Ravelry bans support of Donald Trump and his administration | Hacker News Reader

Ravelry bans support of Donald Trump and his administration

ravelry.com

53 pointsslater82 comments

If they have a problem with political discussion becoming problematic they should ban all politics rather than singling out one side of politics. It comes across as intolerant and partisan.

Their tolerance has reached such an impressive level that they have banned slightly less than half the country.

Having traveled the country by land for years and discussed this topic frequently, intentionally, and occasionally awkwardly with at least a thousand people, I think that you are not even in the ballpark of correct when you surmise that "slightly less than half the country" supports this administration (or any in my lifetime, with the exception of the brief period following September 11, 2001).

The man received about 62,984,828 votes in 2016 out of 330 million people. As an empirical matter, this perhaps demonstrates that a little more than 18% supported him at that time - much more than "slightly" less than half.

There is every reason to believe that, since that time, his support has further waned.

I'm not giving an opinion one way or another on the wisdom of precluding particular content. But I think that it is wildly out of step with reality to suggest that "slightly less than half the country" support the government at all, much less this particularly unpopular and ineffectual leader.

No one counts elections like that. Not when Dems win and not when Repubs win. It’s disingenuous but it looks good when making a point. Even Saddam or my Kim never got 75% even when they state they received 99% of the vote.

It would be very unusual for a US pol to get over 50% of the raw population of their district.

But this person is talking about language to ballpark American sentiment, not how you think people count electoral power.

> Even Saddam or my Kim never get 75% even when they state they received 99% of the vote.

I think I need you to more clearly state the point you are making. Are you suggesting that the published elections totals for Trump, Saddam, and Kim understate the popularity of each of them?

I have never heard any reasonable person suggest that the elections in Iraq during Saddam's rule, nor any election in the history of the DPRK, are a basis for any particular conclusion about the popularity of those leaders or about how elections might be used to gauge the popularity of leaders.

> 330 million people

Not to be nitpicky, but the total population of a country does not equal the total amount of people eligible to vote (e.g. children).

Sorry, don't have actual numbers on this though but thought is was worth pointing out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...

~250M in 2016

That's an important part of the point here: is it fair to suggest that Trump has the support of "slightly less than half" of the nation's children because of the configuration of votes cast by the portion of adults who chose to cast a vote?

Of course not.

Yeah it's fair, given the influence that parents have on their children. In fact, it's probably the children that actually believed America is going to be "great again".

I'm not prepared to draw that conclusion without evidence.

  The man received about 62,984,828 votes in 2016

... which is 140% of what Bill Clinton received for his first term.

Raw numbers mean nothing. One might as well look at the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Hillary and make a similarly hostile conclusion.

> One might as well look at the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Hillary and make a similarly hostile conclusion.

I agree that a similar conclusion is warranted. I don't agree that it is "hostile."

The present situation in the USA is that no leader enjoys support from a large swath of the population.

Voting population growth is a thing. It went up by 32% or so.

There was also the fact that Ross Perot drew off a lot of voters in that election, so Clinton didn't need as many in order to win.

You're falsely equating the voters and the supporters.

Trump still has approval ratings in the fourties, which is slightly less than half.

Surely those opinion polls are biased in some way or another, but that's still the best numbers we have, in my opinion.

> As an empirical matter, this perhaps demonstrates that a little more than 18% supported him at that time.

No it doesn't. It demonstrates that at least 18% supported him for president, at the time. It tells you nothing about the people that couldn't or didn't vote, but may have supported him in spirit. For instance, it's pretty pointless to actually go out and vote for Trump in California.

> Having traveled the country by land for years and discussed this topic...

Of all the numbers that are available, your anecdata is the least relevant.

> Trump still has approval ratings in the fourties, which is slightly less than half.

I do not have confidence in any of the current methodologies for polling for presidential approval ratings, and of course I'm not alone in this view; I'm joined by a substantial cohort within academic political science (in which I have a degree, if that's important) and, occasionally, Pew itself. [0]

At a minimum, even if the methodology is spot-on, all of the current polls (at least of which I'm aware) exclude people under the age of 18, incarcerated people, undocumented immigrants, homeless people, and, in many cases, people who do not have a landline telephone. This relegates them to joke status if the conclusion being discussed is support of the entire population.

> No it doesn't. It demonstrates that at least 18% supported him for president, at the time. It tells you nothing about the people that couldn't or didn't vote, but may have supported him in spirit. For instance, it's pretty pointless to actually go out and vote for Trump in California.

It sounds like we're on the same page here: elections are not a good basis for drawing conclusions about the support a particular leader has within a population.

