Cancel We The Web? (2020)

I know someone (no friend of mine) who said some indefensible things on social media. He ended up losing his job not because of what he said, but because people found where he worked and called up threats against his employers. That wasn’t enough. They also found out where he lived, graffitied and egged his house, made personal threats. I don’t know whatever happened to the guy but the last I heard he had his roommates lying, claiming he had moved.

If you get canceled, it doesn’t happen on Twitter.

We have to stop feeding the trolls. I think someone like Stallman probably made the choice to resign "for the good of the FSF". He probably reasoned, like so many people in this situation, that staying on would be detrimental to the goals of the organization at this point, and he cares more about free software than he does about personally leading it. I think that's admirable, but I think it's wrong-headed.

It may be true in a narrow sense that caving was what was best for the FSF in that moment, but it was bad for the larger world of free software, because of the precedent that it set. It was bad because it fed the trolls. These mobs feed on success. When they see themselves getting people fired, that is incredibly energizing, and that energy points only in one direction: more. Who are we going to cancel today? The trolls are hungry.

Internet communities have been dealing with trolls for decades now, and it is actually a fairly well understood problem. The only way to kill the trolls is to starve them. Don't engage with them, and most of all, do not cave to them. When they see that their tactics aren't working anymore, they'll stop doing it. Unfortunately that may mean a temporary rough period for your organization, if you are the victim of something like this, but it will pass, and it will probably pass more quickly and with less harm than you think.

Now, to be clear, I am not suggesting that organizations ignore serious abuse. If something is reported and your board actually believes a real transgression occurred, it should absolutely be dealt with. But I don't believe that's what happened in the Stallman case. I don't believe for one second that the FSF board wanted him to resign. I think they felt they had no choice, due to mob pressure. And that's the situation in which I implore people to resist. Do not give in to mob pressure that you don't agree with.

> It doesn't require complete agreement - it does require same level of agreement and cooperation that allows us to have common language, common culture, common laws, Open Source projects, charities, etc....

> Yes, there will always be those who do not abide for the societal convention for one reason or another.

I mean, as far as I can tell, the "societal convention" you're advocating for doesn't exist as such, so you lack even the minimal "some level of agreement" that your tactic requires.

> The "bad path" you're describing is what I and many others like about working in software.

This is not true of software in general. Software companies are diverse, and they are run in diverse ways. (Maybe not as diverse as other industries... but there is still a lot of variation.)

> When I'm meeting with other technical people, we can have a frank discussion about problems we're facing and solutions to them, which comes much more naturally to me than constantly thinking about the feelings and relative status of everyone in the room.

There are a few things I'd like you to consider.

1. Software companies face problems with people. Good managers shield engineers from people problems as much as possible, but if you are only having discussions about technical problems and not people problems, then you are probably not having frank discussions.

2. The fact that it does not come natural to you to constantly think about the feelings of others is not unusual nor is it a fundamental part of your job to constantly think about the feelings of others. If that were the case, there would not be so many good software engineers on the autism spectrum. I have worked with several.

3. It is not expected that you intuit when people are hurt, never say anything hurtful, or think about people first when you are having a technical discussion. However, it is expected that you are aware that your behavior can have a negative impact on other people in the organization and that you make reasonable attempts to correct your behavior if necessary.

> ... but I can't support the idea that their preference is fundamentally superior to mine.

This isn't a dichotomy. An organization needs a combination of strong technical skills and strong people skills in order to succeed. Those skills are, of course, not distributed equally. There is no expectation that a software engineer have the same people skills as an engineering manager.

However, consider this.

An engineering manager primarily works on people problems but would suffer greatly if they had zero technical skills. An engineering manager with zero technical skills is a liability. Likewise, a software engineer with zero people skills is a liability.

The fact that a person was ostracized does not make them guilty of some unforgivable transgression. Without concrete accusations, we really can't evaluate what the truth is here, and afaik nobody has made any concrete accusations other than some socially inept jokes.