GP did not personally attack or denigrate the person they were replying to.
As the dozens of other comments show, the overwhelming majority of us do not believe the root commentors claims, and this PM quite objectively does not have the leverage and authority to back their claim that they won’t let this happen again.
It’s hard not to read your conception of “trying for something different” as granting undue credulity to a transparently dishonest corporate actor.
I understand, and I don't want to see ads in such contexts either. But "nobody believes this" is of course a personal attack, and "you don't have the power to [do what you just said you will do]" is pretty aggressive too.
The impulse to hit back against what is perceived as a "transparently dishonest corporate actor" is natural and human. I feel it also, and in fact my first response when I read such comments is always an adrenaline surge and the peculiar pleasure-hit of righteous indignation. So yes, I know where these feelings are coming from; we all do.
The problem is that in the HN context, (1) there is a human being at the other end of the account being attacked, and (2) there are orders of magnitude more attackers. In practice, this can easily turn into a mob dynamic and in fact a mass beating, if a virtual one. That's bad in its own right and bad for the community here.
I would say that "nobody believes this" would usually be a personal attack by default but when it's followed up with "you do not have the power to prevent it" it's not a personal attack.
> The impulse to hit back against what is perceived as a "transparently dishonest corporate actor" is natural and human.
Honest question: If we agree that the transparent dishonesty and the lynch mob behavior are both undesirable, how do you think the two should be balanced in operative terms?
I don’t want to put words in your mouth — but are you saying you won’t allow direct pushback to dishonest corporate actors??
My view is that healthy discourse requires balance and proportionality: flagrant dishonesty, as is the case here, should license a proportional degree of pushback.
I don’t agree at all that “nobody believes this” is quite the personal attack you’re making it out to be, but I don’t care to debate that at length either.
GP did not personally attack or denigrate the person they were replying to.
As the dozens of other comments show, the overwhelming majority of us do not believe the root commentors claims, and this PM quite objectively does not have the leverage and authority to back their claim that they won’t let this happen again.
It’s hard not to read your conception of “trying for something different” as granting undue credulity to a transparently dishonest corporate actor.
I understand, and I don't want to see ads in such contexts either. But "nobody believes this" is of course a personal attack, and "you don't have the power to [do what you just said you will do]" is pretty aggressive too.
The impulse to hit back against what is perceived as a "transparently dishonest corporate actor" is natural and human. I feel it also, and in fact my first response when I read such comments is always an adrenaline surge and the peculiar pleasure-hit of righteous indignation. So yes, I know where these feelings are coming from; we all do.
The problem is that in the HN context, (1) there is a human being at the other end of the account being attacked, and (2) there are orders of magnitude more attackers. In practice, this can easily turn into a mob dynamic and in fact a mass beating, if a virtual one. That's bad in its own right and bad for the community here.
Edit - past explanations in case relevant:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I would say that "nobody believes this" would usually be a personal attack by default but when it's followed up with "you do not have the power to prevent it" it's not a personal attack.
> The impulse to hit back against what is perceived as a "transparently dishonest corporate actor" is natural and human.
Honest question: If we agree that the transparent dishonesty and the lynch mob behavior are both undesirable, how do you think the two should be balanced in operative terms?
I don’t want to put words in your mouth — but are you saying you won’t allow direct pushback to dishonest corporate actors??
My view is that healthy discourse requires balance and proportionality: flagrant dishonesty, as is the case here, should license a proportional degree of pushback.
I don’t agree at all that “nobody believes this” is quite the personal attack you’re making it out to be, but I don’t care to debate that at length either.
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