I am a leftie, but the only radio station I listen to is CBC. I have to admit that I get irritated by the organizations narrow focus these days.

It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.

I've heard people say something similar, about how they were left-wing when they were young, but found themselves right-wing when they were older, without changing their politics, because the next generation had moved the Overton window, but it's surprising to hear of an environment where the shift happened in the space of 18 months.

I think that many people on the right imagine that identity politics is the true form of left-wing politics, and that it was invented by Karl Marx for some reason, but experiences like Tara Henley's suggest that identity politics is more like an aggressive meme that takes over the brains of some subset of people who happen to gravitate towards left-wing politics, and it perhaps has a disingenuous astroturf form which appeals to people on the right as a way to shield themselves from left-wing criticism.

The article didn't say what happened. Did they turn over everyone but her in the 18 months? Or did everyone but her change their position? Or did everyone but her decide that they had to look and act like they changed their position in order to fit with new directions coming down from on high?

She didn't say. I wish she had; I would like to know what drove the change.

I’ll admit that I’m one of the people who’s increasingly convinced that what she’s describing is the true form of left-wing politics, at least right now, and I’m saying this as a leftist.

I think at its core, true workable leftism is about compassionate pragmatism: trying to make the world better for as many people as possible. What disturbs me most about the ultra-woke brand of leftism is that it isn’t pragmatic at all, to say nothing of compassionate. I believe you’re correct that what Henley describes is very similar to a meme: it’s simplistic, reductive, and easy. You can feel like you made a difference without having to do the hard work of actually making a difference.

That’s what bothers me so much about it. It’s an approach that’s primarily self-focused: venting one’s rage, posturing for the sake of boosting one’s social status. It's not really about helping other people—any more than the moral codes of right-wing religious fundamentalism are about actually being a decent person—and it definitely isn’t close to realistic as far as effectively changing anything.

Henley's departure from the CBC is a real blow to that organization. The loss of her reporting on critical issues like "Can hitting snooze and taking a long lunch be the real keys to success?" [0] or "Five West Coast hikes you probably don't know about (but should!)" [1] will be catastrophic to Canadians' ability to understand what's happening in the world around them.

In all seriousness, I imagine that Henley decided that writing sponsored content for CBC wasn't a solid career, and wanted to get on that contrarianism gravy train that folks like Bari Weiss have been pioneering.

Check out the rest of the articles published under Henley's byline—they're all in the same vein: https://www.cbc.ca/life/work-money/author/tara-henley-1.4401...

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/can-hitting-snooze-and-taki...

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/five-west-coast-hikes-you-p...

“The last 18 months” coincides perfectly with start of the BLM protests.

I’ve been involved with an arts-based non-profit for a long time. They do very specific type of older art. They produce it, exhibit it, encourage others to produce it, etc.

The art form is Eurocentric, with a political history that contains some small instances racism, and vast oceans of mainstream liberalism.

Every since BLM protests happened (the second time - in June 2020), they’ve been freaking out.

Suddenly they’re trying to hire as many “BIPOC” as possible, even though there aren’t many open slots.

They’re acknowledging every racial injustice under the heavens. They’re apologizing for existing (literally).

Most of all, they’re scared.

When I go to their exhibitions, every single person, is white. Occasionally a Black family will be there. Everyone in the crowd parts to allow them through. Everyone greets them - and only them.

I imagine this awkward veneration is one reason why so few Black families come.

Most of all, the leaders of this org are scared. Terrified. They don’t want to be considered “non-anti-racist.”

When speaking with others, the terror is palpable.

Edit: just to be clear this is an author specific type of performance art. Think a Bach symphony, a Wagner opera company, or a Shakespeare theater.

Suggest to them that they talk about exactly what you are saying here. Say that it's difficult. That we are figuring it out. Put together exhibitions that talk about it. That's a hell of a lot better than shutting down communication. Be inclusive. Ask for help from other galleries who have better representation. Maybe they can do an exchange.

Identify what there is to be afraid of - it's the necessary step to moving forward.

Regarding putting together exhibitions, this is an author specific type of performance art. Kind of like a Shakespeare theater company.

There’s room to reinterpret the artist, but frankly interpreting this author as socially conscious has been done so many times it’s boring.

It would be like putting on a feminist production of Antigone, or a pacifist recitation of the Iliad, or an anti-racist production of Othello - not only “already done” but probably what the author intended.

The folks running the show have been avoiding actual “woke” (so hate the phrase) art for exactly this reason - already done 1000 time - and the new era demands new efforts!

Instead it’s hiring and outreach that’s gone bonkers.

Regarding communication- it isn’t that people have stopped talking. They’ve stopped listening.

Realistically, the donors are in charge. They’re the only ones listened to.

And currently the powers that be are trying very hard to find new “anti-racist” donors, preferably BIPOC donors.

I’m not sure what anyone can do about that. Other than stop donating.

What do you mean when you talk about doing an exchange with other galleries?

They are afraid of online mobs and local activists looking for a target. That's what everyone is afraid of when it comes to this foolish moment in history. If it was simply a matter of being more inclusive there'd be nothing to worry about. Instead, everyone's trying to cover their ass and not stick out so they don't become the next takedown. The funny thing is if you just ignore social media, none of this has any direct consequence. The only real world consequences are from someone higher up the chain getting spooked and trying to appease the mob by throwing you under the bus. It's like a prisoner's dilemma writ large. The consequences of this will be interesting, it already looks like a lot of people are just deciding to self-sort into groups that won't defect. Others, like the author of the article, are going independent so they don't have to worry about their employer or coworkers defecting.

online mobs and local activists looking for a targe

Do these actually exist in their local environment or are people just afraid because of what's going on over the media networks? Forgive me, as I'm outside of where you are and I often see people being afraid of things that aren't often there.

What clearly seems wrong is the requirement to fill out forms on the race and gender of people you interview, and to have quotas to control whose voice is heard based on those irrelevant traits (irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.)

My policy is to refuse to give my gender or race. If everybody did this, high frequencies of "other" or "unknown" could be spun any way they want to people looking at statistics. If they aren't satisfied with this, they have to go on record clarifying exactly how they define race - which seems difficult since they're also the people who claim it's not a real concept.

I never fill out the preferred pronoun section that have suddenly made their way into forms.

I have a coworker who assigned “Lord” as his personal pronoun.

Isn't preferred pronouns kind of orthogonal to the rest of the stuff? It has nothing to do with attempting to ensure representation and is instead about addressing a person in the manner of their choosing, akin to asking a woman if she prefers Ms, Miss, Mme, Mrs, etc.

I expect it's probably way more appropriate in most contexts to directly ask a person what their preferred pronouns are than to ask what their gender identity is; the pronouns are what you actually need and this way you're finding them out with certainty rather than trying to guess based on some internal gender->pronoun mapping table.

Pronouns are merely virtue signaling acts of control. By specifying pronouns if they are obvious (99% of the time) you are signaling you are part of a non-bigoted, non-hateful club. Surely you don’t hate people right? So why don’t you have your pronouns visible, fellow citizen?

It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious. You want to just live your life? Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my preferred pronouns at all times. It’s a very narcissistic and attention seeking thing too.

