I'm one of the flaggers. This is just my opinion, I'm not speaking for the others, but: I flagged because the piece is poorly argued and mostly just spiteful.
It starts off on a bad foot by implying that Dorsey chose to sell Twitter to Musk and made billions on the sale, both of which are false. Dorsey was forced to sell Twitter to Musk by the shareholders and the board. The shareholders profited, but Dorsey actually did not sell his shares, which means he did not cash out and instead lost money over the course of Musk's tenure. All of that nuance is ignored in favor of a swipe that's used to imply that Dorsey is a billionaire because he profited off selling Twitter to the far right.
Then later he uses his dislike for Dorsey in particular (and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to dislike Dorsey even if the Twitter sale isn't one of them) to justify saying that all billionaires should be unwelcome at FOSDEM. This isn't backed up by any sort of argument for why this generalization makes sense, it's just assumed that you should agree with him. Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't, but there's no argument there.
In all, I'm unimpressed with the piece and the comment section reflected the mood of the piece: kind of mindlessly cranky without much thought. So I flagged the article because it's not the kind of thing that I think belongs on HN.
I don't understand why DeVault's website is still allowed on Orange Reddit. There are people who I really respect who write good, non-spiteful, intelligent pieces who are still shadow banned after 5+ years.
We shouldn't be platforming or providing safe spaces to pedophiles. I flag any and all Drew DeVault content because I don't want this to be a pedophile bar.
lolinder|1 year ago
It starts off on a bad foot by implying that Dorsey chose to sell Twitter to Musk and made billions on the sale, both of which are false. Dorsey was forced to sell Twitter to Musk by the shareholders and the board. The shareholders profited, but Dorsey actually did not sell his shares, which means he did not cash out and instead lost money over the course of Musk's tenure. All of that nuance is ignored in favor of a swipe that's used to imply that Dorsey is a billionaire because he profited off selling Twitter to the far right.
Then later he uses his dislike for Dorsey in particular (and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to dislike Dorsey even if the Twitter sale isn't one of them) to justify saying that all billionaires should be unwelcome at FOSDEM. This isn't backed up by any sort of argument for why this generalization makes sense, it's just assumed that you should agree with him. Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't, but there's no argument there.
In all, I'm unimpressed with the piece and the comment section reflected the mood of the piece: kind of mindlessly cranky without much thought. So I flagged the article because it's not the kind of thing that I think belongs on HN.
phoronixrly|1 year ago
Is this story spam or off-topic? What is the topic anyway? Is an article ever on topic if it's not one of Paul Graham's "essays"?
airhangerf15|1 year ago
swed420|1 year ago
anonfordays|1 year ago
immibis|1 year ago