I particularly object to your contention that this demonstrates that "at least 18% supported him" - depending on your view of "support", I suggest that this excludes the enormous contingent of "anybody but Hillary" voters. These people did not support Trump, do not support his administration, and used their vote as a tactic to show opposition to a candidate rather than support for a candidate.

> Of all the numbers that are available, your anecdata is the least relevant.

Feel free to disregard it then. It's meaningful to me. I have every confidence in the conclusions that I'm able to draw from my extensive travels and discussions on this topic, particularly in the deep south, whose politics I had never understood until traveling there and discussing the 2016 election with people on a daily basis for several months.

0: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/27/phone-polling-cris...

You can have all the doubts you want about bias in phone polling, but unless you can explain to me why it should be biased towards Trump supporters in a significant way, I would still go by these numbers as a "best effort" estimate.

I could certainly come up with reasons why those numbers would be biased against Trump: Coming out in favor of him is "undeniable support for white supremacy" or "caging children" or "pussy grabbing" or whatever scandal Trump is currently involved in. That's also the likely reason why the election polls were so utterly wrong.

> people under the age of 18, incarcerated people, undocumented immigrants, and homeless people

Okay, let's say we count all of these as "non-supporters", you'd still have approval by roughly a third of the country. Is "roughly a third" really substantially different from "fourty-ish"?

________________________________________________________

This is an edit as reply, since I'm "posting too fast":

> I'm making the case that these polls are not a good basis for drawing any conclusions

Given the task of estimating the number of Trump supporters, "I can't do it" is not an acceptable answer. Again, best effort matters, even though we know it's not the true number.

> I'm not following the math here. Are you suggesting that, taken together, these groups represent only 7% of the population? Obviously that's not correct.

The math is as follows:

330 million people in the US (ballpark figure)

80 million undocumented and/or underage (ballpark figure)

therefore, (330 - 80 = 250) million polling candidates

42% of 250 million supporting Donald Trump = 107.5 million

107.5 of 330 million supporting Donald Trump = roughly a third

> You can have all the doubts you want about bias in phone polling, but unless you can explain to me why it should be biased towards Trump supporters in a significant way,

I'm not making this case. I'm making the case that these polls are not a good basis for drawing any conclusions about support for a particular candidate or elected official throughout the entire population.

> I could certainly come up with reasons why those numbers would be biased against Trump: Coming out in favor of him is "undeniable support for white supremacy" or "caging children" or "pussy grabbing" or whatever scandal Trump is currently involved in. That's also the likely reason why the election polls were so utterly wrong.

Agreed - the polls are not useful for this particular set of conclusions.

> Okay, let's say we count all of these [people under the age of 18, incarcerated people, undocumented immigrants, and homeless people] as "non-supporters", you'd still have approval by roughly a third of the country. Is "roughly a third" really substantially different from "fourty-ish"?

I'm not following the math here. Are you suggesting that, taken together, these groups represent only 7% of the population? Obviously that's not correct.

Let see here, in order to have an democratic country where over half of the population voted for the people in power, you need a participation rate of around 70% with children accounted for, and about 70% of those need to have voted for the same party.

The percentage of children under the age of 18 in the US is around 23%. It is thus definitively possible to have a election where 50% of the population voted for the people in power but there is not much of a margin. I wonder if it has ever happened and if so where (disqualifying any dictatorship).

Here are some interesting numbers on landslide votes in the US (only electoral college votes, but I think it represents general popularity as well):

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden... [2] https://www.thoughtco.com/landslide-presidential-elections-b...

2016 US voting age population was approx. 250 million, so it’s actually 25%.

Statistically, unless you have specific data that shows otherwise, we should expect non-voters to have (mostly) voted the same way was actual voters, should they choose to vote. This only falls apart if their are very, very big factors biasing the non-voting population.

> 2016 US voting age population was approx. 250 million, so it’s actually 25%.

Why do you exclude people who are not of voting age?

> Statistically, unless you have specific data that shows otherwise, we should expect non-voters to have (mostly) voted the same way was actual voters

You can't be serious.

This is flatly false, and has been throughout the entirety of the period of modern polling methodology. Non-voters are dramatically less likely to support the government at all, let alone a particular leader.

Consider also that many of the populations who are unable to vote (felons, incarcerated people, undocumented immigrants) are dramatically underserved by government institutions and are typically not polled in any of the presidential approval polls. Why in the world do you suggest, in the absence of any evidence, that they are likely to have a similar degree of likelihood of supporting Trump?

You're twisting numbers to make your point.

There are 330M people in the US but actually 138M voted in 2016. 63M voted for Trump per your number.

Outside of that we don't know who supports whom.

