The article talks about being “receipt free” as a required feature of any electronic voting system.
Fine. But by that standard, in a world where someone can bring their phone or AI glasses into the voting booth to record the whole voting process, how can any voting system be deemed secure? Anyone can show anyone else how they voted.
> I was looking for a job during working on this and absolutely got some disappointing rejections, and one was because of my lack of skillset on things like this in a big tech company's interview. I literally failed the technical screening. Oh well.
Can you explain how user accounts and signups work? Can anyone run a user account service hosting accounts and performing account authentication? Or is that centralized?
If I were trying to win any popularity contests, I wouldn't be discussing this topic on HN. It's risky business!
> Nothing is rude and offensive on its own, nor do you know what everyone else thinks.
I'm not purporting to know what everyone else thinks, only that given the context, the usage of this particular word in this particular situation is offensive.
It's a strange thing for you to insinuate that I feel that I "represent everyone else." Is it not enough for me to be speaking for myself? And what's wrong with users of this website speaking up to negotiate the standards of discourse we all follow here? As I've commented elsewhere, there is a standard of civility, respect and politeness that we all expect from interactions on HN. What that standard comprises should be discussed from time to time.
> As a member of a "minority group myself, there's no connection to "minority groups demanding respect" here..*
If you are going to quote me, then please quote me accurately. I didn't equate OP's "social media lynching" with "minority groups demanding respect". The language I used referred to specific (albeit hypothetical) individuals doing a specific thing. I wrote that "members of those same minority groups" were using "cultural power...to demand respect". It is you who are talking about monolithic groups here—I'm talking about individuals.
If you are a member of one of the minority groups in the US that were historically terrorized by lynch mobs, or were ridiculed in the popular press by the kinds of caricatures that are referenced by the article, then absolutely your opinions on this matter are salient.
It shouldn't require membership in any particular group to view the juxtaposition within OP's metaphor as offensive, however.
The "potential social media lynching" that OP accused eBay of kowtowing to must by its nature be perpetrated by individuals who don't want denigrating, racist caricatures to be promoted and popularized. This is a straw-man in OP's argument, so we don't know precisely who OP would be referring to, but it's not too big a stretch to interpret OP's comment as referring to individuals whose ethnicities are being ridiculed in these books, including African, Native American, Chinese and Arab ethnicities. In fact, a brief search of media reports regarding this controversy would reveal that many prominent commentators on the subject have been African-American and Hispanic educators. Most of this actual commentary has been well-reasoned and civilized, however, and is not at all mob-like.
In contrast, "lynching" in the United States primarily existed as a tool by which white mobs terrorized non-white communities into social, economic and political subservience, by murdering people. Take a look at some of the pictures, and read some of the history:
Lynching is not just some better-forgotten historical grievance. It was a tool for genocide and white supremacy—a tool used to rob Mexican and indigenous landowners of their property, and to keep black people subjugated and to deprive them of political power and economic independence. The last known lynching in the United States took place less than 40 years ago—within my own lifetime. The downstream effects of this violence persist today.
Lynching was also part of a continuum of white supremacist culture that included ethnic caricatures that were intended to ridicule subjugated people, and which had the effect of dehumanizing those people. Dehumanization is a necessary precursor to mob violence, and lynchings would not have been possible without the cruel, dehumanizing propaganda that promoted white-supremacy in the United States for more than 100 years after the civil war.
OP's metaphorical lynch mob would include individuals whose ancestors were terrorized by actual lynch mobs. To convert metaphor to simile, OP was saying that these individuals whose ancestors were terrorized by lynch mobs are themselves like a lynch mob when they complain about the on-going, present-day publication of imagery that was originally created to promote the persecution of those same ancestors.
Is this not offensive on its face? Even if you disagree with these people, how can you not see OP's metaphor as demeaning towards them? And even if you don't care about offending people in the wider world, what about those of us on this website who also fit the same description? Is it not rude to us?
Look, I don't want anyone to be shamed, punished, penalized or "canceled" here. That would be ridiculous. I wasn't even looking for any kind of apology. I'm just hoping that the standards of civility and respect followed by members of the HN community can incorporate an awareness of what this kind of language really means to some of us.
There are some things that no civilized person will say in polite society—that idea, I think, is not controversial. Let this particular use of the word "lynching" be one of those things.
I agree with you that the idea of living your life cowering in fear of offending everyone you meet is ridiculous on its face. It's equally ridiculous to expect that you can impose your standards on everyone around you, and to think you are justified in becoming outraged at every offense.
Do you really think that's what's going on here? I see it differently.
Being polite is often about self-imposed constraints. We constrain our actions and our language as a sign of respect. Do we do it for everyone? No. But we do it for people we care to show respect to.
In the United States, after the Civil War, lynching primarily existed as a tool by which white mobs terrorized non-white communities into social and political subservience, by murdering people. By one measure, three-quarters of lynching victims were black, when only 12% of the population was black. In parts of the old south-west, lynching was part of a successful ethnic-cleansing effort to expel Mexican landowners from lands that white settlers wanted for themselves. Take a look at some of the pictures, read some of the history:
This violent history hits hard when you identify with the victims, when those victims resemble your grandparents and great-grandparents, when you know that your grandparents and great-grandparents were also subject to painful repression within the same cultural and historical context. The word has a different energy.
