For those who haven't seen the special, the core of the controversy appears to be Chappelle mourning his friend, Daphne Dorman. She was a transgender standup comedian who opened for Chappelle and defended his comedy against the Twitter mob. She killed herself shortly after she was canceled by the mob and Chappelle set up a trust fund for her daughter.
Chappelle paid tribute to her in his special, but he did it in an offensive way. But given their relationship, the tribute was probably something she would have approved of and her family has defended Chappelle's tribute: https://deadline.com/2021/10/dave-chappelle-the-closer-defen...
Most of the outrage appears to come from people who haven't actually watched the special and are taking Chappelle's quotes about racism and LGBT issues out of context.
If we want to talk about moral virtue, actions speak louder than words.
Dave, by the sounds of it was a kind and gracious friend to Daphne and this was corroborated by her family. He offered her to open for him in a club as well, a great opportunity given his tenure as a comedian. In addition, upon hearing of her passing, setup a trust for her daughter.
The twitter mob on the other hand tried to have her cancelled after she defended him because she knew that he had no ill-intent.
In my opinion, the 1K employees who are walking are doing so on the flimsiest of moral foundations. Dave has done more for Daphne and her family than any of the 1K employees or the twitter mob ever will. Moral outrage is not generous or kind to anyone, period.
I don't support internet mobs - they generally seem to hurt innocent people (or hurt the guilty in excess of what they deserve) - but i don't see those two as mutually exclusive.
Presumably the twitter mob is mad (rightly or wrongly - i havent watched the special) about transphobia by Dave in general. It is entirely possible that Dave could be a great friend to Daphne and be transphobic at the same time. You can be friends with a trans person and transphobic at the same time (just like you can be sexist and friends with a woman at the same time, etc). Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.
Just because you disagree with someone — even about something as fundamental as the nature of their personal identity —doesn’t mean you’re bigoted or “phobic.”
My mom believes she has an immortal soul that is redeemed by Jesus Christ whose body and blood are present in the Eucharist. I disagree. Does this make me a soulphobe who hates Catholics?
It's just bullying. "Wokeism" gives bullies the opportunity to bully in socially acceptable ways. Note the comments in this thread defending the mobs.
If wokeism wasn't around, they'd find something else to oppress people. Ironically, these people would've been _great_ racists in a different time.
The problem is bullying. I don't know why it's so hard for people to recognize when they agree with the bully, but these sorts of tactics are never acceptable.
It's incredibly damaging to the cause of social justice. These assholes become the de-facto voice/face of the movement they claim to support, and destroy it.
"Woke" white bullies took over the movement, and are once again telling minorities what's good for them and how they should feel, all while alienating any potential converts. It's actually pretty darkly, depressingly hilarious.
Being "woke" is black freedom fighter slang that described an understanding of the case for reparations and police reform. It is being bastardized by people with an agenda in the dominant white society with the help of the media to undermine and/or distract from that movement.
Understand that by misusing that slang, you are also assisting them in doing the same. People that understand the actual definition correctly expect there is malicious ulterior intent when it is wrongly invoked, like in your earlier comments.
Sorry to inform you this original meaning is lost.
The woke virus is everywhere now and the only thing it means, to people here in the Netherlands at least, is "being absurdly sensitive about anything that could possibly hurt any groups feelings".
Yeah, it sucks. Throughout the years I've witnessed many examples of the damage these people cause. It doesn't matter who the target is, only that it's socially acceptable to ruin their life. People have disagreements here on HN but I've literally never seen an instance where someone called up someone actually else's employer to demand that the person be fired because of online comments.
> It is entirely possible that Dave could be a great friend to Daphne and be transphobic at the same time
He says as much in the special, but the message that the hyper-offended mob seems to miss is that in the end of the special he realizes that Daphne’s trans identity was secondary and frankly unimportant to her identity as a human and comedian. Basically realizing he came to view Daphne pretty much as Daphne wanted to be viewed and how she viewed herself.
> just like you can be sexist and friends with a woman at the same time
The friendship will tolerate what it will, until it can't. I think situations like these occur all the time, but unless one side shows more empathy or understanding, the friendship doesn't tend to last. I believe Dave's friendship with Daphne changed him. I think this is further supported by him saying at the end of the special that he won't be making anymore jokes about LGBTQ+ people until he knows everyone's laughing together. That to me, sounds like someone who was changed by a friendship. Whether he stays true to his words, we'll have to see.
In the twisted world of Twitter, virtue-signaling and calling people out gets you more recognition than any kind action that actually makes a damn difference.
My mom used to tell me a story about how she watched Pulp Fiction in theaters when it came out. Some of the scenes were so gross, offensive, horrific and bland that they drove the audience away in waves, until she and her friends were the only ones still there, laughing at how one film could make so many people upset.
> A man claiming that he's a woman because he wears a dress and make-up and really believes he's a woman
Actually, my understanding is that it's really only the radical activists who insist on that sort of thing. Most real-world trans folks are sensible enough to grok the fact that while they might perform socially as their gender of choice, they don't in fact embody it in the same way as someone who was assigned that gender at birth would.
I think you may well be right, though it's hard to say just how many trans people aren't on board with these controversial ontological claims of gender identity activism - perhaps in part because those who speak out against it get accused of 'internalized transphobia' and such, and relentlessly bullied by the activists.
P.S. I didn't watch the special but I did watch a pirated clip (audio only) on YouTube from a show called The Closer - which I assume is the special in question.
Cancel culture is out of control really. That said these people have a bad reason to strike but they have to be allowed to strike and netflix has to be allowed to fire them if they want to. It's just the way free society goes. Freedom has consequences.
Even if they were a union, they wouldn't be allowed to strike in order to force their employer to deplatform someone, they could only strike to get a contract. If they have a contract, they can't strike.
Enough mob justice. It's time for a return to decency.
Let the 1k go, if they must. They can walk out with their heads high and feeling like they've made a statement. But also let Chappelle continue to earn a living and hold his head high. There's room for both. Let the cancellations cease forthwith.
Let them go or plan to phase them out of the firm regardless of what happens?
