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I wish we wouldn't upvote stuff like this. The guy clearly bullied a random Google employee in a private chatroom into commenting on a subject that was totally

I wish we wouldn't upvote stuff like this. The guy clearly bullied a random Google employee in a private chatroom into commenting on a subject that was totally irrelevant to his work, and then turned his comments into a biased character assassination post WITHOUT even telling the dude he was writing about him. It sure seems like the author went into the chatroom looking for a story, and got the THINNEST of all possible stories ("Random Google Developer Has Opinions") and, in an effort to turn it into real news, colored it in the most negative way possible. It is profoundly terrible journalism, and the motives behind it are so ugly. This is not something that we should endorse on Hacker News. The only story of relevance here is that Digital Ocean has a line in its TOS about not allowing "harassment or embarrassment", and they will enforce it if you do indeed harass a guy.

hnnewguy 13y ago
>The only story of relevance here is that Digital Ocean has a line in its TOS about not allowing "harassment or embarrassment", and they will enforce it if you do indeed harass a guy. I think you are missing the real relevance here; that DO will use their own discretion to determine if your content is worthy of dissemination. You're right, it was terrible journalism, and a thin story. So what of it? Why should DO concern themselves with the content that isn't breaking any laws? What, precisely, is "embarrassment"? It was a no-name blogger posting a non-story. >This is not something that we should endorse on Hacker News. The fact that you say this explains a lot about why you have your opinion on DO and how things should work, and why I have mine. If this story is getting upvoted, it's getting upvoted. There is no "we", unless you're trying to curate opinion and create an echo chamber.
- derefr 13y ago
  By accepting implicitly the facts presented by the article as facts, you are doing something called "privileging the hypothesis." Say, for example, that there's an article about a "scientific study", claiming some strong conclusion (e.g. "pig hair cures diabetes.") The article goes on to say that the study has one data-point and no control-group (which is to say, basically, that it's an anecdote.) To still even consider the study's conclusion as possibly true is to privilege the hypothesis. You didn't have any facts before. You don't have any facts after. And yet, your default has switched from "assume pig hair has no special properties whatsoever" to "assume pig hair maybe has something with a vaguely-medicinal use in it." You've updated on zero information. Just as much as publicizing such a "study", it's irresponsible to put such journalism--sophistry, really--in front of other people, where it could possibly infect their defaults. Not everyone catches these things. Most people only read the first paragraph or two of things, and come away with impressions. These impressions, especially in the case of really bad journalism, can be directly opposed to the impressions they should have taken. If we are a community here, then we should want to help one-another avoid bad journalism, and more importantly, avoid becoming swayed by whatever the bad journalism purports to report. We don't all need to think the same thing--but supporting a story just on the basis that other people support it, leads to pig hair being "signal-boosted" into notoriety.
  - judk 13y ago
    Of I post a BS blog post about how DO is way more secure and reliable and cost-effective than AWS, and how AWS is a ripoff scam, will DO take it down to stop be from embarasskng Jeff Bezos? Or are they exercising editorial discretion?
    - derefr 13y ago
      Again, I wasn't speaking at all on the issue at hand, because the issue isn't at hand. The article sucked too bad to let the issue be at hand. All I was talking about is the meta-issue you brought up, of what HN as a community should or shouldn't "give air-time."

hnnewguy 13y ago

>The only story of relevance here is that Digital Ocean has a line in its TOS about not allowing "harassment or embarrassment", and they will enforce it if you do indeed harass a guy. I think you are missing the real relevance here; that DO will use their own discretion to determine if your content is worthy of dissemination. You're right, it was terrible journalism, and a thin story. So what of it? Why should DO concern themselves with the content that isn't breaking any laws? What, precisely, is "embarrassment"? It was a no-name blogger posting a non-story. >This is not something that we should endorse on Hacker News. The fact that you say this explains a lot about why you have your opinion on DO and how things should work, and why I have mine. If this story is getting upvoted, it's getting upvoted. There is no "we", unless you're trying to curate opinion and create an echo chamber.

derefr 13y ago
By accepting implicitly the facts presented by the article as facts, you are doing something called "privileging the hypothesis." Say, for example, that there's an article about a "scientific study", claiming some strong conclusion (e.g. "pig hair cures diabetes.") The article goes on to say that the study has one data-point and no control-group (which is to say, basically, that it's an anecdote.) To still even consider the study's conclusion as possibly true is to privilege the hypothesis. You didn't have any facts before. You don't have any facts after. And yet, your default has switched from "assume pig hair has no special properties whatsoever" to "assume pig hair maybe has something with a vaguely-medicinal use in it." You've updated on zero information. Just as much as publicizing such a "study", it's irresponsible to put such journalism--sophistry, really--in front of other people, where it could possibly infect their defaults. Not everyone catches these things. Most people only read the first paragraph or two of things, and come away with impressions. These impressions, especially in the case of really bad journalism, can be directly opposed to the impressions they should have taken. If we are a community here, then we should want to help one-another avoid bad journalism, and more importantly, avoid becoming swayed by whatever the bad journalism purports to report. We don't all need to think the same thing--but supporting a story just on the basis that other people support it, leads to pig hair being "signal-boosted" into notoriety.
- judk 13y ago
  Of I post a BS blog post about how DO is way more secure and reliable and cost-effective than AWS, and how AWS is a ripoff scam, will DO take it down to stop be from embarasskng Jeff Bezos? Or are they exercising editorial discretion?
  - derefr 13y ago
    Again, I wasn't speaking at all on the issue at hand, because the issue isn't at hand. The article sucked too bad to let the issue be at hand. All I was talking about is the meta-issue you brought up, of what HN as a community should or shouldn't "give air-time."