Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zikes | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I almost can't tell if I'm on Hacker News or Tumblr. Brendan Eich made a mistake 6 years ago, let all of us Social Justice Warriors break out the pitchforks and show him the true meaning of tolerance!

Honestly he's never made any impassioned rants on the subject, never spoken out against gay marriage, never reportedly acted out against any homosexuals in any way. He only made one small donation to what was, at the time, a very popular political campaign.

Maybe he was misguided, or misunderstood the reality of what Proposition 8 would mean. The campaigns were certainly filled with misinformation that suckered in a huge number of Californians. I know we technophiles like to think we're cut from a better cloth than that, but there are days we're just as gullible as the next.

We're all guilty of lapses of morality at some point in our lives. Hopefully we learn from those mistakes. Hopefully Brendan will, as well.

View on HN

What the high-rated HN comments are not calling for:

* Eich to be stabbed with a pitchfork

* His family to be threatened

* Protests outside his home

* Harassing phone calls

* A Firefox boycott

* His termination

* His demotion

What the HN comments are doing:

* Quietly acknowledging that the donation happened

I think it's a far cry from a witch hunt.

Whenever someone starts out their argument by claiming that their opponents are Tumblr SJWs, you know that they're not looking to be convinced otherwise.

Yes, that would require you to prove them wrong. How tedious. They should just accept what you say as fact and be done with it.

I'm not sure how "quiet" that is considering the number of comments. That said, this is HN, not 4chan (though you certainly see the 'sexism-is-not-a-thing' crowd crawling out of the woodwork at every opportunity).

Wrt to Eich and his donation, I'm on a the fence about it. I don't like mobbing on people, especially on the Internet. Especially when the people concerned have not made their reasons public. On the other hand, upon reading Proposition 8, it's difficult to imagine many other reasons than deep conservatism or homophobia for supporting it.

Ah well. I suppose Brendan will trend very carefully, and he certainly has enough technical credibility that nobody will attack him from this angle. I'll also note that a number of figures popular on HN are more well-known for their amount of wealth than their moral character. Maybe one of his crimes is not being rich enough?

Discussing the matter isn't "mobbing", no matter how big the thread gets or how many people vote on it. It would only turn to mobbing if the crowd started, for example, protesting outside the Mozilla offices, or sending him hate mail.

Maybe it's not mobbing, but piling up on the side of the overwhelming majority has really little added value.

> What the HN comments are doing:

> * Quietly acknowledging that the donation happened

With all due respect, this is not an accurate summary. What many comments including the original comment have been doing is seriously broaching the idea that an anti-Prop. 8 vote is a serious grounds to disqualify someone from being Mozilla CEO. Sometimes a bit coyly, in a "nice car, shame if something happened to it" manner, but that's immaterial.

The funniest part is everybody's chatting about this like they actually have a say in who gets to be the CEO of Mozilla.

That is the essence of Commu^h^h^h^h^h"Democracy".

I still haven't found a single person in this thread who both supports Eich and didn't use incredible hyperbole/completely misleading info to do so. I'm loving the high frequency of "no one is perfect!" or "We're all guilty of lapses of morality at some point in our lives.", because, as we all know, since you made a small mistake once you would be hypocritical to criticize a company for hiring a homophobic CEO...and that is how modern logic works folks!

Currently at #2 on the HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7461210

Calling for:

✔ A Mozilla boycott

✔ His termination

✔ His demotion

> Maybe he was misguided, or misunderstood the reality of what Proposition 8 would mean

How could this possibly ever happen? You'd seriously have to be a complete moron. Here's the complete text:

Section I. Title

This measure shall be known and may be cited as the "California Marriage Protection Act."

Section 2. Article I. Section 7.5 is added to the California Constitution, to read:

Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Pretty fucking simple.

I think if he had thought better of it he would have released some sort of statement on it. Until then he actively tried to prevent equality and should be called out on it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com