I didn't take your use of thee word literally. I used the word "non-metaphorical" in my original comment because I wanted to flag that I understood you used the term metaphorically. There are some words, in some contexts that are offensive when used metaphorically.
Just to be clear, I'm not offended by you, nor do I think you are intolerant. I just thought that the word you used in the way you used it was offensive enough given the context to say something about it.
If you didn't have a sense before of how the word might be taken as offensive in the way that you used it, now you do. Do what you will with that information.
Please point out to me where I myself was impolite, or where I accused OP of intentionally invoking the term for its negative connotations.
Is some behavior only rude if the person knows that it will be offensive? I think if a 16 year old picks his nose in a job interview, you’d still think he was rude, even if you knew his parents didn’t raise him right.
When I was growing up, we used the word “gyp” as a synonym for “cheat”. As in “Don’t g** me out of what you owe me!” Earlier generations would use the word “jew” as a verb in a similar way.
As kids, we were ignorant of the origin of these words. Does that fact make our use of them them less offensive and rude? What would you tell your kid if you heard him say to a friend, “You better not j** me out of what you owe me!” Personally, I would be mortified, even if I knew it came from a place of ignorance.
I have not made a straw-man argument. Laws must be written precisely, and it’s entirely appropriate to test proposed changes to law by applying them to specific cases of fact.
You may have identified a real problem in society, but you have not proposed a viable solution.
What is politeness but acting in a manner that is respectful of the sensitivities of our peers?
Perhaps the heart of the issue here is that when the sensitivities of certain people are not deemed to be worthy of polite respect, we are implicitly deciding that those people are not worthy of being our peers.
To the contrary. The context here is the same, as I explained in my original comment. The connection between the literal and metaphorical use of the word here is too close, which is what makes it rude and offensive.
This is different than using the word “master” to describe the trunk branch of a repository, because when we are talking about a “master branch” it is not in the context of a discussion of offensive racial caricatures being removed from eBay’s website.
Perhaps I was offended and was trying to point that out politely.
I wasn’t badly offended. I was offended enough to take the time to write these comments.
Keep in mind that on HN, rude and offensive comments are down-voted all the time. There is a politeness standard on this website, and perhaps that standard should incorporate the use of language like this!
There’s a Spanish idiom that describes your reply here really well, I think. It doesn’t occur to me what the comparable phrase in English would be. Es una cachetada con guante blanco.
I disagree with you, but I have to say, well done. Point made.
It’s not just old Huslters. If eBay were not allowed to prevent explicit pornography from being sold on its website, it would have a much less valuable business, and fewer people would get value from it. Just as an example, it would end up being blocked by “family friendly” web filters that are popular with businesses, schools, and families.
Unless you think that businesses, schools, and families should also be prohibited from blocking pornography, or should otherwise be forced to facilitate access to eBay, your suggestion is untenable from a business perspective.
Ok, so “racially insensitive” material and explicit pornography are both legal currently. Are you saying that eBay should be forced to allow their users to sell both, or are you saying that we enact a new law that says that eBay should be forced to allow their users to sell “racially insensitive” material, but not explicit pornography?
Pointing out that certain usage of language can be offensive? That we shouldn’t be unintentional when causing offense? That if we cause offense intentionally, we shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction of the party we have purposely insulted?
So you are advocating for some standard according to which marketplaces should be required to sell anything the public brings to them to sell?
Is there a line, in your conception, between what eBay should be forced to sell, and what they are allowed to prohibit? For instance, explicit pornography is legal. Should eBay be forced to sell explicit pornography? If so, is there anything in your mind that they should not be forced to sell on their website?
There is a long history in the United States of independent book publishers printing content that the mainstream press wouldn’t touch. It has never been the case in the US that truly controversial material could expect to have access to the biggest platforms.
What is the difference now, except that racially-insensitive material has replaced, say, pro-Soviet material as being too controversial for the biggest platforms to want to sully their brands with it?
I hope the irony isn’t lost on you that you are using the word “lynching”—which in its literal, non-metaphorical usage refers to the terroristic murder of racial minorities in the United States—to refer to the non-violent use of cultural power by members of those same minority groups to demand respect from institutions and powerful individuals.
You may think that some of these demands have gone too far, and you may believe that some institutions have been too obsequious in adhering to these demands, but surely you must admit that the use of the word “lynching” in this context is offensive, no?
Doesn’t this phrase imply that someone is being harmed? Who is being harmed in this case?
The estate that controls the publication rights is deciding not to publish these books, and eBay is deciding not to list the books on its own platform. No one is being penalized or punished, and these entities are acting fully within their rights.
Fine. But by that standard, in a world where someone can bring their phone or AI glasses into the voting booth to record the whole voting process, how can any voting system be deemed secure? Anyone can show anyone else how they voted.