The Cultural Purge Will Not Be Televised
easydns.com
easydns.com
Engaging in such victimhood using the platform of your company's blog doesn't sit well with me. As the negative consequences of him writing this will almost certainly be negligible in relative terms for the company, it undermines his argument. If there's a real "cultural purge", we should expect EasyDNS to go bankrupt for defending groups alleged to be "white supremacist", "racist", and "Nazi".
But I gather they won't be. I didn't hear of "#deleteshopify" until I read this post, and I expect I won't hear about it again.
If you're reading this, future people, do me a favor and reply to this thread when #boycotteasydns has caused the company to fold. We can talk about "cultural purges" then.
[1] - http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/01/26/chancellor-statement-on-...
So, for his claim that there are often unpleasant consequences for being vocally on one side of the cultural divide to be true, they have to specifically happen to him? This is a ridiculous assertion, whether he is correct has absolutely nothing to do with whether he himself faces those consequences.
There are instances of boycotts succeeding - but those aren't "cultural purges", those are isolated incidents and by corollary to what you wrote, we should discount individual instances. It's the aggregate that matters, and the traffic to alt-right blogs and websites only seem to be growing. The "victimhood" of Breitbart (and other alt-right blogs) seems entirely manufactured.
Ironically I think here the author again defeats his own claims. I'm not aware of peer-reviewed studies, but I gather from the disparate press reports and some nonprofit publications that anti-Semitic, racist, and white supremacist sites are on the rise. The author even points to the need to disallow such a site on their platform. Ample existence of the examples of such sites only lend credence to the belief that there is not a cultural purge going on!
What a strange definition for the term "cultural purge" we would have if we could assert that it's occurring despite a surge in outspoken sentiment that is being "purged".
This was a rather amusing bit of irony. It's sort of meta to find out about a boycott from a post talking about how boycotts can backfire due to the Streisand effect.
That said, I share the OPs dismay at the wholesale unthinking tribalism in US politics today. It's hard to overstate the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy on display.
My point is that if you choose to do business with a group that may be targeted by social groups on any side because of their political or social positions you run the risk of being associated with that group and might suffer the same consequences.
But until then, you are describing a slippery slope that doesn't make me feel bad one whit.
And to provide an example of this:
"What if no one would rent a building to the American Nazi Party, or provide their offices and employees with internet access, or sell vehicles to their employees, or provide web hosting for them, because of the threat of boycotts against them for doing business with the American Nazi Party?"
Or let's take it back 50 years:
"What if no one would rent a building to the American Communist Party, or provide their offices and employees with internet access, or sell vehicles to their employees, or provide web hosting for them, because of the threat of boycotts against them for doing business with the American Communist Party?"
Or substitute any extreme you like. The KKK, for example.
What you're misunderstanding about free association is that every person - and every business - has the right to choose not to associate as well. Association is not compulsory, and neither is listening to speech. Bad actors like "actual Nazis" (I am not claiming Breitbart is such) do not have a constitutional right to do business with anyone they like. Free association doesn't mean the market must be blind to the participants involved.
You could play the hypothetical game all day, and what's the point when you can make up any number of unlikely situations? Also let's point out that's not what's actually happening at all.
My gut feeling is that more users are flagging this one because they think it's off-topic for HN than because they disagree with it, but that's just a guess.
That said in my mind it's on-topic for HN since YC themselves have been on the receiving end of what the article talks about (it does mention the outcry to remove Thiel from the FB board, but not that YC also faced pressure to cut ties to Thiel)
The point is: Thiel is completely within his rights to endorse Trump. It's not like he forfeited his humanity by doing so.
It seems you have an issue with people speaking out against him. He chose to publicly support Trump, he could've voted and contributed behind closed doors like most other wealthy people. He chose to make his opinion public because he understands that he is influential and he hoped to exert that influence, but you can't have it both ways.
At least one Silicon Valley CEO can tell you how that one worked out for him.
You seem to be reading a lot more into their comments than is needed. I read nothing in their comments other than clarification based on what's in your replies. They've just expressed a desire to discuss the submission, which seems to actually support the idea of criticism.
Which implies that someone was arguing the contrary.
They explicitly did not imply that something was unlawful, which is how you phrased your reply:
Nobody is accusing him of being unlawful or outside his rights to endorse him. Nor, as far as I'm aware, has he been deprived on any right by that association.
That's the problem with every group that perceives discrimination (or actually is discriminated): They interpret every single occurrence as proof of the discrimination, even while the cause of their perception might be much more trivial and unrelated.
If there's a real "cultural purge", we should expect EasyDNS to go bankrupt for
defending groups alleged to be "white supremacist", "racist", and "Nazi".
But I gather they won't be. I didn't hear of "#deleteshopify" until I read this
post, and I expect I won't hear about it again.
If you're reading this, future people, do me a favor and reply to this thread
when #boycotteasydns has caused the company to fold. We can talk about "cultural
purges" then."Might I suggest disassociating yourself from the federal government by learning the difference between state citizenship and federal citizenship and take appropriate action.
More info here:
>There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard
> truthiness refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.
The "church" has a business model of provoking people into confronting them physically so they can sue them. Basically they really run to daddy when they get slapped for poking someone in the eye.
Again - our decision, no coercion.
Westboro has a right to speak (although not to disrupt the activities of others). But nobody has to agree to give them a platform.
The big distinction is: are you acting under your own volition or under coercion.