Diversity and Discrimination in Open Source | Hacker News Reader

Diversity and Discrimination in Open Source

quillette.com

57 pointsjdkoeck52 comments

Isn't it illegal in the US to offer internships based on race or gender?

There are quite a few groups that place people into internships, and which work to promote people of demographics whose presence in tech is currently below what would be expected from the same demographics' share of the overall population.

I suppose if you want to argue that should be illegal, or that it should be illegal to use one of those places to source your interns, you can. But if you do that, you take away the "pipeline problem" response so many companies like to use to explain why they hire few/no female, black or hispanic people.

In other words, to argue against this, you must also make the case that the "pipeline" feeding a particular company is a matter of that company's choices and that the company can be held responsible for the demographics coming out of that "pipeline". Which, if you really want to make that argument, go for it. But I think the average person who is upset by the idea of places like Outreachy or Code2040 will not want to follow all the way to that logical conclusion.

I'm disappointed with their race-based criteria, in my perception Arabs/Middle-Easterners ("looks like a Muslim") rank far higher on the oppression scale than Hispanics.

The author rightly objects to hiring interns based on their race or professed sexual orientation:

"This time around, however, the LLVM foundation decided to pay for an internship themselves, and agreed a partnership with an organization called Outreachy. This collaboration saw LLVM adopt interesting new eligibility criteria. Outreachy’s rules state that an applicant must “meet one of the following criteria”:

You live any where in the world and you identify as a woman (cis or trans), trans man, or genderqueer person (including genderfluid or genderfree). You live in the United States or you are a U.S. national or permanent resident living aboard, AND you are a person of any gender who is Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@ [sic], Native American/American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander"

How the hell are you supposed to prove that you "identify as woman" if asked? If they follow the ideology at work here, everyone can identify as any gender, so basically everyone can apply by pretending to be a woman. Then they can make a fuss about being discriminated if Outreachy doesn’t acknowledge they are indeed indentifying as a woman. This whole minory/discrimination is a double edged sword.

But how common is it actually to pretend to be a gender you are not for something like this? Displaying yourself as trans brings huge social opprobrium in most places. I can’t imagine anyone I know pretending to be a trans woman to get a job. Do you have any evidence this is a common problem?

Someone willing to take on the stigma and dangers for an opportunity instead of go for one of the already abundant opportunities available for them may not be entirely cis anyway.

There's actually not that many opportunities for internships on C/C++ compilers.

I mean, maybe the GCC people will take you, but... yeah.

"There's actually not that many opportunities for internships on C/C++ compilers."

It seems like there are a lot of llvm-related projects outside of llvm itself, which might mean there are C/C++ compiler-adjacent internships out there.

Lying for the sake of getting $$$ is OK in many parts of the world. Especially if you stick it up a dumb fat westerners'.

Source: born & raised in (ex-)USSR

I suppose I’m fortunate that displaying oneself as trans in my country and state (US south) does not bring huge social opprobrium.

Interestingly, you’d be surprised who is trans and who is cis as it’s not like people have a sign over their head “I’m trans opprobriate me.”

So, in my city at least, it would be as simple as checking a box identifying as trans and no social stigma would even be possible. Unless the potential employer “outed” the applicant somehow. But that seems not only unethical but illegal (again, at least in my state).

Since I live in a prett backwoods area, I assume there are many other areas that are much better.

The south is weird like this. Some places it's great, some places you'd never know it was further in the future than 1959.

To be fair, in many rural places you don't want to fall out of the norm on any spectrum and there's no opportunity for practically anything.

That's why you move out.

You don't have to display as a gender in order to identify as it though. Supposedly gender is about self-identification now, not outward characteristics, so if LLVM are up on the progressive playbook they know they can't reject you for not "passing" as female if you claim to identify as female.

> But how common is it actually to pretend to be a gender you are not for something like this?

Who says it's a problem? It's not up to anyone else to judge my motivation for changing my gender. If I want to change my gender for 10% discount on a pair of sneakers, that should be my right.

Otherwise, where do you draw the line and how do you verify it?

Not very common. But if people incentivize it it's obviously going to become more common.

Vaguely relevant recent events:

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/22/mexico-electio...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/23/two-heterosexu...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/22/labour-allows-ma...

Just put your preferred pronoun on your twitter page, and as long as it's not male and the gender you were assigned at birth, you should be good to go.

As soon as that internship is over, you can just change back. That's what genderfluidity is about, right?

By the way the @ in "Latin@" is a gender neutral form in Spanish that some people use.

Has this been silently hidden from the front page? I saw it on the front page, switched computers and now can't find it listed anywhere.

Yes it has.

Looks like it, yes. Just refreshed the front page in the past ~30 seconds. This got dozens of new comments in that time frame, but the link is no longer present at all.

This article was on the front page when I first discovered it 10 minutes ago. Now it's not even in the first five pages.

See http://hnrankings.info/17399895/ for a history of this submission rank.

This happens every time when a post or thread exposes the social justice orthodoxy for the pernicious and self-centered bullies that they are.

