Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's online rant spurs threats to supes, police reports

This is not borne out by historical events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Sham...

Note that I say "idiotic comments", not outright " F U and die" comments as is the case here.

If that is ever typed seriously I don't want to be in those comments.

Hell, we recently elected a President almost entirely because he was the biggest asshole in the room.

Could probably fix that quote by adding "believe they are."

>who happen to believe they are overtly charismatic to a fault.

Give me DOOM lyrics or GTFO.

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

YC can have political opinions, but they should acknowledge the opportunity cost of putting their politics before their community. Behavior like the one linked in the OP is incredibly petty and probably should make the associated parties feel bad about working with that kind of person. Lord knows I feel ashamed to be an HN user today.

Free speech has consequences. And speech that has unhinged threats (even if it has a disclaimer that it's not) has potential consequences with law enforcement.

I don't think it's out of line for someone who's investing their time and effort into an organization to be critical of leadership.

Can you share a quote, where he literally does that? I only read, that he is talking about Hamas. And explicitely not about civilians.

Probably receiving death threats causes a lot of real anxiety (not just the PC snowflake kind). That's a lot better than an actual assassination, but it's not nothing either.

He expressed a strong desire for these people to die a slow death. How is that not intending to cause harm?

You say "crack down" but it's just an online comment here, which should be protected, right?

"Die slow motherfuckers" is harsh criticism?

Legally, yes. Socially? That's never been the standard. There is no principle in the US that says everybody has to be cool with anything people say short of calling for imminent violence.

Part 1 is a radicalization chain, where you have several layers of public figures with varying levels of public-facing support for your cause, who guide people down the chain by platforming people with more extreme public-facing views. So maybe a talk show host who mostly just points out obvious problems in our society, who occasionally brings on guest speakers who have slightly more specific framings, who themselves occasionally publicly support YouTube channels that pitch potential solutions.

Part 2 is consensus building. As people trickle down the radicalization chain, it's important to introduce them to new social spaces that present your ideas as obvious truths. This normalizes your radical ideas in the minds of your newly radicalized cohort. Casual "joking but not joking" comments are a basic staple of this, with guillotine memes and blackpill posting and Boogaloo jokes all serving to make the appearance to their community that their extreme views are normal, acceptable, and widely held.

Part 3 (which is somewhat optional) is targeting. Some prominent figure (likely one of those public figures on your radicalization chain) paints a far less vague target than usual: casually calling for people to kill all landlords is one thing, mentioning one specific landlord is a clear escalation from that. Ideally this is done without making any incriminating statements, which at least in the US is easy: as long as your don't make a specific plan, it's typically considered protected speech.

Part 4 is, to borrow some specifically leftist terminology, "propaganda of the deed", "direct action", or just "terrorism". With a sufficiently large pool of radicalized individuals, you'll have people all across the radicalization and "unhingedness" spectra. The "extremely radicalized, completely unhinged" corner is where you find your martyrs, freedom fighters, etc. They hear the targeting speech from part 3, and decide to take it upon themselves to do something about it. They commit some act of violence, and probably end up facing some extreme consequences for it, whether that means death, imprisonment, etc. Then, your entire movement needs to achieve 2 things: outwardly distance themselves from the "lone wolf" to avoid unwanted scrutiny or consequences, while privately lionizing them as someone who "did what needed to be done" in order to encourage the next one.

The elegant thing about all this is that what it lacks in cohesion, it makes up for in robustness. Since it's not a rigidly fixed organization, individual parts can take a fall without crippling the effectiveness of the whole. One lone wolf doesn't incriminate any other members, except maybe the person who announced the target, if they were sloppy about how they worded it. And if someone along your radicalization chain loses their seat in the public eye for whatever reason, you have plenty of redundancy to fill the gap, and they can probably find a comfortable position somewhere further along the chain once things cool off a bit.

