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Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

on the other hand we just showed that when a mob on the Internet wants something - they get it.

I don't think that this follows. In this particular case, someone was promoted to a role which many felt was incompatible with his personal views; they made that known, and the person in question stepped down. That's kind of how things should work in a community enterprise.

That said, I understand he's received wildly disproportionate abuse, like death threats. That's totally unacceptable, and frankly I'm surprised that anybody feels that strongly about the issue.

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Not to minimize the issue, but receiving death threats is rapidly becoming part of being a public figure on the Internet. Columnists, reporters, celebrities, and many others receive them all the time. It's definitely unacceptable, but it's not like we have shown an ability to control it, and I can't think of any assassinations of high-profile Internet figures. I'm surprised you're surprised at people, though! Death threats are regularly meted out over FAR more inconsequential things. I haven't received any myself but colleagues have... and then again I didn't look too closely at the comments on my gun control article. Anyway - it sucks, but it's pretty much the norm for people like Eich to receive death threats pretty regularly.

I really wish when people talked about "death threats", there was some clarification on what that actually means.

Is it a detailed email summarized as "I know where you live, you better watch your step, because I'm going to kill you"?

Or a tweet of "Fuck off and die"

> Not to minimize the issue, but receiving death threats is rapidly becoming part of being a public figure on the Internet.

Indeed, I've gotten quite a few death threats myself over the years for my radical cause of trying to improve the quality of video game emulators.

The problem with the internet is that you can't really judge a person's mental state from a text post. Quite often the person on the other end making the threats is literally mentally ill.

I was a LONGTIME Digger before that though had even occurred to me. The crazy folks who shout at you on the bus aren't exactly going to be eloquent when they sit down to type are they ;)

Wow really? I don't get why someone would be against a more accurate emulator, especially to the point of death threats.

I love your work by the way.

Get to be an exec at Nintendo or Sony and you might feel differently!

>my radical cause of trying to improve the quality of video game emulators.

God's work. Thank you for this.

Well, when your partner dies and the State doesn't recognize your marriage, you don't get survivor benefits. It's conceivable to be with a partner for most of your life, and then lose the house you lived in to your partner's bigot family. That's something to feel strongly about.

That said, death threats are always disproportional, and I think we can all agree that however you feel about Eich and his contribution, they were uncalled for.

> Well, when your partner dies and the State doesn't recognize your marriage, you don't get survivor benefits.

The lack of survivor benefits is ridiculous. But it is (or could and should be) completely orthogonal to how government defines the term "marriage."

Well, it's the world we live in, not as it should be. The government definition of marriage and the rights it confers (not just survivor benefits, but substantial tax/program eligibility economic advantages, among others) are real and should not be withheld on the basis of sexual orientation. And the priority should be addessing this clear violation of the 14th amendment before addressing the relationship between the religious ritual of marriage and the nondenominational legal relationship of marriage that regrettably shares the same name.

I might be misremembering (I'm on the other side of the country) but didn't the civil unions give exactly the same survivor benefits?

Here's the root of the issue:

"many felt was incompatible with his personal views"

Who all is "many" here? People at Mozilla? People in the tech industry? People who are LGBT? Angry people on the internet with nothing better to do than troll?

People who actually were directly and personally affected by Eich's actions in donating, of which there are quite few compared to the number of people weighing in on this?

It's easy to have an echo-chamber hollering for blood, but let's not pretend that those voices have any automatic credibility.

People who actually were directly and personally affected by Eich's actions in donating, of which there are quite few compared to the number of people weighing in on this?

Is this the case? There are a whole bunch of LGBT people working at Mozilla, and in the wider tech community. On top of that, there are families and friends of these people, who while not being personally affected can certainly legitimately object to the damage done to their close peers.

I suspect that this affects more people than you are implying.

"damage done to their close peers"

Again, what damage, and how does that get traced directly back to Eich? The law was repealed, marriage reinstated, and everything's fine. The system worked, so what's the issue?

And a "whole bunch"? How many? Numbers? Percentage? Let us not suspect--we are in the Information Age. Google your way to success.

