I'm a little bit aghast at all the comments saying this is normal or no big deal. Maybe it is normal (or at least common), but it shouldn't be. If you believe it's no big deal, I can't agree. I can see this kind of behaviour from adolescents, but adults should understand that words are meaningful and have consequences, and that even if you disagree with someone, they're still a human being who deserves some modicum of respect, or at least decency. Wishing a slow death on someone, even rhetorically, shows neither, to put it mildly.
Yeah, apparently it was a pop reference, and that makes it okay?
The problem with references is that not everybody gets the reference, and without that (and possibly even with) this is a death threat. And with today's highly polarized and volatile political situation, you need to be really careful with that.
I've come to expect this sort of behaviour from random internet trolls, but a CEO really should know better. I think this counts as a disqualifying lapse of judgement.
It's not uncommon to add a minimal amount of plausible deniability to a toxic comment/threat (by calling it a joke or reference, following it up with "in Minecraft" etc), but imho that's intentional abuse of other people's good will and should be treated as such.
Either way knowing how to communicate responsibly is part of a CEO's job, that's one of the reasons they get paid so much.
Yeah there's too much insensitivity being brushed off as "it's a reference", "it's a joke", "it's a meme", or with things like "you can't say anything anymore without anyone getting offended". That's not accepting responsibility for what you said. As is "I / he was drunk"; again, shifting blame. It's an explanation, not an excuse, and if you "become" an unpleasant person when drunk, you're an unpleasant person full stop. Stop drinking then.
I called someone a nerd once, but it turned out they didn't feel it had been "reclaimed" like a lot of people do. I apologized, and we had a nice chat about the paths language takes. It was nice. More situations like this should go like that, but it seems like doubling down, making excuses, or going on the attack is too easy.
If his rapper persona had tweeted the lyrics to a diss track but clarified the theatrical kayfabe by breaking the fourth wall, that arguably could be less of a threat but still demonstrate questionable judgment, so I agree with you there.
But violent rhetoric certainly increases the likelihood that others will escalate violence against the target, and so the risk (threat) of death and harm very much does increase as seen in many unfortunate cases.
That is how asymmetric information warfare has a chilling effect on democracy and infringes others’ fundamental liberties (life, pursuit of happiness), and is different from “free speech”.
It doesn’t require sophisticated thinking to discern the difference, but X is where discourse goes to die.
Where the Supreme Court clarified that even more disgusting speech tinged with violence-encouraging rhetoric was, in fact, legally free speech. (Please, let's not call rhetoric itself violence.)
Citizens United says that something that’s undeniably speech—a movie about a politician—can’t be suppressed merely because the speakers pay for it through the vehicle of a corporation. What do you think is incorrect about that?
If Citizens United has gone the other way, the Trump administration would have been able, for example, to order Facebook to suppress posts about COVID death tolls near the election.
"Legally allowed" doesn't mean it's protected from consequences.
Call someone a dick and you're protected under free speech, but you can still get punched in the face. And a judge won't be very amenable to a possible consequent assault case if the victim was goaded.
The grandparent post is centered around the idea that it wasn't free speech, which is what I was responding to, not the idea that there can't be social consequences.
> And a judge won't be very amenable to a possible consequent assault case if the victim was goaded.
This is incorrect and fairly disturbing. The idea of "fighting words" (which are not protected speech) is extremely circumscribed; it applies basically only to the case of someone standing in front of you and saying something with the intent to provoke an "immediate instinctive reaction." (Ginsburg's words.) It absolutely does not justify punching someone you see in the street for a Tweet they made yesterday and you will go to jail for this. You will not get sympathy from a judge. Unfortunately, this is one of the very sorts of ideas that disintegrates free societies - "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" is true, but it doesn't justify violence legally or morally, and saying so undermines free and fair societies.
Apparently there is plenty of room for debate on this subject, and Brandenburg v Ohio — involving a KKK leader whose conviction under a state law for making threatening and racist remarks was overturned by a divided court — is still being hashed out by constitutional experts to this day.
It doesn’t invalidate the central idea that free speech is different from inflammatory speech “condoning” violence (wink wink) when it is amplified by technology to have an asymmetrical effect on the target of that speech.
And in any case, we are discussing the use of telecommunications systems for harassment and not someone shouting in a park behind a police barricade. I don’t do either of these things, so I’m admittedly not well-informed about the constitutional and case law in the US that might apply.
If I were a C-level executive I would probably aspire to higher level of online citizenry and behavior, perhaps, than a KKK leader, and hire someone else to do the tweeting.
> Apparently there is plenty of room for debate on this subject, and Brandenburg v Ohio — involving a KKK leader whose conviction under a state law for making threatening and racist remarks was overturned by a divided court — is still being hashed out by constitutional experts to this day.
There's always room for debate on anything, but nobody but a tiny minority of legal experts are "hashing out" the case. It's been settled, quiet law for decades. It's also important to note that it came out of a much more restless time in American history, and a time when violence was very regularly politically or racially motivated violence driven by speech and the spread of ideas.
> And in any case, we are discussing the use of telecommunications systems for harassment and not someone shouting in a park behind a police barricade. I don’t do either of these things, so I’m admittedly not well-informed about the constitutional and case law in the US that might apply.
Harassment is another thing that has a specific legal definition. It's become common over time to use stronger words than are justified colloquially because it makes a more persuasive argument. For example, we might describe an accidental death as a "murder". But I don't think it's very productive in coming to understandings or deciding how we should set norms and make laws.
> It doesn’t invalidate the central idea that free speech is different from inflammatory speech “condoning” violence (wink wink) when it is amplified by technology to have an asymmetrical effect on the target of that speech.
In what sense is it asymmetrical? It's been my observation that many people making arguments like this seem to believe that 21st century social media technology has changed everything. Rather, historically speaking - at least in the modern era - it's more akin to returning to the norm, rather than the closely gatekept broadcast media era. This sort of thing is obviously gross, but it is not beyond the historical pale. It has seemed to me that many people would prefer to return to the brief period we did have asymmetry, where the wrong people saying ugly things were kept out of what was regarded as the place of public discourse, which discourse could then target people not blessed with access and leave them no way to publicly respond or defend themselves.
But in this case we're talking about a tweet made about a politicians and public figures. (It's worth mentioning that in the US, anything related to political speech is given even more leeway.) Twitter is available to both their proponents and their detractors. Any politician has themselves an enormous platform. Nothing about this case is asymmetrical, unless the argument is that the politician(s) has acquired more vitriolic haters than defenders. Well, that's the nature of social life. I would hope that the police would seriously investigate any actual threats and keep a close eye on the neighborhood they live in.
As for inflammatory - well, yes, inflammatory speech has been held to be protected over and over and over again. I also don't think it's fruitful to go down the road of "this speech is secretly condoning violence" (which is also not illegal or the "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences folks advocating for the enemy du jour to be assaulted in the streets would be in trouble.) Even if it is secretly condoning violence, it's very obvious that criminalizing "coded" speech is a wide open road to serious abuses of rights.
> If I were a C-level executive I would probably aspire to higher level of online citizenry and behavior, perhaps, than a KKK leader, and hire someone else to do the tweeting.
No argument there. I do not know Gary Tan or anything about him other than what was in this reporting but it's obvious the tweet is trashy and unprofessional and the world would be better off without it. Nothing in my posts should be construed as an endorsement or agreement with it or Gary Tan.
I think we can both agree that online behavior can be harmful even when it is legally protected, and that free speech is a topic about which some people are very passionate.
Whether it fits any legal definition of a death threat or not is... kind of moot, you can be a dick to someone else without violating the law. Society isn't built on laws, but on decency and respect, and wishing anything negative on someone else isn't it. A few days ago the CoC of an online community was posted, and "slow death" threats wouldn't pass their "be kind" rules either (https://www.improbableisland.com/coc.php, via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39135779).
There's a big discussion going on on whether this was good or bad, or whatever, but the point remains that he represents a company, he made a public statement that puts himself in a bad light, which in turn makes the customers of said customer lose trust and respect, which in turn causes the company harm. A lot of harm. And you can't have a CEO that causes the company harm through his public behaviour.
He's paraphrased 2pac is his alcohol fuelled moment
"Fuck Mobb Deep, fuck Biggie
Fuck Bad Boy as a staff, record label and as a motherfuckin' crew
And if you want to be down with Bad Bo, then fuck you too
Chino XL, fuck you too
All you motherfuckers, fuck you too (take money, take money)
All of y'all motherfuckers, fuck you, die slow, motherfucker"
It's immature and poor judgement but he's apologised for it so I don't think it's fair to drag him down.
> but he's apologised for it so I don't think it's fair to drag him down.
So, the way this works is, he can say whatever he likes, but people shouldn't say mean things about him? How does this work? I'm genuinely curious; this, on the face of it, makes no sense to me at all. Is it because he's rich? I don't get it.
> I'm genuinely curious; this, on the face of it, makes no sense to me at all. Is it because he's rich? I don't get it.
For me, it's because I can remember many times when I've done something wrong or stupid and others have forgiven me. Nothing as public as this, but that's frankly more due to lack of an audience than a difference in character.
I can see a part of myself reflected back, the same part that's been a little too honest during a long happy hour, and I can empathize with how he probably feels.
I don't see myself as different at the human level, and I'd rather live in a world where we both deserve forgiveness than neither of us.
He seems genuinely remorseful. He knows he fucked up. He knows he fucked up bad. I don't see the point in beating a dead horse.
He'll probably lose his job. That's fair enough to me, you reap what you sow. Can't have that public or a role with outbursts like that. I don't see a reason to hang this around his neck for forever, though.
Yes, when people apologize for things we generally move on since the person acknowledge their error.
Let’s be honest, it’s blowing up because the California political machine is threatened by this guy, and tearing him down for a small transgression means they’ll hold onto the reins of power even longer.
Some people read it as a death threat but they mostly seem to be people who dislike him or his politics. To me that seems like it's being exploited for political reasons. Which Garry obviously made easy to do. Not the same thing as an actual death threat though.
Are you implying that it's not a threat of any kind? Regardless of how it's enacted? I would certainly rather be threatened with a nice day.
Especially in this climate, where the tip of a hat causes anonymous people to pile on and send threats via mail, it wouldn't be as simple as brushing it off.
The worst part isn't usually the initial threat, it's the piling on afterwards that can last for months and years afterwards.
The higher up you are, and the more you represent an organisation, the less immature behavior or poor judgement you cannafford orbare entitled to. USN nuclear sub commanders get replaced for DUIs, because poor judgement is not acceptable. Creating public outrage with drunk rantabon social media falling back on an employer is nothing a normal employee woild get waway woth, let alone a CEO.
But in a world where everyone seems to think they are Elon Musk, and not Steve Jobs anymore, it is no surprise this behavior is shickingly common.
No, CEO and other public figures from a company should be held to even higher standards than the rank and file.
Which is enough to make him unfit for the position at YC and justifies his resignation.
Walmart cashiers are being fired everyday for things like immaturity and poor judgment, why should YC CEO be held under lower behavior standards than blue collar workers?!
