Everything about the post makes my skin crawl. The weird vaguely sketchy tweets, overly needy behavior, constant need for validation.
Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
71–80 of 184 posts
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#72At some point you offended the wrong person, they added you to one of those shared blocklists, and that's all, you're banned forever. Who's to blame? I'd say you, for caring. This is the way politics works now, and some software projects have, for some reason, joined the politics battle. By caring you're giving them weight. Just flip them off, tell them to go fuck themselves, and keep thinking the way you do. It's no…
On the one hand, it is a privately run conference and they can generally do what they want. On the other hand, I am strongly opposed to private blacklists, on the following grounds:
First, I understand there is an effort to create blacklists independently, then contact conferences who have a speaker who is on them, and then publicly shame the conference if they don't ban the speaker in question. This removes agency from the conference to decide who they want as a speaker, and creates a chilling effect, as nobody except the owners of the blacklist knows who is on the list.
Second, if I am a speaker who is on a blacklist, I generally am not told about this. Which is safer in the current political climate, to submit and risk becoming the epicenter of some twitter drama, or to decide not to submit a talk? How many great talks do we miss because an unaccountable arbiter of a blacklist has decided on my behalf who gets to speak and who doesn't?
Third, the owner of the blacklist acts as the judge, jury, and executioner all at once, with no due process. As either a conference organizer, speaker, or member of the public, I am generally not privy to 1. why the person was blacklisted 2. how many other people are blacklisted 3. whether or not (most likely not) there is an appeals process so they can be removed from the blacklist. If this sounds familiar, it's because the TSA does the same thing.
Two additional things: I realize that I am assuming some of the structures of these systems, but it comes from a bit of experience. Second, I understand that the blacklists extend to more than just conferences, also to contacting employers to get people fired, or prevent them from being hired.
I'm not sure if the conference is employing their own blacklist or was contacted by a third party, but my points still apply either way.
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#73At some point you offended the wrong person, they added you to one of those shared blocklists, and that's all, you're banned forever. Who's to blame? I'd say you, for caring. This is the way politics works now, and some software projects have, for some reason, joined the politics battle. By caring you're giving them weight. Just flip them off, tell them to go fuck themselves, and keep thinking the way you do. It's no…
> [...] and keep thinking the way you do.
I think sociologically it is wrong to just ignore 'them' as considering a change of your own thinking is important to resolve conflicts in general.
Nevertheless, without an explanation there is little he can do so ignoring them might be a reasonable self-defense in this situation.
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#74Why do you keep bugging someone when they obviously do not want you to contact them? Blocking you is a way of saying "Leave me alone!" Not replying to direct messages or emails is a way of saying "Leave me alone!" Nobody needs to explain why they want to be left alone. Maybe stop thinking about yourself, and just accept that the people behind the twitter handles just don't want you to contact them anymore for whateve…
What you say is true if it was a private person. This is about a conference that seems to be important professionally to that person. They even replied to him - why not just say WHY and get it over with once and for all? This is just stupid, not (just) unprofessional. If they could at least point to "we already told you, now get lost" - but never giving a reason... it's not like they could be sued (first, Europe, sec…
Perhaps all his 30 speech proposals were completely inane and he's been viewed by organizers as that spammy fellow in late stages Dunning–Kruger syndrome? If that's the case, then muting communications is the least offensive option and it is entirely appropriate. However it does require the other side to be able to take a hint.
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#75After reading the "code of conduct" on their homepage I would assume that you have unknowligly broken something like
> "Using gendered terms like “dude” or “guys” to address a mixed-gendered group of people contributes to furthering exclusion of underrepresented individuals."
The fact that they included an option to "make an anonymous" report furthers the assumption that you just got under the political wheels of the conference.
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shared blocklists are a pain. If you at one point happened to make a bad but well-intentioned pun, you ended up[1] on a blocklist meant for blocking fascists[2]. [1] https://twitter.com/wilw/status/688127971337449475 [2] https://twitter.com/wilw/status/688149812881960961
I know this conference is probably not using this particular blocklist, but why should a conference 1) use a blocklist and 2) block people just for being of particular political view?
