Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo? • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#131

Post by eropple » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 5:48 PM UTC

RexRollman wrote: post #120

jbjohns wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of. That's the adult thing for him to do. But the adult thing for the rest of us to do is mind our own business. If I start to start a conversation with someone but find their speech offends me, I walk away. If his picture offends you, just take him off your feed. No big deal.

No, the new "adult thing" to do is try to control what other do and say, so that no one ever has to experience the traumatic effects of being offended.

I think many people here are conflating offensiveness and propriety. You don't have to be offended by something to find it inappropriate for a service that you run. (I don't find profanity offensive, but I also don't find it appropriate for business conversation. I doubt Googlers find a bird all that offensive, but the people making decisions apparently don't find birds appropriate for public G+ feeds. Oh noes?)

He, and you, and I, have no inherent right to do whatever we want on a private service. Their house, their rules. Maybe he should start his own social network (with blackjack, and...). He can call it CrunchPlaid. =)

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#132

Post by eropple » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 8:08 PM UTC

viscanti wrote: post #128

eropple wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the criteria to remove something is that more than one person finds it offensive, almost everything on the internet would be removed. Reductionist strawman. While a middle finger may not be particularly offensive to most people (including me), more people are likely to be offended by it than are likely to get their knickers in a twist over such a photo being removed. Ergo, it gets removed. Waste time with warnin…

It's not at all a reductionist straw-man argument. The post I responded to argued that if more than one person flagged the post as offensive that the content should be removed. The argument assumed that there should/could be a vote on if something is offensive, and if more people found it offensive it should be removed. That line of reasoning is flawed, especially since there's no way to vote that you're not offended…

> There's no reason to remove the content

"It doesn't meet the standards of public discourse G+ is made for." Blam. Done.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#133

Post by viscanti » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 10:20 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #132

viscanti wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all a reductionist straw-man argument. The post I responded to argued that if more than one person flagged the post as offensive that the content should be removed. The argument assumed that there should/could be a vote on if something is offensive, and if more people found it offensive it should be removed. That line of reasoning is flawed, especially since there's no way to vote that you're not offended…

> There's no reason to remove the content "It doesn't meet the standards of public discourse G+ is made for." Blam. Done.

Right. It's an arbitrary decision. The fact that they made a (arguably silly) decision doesn't prevent that decision from being called out for being silly. It is silly. G+ is certainly entitled to make whatever decisions they want to, provided those decisions are legal. That doesn't make them impervious to criticism.

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#134

Post by sesqu » Fri, Dec 30, 2011, 10:49 PM UTC

jbjohns wrote: post #117

eropple wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of. Siegler's little renegade act probably wouldn't work so well with the people who still think you can be a badass tech writer if he refrained, though. MC Siegler and his fans are completely and totally allowed to share pictures of them fingering at each other (that came out wrong, but I'm leaving it for poster…

>The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of. That's the adult thing for him to do. But the adult thing for the rest of us to do is mind our own business. If I start to start a conversation with someone but find their speech offends me, I walk away. If his picture offends you, just take him off your feed. No big deal.

You're assuming we're the adults here, rather than Google.

If flipping the bird isn't an adult thing to do, clearly the users are not adults. So the guardians have to clean up after them, as is customary.

Heck, apple has made a lot of money by taking that stance. Why shouldn't Google emulate it?

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#135

Post by tincholio » Sat, Dec 31, 2011, 4:24 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #129

ryguytilidie wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to mention EVERY TECHCRUNCH WRITER's long history of self-promotion. /fyp

I have never seen any story like "ROBIN WAUTERS WONDERS WHY ROBIN WAUTERS ISN'T IN THE HEADLINES," like you see multiple times per week with MG...on HN. Is he the most gossipy person there, now? This is usually the kind of drama you see with Perez Hilton type personalities.

Well, we had those with Arrington, but fortunately he seems to have "vanished" from the HN mind...

Re: Dear MG Siegler, Are you seriously upset about your photo?

#136

Post by rhizome » Sat, Dec 31, 2011, 8:36 PM UTC

tincholio wrote: post #135

rhizome wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen any story like "ROBIN WAUTERS WONDERS WHY ROBIN WAUTERS ISN'T IN THE HEADLINES," like you see multiple times per week with MG...on HN. Is he the most gossipy person there, now? This is usually the kind of drama you see with Perez Hilton type personalities.

Well, we had those with Arrington, but fortunately he seems to have "vanished" from the HN mind...

That's a good point: MG might just be bored because he doesn't have enough interesting work to do, so he's going to stink up the place until people give him work/money/cocktail-weenies.