

I Stand With Trolls - dionidium
http://braythwayt.com/2013/04/17/i-stand-with-trolls.html

======
zacharyvoase
Just an anecdote, which I know is not the singular form of 'data', but still:

I respect Mozilla as a company, but have no desire to work there (despite
there being a lot of technology fit) because the CTO, Brendan Eich, made a
donation of $1,000 to support Prop 8—a 2008 California ballot measure which
banned gay marriage. Sure, I understood that his views were not those of his
employer. But that doesn't make it easier for me to want to work for/with the
guy.

See, I don’t think it’s about the public message that companies send to their
consumers. It’s about the message they give to potential hires: you’ll be
working with these people on a daily basis. Depending on the dispensability of
the employee in question, a company may choose to fire someone rather than
potentially rule out a large number of future employees. It’s an economic
decision.

~~~
sodomizer
I think it's a terrible idea to judge other people's political decisions until
you've walked a mile in their shoes.

If you are a professional, you should be ready to work with anyone, not just
the people who agree with you.

Your view is not objectively correct. To insist otherwise is fascism.

~~~
ben0x539
I think it's not fascism to refuse to work with/for people whose polics are
aimed at concretely restricting your civil liberties, in a way that might have
affected your day-to-day life for the rest of your life.

~~~
DannyBee
This is strange, because everyone has a different interpretation of what civil
liberties are.

There are few any large set of people actually agree on

gun control, prayer in schools/government, searches by the
government/TSA/whatever

There is a lot of subjective disagreement over exactly what liberties exist,
and their limits.

As the parent said, if you really think you have an objectively correct view
of what civil liberties are, and other folks are just wrong, ....

~~~
ben0x539
I genuinely think that it's objectively correct that some minority must not be
banned from being able to marry. I really don't think you can spin that into
fascism.

To put it more drastically, just because someone dares to stand up to their
oppressors, they are not immediately oppressing anyone themselves.

------
csmattryder
There are time when split personas just cannot be justified.

The Microsoft guy was their Creative Director for Xbox Studios, and he made a
comment about his employer's product to a very large audience under the said
persona.

For people like me, the OP, it's fine. We don't have high ranking positions in
multinationals. Our opinions are unlikely to matter (but of course there are
exceptions) when tweeted, blogged or emailed.

There's a time, place and persona for everything, Adam Orth decidedly chose
the worst of the three to use.

------
tptacek
Saying unpopular things on Twitter isn't trolling. You stand with people who
speak their mind in public. I'm not sure you mean to stand with the trolls.
Those people usually _aren't_ speaking their minds.

~~~
shardling
Apparently Orth later stated that:

>“[That was] just the normal daily back and forth I have with Manveer,” Orth
wrote on Twitter later. “Apologies for offending non-cities. I was trolling
him personally.”

[http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-
creative...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative-
director-insults-non-cities-to-defend-always-on-digital-rights-management/)

~~~
andrewljohnson
Unfortunately for him, what his words meant in context is irrelevant. He gave
the public a hint that Microsoft might feel like people should just put up
with the always-connected nature of consoles, and that Microsoft intended to
steamroll the naysayers. That's just bad PR no matter what anyone meant to say
or who they meant to say it to.

~~~
shardling
I was explaining why the author chose the "with trolls" part of the title.
What you say is already understood.

------
lubujackson
Love this post. If we want an open and transparent world, which we are headed
toward at breakneck speed, we need to ALLOW AND ACCEPT when people are stupid,
say racist things when they were 15, say harmful things on Twitter, insult
people and generally be the asses that people are at times. It isn't
endorsement, it is a readjustment of cultural norms - these are some more
Internet growing pains for everybody.

When EVERYTHING we say is attached to a megaphone, people either start to say
a lot less or we need to accept a lot more. Personally I want to accept more
and not be self-muzzled. I think we have to go in that direction, if no other
reason than to accommodate that poor generation that grew up online and have a
whole embarrassing history attached to their future lives before anyone
understood that their history will no longer fade away from sight.

If one off-the-cuff personal comment can get you fired from a job, does that
mean it should prevent you from getting hired too? Ever again? It is an easy
decision to fire someone in the 5 seconds of Internet heat that these sorts of
things can generate, but we need to consider what that is costing us all.

~~~
anxx
Totally agree. People are probably saying a lot of stuff in daily conversation
that, if transcribed, could get them fired.

Thanks to social media, these conversations stop happening between two people
and include me on the other side of the globe, too. I like that. I want to
hear people's real opinions, get a sense of their real personality, from the
internet.

Firing someone over their tweets sends a powerful message to everyone to
filter what you tweet.

------
aredington
He got whacked because he was being dismissive of people's objection to a
business decision.

