Comment by dmw_ng
4 years ago
Watching company employees consistently pop up on critical threads (not fingering CF here, many including at least Stripe come to mind as frequently occurring too) feels a lot like gaming the forum. Vetted messages like this from a recognizable source will often end up pinned to the top of the thread, but I don't really think they overly contribute to the conversation in most cases, and I find myself wishing there was some rule against it.
Not to say there shouldn't be a place for official responses, just that it's kinda tiring to see crowdpleasing justifications during times of stress displacing the thoughts of other potentially less biased folk on the Internet discussing the problem at hand.
(The counterargument would be that the status quo provides unparalleled public access to top-level staff, I'll leave that angle for someone else to explore ;)
I have to disagree with this. These folks are best positioned to give us actual information. 90% of the rest is just opining.
At the same time these folks have all the incentives to provide false information instead.
I don't have any huge problem with eastdakota's comment here, and I think I agree with Cloudflare's action (I listened to a Behind the Bastards podcast recently that covered an individual who was bullied until they committed suicide by kiwifarms, so I understand the stakes) but - there is nothing in their comment that presents "actual information"; it does not present any facts; it just presents the perspective that their legal team would like all of us to take on their action. dmw_ng's criticism is entirely fair.
It's pretty easy to, you know, scroll down.
Companies in this position are damned if they do, damned if they don't. I for one at least appreciate thoughtful, substantive responses from company leadership in company-specific threads, and I'm happy that at least on HN we are more likely to be given a real, substantive response than the corporate drivel that is shoveled to most other media outlets.
It seems fair if people can reply to those posts, as you have done.
> ...kinda tiring to see crowdpleasing justifications during times of stress
People must be allowed to change their minds without being stigmatized or judged for it.
> ...displacing the thoughts of other potentially less biased folk on the Internet discussing the problem at hand.
Well, why should one look for additional (potentially irrelevant) context [0] when there's debate that could be had on its resolution? I mean, it is a struggle to get everyone to agree even when they are on the same page [1].
[0] https://youtu.be/bjD3PcULhJg?t=369 / https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/bjD3PcULhJg
[1] https://nitter.net/visualizevalue/status/1565797227527868417