
React adopts new code of conduct - jchanimal
https://www.businessinsider.com/reactgate-react-facebook-code-of-conduct-twitter-2019-8
======
Nextgrid
Maybe the solution is to just leave that cesspool that is Twitter? Seems like
the harassment has less to do with being a minority and more with angering the
Shitter mob which can happen to anyone.

~~~
Grue3
The solution is to leave the cesspool that is JavaScript. For some reason
these sorts of "scandals" only happen with Node.js, React and other JS
libraries.

~~~
pmlnr
LOL.

\- [https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-
drupal-...](https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-drama)

\- [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-
apolo...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-apologizes-
for-years-of-being-a-jerk-takes-time-off-to-learn-empathy/)

\-
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/freebsd_code_of_con...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/21/freebsd_code_of_conduct_controversy/)

It's everywhere. The problem is ultra sensitive people from mainly the US.

~~~
raxxorrax
And implementing a COC is basically a cease-and-desist declaration now. I
would never agree to any of that.

------
lfarroco
What's the actual instance of prejudice, harassment that is being reported? I
saw a lot of _very serious_ accusations in the article (the kind that is
capable of ruining a carreer), but no links or screencaps of the actual
wrongdoing.

~~~
0xB31B1B
The Mac girl gave a talk about how she doesn’t feel able to contribute well in
tech due to people’s implicit biases and existing power systems, some people
online pointed the finger at two leaders in the react community as examples of
that. Over the weekend, the person who gave the talk experienced a ton of
online harassment (par for course for being a woman online unfortunately) and
some of the accusers really escalated what they were accusing the react devs
of.

I think there is likely good support in the girls original talk, an implicit
understanding in JS land that the react community is has some deep bro
encoding (bro meaning weightlifting, video games etc, not politics and
hatred), and a misunderstanding that a deep bro encoding doesn’t mean you’re
alt right trump supporters but it does mean that a “non bro” might have a hard
time fitting in and experience relatively more harassment in that community
than in others.

~~~
repolfx
She wasn't getting abuse because she was a woman, she was getting abuse
because she's a feminist picking fights with all men, and engaging in nasty
witch-hunt behaviours. Literally, "men are biased against women even if they
say they aren't and even if nobody can prove it".

Men who promote that sort of hard left identity politics get lots of abuse
too, which is fair game because it's about their opinions and not their
identity.

------
FlorianRappl
Sorry I'm too stupid for this one.

Who wrote (or said) something about what or which person? Was the indicated
talk the target here? Was the person giving the talk the target here? Who was
attacked and why?

On the surface that just seemed that the majority of the people contributing
to some project (in this case React) are white people which presumably ends up
in joining together and dismissing opinions coming from people associated with
other groups. Was this the case? Where is the evidence for that? Is / was the
discussion completely unrelated to this? Really - I don't get at it all. Maybe
a language barrier.

Don't get me wrong - if something like that occurred then a CoC / actions from
the project leads must follow, but I just don't see it. Maybe the article is
not clear about it.

Thanks for helping me out on this one!

~~~
wolco
Someone associated with react gave a speech on white supremacist capitalist
patriarchy at a tech conf. Someone said this is a swf topic. People agreed.
Orginal speaker cries Racism/male power and has other people back her up. She
says she is leaving community. React leader turns off twitter for a few days
and comes back with new racism react behaviour code. Most devs just keep thier
heads down and keep coding.

~~~
goatinaboat
_Someone associated with react gave a speech on white supremacist capitalist
patriarchy at a tech conf_

I’m curious - on what basis was this speaker given a slot to present this
material at a tech conf?

~~~
username90
The conference focused on the tech environment and its people instead of
technology itself.

~~~
goatinaboat
Tech is perhaps unique in that people outside of it have very strong opinions
on those inside it.

------
ativzzz
While we should generally just be nice to each other and we should discourage
harassment, this article doesn't seem to present much in the form of evidence
of harassment and is mostly tweets of people apologizing for things, and as
someone who is not a member of the React community, I'm not sure what for.

------
pmlnr
#GatersGonnaGate

On a more serious tone: this level of "I'm offended by []" is actually
becoming counter productive. It's pushing talented, good people, with
controversial lifestyle/opinion out of open source, out of the very thing
that, in theory, should welcome contributions from anyone as long as it's
technically sound and clear. (Related read I found this morning:
[https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-
drupal-...](https://mikkel.hoegh.org/2017/04/18/why-i-care-about-drupal-drama)
)

Can we please go back to the nobody knows you're a dog times with pseudonyms
and everything?

EDIT: "nobody knows you're a dog" requires the one behind the pseudonym to
stay faceless and the community accept that anyone can be behind a pseudonym
and approach the contribution/work/etc without assumptions. It's hard. It's
never been properly done, but maybe it's time for this.