Note: This is a general comment and not intended forgive or incriminate anyone.
Perhaps. The thing is, if we only look for leaders who have never erred (read: never fallen and gotten up) we end up with (for example) our "representatives" in Washington DC. That is, generally spineless, middle of the road, etc. The word beige comes to mind. That is, we end up with "leaders" without the toolbox of experiences necessary for effective leadership.
Humans? Humans *by definition* make mistakes. Sure some are worse than others. Some demand some mistakes be paid for (in a number of socially acceptable ways). That said, one (rant) is not a pattern.
The question is: What are our collective priorities? Human leaders capable of leading humans? Or perfection which effectively translates to no edges, risk adverse, and ultimately flacid and unfollowable?
>What are our collective priorities? Human leaders capable of leading humans? Or perfection which effectively translates to no edges, risk adverse, and ultimately flacid and unfollowable?
Sure, I'd take humans leading humans. Probably is we're in an era of humans trying to exploit other humans to appeal to semi-human stock market dynamics (likely funded by rich humans who have much better financial security).
I want empathy, and representation of the people's needs. Not some infeasible goal to keep growing profits even amidst a potential recession. I don't know Tan that well, but nothing in the conversation I've read over the past few days has even mentioned him being like that.
I don't necessarily have any vested interests here, but I definitely don't have sympathy.
Collective is to say this isn't Left or Right issue. We elected the electable. That is, those who campaign best. That doesn't mean they'll be great representatives. That doesn't mean they're capable of leading. If fact, we've normalized a bastardized definition of leader and apply that label without shame.
We see this time and again. And yet every election cycle we go back for - and/or are only given - more of the same.
oh yeah, 100%. I don't exactly think it's optimal for my country's 82 YO incumbent president to continue to run for 4 more years either. Frustrating realities of a 2 party system, you're just picking the lesser bad instead of a proper represenative of your values.
> Walmart cashiers are being fired everyday for things like immaturity and poor judgment, why should YC CEO be held under lower behavior standards than blue collar workers?!
Parent:
>> If being immature and showing poor judgement means you can run a VC fund 100% of VC funds would be firing their CEOs.
Yes it's politics and working with computers and man-children all day is poor training. Stick to your lane tech billionaires you couldn't win an election if you were the last person alive.
To put it in a bit more context: this was out-of-hours, and those Walmart cashiers shouldn't be sacked for immaturity and poor judgement in their personal lives if their work is life is up to scratch.
I know it is more complicated than that when your actions have wider reach, especially for someone as high up as a CEO, but for all of us these days with ubiquitous social media potentially giving us all more reach, as what you do in your off-time can negatively impact the company, and your position can lead to your stupid moments having far more impact on people generally.
Even a grade A class 1 drunken cockup, in personal time, shouldn't result in a firing unless it is part of a larger or repeating pattern.
IMO: he has taken ownership of his actions, accepted that they were stupid, apologies for causing office (and not in the “sorry you found it offensive” non-apology sort of way), etc, so : ridicule him by all means, but sacking seems OTT at this point. And if he does it, or something else similarly foolish, again, then we break out the pitchforks.
There's no out-of-hours for CEO. He was using is official Twitter account to make a public statement, that's a work-related mistake. (It's not like he used some anonymous account to troll on some subreddit)
> Walmart cashiers shouldn't be sacked for immaturity and poor judgement in their personal lives if their work is life is up to scratch.
I don't know if they should, but they definitely are. Musk's obsession with his employees drug use out of work is an example (and also an example of double standards between CEOs and blue collar workers).
If his contract foes specifically say that, then I doubt it is legally enforceable anyway.
> He was using is official Twitter account to make a public statement, that's a work-related mistake.
If he used an official work account, then yes that paints a different picture and is a more clear-cut case of abusing resources and directly bringing the company into disrepute. But @GarryTan doesn't sound like a company account to me (I'm assuming the 陈嘉兴 in the account display name “Garry Tan 陈嘉兴” is also personal name information, not company affiliation, please correct me if I'm wrong).
> I don't know if they should, but they definitely are.
Calling for the bad side of a double-standard to apply to all is not the way I'd choose to fix the situation.
--
Of course the people threatened by the ill-advised quotes, which might indicate overly string views, are well within their rights to pursue legal action against as they see fit, but at this point I'd say it isn't a sacking matter for the company.
He’s right. Source: was executive, CEO adjacent, and id still have been let go for such behaviour. At that level, you’re a very different representation of the org and you’re held to a higher standard in such cases where your actions regardless of when or where they took place reflect upon the org.
>Unless his contract specifically says that, bull.
I imagined he's not paid hourly. I have to deal with off work bad behavior so I don't see how holding someone accountable on an official social media account is too far.
>But @GarryTan doesn't sound like a company account to me (I'm assuming the 陈嘉兴 in the account display name “Garry Tan 陈嘉兴” is also personal name information, not company affiliation, please correct me if I'm wrong).
that is indeed where things get muddy and where we gotta look closer.
In this case, this isn't just some small personal account for maintaining contacts. his Bio has a banner that reads
```President and CEO
Y Combinator (insert social contacts on the right)```
and his bio reads
```President & CEO @ycombinator
—Founder @Initialized
—PM/designer/engineer who helps founders—YouTuber—San Franciscan—technology brother—Accelerate human abundance```
Other workers who mix these in their bio would at least say "Opinions are my own", which is a dubious defense for someone like a CEO, but one that was not taken anyway.
>Calling for the bad side of a double-standard to apply to all is not the way I'd choose to fix the situation.
well we've tried the good side for decades, and headway isn't made. You gotta change your approach if you want empathy.
I agree that this guy is a tosser. I’m always first in line to give a fatcat tech bro what for. But you’re completely barking up the wrong tree with this tribalist argument. You’re holding him to a standard that you at least in part don’t believe in, but are simply saying “an eye for an eye!” when he wasn’t even the one responsible for taking the first eye. Chill.
>You’re holding him to a standard that you at least in part don’t believe in
In part. but CEOs have a lot more money and PR on the line than some WalMart worker who may not even be recognized by regular shoppers at that store.
And yes, some of it is spite. We're in a period of time where the economy is crashing and such C level execs will drop thousands of jobs at the drop of a hat, for people who did nothing wrong and probably made the company millions, billions. I don't really sympathize when suddenly they screw up on their own volition and may be given the sack themselves.
They may think that it's reasonable to hold tech CEOs to higher standards in this respect than Walmart cashiers. So I don't think there's necessarily any inconsistency here.
That he was drunk makes it very likely that he was expressing what he really thinks. It's not a matter of "dragging him down" as much as "when someone shows you who they are, believe them."
Apologizing is great, but it can't make people unlearn something they learned about the person.
The main consequence to him so far has been a lot of people thinking less of him. It was also consequential for the subjects of the tweet, and to a much lesser extent, to all of us who've been exposed to it.
Okay sounds like he faced those exact consequences and a bunch of people are acting like victims because they chose to take him too literally. I don't think Gary really cares what you or some others think. He's developed a thick skin for this sort of stuff maybe others should too.
I think more of him though. Sort of like when a polite old woman tells someone to fuck off and they're literally shook. A lot of people could do with hardening up a bit.
> A lot of people could do with hardening up a bit.
How often have I heard that from bullies who shit themselves, whine
and go running to mommy as soon as they get a little of what they
give?
You actually mean "shut up, roll over and passively accept abuse."
Anyone who hardened-up, as in speaking their honest feeling and the
truth about this sort of bully would be banned from here in 5 seconds!
We don't have the option to "harden up", because we value civility and
intellectual curiosity, and all know it would make this forum a much
worse place.
Pursuing intellectual curiosity involves tolerating ideas or language or phrasing you don't like. The world is messy. Gary hasn't bullied or abused anyone. That is where the line is.
The real answer is here is Gary could have phrased his words better and he would have been more effective in communicating his message. That's it.
There's a real leap in the phrasing of "die slow" as "I do not approve of your policies and hope that others are elected to improve the city".
Simply passing that off as "bad wording" is reductive and gives leeway to others who test the waters with extremism and turtle back into the shell of "I didn't mean it that way" when they get pushback.
It's not that Garry literally means he wants them to die, it's that it's irresponsible for a leader to infer that idea and to normalize (unintentionally, as I would give him the benefit of the doubt here) the same type of actions as actual extremists.
Let's say he hasn't. So what's at issue? Because this bothers me if I
am to continue to participate in HN.
Pursuing intellectual curiosity involves tolerance, yes, and
forgiveness. And seeing a little of the other in yourself, and you in
them.
You know, I wouldn't presume to say anything about a person I don't
know, or to psychologise too much on an individual. There's a parallel
universe where I'd meet Mr Tan and enjoy some beers, we'd talk about
tech, and maybe after a few we'd get all 'blokey' start comparing our
lists of people who should die horribly. That's all human enough. And
I come from a background that makes me not ashamed to be in touch with
my own disdain, violence, unacceptable sides and masculine toxicity.
We all say cringe things we wish we could take back from time to
time. Shame is a good teacher if we don't leave that unexamined etc.
I'm not "outraged" (the only emotion 21st century people feel) at Tan
for slipping up and going a bit gangsta, channelling his inner 2Pac or
whatever. Who doesn't? I've no doubt some of those Californian
politicians are infuriating and cut from the same cloth as the poor
shower we have over here.
I'm disappointed because of how that reflects on me, on other hackers
and the real tech community - you know, us grunts who actually think
up and build all the stuff.
He's not quite young enough to be my son. But if he were, I'd have to
say "Gary, why are you hanging out with these losers? People who
claim to represent utopian technological ideas, but are massively
stunted as human beings? Tech billionaire trash who are actually a lot
less smart and well educated than they think. They're insecure,
inauthentic, cloistered, frightened of dying, doing far more drugs
than is good for anyone, and hell-bent on imposing technological
terror upon the world we haven't seen since the Third Reich.
Please find some nicer friends."
And what I'd hope to hear is like; "Yes I'm sorry to let the community
down. I feel a lot of anger and frustration at the world. I realise
my worldview is parochial. I see that I'm in a group whose ideas are
not universal, whatever our "progressive" good intentions. Maybe I
can temper myself in a way that's more congruent with the money, power
and consequent responsibility to others' I carry."
My general rule is sort of a variant of Godwin’s Law:
“The first person to tell their opponent ‘you shouldn’t be so sensitive’ forfeits the debate.”
There are of course exceptions. But obnoxious people think that every time they say something offensive or awful, the onus is on others to make allowances.
That rule is great in a monoculture but fails when good-faith participants are coming from widely differing perspectives and values. If it’s not a good faith discussion, nothing helps.
But I’m not actually trying to engineer a debate ruleset, I’m mostly pointing out how people try to get away with being assholes.
A lot of people could do with learning more empathy. People shouldn’t have to be hard. People, especially over-privileged people like this, should learn how to behave like decent humans.
I am not a lawyer, but if some deranged individual who follows him takes his comment and face value and murders someone, he will face many consequences.
