommodate that poor generation that grew up online and have a whole embarrassing history attached to their future lives before anyone understood that their history will no longer fade away from sight. If one off-the-cuff personal comment can get you fired from a job, does that mean it should prevent you from getting hired too? Ever again? It is an easy decision to fire someone in the 5 seconds of Internet heat that these sorts of things can generate, but we need to consider what that is costing us all.

anxx 14y ago
Totally agree. People are probably saying a lot of stuff in daily conversation that, if transcribed, could get them fired. Thanks to social media, these conversations stop happening between two people and include me on the other side of the globe, too. I like that. I want to hear people's real opinions, get a sense of their real personality, from the internet. Firing someone over their tweets sends a powerful message to everyone to filter what you tweet.

gonzo 14y ago

as an aside, one does not "stick" one's .signature file in a NNTP feed. Author likely wasn't there, back in the day.

edw519 14y ago

...but we are moving more and more to a transparent society... This key issue isn't whether or not things are changing (they are) or whether it's good or bad (that's debatable). The key issue is who gets to decide. If I want to tell the world a million things about myself, that's my business. But if someone else wants to tell the world things about me (especially if they know it's personal or private), then that's definitely not cool. It's not that much different for institutions, companies, or any group in general. None of us should be surprised at the reaction of another whose digital cherry we popped on-line. This reminds me of the old tale about the man with a gossiping problem who went to a sage for advice. The sage told him to slice open a feather-filled pillow, shake it outside his house, then come back tomorrow. The next day the man asked the sage what to do about his gossip problem. The sage said, "Go gather those feathers."

supercanuck 14y ago
For those like me who didn't understand the feathers reference, the analogy of the sage is that gathering up those feathers is the equivalent of taking back what you said. Once it has been said, it is out there forever, the damage has been done.
- WilliamMayor 14y ago
  I think it also means that gossip spreads really far and you never know where all those feathers end up. Even if you could take back what you say, it's hard to find where the gossip has spread to. I'm reminded of the Friends episode where Ross sleeps with the copy girl.
- cdmoyer 14y ago
  Hmm. I also took from it that the man should just go spend time doing something other than gossiping. Say a task that would take a long time, like gathering the feathers. (ie. you can be less transparent by spending your time doing rather than talking.)

xradionut 14y ago

"But I would like to live in a world where people might disagree with Reg Braithwaite but buy Raganwald’s book." I wouldn't judge a person based solely on their published content, especially those authors that write fiction. But there are works I'll never buy or recommend because I will not knowingly support the actions/attitudes of the author. (SciFi examples: Card, Hubbard, Rosenberg...) My choice.

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doobius 14y ago

He chose to speak his mind, and I believe his opinion was mean-spirited and unnecessary. Sometimes, employers fire people for that, and that's the way the world works. I don't see it as a problem.

MrMcDowall 14y ago

Executives shouldn't be trolls. If you're an executive, and you say or do something in public that tangibly affects the market perception in a negative way, you should have known better, and you deserve to be fired.

summerdown2 14y ago

Reminds me of this talk from LongNow: http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-always-die-and-life-gets-faster/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-gro... One difference as to why cities keep going and corporations die: "Cities tolerate crazy people," West observed, "Companies don't."