He compared the business decision to engineering limitations (vacuums need AC
out of plugs, mobile phones need cell towers in range), and was snide about
people objecting to the business decision to have a console that only works
when it is connected to the internet.

He wasn't having open an honest dialog, and he wasn't conducting that dialog
politely.

I think most folks on HN know of some marginalized political philosophies such
as anarchism or libertarianism. These political philosophies aren't popular,
but there are polite and intellectually rigorous ways of discussing them, and
there are immature and inconsiderate ways of discussing them.

You can discuss marginalized or unpopular things without being an asshole. But
Orth was discussing them while being an asshole, and was doing it as a
representative of Microsoft.

------
MechaJDI
While it's true that you shouldn't HAVE to hide behind a persona in order to
speak your mind, the Microsoft guy was free to do so. Why couldn't he just as
easily say what he had to say under his 'randomMicrosoftEmployee' account
instead of his public one? Simple. He wanted an audience. This is very
reminiscent of the high ranked guy of some company who went off on a random
chick-fil-a employee in the drive thru, posted it on youtube for the world to
see and got fired over it during the whole 'supporting a anti-gay
organization' thing. No one is saying you can't have or share your opinion but
use common sense and decide HOW you'll share said opinion as well as the
possible consequences.

------
potench
Orth was a Microsoft employee discussing rumored Microsoft decisions. I doubt
he would have been fired if the discussion were about Playstation decisions.

------
h2s
People use each other's employers to beat each other into submission. When
that PyCon 2013 shitstorm went down, the Righteous Male Anger crew were very
vocal about their plans to end all their business relationships with SendGrid
in retaliation for Adria Richard's actions. It was a calculated move intended
to get her fired for what she did. Presumably the dude who got canned for his
remarks earlier in that sorry saga was the victim of similar pressure from her
supporters.

Sometimes this happens because people force it to happen.

~~~
yuhong
AFAIK Anonymous tried to threaten SendGrid with a DDoS.

------
chrisrhoden
> Now he’s been fired, do you think that means that anyone with his opinions
> is going to be fired as well?

> No.

As much as I agree with the rest of your thesis, you can't argue that a very
strong message hasn't been sent to the people making decisions at Microsoft -
on this issue, there is an extremely vocal group who disagree with this
position. It's dishonest to suggest that this will not have an effect that the
people who disagreed with this man will appreciate on the final product
design. It will.

------
andrewljohnson
The OP isn't siding with freedom-of-speech or honest dialog - he's standing
with people who accidentally say the wrong thing in public.

------
socrates1998
If you are fired for something you said outside of work that doesn't really
affect your job, it means you weren't very valuable to the company.

This is my criteria for understanding if I actually worth something to my
company/organization/team.

How much can I screw up and still be a part of this organization? That is
value.

If you are one stupid meaningless tweet away from being fired, you should be
looking for another job.

------
edw519
_...but we are moving more and more to a transparent society..._

This key issue isn't whether or not things are changing (they are) or whether
it's good or bad (that's debatable).

The key issue is _who gets to decide_.

If I want to tell the world a million things about myself, that's my business.
But if someone else wants to tell the world things about me (especially if
they know it's personal or private), then that's definitely not cool.

It's not that much different for institutions, companies, or any group in
general. None of us should be surprised at the reaction of another whose
digital cherry we popped on-line.

This reminds me of the old tale about the man with a gossiping problem who
went to a sage for advice. The sage told him to slice open a feather-filled
pillow, shake it outside his house, then come back tomorrow. The next day the
man asked the sage what to do about his gossip problem. The sage said, "Go
gather those feathers."

