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Cancel We The Web? (2020)

wetheweb.org

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Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#101

Post by _euac »

google234123 wrote: post #91
dguaraglia wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever pondered if your 'shit posting' led to other people being harassed and led them to question their safety?

Has Dave Chappell's (or any other comedian's) jokes led to other people being harassed and led them to question their safety? Should they be "cancelled" and erased from society?

There's a whole gaping chasm between Dave Chappelle - a world-famous comedian - making what is clearly a joke on a stage and some anonymous person posting edgy white supremacist shit 'for the lulz'. In case you haven't been following the news, that's the kind of radicalization tool that resulted in a not insignificant amount of the population believing that QAnon was real and that storming the capitol and killing a policeman were justified.

So yeah, people who are there just to 'shit post right wing stuff' should definitely consider what they are doing.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#102

Post by meibo »

axaxs wrote: post #70
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #59

> Sarah Mei then went through the board members involved one by one, digging into each of their histories, and tweeting what she viewed as fire-worthy infractions. What a [negative adjective removed at moderator's request] human being. Worst of all, she probably views her activity as a worthy contribution to society.

Careful now, the world missed out on all of her genius open source in the 90s, and are obviously much worse off.

> Currently stirring the pot at @SalesforceUX

Seems like Linux UX wouldn't have been much better off with her!

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#103

Post by klodolph »

Clewza313 wrote: post #57
klodolph wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that this is just an attempt at explaining away toxic behavior without taking responsibility for it. People in the OSS community can, at times, glorify toxic behavior. I know people who take it as a badge of honor to "speak the truth", "speak directly", or "have no filter". Speaking directly and speaking the truth are good ideals to have, but if you really want to PROVE that you speak the truth and don't fear…

So expressing sincerely held beliefs in a personal forum like his own website is in and of itself "toxic"? Many of RMS's beliefs are indeed well outside the mainstream, but as far as I'm aware nobody has ever accused him actually doing anything abusive to anybody.

> So expressing sincerely held beliefs in a personal forum like his own website is in and of itself "toxic"?

That's a loaded question... it looks like you're making some wild assumptions about whether I think Stallman is toxic, and the reasoning for that.

> Many of RMS's beliefs are indeed well outside the mainstream, but as far as I'm aware nobody has ever accused him actually doing anything abusive to anybody.

So, I'll share a couple articles.

https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

> RMS’s loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior.

Speaking of the FSF / GNU project leadership itself... I think it's clear that the GNU project needs a code of conduct, and if the leader is opposed to the idea as much as Stallman is, then it's correct to replace him. He has a vision for software freedom, but he's to averse to good community management (which is what the GNU project needs).

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#104

Post by ggm »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #31
ggm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't agree. He was partly punished for what people THOUGHT he had said, and for past transgressions, and in large part for what people were TOLD he had said. Not for what he actually said.

*Alleged past transgressions.

Yes. important distinction. Things he said and did in the past, which people got upset about, which are completely unrelated to the current Epstein context.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#105

Post by visarga »

smsm42 wrote: post #41
1024core wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Sarah Mel character is the one who should be "cancelled".

Nope, she is the character that needs to be ignored. That's the proper way to deal with trolls - not feeding them, not fighting them but starving them of attention they so desperately crave.

Pedro Domingos has published an article about how to combat cancel culture.

> Beating Back Cancel Culture: A Case Study from the Field of Artificial Intelligence

https://quillette.com/2021/01/27/beating-back-cancel-culture...

TL;DR: Find your friends, Know what to expect, Don’t back down, Don’t let them make it about you, Hold the moral high ground, Mock them mercilessly, Don’t let their narrative outrun yours, Goad them into overreaching, Turn their weapons against them, Use the courts, Bring administrators around

He has had some success in dealing with Anima Anandkumar and her mob on Twitter.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#106

Post by r3856283 »

mjg59 wrote: post #84

Any writeup of this that concentrates on external responses and ignores the strong response from many within the communities that RMS led is failing to tell the complete story. There's no shortage of people extremely familiar with his work and behaviour who felt his continued involvement was inappropriate, but instead we're exposed to story after story about how a group of people pushing a one sided narrative unjustl…