These sorts of events keep happening. At this point the pattern is very clear: if you hire very left wing employees then you're building the firm on an unexploded bomb. You can't predict what will cause it to go off or when it will occur, but it seems likely that at some point it will. How do you as an executive build robustness to this type of event? You can't simply "do the right thing" because the left's definition of "right thing" changes on a near weekly basis, and is often so outright deranged that doing the right thing would cause you to end up doing quite evil things to other people. Or you can wait then cave, but that just encourages them and means you'll carry the can for the company's performance even though you won't actually have decision making power, and responsibility without power is a terrible place to be.
So there doesn't seem to be an easy fix, except ensuring you never get into that position in the first place by limiting your intake of very left wing employees. In the current environment it's probably enough to simply make yourself unattractive to these people via public announcements and policy, but for example when WhatsApp was rolling out encryption it was doing ideological screening interviews to ensure they wouldn't hire anyone who would freak out over a hardline privacy stance. Such interviews may quietly become more common. At the very least we should not be surprised if we see a raft of Coinbase style "we are a mission focused company" moves in the coming years.
Maybe companies should adopt a practice of only hiring middle-of-the-road rational, calm, level-headed people, instead of people who are far left or far right?
Problem is, how do you know? It's not like people talk about their leanings during technical interviews. I'm sure a set of conventions and tactics will evolve over time to handle this.
A background check that includes even a cursory review of the candidate's public social media presence would probably go pretty far in terms of weeding out the most extreme right or left wing people (who often tend to be vocal with their viewpoints).
There's a reason why I never post ANYTHING political on my public social media anymore. I keep all my controversial opinions limited to my alternate profiles.
The only positive mainstream review I’ve seen of his special was not all that positive, but that it was really a Rorschach test for your political leanings. What are the chances not one mainstream outlet had a positive review, was it really that unfunny?
He makes jokes about Jews, and Blacks, and Whites, that are completely overshadowed by Twitter (which is not a real place) claiming it was entirely anti-trans.
No one is claiming it was his funniest, but there was a subtext there. That it wasn’t about them, but about him. He’s not wrong at how successful without violence the trans movement has been compared to civil rights for blacks.
I thought the goal was to be offensive at the beginning and end with the message that canceling comedians for jokes is bad for everyone.
Part of his criticism was centered around how the 'alphabet people' have made rapid strides, but that conveniently forgets that black people can be gay or trans too, and also haven't made the same gains white LGBTQ folks have.
I'll gladly cede that America is more structurally and culturally anti-black than they are anti-LGBTQ, but that isn't the argument he was making.
This is a pet peeve of mine, but someone actually tell me which millionaire/billionaire actually remained 'cancelled' after being cancelled. As far as I can tell, the only people actually being cancelled are the trans people being fired from their jobs for finding the special distasteful and voicing that publicly.
It's rather disingenuous to point at the increase in murders like that, given how 2020 saw a huge spike in murders year over year for the general population.
So 44 trans people were murdered in 2020, out of a total of 21,570 in the US [0]. Estimates for the trans population range from 0.39% [1] to 0.58% [2].
That's about 2-3x lower than we'd expect, as a population of that size with an equivalent murder rate would have 84-125 homicides per year.
If we zoom in on black trans people and compare them to the black population as a whole, 27 were murdered compared to 9,941 for the black population [3]. Doing a bit of napkin math, and with the assumption that the rate of transgender identification is the same in the black and non-black populations, and using 46.9 million for the black population, we get:
21.2 murders / 100k for the black population
16.2-24.1 murders / 100k for the black trans population (using 0.58% for the first figure, and 0.39% for the second).
So the surprising conclusion seems to be that the trans population has a significantly lower homicide victimization rate compared to the general population, and black trans population has a slightly lower rate than the black population.
And if anything, I'd expect this gap to expand once correcting for age (the trans population skews younger) and the rapid increase in trans identification over the few years.
So sure, mentioning deaths is inflammatory, but not without context. It was in reply to the parent comment's (and Chappelle's) narrative of 'the trans community has somehow been too successful'.
Additionally, a black trans death is precisely what Chappelle used to justify his own monologue.
Analyses like you just did do feel authoritative, but it is important to remember that HRC only began tracking these things in 2013, and given the state of play in the US, I wouldn't expect it to be a complete survey for quite some time.
Quoting from the nih article you cited about the difficulties collecting data:
*Research has shown that transgender individuals around the world and in the United States are exposed to widespread social stigma, discrimination, harassment, and physical and sexual abuse. Compared with the general population, a national survey conducted in the United States in 2008 found that transgender individuals were 4 times more likely to live in extreme poverty, had double the rate of unemployment, and had almost double the rate of being homeless. In terms of health, transgender individuals had 4 times the rate of being HIV-infected and 28% postponed medical care because of discrimination. Particularly alarming is that 41% of survey respondents reported at least 1 suicide attempt. A barrier to understanding social determinants and health disparities faced by transgender people is the under- or nonrepresentation in a range of demographic and health-monitoring activities,5 which may result from a lack of transgender-inclusive data collection with regard to gender identity.*
Additionally, your zooming analysis didn't account for victim gender disparity.
3,584 female victims in 2020 vs 14,194 males.
Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are
black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion.
44/21570 (0.002) becomes 27/3584 (0.0075)
when viewed through the lens of gender.
I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself.
Even if a community did have a higher homicide victimization rate than average, it could still punch well above its weight in terms of Twitter mobbing. Those things aren't somehow mutually exclusive. And Chappelle's anecdote was about a black trans person who committed suicide after being marginalized by their community, and I don't think anyone is disputing that trans people disproportionately struggle with mental health issues and suicide.
> Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion.
I deliberately didn't try to break it down by gender because of the inherent issues with comparing someone who has biologically and socially developed as a male (to varying degrees, eg. someone who begins transitioning at 15 is going to be different than someone who starts at 35) to natal women. It is notable though that if you look at the stats, the victimization rate for black trans women falls in between the stats for black men (much higher) and black women (much lower). It would be interesting to look at other indicators like automobile accidents that show significant gender divergence to see if a similar pattern emerges.
