
Twitter fired its VR manager because of something he posted to Facebook in 2013 - prostoalex
http://qz.com/813926/twitter-twtr-hired-and-fired-its-head-of-vr-in-one-day-because-of-an-old-deleted-facebook-fb-post/
======
ng12
Is Twitter extra sensitive because they were the driving force behind the
gentrification of the shady part of SOMA? Apparently you can displace the
homeless but you just can't voice negative opinions about them.

~~~
gjolund
Yeah, I wouldn't be suprised to find out they are just using this as an excuse
to shed some overhead.

If I were at Twitter I would have my resume ready and be interviewing already.

~~~
umeshunni
He started there on Monday, so this doesn't apply.

------
notliketherest
This makes me furious. Political correctness run amok. I don't feel safe
expressing my opinions publicly for this very reason. I support Donald Trump -
could I get fired from my (tech big 4) workplace for tweeting that publicly?
That's not entirely out of the realm of possibilities! What is this world
coming to? If I don't fit into their mold they fire me. My heart aches - this
feels like the road to totalitarianism. These self proclaimed "progressives"
and "social justice warriors" are not liberal in the classic sense - they are
radicals hell bent on cutting down anyone who does not fit into their world
view. A classic liberal would have said "I may not agree with what you say,
but I will die for your right to say it." What happened to our country?

~~~
Cookingboy
Supporting Donald Trump isn't just a straight up political point of view, it
shows that you are at least tolerant of some of the most horrible values he
has exhibited during this election. They include promotion of sexism and
racism and downright violent behavior toward minority and people with
different religions.

If I were your employer, I would definitely consider firing you because I do
not believe my company should employ people who are tolerant of racism,
sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and political violence.

It's the same reason I would fire any employee who are openly in support of
KKK or Nazi. Some people may argue that they disagree with Donald Trump on
those things but support his policies. That's like saying it's ok for me to
support Hitler because his economic recovery plan for Germany is sound, but I
just disagree with the whole genocide business.

EDIT: I do believe in the First Amendment. As long as they don't violate
Federal laws regarding hate speech to incite violence, Mr.Trump and his
supporters should be allowed to exercise their free speech without fear of
government prosecution.

However I am also for the right of any private party to distance and
disassociate themselves from Mr.Trump and his supporters, including their
employers.

~~~
maxsilver
> If I were your employer, I would definitely consider firing you because I do
> not believe my company should employ people who are tolerant of racism,
> sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and political violence.

But where does that end? You could use that against line of reasoning against
_literally any political topic_.

You could just as easily say, "I would definitely consider firing you for
being pro-choice, because I do not believe my company should employ people who
are tolerant of murder".

or "I would consider firing you for being Christian, because I do not believe
my company should employ people who are tolerant of discrimination, judgement,
and torture."

~~~
selestify
Being Christian does not imply being tolerant of tolerant of discrimination,
judgement, and torture. Being a Trump supporter does mean giving support to
Trump and all he stands for.

~~~
Cookingboy
>Being a Trump supporter does mean giving support to Trump and all he stands
for

It means at least you put other things at higher priority than discrimination,
torture, and promotion of violence and hatred and you are willing to at least
ignore those.

In my eyes, that's simply not acceptable. We aren't talking about economical
policies or debate on tax laws here, we are talking about basic human decency.

~~~
s_m_t
But being the secretary of state of the administration that assassinates US
citizens without trial (including a 16 year old US citizen) and laughing on
television about a world leader being killed and sodomized with knives by a
mob on television is acceptable?

We are all complicit in this madness. You should fire everyone and then fire
yourself.

~~~
Cookingboy
Clinton did not order nor promote sodomizing a "world leader" (a brutal
dictator, you made it sound like he's an elected leader from a democracy or
something).

The killing of the U.S. national without trial was done due to such
individual's action. There was no condemnation of violence toward a large
group of people due to racism or sexism.

The world is obviously not perfect, but you can't use that as the basis of
argument for "everything and everyone is just as bad as each other and things
cannot possibly be worse".

~~~
s_m_t
No, she just helped destabilize the country until he was killed and sodomized.
And then laughed about it, on television. Surely this was the administrations
intention all along. Of course they didn't expect him to be sodomized but as
long as he died one way or another I really doubt they cared. Of course, now
Libya is still embroiled in civil war.

The point is that there are legitimate reasons to support Trump over Hillary
that don't involve someone being a racist, sexist, bigot. The world definitely
isn't perfect and we have two (major) candidates to choose from that make a
lot of reasonable people on both 'sides' existentially concerned about the
future of the republic.

I agree with your concerns about Trump. I just think Hillary is even scarier,
especially because a lot of the type of people who would protest and
politically mobilize against the actions I think she might take support her.

------
flukus
Thanks twitter for teaching us the dangers of posting something on social
media.