The original announcement about Rafael leaving LLVM was flagged off the front page too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982837

Remember LambdaConf? Those posts also ended up several hundred items off the front-page, without being visibly flagged. https://archive.is/iI5NA

HN maintains plausible deniability and claims that it wants to keep ideological warfare and flamewars out, but the pattern is too obvious for that to be believable, because only one side of the argument consistently gets flagged away.

This story was flagged by users and received a mild penalty for being a follow-up post (to the original announcement to which you've linked) without significant new information.

Everyone sees the pattern that represents the “other side” as having an unfair and total advantage. From where we sit, it's an obvious bias that perpetuates this kind of indignant sense of persecution which leaks meta all over the discussions—except it's even-steven. How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole?

Your lead moderator on the subject recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310213

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913312

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14539802

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284053

Can you show some articles from the "other side" that were treated like this one?

Wait, so it got the "mild penalty" (which resulted in its immediate disappearance from the frontpage) because it was a follow-up?

The post to which it was a follow-up also got flagged. Why? Because "users" flagged that as well? Who cares? Your reasoning is entirely unconvincing.

> How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole?

Disregard that, what arguments does the moderation have to hide this post? I see neither a flamewar, nor alt-right or SJW run amok in here, but I see that the moderation is hiding this post. That's the issue at hand.

It's true that the original post ended up in a flagged state, but not before it got a big discussion, 200+ upvotes, and time on the front page. That counts as significant attention. When a post has had significant attention we treat follow-ups like dupes unless they add significant new information.

It's not uncommon for a topic to have a big discussion on HN, prompting media outlets to write about it, and then people post those articles back to HN. Those don't make great HN submissions, because the story is still the same. An interesting recent example was the BBC doing https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44561838 after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645. The present case wasn't quite like that, of course, but it's close.

Intellectual curiosity withers under repetition; ideological combat thrives on it. Most people are here for intellectual curiosity, and since that's what the site is for (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), those readers take precedence over the ones who want to have the same fights over and over.

What arguments does moderation have to moderate HN? Well, HN is a moderated forum, it always has been, and it makes no claim to be anything but. If we didn't moderate HN it would be a quite different place. We try our best to be even-handed, and I hope you realize that our reward for that is to get slammed hard from both sides. We get accused of supporting white supremacism and misogyny just as much as the kind of things you guys are saying here. It sucks, and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it.

p.s. It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Please don't do that. It's not what this site is for, and it's incompatible with what it is for, as I explained above. This is in the site guidelines, which we'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You have entirely sidestepped the question: Why did you flag the original post? It "got attention", but so do a lot of front page articles and they don't get flagged.

> What arguments does moderation have to moderate HN?

That wasn't the question, what's the argument for moderation to flag the original article? No arguments have been brought forth, not before and not now. Thank you for your reply, but it just doesn't address the point.

> We get accused of supporting white supremacism and misogyny...

That's the whole problem. I have never ever seen an actual white supremacist or a bona-fide woman-hater on HN (or most anywhere tech related). What I do see all the time is people of the "social justice" persuasion labeling most any criticism in such defamatory terms. Then, if somebody jumps in to defend someone's right to hold a different viewpoint, they too get attacked as "enablers" (or similar). It's dishonest and disgraceful and it needs to stop. The first step is to not ever pander to those people.

> ... just as much as the kind of things you guys are saying here.

What's wrong with what we're "saying here"?

> It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle.

I disagree with that.

> This is in the site guidelines, which we'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow

Let me cite:

"On Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

There is a strong need for this kind of open debate in the tech sector and it would be great if you didn't make an effort to push it under the rug, or even suppress it.

To my knowledge, flagging is entirely a user action, so asking moderators why they flagged something makes little sense.

EDIT: and re the "I've never seen", e.g. just in the last few days I saw a comment asking people about their coworkers and their skin colors, and if they really knew any "really dark and not just mocha" ones that were capable. "All muslims are violent terrorists" is also something occurring every now and then. On the other side of the isle, I've seen people being (IMHO correctly) banned for too aggressively defending "SJW" ideas.

Fair enough, I don't understand the technical details.

The posts were hidden from the frontpage, by moderators, through whatever mechanism. Why? Not as technical question, but why was decision made to hide it? What's the argument behind doing something like that?

If any users can explain why they are flagging this post, I'd be interested in knowing too. To what end, exactly?

Users flagging affects the ranking quite drastically on its own (even before it's displayed as [flagged]), without any further moderator action. The system trusts users to do "the right thing" for this.

It wasn't the user flagging that caused this, it happened from one moment to another: http://hnrankings.info/17399895/

The moderators do not deny being responsible for it.

> It wasn't the user flagging that caused this, it happened from one moment to another.

How can you tell? Something being flagged by users looks exactly like this. Things rise to the front page, get more attention and age slightly, a few flags come in and push down the ranking.

Again, the moderation does not deny being involved.

I will concede though, I technically can't tell. However, if "a few flags" really can push an article from the front page down to page 10 within the course of five minutes I still have the following to say:

1. This system is easily abused

2. Accepting these flags on an article like this is accepting abuse, which is the purview of moderation

In other words, the system is laid out to hide anything that a few users don't like to be seen and the moderation supports that tacitly.