It's just an extension of using someone's name. Is that virtue signaling, too? Or is the problem really that it's new and scary?

by specifying pronouns if they are obvious (99% of the time)

Except they aren't obvious 99% of the time. They aren't even "obvious" like 60% of the time. They aren't even "obvious 99% of the time" for cis-straight (non-LGBTQ) folks.

"Hi, Sam Shepard will be on the call with you today, and will be joined by Alex VanBeckran and Kegan Marton" -- are these folks hoping to be addressed as men, or women, or non-binary? There's no way to tell, and it's kind of disrespectful to be wrong.

It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious.

Form of control? What on earth? It's literally just a tiny amount of human dignity. It's basically no different than being asked to address someone as "Mr. / Ms. / Mrs. / Mx." from decades prior.

Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my preferred pronouns at all times.

It takes literally almost no extra effort, you just file it along with their name (or phone number, or timezone, etc). If you are thinking that hard about it, your probably doing it wrong.

"Hi, Sam Shepard will be on the call with you today, and will be joined by Alex VanBeckran and Kegan Marton" -- are these folks hoping to be addressed as men, or women, or non-binary? There's no way to tell, and it's kind of disrespectful to be wrong.

As another commenter pointed out, in a professional setting you would ideally address these people by their proper nouns (names) and not by their pronouns. And if you're addressing more than one person, it's the gender-neutral we/they/them anyways.

I'm actually struggling to think of a business scenario where using the proper pronoun would be more professional or polite than just using someone's given name.

asking a woman if she prefers Ms, Miss, Mme, Mrs

This was at one point a controversial topic. Conservatives objected to the new construct of neutral meaning "Ms" and feminists objected to "Miss" and "Mrs" because they indicated marital status. The argument being that viewing a woman's name with those titles was reducing her to an object who's worth was determined by if she was available or not to men.

I'm a strict egalitarian and have been doing exactly this, and always encourage others to do exactly this. I refuse to state my gender, race, class, health status, sexuality, or any other qualifier that could categorize me into being discriminated against or in favor of. Let my actions speak to the quality of my character.

edit: Not sure why this thread has gone deep into a discussion about pronouns. I don't identify as any gender and welcome any pronouns to refer to me. My humanity is the only classifier I accept. Think of my pronouns as a `void *`

At a previous job HR directly contacted me and told me to put my pronouns on my profile. I said sure and proceeded to ignore it.

Fuck that shit

Good. This pronoun virtue signaling meme has gotta go. Or at least don’t censor us by limiting us to the ones Officially Approved by the Pronoun Establishment like Instagram and most other places do.

If they can have custom pronouns, why can’t we?

(The answer is because it would immediately undermine the “cause” by shedding light on just how silly but also how 1984-esque the concept is.)

If someone wants to tell me pronouns they want to be referred to, sure, I’ll try to remember as long as they’re not asking for something extreme, but honestly I’m not that good with even names so… best effort.

I would rather not give out pronouns and don’t really care how people refer to me though “they” in forums when my username is my real name does come off as a bit strange… though again, this is a trivial annoyance.

Yes, it's a trivial annoyance. That's the human, normal way of looking at this, not like it's some massive festering grievance as some people seem to feel.

I would think that virtue signaling is good. It sure sounds good.

"Virtue" means " Moral excellence and righteousness; goodness."

"Signaling" means "An indicator, such as a gesture or colored light, that serves as a means of communication."

So, basically if I'm morally excellent and I communicate that to you, that's a bad thing? Why is that? Is it because it makes you feel bad?

Same question about "woke". Like, "not asleep"? How is that bad?

I just feel like these terms are thoughtlessly bandied about. They're never really defined. They actually don't sound bad, but they're used in a pejorative context. It's just really strange.

When someone asks me about preferred pronouns, my answer is "I prefer a raise over pronouns and thank you letters". I wish more people would do the same.

This weird hatred of not sharing pronouns is harmful - it's.. a few characters next to your name to help people talk to you and to help people who use different pronouns to what society has given them. Please stop acting all high-and-mighty over them - it's always with good intent.

I am a man. My pronouns on my LinkedIn profile do nothing other than to appease a fringe part of society who thinks being incorrectly referred to by a different pronoun is an attack on their character. I don't feel the need to give in to these people. Someone who would repeatedly refer to you by the wrong pronouns doesn't care that your pronouns are on your profile. It is a solution looking for a problem.

Well sometimes it can be tough to know. Is that a trans man showing a bit an effeminate side sometimes or a woman? Is that person trying to look androgynous or masculine or is it just what they like to wear?

Well, if it really bothers someone when someone else uses the wrong pronoun, they could always just politely ask. Just like people with hard-to-pronounce foreign names. And if someone else refuses, you know, just don't be friends with that guy - be professional, to-the-point and spend your free time with the people that share your values.

If you actually have a great home, friends, hobbies, and are generally happy about your life, someone using the wrong pronoun or giving you a weird look shouldn't bother you more than an unexpected rainy day. The problem is that most people that are vocal about pronouns are actually deeply unhappy, and the HR has sold them the bullshit pill that devoting your life to correcting others will somehow make you happier.

Or you could agree to disagree on pronouns, and agree to agree on pursuit of financial independence like in the good old times. Easy common goal. After all, you don't care if your colleague likes heavy metal while you love rock, as long as they can reliably answer questions that would otherwise take you days to research.

Which profile.. some internal org chart or a public platform like linkedin?

While I understand the sentiment, I think to some degree putting a pronoun down is for the benefit of those conversing with you, so they don't have to wonder or get it wrong.

In lieu of this, and because I don't really care what pronoun is used for me, I sometimes just put "any" if it's an option to denote that I don't care.

I literally dont give a shit what you call me.

People who hem and haw about getting pronouns wrong blow my mind of how weird this has all become

They hem and haw because some people care a lot and make a big deal if you get it wrong and it can have social consequences depending on where you live/work, etc, and if you repeatedly ignore what other people want to be called it can be seen as an act of aggression.

In the current climate, people want to get it right for other people because either they don't want to be an asshole, they believe it's important, they're afraid of being called out, or some combination thereof.

If you actually don't care, the easiest thing to do is just advertise that you don't care so people don't have to wonder. If you actually do care, but about how you shouldn't have to care and are trying to make a point about that, well that's something different, isn't it?

What else about myself do i have to actively advertise so that people are not afraid of talking to me.

So if you are "she" and someone calls you "he" out of ignorance and you correct the person, and he says "Oh, I'm sorry for my mistake" can that not be the end of it? Is that such a terrible thing to have to deal with?

I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.

One place where the "pronouns in the signature" can be helpful is if your name is foreign. I work with a group of international folks and if I haven't met the person, I don't always know if a person's name is a male or female name. So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.

Is that such a terrible thing to have to deal with?

For me? No. I imagine that someone that might deal with that 10 times a day or more might feel a bit different about it, and be tired of being in the situation of either correcting people or just letting it go because it's too tiring to deal with. I mean, I used to get that way because of my first name which has an uncommon spelling, and just correcting people writing it down for me (because otherwise I always have to worry if they search digitally where they recorded it whether their system is smart enough to do levenshtein distance or something similar to find it). I imagine it's much worse when it's something you might really care about, like gender identity, or even just people that get mistaken for the other gender often.