> I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself.
Unfortunately I don't think we'll get better stats anytime soon. Race and gender are fairly easy to track because they get marked down on various forms of ID, but there is no equivalent "trans: Y/N" anywhere. And many trans people would vociferously oppose something like that. The result is that police will likely only include trans identification in case documents if it is relevant, eg. with a hate crime.
Even if a community did have a higher homicide victimization rate than average, it could still punch well above its weight in terms of Twitter mobbing.
Even if I ceded that trans people are uniquely online and 'too strong' on twitter, and I additionally cede that somehow that also means 'they' (and not a few individuals) are uniquely willing to kill their own in the name of internet points, that doesn't change the fact that the group is currently marginalized, and 'wins' online don't actually translate to acceptance in the real world.
You needn't look far to find laws being passed that specifically target and exclude the trans community.
Painting a marginalized community as vicious enough to 'eat their own' paves the way for very ugly rhetoric that we've seen with other marginalized groups the world over. Chappelle especially is smart enough to know this.
And indeed, from reading the comments here and elsewhere, it seems that whatever empathy he attempted to bring to the special, the modal comments on his work looks like this:
'I prefer the old skinny Chapelle. Black white supremacist is a killer. However, I must confess, I agree with him and J.K. Rowling on this one. Being trans women doesn’t make you a woman.'
The HN sentiment above this comment seems to be 'wokeism' is destroying the fabric of America, trans folks on twitter are 'woke', and bullies, and the real problem.
I don't think anyone is disputing that trans people disproportionately struggle with mental health issues and suicide.
I don't dispute it, but also, I think being kicked out by your family, not being able to get a job, having poor access to (or being afraid to ask for) healthcare, or being assaulted, etc... e.g. the effects of being marginalized, have a dramatic impact on mental health even without considering what it's like to be trans in isolation. I've met many folks(trans and not) in situations like this and the despair can be palpable.
This review seems to be speculating in the same direction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7317390/
Furthermore, compared with trans men, the societal position of trans women is lower (31, 32).
In the Netherlands, between 1972 and 2017 suicide rates showed a fluctuating course. Our finding of a slightly decreasing suicide risk in Dutch trans women may confer some hope. Recent studies showed an increase in societal acceptance toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (31), and indications of an increase in social‐economic status over the years (33).
...
Although the literature on suicide risk factors is comprehensive, and particular suicidal risk factors like verbal victimization, physical and sexual violence, and the absence of social support (9, 34), may apply for transgender people in all stages of transitioning, it seems clinically highly relevant to understand and explore possible differences in motives and risk factors in the different stages of treatment.
Race and gender are fairly easy to track because they get marked down on various forms of ID
It's my understanding that changing gender and name on ids is quite common, but often legally fraught. That kind of change effectively serves as as 'trans/enby: Y/N' where it is allowed at all. But yes, I don't think putting that explicitly on an ID is a safe idea.
> This is a pet peeve of mine, but someone actually tell me which millionaire/billionaire actually remained 'cancelled' after being cancelled.
From what I gather, Louis CK and Garrison Keillor are still cancelled (e.g. reduced to releasing stuff on their own personal websites).
Also, the kind of people who get canceled are entertainers and academics, and few if any of those are billionaires. I'm not even sure how "canceling" a billionaire would even work.
I'm fairly certain that was primarily his coke? habit and the n-word fiasco was the excuse the board needed. Also he definitely was given interviews afterward while he was promising a very sweaty 'day of reckoning'.
Here is how I took it. I watched it the day it came out before I read the outrage.
I am a southern raised white male. I have seen Dave live. I HAD been a fan of his stuff. I had some issues with his comedy in the past but nothing that made me avoid it.
However, this special rang different to me.
This special felt the same as white dudes I have heard my entire life. White dudes who would say racist shit and turn around to say they aren’t racist because they have black friends.
I felt Dave did the exact same with his trans friend. He used that friendship to try to shield his comedy.
Look, Dave doesn’t need our money. He doesn’t need any fucking person supporting him. Dude has so much money it doesn’t matter. So I do wonder why so many people are so desperately trying to defend transphobic comedy routines?
Stand away from the comedian and take a stand on what Dave’s actual views are. Own them yourself and defend those views. I think in 20 years you will look back and realize you held shitty views or at least society will
What his views are? That he was deeply upset his trans friend committed suicide, that he feels it was at least partly because she defended him online, that Twitter sucks and people do things there they would never in life, that he made a trust for Daphne’s daughter, that he is against bathroom laws, that he used his platform to try and stop the bullying of people with social media, that he is a true advocate for free speech? IDK, maybe he is a complex person and maybe you disagree, but I can’t find the monster.
> I think in 20 years you will look back and realize you held shitty views or at least society will
I think my views 20 years ago were near exactly what they are now. What if it’s yours that change? Then was Chapelle ok again?
What if your or my or his opinion doesn’t matter and everyone should be free to have their own and that is just ok even if someone else thinks it’s wrong?
By your post you justify that racism is ok because people should just accept people should be free to have ideas. I agree, they can have those ideas but they aren’t free from the consequences of having shitty ideas.
Yes I believe people can change.
As for his views, he straight up said he was a trans exclusionary radical feminist.
He said it multiple times in the special.
Go look at what that means. He is AGAINST legislation for trans rights. This is no different than white people saying we didn’t need the black civil rights movement.
Let me put it another way, my mom is an old white women who was alive during integration of the schools. She is racist as shit. She has a black friend. If her black friend dies first, she will absolutely be at her friend’s funeral. She loves her black friend. My mom would say her friend is “one of the good” ones. My mom is straight up racist. Having and caring about an individual in a group she is racist against doesn’t mean she isn’t racist.
Dave cared about his friend. He cares about his family. But he said what he is. No one put those words in his mouth. He said he was a Terf
Anybody who is FOR legislation of "rights" predicated on a non-falsifiable self-proclamation is almost certainly an idiot.
I don't dispute that gender dysphoria is real, it most certainly is. I don't dispute that living this way in a world that doesn't acknowledge who you are is a real bummer.
