Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's online rant spurs threats to supes, police reports
If you or anyone read those and have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Edit: I've turned off both the flags and flamewar detector on this article now, in keeping with the first rule of HN moderation, which is (I'm repeating myself but it's probably worth repeating) that we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC-funded startup is part of a story (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Please note: that doesn't mean we don't moderate at all; what it means is that whatever we would normally do, we do less of it in such cases.
Normally we would never late a ragestorm like this stay on the front page—there's zero intellectual curiosity here, as the comments demonstrate. This kind of thing is obviously off topic for HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If it weren't, the site would consist of little else. Equally obvious is that this is why HN users are flagging the story. They're not doing anything different than they normally would.
All this goes double when a story has already had extensive discussion, and more still when the article is sourcing its content from Hacker News itself, as this one is. That's absurd. But I'm willing to take the hit because the first rule of HN moderation is more important.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
With that said, it is a shame that in cases like this, you may not even know about a post with hundreds of comments unless someone sends you a link. Have you thought about implementing a view that ignores the flamewar detection? This could even be a historical view, like https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2024-01-31 . The post in question was one of the highest upvoted submissions of the day and yet it's not on the first page of this link.
I fully agree with you that in the majority of cases these comments are not encouraging intellectual curiosity, I still do like reading the comments because I do find some interesting stuff there sometimes.
There’s a fair argument that Tan is joking about violence against people whose policies are facilitating actual violence.
Were that so, why would there be a rise in crime targeted at Asians across the the US in recent years?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-year-after-atlanta-and...
Yes. That exists in https://news.ycombinator.com/active, which is listed in https://news.ycombinator.com/lists, which is linked in the footer.
Garry Tan should know better. As an earlier article mentioned [1], he was previously quoted as saying "this kind of stuff should have zero place in San Francisco politics," referring to an activist's taunt that millionaires and landlords should be guillotined.
[1] https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-sup...
We're pretty much there, yup.
But stochastic terrosism[1] isn't a new or unique thing.
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated after similar remarks were said by Netanyahu[2], which was arguably a pivoting point towards the war in Gaza we have today.
Public figures talking about specific people dying should always be treated seriously. It's not disturbing that we do.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin...
[0] https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sendin...
If the other side said it, oh dear. We'd best remove them from their job, their payroll, shun them forever, and make sure they never have power again.
I think the correct approach is to have a conversation, to seek an apology, and to hold the party to being better. Strike one; it's water under the bridge.
It's well worth reading, but is a long and initially tedious article bemoaning the passing of a gentler, humane culture.
Then about halfway through it grew some balls and teeth, and frankly I found it shocking. I had no idea California was this degenerate. And for those too close to it, no, this isn't just how every country's politics is. It reads like Chicago in the 1920/30's, or perhaps more like Mexico or El Salvator, with billionaires instead of drug lords.
Read alongside "The Californian Ideology" [2] it's eye opening and paints a great picture of the slow trajectory of San Francisco and California from a left-liberal counter-culture to extremist far-right billionaire technofascism.
[0] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n03/rebecca-solnit/in-th...
[1] >>39226296
Specific example that I linked:
>Rallies organized by Likud and other right-wing groups featured depictions of Rabin in the crosshairs of a gun. In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman's noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, "Death to Rabin".
>Netanyahu denied any intention to incite violence
Rabin was subsequently shot dead.
The definition in Wikipedia says:
>Stochastic terrorism refers to political or media figures publicly demonizing a person or group in such a way that it inspires supporters of the figures to commit a violent act against the target of the speech.
Of course, direct "kill this person" language is not a requirement for that. "Won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?"[1] is a famous example from the 12th century.
>If "XXX of party YYY is a disgusting piece of human garbage" than I don't think that should be called terrorism.
By itself, it wouldn't be. However, if XXX of party YYY subsequently starts getting death threats or other harrassment as a result of this statement being made, there is a problem.
Which language a public person uses to indicate a target to their followers highly depends on the context and history of the particular public person and the group they are addressing.
Hopefully, you understand why doxxing[2] is problematic. There are real-life consequences for the person being doxxed. However, the language is perfectly benign; after all, there is no explicit call to action in an address, a phone number, a name.
Stochastic terrorism similarly leverages context and publicity to highlight targets. It's not about how you would interpret the message; it's about how the target audience interprets it.
In Tran's case, both the message (die slowly) and the target audience's interpretation (a call to harrasment) indicate that there was no miscommunicaiton.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
He was mostly annoyed it seemed because this meant he got demonitized or had to pull some content which cost him money. And that people didn't listen to his specific pre-show instruction to not call for death. And that some of his viewers got angry at him about this (I didn't quite follow why, they weren't angry about the death threats but somehow thought his removal of episodes made him a part of the deep state or something).
edit: link to short version of the clip I saw
https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/y-combinator-ceo-garry-tans...
This would not change ex post facto because of someone else's actions.
In the US, what he did said is disgusting but legally protected free speech. It's conceivable that he could be opened up to a civil lawsuit, but that's about it.
i tend to favor vacancy tax, but this won't fix the problem with developers. SF needs to reform their review process. this is TLDR but there was a big study about this: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/us/san-francisco-housing....
it's already incredibly expensive for a developer to even go through the review process for a development, let alone build it. a vacancy tax would further deter developers from building in SF (as it's already happening due to the terrible review process)
OR
like you said, maybe he is on some behavioral or cognitive decline. Another Lee Holloway situation [1]
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline...
FWIW here's a PDF (bitmap scan) I verified [0].
It's also lengthy and hard work, and took me three or four reads to fully grok. Suggest starting at p.61 Cyborg Masters and Robot Slaves for the wrap-up. Thanks for the Henderson tip.
[0] https://monoskop.org/images/d/dc/Barbrook_Richard_Cameron_An...
The current thread, however, ended up spending 8 hours on the front page, far more than we'd ever normally allow for this class of story.
Here are the explanations I've posted about this so far:
If anyone reads those and still has a question which isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Your comment would be just fine without that bit.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/trump-pinata-school/
https://am870theanswer.com/all/la-antifa-group-hangs-trump-i...
https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/donald-trump-effigy-hangs...
https://www.coloradoan.com/picture-gallery/news/2021/01/01/f...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3500960/I-hate-Trum...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fibonacciblue/31620818443
https://www.newsweek.com/protest-trump-doll-guillotine-outsi...
And that's just the last president. If you search, you'll find plenty of similar examples for Obama and Bush too. Going further back than that will probably be harder to find records for, but yeah we have a long tradition of wishing death on our politicians and expressing that quite loudly. And almost all the time, it's certainly legal, whether or not the local community is keen on it varies.
https://quinnanlaw.com/criminal-defense/elements-of-criminal...
It isn't polite speech that needs to be protected and the tests for whether something is an actual threat or not is well understood, there's no excuse for you not knowing them unless you don't live in the US.