Firstly, he would be involved on murder. That's not a great experience to have, for most people.
He would at least be on trial. I don't exactly know how incitement to murder is treated in the US.
It could even be considered domestic terrorism (an assassination made to intimidate a group based on an ideological agenda/government policy). Then, I don't know what would happen, exactly. The FBI would probably get involved?
> Wishing death on political figures is a cherished American tradition
It's a strange sort of "cherished American tradition" that is so subtle that I, as a native American more than a half-century old, have never even heard of it being a tradition before.
> Americans have cherished a very liberal/free definition of free speech rights.
Absolutely. That wasn't what I was questioning. What I'm questioning is the proposition that wishing death on people is a "cherished American tradition". I don't think it is.
The American tradition is to be very permissive about how far speech can go before it becomes illegal. That's a very different thing.
This would not change ex post facto because of someone else's actions.
In the US, what he did said is disgusting but legally protected free speech. It's conceivable that he could be opened up to a civil lawsuit, but that's about it.
The US has a long history of "stochastic terrorism", which seems to be at a relative low compared to the violence of the early 1900s, the 1960s, and several other periods etc. I have faith in its institutional ability to handle and restrain actual violence.
I am much more concerned about the normalization of the idea that we should restrict free speech. I suppose this isn't too shocking - the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed after what we would now call many instances of "stochastic terrorism" in the newspapers - but I'd hoped we'd learned our lesson and permanently repudiated these ideas.
Because things were worse before doesn't mean we need to stop trying to be better in the future.
After January 6th, I don't share your assessment of the present or recent past. Free speech seems excessively protected today, even for veiled threats; moreso if one is rich or popular.
Unfortunately, discussing this too much more runs the risk of becoming too politicized for HN. I'll point out only that as deadly riots go, January 6 ranks at the near the bottom of American riots (lots tied with one fatality.) As protests or even attacks on or in government buildings go, it is not particularly notable. If that's what we're worried about, I'm not worried. It will be forgotten like the 50s Puerto Rican attack in the Capitol and it will have had less effect. If there'd been a stronger police response/presence as there was during the BLM White House protests or some earlier Capitol protests, you'd not even be hearing about it today. But for that accident (or conspiracy if you're so inclined, or deliberate underestimation of the threat of Trump supporters, or whatever) it would have been forgotten on January 7th.
Two fold: Legal consequences if some of the people threatened by him want to sue or have him indicted about it. And whatever YC as his employer sees fit for the resulted harm on the reputation of the company.
So, in the end, it can be everything from nothing to a criminal charge and conviction with loosing his job somewhere in the middle.
to clarify, in the US, "I will kill you" may or may not be considered a threat. It depends on whether or not it's actionable. If it's a tweet, it's probably not going to be considered actionable.
People talk shit all the time, a lot of people in this post need to calm down and stop being so quick to be offended.
Should have said it? Probably not. Does that make him a danger to anyone? Not by itself it doesn't.
If he said "I will kill you" it'd be a pretty open threat. I'm sure it'd still be argued a lot in courts on if it's genuine but it'd be an actual argument.
Saying "die motherfucker" makes it less obvious. Since the other extreme of "this person should die" is crude, but not a threat (lest Twitter would be shut down overnight). So it'd come down to the judge and how they interpret the phrase to get any headway
>People talk shit all the time
And that isn't right as a concept. "Shit talking" is almost never necessary in modern discourse. But the US has strong libel laws so "talking shit" won't lead to much legal consequence.
It isn't polite speech that needs to be protected and the tests for whether something is an actual threat or not is well understood, there's no excuse for you not knowing them unless you don't live in the US.
Okay, and a lawyer can easily argue 4/5 of those points if he did indeed "I'll kill you". He's a person in power with the means to find the subjects listed.
I'm not a lawyer but I'm just saying that I can see it being argued based on the phrasing and how far the subjects wanted to escalate this. Whether or not it would be effective or viable is another question.
sure, a lawyer can argue anything they want, the issue is that our court system has precedent going back 100+ years.
One of the reasons for this precedent is to prevent exactly what you're attempting to do here, which is to curb someone's freedom of expression using the law.
I'm not a lawyer so I won't say if they could win. I'm just saying that not all speech is covered under freedom of expression. Threats are not covered. Slander/libel is not covered.
that's called moving the goalpost, the original discussion is about whether or not the specific tweats would be considered threats under the law.
The answer is they wouldn't because there's nothing immediately actionable.
"Someone standing in front of you with a knife who says they're going to stab you would be considered a threat! therefore ... something something something ... a tweat by a politician should be punished!".
As I said before, you're not the first to try and curb someone's freedom of expression using the law.
>to clarify, in the US, "I will kill you" may or may not be considered a threat
This is all I'm responding to. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not going to assert that you absolutely can or cannot consider it a threat. But it's not black and white like you're implied, and are currently implying.
Please don't accuse someone of derailing a discussion if you forgot the context. I've been patient but you've been incindiary in every response. That's not illegal but it is not in the spirit of HN rules.
>As I said before, you're not the first to try and curb someone's freedom of expression using the law.
You're not the first person to pretend you can threaten to end lives and "be oppressed" when the authorities come.
I'll remind you once more that we're talking about a theory here, since Tan did not literally say "I will kill you". Is Tan's literal words a threat? My mind hasn't changed in this discussion so I'll repeat my point and end it here before it devolves into a flame war:
>it will depend on the interpretation of the judge in question who is reading the quotes.
Reflect on this conversation for next time, others would be less hesitant to flag your comments.
The consequences are a hit to your reputation (I think they call this "being canceled" nowadays). I guess you can get to a point of wealth where this doesn't really matter. But at least for 99% of people this is really harmful and takes a lot of effort to rectify.
I saw a clip from a popular right wing podcaster recently in which he was annoyed that his guests kept wishing death on people.
He was mostly annoyed it seemed because this meant he got demonitized or had to pull some content which cost him money. And that people didn't listen to his specific pre-show instruction to not call for death. And that some of his viewers got angry at him about this (I didn't quite follow why, they weren't angry about the death threats but somehow thought his removal of episodes made him a part of the deep state or something).
It isn't normal for anyone else, of course. As for Garry, he is heavily invested in SF politics.
> no big deal
It is a big deal only if Garry was consistently inflammatory. Otherwise, it can be safely relegated to careless jibe by a drunkard.
> words are meaningful and have consequences
True, but one is allowed to retract, excuse, apologize. One incident unto drastic consequences will result in heavy-handedness wielded often, a weaponization against anyone standing upto establishment or established norms (which is quite contrary to what either the left or the right would want, in the context of political discourse).
> adolescents, but adults
Are we being too sensitive, vindictive, projecting remorse? One look at tech Twitter (and deleted tweets) and we'd want to cancel them all. What good is that going to bring, other than create an inescapable and ever shrinking echo chamber?
> some modicum of respect, or at least decency
Politics gets dirty from time to time.
> Wishing a slow death on someone, even rhetorically
There is probably a socio-political climate in which such statements could be considered incitement, but in this case, lunatics using Garry's words to threaten and scare their victims is exactly that... a work of an opportunist lunatic who probably thinks highly of themself. That isn't on Garry.
> Are we being too sensitive, vindictive, projecting remorse? One look at tech Twitter (and deleted tweets) and we'd want to cancel them all. What good is that going to bring, other than create an inescapable and ever shrinking echo chamber?
It's simply nonsensical to think that there are two extremes of discourse, "echo chamber" and "people can feel free to voice threats," which are in opposition.
> It is a big deal only if Garry was consistently inflammatory. Otherwise, it can be safely relegated to careless jibe by a drunkard.
People on the business end of a threat certainly have a different perspective on what can be "safely relegated" to the "don't worry" category. There's nothing wrong with taking into account the perspective of those being threatened when determining whether something like this is a "big deal," as the parent poster presumably did, and as the law does.
> It isn't normal for anyone else, of course. As for Garry, he is heavily invested in SF politics.
How unique he is. It's hard to imagine a reality where lots of people are heavily invested in politics and behave foolishly because of it. That would be an alternate reality that is difficult to imagine.
But you would say this kinda thing to friends, people joke around all the time, it’s good to show that strength of emotion about something instead of having to PR speak your entire live.
Mate, no I don't say this to my friends, but even if I take your point: if I say it to my friends there won't be any impact on anyone's life. Gary's rant absolutely has a potential to impact lives. So you chose your words to the occasion, no?
You can be professional and be genuine (distinct from PR speak). Sure, you're not fraternizing with your subordinates as much as you could, but you're doing your job better and your subordinates will be happier.
No, I wouldn't. I have never said anything like that to my friends (nor have my friends ever said anything like that to me), and I can't imagine ever doing so.
We can debate about whether it should be normal, but clearly it is, right? For example we have the Darwin Award, where we mock people who actually died (not just rhetorically). I’m not the least bit edgy as far as millennials go, and I’ve made the joke that “the best thing Trump could do for the GOP is to get assassinated.” It always gets a laugh.
The firestorm is entirely because Tan is rich and Asian. There’s always been a taboo on “punching down,” but in recent years in certain circles politicians have moved positions in the hierarchy.
I mean, that's part of it, but if look at the quality of some of the analogies being made on this thread, "objectively not smart" on its own is clearly not sufficient to cause a firestorm.
Wishing death on a political opponent in a venue where they're sure to see it and might view it as a threat. Joking about someone who foolishly brought about their own death. They're exactly the same thing!
Not totally sure if this comment is ironic or not but wanted to expand on this thought either way.
Using a reference with threatening language in it that is potentially unknown by the people recieving it, makes a death threat even more sinister as it feels like you're building in plausible deniability and trying to have your cake and eat it.
It's basically admitting "if I just said this it would cross a line, but if I quote it instead then it'll not cross a line for people who know it's a quote, but still cross the line for the people I'm threatening. So I get to make the threat and disclaim any intent at the same time.
And? Was he giving a recital of Tupac's lyrics / reading it out loud, or was it pulled out of that context and aimed at someone specific?
I can call your mother a hamster and that your father smelt of elderberries; just because it's a quote from Monty Python doesn't mean it wouldn't be insulting to you.
Reading this article by Rebecca Solnit [0] posted on HN here [1]
absolutely helped me make sense of the Garry Tan story, and what is
going on in Californian politics.
It's well worth reading, but is a long and initially tedious article
bemoaning the passing of a gentler, humane culture.
Then about halfway through it grew some balls and teeth, and frankly I
found it shocking. I had no idea California was this degenerate.
And for those too close to it, no, this isn't just how every country's
politics is. It reads like Chicago in the 1920/30's, or perhaps more
like Mexico or El Salvator, with billionaires instead of drug lords.
Read alongside "The Californian Ideology" [2] it's eye opening and
paints a great picture of the slow trajectory of San Francisco and
California from a left-liberal counter-culture to extremist far-right
billionaire technofascism.