~~~
rimunroe
> It's pushing talented, good people, with controversial lifestyle/opinion out
> of open source, out of the very thing that, in theory, should welcome
> contributions from anyone as long as it's technically sound and clear.

What if the people who are being pushed out have been pushing other people out
this whole time? People complain a lot about losing talented/high-profile
developers because they made parts of the community uncomfortable, but then
seem to ignore/minimize the way that person was driving other talented people
--often from underrepresented/marginalized groups--away.

~~~
pmlnr
It may have been when these scandals started many moons ago and there are
always exceptions to anything, but from what I've been reading for the past ~2
years, this is not the case any more.

People being pushed out are, in many if not most cases those who have a
personal life, with personal view on life, which other can't accept, despite
the fact that those views and their work are usually well separated from each
other.

~~~
0xB31B1B
I don’t think they write articles/scandals on the huge amount of harassment
people receive just for being a woman on the internet, or black on the
internet. The reality is that (1) everyone gets harassed online (2) black
people get harassed more than white people (3) women get harassed much much
more than men. If all you’re reading is articles about “gates” then of course
it seems like there is an assault on a specific type of person, but you need
to adjust your priors to understand that many women receive that volume of
abuse much more frequently and no one is writing articles on it. There might
be acute attacks on individuals in scandals, but there is a constant mid to
high level harassment on some individuals.

~~~
pmlnr
I've not challenged or questioned your points. The scandals, CoC, []Gate, on
the other hand, doesn't really seems to be working, because they keep popping
up. Hence the thought of pseudonyms.

~~~
apacheCamel
I am not sure on your reasoning here. If they keep popping up, isn't that a
good thing? More and more communities are seeing the internal problems these
people are causing and are calling them out on it. I've never seen "ReactGate
2.0 cause the 1.0 people are still causing issues". I can't say every "gate"
has fixed all their problems but acknowledging the issues and working towards
a fix is a step in the right direction.

~~~
username90
Is there any part of tech which succeeded and is now a blossoming haven of
diversity? I mean, with so many people getting pushed out from everywhere else
it should be easy to fill your rank with top talent, no? Given that we have a
few million programmers in USA, you'd expect it to be a simple task to get a
few thousand of these harassed people together to start something big.

I know there are a few projects with ~100 people, but I am not aware of
anything larger than that which is not what we would expect. So the measures
we apply today like CoC's seems to have no effect on how welcoming the
industry feels to marginalized people.

------
eej2ya1K
The peculiarly American coalition of political extremists, liars, con artists
and mentally ill people wins again, and the longer they keep winning the worse
the backlash is going to be when it comes.

Just say no to codes of conduct. Say no to victim-ideology. Say no to
politics. And most importantly, say "fuck you" to anyone who dares make the
claim that everything is politics.

------
javagram
This guy was attacked for having a picture where he used the OK sign a year
ago? Everyone knows what the OK sign means and it isn’t “white power” except
in a 4chan meme. And only people who are heavily plugged into politics know
about that meme, normal people keep using the symbol for what it’s always
meant. Context is key with any hand symbol.

I read the whole article and there didn’t seem to be any evidence of white
supremacy either? Just an assertion that “move fast and break things” is
somehow connected and similar other vague statements.

~~~
Illniyar
As far as I can tell there wasn't any. Evidence of white supremacy I mean.

The "instigating event" apparently opened the floodgates of people who felt
marginalized and ostracized by the react community. I couldn't really figure
out who those people are, and what events/situations they were referring to.

I think it was mostly about women and misogyny after the initial blowout.
Though I can't really pinpoint anything.

This is actually quite frustrating as someone looking from the outside - no
one is really saying what it's about but everyone is acting as if it's a very
big deal.

~~~
barrkel
Performative outrage is a social currency.

There may be something there, but outrage can easily become an end in itself.

(I have no dog in this hunt, haven't looked at it at all, it's just a social
dynamic that I've seen playing out several times, especially in Twitter pile-
ons based on limited or misleading quotes.)

~~~
teddyh
Paraphrasing George Orwell, the object of outrage is outrage. The object of
power is power.

------
notus
This is insane.... attacking Abramov for using an Ok hand? attacking Wheeler
for sticking up for react developers when someone implied they were a bunch of
tech bro meathead gun toting trump supporters? I'm irritated they even
apologized

------
leftyted
I am skeptical that the "React community" is a hotbed of white supremacy.

It seems wildly inappropriate to have a talk titled "White supremacy
Capitalist Patriarchy" at a software conference. Is there a way to criticize
that without being called a white supremacist?

edit - here's the talk that led to this controversy (I got the title wrong):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQq_gZiZ-
jg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQq_gZiZ-jg)

You be the judge. My understanding is that implicit bias tests are
controversial among experts [0]. I also think that the talk is extraordinarily
inappropriate (given the venue) and I'm not surprised that there was backlash.