I wonder what you are talking about? He got a ton of bad press that no one wanted to be associated with, but when it came down to the communities he leads, they were largely supportive of him. GNU is a collection of programs that publicly ascribe to ethical principles he advocates for and helps define, but when it comes to the actual work of development, they are lead by their individual maintainers, not RMS. A small minority wanted him to step down, largely because they wanted someone who would lead GNU on issues like technical direction and marketing, and they were told new leadership is welcome, there's no need to remove RMS for that, and wanting a leader doesn't make one magically appear and so it didn't go anywhere. He is a maintainer of Emacs, no one there wanted him gone, and he is a leader of a couple people who are called the GNU webmasters, and none who were active wanted him gone.

Nadine doesn't know all that, but the opinion of an outsider who doesn't have personal involvement skewing their views is extremely worthwhile.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#107

Post by Torwald »

klodolph wrote: post #38
r3trohack3r wrote: post #6

A different take: Microsoft, Oracle, et. al. waged a war against OSS in the 90s. They went as far as using mental illness as a weapon against the community (equating participation in the commons as an equivalent to mental illness). It’s not a coincidence the class of human that weathered the storm looks like Stallman, Linus, ESR, et. al. That’s what it took. The toxicity in these communities is a result of what was l…

I think that this is just an attempt at explaining away toxic behavior without taking responsibility for it. People in the OSS community can, at times, glorify toxic behavior. I know people who take it as a badge of honor to "speak the truth", "speak directly", or "have no filter". Speaking directly and speaking the truth are good ideals to have, but if you really want to PROVE that you speak the truth and don't fear…

> People in the OSS community can, at times, glorify toxic behavior.

I wouldn't go so far as to glorify toxic behaviour, but some of what is seen as toxic by some is IMO just frankness or a tactic to bring the conversation back into a realm of technical discussion.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#108

Post by eganist »

tryonenow wrote: post #77
ComputerGuru wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some McCarthy level witch-hunting: > The fourth @fsf board member is Benjamin Mako Hill - @makoshark - seems super involved with Wikipedia, which is also known as an extremely hostile community towards women. What a leap! Just make crazy allegations and move on to the next name on the list! I always post online knowing someone might come digging, but I didn’t realize the bar for extortion-worthy material was…

And how laughable, given wikipedia's heavy progressive bias. These people seek out and peddle victimhood as currency. Truly McArthy-esque, to see villains (in our times "oppressors") behind every shadow... Even manufactured self righteousness must be addictive.

> given wikipedia's heavy progressive bias.

Do you have a robust academic citation for this?

None of the sources here (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_bias_on_Wikipedi...) suggest a heavy bias, and overall it seems that bias is attenuated with stronger participation.

I haven't been able to find sources other than those linked.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#109

Post by optimalsolver »

CanceledAccount wrote: post #40

I was canceled on Twitter last year. Hundreds of people were harassed for being associated with me, my social circles were ripped to shreds, and I feared for my safety. I got into right wing shitposting and logs from a small private chat group were leaked. It was one of the worst experiences of my life and I haven’t recovered. They feel like they’ve made the world a better place.

Did you lose your job? And any idea who?

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#110

Post by adolph »

jimbob45 wrote: post #81
jonathanlb wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just avoid cancel culture. Anyone who claims to support BLM or ActBlue or any liberal politician [...] should be avoided with extreme prejudice. So, to avoid cancel culture, you should cancel others?

No, not others. Just those who would themselves cancel. After all, how did we solve McCarthy if not by removing him from power?

With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt that same year, McCarthy's support and popularity faded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

According to the theory, when articulating preferences individuals frequently tailor their choices to what appears socially acceptable. In other words, they convey preferences that differ from what they genuinely want. Kuran calls the resulting misrepresentation "preference falsification".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification

Now this is a system where if one of us decides for whatever reason that we’re going to call a spade a spade and say this system doesn’t work, I don’t like it, I go out in the street and I start demonstrating — a lot of other people are going to follow. So what’s happened is ultimately, when some demonstrations began, and it happened to be the demonstration started in East East Germany, these demonstrations started growing every week, more and more people found in themselves the courage to say what they believed and to come out against the regime.

https://moses.land/eric-weinstein-and-timur-kuran-on-the-por...

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