I'd like to think that everyone deserves the benefit of a doubt and one or more times being corrected, but some people are worse at remembering than others, and I don't see a problem with people putting preferences down, or people being asked for their own preference, especially when they think it's such an obvious thing to see.

I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.

I mean, so do I, but if Jim has corrected me once already or has registered a preference that I've seen, I should probably address them as they'd prefer, right? Anything else is just being an asshole, IMO.

So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.

They/them went out of favor a while back in English for gender neutral communication, which I think is weird, because it's super useful. I remember an English teacher in college telling me not to use it, because it was less direct and impactful. I always disagreed. I just default to you/they/them whenever I don't know specifically. It doesn't seem to cause problems, from what I can see. If someone asked me to use something else for them, I would try to remember to do so as a courtesy to them.

Do you actually not give a shit or do people just tend to properly guess what you'd want to be called? Pronouns are part of how we communicate gender and many people do get bothered when others perceive them differently than how they perceive themselves

putting a pronoun down is for the benefit of those conversing with you, so they don't have to wonder or get it wrong.

The type of people concerned with being addressed by the "correct" pronouns will list them without being asked, believe me. And for the other 99.9% of people, it's pretty obvious what to use.

Maybe for you, but I don't know what pronoun to use to refer to someone named Xie that I have never met, and it's not exactly unusual for it to come up in email discussions.

I dont understand. You do the thing we have been doing a hundred years. "They"

I'm transgender and this business of putting pronouns everywhere bothers me too. If I'm in a group that usually doesn't do pronouns but does when I'm in the room it's like they're pointing a finger at me saying "you're different and we're afraid of offending you, so we're going to act differently around you".

No. I just want to be a human being. If you wonder about my pronouns, ask and I'll happily answer. If you get them wrong I'll happily correct you.

If you're an ass to me I'll report you to HR, but putting my pronouns at the bottom of my email isn't going to make you any less of an ass.

But that’s a problem for like 1% of people who’re free to do so. Absolutely no one will confuse my bearded, balding, fat self for a “she”. Seems unnecessary to require this as a matter of policy.

I mean, not everyone interacts with people in person at work. I would go so far as to say that most these profile settings are used for textual communication, where it's not always obvious, but where some people still get upset over the wrong pronoun being used (possibly because for then it's such a contentious topic in their lives it's hard to disambiguate honest mistakes from passive agressive purposeful behavior).

Like you, I also wish that pronouns weren't a big thing, but the truth is that right now society has shifted a bit to the point that it is, so rather than upset people over something I really don't care about, I just try to address people how they prefer to be addressed, while noting I have no preference and don't care if you get it wrong.

I don't hate the idea of explicitly stating pronouns, especially online, because I had to interact with people with particularly ambiguous names (happens often in very international environments).

Even here in America, if you get an email from "Taylor Something" and their intranet picture is a houseplant how do you respond?

If asked for race, I suggest answering "human".

It's not often, the last time for me was the stackoverflow survey. I usually reply that it's an illegal question where I live.

Obligatory story beginning in 1963, where computer scientist Les Earnest explains why he always entered "mongrel" when questioned about his race:

http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm

I mean it sounds bad, right? But if all the people they talk to for stories are white - and they’re attempting to fix that, and track their progress in fixing that - how exactly should they go about doing that?

Is the issue that all the people they talk to for stories is white?

Or is that a symptom of the real issue, which is something else?

And if it is something else, is there a better thing to track?

Even if it is a symptom – say they're interviewing CEOs for a piece on Canadian business, so it's tricky to find people who are not white men – then I would argue that what they're doing is important.

There's a chicken and egg thing, and media can be a part of addressing the root cause. To me it seems logical that a young black woman who sees a black female CEO interviewed on TV is more likely to become a CEO herself.

"To me it seems logical that a young black woman who sees a black female CEO interviewed on TV is more likely to become a CEO herself. "

Beware logic in this case. A lot of claims in social sciences seem logical, but either aren't proven at all or the alleged proof fails to replicate.

A similar logic was used to argue for banning violent video games or porn.

This is a strawman argument. That some claims aren’t proven or that some similar logic was used to do another bad thing doesn’t mean OP is wrong. What OP is referring to is largely documented and is not some small claim from a random article.

[citations needed]

Lots of previously believed claims fail to replicate. One of those is "stereotype threat", which was basically taken for granted for decades and also looks logically plausible.

https://replicationindex.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-repli...

which seems difficult since they're also the people who claim it's not a real concept.

A straw man if there ever was one. Insofar as anyone even says something like "race isn't real", the claim isn't that the concept doesn't exist. What would that even mean? The claim is that it isn't biologically grounded, or that it's socially constructed or some such.

they have to go on record clarifying exactly how they define race -

In these contexts, "race" is a stand-in for social segregation phenomena and not the Oxford dictionary defintion.

By not identifying the distribution of various discriminated-against groups, they are rendered invisible, or nonexistant when it comes to policy making. THis is fine if you are in the majority, because that is the de facto policy making consideration, but not so good if you are not represented.

Dismissing this as "spinning statistics" is a very privileged viewpoint, because it means you aren't affected by the statistics so why should you care?

All racial classification schemes in the Western world are running against the wind of interracial marriage. Mixed kids of the "25 per cent Lithuanian, 25 per cent Arab, 25 per cent Mexican and 25 per cent Japanese" type are becoming ever more common and the narrow racial classification into old fashioned racial boxes is unable to categorize them with any kind of precision.

In that case, either you revert to the "one drop rule" of the Old South and start classifying anyone with any non-white ancestor as a minority, or run into untenable contradictions.

That's one way to look at it, if you want to radically oversimplify the problem.

Another way to look at it is there currently exists very clear discrimination practices based other vectors (income, geography, history). System racism is intersectional.

Arguing that it is "all or nothing" is another tactic to erase the existence of discrimination. This fallacy is often deployed intentionally.

irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.

I’m not sure I get you here. Of course race and gender have a huge impact on a person’s life, and thus on their ideas, experiences and ability to express themselves. White men virtually never experience racism or sexism, whereas women and/or Black people are reminded about their identity every day. All women have been bothered by men in the street and all Black people have heard numerous racist comments through their life. They are so used to it they don’t even talk about it; it’s just normal. White men can’t even imagine to what extend this goes because they never experience it. People who never experience discriminations often don’t see the problem or diminish it because it’s unfamiliar to them.

Who are those "white men"? Jews, italians, chinese? Where's the whiteness line drawn?

I am curious what Canadians think of this argument. Does it seem true? It's hard for me, a USA resident who doesn't follow the CBC, to really evaluate.

CBC is widely criticized here for its distinctly liberal bias, usually from the nation's conservatives. Which is fair enough--you pay for it in taxes regardless of which side of the political spectrum you're on, so you'd at least expect it to have a balanced coverage of issues.

That's not to say that CBC does no good journalism, but like the author of this article mentions they are a bit lacking in journalistic integrity sometimes.

CBC's bias is Liberal with a capital-L, not liberal. They're centrist and corporatist, which aligns them pretty well with the Liberal Party of Canada.