~~~
supercanuck
For those like me who didn't understand the feathers reference, the analogy of
the sage is that gathering up those feathers is the equivalent of taking back
what you said. Once it has been said, it is out there forever, the damage has
been done.

~~~
WilliamMayor
I think it also means that gossip spreads really far and you never know where
all those feathers end up. Even if you could take back what you say, it's hard
to find where the gossip has spread to.

I'm reminded of the Friends episode where Ross sleeps with the copy girl.

------
xradionut
"But I would like to live in a world where people might disagree with Reg
Braithwaite but buy Raganwald’s book."

I wouldn't judge a person based solely on their published content, especially
those authors that write fiction. But there are works I'll never buy or
recommend because I will not knowingly support the actions/attitudes of the
author. (SciFi examples: Card, Hubbard, Rosenberg...)

My choice.

------
MrMcDowall
Executives shouldn't be trolls. If you're an executive, and you say or do
something in public that tangibly affects the market perception in a negative
way, you should have known better, and you deserve to be fired.

------
michaelochurch
Troll (mostly white-hat, these days) here. Had a gray-hat trolling habit as a
teenager and in early 20s. Now I try to direct any hypergraphic tendencies to
worthier causes. Denouncing idiocy is charity work that I do. However, I've
"trolled for good" quite a bit and have really suffered for it, as the world
unfortunately knows.

The guys at the game company didn't deserve to be fired. They were engineers
having a (somewhat obnoxious) private conversation. Adria Richards did. I
can't defend her, because her job was PR and she condescended to a mean-
spirited, name-and-shame attack on people she didn't know. (She didn't deserve
the onslaught of horrible things said about her, clearly, but she fucked up
and deserved to lose her job. I've lost jobs over less.)

I hate the private-sector politician life more than anyone, as one can tell by
my railing against it, but if your job is to be the public face of a company,
then you choose not to have the same rights to public/private separation as
most people, just as elected officials can't let their guards down. So that's
why I can't stand with Adria.

That does not apply to people like Aaron Orth. CEOs are public faces; almost
everyone else is a public individual. Orth being fired over that tweet is just
ridiculous. This is why I hate 99+ percent of corporations. If you turn your
back on someone just because he becomes unpopular, then you are of no use to
anyone. Corporations with no moral fiber deserve to be dissolved, and their
resources reallocated to the public interest. I am all for private enterprise,
but only if it stands for something. If you fire someone because an off
comment gets negative attention, then you don't have any moral constitution
anymore and there's no reason to allow you ("you" being a company; I'm not
advocating killing _people_ ) to continue to exist.

~~~
VLM
It makes sense to fire Orth. No one other than MS employees, a couple console
game programmers, and their hired astroturfers wants an "always on" console.
Therefore firing him means we're talking about Orth instead of a very
unpopular decision by a monopolist.

The moral constitution and all that should be outraged at closed gardens and
monopolist providers and assymetry in the market between a couple providers
and a lot of consumers blah blah. Its not a "do no evil" company, and firing
him is pretty small potatoes compared to their other issues. You're dealing
with a criminal organization. Don't bother busting Al Capone for jaywalking,
or in this case firing a crony.

------
1337biz
_Anonymous and Wikileaks might get ahold of Google’s entire email database and
start publishing stuff._

Speaking of which ... is there any tool to swipe clean an Gmail inbox? Due to
to the recent changes I finally got ready to switch over to my old pop3s. I
plan on slowly fading out my Gmal account, so I would start by deleting all
the past mails, etc. Any recommended way to do this?

~~~
prg318
I would be honestly surprised if deleting messages from your gmail account
actually removed them permanently from Google's databases.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Well then if you live in the EU, complain to the Data Protection Commissioners
in Ireland.
[http://www.dataprotection.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocID=18&UserLa...](http://www.dataprotection.ie/ViewDoc.asp?DocID=18&UserLang=EN)
It appears that you need to have deleted your data already, and then contacted
Google and asked to have it permanently deleted. There's an online form and
everything....

I vaguely remember that when people complained about Facebook, they were
forced to ensure that data had been deleted.

~~~
prg318
Thanks for the info! I was unaware of that. I live in the US; I wonder if
there is similar jurisdiction here.

------
summerdown2
Reminds me of this talk from LongNow:

[http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-
gro...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/jul/25/why-cities-keep-growing-
corporations-always-die-and-life-gets-faster/)

One difference as to why cities keep going and corporations die:

"Cities tolerate crazy people," West observed, "Companies don't."

------
tixocloud
I think that regardless of what employees say, if it has the potential to
negatively influence the company's business in any way, there's likely to be
repercussions. Even if we choose to disassociate our statements from
employers, I think the general public will think something along the lines of
"Some MS employee said X" = "MS said X".

~~~
sodomizer
I think his point is that if we encourage that mentality and don't fight it on
twitter etc, soon no accounts will be associated with the employers
unofficially, and thus we won't get any of the news that leaks out that way.
Our loss.

------
ronnier
Alright, what did the guy from Microsoft say on twitter to get him fired?

~~~
swanson
[http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-
creative...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/microsoft-studios-creative-
director-insults-non-cities-to-defend-always-on-digital-rights-management/)

------
doobius
He chose to speak his mind, and I believe his opinion was mean-spirited and
unnecessary. Sometimes, employers fire people for that, and that's the way the
world works. I don't see it as a problem.

------
hartman
"I’m personally willing to cut a Microsoft employee a lot of slack on his
personal time."

Microsoft was willing to cut a Microsoft employee, too.

------
rdouble
None of these people were fired simply for their Twitter comments. Their
employers wanted to let them go but needed an excuse.

~~~
michaelochurch
Then those companies are run by idiots.

If you really want to fire someone, swallow your pride and write a decent
severance package, but do it same-day. If things are really at that point,
then waiting does no good.

------
gonzo
as an aside, one does not "stick" one's .signature file in a NNTP feed.

Author likely wasn't there, back in the day.