Playing whack-a-mole with the people with enough prominence to plausibly select targets is probably the most legally justifiable way of suppressing a standalone complex like this. Most people along the chain, both participants and consumers, are pretty clearly practicing free speech and assembly. They make perfectly legitimate targets for rival radical movements, but the State needs to uphold basic human rights, so it takes a more precise approach. Focusing on the shotcallers, it's easier (not necessarily easy) to get creative with what constitutes a non-protected "true threat", rather than crack down on civil liberties as a whole.

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

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But tying this potential legislation to the message Tan communicated to his 408,000 Twitter followers would appear to be a serious legal challenge: Half a dozen lawyers and judges told Mission Local that, however ill-advised, Tan’s comments do not rise to the legal definition of a death threat.

Under Penal Code 422, a person making a criminal threat must harbor “specific intent that the statement, made verbally, in writing, or by means of an electronic communication device, is to be taken as a threat…”

“It is offensive, but it is speech protected by the First Amendment,” said Berkeley School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “It does not meet the standard for incitement.”

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"This is a fairly standard and boring way of dressing up censorship as something high-minded."

Do you think that speech is not an act? That speech does not have any consequences in the world, and so should be free from all restriction? That's certainly not the law in the US, and you seem to be aware of incitement to violence.

"missionlocal is not the impartial jury who gets to decide whether or not quoting 2pac is incitement to violence."

Please quote where missionlocal decides that is incitement to violence. You are accusing missionlocal of hack journalism where it is simply reporting what happened. You may not think Garry Tan should get heat for doing what he did, but you should not place your ire on the journalists who are reporting what is by any reasonable definition a story within their purview.

It's called stochastic terrorism you dense moron

Garry Tan chose to flaunt the high-end liquor bottles and "Twitter menace" plaque ahead of his sort-of-apology, not missionlocal.

Only one of the articles (not the one linked) refers to them at all. The other one focuses more on the hate mail some idiot decided to send being a screenshot of Tan's original tweet, and both of them are pretty clear about it being a rap lyric.

Kind of hard to argue with a straight face that the real problem with the YC CEO acting like a not-very-smart bro influencer even in his sort-of-apology is that some local rag journalist didn't spare the embarrassing detail.

Sure, Tan was probably more interested in highlighting the "twitter menace" plaque than the fairly expensive liquor and unremarkably-priced wine, but celebrities flaunting wealth with a laughing emoji as a "fuck you" to their critics is a well established trope, and I don't think high-minded, mature journalism is about taking the most sympathetic interpretation possible of bro silliness.

If we are also continuing along pedantry, it was a quote, it was an incorrect assertion.

But what we can possibly agree on, is that whilst we are both engaging on this particular point, the more important issue of a CEO acting incorrectly goes unexplored.

Where I think we are both aligned: the CEO is perfectly within their rights to say stupid things, however they really shouldn't. Whilst we shouldn't use legal tools to stop CEOs doing stupid things, we certainly should use social tools to encourage them to respect other people.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39199703

You can call it censorship or not, but it's not a good look either way.

I thought I saw a Venn diagram for XKCD ...

I mean, I and everyone I know have become very emotional and ranted about things every so often, but never has expressing a desire to see people die a slow death entered into it. That he did says something important to know about him.

I think the word "obsessed" would definitely be inapplicable.

The "progressives" generally want to limit gentrification, prevent renters from being evicted, and add more subsidized housing. The "moderates" generally want to make it easier to build more housing of any type. You could broadly characterize the two groups as "default skeptical" vs. "default supportive" of real estate developers.

But housing is only one point of disagreement (albeit one of the most significant), plenty of people have more nuanced positions than this, and these camps are not entirely uniform across issues. Other points of recent disagreement include Covid lockdowns, what the school board should focus on, how hard prosecutors should go after police misconduct vs. minor crime, responses to the homeless, how much power the board of supervisors should have vs. the mayor's office, ...