I cannot speak about the alleged wokeness, as I don't consume enough CBC content to make an informed judgment. What I can say is that CBC is the only major Canadian media company that is not capital C Conservative, at least among English-language media. Toronto Star used to fit this description too, but they got sold to what I think is a private equity firm who has been selling off their assets, so I don't expect them to be around much longer. Toronto Star is/soon-to-be was leftist. CBC is supposed to be neutral. All other major media companies are Conservative. See party endorsements for federal elections for example. Note that all non-Conservative endorsements come from the late TorStar corporation.

https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/

So maybe the issue is not that CBC is too Liberal, but that every other publication is Conservative, so even a neutral publication will look far left by comparison.

Again, I don't consume enough CBC content to comment how their leanings are. I just know a bit about Canadian media atmosphere in general.

What I can say is that CBC is the only major Canadian media company that is not capital C Conservative, at least among English-language media. [...]

https://readpassage.com/election-endorsements/

But the source you cited seems to only include newspapers? Media companies tend to pander to their readers, and newspapers attracts... a certain type of readers. It's not surprising that most newspapers are conservative.

You are right that newspapers lean capital C Conservative [1] in Canada. It is mostly due to Postmedia. Ownership by Postmedia is quite conspicuous in the list.

CBC is really woke though. You don't need to suffer them too much to notice that. Randomly turn on the radio while driving a few times, and you will see.

[1]: Which in its current form looks like a bland, toothless, uninspiring, "big tent" party. Roughly speaking, they only seem to win if you use irrelevant metrics like popular vote (https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/erin-otoole-conservatives-p...)

Now that TorStar is on its deathbed, without CBC, Canadian English-language media will be comprised of solely Postmedia. That's not a future I am looking forward to, but one that is quite likely the next time CPC gets elected.

No party wins popular vote anymore (as in more than 50%). With FPTP, we are stuck with less-than ideal seats-to-votes correlation.

I'm not sure these sorts of articles provide much value on HN.

By "these sorts of articles", I mean the ones that have claimed that "diversity efforts have gone too far this time." Regardless of your support or opposition to diversity, I think one would agree that these rapidly turn into unproductive, highly divisive comment sections that are out of place with the rest of HN.

From HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

Maybe I didn't word it well enough, but I intend to comment on a broad category of discussion that I don't think is necessarily inappropriate according to the guidelines, but tends to produce unproductive, hostile conversations. I understand that anti-diversity blogs often gain a lot of traction with a particular subset of HN readers, but it consistently winds up producing flame wars and can make HN a less friendly place.

It seems to me that HN is the last place you can discuss this topic - it's just preemptively deleted on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Based on the number of flagged posts I've seen on here... I think it's not preemptively deleted, but it is very self-censoring.

I would argue that the article highlights the biggest problem of the West. It used to be a society of strong independent and happy individuals, capitalizing on their strengths and trading with each other in search of prosperity. We traded it in for a steady paycheck in exchange for mindlessly fulfilling standardized corporate jobs, and are now surprised that the human ambition got redirected from finding ways to create new value to bashing someone who seemingly got a patch of greener grass.

I think, the way out is understanding that the current divisive ways the society is going are doomed, and that we all have a common problem to solve, and sweeping such discussions under the rug will only delay this outcome.

So, to be clear: "end of barter system" -> "steady paychecks" -> "death of innovation in the West" -> "bitter people seek to create division"

That is an absolutely wild series of logical leaps and generalizations, each sorely needing any kind of evidence or even intuitive explanation.

In North America at least, I think this century will be the first time it has really run out of "unoccupied" land to grow into. Other parts of the world have been in this steady state for many centuries; it remains to be seen how the equilibrium will manifest here and where it will lead.

In terms of sovereign territory, I guess you're right, but if you want to go live somewhere with no neighbors, there are plenty of places in America and Canada where you can do that.

I 99% agree with you.

One small counterpoint: Employers enjoy a bully pulpit on these issues. Employees with legitimate concerns about their employers' stances / policies sometimes can't even discuss them without the risk of losing their livelihood.

This can create a situation where individuals perceive that "the whole world" is telling them they're wrong, and are bad people for being wrong in this way. HN's anonymous-yet-respectful forum can somewhat help with this.

If nothing else, it's encouraging to know that they're not alone, but rather in an environment where other dissenters are also silenced.

One small counterpoint: Employers enjoy a bully pulpit on these issues. Employees with legitimate concerns about their employers' stances / policies sometimes can't even discuss them without the risk of losing their livelihood.

There are endless platforms that are better suited for these discussions: Gab, 4chan, and Ruqqus to name a few. "HN's anonymous-yet-respectful forum" is best preserved by not hosting these types of deeply hostile, alienating discussions.

Part of my point was that HN is unusually good at keeping discussions civil, which I view as a requirement for productive discussion.

If you know of another forum that has this quality, I'd be grateful for a link. There are large swathes of the Internet I'm ignorant about.

Right. To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized to a few corners of the internet suffering from "the coven of the witches" problem.

And for the record, Ruqqus was shut down [1], so it really doesn't even exist.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799199

There's a chicken or egg problem with the "coven of witches" conjecture. I also don't think Gab is all that marginal. It seems to exist largely to facilitate conversations around perceived excesses with diversity efforts.

My greater point is that communities that facilitate these types of conversations typically have less inviting, more hostile cultures. There's a spectrum of course, but you can see glimmers of the type of discourse found on sites like Gab in the comment sections of anti-diversity blogs on HN. I think that an HN which plays host to more discussions about perceived issues with diversity will alienate a lot of folks who aren't entrenched in those sorts of debates and self-select for the type of discourse associated with these so-called "covens of witches." It seems to me that there's no value in sliding down that side of the spectrum for a site that's largely meant not to play host to ideological battles.

Wow, you'd almost think wage slavery might be a problem along with racism.

Oh - you mean the problem is white wage slaves might have less power to exclude and discriminate against non-white wage slaves.

They very reliably rise to the front page (because people like arguing about this stuff) and then sink off again (because, I believe, the HN algorithm penalizes a low upvote-to-comment-count ratio). I predict this'll be gone in two hours...

the HN algorithm

More accurately, it's people flagging it and also manual nerfing by @dang

To be fair, every comment that didn't agree with the conclusion of the article was nerfed. The top comment on this post for most of its existence immediately left the top and within seconds jumped to being the very last comment at the bottom with all the other even vaguely pro-diversity comments.

Your and others' comments criticizing the article have been heavily upvoted, so this is clearly not the case.

I think maybe my comment wasn't really clear. I know the pro-diversity comments had a lot of upvotes, what I was pointing out was that they were nerfed by a moderation tool or algorithm, not by downvotes, as evidenced from going from the top comment to the very last comment in the thread within a few seconds.

Ah, ok—I was probably reading your comment through the filter of "comments supporting my view are constantly getting downvoted/flagged/suppressed on this site", which is a more common complaint (which was also making appearances in this thread).

Software can indeed affect subthread ranking, and moderators do that too—but certainly not for pro- or anti-diversity (or any other $divisive-topic) reasons. We downweight top subthreads for reasons like this: (1) they're too generic rather than engaging with something specific in the article; (2) they're high-indignation/low-information; (3) they're meta; (4) they're offtopic in a predictable way*. What all 4 of those categories (and there are probably others) have in common is that they tend to both get heavily upvoted and to not be interesting in HN's sense of the word. Once they get heavily upvoted, they tend to hang out at the top of the page, accruing mass and choking out more curious conversation. We try to use moderation and (to some extent) software as countervailing mechanisms to these default tendencies, because we've learned over the years that this is one of the highest-leverage things we can do to make threads more interesting. But this has nothing whatever to do with agreeing or disagreeing with the points being made.

