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Marc Andreessen: I regret not doing more to support and defend Brendan Eich

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Re: Marc Andreessen: I regret not doing more to support and defend Brendan Eich

#61

Post by archagon »

dang wrote: post #60
archagon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have strong opinions about the Eich situation. But: > Should half the country "suffer" as well just for voting Republican? In the past, probably not. With today's Republicans? Absolutely. You don't get to knowingly vote for a fascist and his corrupt sycophants and face no repercussions. If your politics are "I don't give a fuck about democracy unless I win," our world views are entirely incompatible and I don…

Your account has swerved into using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. I don't know why, but it's dismaying, because you've been a great contributor in the past but now you're posting more battle comments than not. This is not allowed on HN, regardless of which politics you're for or against, or how right you are or feel you are. We have to ban accounts that post like this and I definitely don't want…

I’ve been seeing more and more topics that are strictly politics on the front page, such as this, despite being flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40052403

If “political and ideological battle” is not allowed, then why not ban these topic entirely?

Re: Marc Andreessen: I regret not doing more to support and defend Brendan Eich

#62

Post by dang »

archagon wrote: post #61
dang wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your account has swerved into using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. I don't know why, but it's dismaying, because you've been a great contributor in the past but now you're posting more battle comments than not. This is not allowed on HN, regardless of which politics you're for or against, or how right you are or feel you are. We have to ban accounts that post like this and I definitely don't want…

I’ve been seeing more and more topics that are strictly politics on the front page, such as this, despite being flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40052403 If “political and ideological battle” is not allowed, then why not ban these topic entirely?

I've written about this extensively over the years:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

If you look over that material and still have a question that hasn't been answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

The short version is: (1) some political overlap is inevitable* and ok, but (2) even in those threads, battle-style or flamewar-style comments are not ok, and (3) using HN primarily for such purposes is not allowed and we ban accounts that do. Your account has been on the wrong side of both (2) and (3), which is why I replied to you.

It's a common perception that "HN is getting more political lately" but I think that's an illusion which goes back a long way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869. It's a product of sample bias plus random fluctuation.

* Btw, that is the answer to your question "why not ban [political] topics entirely"—it can't be done. For one thing, there's no agreement about what counts as "politics"; for another, many stories that are clearly on-topic for HN have political aspects. Trying to exclude the political altogether would actually be a surefire way to intensely politicize this place, as we discovered when we once briefly (for a couple days) tried an experiment in doing so. That was quite a learning experience.

Re: Marc Andreessen: I regret not doing more to support and defend Brendan Eich

#63

Post by hagbard_c »

mvc wrote: post #59
hagbard_c wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CEO is a very political position and he made a politically bone-headed move No, that is not what happened. Political activists inside companies have gained power as a result of the 'long march through the institutions [1] which they have been using to enforce their ideology in rigid fashion. This started in the lunch rooms but eventually reached all the way to the top. Eich, like many other CEO's was replaced by a…

You can't drive politics out of everything by making "the market" king and then be surprised when activists then take the fight to the market. What did you think was going to happen?

That is also not what happened as can easily be seen by those same activist taking over non or only partly market-driven sectors like academia and large parts of the public sector, especially centred around education.

If "the market" truly were king I'd expect those who come with plans to rake in the most money for the least effort to take over, i.e. the thing which those same activists tend to point damning fingers at for being the evils of 'capitalism'. I'd also expect companies which are taken over by activists to fail in the market since they produce less efficiently given that part of their energy is used to further the cause of those activists instead of focusing on 'shareholder value'.

Re: Marc Andreessen: I regret not doing more to support and defend Brendan Eich

#64

Post by foldr »

weberer wrote: post #19
bjord wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

incorrect—eich donated to the campaign for california proposition 8, which was "a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage", and actually passed at the time, but was later overturned in court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8

This was also back in 2008 when even Obama was quoted as defining marriage as "the union between a man and a woman" [1]. So that begs the question: Why did Eich get so much more scrutiny than even Obama? Why did the media seemingly coordinate to do hit pieces on him? And why the CEO of an open-source browser with [1] https://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2008/08/obama-says-...

Obama opposed Proposition 8: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-opposes-proposed-b...

Re: Marc Andreessen: I regret not doing more to support and defend Brendan Eich

#66

Post by Slava_Propanei »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #6
SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #3

Too little, too late I'd say. This pattern is already thoroughly normalised.

Seems like he actively fought against equal rights and a level playing field. That position should be morally repugnant in a modern society. I’d say doing nothing (I.e. too little) was actually too much.

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Re: Marc Andreessen: I regret not doing more to support and defend Brendan Eich

#68

Post by Slava_Propanei »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #9

The problem was that he was CEO of Mozilla - pretty sure they have had am outsized sample of LGBTQ people in their employ and other tech organizations which they interacted with. How could he lead an organization when his personal biases was made clear by these donations which was to deny them what most people consider to be a basic human right - the right to life and happiness.

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