The wiki article is incoherent or at least not easy to sustain motivation enough to finish reading. I think the California ideology they seem to be hinting at can be better thought of as “luxury beliefs” the sort of which Ron Henderson writes a lot about. California is resource rich, historically. Historically this leads to growth and what I would call “messy progress.” It’s definitely gotten messier as growth surged in recent decades due largely to selfish policies that result from its very open (for better and surely for worse) political system.
It's also lengthy and hard work, and took me three or four reads to
fully grok. Suggest starting at p.61 Cyborg Masters and Robot Slaves
for the wrap-up. Thanks for the Henderson tip.
I find it interesting that you added "despite tech advancements". I don't see how the level of technological advancement enters into this equation at all.
Maybe the connection dandanua is alluding to is that mythology from
the beginning of the "Information Age" (circa 1980) that technology
would "bring us all together in a giant conversation of humankind". As
if. Now, here we are having this conversation on a platform owned and
run by those same "bunker men" who probably bought the laws that
destroyed the peered Internet that was our hope. We're still stuck in
1980, holding out that "technology will save us".
tech advancements = improvements of life for the whole humanity, and thus overall happiness. But it seems this naive thinking doesn't work in this world.
> tech advancements = improvements of life for the whole humanity
Yes, that equation is inaccurate. Tech advancements mean more powerful tools. Tools that can be used to improve things or can just as easily be used to make things worse.
The entire history of mankind indicates that it will always end up being a mix of both.
If you’re trying to learn about California and San Francisco from Solnit, you are far down the wrong path. My favorite part of that incoherent article was how Solnit takes credit for social movements that ended decades before she moved to San Francisco.
Actually white feminism is a technical term when used in my comment referring to a certain type of egotistical blindness to the reality of others enabled by an extreme privilege and narrative making of one’s own.
Solnit has no clue what she’s talking about. She writes as if San Francisco was a bohemian paradise in 1980 when she moved there when in fact it was already considered very expensive (the NYT would write that it was a city for childless yuppies a few years after she arrived), the gays were displacing blacks and Latinos in the Filmore and elsewhere (it was losing more of black residents then than anytime in the 21st century), and it was the financial capital of the west coast.
Most importantly: all the so-called billionaires that clueless progressives think live in San Francisco and influence its politics actually live in Atherton and couldn’t care less. You wouldn’t get clowns like Hallinan and Daly winning elections if there was any meaningful moderate faction in local politics. Which is why they so greatly fear the establishment of one in recent years.
Tupac was a gangster who'd been convicted of sexual assault. Personally I try to separate the artist from the human because humans are consistently awful creatures, and otherwise we'd never be able to enjoy any art ever. But I wouldn't be in support of Tupac running Y Combinator, or to be the CEO of pretty much any company, ever.
I like Freddie Gibbs and Danny Brown. Both release music that is extremely misogynistic.
Deeper, Freddie (+ Madlib, ofc)
> Slammin', half a thang of heroin in the bathroom
> Keep an AK and the backup in the backroom
> Cook a meal clean and she suck me like a vacuum
If I tweet at a woman I disagree with that she should be in the kitchen cooking me a meal clean and then sucking me like a vacuum, that's okay right? Because I'm just aping my favourite popular rapper?
The interesting thing about 2Pac is he grew up intelligent and was taught to respect women. Some of his earliest lyrics were very pro-women.
He changed his tone later in life as he was betrayed many times.
“Since we all came from a women, got our name from a women, and our game from a women. I wonder why we take from women, why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think its time we killed for our women, be real to our women, try to heal our women, cus if we dont we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies, who make the babies. And since a man can't make one he has no right to tell a women when and where to create one”
Wonder how much of that change was personal and how much marketing. He'd be far from the first artist to appeal to the "thug life" despite having a relatively comfortable and conflict-free childhood. But in the 90's the music industry went HARD on selling that image.
The fact that it is a quote (which I didn't know) moves it out of the extremely disturbing category and into the extremely cringe & very disappointing category.
SF politics is a clown show on all sides - Garry has lost serious credibility that he could play some part in cleaning it up. I think he knows that.
To me, it's extremely disturbing that someone would consider this whole thing as extremely disturbing in the first place.
Whether people in the US are extremely oversenstive to tweets and words, or that the tweets and words have the power to suddenly make regular people hateful and violent - neither of those states are normal.
Either that, or the country really is a few Twitter sparks away from civil war, which again would... not be a normal state of things.
Posting that you want a group of city councilors to die is not normal behavior. It's not normal when sober, it's not normal on alcohol, it's not normal for any functioning member of society. Anyone saying these things is disturbing. The fact that someone who a number of people believe is intelligent and worth listening to would say such things is extremely disturbing.
Are we sure about that? There are politicians who have coordinated/enabled things with consequences that would justify capital punishment if someone believes in that as an option. For example, from a raw moral perspective a reasonable person could support executing the entire congressional Aye vote for the US sending the army into Afghanistan.
That would be a terrible mistake, because the incentives don't check out, politics would become a bloodbath when people make honest mistakes, bloody vengeance helps no-one and there is a plausible question around whether the person voting is making a personal decision or just trying to channel their voters. But since it is a superficially reasonable position I assume people would say that sort of thing regularly. To argue it out and learn why it is a bad idea, if nothing else.
In the situation you posit, that sort of action would come from a vote, not a single person's vigilante call for action. That is the difference.
While I'd argue for a normal person that posting something like that would just fly under the radar and disappear into the aether of the internet, the same does not apply to someone who heads a large publicly visible company, and who posts publicly on an account associated (implicitly) with that company.
That's a government person calling for an attack on another government. This is a citizen calling for an attack on a group of individuals, government-involved or not. It's not even remotely the same.
It's literally illegal to give death threats (not that I think this qualifies as a particularly serious one). But that's the difference between this and your argument with politicians rattling sabres. (Just to make it clear, I don't feel so strongly about the whole situation, but I do think making false equivalences is misleading)
1. Votes come at the end of a process starting with someone calling for action. Has to be a first person to bring the idea up; and Twitter is as good a place for public debate as we have. (If only people could master the longform paragraph, or even essay-length debate and move to somewhere a bit more nuanced.)
2. Reflecting on the "Die slow motherfuckers" for a little while - Tan didn't actually make a call for action. Exactly what that means is ambiguous, and it is without a doubt poor form.
> someone who heads a large publicly visible company
If the board wants to sack him I could certainly see that happening. Although as a practical matter, I don't think this is a sustainable standard. A good CEO is worth their weight in gold, sacking them over being a Twitter troll from time to time seems like a bad call. Musk is an example; both a troll and also a pretty amazing CEO. The right thing to do might be to tolerate the situation unless the pressure gets overwhelming.
On that point we've been tolerating outward displays of political speech from corporations for a while. I'm against it both on principle and because it is typically left-wing-aligned but since it happens I don't see why this sort of political diatribe is needs to be stepped on. Dude has political opinions. We all do.
To your last point, it might be more constructive to point out the specifics of why you are against corporate political speech as opposed to a somewhat-binary left/right of the political spectrum.
One benefit I see of it is normalizing the presence of historical out-groups (racial minorities, gender minorities, etc.) that have always existed in society.
But, in practice, the "support" can be paper-thin and the chasing of support from out-groups simply as a means to push profit margins is sometimes obvious and thinly-veiled enough to the point of growing discontent towards the groups that they're ostensibly supporting.
This sort of critique (even if I can't guarantee its accuracy) is a bit more nuanced and feels a little bit less cargo-culty than just left/right.
There exist people who see benefits of any political stances. That is why the stance is taken. Arguing about whether it is a benefit is at the core of politics. For example, Mr Tan probably sees benefit from certain SF supervisors resigning immediately and is frustrated that they don't.
But it is better to keep businesses out of that, I believe we're better off if they are relatively neutral and thoughtless engines to achieve highly specific goals.
> But, in practice, the "support" can be paper-thin ...
1) This situation is also paper thin. I'd bet money that Tan doesn't do anything that would cause the supervisors to die a slow death. Most attack on politicians are.
2) I've had it made quite clear to me in companies I've worked at that if there was a candidate with different skin colour or gender to me they'd be before me in the line for hiring and promotions. That is paper thin support, but it is due to political ideology and I still don't like it. I would like companies to promote equal treatment and be scrupulously neutral on politics.
If one's own side of the horeshoe [1] had made the gaffe, it's sticks and stones. We're a bunch of evolved apes. Sometimes we say things we don't mean. They'll get over it.
If the other side said it, oh dear. We'd best remove them from their job, their payroll, shun them forever, and make sure they never have power again.
I think the correct approach is to have a conversation, to seek an apology, and to hold the party to being better. Strike one; it's water under the bridge.
> If one's own side of the horeshoe [1] had made the gaffe, it's sticks and stones.
Some of us have enough principles to complain even when "our" side does horrible stuff. When a friend does it, I might be more inclined to talk to them in private rather than blast them in public, but that's a mix of "I am more likely to change their mind if I don't antagonize them by making this public" and "I have absolutely no social media presence, so me calling someone out doesn't really make a difference."
> If one's own side of the horeshoe [1] had made the gaffe, it's sticks and stones. We're a bunch of evolved apes. Sometimes we say things we don't mean. They'll get over it.
> If the other side said it, oh dear. We'd best remove them from their job, their payroll, shun them forever, and make sure they never have power again.
When a group of people routinely cause harm to other people that is in aggregate much greater than the harm involved in them dying, I think it's understandable for the thought to come to mind.
And that's just the last president. If you search, you'll find plenty of similar examples for Obama and Bush too. Going further back than that will probably be harder to find records for, but yeah we have a long tradition of wishing death on our politicians and expressing that quite loudly. And almost all the time, it's certainly legal, whether or not the local community is keen on it varies.
Is it just me, or does nobody here remember the random baloney they did or said when they were in high school or college? People being frustrated and saying things that aren't quite acceptable is fairly common, seemingly especially when alcohol is involved.
Can we all just like I dunno chill out a bit? Who cares, and how does this affect me?
Did you also share that random baloney on a public account with your company logo on it? Probably not. And alcohol is not an excuse just because it happens to be legal compared to other drugs.
I wish I could find the clip, I think it's another Tupac song, where it plays a news clip of a stressed sounding woman saying "he says he wants to see his rivals deceased" (roughly) in response to what I assume is a line in "Can't C me". Anyway, it's funny because that clip was making fun, but sounds a lot like all the "calling for someone to die is never ok" feigned pearl clutching I've seen here. The tweet was dumb, insisting on taking it literally in spite of all evidence, for the purpose of outrage is worse.
I can quote all kinda of people to make very disturbing, threatening statements. Unless I am writting fiction, quote or not, it is still a threat.
At the very least, tweeting bat shit crazy stuff while drunk is nothing a CEO should be excused for, at the very least it is a sign of aerious self-control and judgement issues. Regardless of what politicak side said CEO, or anyone else really, is on.
Also, the name of a great song by Wang Chung. I had never heard it until asking Google to play To Live And Die in LA and it played the Wang Chung song instead of Tupac.
>Either that, or the country really is a few Twitter sparks away from civil war, which again would... not be a normal state of things.