But advocating for legal recognition of a person's declaration, a word that cannot be objectively falsified, is absolutely a recipe for disaster. For every legitimately gender-dysphoric person, I bet there is a sexual predator rubbing his hands in anticipation for access to womens' spaces. And by what standard can the legal system deny them?
And why stop at gender? What stops me from falsely identifying as Black in order to qualify for scholarships or other programs intended to correct societal imbalances? By what right does a legal system that accepts the premise of subjective declaration as truth stop me from claiming Tribal casino profits or squatting on indigenous land?
It is the very height of idiocy to believe that a system of laws could possibly rest upon non-falsifiable claims.
Does it suck to live with identify disorders of any kind? Yes, absolutely. But should we upend our entire value system of objectivity of law in order to address it? Hell no.
Holding gender critical beliefs isn't at all similar to racism.
With racism, the racists are denying other people's humanity, based on race. That ideology centres around the notion of a group of humans being somehow subhuman.
This isn't the case with 'terfs' - they're not denying or diminishing anyone's humanity, they're simply saying that whether you're a woman or a man is determined by your biological sex, rather than a proclaimed gender identity.
Mainstream media is very cautious about causing a mass exodus of their customers. That’s why this whole thing is scary: a random group of people, easy to ignite deliberately, can shift what many people see or hear. That’s scary.
That is not what people are taking issue with. Regardless of where anyone stands on the issue, much of the special was about LGBT people, and the bit about his friend could hardly be construed as the most offensive part.
This is hardly the most offensive comedic content around. In my experience it's actually harder to find less offensive comedy than very offensive comedy.
I know at least Indians LOVED Russell Peters in the 2000s precisely because he made such funny jokes about us that (this is what makes a lot of comedy great) were relatable. Most of us laughed along with everyone else.
Yep, same here. There's a good interview of Russell Peters with Jordan Peterson where Russell talks about how whenever he would visit some country for his show, he would visit their local places to get a feel of what the people were like so that he could joke about it. That made him more relatable.
> There’s thousands of skits about brown, black, white, asian, men, women and every other diversity box possible which everyone has loved laughing at for forever and continues to do so till this date.
Yes, there are. Including about the “diversity box” targeted by Chappelle, that are nevertheless appreciated by the people upset at Chappelle.
Not all things that someone slaps the label “joke” on are created equal.
What are you replying to? I'm not talking about whether or not it's okay to make fun of trans people. I'm saying the bit about Chappelle's friend was one of the least offensive parts of the special, and it's not the part that some people are taking issue with. I didn't even express my feelings about offensive comedy in my comment, you just inferred that because you have some axe to grind about the subject.
For the record, I agree and I enjoy offensive comedy.
I am sorry, my comment wasn't specifically against your comment. My comment was a general reply to your comment. That's why I used the word "one" instead of "you".
I was simply stating that trans being offended by jokes while also wanting "equality" is impossible. Wasn't attacking your comment.
There's nuance to be sure, but Chappelle's quotes aren't really very far out of context. He's been banging the anti-anti-anti-cancel-culture gong for years now, dancing constantly just shy of outright hate, deliberately. And this really was no different. The fact that he personally had a trans friend who was herself in a complicated relationship with the LGBT community[1] is interesting and notable. I'm not sure it's "context". Chapelle wasn't talking about Dorman in those quotes, and he certainly wasn't "mourning".
[1] And, again, "cancelled by the mob" is a pretty poor summary.
I find it interesting that you use inflammatory language like “cancelled by the mob” while copying terminology and unsupported theories that tabloids like the Daily Mail use to incite outrage and mob-like reactions of their own.
She committed suicide after what appears to be a troubled life, months after being criticized by other members of the trans community on Twitter. Unless you have some special knowledge of her motives beyond what was in the note, it seems exploitative to use it as a vehicle for your political views. Similarly, rather than claiming that people who are reacting negatively haven’t watched Chappelle’s special, it’d be better to try to engage intellectually with what they’re actually saying rather than finding an excuse not to.
Maybe that dragged on, maybe there’s some private messages he heard about which aren’t public but the main point was simply that it seems like a politically convenient stretch to state with certainty that the blame goes entirely to an undefined “mob” rather than any of the other factors her friends and family acknowledge. I don’t love mob tactics but to be honest that read more like an an attempt to stir up a reactionary mob rather than calm things down.
Your account has unfortunately been using HN primarily for ideological battle. We ban such accounts, regardless of what they're battling for or against, because this is destructive of the curious conversation HN is supposed to be for.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
What would you say if Netflix called their bluff and just fired all the people that walked out?
This reminds me more of the student protests we used to see, where they wanted to walk out of classes or miss exams but also wanted special treatment so they didn't fail the class.
I've got no problem with not working at a place whose values you dont agree with, but I see this kind of action (and similar things at other tech companies) more as expecting your employer to pay you to undermine them. I could be wrong.
> What would you say if Netflix called their bluff and just fired all the people that walked out?
That would be a pretty awesome outcome - Netflix shouldn't have to change their programming (which is generally largely uncontroversial for the most part - I mean when is the last time they truly pushed the envelope? Maybe the OATS STUDIOS and original Black Mirror content?) to satisfy the permanently dissatisfied members of these new-age social movements that attempt to force people to say things that they don't agree with for fear of getting 'cancelled' among other outcomes that are socially negative.
> What would you say if Netflix called their bluff and just fired all the people that walked out?
They work at FAANG. Pretty sure they'll be able to get new jobs very quickly.
I suspect people involved with work stoppages who aren't protected via a union are keenly aware of the possibility of being fired and have deemed it worth the risk.
> This reminds me more of the student protests we used to see, where they wanted to walk out of classes or miss exams but also wanted special treatment so they didn't fail the class.
Umm, why not compare it to just a normal labour duspute strike action? This is literally a text book example of the type of action organized labour takes when its mad about something.
