Readit News_zzaw commented on Twitter now requires an account to view tweets techcrunch.com/2023/06/30... · Posted by u/celsoazevedo
"Don't be snarky."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I'm not saying you owe CEO billionaires or billionaire CEOs better, but you owe this community better if you're posting here. If you'd please review and follow the site guidelines, we'd appreciate it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I'm a little surprised at this response, dang. I could understand if I was being hostile to the poster, but my sarcasm was directed at Musk (who they're quoting), whose comment about data pillaging I find highly dubious.
As far as snark, I see several other examples of that—also intended for Musk—in this thread. They don't strike me as either offensive or particularly constructive, so it's not clear to me why my comment was called out here. (Especially considering that there are a few other comments that definitely go beyond the acceptable levels of user-to-user snark as I understand them.)
I can avoid sarcastic comments about billionaires in the future, if that's a problem. If the issue was snark directed at another user, that wasn't my intention.
I'll also say that the "snark" rule you cited, while well-intentioned, seems very broad and selectively applied here.
_zzaw commented on Twitter now requires an account to view tweets techcrunch.com/2023/06/30... · Posted by u/celsoazevedo
Musk commented on this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674865731136020505
"Temporary emergency measure. We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!"
Yes, it was definitely the "data pillaging" that was degrading service, and not the fact that Twitter is now hosted on a Mac Mini under somebody's desk...
_zzaw commented on Twitter now requires an account to view tweets techcrunch.com/2023/06/30... · Posted by u/celsoazevedo
This feels a little like the shittiest restaurant in town raising its prices. I have an account, and I wouldn't even bother logging in at this point. Why bother? The Twitter experience is so devotedly wretched that whatever I'd get from the tweet I want to see is outweighed by everything I have to wade through to see it.
There was a point when Twitter was good enough that maybe they could have pulled something like this and gotten away with it. At this point, I think all this will do is hasten their irrelevancy.
_zzaw commented on Russian paramilitary chief says his forces will turn around nytimes.com/live/2023/06/... · Posted by u/veer
Erratic behavior, a sign of drug abuse. Prigozhin must be under the influence of drugs.
Another possible explanation: he got the backing of some faction inside the Kremlin, but they did not really back him when push came to shove.
I don't know about drugs. Ego, messiah complex, and delusions of invincibility? Sure.
Putin got where he was through reality-TV-level ostentatious displays of strength. Prigozhin likely figured he was the only one who could boast measurable gains in the war, and the same tactics would work for him.
My guess is his miscalculation was assuming he was more popular among the rank-and-file Russian military and police than he is, and it's too early to tell if that's actually a miscalculation.
_zzaw commented on Top secret U.S. Navy system heard titan implosion days ago wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy... · Posted by u/whytai
It does not say “don’t be snarky unless scarasm is directed at a billionaire because then it’s ok because they have a lot of money and power, so we will allow it”.
You would then need to define some amount of money that would put someone in then “can be flamed” category.
The rule is not applied selectively here; it is applied to everyone, Musk included.
I'd say what's not clear to me is what to avoid in the future. I'm not trying to be difficult here—and dang is one guy dealing with the internet version of a city, to be sure—but I see sarcasm all the time on HN. The really toxic, demeaning stuff, sure, that has to go. In this case, it never even crossed my mind that what I said would be interpreted as targeting the person I was replying to. (While I wouldn't have flagged it, your snarky response, by contrast, was pretty clearly targeting me.)
Looking over the thread—and HN in general—there are no end of snarky posts, including yours, and especially in regards to wealthy tech guys like Musk. The vast majority of them are permitted. That's what I mean by "selectively." Going by your interpretation, no snark would be welcome at all; if that isn't the case, which I didn't have the impression it was, then what was it about my post that warranted a response more than the others?
Genuine question. I can observe consistent rules, but I'm not seeing consistent application of this one.