We're pretty much there, yup.
But stochastic terrosism[1] isn't a new or unique thing.
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated after similar remarks were said by Netanyahu[2], which was arguably a pivoting point towards the war in Gaza we have today.
Public figures talking about specific people dying should always be treated seriously. It's not disturbing that we do.
>Rallies organized by Likud and other right-wing groups featured depictions of Rabin in the crosshairs of a gun. In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman's noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, "Death to Rabin".
>Netanyahu denied any intention to incite violence
Rabin was subsequently shot dead.
The definition in Wikipedia says:
>Stochastic terrorism refers to political or media figures publicly demonizing a person or group in such a way that it inspires supporters of the figures to commit a violent act against the target of the speech.
Of course, direct "kill this person" language is not a requirement for that. "Won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?"[1] is a famous example from the 12th century.
>If "XXX of party YYY is a disgusting piece of human garbage" than I don't think that should be called terrorism.
By itself, it wouldn't be. However, if XXX of party YYY subsequently starts getting death threats or other harrassment as a result of this statement being made, there is a problem.
Which language a public person uses to indicate a target to their followers highly depends on the context and history of the particular public person and the group they are addressing.
Hopefully, you understand why doxxing[2] is problematic. There are real-life consequences for the person being doxxed. However, the language is perfectly benign; after all, there is no explicit call to action in an address, a phone number, a name.
Stochastic terrorism similarly leverages context and publicity to highlight targets. It's not about how you would interpret the message; it's about how the target audience interprets it.
In Tran's case, both the message (die slowly) and the target audience's interpretation (a call to harrasment) indicate that there was no miscommunicaiton.
>>However, if XXX of party YYY subsequently starts getting death threats or other harrassment as a result of this statement being made, there is a problem.
How can you control that, though? Are people responsible for the mental state of all their followers? Or do they have to ensure that every utterance is so milquetoast that no action would ever come of it?
I'd have less of an issue if these rules were to be applied in a politically neutral fashion, but we know they never will be.
While on one hand I agree that getting this worked up over speech is weird, Gary is a (not so) unique case in that when he is able to incite the Twitter activist mob mentality on his side, against other people’s speech, he will happily do so with no hesitation whatsoever.
A while back somebody put up some stickers with his face on an octopus and the tentacles holding his various assets. The Twitter mafia went all out saying this was clearly racist and totally unacceptable in civil society, because of some prior art where an asian individual was offensively caricaturized atop an octopus. I tired to point out that the octopus has been used as a symbol of a many faceted organization since forever, and the racist aspect of the prior art wasn’t the octopus but rather the ridiculous caricaturization. The picture of Gary used in his octopus was a totally normal photo, so the racist prior art was of no consequence. Gary somehow saw my comment and decided to launch a tweet thread telling his hundreds of thousands of followers what a terrible racist horrible idiotic person I am, which resulted in a huge hacking campaign being launched against various little personal projects I had posted on my Twitter.
Your comment seems to suggest that you're viewing this event from outside the US. If so, perhaps you're unaware of the dangerous and recent rise in violent political rhetoric here. Garry Tan is a prominent and powerful person in the tech industry, and his words carry weight. When he rips violent lyrics out of a hip-hop song and refashions them into a political rant, he's pouring more fuel on a fire that's starting to burn out of control.
Garry Tan should know better. As an earlier article mentioned [1], he was previously quoted as saying "this kind of stuff should have zero place in San Francisco politics," referring to an activist's taunt that millionaires and landlords should be guillotined.
Where or what do you consider normal? The United States is far from the only place where harsh words provoke outrage, rightly or wrongly. It's actually a cultural and historical norm.
> The United States is far from the only place where harsh words provoke outrage, rightly or wrongly
Elsewhere in the world, only retroactively - in retellings, in legends, in K12 history lessons. The nice, patriotic fiction of good person saying something, galvanizing the population, and then large changes happening.
> It's actually a cultural and historical norm.
It's not. Broadcast media are barely 100 years old. The ability for any rando to broadcast thoughts outside their direct social circles exist for less than two decades.
Randos telling other randos within their social circles that they want bad things to happen to public personas - that is a cultural and historical norm. Nothing ever coming out of it, except maybe said randos landing in shit if the word reaches the public personas - that too is the cultural and historical norm. For such talk to be an actual danger to anyone else, and especially the subject of discussion? That is a very recent historical and geographical aberration (or rather, I suspect believing such talk to be dangerous is the aberration).
I agree; I probably wouldn't go as far as "extremely disturbing." But at minimum it's pretty lame and cringe. I want our leaders to be held to a higher bar, and the head of YC should be above this stuff. The sad thing is that it feels fairly in character with what I've seen from Tan in the past.
It's nothing new that words have power. Death threats have the power to silence or coerce people just as much as blackmail does. There's a good reason these are both forms of illegal, punishable speech. Because they can hurt others, even if you don't actually execute the threat.
In such case, my pants would be in laundry too, but I (perhaps mistakenly) assume writing angry comments about politicians - up to and including even worse kind of violent wishes - are kind of normal since forever, and nothing ever comes of it. Maybe I'm misjudging the power/prominence of Garry Tan (of whom I never heard of before today) relative to SV politicians?
can confirm this is taken almost word for word from "Hit 'em up", 2Pac's infamous and apparently (at least partially) sincere response to B.I.G.'s "Who shot ya?"
this song played an important part in the public exchange that concluded with both artists dead from fatal gunshot wounds.
the seemingly out of place "as a record label" portion of Tan's quote probably should have engendered some pause in the discerning reader.
You know, like a Che T-shirt doesn't mean you're endorsing the killing of political prisoners and stuff. Or that a George Washington statue endorses slavery. It's like a "you came at me but I'm going to beat you" lyric, not literally as Tupac meant it.
Whatever, it's not intended to mean killing someone. But you have to be a colossal dumbfuck to say it like that to a bunch of people wise in the ways of the street political machine.
Most people who see a Che t-shirt don't know who he was, only that his face shows up a lot.
The problem isn't referencing something or someone, but doing so expecting those on the receiving end to know the reference and not take it at face value.
Yeah, I think there's a big difference between wearing Che's face, and posting a quote of Che where he ordered people to kill someone.
One, without context, is just a face. The other, without context, promotes murder. Context matters of course, but so does the actual quote itself without the context.
>You know, like a Che T-shirt doesn't mean you're endorsing the killing of political prisoners and stuff. Or that a George Washington statue endorses slavery.
What a load of bullshit. He put names of specific people in his tweet who have subsequently received threatening letters in paper mail.
The intended audience heard the message loud and clear.
I wonder if you took that message the same way if Tran said "Die slow, Rene Wiltord" and you received personal paper mail afterwards that said "Tran was right. Die, Rene."
These discussions here wouldn't exist if he'd just posted Tupac's portrait on Twitter. But he specifically quoted a sentence with a very clear and unambiguous meaning.
Post Elon acquisition, many influential tech figures have discovered that being a provocateur on Twitter/X is more consistently successful at building an audience than genuine insight.
It's human nature. People are social creatures and they love to join some fight as long as they have their own comrades with them.
My wife spent years on Twitter embroiled in a very long running and bitter political / rights issue. She was always thoughtful, insightful etc. She'd spend 10 minutes rewording a single tweet to make sure it got the real point across in a way that wasn't inflammatory, and that had a good chance of being persuasive. With 5k followers, I think her most popular tweets might get a few hundred likes. The one time she got drunk and angry, she got thousands of supportive reactions, and her followers increased by a large % overnight. And that scared her. She saw the way "the crowd" was pushing her. Rewarding her for the smell of blood in the water.
Audience capture is real. Chronically online people with polarised followers will play to their crowd. Inch by inch, day by day, as social creatures, we automatically and subliminally seek approval from our social group. I've seen this type of dynamic push people into the extremes.
My wife got out. First she asked me to block twitter on all of her devices. A month of cold turkey later, she quit for good ,and she's far happier for it.
People gathered up to see public hangings. We just love to see a fight. When Gary Tan acts like a monkey, people line up to see it. Same reason why Elon draws a crowd. Calling people a pedo is the online equivalent of a fist fight and we humans love it.
Should Gary Tan quit over this? Of course not. I think the fact that people put others on a pedestal is a mistake in the first place.
At the same time, a thoughtful post today can change the entire life direction of a ten years younger you and end up providing far more value to the world overall.
I know that was the case for me. I spent hundreds of hours of reading blog posts by intelligent, optimistic, philosophically transgressive at times but not actually rude or crass folks, all trying to grapple with how to live best in this world. I think this reshaped me to be a much better person in a whole bunch of ways. Very happy for it.
Before Elon, posts on Twitter were sorted and hidden at the whim of engagement-maximizing algorithm. After Elon, the same is the case, maybe with the same tweak to the algorithm.
I thought the idea that timeline sorting order on social media sites is deterministic or scrutable to the viewer is long dead by now - it's not been the case for at least a good decade now!
While that's true, the thing where ~all bluetick replies are promoted above ~all normal replies is a post-Musk 'innovation'. Stupid idea; there's 25 years of experience showing that pay-for-attention is corrosive to social sites (dating/hookup sites have been trying to make it work basically forever, and have generally ended up having to ration it).
But which audience? It seems like with social media nowadays only the absolute numbers count. Influencers are very happy to have an army of dumb followers. I guess it’s easier to well influence them.
Eh? Trump was never there post Elon acquisition. I don’t think that timing makes sense. The tone of Twitter has been like this for years if not the beginning.
I’m not sure how anyone can say this when he’s notorious for blocking thousands and thousands of people on Twitter/X for the smallest perceived critique, including people who have never interacted with him at all because they engaged with some tweet he didn’t like
The only kind of person who’d ever go that far is someone with a very fragile ego
So he sees someone interacting with some other tweet in a way he doesn't like, and then blocks them from following him?
Having not used twitter, is this easy one-click thing that takes no time nor thought, or is he having to switch screens and spend time on doing this?
(Technically I became a twit yesterday because nitter stopped working and there is just one person's posts that I like to check up on, so I ended up giving in and logging in... :( But I still don't know the UI well enough to answer my own question :) )
There are also tools that allow you to block everyone who’s liked a tweet, everyone who follows a particular person, etc. I don’t know if Garry Tan uses such a tool, but maybe he does.
I’ll never get this. He doesn’t owe those people anything. Just because you start talking doesn’t give everyone the right to listen, just because someone is talking doesn’t require you to listen…
Alcohol disinhibits and makes people show sides they usually suppress. He probably has pent-up anger and let it all out in that tweet. I guess he's neither fully the person you know nor the person from that tweet, but both are part of the "real him"
I followed Garry since the old days of Posterous. Seems like 5 years ago he took a turn and got obsessed with edge lordy SF politics. Finally I had to unfollow. Too much money has corrupted all the original startup role models
I think the failing here is using Twitter at all - or at least without an intermediary like an editor. Twitter is almost purpose made for stripping context. Tweets are, traditionally, short and pithy and so are easy to misinterpret or misrepresent. If you're even a semi public figure, Tweeting a lot is a huge liability.