So we don't know if this move by raverly really effects almost half but most likely does effect a lot more that the 18% you stated.

> Outside of that we don't know who supports whom.

That's my point. It is highly disingenuous (and a little creepy) to suggest that an executive leader is supported by "slightly less than half" the population when we don't even have a basis for knowing that.

> Having traveled the country by land for years

Don’t fully get why you have to plug that you are traveling a lot here, but okay.

I have personally talked specifically about the 2016 with a lot of people. A lot of people. In nearly every US State. I lived in a school bus for two years and made it my business to bring up this topic every day with strangers.

Living in a school bus on the road doesn't expose one to a truly broad spectrum of the American demographic.

Are you serious? Have you ever tried?

> I lived in a school bus for two years and made it my business to bring up this topic every day with strangers.

Why were you bringing up Trump? Most Trump supporters won't share with a stranger that they support Trump.

> Why were you bringing up Trump?

...because it's vitally important.

> Most Trump supporters won't share with a stranger that they support Trump.

I too had this prejudicial stereotype, but we are, as far as I have been able to tell, incorrect on this point. Specifically, I heard a lot of smart, well-adjusted, concerned Americans share with me why they voted for Trump (some because they supported him, most not) and whether or not they continued to support his administration (some did, most did not).

> I too had this prejudicial stereotype

It's not prejudicial stereotypes. Most people don't want to share their political views specially when they are controversial and a perceived minority.

> Most people don't want to share their political views

This has not been my experience.

Most people don't want to share their political views with complete strangers has absolutely been my experience, for one.

For what it's worth, my experience has been that many strangers are borderline ecstatic over the opportunity to share their political opinions in a somewhat hostile tone. And many, I'm sure, are not.

Things really must have changed, then, because I remember when Trump supporters wouldn't shut up about winning and how much they enjoyed the taste of bitter liberal tears.

And then provide a laundry list of everything progressives, liberals, feminists and Democrats ever did to deserve this.

Indeed I remember this noise as well.

My experience has been that this loud, aggressive, often insensitive minority drowned out thoughtful, reasonable, well-informed Trump voters, especially in the American South, where I ran into them every night at campfires and watering holes.

The narrative that all Trump voters are part of a troglodytic, unsophisticated, callous constituency, failed by the American educational system, is pervasive throughout major media and, as far as I can tell, not a significant explainer of the results of the 2016 election.

Make no mistake: I think Trump is a total, umitigated disaster, but I think that his supporters are far more reasonable than is typically depicted.

According to the announcement, they ban behavior. The “slightly less than half the country” can still use the site.

Ravelry users can found around the globe, also their users tend to be more female than the general population.

Such is the effect of fighting against the paradox of tolerance [1].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

They’ve banned discussion topics, not people.

It explicitly says: You can still participate if you do in fact support the administration, you just can’t talk about it here.

That's like saying, "you can still support the right to abortion in our area, you just can't have one here... so, you see, we are mostly pro-choice."

Well, no.

The parent post claimed they had banned half the country. They haven't - they have banned a particular topic of conversation. On a knitting website.

It seems more akin to the old "don't talk about politics or religion in polite company".

You can't have an abortion in many places that are run by pro-choice people. It would be inappropriate.

18% of the USA voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, which is slightly less than 1% of the international population. I have no stats about the popularity of the Trump administration in the knitting community. But I suspect it is a somewhat fringe view.

This story from the knitting community seems to be politically consistent with this one:

https://quillette.com/2019/02/17/a-witch-hunt-on-instagram/

I wonder if there is much overlap of the people involved. And what is it about knitting attracts people with a particular political valence?

It's not really about knitting, this crazy politicization has infected everything at least on some parts of the internet. You can think of it as the equivalent of people asking you why you still haven't been "born again" by accepting the Lord God So-And-So as your lord and savior, placing all faith into Him and living your life in accordance with the sacred texts, and telling you how anyone who doesn't do that won't get into their religion's variety of Heaven. The underlying self-assurance and proselytizing mentality is exactly the same.

In my experience, in casual forums, most discourse from people that involves explicitly voicing support for Trump in a general sense also follows the attitude you're describing. It's near-universally accompanied by very strong expressions of hatred for one of a few named groups. And of course such behavior naturally provokes the same attitude to be returned. In that sense, it makes sense to ban it outright.

> Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, weavers and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, project and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration.

Knitters-for-The-Donald website going up in 3, 2, 1...

Ravelry user here (I picked up crochet to look busy at the playground and not think about programming more than I should) and though it would have been nice if they had given a few examples for why the policy was necessary, I understand and welcome it.

