Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mark in the Middle

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 603 posts

Re: Mark in the Middle

#41

Post by dx87 »

ThomPete wrote: post #4

I will never understand the extreme intellectual fragility of cancel culture. A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement or what is it that have created such a thin skinned generation of seemingly well educated people?

I just finished reading "The Coddling of the American Mind", and it goes into the subject pretty well. A lot of it stems from parents not letting their kids be independent, so they never learn to deal with disagreements from dealing with other kids, then colleges cave to whatever demands they have because they just want to collect tuition money.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#42

Post by Cthulhu_ »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #15
jsiepkes wrote: post #3

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

Who are these people they "serve"? Surely you don't imply that Facebook is a user driven website? One look at how they handle UI changes tells you that any claims to "serve" the users is extremely hollow.

UX / look and feel is one of those things where a company cannot win; ANY change, especially redesigns, will cause friction with their customers.

Ask people what they want with the UI and you get either small pet peeves (but none of them statistically significant), but generally a "leave it as is" answer. Even though the current version may not tick all the boxes from the company's point of view - things like engagement, advertising opportunities, etc.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#43

Post by onion2k »

actuator wrote: post #22
ThomPete wrote: post #4

I will never understand the extreme intellectual fragility of cancel culture. A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement or what is it that have created such a thin skinned generation of seemingly well educated people?

Yeah, the way people like JK Rowling have been hounded for not agreeing on every point with some people is very depressing to see, considering that she has been quite supportive in the past of the very groups that are hounding her. Mob like behaviour to hound someone for their beliefs just reeks of illiberalism.

Yeah, the way people like JK Rowling have been hounded for not agreeing on every point with some people is very depressing to see, considering that she has been quite supportive in the past of the very groups that are hounding her.

She has changed a lot since writing Harry Potter. It's obvious that she no longer believes in supporting marginalised groups or telling people that it's OK to be who you want to be. Her recent work is extremely political and designed to further marginalise people who are already marginalised - she's literally just had a book published that's about a serial killer who dresses as a woman to approach and attack other women, which isn't even slightly veiled as an attack on the trans community.

If that's how she thinks now then she has every right to be like that, but everyone else has the right to point out she's being an asshole.

As always, there's an XKCD for this - https://xkcd.com/1357/

Re: Mark in the Middle

#44

Post by monadic2 »

dx87 wrote: post #41
ThomPete wrote: post #4

I will never understand the extreme intellectual fragility of cancel culture. A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement or what is it that have created such a thin skinned generation of seemingly well educated people?

I just finished reading "The Coddling of the American Mind", and it goes into the subject pretty well. A lot of it stems from parents not letting their kids be independent, so they never learn to deal with disagreements from dealing with other kids, then colleges cave to whatever demands they have because they just want to collect tuition money.

Smells like bullshit meant to coddle the american mind.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#45

Post by PedroBatista »

jsiepkes wrote: post #3

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

The observation by itself is dead right.

When employees complain about far-right "conservatives" using FB to do X or Y they are right too and when I say: compared to most FB (vocal) employees' World views, +90% of the World's population are capitalist Hitler supporters, I think I'm right too.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#46

Post by blueterminal »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #20

Whatever you think of the opinion of some of the employees regarding FB's stance towards politics, they're just never going to get their way without a union. It's exactly right that FB is a monarchy and what we see here are akin to the political challenges you'd read about in a monarchy. The small collective actions seem to be a good step in that direction but still much, much smaller than you'd need to form a union.…

Unions are absolutely detrimental to the society. Thank god we'll never have one for Software Engineers.

Great short explanation from Milton Friedman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4

Re: Mark in the Middle

#47

Post by [deleted] »

ThomPete wrote: post #4

I will never understand the extreme intellectual fragility of cancel culture. A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement or what is it that have created such a thin skinned generation of seemingly well educated people?

[deleted]

Re: Mark in the Middle

#48

Post by zimpenfish »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #38

Premise: Diversity is good. Diversity means diversity of ideas. Ergo, you will disagree vehemently with people, and this is a good thing under the framework of diversity. Do not confuse disagreeing with someone as that person being morally sub-human, and if you are able to do this your life will be more pleasant. Disagreement is a good thing, it is society’s mechanism for decision making in complex circumstances.

> Do not confuse disagreeing with someone as that person being morally sub-human

If your disagreement with that person is about whether someone else is considered less of a human than they are (by dint of race, wealth, sexuality, whatever), it's probably ok to consider them morally bankrupt on that basis.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#49

Post by Cederfjard »

loxs wrote: post #35
C1sc0cat wrote: post #21

He is Fucked if Biden wins - and I suspect the dual stock structure used to maintain control might get looked at by the SEC. The Board need to tell him " Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!"

As an outsider (from a different continent), it doesn't seem at all likely that there is a chance for Biden winning. It probably looks the same from where Zuck is sitting. We might, of course, both be wrong :)

I think that’s a take without merit. It’s certainly not clear-cut.

Here’s The Economist and FiveThirtyEight both saying that they favor Biden to win (at the time of my posting this):

https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

Re: Mark in the Middle

#50

Post by mcintyre1994 »

I think coverage of Facebook is often too US-heavy and it really misses the point by making it into a US partisan issue - this article mentions Trump but doesn't mention Ethiopia. Here's a Vice Article about how hate speech on Facebook is currently pushing Ethiopia toward a genocide just like it did in Myanmar a few years ago: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg897a/hate-speech-on-fac...
Post reply on HN