> They work at FAANG. Pretty sure they'll be able to get new jobs very quickly
I think companies are acutely aware and growingly suspicious of employee activism. Would you want to hire an activist for your organization? It would be a red flag to me as the activist employees could second guess any decisions made at any level of the organization and work to organize to cause a disruption. It's just not an effective way to run a business
Given the current job market and political climate in tech, i find it hard to believe that a high skill employee would be passed over because they attended a pro-trans protest/walk-stoppage along with thousand other people. I don't think most people would even consider such a person to be an activist employee.
The person who leaked confidential data - yes, i could see that being a red flag in hiring.
It's really tough to find good people, but for 500K FAANG jobs, there's still a long line of applicants.
I don't think we've reached the state (yet) where firms are going to be keeping blacklists of activists.
But we're certainly heading in that direction as techies try to force employers into more extreme stances. Dave Chappelle is a popular guy with broad mainstream appeal, and it's incredibly arrogant for Netflix employees to try to deplatform him, or to try to dictate what Netflix, a company with a global reach, can show to a worldwide audience.
And I think we are going to see some mass firings and circulation of blacklists in at least some of the FAANGS before people wake up and realize they are no longer in college protesting some speaker they think makes them "unsafe". For these types of salaries, some professionalism is expected, and long term employers will demand it.
I've worked in some places where company policy on clothing was "no offensive or political slogans". This was 15-20 years ago. So there was some appetite for keeping politics out of the workplace. I wonder if that needs to be brought back in to most places.
Personally I think there is a fair chance that unless many of these are really good, Netflix will be more productive a month later, not less.
I also think for a large demographic it will make Netflix a more interesting employeer, not less.
I'm in talks with a FAANG company now and this is an actual worry that I have but cannot discuss with my point of contact, that I will be canceled shortly after I'm hired either because of my friends, my views or something I said half a life ago.
I don't blame them. I would definitely consider activism when picking someone for my team. At the end of the day I like working in mission focused organizations. I love working with a diverse group of people, but it's critical that a mission unites us
Do you really believe your mission unites your employees?
Maybe if you're curing cancer or something, but for most tech workers working on some generic CRUD app, they pay lip service to being motivated by the "mission", but settle for something mildly interesting that hopefully isn't actively doing evil in the world.
Your employees trade time and skill for money. Hearts and souls is a much less common trade.
It doesn't matter what the mission is so much as there is one. If the mission is build a beautiful website or a well designed flexible backend, then that's fine. In that case we come in every day and drive towards that.
Perhaps we're using the word "mission" differently. I would call that a goal, and i agree its important.
In most places i have worked, the mission has been some high minded rhetoric about how we're going to change the world for the better that is really disconnected from what we actually do.
I would never hire someone with public activism record. In fact I'd rather hire someone with prior criminal record, as they actually have a chance to recover.
Would you please stop creating accounts that use HN primarily for ideological battle? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. As you know, we ban such accounts regardless of what they're for or against. I've banned this one.
If you want to use HN as intended—for intellectual curiosity—then you're welcome, but ideological agendas are the opposite of that, irrespective of which ideology.
>If you want to use HN as intended—for intellectual curiosity—then you're welcome, but ideological agendas are the opposite of that, irrespective of which ideology.
You may not be interested in any ideology, but Ideology is surely interested in what you believe. That world where internet was for intellectual curiosity and not
ideology battle at every step, is long gone and never coming back.
Maybe so, but the site guidelines haven't changed. If we have to ban more accounts for breaking them, that's fine. It's certainly better than not banning them.
you've got the importances inverted. letting companies do as they please is no way to run a society. people first, then companies. it's this sort of inversion that's gotten us into the mess of a society we're facing now.
I think you and many of the comments below are missing a critical point: the employees are objectively in the wrong here. This is not about labor conditions or abuses or something, it's about a group trying to censor content and impose ideology on others. You'd have a point if this was Netflix not allowing breaks or something, but it's really just censorship. If there was a group of christian employees walking out over non-Christian values in a show, would you still support it as "people first"? Censorship is censorship, whatever the ideology behind it, it's up to me what I want to watch, not employees at the infrastructure provider
i can concede that attempting to censor content is generally a poor remedy, for society at large. however, the notion that netflix should then fire the employees without discussion or recourse is just as egregious. let’s get past these superficial aspects, otherwise such discussions are useless.
I disagree. You need strong leadership in an organization. You can't run an organization with 10k employees where any employee can hold you hostage and refuse to work if they disagree with any decision made.
so coercive tactics by companies against employees is ok but not the reverse? again, that’s a perverse inversion, against the common interests of society at large. corporations are chartered by the government as a means to direct their efforts toward the common good. they’re not natural entities, and we should be way more willing to revoke those charters for the betterment of society.
The interests of society are not served by a group of activists with extremist views trying to impose their values on the entire planet by leveraging the fact that they work for a global brand, and then trying to use that leverage to deplatform anyone who offends them.
Letting people watch what they want is the democratic position that benefits society at large.
the company should use this opportunity to move the ball forward wrt deeper, mutual understanding, not retaliate with mass firings (which is the recommendation i was responding to). that’s escalation, and does nobody any good.
I'm not sure what you are responding to in my comment. I don't think i said anything of the sort.
If an individual employee doesn't like their job, they should quit and find a different one. If a large portion don't like it, then a labour dispute is one possible way to try and resolve the situation.
i may have read too much into it, as it seemed to be making the same trite argument (that many others are making) that the employees should just quit, as their only recourse.
strong leadership can tolerate disagreement and critique. it’s weak leadership, of which we have an overabundance, that cannot. you advocate coercion, which is the favored tool of weak leadership.
also, it’s a fallacy that the senior managers of an organization (at least successful ones) “run” it. at best, they have outsize influence.
I know this is probably an off-hand comment from someone who doesn't know US unionization history very well, but it's hilarious still. That we even still have any steel production is because of unionization. That corporations were allowed to outsource is because of anti-unionization efforts.
I am familiar with unions and union history. Also union busting efforts and the growth of unions until the 80s during the Reagan era - but to compare a factory worker or a longshoreman to software engineers feels like a facetious comparison with little merit IMO.
I worked at a retail job briefly after high school and it was a joke that I had to pay union due by law in the state of Maryland.
