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Comment by RadiozRadioz | Hacker News Reader

I am confused about how this photo exists. If I were a CEO, regardless of my politics, the last thing I would do would be to post a photo with somebody that controversial. It's a situation that one can only lose from: one side might feel mildly positive about it, the other side will hate your guts. And the side that hates this guy is surely a much larger portion of Vercel's customer base. It doesn't take a genius to gauge public perception of a world figure in your key market (US & other western countries).

They need a publicist, bad, to control this guy.

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Exactly, Netanyahu is contentious on BOTH sides of the political aisle. You're advertising to an ever decreasing spectrum of the right. Beyond the moral objections over this, I'm just confused how this happened from a PR perspective.

As an Argentinian, Israel/Netanyahu are generally well received (because of many people with Jewish heritage) by people in the center/right, even people in the left spectrum will be reticent about criticizing if they come from a Jewish family. The echo chamber is very real if you only watch right-leaning TV channels for example (most of them).

Pure speculation from now on, but afaik Guillermo lives in the USA, and as the CEO of an international company I'm also surprised he's so tone deaf but it's not the only example (i.e. check Galperin's Twitter feed). I don't think it's about sending a message I think Guillermo probably follows Argentinian media/politics and fell for the echo chamber, he also wanted to look cool/important for Milei.

And he probably doesn't think the Elon Musk's hail Hitler gestures were a stupid move.

The image he's minted is at best: he's a total effing tool, at worst: he's an ethnonationalist supremacist. Either way reeks of unstable stupidity.

Are we going with "controversial" now to describe genocidal dictators?

Because many people don't think that murder is a bad thing. If it's done in the name of one's God, or to clear away an existing culture or people to make way for one who has been taught to believe they are superior to others, special, or deserving in some way.

People like to act like this has never happened before, but the fact is it happens all the time throughout history. We like to think we are evolved past that, but we are not and unlikely to ever be at this point. The true nature of man is destructive, selfish, xenophobic and cruel.

After Israel is done with Gaza, we'll create some holiday that has children dressing up as Palestinians for first grade theater. Palestinians will become like Native Americans: scarce and marginalized. Because of the religious, ethnic and racial homogeneity of the Israeli people, its likely to be far worse than what settlers did to the Native population at the time.

Most people just don't care. If more did, it wouldn't be happening in the first place. Or at least those who are in power don't care and see human life as disposable.

No that's not what I meant. I'm not talking about the actual conflict or how it works. That's political discussion. My comment was specifically about the action of him posting the photo from a public relations perspective.

There is a controversial world event. Regardless of which side you're on, everybody agrees that there are many people with strong opposing views. As a representative of a company, he should have stayed away from the topic as a whole, because getting involved with it is a PR nightmare with essentially zero upside.

Not everyone puts the bottom line first, even among CEOs. In fact it's incredibly normal not to.

So what would you say the Vercel CEO is putting first here since this is clearly causing massive brand damage.

Well, presumably he's a massive fan of Israel's current administration and thinks everyone who disagrees can stop being customers and also pound sand. Either that or he's completely lost the plot.

LOL, unless that guy/the group like that guy can bring much more money than the customers/people hate it.

It might very well be the case. Vercel might have increasingly tougher time reselling AWS to small customers. So chance to resell AWS AI to countries might be great new market.

there are 15m palestinians.

20% of Israeli population (~2m) are palestinians. how do you factor this into "religious, ethnic and racial homogeneity of the Israeli".

Apartheid definition. Palestinians don't have the same rights even if they're native to the land.

Billionaires and ethnonationalist supremacists share a belief that they are "special" and entitled to do whatever they want because they are "better" and "more deserving". Doesn't matter the time period or the faction: European colonial invaders/separatists, Nazis, or Likud because almost every ideology based on supremacy tends to lead to war, repression, suffering, and/or mass death.

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A gotcha photo? He posted it himself..

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