Ravelry is a place for crochet and knitting, if you want to discuss politics, especially politics as erratic and divisive as Trump's, there are other places more suitable.

But Ravelry, why is "[s]upport of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy"? They haven't made that clear at all.

That's the thing. I don't believe in, what I am going to call the transitive property of racism/sexism.

I voted for Trump because Hillary Clinton tanked the candidate I wanted to vote for-- Bernie Sanders.

That does not make me racist or sexist. Period. Full stop.

The amount of crappy stuff Hillary Clinton has done is mind-boggling. Most notably, covering up rapes her husband committed. Either way in 2016-- you were voting for a rapist.

I don't understand why, in such a ridiculously broken system, people seem to assume voting == supporting. I know plenty of people who thought Trump was a better candidate than Clinton who are not sexist, racist, white supremacist, nor just assholes. I know near-zero people who actively express support for Trump generally who do not grapple with at least one of those traits.

They don't have to. Anymore than Reddit owes users an explanation for banning /r/coontown.

I agree, they didn’t. You may have to use other sources for that.

They cite the RPGnet forums as an inspiration for this, their thread has a Policy Citations section:

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/new-ban-do-not-post-...

Apparently it’s one of those self-evident assertions that need no explanation.

Ostensibly, I'm sure you mean. But since there are no solid statements from the Trump administration in support of white supremacy, and nothing recently happened that would make Trump a supremacist, I don't understand why a company with 800k users would suddenly take a political stand and alienate a portion of its users.

I think it's the belief that since white supremacy has so closely linked itself with Trump base that it is hard to support Trump without the connotations of racism. I could be wrong.

Anyway it should be mentioned this is a crocheting website first and foremost, not a politics one.

> Anyway it should be mentioned this is a crocheting website first and foremost, not a politics one.

Exactly, they got their priorities straight:

1. Crocheting

2. Assessments on what is and isn't white supremacy

3. Knitting

Wouldn't any website reasonably be motivated to ban hateful content, and in practice usually do? Most places seem to just rely on good old human moderation and subjectivity. It's imperfect, but it would be naive to think you could write perfectly deterministic rules for identifying hateful content. It doesn't mean you should fall back to inaction.

A website could be reasonably motivated to ban anything that is disturbing the intended operation, especially political discussion.

The irony here is that putting out the claim that "Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy" is an extreme political statement that is likely going to disturb intended operation going forward.

Exactly, knitting goes third, and I'm just not saying that as a crocheter.

>Ravelry is a free site for knitters and crocheters.

Seems like it would be pretty good for the quality of a community having problems with politics. Trump support on social media is pretty toxic and I challenge anybody to find something existing which they would argue would be a valuable addition to a knitting community.

Honest question. Is Trump genuinely an avatar for white supremacy? I was under the impression that he's a buffoon and white supremacists have subjugated the White House and President by citing his buffoonery.

Even if he isn't an avatar for white supremacy, his reaction after Charlottesville was rather slow, as well after the New Zealand massacre this year. I see the same problem in my native Germany, populists and conservatives aren't taking domestic right-wing terrorism as serious as they do with the much rarer left-wing terrorism.

Who did David Duke support during the presidential campaign? Trump. Who did applaud when Trump put up that Muslim travel ban?

It doesn't matter much what Trump claims he is or isn't: The problem is the extreme fringes of society that support him and feel empowered by his election. Empowered so much that they get out on the street more openly with the hate speech.

I personally don't think he is, but in the current climate sometimes it's hard to tell. There is circumstantial evidence for his being bigoted, from his public statements and various lawsuits in his past (prior to his campaign) but people disagree about the interpretation of this. He dated a black woman once. Then again, H.P. Lovecraft was an inveterate racist and anti-Semite, and married a Jewish woman.

It is true that the white supremacist movement has aligned itself strongly with Trump and see him as "their man," and that his campaign was presented in the press as something of a revolution amongst the "angry white male" demographic, who were rejecting progressivism, globalism and their own demographic minority. Personally I find it odd how such a revolution just sort of sprang up out of nowhere like that, but whatever.

Maybe someday we'll get past the partisan bullshit and actually be able to look calmly and clearly at the phenomenon that was this last election cycle and find out just why the neo-Nazis came out of the woodwork for some globalist billionaire huckster best known for playing a parody of himself on television. That day will obviously not come until after 2020 at the least, or 2024 at the latest.

But I am coming to suspect that Trump is more the symptom than the disease.

I really have to object to your implication that the "angry white male" demographic can or should be conflated with white supremacists. Just because you find it rather problematic when a certain Presidential candidate I won't mention by name labels y'all as "the basket of deplorables", doesn't make you a white supremacist.

> "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."

Big if true.

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