Software engineers are politically probably one of the strongest positioned labor groups in modern history, up their with probably high finance and heirs of huge fortunes. The fact of the matter is that most people don't want to work the vast majority of union jobs and simultaneously, corporations are willing to offshore many of these labor requirements in part due to the cost burden. Sure, management takes home a lot, but honestly I'm unsympathetic to most union industries and I shouldn't have to pay another tax to some obscure group to handle issues.
If you hired landscapers to mow your lawn and they refuse to do so because they spotted political banners on the aforementioned lawn they don't approve, what's going to happen? Forget the reason, what's going to happen if you hired somebody and that person did not show up to work?
Same thing with the companies, they hire people to do work just like people hire other people. If hired people don't want to work - that's fine, just let them go. I am pretty content with this way of society and don't see how changing it can make it any better.
that’s a false equivalence. employment law recognizes the difference between contracting (many-to-many) and employment (many-to-one) and the power and leverage therein. it’s simplistic takes like this that derail genuine and productive discussion.
> I suspect people involved with work stoppages who aren't protected via a union are keenly aware of the possibility of being fired and have deemed it worth the risk.
I think you vastly overestimate the amount of forethought that humans apply when following the herd. Just look at all the Jan 6 people who are completely floored that there might be consequences to their actions.
That doesn't necessarily imply a lack of forethought. They might have seen all the leftists rioting, occupying government buildings, setting up autonomous zones, etc without consequences and thought they would receive similar treatment for behavior that was a common protest tactic in 2020.
> Pretty sure they'll be able to get new jobs very quickly.
That's what makes it so good for both parties: Netflix would get rid of employees who are holding the company back, and the employees could easily find new places to work. Seems very mutually beneficial.
> This is literally a text book example of the type of action organized labour takes when its mad about something.
It's not, really. Strikes are usually about workers: their pay, their conditions, their environment.
Rightly or wrongly, they seem to think netflix did something morally wrong (i haven't watched the show in question, so not making any judgements on validity). People who work for "bad" companies are often seen as "bad", so it does affect the employees.
More to the point, isn't the important bit that employees are angry and in agreement, not what they are angry about? It seems pretty dystopian to me to say only some grievences are legit.
> What would you say if Netflix called their bluff and just fired all the people that walked out?
The employees would go on to complain about being improperly let go. This is what happened to Google AI Ethicist Timnit Gebru [0]. She wrote a very public letter demanding changes or she'll resign and Google took her up on the offer. If you go through her twitter[1] you can see she made the firing into her identity now even though it happened nearly a year ago now. It's kind of sad
great byline, surely a hill to die on as opposed to real credentials. Can't remember what this is from but this quote always feels super applicable to these times: "World's gone mad, going off the grid. over"
> expecting your employer to pay you to undermine them. I could be wrong.
This is a good point.
There's likely a huge amount of content on Netflix that offends a lot of different people and groups. It's your choice to not watch, not subscribe, or not work for them.
There are constructive ways to work with your employer but if you're going to go this route, you better be ready for them to dismiss you.
Maybe I'll start checking Netflix open job boards. There my be some openings soon.
The people they terminate would even be ineligible for unemployment benefits since they admitted to slacking off at work, easily substantiating a termination for cause (and hence saving a Netflix some money by keeping their unemployment insurance premiums lower).
Pretty sure the Netflix would rather be rid of those who have totalitarian tendencies than to be rid Chappelle, given that their mission as an entertainment company is undermined by this type of censorship.
There's a long line of people who can provide the same labor to Netflix without the hysteria, so a parting of ways would be a pareto improving outcome.
It’s a pointless gesture designed to be more about sending a virtue signal than any impact at all. Dave’s been paid, a work stoppage won’t stop eyeballs and ears from hearing the comedy (it’s all over YouTube), and Netflix will not lose a statistically significant number of subscribers over this. To be honest, I’m sure that there will be no interruption to the streaming service at all.
And the next series of specials that Chappelle sells will have an increase in viewership because of the controversy these activist employees and stupid media outrage has created from this one. Netflix knows this and will want a chance at being the provider of that content.
Makes me wonder if there are any objective metrics whether the tactics are working more or less as time marches on. I’d imagine the contagion of woke continues to spread like any other, but by now most of us have been exposed and developed antibodies.
It arguably makes sense for it to be made abundantly clear what caused a mass exodus vs. a pile of disorganized but disillusioned employees quietly parting ways piecemeal, if part of your goals is to actually effect change.
> If you don't like the company's decisions, you should stop working for the company - easy enough.
While I don't agree with the aims of the employees in question, I should point out that unions came about because your advice does not work. The only way to stand a chance against organized capital is with organized labor. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28603398
Sure but you have to get enough organized labor. This is a niche topic and I'm guessing the other 99% of netflix don't care enough about it to get fired. Organized labor generally appeared because of universal bad working conditions, pay, voice in governance, etc. Not really because of less popular items like LGBQ concerns about a comedian's opinions.
Do you mean that it's easy to say "I quit," or that it's easy to kiss your next paychecks goodbye with no other approved recourse, despite the fact that you were employed by a company that you and thousands of others saw as perpetuating injustices toward a minority?
I'll be watching this with interest, hoping that Netflix leadership follows recent pushback against the woke mob. We can no longer tolerate sanitizing the web of the things a small minority are offended by. This was the message that Chapelle delivered, and this is peak irony.
Hi, Netflix, I will consider any work opportunity in your fantastic business as it looks like a lot of positions will be available shortly. I'm 100% mission focused and committed to technology and nothing else.
So what’s the demand of the walkout? That they cancel the Dave Chapelle special? A black comedian who struggled through accusations being a “mentally ill black crackhead” when he walked away from 50 million dollars?
Doesn’t that just prove his point about the double standard and culture of victimhood and success in the trans movement?
This all seems to highlight the problem he’s bringing to the forefront.
Why does it seem like the controversial statements that are being picked out are what is being fixated on? They seem to intentionally ignore the surrounding context of the message he’s actually trying to convey.
The more they take out of context, the more material they have to call out. It’s not like their follower-allies are going to mind that it was taken out of context.