Edit: I'm guessing you were talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29785012, which indeed got downweighted in exactly this way, because it falls into categories #1, #3, and #4 above. But not into #2, at least, which is unusual and to your credit.

* Unpredictable whimsical offtopicness, by contrast, is often interesting and we try to give it a pass. Otherwise moderation would get too predictable in its own right. I often have to remind people about that.

Have you considered transparency for when you down-weight a specific post or thread?

I'm just waiting to see a novel comment on the topic. It's only been discussed N times where N is the number of drops of water in the ocean.

Anything outside the Overton window is definitely not allowed by the HN guidelines, so why would you expect to read/see something new here?

One thing I learned in my many years in this life: you can't fix inequity by inching slowly in the "right" direction. However, the "right" stopping point is too often controlled by the same oppressors. You have to be like a pendulum and swing waaayyy too far past "equity". Then the pendulum will eventually energy out at a more reasonable equitable point. This is a lot of anchoring point bias built in. This overcomes it.

What would be in your opinion the best historical example of a inequity that wasn't righted by moving slowly and one of an inequity that was righted by overshooting the target?

This is incredibly tedious. I can't fathom how this has anything to do with "Hacker News" but I guess it's appeal to a certain subset of the audience here overrides that.

The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. It seems reasonable that a subset of the culture that produced the work environment at Blizzard [1] or has historically rallied behind alt-right thought leaders would also be here on HN. Talk to any woman software engineer, I 100% guarantee they have multiple stories about dealing with a...specific type of guy.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/8/22823991/activision-blizz...

The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley.

I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc.

But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and I just started working with tech/SV companies as that happened.

My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere

Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies.

Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc.

It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc.

Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies. Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc. It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc.

Is it? Keep in mind that the target hires for these companies are grads from serious CS programs. Are CS programs 12% blacks? Were they 15 years ago (when a now L5 graduated)?

It's like setting shop in Puerto Rico and favoring whites because, since Puerto Rico is part of the US and the US is ~55% white you should have that same proportion in your business.

The real question is, and that's an uncomfortable one, is why aren't we seeing enough minorities in serious CS programs.

This is totally wrong. At private law firms it's the tech clients more than any other hammering diversity quotas (literal quotas) in the racial composition of their outside counsel.

I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences. I know many women software engineers who've felt deeply, uniquely uncomfortable in tech spaces. I have yet to have a woman software engineer friend who hasn't had one of these experiences, and the idea that the tech industry is uniquely hostile to diversity efforts doesn't seem to be all that uncommon or controversial.

I wonder where she will go after publishing her book. Postmedia? Bell media? Staying independent? The news landscape in Canada is rather limited and still consolidating. Think what you may about the CBC and its biases, its nothing compared to the National Post where the owner, Conrad Black, airs his crappy opinions.

Conrad Black hasn't owned the National Post for over 20 years.

Except at political groups to which I belong, I am almost always the left-most person in the room. The Lefts greatest weakness is an enthusiasm for splintering over small matters of doctrine. Identity politics, tribalism over principle, virtue signaling, whatever fad this is, it's deeply hurting progress.

I suspect you’re right. My personal solution to this problem, having once run a left-leaning organization that was taken over by all the things you mention, is to learn more towards the centre. I’m curious if you’ve considered the same, especially because you describe yourself as “the left-most person in the room”?

In the United States the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right. In a Scandinavian Country I'd be a fairly moderate, conservative social democrat. Here, if people knew my thoughts, I'd be seen as a Wild-Eyed Radical. But given the politics in my country, I've given up compromise and actually moved further Left. And more militant, less quiet.

Luckily, the organization I'm currently involved with (the SRA), while hilariously disorganized, is firmly Left.

I don't mean this as any kind kind of criticism, but being a swede with an American friend who was partially brought up in Sweden during the good ol days of Swedish social democracy I wonder if Americans really know what they mean when they talk about Scandinavian social democracy. These days they're a lot more conservative than they used to be. Mostly I imagine their stance on immigration control, and crime wouldn't be what Americans have in mind. Or maybe you do! All I'm saying is that it's interesting hearing it come up a lot in American discussions as if it's its own thing when really they're quite the moving target.

EDIT: but i guess for you guys it might be more single-payor healthcare and reasonable taxation in which case, yeah, some things haven't changed :)

On social stuff, California is well left of Europe including Scandinavia. What you say could apply in Arkansas.

For example, Danish or Norwegian immigration rules would be a perfect fit for any R president, perhaps even too strict.

This is reductive to the point of being incorrect. "Social stuff" includes things like maternity leave, childcare, healthcare, incarceration and drug policies. California is proud that they ended sentences of life-without-parole for children in 2017 - and replaced it with life-with-possible-parole-after-25-years, which remains far worse than Denmark permits even for the worst adult crime (life with possible parole after 12 years).

Fine, I meant "woke stuff" that excites Twitter so much and makes so many non-Twitterati confused and perplexed.

What you mention used to be a typical left-wing agenda, but is increasingly being utterly forgotten by the younger generations of left-wing politicians.

In the United States the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right.

I'm sorry, but what?

Within the party, they've promoted universal basic income (marxisim), state healthcare, universal education, etc. It's almost completely authoritarian marxist.

They're far left of most of Europe in terms of social policy (LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, drugs, etc) and economic (complete universal education, health, payments, work, etc)

If that's center-left what is left, exactly?

Let's take the example of state healthcare. The Democratic Party talks a big game about universal healthcare at election time, but only ever proposes modest reforms (like the ACA) when it's time to craft policy. Meanwhile many (all?) European countries actually have some form of state-run or state-funded universal healthcare.

The Democrat Party is only "far left" if you believe their wildest election rhetoric and don't judge them on their actions. To call them authoritarian marxist is ridiculous when they fail time and time again to reign in corporate power and are financially beholden to that same power.

Your comment calling political measures which are universally accepted across the entire range of politics in Europe (state healthcare, universal education, ...) authoritarian marxist is a hilarious example of what the top poster meant by "the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right".

Authoritarian - centrally controlled and managed

Marxism - attempt to remove classes from society

The Marxism is being implemented through high taxes and redistribution of wealth via services centrally administered via government.

That seems to meet the definition.

What you're describing are simply ordinary welfare state policies, and what you view as "high taxes" are not particularly high compared to historical tax rates even within the US. The idea that you'd have to be a Marxist to want to centralize health insurance to reduce costs so people don't go bankrupt paying for medical care is simply propaganda. In fact, most Marxists would probably view these kinds of measures as capitalist Band-Aids to keep the entire system from collapsing.

The right and the religious are also known to splinter over small differences. I see it as a trait of fanaticism, and an indication of tendency towards extremism.

Agreed. It is a human quality, not a Left or Right quality.

People act as if this is a new thing. We’ve been doing this for decades. Hence the People’s Front of Judea gag in Life of Brian.

Peter Thiel (gay man), Caitlyn Jenner (trans woman) and Kanye West (black man) all publicly support Donald Trump. It's not identity that's the issue, it's economic inequality. Even as part of marginalized groups, these people's vast wealth allowed them the luxury to support a man who did not have marginalized group's best interests in mind.

