Tell HN: The Twitter acquisition is a mask off moment for this site

4 points by vdnkh 3 years ago | 1 comment

With any other company, I'd bet most of you cheering the demise of Twitter would be up in arms over it. But because most of you dislike Twitter, it's funny or justified. Let's abstract away your dislike of "liberals" for a moment:

"A random billionaire takes over a social media company, revokes source code access, fires a ton of engineers on the spot, and proposes to make sweeping changes without first understanding the context of their problems."

If this happened to YOUR company or team (aka at a scale understandable to you), I bet you'd be livid. Rephrasing the above:

"A random manager came onto my team, reorganized the structure and fired a ton of people, and upended our roadmap without understanding our problems."

For me, this is the mask off moment for HN. I'm sick of participating in a website that's become a gathering ground for aggrieved conservatives in tech. Cheering efforts to reduce moderation - efforts which are done for the tangible benefits mental health and general wellbeing of users - for the abstract notion of free speech is disgusting.

djha-skin 3 years ago |

Of all the things that this site could be accused of, "conservative" in general is perhaps the most surprising.

I think most people are cheering its demise because they prefer more informed sources of news in general over Twitter. I'm here because I like long form articles, thoughtful discussion, and hands-on, context-specific moderation, all of which is missing at Twitter.

You make good points about having empathy for the employees who work there. Looking at this through another lens is helpful, those of the employees at Twitter.