Why?

Users flagged it. HN's system works this way. It works that way on both sides of most divisive issues, and each side always cries foul, bias, and help-help-I'm-being-repressed. In other news, the system is rigged, the refs hate your team, and the mods are against you. It always feels like this when one's views are passionate and a call goes the other way.

This sort of eternal argument doesn't lead anywhere, and I'm not seeing much indication of good faith here, just battling for one side against another. That happens to be a continuation of just what we're asking you not to do. If you want to smite enemies, please do it someplace else.

I'm glad to hear that the system indeed at least works equally badly for "both sides". It wasn't clear to me at all.

I refuse your attempt at categorizing me. This isn't a battle. I don't want any "pro-SJW" content hidden from the front page either, just because a few people don't like it. That's not what user flagging is good for.

My point stands: As moderators, why do you accept these bad-faith flags that have a huge impact on visibility? With this policy, you are supporting the extremists on both ends.

My recommendation is that you answer that question for yourself by studying what this community is and how people tend to react to stories of the kind you're advocating.

My studies show that you must have a community of adult children who throw a tantrum when they encounter something they don't like, combined with a group of exhausted parent moderators who let them have their way, against better judgement.

I recommend family therapy.

Breaking the site guidelines like this, after all of the above, is a clear indication that you don't mean to use HN as intended, so I've banned the account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

I see this claim from HN moderators from time to time that "both sides" get same treatment, but I can't recall a single time where this kind of article stayed in the front page, or forbid, had flagging turned off. Anecdotal, but it is the observed pattern that I have seen.

It would be lovely if someday you all made a statistic summery of how often moderation action is made on gender equality articles, "which side" the article is on, and what the moderation action was. A nice intern project that would at minimum give some data on the subject.

I suspect that it is partial possible to do from the outside using the API, and I have been tempted to do a bit of casual dig into how often dang comments his moderation with "I understand" or "I get what you ..." vs a more aggressive "do not do this again" or "you will get banned". It would naturally just measure the tone, but would again give some insight in how the moderation is spread on both sides.

The problem with publishing data on all that is that it wouldn't convince any of the people who care strongly about this either way. All it would do is pour fuel on the flamewars. I say this with high confidence based on past experiences.

I would say in other flamewar topics, publishing data has had a net positive effect. For example, having some data on GPL vs BSD license usage has not killed the flame war but it has elevated some of the discussion. Similar for comparing install/download numbers of Vi vs Emacs. It is unlikely to cause anyone to "switch side" but it reduces the anecdotal noise and focus the discussion to either be about the strength and weaknesses of each side or to be about the data collection method.

I personally can't think of a single flamewar topic where data has poured fuel on the flame and made the discussion worse. Could be a failure of imagination of course but past experience has been clearly on the positive. I see however that the work is unlikely to be done by you all if you collectively don't think it is a good idea.

Those are good points! But I still don't see the upside. I think it would likely force us into spending even more attention on ideological matters, which already take up far more of our time and energy than they should. Just attempting (and repeatedly failing) to keep the peace here is at the limit of our resources and abilities. It takes time and energy away from other things we could be doing to improve HN. People don't often consider this opportunity cost, but it's on my mind a lot.

"How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole?"

If one side is committed to flagging content off into invisibility, and another is committed to debating that practice, then you end up with this situation. There does not need to be any symmetry in behavior, and it does not mean the site is both or either of those things.

It just means you have some religious SJWs who call everything they disagree with alt-right, regardless of people's actual political self-identification or their desired policies. It means that SJW tactics are allowed to work, and that they are successfully casting the blame onto their own targets. It's like a social prisoner's dilemma where one defector castigates the other for not cooperating.

I invite you to show posts that advocate SJW ideas in a polite and neutral tone that have been flagged off the front-page, rather than debated. Given that opponents of SJWism tend to favor free expression on principle, I highly doubt you can find them in any number.

If you don't want the meta, keep the object-level clean.

Summary: "I can't tell the difference between discriminatory hiring [rejecting based on identity] and targeted hiring [seeking people out based on identity]."

Author even acknowledges the previous policy (which does sound discriminatory based on their framing) is no longer in place at LLVM, which is the focus of the article.

This is not really about "open source." It's about LLVM, and springs off randomly at "open source" using poor-quality non-citations, weasel words (of the species "some people say"), and other hallmarks of bad, ideologically-tilted writing.

... please read the article, its not about hiring. Its about internships.

That's arguably a kind of hiring.

Speaking of weasel words, it's hard to think of a better example than using the word "targeted" in place of "discriminatory".

If anything is a hallmark of bad ideology, it's making a mock summary of other people's thoughts so you can valiantly take it down from a distance without ever engaging with it.

> Summary: "I can't tell the difference between discriminatory hiring [rejecting based on identity] and targeted hiring [seeking people out based on identity]."

Educate me - does this mean that an ad that says "blacks and women need not apply" is discriminatory, but an ad featuring that says "applicants must be white, male, or both" would be "targeted hiring"?

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