The only number we have is $1000 from Eich to support Prop 8--that's the only number we have. Somehow that one number is enough evidence to cost the man his job, but magically nobody else has to back up their assails.

Look, if the numbers for this act justify the outrage, sure, I'll recant--but that simply hasn't happened yet, and the bookkeeping is pretty shoddy.

That's a preposterous argument. Is there some kind of minimum damage level that must be achieved before publicly objecting to someone's views? How does one quantify social damage?

Well, they just cost a man his job--that's fairly quantifiable.

So, yeah, I don't think it's unreasonable that, in exchange, we be able to show both columns in the ledger.

How is that not enough evidence? He paid $1000 to the campaign. Since the outrage began, he has said nothing to nuance his position, nothing to talk about changing his mind, nothing to make his employees or contributors feel like he had their best interest at heart.

And furthermore, are you really trying to say we should have to directly tie how that money went into the Prop 8 bank account and then was spent to influence voters in California?

You're making completely irrational requests. Showing up at an anti-civil rights protest back in the 60s may not have directly influenced someone to keep their mouth shut out of safety(and how would you prove that it did), but it has an influence and to act like because you can't directly tie it to someone is to absolve people of any past wrongdoings short of force.

Changing your mind is okay. Saying you were wrong is okay. They need to be, as society grows and matures. But the same as the risks taken by those who try to push society's opinions ahead of itself, if you lag behind you're just as likely to get hurt.

It's rational to demand an apology or explanation for a vote held six years ago that actually passed? Are you going to collect apologies from the other seven million voters as well?

Sorry, and I hate to be the one to say it, but his view isn't that far from mainstream. In fact, it would seem less than a decade ago, it was quite popular.

Just because your opinion is currently popular, doesn't mean the people who disagreed with you six years ago owe you an apology or they can't have a job.

Yes. The "many people" here is a small but shrill collection of single issue voters/activists. Through slick PR these individuals were able to convert his employment status into a referendum on a political issue, even though one should have nothing to do with the other.

Were there actually threats? I just googled "Brendan Eich threat" and didn't see anything relevant.

Of course a threat that actually contains the word threat is probably more comedic than threatening.

Reasonably legit news reporting on threats would probably contain the word "threat"; that's what I was looking for.

I work at Mozilla. I don't know about Brendan, but other employees definitely received multiple death threats.

Why would anyone else get threatened?

Because they blogged about the situation.

Because people can be cruel idiots. Your question makes it sound like properly targeted death threats would be rational. They are not.

There was at least one mozilla employee that reported on their blog that they received death threats when they blogged about support for the new CEO (despite initially conflicting feelings, the blogger is gay). I'm not linking to the blog because they might end up getting more abuse.

When controversial stuff like this happens, it is sadly common to receive death threats on the internet. Given that employees merely voicing support received death threats, I would be surprised if the CEO did not receive such things as well.

Why would you not link to it? It is a public blog it is meant to be read. Respectful your point makes no logically sense. You think the HN crowd is the youtube crowd? Is it this one: http://incisive.nu/2014/thinking-about-mozilla/

I was talking about a different blogpost actually.

While I agree with you that the HN crowd is not YouTube, there are still many people reading this and sharing with others etc., and since the blogger I am talking about has already been harassed, I don't see a point in drawing more attention there. It doesn't help our discussion anyhow, there are only downsides.

> That said, I understand he's received wildly disproportionate abuse, like death threats.

[citation needed]

That said, I understand he's received wildly disproportionate abuse, like death threats.

It must have been difficult for him to receive the same treatment as every sufficiently notable LGBT individual.

Burden of proof is on you to prove that "every sufficiently notable LGBT individual" has received "wildly disproportionate abuse, like death threats".

I don't know that there's a list of famous people including sexual orientation and whether they've received death threats or not. However:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6239098.stm - 17% of UK gay students report receiving death threats

http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/victims.html - 17% of hate crimes in the US (2008) are related to sexual orientation (mainly against male homosexuals).

I think it would be fair to extrapolate that famous gay people also receive plenty of death threats.

Nevertheless throwaway137 said "every", not something around 17%.

Yes, it probably was. And it's just as sad.

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