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Comment by mrtranscendence | Hacker News Reader

This is a bad take. The purpose is, at least partially, that the author of the package subscribes to these opinions rather than others, sure. But this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with them being "right" or not. I don't get a lot of capital at Hacker News by saying that I support Black Lives Matter, but if I do so (and I'm doing so) does that mean I only want to display that I subscribe to the "correct" opinions?

Plus, demonstrating what opinions are held is not the whole point. Part of it is telling others who support those causes that they're not alone. And it's also partially a "fuck you" to those who are triggered by mentions of causes like Black Lives Matter.

View on HN

I think the person concerned is taking zero personal risk by displaying a view that is backed up by 99% all of media (even if no 99% of all people).

If they had a banner saying "Trump 2024" or "The AZOV Battalion are Nazis" I might not agree with them, but at least they are taking some personal risk of cancellation.

Criticising the silent majority when they try not to be silent anymore with "youre not taking any risks, so stay silent" is a bad take.

I'm highlighting the emptiness of the moral grandstanding.

We appear to have burned 393... Wait, 394... User comments on the subject.

So if it's empty, so is commenting on HN, I'd extrapolate. Otherwise, it's gotten the attention of the sort of people who comment on HN, and that's something.

I think HN folks are commenting because:

1. These political threads always bring out the most ideologically strident folk

2. Developer time/experience is impacted by these changes.

While I personally think these banners are fine and good to raise awareness, I do agree that there's a moral grandstanding element as well. I'm often puzzled why it's so controversial a belief to have. I don't see why folks are so annoyed at these banners though because I've been annoyed for years and years at crappy ASCII/figlet drawings that libraries/apps output that are garbled in my terminal's width/encoding and yet people still add those.

Fox News is part of the media, conservatives cancel people too, and calling the Azov Battalion Nazis is not exactly controversial. They're pretty open about that.

But mostly I'm wondering why it matters if they're taking a personal risk or not. How is that relevant to anything?

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