If I was rich and wanted to take over a local government, I would channel my efforts toward dividing people on everything except economic class. Yeah, you're both poor and live in squalor next to the train tracks, but you're different races! How could you possibly get along!

This.

IMO, most of the culture was a distraction from what really matters. People are up in arms on TV over who can claim to be a woman, but meanwhile, the concentration of wealth and economic power and worse than even the guided age.

If the bottom 50% of the population (economically) united on JUST this topic, they would see massive change - better structured education, housing, health, etc.

Instead we get what I call "hand grenades" that distract and mean almost nothing - like another biological male smashing records in a female sport and wanting to keep the medals.

I share a similar opinion. Everything and every group's voice should be heard at some point but not in a more divisive manner and to the detriment of attention to the immediate problems that affect us all in the most serious ways: housing, healthcare, wages, political corruption, conflicts of interest, and so on. We're in very bad shape and a risk major collapse. If we continue down this path we'll see homelessness and and inequality rise to catastrophic levels. What we really need at this point more than anything is some form of unity.

Broadly speaking, the left likes to go come up with new ways of doing things, the right likes to implement the "tried and true".

Almost by definition, this means the left is always trying many things (always need the next new thing) and the right is consolidating on what they perceive to be the best of the tried and true.

The antipathy between “try something new” and “stick with what works” is so frustrating because they so clearly go hand in hand. “If the Left wing or the Right wing ever got control of this country, it would fly around in circles.”

This is a classic centrist position - the left and the right are both radical, pick a point halfway between and you're good - but I would argue that the US and Canada have been largely ruled by centrism for the past 30 years and things have been getting worse and worse in that time.

That doesn't match up with reality. Take climate change for example. The left was fine with coal until it became proven that it is a major accelerant to climate change. It isn't change for the sake of change. In a similar vein, the right may choose an action because it is convenient, not necessarily because it is tried and true. Not only does what you say not follow, it describes nothing by definition.

That being said it isn't a good look to simplify these perspectives as "the left" and "the right" as people do not really act within the confines of those labels.

an enthusiasm for splintering over small matters of doctrine. Identity politics, tribalism over principle, virtue signaling, whatever fad this is,

I question your assertion that you are "leftist" when you describe progressive thought in dismissive, inflammatory, right-wing terms.

Max dem donor, historically very "left" as well. This is an issue on both sides in the extreme. On the right just look at what to outsiders are TINY doctrinal differences in things like faith issues - have historically driven major internal divisions.

I always thought the American left would really endure / have the advantage long term because of what seemed like a healthier exchange of ideas (free speech support etc).

That has changed it feels like a bit. If you don't support the cause de jour (abolish ice / defund the police / violence at protests) or other orthodoxy there really isn't a place for you.

And despite the talk of love and acceptance, the left really seems to be driven by hate and outrage now more than I remember plus a very healthy dose of hypocrisy. Ie, defund police, unless a poor person shoes up on my doorstep - then I'm calling!

AOC jetting off to florida in the midst of a massive surge in NY? The irony (she made fun of others jetting off during crisis, and florida is the anti-NY in terms of COVID approach). Newsome and his lobbyist dinner unmasked inside while ordering lockdowns? It's annoying to have such harsh rhetoric from leaders (ie, they promised to destroy any doctor who gave vaccine to anyone but the anointed few) but then relatively unprincipled action by them (they go out and party, dine, get vaccines for themselves).

I'm hoping the next generation has a good take on this.

And despite the talk of love and acceptance, the left really seems to be driven by hate and outrage now more than I remember plus a very healthy dose of hypocrisy.

Sounds like you're talking yourself into giving Nazis a "fair shake". Why would you do that?

I'm hoping the next generation has a good take on this.

I believe the current generation has a good take on this: when your identity becomes enmeshed in a political religion, the creation of differences is mandatory to support your vision.

This necessity of finding a cause or something to believe in—the need for baddies and an existential battle of good vs evil—will exist in perpetuity on the left. If there are no baddies, they must be created.

The origin of "the left" in America is a road through the Darwinian origins of Progressivism which, along with its gross support of racial anthropology, believed in a better class of men to administer a society they believed incompetent. It then moved down the meandering corridor of postmodern Marxism in academia which took as an article of faith that dishonesty was required for social change. We're now at the weapons-grade, enriched version of that belief with Wokeness where the adherents privately believe they are better people, qualified to manage society's past ills but then publicly disown the idea when confronted.

Unless the cultural left in America wants to disown over a century of believing they are superior, the orthodoxy is here to stay. There is no difference between Wilsonian progressives and the modern day woke other than transparency and visibility into the worldview.

"the need for baddies and an existential battle of good vs evil"

I would argue this motivates a fair bit of the hard right too. Think of the folks fighting the "murder" of children, they come up with baddies (abortion doctors), take the law into their own hands (bombings etc). Same thing with the "stolen election". I'm not speaking about the merits of either of these issues, just that they serve to drive a similar situation on right.

Left and liberal do not mean the same thing. Basically all of my blue or red friends agree with the principles of Liberalism, which brought us the enlightenment and [modern] civilization. You can ask your own friends, here's a definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism (quote below)

In terms of numbers, about 8% of the US population is.. left. 25% is traditional conservative. And the other 67% is regular folks who in fact agree on most policy questions

From Wikipedia:

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), democracy, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and a market economy

Over the past ten years, there's been a weird collaboration between centrists and right-wingers to define not being a bigot as being left-wing and being a bigot as being right-wing. So corporate PR has transformed huge employers and the finance industry into left-wingers, and when right-wingers complain about being silenced, they're specifically talking about being censored about race and gender.

This creates the false drama. Instead, what the US has is two liberal parties, one trying to also appeal to a base of evangelical whites and the other trying to appeal to people who aren't white. Both are trying to pass the same liberal policies, policies that I hope you aren't trying to associate with some 67% silent majority. 67% of people aren't against antitrust enforcement or free health care.

Hmm going on a tangent here: do HNers "consume" news from old style media any more? I'm pretty certain that I haven't got my news from either radio or TV in a billion years. Since I had a pet dinosaur.

To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny.

Not an accident, I believe. Occupy Wall Street made the billionaires and Wall Street take notice. As a consequence, they probably decided people need to be busy with something else, just in case, so they don't get any more funny ideas. Identity politics is a great one to divide people, fan anger, get more clicks and views, and at the same time get them uninterested what the billionaires and Wall Street firms are doing.

The primary arts centre in one of Canada’s largest cities spent most of last summer running a series of events where transgender artists presented children’s songs and stories. I can’t help but think that for the vast majority of casual viewers (pedestrians and casual passers by) it was confusing at best and “another example of how we waste money on the arts” at worst.

I love and respect the arts. It’s goals are worthy. It needs to do better than this.

The CBC got a $1.2B in government funding in 2019-2020:

Source: themselves:

https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/impact-and-accountability/fin...

Can you believe it?

Yet, these money-grabbing robber barons don't provide Canadians with streaming.

There is a shitty CBC app compatible with Android TV which serves some canned videos and pictures, and a CBC News app for phones that has live news (that will Chromecast).