The missing context in this article is that two trans employees were suspended for attending a zoom meeting they were linked to by a director. One of those employees had written a twitter thread critical of the special on their personal account.
The second thing to note is they fired an organizer of this protest claiming that they leaked how well this special did (broke even basically) just a couple days ago.
This is obviously going to have a chilling effect within the company no matter what the intent of the special or the executives was.
More broadly, Chappelle seems to have a lot of empathy for his trans friend, but the actual effect seems to have been a fresh supply of TERF ammunition for the next few weeks. The 'discourse' around this is pure poison, and he probably could have predicted this based on how the last special went.
> The missing context in this article is that two trans employees were suspended for attending a zoom meeting they were linked to by a director
Were they invited to the meeting, or did they just acquire a link? Just because I find your conference call number doesn't give me any inherent right to sit in on it.
The person suspended (and then reinstated) intentionally crashed the meeting, and the person let go, leaked the amount paid to David for the special, which is the #1 no no at Netflix, given their business works primarily on information asymmetry. It’s the one thing you definitely shouldn’t do at Netflix, and they knew that.
> "At least one thousand Netflix employees are expected to participate in a virtual walkout to protest Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ recent comments in support of Dave Chappelle’s latest special, The Closer, according to a current staffer who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter."
This should probably be the main article linked in this thread.
Anyways according to wikipedia Netflix has just over 12k employees, so 1k+ walkout would be 8%+ walkout which would be pretty significant.
The sourcing here seems incredibly thin. Who says 1,000 employees are walking out? Variety links to another Variety article as a source for this statement, which in turn links to a Verge article as the source. The Verge article says nothing about 1,000 employees walking out, and contains only a single, anonymous claim that they characterize as,"a leader of the trans ERG in an internal organizing message."
It would be interesting to see how many actual Netflix employees are outraged enough by a comedy routine to walk out on their jobs.
Its really tough being a comedian. Generally, in society there are lines drawn over which you must not cross. Comedians typically get to push those boundaries under the guise of comedy or free-thinking or equal-opportunity racism or bigotry. Generally, I am totally supportive of that as it is thought-provoking and conversation inducing. It's better to bring uncomfortable subjects out into the open and make fun of them rather than have them be taboo subjects that should not be discussed.
So ultimately, the meta view on all this is, yes, lets have a conversation. Maybe its a heated one, but lets not "cancel" people while were at it. Let the free-markets determine who should be cancelled.
> Let the free-markets determine who should be cancelled.
What would that look like though?
I think there's a somewhat valid conversation to be had about cancel culture, but this point comes up over and over, and I'm constantly wondering: if people criticizing speech in public places like Twitter isn't the free market, and Netflix employees collectively advocating that they don't want to host the speech isn't the free market, and if users boycotting or voting with their wallets isn't the free market, and if advertisers pushing for higher standards on the platforms they're advertising on isn't the free market, and if platform-holders and publishers deciding what content they want to promote isn't the free market, then what is the free market?
When we talk about cancel culture, a lot of the mechanisms of canceling use free market actions; freedom of association, the right to criticize, the right to filter and to share filters with other people, the right to choose how we spend our money and time. And it's valid to look at the free market of speech and say that sometimes it's overly harsh or that it censors the wrong people or that it can be intolerant, but I don't see how it's possible to simultaneously say that the marketplace of ideas is the correct way to sort out good and bad speech, and also that people being mean on Twitter or calling for boycotts is fundamentally the wrong way to tackle conflict.
What do people think the marketplace of ideas is, and how should it act? When the marketplace of ideas deems an idea unpopular or bad, should it still be given equal weight and equal investment and promotion alongside other ideas, even though the marketplace doesn't want it?
That's not how the real economic marketplace works; in the economic marketplace if you can't convince people to buy your product, then your company dies and investors stop giving you money and putting you on store shelves. Nobody says that it's a violation of the free market if people badmouth a company online and stores stop carrying their products as a result. Nobody argues that I'm "canceling" Facebook when I tell people to stop using it, or when I argue that Facebook's future VR products are likely to be bad just by virtue of being made by Facebook.
What's different about the marketplace of ideas? Is it that Netflix has too much power and it's a pseudo-monopoly over entertainment? I can buy that argument for situations like Facebook or the Apple app store, but I don't really buy it for Netflix.
Should 1000 Netflix employees be able to represent what content Netflix hosts?
Netflix refuses to carry an awful lot of content. Is it a violation of the free market of speech that they're not streaming everyone else's responses to David Chappelle? I mean, I personally haven't been contacted by them to make a video with them about this debate, does that mean Netflix is censoring my voice and subverting the marketplace of ideas by refusing to stream my videos? The problem is that if we go too far down the road of deciding Netflix is violating the marketplace of ideas by choosing not to host certain ideas on a curated service, we end up with really silly conclusions.
I'd be a bit more charitable to this idea if we were talking about a general platform like Youtube, or if we were talking about a platform with outsized monopoly-levels of control over video content. But it's absurd to say that the marketplace of ideas means Netflix is obligated to pay people to produce content for them and to promote that content; that would be a huge violation of Freedom of Association, and it would just be completely unworkable as a business model.
And if Netflix isn't obligated to pay for and host everyone's content, then who else has more right to have input into what Netflix does host than its employees, owners, and stakeholders?
> I mean, I haven't been contacted by them to make a video with them
Consider -- just for a moment -- that you are not Dave Chappelle.
But if you were an entertainer with his appeal and fanbase, then I don't doubt that Netflix would reach out to you to try to sign you to some specials.
In other words, Netflix is not a pez-dispenser of views on political issues. It's an entertainment platform for the entire world. So no, extremist groups within Netflix don't get to stand between Chapelle and his audience, deplatforming him just because they have a job at Netflix.
> But if you were an entertainer with his appeal and fanbase
And who decides what that line is? Netflix, right?
Netflix ultimately gets to decide what its standards are for the content it hosts, that's the only sensible conclusion we can draw. It's the only setup that makes sense in a free market, companies get to choose what products they produce and host.