That's the conundrum of being a modern tech CEO - you're supposed to forever pretend you're the high school buddy with everyone, even if the "startup" you're running is a billion dollar+ multinational corporation, and you yourself are wealthier than anyone except the world leaders and other corporate... er startup CEOs.
That's just par for the course when it comes to sports commenting.
I'm a little surprised though that a tech person of Asian ethnicity would be interested in boxing, good for him for going against all the ingrained stereotypes.
I am not an alum but I did have a short chat with him about 6 years ago: "gentle" is definitively not how I would describe him, at least from that interaction.
Everybody has a bad day though so I did gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I'm really not surprised by this tweet "scandal" at all and the way he's dealing with it.
A tweet is a thought with cheap delivery, therefore offers no insight at all. It's just like an anecdote from executive leadership to get something over the line to meet a goal. That person has absolutely forgot they said it the next day.
This message confused me on a few dimensions, so I translated it a bit:
"State subjective perspective as objective fact. Cast shame upon the OP for not pre-aligning with said belief. Put the responsibility on the OP to prove that they are not deserving of shame."
I grew up in an environment where this kind communication was sort of the default, hence why I was curious and wanted to drill down a bit and give it some thought. Of course, many people agree that Twitter is more unhealthy than healthy. But that's not entirely the point here, I think.
I haven't met him, but as someone who reads and engages in online discussion about SF quality of life issues, this is NOT shocking at all, there are a LOT of people openly wishing violence on politicians, homeless people, and people accused of petty crime.
Vile and disgusting? Yes. Shocking? Absolutely not. Sorry that your buddy lacks empathy.
The reaction feels like pearl-clutching to be honest.
This is the kind of shitpost most people would be able to get away with, but Tan is now too important -- and will have to curate his communications more. Especially if he's going to take such a strong position against incumbent politicians cautious of their own images.
It also feels like a smart political play by his targets to discredit him. They were probably waiting for him to slip up and say something like this.
Anyways, his position is a sympathetic one - the city is not well managed. I say this as someone who frequently disagrees with Tan.
The fact it’s a Tupac lyric is not like common knowledge. I doubt a random poll of Twitter users would show most people would know the reference immediately.
Sure, and that was the misstep here. He clearly wasn't threatening to kill anyone, it was misinterpreted, he thought people would get a reference that they clearly did not. He's apologized, it's time to move on. There's better things to spend our outrage budget on IMO than someone who cares a little too much about city politics and has probably learned not to overestimate his audience's knowledge of Tupac.
It’s an election year. People will use the tweet as they see fit. Voters will ultimately decide whether it matters or not concerning candidates who have received money from Tan. But I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear about it.
They were probably waiting for him to slip up and say something like this.
This is a touch paranoid.
it was misinterpreted, he thought people would get a reference that they clearly did not
As a general matter, people should spend more time saying what they mean instead of engaging in meta-discourse of quoting cool references to each other for vibes. It's an unhealthy way to communicate; online discourse is totally irony-poisoned and (imho) this is partly why there's such a breakdown of social trust.
And really, don't you think throwing out lines like 'die slow motherfuckers' in public for cool points is a little...juvenile?
This entire comments section is a poignant example of the spiritual dichotomy present in our society: those who have ever been immersed in 4chan-and-adjacent culture, and the bitchless and cringe.
He did not threaten to kill anyone anymore than anyone saying they hope Trump has a heart attack is threatening to kill him. He made a twitter post in poor taste and apologized.
How is he important? Would a person on the street know who he is?
I guess this goes with the idea that he can wish death on people and be an asshole but that’s ok, as long as it’s hidden.
Assuming he is so critical or important should the public then know better what his thoughts or attitudes are?
“Gosh, wish someone handed him a twitter account earlier so we knew before signing a contract or something…”
On the other hand one can take a more compassionate view and say maybe he had a mental breakdown or some trauma. Not knowing or caring about his importance, I’d default to that, as I would most strangers in that situation.
I'm not sure what Tan's specific beef is, I could never endorse violent rhetoric in politics, but the level of avoidable human misery caused by the dysfunction of politics in San Francisco is sickening. If you can walk through the Tenderloin without becoming utterly enraged at the people responsible, there's a piece of your soul missing.
> I could never endorse violent rhetoric in politics
In literally the next sentence:
> the level of avoidable human misery caused by the dysfunction of politics [...] sickening [...] utterly enraged [...] there's a piece of your soul missing
So you'll deploy extreme emotional hyperbole, but not "violent rhetoric"? Seems like those are two rather nearby points on the same spectrum, no? Tan just slipped a bit off the edge. If you're going to deny someone's soul, it's not that big a leap to wish them dead.
Only according to external rules about what you're supposed to say. The emotional content of the rhetoric seems pretty identical. No one thinks Garry Tan was actually wishing death on anyone, he was expressing anger and doing that by invalidating the target's existence. "You should die" and "you have a piece of your soul missing" are coming from the same place, they both mean "you're worthless".
It's just that Tan forgot the rules in the heat of the moment. And so would the grandparent poster after a few drinks, I suspect.
To wit: cool the fuck down, everyone. Shitposting on the internet is a slippery slope to an accidental death threat.
Many were enraged with by the soulless tech gentrification of the city. But they couldn't compete so they had to move. Some don't have the means to move. It must be sickening for many to have to deal with the externalities.
Or they can just agree with Gary that correlation is never causation.
It was a song lyric. Dumb, cringe tweet for sure. But not violent. People are so inclined to look for reasons to be mad. They all must be perfectly well-adjusted, down to earth, basically flawless people themselves. Clearly.
Dan Preston is a NIMBY dressed in wolves clothes. Like most progressive agendas in SF they do very little to actually secure more housing. They make for great tag lines to pull support in and NOTHING changes.
> Dan Preston is a NIMBY dressed in wolves clothes.
Citation?
> They make for great tag lines to pull support in and NOTHING changes.
Two questions, independent
* Is that the fault of those advocating for change? Are they failing to introduce legislation or is their legislation not making out of committee or whatever due to opposition? Sincere question
* Is there a candidate which would walk the walk better on actually implementing the popular policies which Dan advocates for?
Preston used to represent me before redistricting happened.
His office is accessible and he very clearly cares about the work he is doing. I often see him walking to work and talking to constituents along the way.
Taxing vacancies breaks the rent logjam caused by financing agreements that allow you to tack missing rent onto the end but require recapitalization for lower rent.
Individuals and small landlords raise or lower rents in response to market conditions as they prioritize cash flow--it's very difficult to make up for lost rent. It's the private equity financed stuff that is artifically keeping rents too high as they have enough cash to ride across an empty property almost indefinitely.
Vacancy taxes stop the idiocy and force the private equity financed stuff to be market responsive as well.
It's not just that. It's the way property owners in renter-majority jurisdictions buy off just enough of the renters to keep other measures to raise housing costs on the books, which both erases the benefit of rent control even for the people who have it and screws over anyone without a rent controlled apartment twice.
> it unfairly punishes property owners in soft rental markets like the one we have now.
Eh? I mean, conversely, allowing the property industry to leave properties vacant unfairly punishes ~all other industries, along with the general public. What's special about the property industry here?
"We should leave people without anywhere to live, and harm the economy in general, to facilitate a small part of the economy" is a pretty weird argument.
(I do think that possibly some individual property investors believe that, rather than running a rather complex and highly regulated business, they are buying into a passive investment magical money machine. These people should probably consider just buying shares in a REIT, instead.)
There's no such thing as a property that can't find a renter, only a property whose rent is too high.
Many landlords are bad at math from what I've found. If you're asking for $2400 and no one is biting, it makes more sense to drop to $2200 than hold out for a month to try and get $2400, because at $2400 it will take a year to catch up.
Not with rent control. If we're in a low price market, it and a renter snags rent at a low price, he gets you locked in at that low price even when the market recovers.
Rent control incentivizes empty housing during bear markets.
This is true, rent control adds a complicated calculus to it. At first they were doing things like "first month free" to get around it, but the city caught on and made that against the rules too. I wonder if they've looked at how that affected vacancy rate.
it's already incredibly expensive for a developer to even go through the review process for a development, let alone build it. a vacancy tax would further deter developers from building in SF (as it's already happening due to the terrible review process)
That story is a bit dated. The California laws are forcing municipalities like SF to fix the review process and in fact a new plan was submitted in December and initially rejected before an updated plan was submitted at the end of December. The hope is that this fixes things and if it doesn’t SF is at risk of losing its zoning powers wholesale which may not be such a bad idea.
the story might be dated but the research that drove the story isn't dated, that's what i was trying to share. the action from the state and the municipalities was informed by a research project from UC Berkeley.
Correct, I was only highlighting that the news story itself is way late and not really relevant as news. The research around zoning laws and their impact on housing development was known probably 5-10 years ago if not more, the state law changes passed within the past 1-2 years ago, and we are in the middle of the time period of the state enforcing all municipalities to conform or lose zoning privileges and SF nominally claims to have ratified changes to be conformant (the initial plan was rejected by the state and they submitted a revision at the deadline)
no this research is new and came out like two years ago. it was a different take on the typical research about zoning. it basically looked at the time it took project to get approved. this was a novel approach (believe it or not)
as a lifelong tenant, i think it's time that the property owners got punished instead of renters. those poor property owners, what happens if we don't look after them?
> “It’s shameful,” added a Y Combinator alumnus who, like others, declined to be named for fear of professional retaliation. He has been checking the Y Combinator internal Slack and monitoring their daily email updates, but there has been “no communication” from the company, he said.
If these things are true, it sounds like the problem goes a lot deeper than just the person at the top. Even putting aside any moral implications, it's strange to see a company of this caliber not immediately go into damage control mode orchestrated by PR professionals.
Um… there are liters lawyers and PR professionals that make their living with that kind of service. And for a certain personality type… I don’t see the 1k$/month being the relevant factor. I’d bet there would be buyers for that service. Though: Probably not enough to actually sustain the liability insurance that you’d need to deal with the complaints of a faulty product
It's OK. If the client tries to write a nasty tweet about you, or email a lawyer about you, it will "help" the client, by telling them this is offensive and blocking the action.
Won't work for people who write under "altered state of mind" conditions. You'll have to show them a fake page featuring the post, store the actual post in some sort of draft box and ask them if they really want to post it 24 hours later.
This is not a bad idea. Another one is to have it make you solve some complicated math problem or also not let you tweet when you know you are going out.. sort of like not driving to the bar. You could do that with screen time settings though.
Yeah, but why would you make that effort when all you'd need is the thinnest veneer over ChatGPT, and given the proposed pricing would leave plenty of margin?
Don't worry, you can say something vague like "it's powered by LLM" which could reasonably mean that the LLM was used during the training phase of your own classifier.
