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Comment by redcap | Hacker News Reader

So what if people are horribly offended? Let them be offended. It's not like anything bad will happen. "Someone flipped me the bird, I found it offensive and the next morning I had leprosy!" (Riffing off Steve Hughes, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cycXuYzmzNg watch this, it's pretty much my whole argument)

It's a finger for fuck's sake. It's not hurting anyone. If you're offended by it you really need to grow up and stop living in 19th century Victorian England.

Yes, pictures of dicks and gore is disgusting, but a finger? That's just childish, and reacting to that is also childish.

The adult thing is to just ignore it.

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My point is that it's all relative, and from Google's perspective, something bad will happen--people won't use their service. Telling your potential users to grow up and act like reasonable people is not going to be a successful strategy when your goal is getting literally everyone with an internet connection to use your service. Lots of people are not rational, reasonable or mature. Personally, I don't find dicks and gore to be disgusting. It's just absurd to me. Of course, I understand perfectly well that other people find it disgusting, just as I can understand that there are a lot of people in the U.S. that find the middle finger to be objectionable (hey, maybe they aren't even offended by it, maybe they just don't want to explain what that gesture means to their kid, who then runs around flipping off everyone at their school [true story, I did that when I was about 4 years old]).

Almost any business that is targeted at a mass audience understands this and governs their products accordingly. If you find their censorship to be prudish and ridiculous, you can boycott them and use the Fuck You Network. I suppose if enough people boycott G+ for being unreasonably prudish, maybe they'll change their position, but judging by past performance, it seems like the prudes win these fights. Social networks are not like content distributors like HBO, that can appeal to a relatively small niche and be successful, for G+ it's all or nothing.

Haha. I just Googled "Fuck You Network", and got this link on the first page of results.

http://theangrydrunk.com/2011/11/15/fuck-you-google

It's just one big circle. Oh wait! Doesn't Google+ have circles? And so it goes ... :)

Can someone explain why this post was down voted? It consists of rational arguments in favor of the G+ policy.

You've inadvertantly identified precisely what the real issue is: where is the line drawn? To you, it's at dicks and gore. Dicks and gore HAVE to be taken down!

Well, I've got news for you. Not everyone has the same threshold for tolerance of offensive material. Maybe the middle finger is devastating to me, but I love seeing gore. Who are you to tell me that's childish?

There are rules. Even HN has a set. If you don't like them, don't play.

The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of. Siegler's little renegade act probably wouldn't work so well with the people who still think you can be a badass tech writer if he refrained, though.

MC Siegler and his fans are completely and totally allowed to share pictures of them fingering at each other (that came out wrong, but I'm leaving it for posterity) in private circles on G+, aren't they? But Google doesn't want it in people's public feeds.

I don't find it offensive--I do find it stupid in that sort of "oh, look at the Internet Tough Guy" way, but that's a far cry from taking offense--but at the same time I can entirely get why Google wouldn't be all happy and such with that sort of picture in folks' public feeds. Like it or not, there are some venues where you get to be a little civilized if you want to be out in public, and Google's decided that they have a bit of a dress code in their neck of the woods: shirt optional, pants optional, tie not required, birds verboten. Not a big deal; the total of this tragedy is pretty much that MC Siegler will have to resort to other methods than a bird in a profile picture to show what a trendy rebel with his fingers on the pulse of Technoeverything he really is.

Maybe he could do it with a thoughtful, well-written, incisive arti...ahahahahaha. I made myself laugh. =)

>The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of.

That's the adult thing for him to do. But the adult thing for the rest of us to do is mind our own business. If I start to start a conversation with someone but find their speech offends me, I walk away. If his picture offends you, just take him off your feed. No big deal.

No, the new "adult thing" to do is try to control what other do and say, so that no one ever has to experience the traumatic effects of being offended.

I think many people here are conflating offensiveness and propriety. You don't have to be offended by something to find it inappropriate for a service that you run. (I don't find profanity offensive, but I also don't find it appropriate for business conversation. I doubt Googlers find a bird all that offensive, but the people making decisions apparently don't find birds appropriate for public G+ feeds. Oh noes?)

He, and you, and I, have no inherent right to do whatever we want on a private service. Their house, their rules. Maybe he should start his own social network (with blackjack, and...). He can call it CrunchPlaid. =)

If by "new" you mean "the thing that's been going on for thousands of years."

You're assuming we're the adults here, rather than Google.

If flipping the bird isn't an adult thing to do, clearly the users are not adults. So the guardians have to clean up after them, as is customary.

Heck, apple has made a lot of money by taking that stance. Why shouldn't Google emulate it?

He's not on my feed. I don't use G+ and wouldn't follow Siegler if I did.

I don't really see many people not minding their business, though. I see a few (including me) saying "meh, it's Google's house, they choose the rules", and that's about it.

> So what if people are horribly offended?

It's not about this, it's about setting your rules for your property. You want to use a service, you agree to terms of use.

Imagine someone painted a giant middle finger on your house wall, how would you feel about that?

It's Google's social network that they give everyone for free, they can refuse service to anyone. I don't agree with the level of censorship personally (it's a little bit too PC), but I respect Google's right to run their website how they see fit.

Of course they have a right to run their website how they see fit. But we also have a right to talk about what they're doing, and make informed decisions as to whether we'll be a part of their social network.

It's a finger for fuck's sake, so get over it.

It's a <insert whatever YOU find ofensive> for fuck's sake, so get over it.

The amount of moralizing over what people are "allowed" to find offensive here is amazing. If it were my network, I wouldn't give a rat's ass what MG was doing in his picture, but it isn't my network.

The adult thing would be to act responsibly in the first place. Simplicity describes that spirit best: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or another sentiment is: would you do/show that to your grandmother (any beloved elder)?

So if it would in the slightest bother you, then don't bother doing it.

The MG criticism is over the top, as expected, since G+ is far more "public" out of the gate than previous networks it needs to be more proactive rather than reactive. As FB becomes more public they will begin to grapple with the same issues, it's only a matter of time...

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