~~~
MK999
in the future we will all use pseudonyms, the politically correct noose is
getting a bit tight

~~~
flukus
In the past we usually did. White supremacists, POC, leftist, tightest, gays,
Christians, etc could all happily cooperate because those issues were outside
of a project or companies scope.

------
Keyframe
Not related, but it kind of is.

In 2008 I was working on a joint co-production for one of the biggest TV
stations in Europe (it rhymes with RTL/Endemol) and we were stationed in Asia
where we were shooting a Big Brother show.

One of the colleagues wrote something on his facebook wall (2008, after all)
which was set private and he had a tight circle of friends. What he wrote was
really bad, comparing his German employer to Nazis or something. Real bad.
His, well, our boss then heard about it (he wasn't on his facebook) and guy
got promptly fired and dispatched to Europe. The evening he got fired he
wasn't even allowed in the same hotel we were at. They transported him
immediately to another hotel where he would wait for transportation back home.

That event made me aware of what this thing will be in our futures, but also
to always be open and vocal about your issues in all channels of
communications or shut up completely.

edit:

I forgot the 'detail' about the story though. What he wrote was before he
landed the gig (with that company), and boss found out during the production.

------
robinson7d
If true, the troubling part for me is this sentence from the article:

> He’s since deleted the post, and seems to have spent a better part of the
> last few years trying to understand and ameliorate the issues of
> homelessness and mental health in the city.

Basically, it sounds like he said something wrong (awful, even) years ago,
recognized it as a problem (sure, perhaps after being told it was), and has
spent most of the time since then working to gain a better understanding to
avoid repeating that sort of statement.

To me, that sounds like a good thing. Unless there's more to the story, I'd
expect he'd be less likely to cause the same (/related) problem again than
most other people.

------
bpodgursky
Well, I'll just state for the record that San Francisco is overrun by crazy,
homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash.

Looking forward to being fired in 2019!

------
CarpetBench
My guess is that Gopman posted something incredibly insensitive in a moment of
frustration and probably really regrets voicing his opinion, even if he still
believes it. It's hard to have sympathy for him given that.

Still, this argument that we should use someone's past actions against them
indefinitely is oddly reminiscent of our penal system. Are criminals
inherently incapable of rehabilitation, even with an idealized correctional
system? Should we hold their past actions against them indefinitely? If not,
what's an appropriate amount of time? What if they seem truly remorseful of
their actions?

I don't know that I have a good answer for those questions, but it's
interesting to see some of the same people arguing for a more humane penal
system simultaneously holding these long grudges against people for their
(admittedly incredibly insensitive) actions.

------
ttam
> Twitter’s headquarters happens to be in a San Francisco neighborhood called
> the Tenderloin, where some 6,000 homeless reside—right on Market Street.

erm, no, Twitter's HQ is not in the Tenderloin...

and Greg Gopman's story is pretty well known, if that was really the reason
for him being fired, then Twitter's HR should also be fired..

edit: the actual article with the "news"
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/18/in-its-vrar-push-
twitter-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/18/in-its-vrar-push-twitter-
trolls-itself/) apparently he was just a contractor

------
smaili
Honestly, the title should be:

Twitter fired its VR manager because of _Techcrunch reviving_ something he
posted to Facebook in 2013

~~~
mathattack
This is more on Twitter than TechCrunch. Any background check should have
turned this up.

------
erobbins
Why does anyone in tech use their own creations? They should know better by
now :)

------
Uhhrrr
Was he fired because what he wrote was inhumane, or because it was true?

------
eliben
TIL that Twitter has a burgeoning VR business

~~~
tomphoolery
> burgeoning

Citation Needed.

~~~
eliben
It's from the actual post, very first paragraph:

... "Twitter had hired Greg Gopman, formerly in business development at
virtual-reality media company UploadVR and the founder AngelHack, a startup
that runs hackathons, to lead its burgeoning VR business" ...

------
darkengine
edit: I did not scroll far enough in the article to see his second comment.
That one is much worse, but firing people for their opinions strikes me as a
dangerous precedent.

~~~
scarmig
To be fair, the post in question:

    
    
      In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city…You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us. It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking different, but the crazy toothless lady who kicks everyone that gets too close to her cardboard box hasn’t made anyone’s life better in a while.
    

I hate the contemporary pastime for witch hunts against the bad-think, but
that strikes me as a pretty distasteful post. YMMV

~~~
x0x0

       pbpaste | fold -s -w 77 | sed "s/^/   /" | pbcopy
    

^^ makes it way nicer to read

The quote in question:

    
    
       In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt 
       you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the 
       city…You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the 
       world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for 
       the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so 
       close to us. It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us. 
       Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I’d consider thinking 
       different, but the crazy toothless lady who kicks everyone that gets too 
       close to her cardboard box hasn’t made anyone’s life better in a while.

~~~
scarmig
Awesome. I was looking through HN formatting options to find something like
this.

------
kafkaesq
Of course the rank and file routinely not get canned -- but in this guy's
case, apparently have their professional lives irrevocably destroyed -- for
running their mouth a bit too far in public. A few people online may grumble,
but that at the executive and investor level, no one bats an eye about it.

But at _their own_ level? Meanwhile YC can't fire you-know-who, 'cause, you
know, "diversity".

------
gjolund
Did he actually get fired for saying SF has a lot of homeless people?

~~~
selestify
No, he got fired for making derogatory remarks about them. Did you read the
article?

~~~
gjolund
“overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash,”

While a little harsh, it is not inaccurate.

~~~
parsnipsumthing
He went on to say further things about them.