Progressives believe that allowing developers to build housing will only create "luxury" housing that is unaffordable to all but the rich, increasing gentrification and displacement. Therefore it's necessary to mandate things like "inclusionary zoning" and tight review of every single development project.

Empirically, the progressive stance results in a lot less housing of any sort getting built, whether "affordable" or otherwise, and consequently higher housing prices for all but the lucky lottery winners who grab the limited number of BMR ("Below Market Rent") units. Some would say that that's actually the goal of progressives (ie, they're using "progressive" window dressing to preserve property values/neighborhood aesthetics of the very rich).

As for social policy, it is heading to the right, gaining momentum in the years leading to Trump and making steady gains since. I would characterize the social overton window in the US as the Democrats nailing the left end of the window the wall and Republicans systemically dragging the right end further and further right.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39206679

How can you be in support of Freedom of Speech,

and at the same time be out here saying there is "too much criticism"?

It doesn't make any sense.

You can support the right of people to express their opinions, but disagree and regret what those opinions are.

Lots of people seem to have poor opinions of Elon specifically because he does this sort of thing.

That seems to be working as intended.

And we're never going to fix the "money buys away consequences" problem. F.ex. I'm not beholden to chefs' opinions of me, if I can throw 100x average salary to get one to work for me.

It's debatable.

Imminent exhortations of others to break the law should be illegal.

Past that, it's a slippery slope to pre-arresting people for thought crime.

As abhorrent as some of the language is, it seems... dicey... if the US had simply banned gangster rap, NWA, fuck-the-police style music. And it's a tenuous line from threat to actual violence.

Which is why "credible" is usually the standard for charging. I.e. did you make a threat and take actions to realize the threat?

We’ve all said things we aren’t proud of in the heat of the moment, especially under the influence of mind altering substances. And perhaps he was making an (albeit poor taste) joke? We’ve become far too sensitive these days.

However, just because it's narrowly legal to say something doesn't mean it's a good idea; this kind of thing does tremendous self harm to the speaker's public reputation.

Why do people always say this? Yes, it’s true - and it’s also just flexing your power and ability to crush any speech you deem should have “consequences”.

Free speech advocates are trying to push for a consistent, fairly applied position (which is very noble but imo untenable - I’m not a free speech advocate) and often met with a response that’s essentially “you have no power and I do, so if I dislike what you’re saying I’m going to crush you”.

Granted, this was in a smaller venue, but seeing H.W. actually consider the question on the spot and deliver an on-topic, detailed answer outlining his position was... refreshing.

Presumption that the question is valid and interesting, the asker is to be respected, and supporters of the platform espoused and opponents have good points and should be respected.

Empathetic disagreement is not something you typically see anywhere recently. It's been boiled down to staccato sound bites.

As classic liberals, they actually were.

That stiff upper lip has, perhaps, become a bit more relaxed.

For me, those two paragraphs do not say that Tan was antisemetic in any form. It says that

i) some of the same people received an antisemitic hate letters before

ii) those antisemetic letters used the same wording than the ones sent using Tan’s face

The only implication that I see is that they were likely sent by the same person/group. I see this is very clear in the writing as it is. Zero scummyness in it.

And, this connection, in my opinion, very much justifies including the antisemetic letters in the article. It seems a very relevant information.

Analogous is any other news story that points out any other recent trend.

For example, there is a similar NYT article today about increases in train derailments and accidents since last year. The story mentions East Palestine, OH Norfolk Southern derailment. While they're not blaming Norfolk Southern for the broader increase in accidents, it's something that readers have ALSO heard about that was very prominently in the news and helps ground the trend in a noteworthy example.

Are you asking your question in good faith?

The person receiving that is probably concerned they've been doxxed on 4chan by now.

That sort of stuff ruins lives, people do go into hiding.

An online rant really is one thing, but when it starts to be connected to crazies sending letters to your home address - that gets scary fast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKuoXw2h3Xc

And as for “context,” is there a medium that provides less context than a tweet?