As we navigate the complexities of San Francisco Bay Area politics, it's important to recognize that not all partnerships and collaborations meet our expectations or align with my values and vision. While we strive for unity and mutual success within the San Francisco Bay, there are occasions when differences in approach and strategy with specific individuals or groups, such as with Chan, Peskin, Preston, Walton, Melgar, Ronen, and Safai, can lead to a reevaluation of certain relationships. Our focus remains steadfast on innovation, integrity, and delivering value to our constituents and neighbors. We appreciate the efforts of all who are putting forth an honest effort to improve the Bay Area, including those mentioned, but moving forward, we will be redirecting our energies and resources toward partnerships that better align with our mission and contribute positively to our collective goals.
Whether he should have said it on moral grounds is one question, and whether it is indicative of handling part of the CEO's job very poorly is another. The CEO is the public face of a company - that is literally part of the job. He did this abysmally, and in many, many companies, it would be enough for a board to sack him. The CEO doesn't get a firewall between their personal life and work, or a pass for off work behaviour. They get paid to live it.
I work in diligence on medium stage companies and the acquirer wondering if they have to ditch some of the current exectutive is very common. (I know nothing about the ownership of YC mind you.)
Notch is Markus Presson, the creator of Minecraft. He got $2.5 billion in cash from Microsoft when he sold it. In the years since he had a whole lot of controversial tweets, but that didn't' seem to affect him due to his wealth.
I read HN probably more than I should, and I was pretty surprised to see this has over 500 comments and I didn't see it at all. Turns out it was only on the frontpage for 1 hr. https://hnrankings.info/39205676/
If you or anyone read those and have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Edit: I've turned off both the flags and flamewar detector on this article now, in keeping with the first rule of HN moderation, which is (I'm repeating myself but it's probably worth repeating) that we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of a story (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Please note: that doesn't mean we don't moderate at all; what it means is that whatever we would normally do, we do less of it in such cases.
Normally we would never late a ragestorm like this stay on the front page—there's zero intellectual curiosity here, as the comments demonstrate. This kind of thing is obviously off topic for HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If it weren't, the site would consist of little else. Equally obvious is that this is why HN users are flagging the story. They're not doing anything different than they normally would.
All this goes double when a story has already had extensive discussion, and 10x when the article is sourcing its content from Hacker News itself, as this one is. That's absurd. But I'm willing to take the hit because the first rule of HN moderation is more important.
Thanks Dan. When I wrote my comment I thought most people would already know that it was most likely an automated system that downranked the post. The next time I talk about this topic I'll make it extra clear I'm not insinuating any manual censorship.
With that said, it is a shame that in cases like this, you may not even know about a post with hundreds of comments unless someone sends you a link. Have you thought about implementing a view that ignores the flamewar detection? This could even be a historical view, like https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2024-01-31 . The post in question was one of the highest upvoted submissions of the day and yet it's not on the first page of this link.
I fully agree with you that in the majority of cases these comments are not encouraging intellectual curiosity, I still do like reading the comments because I do find some interesting stuff there sometimes.
I also missed original post but I would flag it as I’m against internet dramas of any kind. And I get it that many people are interested in this kind of politics but I don’t think they recognize that there are many who couldn’t care less.
This is the response I’d personally expect and moderation context and how it unfolds is the interesting part to me.
The way HN is set up, having 500 comments would have contributed to that. The "flamewar detector" the mods sometimes mention seems to take comments/votes and comments/time into consideration then penalises threads.
Yes, this is correct from my observation, too. The comment-to-vote ratios go fast; up south, they will likely be out of the pages quickly. One might think that a post that falls off the homepage would linger on page 2 for a while, but it can be out of even the first 100 posts fast.
I have stopped thinking about HN's algorithms and just let it do its job.
It's also strange because I've seen Tupac Shakur glamorized in popular culture (for example, hagiographic discussions about him on NPR). But Shakur was rapping about killing people, while those people were being targeted and killed by associates of his, and he himself shot people. A 6 year old was even shot in the head and killed with his gun in one of the fights he got into (he claimed he dropped the gun and someone else fired it during the fight).
It's bizarre to see the level of outrage against Tan quoting Tupac compared the the veneration you usually find of Tupac.
I don't see how it makes it any better that it was a quote. The quote still had words in it. Does Garry Tan think the entire world listens to Tupac? And what wisdom does Tupac really have to offer in this case?
I mean, if someone says something like that and they’re conjuring it up directly or they’re quoting a piece of art, I think that’s obviously relevant to interpreting it. Without taking a position on how severe to interpret it, it’s plainly obvious this important detail is glossed over and ignored and the media coverage of this is desperately trying to leave readers walking away thinking this was a more direct straightforward statement not subject to interpretation of how much to take it at face value.
It's only technically better that it was a quote. That doesn't come close to excusing the behavior. It's still completely beyond that pale that he chose those specific lyrics to post on Twitter. The question of how honest the reporting was feels secondary.
Does it really matter? It's terrible judgement to post something whose intended meaning hinges on whether you know an American rap song from ~30 years ago to a public venue like Twitter. There are plenty of voters who weren't even born when Tupac was still alive.
Sure it matters. It doesn’t mean you ultimately would judge it appropriate, but take any scenario where violent rap lyrics are used and revoke a person’s ability to know they are quoting a song and it will be interpreted wildly differently.
CEOs, politicians and anyone under the age of 16 should not be allowed to use social media.
However, for politicians, CEO's and other "public figures" I would argue for an intermediary, let's call it the Ministry of Truth, to clean, revise and fact check all interactions with the public.
With this, damage to stakeholders (of companies and political parties) can be done in a controlled manner, and an artist's public perception can be adjusted.
> He employs partisan and apocalyptic language, calling opponents “cronies,” “corrupt” or “doom loop accelerationists,” and claiming they want to “destroy public safety” and “ruin” or “destroy” the city.
Whether it should be or not, this is basically par for the course for modern political discourse. What a weird line for the article.
> Tan “should not have done any of that. He should go for a while. He should not represent tech anymore,”
I'd argue that anyone who cares this much should "go for a while".
For over at least a decade now it's made no sense that we hold people in certain roles to a higher standard than anyone else. These high standards are a form of power transfer that hurts those who believe in them. Can't we just admit we're all human?
"...two $32 bottles of Roederer Estate sparkling wine"
I have half a dozen of these in my closet to get me through the month; is this supposed to be exorbitant? What's the point of talking about his reasonably modest stash we've been shown? Weird.
Maybe? Savvy shoppers know that Roederer Estate is about the best bang for the buck sparkling wine on the entire planet. One thing is for sure is Mr Tan has good taste in booze and doesn't waste money on Veuve any other overpriced shit from Champagne.
> super fancy whiskey and then sparkling white wine that you pick up at Lucky on sale.
Off the shelf Macallan and Balvenie bottles from his photo is what some Eastern European owner of chain of car repair shops would buy in duty free airport store when going to his annual Turkey or Egypt vacation, definitely not a "super fancy whisky" and a bad value for money.
Those are Balvenie 21 and Macallan 18, ~$300 amazing bottles of scotch whisky. They're not worth the $ (diminishing returns after $50 bourbon and $80 scotch), and are incredibly poor taste when you're in the midst of a political fight with people who campaign on rent control as to not get evicted...
Hilariously specific person you invented there, but I'd not sneer at someone offering me a glass of what appears to be a Balvenie that itself is old enough to drink. I happen to have a 12 year old version of that bottle but it wasn't even expensive enough to fuss over.
The level of corruption in California and San Francisco is astonishing and there is so many things to be fixed.
It's essential to engage in constructive discourse and have a clear action plan that will kill corruption. For example, he has money and he can support investigative journalism to investigate corruption in building/renovation permit system, to investigate San Francisco SAFE corruption/fraud scandal, etc.
The situation with journalism, particularly in the context of investigating significant issues like the SF SAFE fraud scandal, presents a complex paradox that indeed feels disheartening at times.
On one hand, the reluctance to financially support news outlets has led to a scarcity of resources for journalists, limiting their ability to conduct in-depth investigations. This trend compromises the quality of journalism, as reporters are pressed for time and resources, often resulting in superficial coverage of complex issues.
On the other hand, the alternative – journalism funded by wealthy individuals or entities – raises concerns about bias and influence. When the financial backers of journalism have vested interests, there's a risk that the news could be slanted to serve those interests, potentially undermining the integrity and objectivity that are foundational to the profession.
Also: even if we completely left out the actual contents of this tweet.
Then we are still left with an adult (who happens to be a CEO) who thought that it would be a rational thing to tweet that and couldn't predict the outcome of it.
I would have expected that to be almost worse to people here. And no, alcohol is not an excuse for that. Drinking enough not to be able to rationally think about whether that is a good idea anymore is a confirmation of it.
It isn’t illegal to say what he said but it’s not the right tone for his position. The slow drop into political violence begins with speech normalizing calling for death and murder.
I just hope everyone outraged analyzes their own speech. I hold a lot of opinions outside the bounds of cocktail conversation, but I was having cocktails with my (blue city, professional) friends and they made a joke about someone needing to assassinate a certain right wing presidential candidate and everyone laughed really hard. The way she said it was funny and I laughed along but it’s easy to have outrage when you want it.
> The slow drop into political violence begins with speech normalizing calling for death and murder.
I have seen this a lot lately in online discussions of homelessness and people accused of crime. It's very unsettling.
That is the context of why Mr Tan wrote that -- there's a popular narrative that specific individuals are complicit in crime and homelessness in San Francisco. This leads to lots of ad hominem and in my view rises to the level of conspiracy theory in many -- it's not like every problem is the fault of a single office holder or even a "cabal" of them. Voting against someone or supporting different candidates is one thing. Calling them solely responsible for all that you consider evil, escalating to the level of death threats, is quite another.
And that's just politicians. It's also routine to see people call for violence on homeless people or people accused of crime.
On the other hand, where does the path we're on lead?
Let's not forget, there is a multi-dimensional spectrum in between, nobody is consistent across the spectrum, it is possible and often beneficial to speculate non-seriously, plenty of ~good people support intentional killing by our military if it has a well crafted (by literal professional thought shapers), just-so story to accompany it, and so forth and so on.
Optimal gameplay is difficult. Even aspiring to it is difficult.
I don't think it is very controversial and haven't seen anyone actively saying it is a good thing. I think all division and debate is around if and how much anyone should care.
I see a lot of declarations that it is bad, inexcusable, disgusting, ect. What I dont see is what people think the implications or consequences of that determination are. When someone says that, what do they want to happen?
Do they just want other people to acknowledge it was bad, and then everyone goes on with their life? Do the police make them wear a scarlet letter or send them out into the wilderness. Does it mean that people should unfollow them on twitter?
Doesn’t the phrase “living rent free in your head” refer to someone being preoccupied with another individual with whom they have a disagreement to an unhealthy degree? You can’t waive rent if you’re the one doing the living, and by definition if someone is letting someone else “live rent free” in their head, the rent is already waived. Without any commentary on the rest of this (because I have no idea what’s actually going on), unless this is referring to something other than the common idiom, no this is actually a lousy clapback because it completely misunderstands the idiom.