I say cut the taxpayer funding, or else make them deliver to Canadians the content they are paying for.

In Japan, NHK (rough analog of CBC) has a website where you can watch the actual broadcast. (Not available outside of Japan without a VPN, but that's entirel beside the point.)

That a broadcaster with approximately twice the government funding is delivering a better service is not a great argument to cut funding, you could even say that it is the opposite.

CBC get $31,807,419 CAD per million capita from the government.[0]

NHK get $61.293.417 CAD per million capita from license fees.[1]

CBC may be awful compared to NHK, but your argument loses power when you have not looked up information like this.

Danish Radio gets $114.787.353 CAD per million capita from the government which is more than both the above, and they also have a great collection of shows and movies available to stream. [2]

[0]: Your link

[1]: https://www.nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/english/publication/asse...

[2]: https://www.ft.dk/samling/20201/almdel/KUU/bilag/103/2332285...

It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like

Very glad this got mentioned, in all of this people have forgotten who their enemies really are: the government for some, the big corporations for other, sure as hell the real enemy is not Sam from around the block who doesn't believe in LGTBQ rights. Sam doesn't have an ounce of power, no matter how retrograde or not his beliefs are, the government and the big corporations have, lots of it.

Enemies?

Sam has a lot of power. We've seen over the last few decades how speech influences a lot of Sams and completely changes society. Society is the sum of all Sams and Sams have a lot of power. Sam from around the block is the Sam that used to report or burn the witches in the 1500's.

Now LGBTQ isn't necessarily the dearest topic to my heart, but freedom is and this is just one aspect of it.

Racism and bigotry are all over the place. What do we do about it? I would argue that those mindsets are not that dissimilar then those causing issues with governments and corporations.

If you believe in freedom of expression and of speech, it doesn't matter how much power Sam has, even if you disagree with what he says. I don't like or agree with white supremacists, but I consider the ACLU defense of their speech a monument to our civilization's respect of human rights.

ACLU defense of their speech a monument to our civilization's respect of human rights.

Is there an argument from a landmark case or are you speaking gsnerally?

Here is the specific case I am referencing: https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/sk...

In the US I think hate speech is protected under freedom of speech but I disagree with that. Hate speech leads to violence. This isn't about disagreeing with what Sam says. In a perfect world people decouple "speech" from their actions/beliefs but in the real world people act on what they believe and what they believe is influenced by "speech" (sometimes more so than by things like "facts", "reality", "science", "logic".) Now some of that is mostly harmless, like the flat earth. But if your speech results in harm then you should be held responsible and speech that we know results in harm should not be protected.

How exactly do you quantify this harm? Most of these re-definitions of "harmful" speech always seem unclear and difficult to define. Under the current legal framework (which you said you disagreed with) we already have standards and methods of quantifying that harm when speech directly incites violence. These same measures also explicitly define anything else as not harmful.

The way I see it, the government has more of a duty to protect free speech than it does to prevent nebulous, poorly-defined and indirect harm. Outside of these moral implications (that no speech is fundamentally harmful, that we must have the freedom to have incorrect ideas), efforts to "prevent harmful speech" always seem to hurt society and individuals when put into practice. There is always the problem of who defines what harm is (usually it's the government) and such measures exist now explicitly to prevent the government from infringing on these rights.

Where I live this what we got: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_Canada

Also see the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United...

"Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, gender reassignment, or sexual orientation is forbidden.[1][2][3][4] Any communication which is threatening or abusive, and is intended to harass, alarm, or distress someone is forbidden.[5] The penalties for hate speech include fines, imprisonment, or both.[6]"

There's plenty of laws where there is some ambiguity and the courts and juries need to interpret them.

There are lots (most?) countries that do not have the same level of protection of free speech like the US has and it doesn't generally seem to "hurt society and individuals". If you compare the US to other modern democracies in the west it's not apparent that "free speech" with no limits is a win and there's no problem in those other countries in speaking out in general on any/many topics. You'll be stretched to find an example of hate laws abused as a way of restricting general freedoms.

Sam has a lot of power. We've seen over the last few decades how speech influences a lot of Sams and completely changes society.

You've said this, but you haven't argued it. Sam didn't make America racist.

Yeah, those abolishinists and civil rights protesters were very unpopular. These "woke extremists" are not sympathetic to how most people around me feel about them.

Abolitionists and civil rights protestors had more clearly defined 'win' conditions. What is the end goal for 'woke extremists'? A person who was previously my friend could not articulate it to me. He said 'when white supremacy is gone' and then regularly leveled that label at every single thing you can think of, including Netflix, my parents, museums, and more.

I have heard that "discomfort is part of the process" but also that "there's always more work to do." My friend and I had "difficult conversations" about "doing the hard work" and I kept agreeing with him against my own beliefs and letting him go on about this stuff until one day he cut me out of his life anyway for not being woke enough.

I am sincerely at a loss for understanding.

It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.

Don't worry, you're still the furthest to the left.

It's the others that have aligned with the priorities of mega-corporations, think tanks, and power centers - downplaying class and overplaying identity issues (and at the moment when those are the least anti-establishment and most incosequential position). Worse, they're using this as a weapon for class warfarce (against the working class, white predominantly, but they'd also openly use it against the poor black and latinos too, but they need to pretend they champion them) and a class signifier.

What makes you think corporations, think tanks, and power centers are aligned with identity politics? I draw rather the opposite conclusion.

I'm not big on identity politics, but then I'm white. But, I also don't get why we can't allow other people to express their own valid experience without trying to shout them down.

Strange thread here ignoring the very important points about the media Tara is making.

'Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted.

It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.

To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.'

I would argue the UK BBC & US NPR are also in dire straits because of similar erosions of impartialness.

Neilsen demonstrates that the legacy media are dying fast, fewer and fewer people are tuned in as the broadcasting becomes more and more toxic. This is a good thing imo.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-busin...

Neilsen demonstrates that the legacy media are dying fast, fewer and fewer people are tuned in as the broadcasting becomes more and more toxic. This is a good thing imo.

But is it a good thing?

A free press can be thought of as the sensory organs of the polity. If the sensory organs are faulty, or worse are deliberately lying, then alternative sensory organs may fill in the blanks with less robust information. These days, when you read a story from mainstream sources, it's often best to say, "well, I don't know anything about this story, but it's pretty safe to assume that what I just read is either wrong or nonsense." That's really not good. It gets worse if the only alternatives are just as wrong, or just as nonsensical, and you have to apply some kind of boolean bullshit math to get some outline of what the issue even is.

The erosion of public trust isn't a short-term problem.

By 'free press' here I think you mean state sponsored and/or corporate 'news' outlets. The internet has transcended these last century print and broadcast foundationed constructs long ago, but their owners prop up their mastheads as though they are still the top tier of 'fact checked' integrity, despite the fact they are now in some cases sloppier than the Drudge Report ever was.

Tara presumably left a salaried job where her job description changed. Good for her, now the challenge is building credibility on the censorship dominated internet and staying on the right side of the big tech editorial platform gatekeepers....CDA230 where are you?

This is the Overton window at work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window In the US, it goes far beyond broadcasting. Note how lin manuel miranda's Hamilton has gone from Obama era cultural gold to "cringe-worthy" - https://www.vox.com/22641501/hamilton-parks-rec-harry-potter...