Similarly, Netflix can look at feedback from its customers and other clients, and it can look at feedback from its workers, and it can take that feedback into account when making decisions. Just like it does for literally every other business decision that it makes.
> Similarly, Netflix can look at feedback from its customers and other clients
Yes. And I got news for you -- the rest of the world thinks these Netflix protestors are crazy, power hungry authoritarians. This special is popular, as is Chapelle.
> it can look at feedback from its workers,
In terms of what netflix shows, workers are not more privileged than any other netflix customer, unless they are the ones hired by Netflix to select content. If you want a collective editorialship role, then go to work for a cooperative, or seek a job with that role. But if you accepted a job as release engineer, then no, you don't get to decide which comedians Netflix signs just because you are a release engineer for Netflix. That's something that workers know when they sign on.
> But if you accepted a job as release engineer, then no, you don't get to decide which comedians Netflix shows just because you are a release engineer for Netflix.
Do the workers get to decide whether they work for Netflix?
If, theoretically, they threatened to stop working, would that fall within the bounds of their freedom of association under the 1st Amendment?
They can leave, sure. I don't think they have a right to "threaten" anyone, and they certainly don't have a right to strike, not being in a union or even trying to form a union.
They could however form a union first and demand a labor contract in which every Netflix employee has the right to veto content shown on Netflix. Then they could go on strike if the union fails to agree on a contract, saying that this "right to deplatform" is a non-negotiable demand.
That is the equivalent of what is going on here, which should explain why the rest of the world thinks this is a terrible idea. Anyways, good luck with that.
> I don't think they have a right to "threaten" anyone
Of course they do. As a worker, I have a right to threaten to quit during a negotiation process. As a consumer, I have a right to threaten to cancel a subscription or stop buying a product. I'm not sure where anyone would get the idea that those kinds of actions aren't allowed in a free market.
> and they certainly don't have a right to strike, not being in a union or even trying to form a union.
I also really don't understand what's meant by "right to strike" here. I'm not aware of any strike laws in the US that ban employees of entertainment companies from striking. Without a union, Netflix workers can't call an official strike, but they can still legally refuse to work, and Netflix can respond as it sees fit.
If they don't have a right to do what they're doing, then Netflix can try pressing legal charges against them or at the least can fire them.
> Even the "canceled" comedians seem to be doing just fine.
I feel this is a gross generalization, are we talking about CK Lewis or Daphne? What's the line for doing fine, losing a year of gigs, working in another area, not dead, not in a mental institution?
This "cancel" culture is unproductive and pitting people against people for misunderstandings that wouldn't hold water in real life.
People are so lamely political these days, it's hard not to see this as slacktivism. I hope the internet virtue signaling echo chamber dies off already, and all these people get fired.
Then at least they can see themselves as heroes in their "I'm the main character" stories about how "politically active" they were when they write their books.
The issue is the poor taste in not defending those who are struggling to defend themselves. That shows lack of leadership and meaningless principles. Netflix employees rightly recognized that Sarandos’ statement had no real principles behind it, but was purely based on appeasing popular creators.
To be fair, cuties had a lot of controversy around it too. As with such matters, that's long forgotten in the world of twitter and people have moved on to the next thing.
I kind of got the impression the 'cuties' outrage was stealth marketing. I wonder whether this is something similar. Until I saw this story I didn't know Chapelle had a new special out, maybe this is exactly what's desired.
That was mostly from the right though. Everyone knows they'll move on to the next thing quickly unlike slacktivists who will take on something and hold on to something until twitter stops giving them any feedback.
If you haven't watched it, on what basis do you assert that the characterization of it as “sexualization of prepubescent children” is at all valid?
I haven't watched it, and have no specific opinion, but I certainly do know that many times when I’ve seen characterization of objectionable content in media it wasn't supported by a reasonable viewing of the media.
What do you think of child pornography, and have you watched any of it to make sure it's objectionable for you? Or were verbal descriptions enough for you to make up your mind?
exactly, I watched enough to know it wasn't my cup of tea, but I don't think there was anything in there that was going to cause a wave of pedophilia like the pearl clutchers thought.
Corporations will need to start looking at the tweets of applicants to make sure they don’t hire the woke activist types. They are becoming a nuisance in the corporate world.
Unpopular opinion on hn here but Dave's trans skit hinges on his audience not knowing enough about trans people for him to get away with creative character assassination. He openly condemns their argument against Rowling as goal-posting make believe and in doing so lends his approval to her documented and open transphobia.
If anything it should be an indictment of how he treats his audience in 2021. There are plenty of hillarious trans jokes to be made but He needs to do a better job of reading the room. When you punch down in your sets, its bullying not satire.
Perhaps JK made some genuinely hurtful comments I'm unaware of, but given the ones that were quoted in a pearl-clutching context I'll believe that iff I see it. There is a school of thought that seeks to treat all trans-gendered or gender dysphoric people as a monolithic group who have only one correct course of action. The irony of that, given what gay-rights activists were working for within living memory, is so sharp as to be painful.
There's a point in the new special where Dave brings up the anti-transgender bathroom bill that was passed and then repealed in North Carolina. When he mentions it, an audience member enthusiastically cheers for it and Dave has to immediately clarify that he's against it. If the points you're trying to make are so unclear that people are enthusiastically cheering for anti-trans laws, you may not be anti-trans, but you're certainly wearing an anti-trans uniform.
Yes, we shouldn't allow people to have the wrong opinions.
If these people use Dave as the beacon for anti-trans opinions, the person who created a trust fund for the daughter of trans person who killed herself, maybe they aren't that good at anti-trans, just saying.
That's a good start, hopefully he'll be using some of that $60 million he's made from his netflix specials to support other trans people, not just 1 person he knew
Chappelle paid tribute to her in his special, but he did it in an offensive way. But given their relationship, the tribute was probably something she would have approved of and her family has defended Chappelle's tribute: https://deadline.com/2021/10/dave-chappelle-the-closer-defen...
Most of the outrage appears to come from people who haven't actually watched the special and are taking Chappelle's quotes about racism and LGBT issues out of context.