I suppose if they're thinking like if any third party wants to get in his head, they will declare rent is not due (waive seems wrong not just if you're living but in general if you're not the landlord) - which kind of works because of their position I think (but I'm not from the US so I don't really understand or want to bother looking into it), but yeah we've probably both thought about it too much and more than they did before posting as a quick joke at this point.
This sort of discourse would be flagged, moderated and possibly result in a ban here on HN. His actions seem to undermine a lot of what this community is meant to be about.
Sure, and that would be the system working as intended. I choose to post everything under random dictionary word pseudonyms just in case one of my hot takes is slightly too spicy. His real mistake was posting under his real name IMO.
You do realize that the first amendment protects individuals from prosecution for protected speech, right? It does not guarantee protection from professional or social consequences. For some reason this distinction is very hard to understand for people of certain political stripes.
Regardless, death threats are not protected under the first amendment, so you're even wrong under your idiotic assumptions of how the law works.
Most journalists are just propogandists and misinformed people stating option as fact. I don't understand why anyone holds them in high regard. Like yeah, there are many great individual journalists who take their job seriously and get real information out to people, but for the most part, no.
What I've heard about Garry Tan so far suggests he is childish and out of touch.
- He blocks random people on Twitter over the slightest disagreement.
- He capriciously refused a once-in-ten-thousand-lifetimes offer from Peter Thiel for the safety of a steady paycheck at Microsoft. Someone who is that risk-averse really shouldn't be role-playing as Tupac.
How can he be a role-model to the thousands of founders who typically take massive personal risks with no backup plan?
I don’t know much about YC lore, but pg seemed like a pretty “buttoned up” person, and then came Altman and Tan, more freewheeling loose cannon types. Is that right?Is that just the new ilk for this generation of tech leaders?
PG had a rule of no politics, even though he made many political donations and made unjustful imprisonment and overturning the death penalty one of his pet projects.
Michael Seibel, Geoff Ralston, and Sam Altman were all very apolitical CEOs. Sam was the most, but usually it was only general/presidential election stuff. YC also does some lobbying with investors like Ron Conway, who in the past has supported gun control policy.
Garry Tan is the only YC CEO with insanely thin skin.
This situation reminds me of the opening scene in office space where Michael is rapping in his car but turns the music down and pauses when the guy selling flowers walks past.
Of course, that wasn't public and Michael wasn't a CEO. Whoops.
It was a stupid and shameful tweet. The thing that elevates this above a drunk tweet though are the "real life" postcards. Should we ignore the fact that the postcards seem very much a false flag?
Note to everyone making death threats: just make sure to quote music, film, or theater in your threats. You’ll be protected from prosecution but your recipient will still get the message.
I wonder if he accepts the same conduct targeted at him for example from those on his staff e.g. "Fuck my life. The CEO came in drunk again. I wish his liver would finally give out and make space for a CEO who deserves the title instead of this useless motherfucker." Would he consider that normal social media use or would he see it in a different light when its about him or done by gasp an underling?
Isn't this the same guy who is constantly whining about guillotine jokes on the left without reference to specific people being "deadly serious" calls to violence? And he's tweeting a list of 5+ politicians with "die slow motherfuckers"?
I don't think the description of him as a "moderate" is accurate.
one time i was on twitter and some asshole was tweeting mean, stupid stuff and i was like who is this asshole? what is e/acc? and then i realized he was the president of YC and it made me sad. and then i learned more about e/acc and i decided how dumb that shit is
It's worse than childish. The people called out in that bizarre tweet would probably have a conversation with their staff or the police about whether they or their families are in any kind of danger from this apparently popular guy wishing death upon them from the internet, or perhaps from one of his idiot followers.
They might not know much about where Tan is coming from, but they know they work in a building where Moscone and Milk were assassinated.
They would be perfectly reasonable to hire private security and sue Tan for damages to pay for that and whatever other measures that seem prudent for their own protection along with the pain and suffering that goes along with the very reasonable fear this tweet and its effects caused.
What he wrote was more or less the limit to what you can say before it becomes a serious crime.
Agreed. SF politics is profoundly broken, and many of the Supervisors are sclerotic and out of touch. But wishing death on them publicly is very very serious.
I think this modern internet trend of saying that every mistake is inexcusable and should lead to a breakup is super weird and destructive.
What he said was bad, and wrong. But he just needs a scolding and some minor punishment and to then learn and not do it again. If it becomes a pattern then sure, that's a different thing.
We can disagree on politics, but calling for the death of politicians publicly — especially as an influential member of an already regionally important company — is disgusting.
This behavior cannot be tolerated. I don’t care how inebriated someone is.
I say this as someone who worked for a YC company (that is still in business) for almost a decade.
> “If the CEO of Boeing or Coca-Cola said, ‘I hope Joe Biden dies a slow death,’ someone would be like, ‘Oh, whoops, that wasn’t supposed to happen,’” he said.
No, they just their customers dead, one way or another.
I can't imagine why anyone cares what a CEO says in a few tweets? I was under the understanding that people actually work in this industry instead of playing these cliquey games of reputation or scraping through social media. (which is meaningless)
Only real valuable piece of information that I can glean from any of this is further evidence of the amount of vultures in this community who will publicly lambast another for the crime of "going off" (drunk or not) and calling for them to resign. History shows these types to be narcissists; I for one hope whatever is going on with Garry, that he can get some help and continue on doing what he does best, and I don't care what he said if he was really drunk, the content doesn't really matter too much when you are hammered.
> Tan, for his part, apologized over the weekend, noting that his post was a reference to a Tupac Shakur lyric
How famous does someone have to be joke about a politician dying before it’s a problem? Tan is less famous than Charlie Sheen or Johnny Depp, who have joked about Trump dying.
Also, from Wikipedia: “Tan supported the 2022 recall campaign against progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Tan donated at least $100,000 to the effort. Tan blamed Boudin for physical attacks on Asians.”
There’s a fair argument that Tan is joking about violence against people whose policies are facilitating actual violence.
Boudin is just one example of the trend of progressive prosecutors all over the country. And Asians tend to be the victims of any reduction in law and order, because they are seen as easy targets by gangs and a large fraction of them live in areas where gangs operate. They also tend to own or work at small businesses in the place affected by the 2020 riots. If crime goes up in New York City, for example, the Bangladeshi is in Jamaica are going to be hit disproportionately hard.
Right right, I'm sure it's nothing to do with any prominent political figures stoking paranoia about Chinese communists to rile up a wilfully ignorant voter base.
Not famous at all, really. It'd be reasonable (and good) to have a standard where people don't wish violence on their political opponents. Possibly even where cooperating with people they don't like is an option. Opponents of Trump please take note.
However, after acknowledging that Tan shouldn't have done this, it doesn't look serious. Drunken rants on Twitter are not important in and of themselves.
Why such nonsense over a tweet. People can’t say anything anymore.
There doesn’t need to be a response, people need to get on with there lives instead of what someone said while angry/drunk.
Maybe it hasn’t been addressed because it doesn’t need too? Too much crap happens because of public pressure but it doesn’t exists, just ignore the idiots and get on with life.
This is why the world is becoming so boring and mundane, nobody can have an opinion or say anything anymore, everything has to be ‘nice’ or PR speak so we can never have people actually be human beings.
It’s not just California, just look at almost anywhere. Same story across the UK - taxes and prices ever increase, quality of everything and every service continues to decline. The greed and corruption on display by nearly all politicians is beyond brazen. Lucrative contracts for friends that deliver no value, insider trading, tax avoidance, offshore accounts, communicating government business on burner phones, deleting emails, fiddling expenses, huge infrastructure projects running vastly over budget then being cancelled, etc. What amazes me is how few realise the level of outright theft of their own hard earned money, and seek some form of comfort in blaming the other side, believing their team will fix it next time. There are even some that try to put it down to incompetence.
The corruption is now so deeply rooted and endemic throughout all of society, government and media it’s impossible to know where rooting it out could ever start and end. So probably the only way to turn the tide is for everyday hard working people to start rejecting it and rejecting to support it in any way, shape or form, everyday throughout their own lives. No single person or group can fix this and any claiming to be able to is both a liar and a fraud.
>This is nothing more than activist journalists hating successful people for leading a stand against a self-destructive ideology ruining lives.
There's plenty of people in this very thread who profess a sympathy for Tan's causes but think his drunken remarks are deplorable and reflect poorly on him, even if not legally actionable. I'm among them.
Wagon-circling is a sad pathology of politics. Nobility requires that we rise above it.
HN is different from Twitter. The reason users (correctly) flag such comments here is that we're trying for a specific kind of site (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). One thing I often say (to a certain type of commenter) is that this isn't an ethical or moral rule—it's more like a game. Different games have different rules. If you're playing chess you don't get to tackle the bishop.
If Garry or anyone else had posted that on HN, users would certainly have flagged it, and mods wouldn't override that.
I thought the US was the land of Free Speech. And yet, when a guy speaks his mind he's burned at the stake. Of what use is that freedom, then? Or do you have to be poor and uninteresting to exercise it? Or only in front of your own mirror? So many paradoxes.
If the reference to Biden is the unacceptable one, I see President Biden daily expressing his thoughts on other world leaders, calling them names, saying who must die and who not, who is a good guy, who is a bad one. Is that Free Speech done right?
That's not what free speech is. It is a concept that lives far beyond what's written in a document.
You can violate free speech all day every day in full view of the world and them having taken very articulate notes on your violations and not see a single day in court or jail.
But then, my criticism of the people's criticism of Tan's free speech is also criticized. And then we only get criticism of criticism and no actual productive dialogue. Or so it seems. Looks complicated. Where does it end?
Not to sound snarky but who is mission local and why should a reader of HN care for their opinion? Have they done a noteworthy op-ed? If so, which one?
Yes? I definitely don't plan on treating someone's opinion on how to handle fleets of server racks worth $15k/unit equivalent to mine when they're a 19 year old underachiever who has written basic calculator apps for 2 years.
Of course he's probably getting kicked out of YC for this, but I still feel that most politicians (and tech leaders too, actually) say the same worthless points and don't really do much good in the world. In some ways, I'm more interested in Tan.
Surely this is fine yes? I haven't met a single person that hasn't ever wished death upon someone. Emotionality is fine, we just have some ridiculous high standards for Garry since he's YC CEO.
Given that this sort of public outburst would be grounds for firing an employee at pretty much every tech firm, it only seems right to hold the CEO to the same standard of behaviour
Technically we are all dying slow. If we are going to take his statement literally then we should consider how literal the entire statement is.
We all “should die slow” as that is inherit to the human condition. Each breath we inhale is slowly oxidizing us from the inside out. If he said they should die fast I would be more concerned.
If he said they should all die on x date at y place by z method then that is definitely more of a real threat than drunken word play for attention.
“They should” also implies he has no intent of a threat. A threat would be more like “I will”.
I take no side here in this factual statement yet welcome even more down votes from anyone that can’t regulate their emotional response beyond a down vote to a reasonable and objective analysis of his statement. Carry on with the downvoting. You are doing great!