Or how JKR on Harry Potter went from being vilified by conservative voices to the modern "She who will not be named" of Lefty HBO.

And a different edge of said window expanded to include actual ethno-fascists.

This is not whataboutism, just want to portray the scenario in a more complete light.

Actual ethno-fascists?

(response to post that was just deleted)

'critical to note that she is just recounting of her own perception of herself.'

Tara is outlining why she quit a job she couldn't do anymore because the CBC were ignoring important local stories to focus on CRT, identity politics and racialization of everything, biased reporting and click bait.

'People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as “brainstorm” and “lame.”'

Most journalists know if they get paid they are expected to promote the owner's views - the line between pr and journalism is a fine one - but that they will be promoting wholesome, useful values and information. When the owners lurch too far people leave, both writers and readers/viewers, leaving a weak core.

Once you've lied and/or lost your audience's trust it is a very hard road back. It was smart of her to get out while she still had her integrity imo

I always considered the idea of CBC to be... extremely weird. Having government approved journalists on government payroll sure sounds like something out of China, Russia or Cuba. Not a western democracy. From the article:

To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others.

Here you can see someone "from the top" made that request and that the (taxpayer funded) employees are filling out their request. So much for "journalistic independence".

To me that, and that they are using taxpayer money to fund sitcoms and entertainment while it's one of the most profitable businesses on earth, is completely bizarre. I mean Disney and Marvel made billions just last year simply by producing content people want to watch!

Most journalists know if they get paid they are expected to promote the owner's views - the line between pr and journalism is a fine one - but that they will be promoting wholesome, useful values and information. When the owners lurch too far people leave, both writers and readers/viewers, leaving a weak core.

At the same time they can push this ultra-liberal agenda because they aren't subjected to market forces. It doesn't matter if more and more people tune out, funding is guaranteed and comes straight from the (captive) taxpayers.

Lastly, for an "anti-racist" media, they aired content that was quite racist not that long ago, and refused to edit any of it. [0]. Maybe some races are more equal than other according to these people!

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/cbc-apology-story-of-u...

I think a lot of what is happening inside the CBC reflects what is happening in Canada's public service generally. The whole institution has gone from traditional "Liberal" left to a bad caricature of the US left (especially because in Canada we don't have many of the same issues).

Calling the CBC “Government approved journalists on the government payroll” is an extremely misleading description of what is an overwhelmingly common situation in English speaking democracies.

Canada has the CBC, the UK the BBC, Australia the ABC and NZ TVNZ and associated entities. None of these are Pravda, they’re all arms-length, independently run organisations.

I’m sure they’re all far from perfect (I’m happy to share my opinions on the non-CBC ones in an appropriate thread) but what media organisation is?

You're running straight into an established Canadian conservative talking point. It's pushed relentlessly by private news organisations who would reap financial benefit from the CBC being defunded. These organizations also happen to be the major news and opinion source for many conservative people in this country, so there's a convenient feedback loop in place. I'm sure this is not dissimilar to the other countries listed.

I agree with the majority of the linked substack in this thread, I think that the quality of CBC journalism is on a pretty clear downward trend, and I think that ignoring widespread societal issues to focus on the ultra-niche "darling of Twitter" social issues is journalistic malpractice at best.

That being said, the comparison of the CBC to Chinese state-run news broadcasting (while extremely common from conservative opinion makers in this country) is, I'm sorry, a completely childish take.

I really don't see how one could look at CBCs news coverage and feel that way. It's the propaganda arm of the Liberal party, plain and simple. The "childish" take would be really believing that CBC is anything but a liberal mouthpiece. All mainstream Canadian news organizations are garbage, I don't mean to say there is a better alternative, but our tax money only pays for one of them.

If the CBC was the "propaganda arm" of the Liberal party, it would follow that they were be extremely negative towards the NDP and the Green party. The combined share of left-wing vote in Canada swamps the combined right-wing vote, and it's not particularly close. In 2021, there were 9 million left-wing votes and 6 million right-wing votes. If we put the BQ with the left-wing(which in my view isn't unreasonable), it's 10.5 million versus 6 million.

If the CBC had daily meetings where they planned on how to elect the Liberals in the next election, the most logical course of action would not to go after Conservatives, but to spend their time going after the other left-wing parties.

But, of course, that's not what happens. Why does that not happen? Because they're not a "propaganda arm" for the Liberal party, they are biased towards small L liberal viewpoints. And that difference is the difference between the CBC and a state-run propaganda program. The childishness is equating the two.

(FWIW, I know three people who work for the CBC, one of whom is a complete moron, and two of whom are good humans. All three are left-wing in their personal lives, but if any of them were in a meeting where it was discussed how to elect the Liberals in the next election, they would walk out on the spot. The idea that that happens is purely a Conservative fantasy.)

Look at it this way - without government-funded journalism, the only voices are corporate ones. I think it's good to have both, even if neither is fully independent.

This is not at all how journalism works.

Journalism requires editorial freedom, who pays the bills should have literally no impact on reporting; this is true even when with meta coverage of the publication or owner in question.

Anything else is not journalism.

Kind of … more and more journalism outfits are going towards non-profit status. That usually involves some sort of ideological position: National Review is neoconservative, Jacobite is far left, n+1 is progressive.

That’s not really what we usually mean by news, but that’s the mode being adopted by many news outlets.

That’s not really what we usually mean by news, but that’s the mode being adopted by many news outlets.

National Review was founded in 1955, and is the only one of the examples you cite that even pretends to have a journalistic component (though its overtly mainly commentary); Jacobin is overtly commentary, not news; n+1 is a literary, rather than journalistic, outlet.

That's not really good examples of a novel trend in journalism.

Or how JKR on Harry Potter went from being vilified by conservative voices to the modern "She who will not be named" of Lefty HBO.

well, that's for one very specific and notable reason alone, not because of some shifting moral landscape.

She got cancelled for an essay that essentially says, “Trans women are fine, and I support them, but they are not the same as people who are born women”, which is a position that went from relatively uncontroversial to transphobic within the last five or so years.

What point was she trying to make by highlighting any distinction?

The main points of this article (roughly, that the supposedly-centrist-but-actually-left-wing media now cares more about wokeness than real news) have been made prominently and continuously since the days of Rush Limbaugh. The old joke about liberal media coverage of the apocalypse ("WORLD ENDS, WOMEN AND MINORITIES HIT HARDEST") dates from 1988.

To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.

Unfortunately, it appears fairly clear that over the past decade, a deeper cognitive dissonance is that of journalists' beliefs about their profession. Journalists seem to believe that Quality News [0] can sustain itself.

News is entertainment. Quality News loses because it commands less engagement than tweets, youtube videos, tv/movie streaming, gaming, and others.

News organizations survive now by aligning their stories with a chosen tribe (liberals, conservatives, whomever) and inflaming the base with rage rhetoric.

Unfortunately, it turns out that people don't really care about truth - it's pretty boring.

[0] Quality News defined however the particular journalist wants to define it (ethical/fair/unbiased/relevant/etc)

Why is this here, it's just clickbait self promotion:

The TLDR: - She claims she's not an aggrieved conservative

- She blows a bunch of right wing dog whistles

- Says she quit

- Plugs her book and new substack effort (Check out my soundslice!)