Possible answers:
1) Some political views correspond strongly with problematic behaviour that a conference would rather not deal with.
2) Virtue signaling for PR purposes.
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#77You submitted 30 proposals? Maybe they are just annoyed by you spamming them?
Also, they just banned you on twitter, what's the big deal here? You can still attend the conference.
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you say is true if it was a private person. This is about a conference that seems to be important professionally to that person. They even replied to him - why not just say WHY and get it over with once and for all? This is just stupid, not (just) unprofessional. If they could at least point to "we already told you, now get lost" - but never giving a reason... it's not like they could be sued (first, Europe, sec…
Perhaps all his 30 speech proposals were completely inane and he's been viewed by organizers as that spammy fellow in late stages Dunning–Kruger syndrome? If that's the case, then muting communications is the least offensive option and it is entirely appropriate. However it does require the other side to be able to take a hint.
Perhaps - then tell him.
The reason does not matter (especially since we are unlikely to hear it from anyone), what matters is that they refuse to say what it is. "Effort" is not an excuse either since they even replied to him - but with something unprofessional while still leaving out the reason for no good reason that I can think of. You can even mask it behind a more fuzzy reason if you think the specific reason is not good enough to be made public, but they did not even make the attempt.
> then muting communications is the least offensive option
Only after telling him. Something, anything - they could even make up a polite "official" reason and keep the truth for themselves as we humans often do, which can actually be perfectly okay. But stubbornly refusing to give any reason at all... no, that's not okay. It would be if it was between individuals, but not for a professional organization, especially one that the person may not be able to ignore even if they wanted to, since he seems to find them a valuable contribution for his professional life.
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#79Slightly off topic: I've always found twitter-style blocking totally nonsensical. I mean: you've got a public account. Blocking should prevent people from replying or tweeting at you, and from sending you DMs, maybe even retweeting what you said (even though I'm not sure about the usefulness of this last thing)... but why should ANYONE be prevented at just READING PUBLIC CONTENT when LOGGED IN? (I think the same appl…
I've also wondered about this, and the only conclusion I could come to is quite cynical. Think about the practical effects. It encourages people to create multiple accounts and also encourages warring of various sorts. These behaviors send Twitter's usage and user numbers up without bots while enabling complete plausible deniability about any complicity. It's a problem with ad-driven networks. Their goal is to increase user numbers which enables them to inflate their advertised reach and thus increase their overall revenue.
One might joke about Facebook bragging about its reach: "We have more than 2 billion users and only 25% are located in the USA!" Subtlety, math, and statistical references all in one one-liner joke - what could be better?
Re: Blocked by JSConf.eu Twitter account
#80Why do you keep bugging someone when they obviously do not want you to contact them? Blocking you is a way of saying "Leave me alone!" Not replying to direct messages or emails is a way of saying "Leave me alone!" Nobody needs to explain why they want to be left alone. Maybe stop thinking about yourself, and just accept that the people behind the twitter handles just don't want you to contact them anymore for whateve…
I think this is not a private or personal thing, this just unprofessional handling of an yet unclear situation. Like beeing conficted without a trial (of course this is just a business relationship between him and the conference). Imagine that Hacker News would ban your account jakobegger, no explanation, no way to get informations why or what you did wrong. Would you just accept this as just "leave me alone"?
The reason we respect HN and its respective admins, is because they explain their decisions quite openly and transparently, and will even discuss issues over email. I was actually banned a few years ago because I was being a negative, hateful, POS due to some events in my life combined with clouded judgment. But I appealed, and began posting better comments that were more in line with what one would expect from a discussion forum for positivity (startups) and rationalism (tech.) I'm sure there are many others like me who the admins treated quite fairly and with respect. "Silent treatment" is a last resort, in all other cases it is just a weak and impotent thing to do.