As always, the line between "criticism" and "harassment" is blurry. But,
again, is there a way to criticize that talk without being labeled a harasser
or being accused of "minimizing white supremacy"?

[0]
[https://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/07-08/psychometric](https://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/07-08/psychometric)

~~~
matwood
> But, again, is there a way to criticize that talk without being labeled a
> harasser or being accused of "minimizing white supremacy"?

The technique of labeling your opponent or ascribing some extreme position to
your opponent is as old as debating. What Twitter has done is make the
technique more effective. Disagree with how antifa does things? You must be a
nazi. Dislike Trump? You must be a USA hating communist.

But you can also see this happen in the small scale. Disagree with a business
partner about a business idea? You must just want to close down the business.

It's all ridiculous posturing, and unfortunately seems to be used much more
today. I also think it provides a smokescreen for when someone really is a
nazi or racist.

------
whalesalad
Whenever events like this happen there is rarely an unbiased account of what
was said. I still have no clue what was said by any one of these parties. It
would better serve the community at large to be able to interpret their own
conclusions from the behavior than read these inflammatory click bait posts.

I’m reminded of the bullshit “dongle” incident from a few years ago.

------
wolco
A lot to parse here.

"white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" tech topics at tech conferences are
probably not the best venue. Feels a little like false advertising if I
expected to learn something about react.

Mac describing the react community as bro-code break things.. male energy as
awful and something to be changed. 90% of the community is male and their
energy made the react community what it is today. Exclude them and react has
1% of the market.

So many other programming languages have conferences that focus on the
language.. why is react different.

Mac leaving the community sounds strange. What does it mean? She won't use
react and will switch to vue? She will never code again (there are other
libruaries/languages)

What is a code of conduct for react and how does it affect a normal developer.
Can someone still use react or do they need to be vetted first?. Will they
change the licease so if someone breaks these rules they will not allow react
on any sites they developed?

------
jpdb
I always see "both sides" participating in HN comments, but I overwhelmingly
see people shooting down CoC's (and similar documents) here as opposed to
supporting them. Here's my personal take as someone who is very socially
liberal.

I would enjoy living in a world where these sort of documents are not
necessary. However, people are absolutely discriminated against in open source
projects and these documents aim to alleviate some of those pains. This sort
of rule is necessary as an unregulated expectation of kindness isn't working
(eg "be excellent to each other").

The prospect of anonymity could help, but cannot be expected. People shouldn't
have to hide who they are as a person in order to contribute.

People also make a weird claim that people are more offended by things and I
don't see how that's a bad thing. I would prefer society that calls out these
intolerances instead of them just dealing with it. If gay people "just dealt
with" the adversities they faced then we'd still be persecuting them. Part of
"being offended" is being vocal about people doing and saying terrible things
in order to put societal pressure on them to change.

There are some legitimate concerns around CoC's and the like, but the people
protesting them aren't attempting to help solve those issues, they're doing so
to get rid of these rules and maintain the status quo.

Hope this at least exposes some people on the fence to some of the reasons
people support CoCs. I can't speak for every socially liberal person but I'll
happily engage in some back-and-forth if you disagree with any points I made
or just want more information.

~~~
finnthehuman
>unregulated expectation of kindness isn't working

What if part of the problem is expecting kindness? Different geographic and
work contexts have different kindness levels. But when everyone knows what the
baseline is, it's just that, a baseline. When I hang around my friends that
work in the trades, I don't have a subjectively worse experience because they
bust my balls.

------
yummybear
I wonder if other industries ever experience the same thing - like a carpenter
convention that veers off into an argument about whether the screwdriver
community is a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy?

~~~
Grue3
Well, anyone who happens to include a picture of a screwdriver on a slide is
obviously a fan of the neo-nazi rock band Skrewdriver.

------
gedy
From reading the article, is the issue a React conference presenter showed a
slide with "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy", and people tweeting
about that negatively are seen as evidence of white supremacists, etc in the
community?..

------
skrebbel
I use React and I lift weights (badly), yet this particular drama went by me.
The article doesn't clarify matters much, can anyone try to tl;dr the
situation in an objective way?

I mean, I just read apologies from people I respect (Ken Wheeler and Dan
Abramov) but I'm not sure what they did wrong and the article doesn't really
say.

~~~
literallycancer
They must have forgot the daily Two Tweets Hate.

------
raxxorrax
Sounds like the usual crybully story again. Nazis, sexists everywhere, etc.
pp.

The usual assertions without evidence are presented. Bad journalism in my
opinion and people I basically view as crazy persons were proved to be correct
again. Nice work.

------
mcintyre1994
> Another user, designer and writer Heydon Pickering, tweeted a joke
> suggesting that users in the React community were obsessed with lifting
> weights, guns, Trump and free market ideals.

...What.

~~~
AimForTheBushes
None of this makes sense.

