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Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley loves passive aggressive solutions. These work well when no one has the power to challenge you on them but they're incredibly flimsy once those opposed get a bit of leverage. Those who have pushed this type of behavior will quickly fold when forced to go toe-to-toe in actual conflict. It is a huge tell of one's spinelessness.

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They aren't doing this though, it is just a Republican fever dream talking point that they're not getting the engagement they think they should have, or people unfollowing them because they're toxic. They're free to post what they want, but also free to risk being banned if they're posting harmful content.

> Those who have pushed this type of behavior will quickly fold when forced to go toe-to-toe in actual conflict.

“toe-to-toe in actual combat”? WTF does this refer to? Rolling up on Twitter HQ in F150s with pintle-mounted machine guns?

I mean, I think—irrespective of whether the particular policy is “passive-aggressive” or not—most people involved in deciding content policies are, yes, not particularly interested in defending them “toe-to-toe in actual combat”. I am not sure why you think that's surprising; if someone offered to escalate a dispute about my coding decisions to actual combat, I’d choose not to engage if practical, too.

'Conflict', not 'combat'. Doesn't have to be physical, e.g. ideological conflict.

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