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Comment by AKrumbach | Hacker News Reader

If your conference will dis-invite / "de-platform" people based on their opinion about topic {foo}, you are in fact hosting a conference about {foo}, regardless of what your name, official agenda, or spokespeople say.

Kudos to LambdaConf for actually keeping on focus in the face of dissent.

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Well, this works the other way around too, right? If you invite, or accept applications from, someone who is primarily noted for {bar}, then whatever your name, official agenda, or spokespeople say, you are now hosting a conference tolerant or supportive of {bar}.

You seem to be making a declaration that acts are inherently political, and I'm all for that. It's just that the standard works both ways.

The participants were picked in a blinded process, and the participant in question agreed to leave their personal politics at the door as they would at work.

So not in this case.

I mean, okay, maybe, but that just means that they'd be hosting a conference about "nazis suck" and hey, I'm okay with that. That's a message I can get behind.

So what you're saying is, you're cool with discrimination, so long as it's not against you.

So when someone decides to hold a dev conference but chooses to disallow any gay/lesbian developers, is that also totally okay?

Yes, I am perfectly okay with discriminating against Nazis.

Since when is ALL discrimination bad? I discriminate against shitty people all the time, and so do you. Don't even pretend you don't, no one will believe you.

>and so do you. Don't even pretend you don't, no one will believe you.

You're projecting a bit. I try hard -- consciously -- not to shut down and shut out people who need grace as much as I do (either more or less externally-visibly).

Your own code of ethics is not universal. There are people who think and operate differently from you.

Which is exactly the point of not discriminating whenever it's avoidable.

Your code of grace is also not universal and is almost certainly the minority.

What if they wanted to host a conference about technology? Are they allowed to do that?

My god, could you imagine such a thing taking place?! It would be the end of all things.

Kudos are actually due to all the normal people, outside the echo-chamber. Who not only declined to participate in fear or politics but in many cases wrote movingly about the value of open access.

All life is political. Sorry that hurts your feelings.

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