Rustlang: “This account will pause tweeting until further notice”
twitter.comI like this a lot. Even the passive acknowledgment that technology and engineering do not exist in a bubble exclusive from the real world is meaningful. I do think the call to action to invest in our communities matters.
I know I'm N=1, but I have increased respect for the Rust organization.
Not seeing anything similar on /r/rust, or the official forum. This twitter account barely tweets at all, it's like they want to send a message, but don't want to actually inconvenience anybody.
I agree - it's the definition of pandering: it serves no higher purpose than to gratify some group of people, without serving any deeper meaning.
I would like to know in what way this will actually influence change. Don't get me wrong, sincere displays of solidarity matter, but this isn't one. It's an effortless token gesture.
> Don't get me wrong, sincere displays of solidarity matter, but this isn't one. It's an effortless token gesture.
This is entirely based on assumptions about who wrote that tweet and how that account is manages.
I view it as simply spreading the message.
Their pinned thread explains that the account is mainly run by one person https://twitter.com/rustlang/status/1263105810525237248
Virtual signalling is the highest form of pandering.
The negative use of the term "virtue signalling" honestly baffles me. Why on earth is publicly stating your beliefs is a bad thing? Communication is how ideas spread.
“Virtue signalling” refers specifically to a public performative show of caring not because a person/organization actually cares but wants some sort of social, financial, political, or personal benefit from giving off the appearance of caring.
Seems like to claim "Virtue Signaling" you have a.) "show of caring" but no evidence of b.) "wanting some benefit from giving the appearance".
And without any attempt of evidence or justification for claim of B, just dropping the accusation of virtual signaling comes across as merely trying to describe "openly not being an asshole" as if it were a bad thing.
How do we know the person behind the Rust twitter account doesn’t actually care? Because that’s the clear implication in labelling them a virtue signaller.
A judgement-free aside:
The information age intrinsically makes it harder for this kind of statements.
On almost all topics we are bounded to be ignorant of some important facets, and the sheer size of the internet means that many other will be ignorant/knowledgeable on different facet of any topic.
In a sense this means that most endorsements of public topics by an organization/individual will incur in a certain level of "what about these negative sides of that thing"; this happens especially if there was not a previous synchronizing pressure for that topic.
Once upon a time it was a lot easier for social clusters to be similarly ignorant/knowledgeable on any given topic.
As often happens with progress we lose something and we gain something.
>Rust believes that tech is and always will be political
Yeah, no thanks. And much less when you're taking a side. I mean, I know you're a Mozilla project after all, but eeek.
this make absolutely no sense. as one reply pointed out, are they going to shutdown their feed every time something happens? maybe i'm just too involved in AA, so i like the whole concept of "we have no opinions on outside issues". rust is doing the opposite of this. to me, if the individual core team members want to take stance and not tweet, that's fine, but the organization as a whole shouldn't.
> In acknowledgement that taking a stand against police brutality is more important than sharing tech knowledge, this account will pause tweeting until further notice. Feel free to email the core team at: core@rust-lang.org.
-- @rustlang
So they've stopped using twitter for a week or two, but are still running an email list. That's nice to signal they're in solidarity I guess? I mean, what is the downside for them here? A for short time some casual Rust enthusiasts won't see news?
Python Software Foundation's Twitter account did the same. I don't know how many more made a stance, but I needed to learn Wagtail CMS and they too went dark on their website. Maybe not all tech is political, but open source, freedom being one of its foundations, sure is.
Freedom includes the freedom to not do something.
That's why when I modify a free software package for my own personal use and gratification, I'm not forced to distribute the changes to anyone, not even upstream.
Archive.org's copies, like the one at https://web.archive.org/web/20190212143902/https://wagtail.i... , seems usable. Plus, things like http://docs.wagtail.io/en/v2.4/ are still live.
Also any inner links are fine, like https://wagtail.io/features/. They didn't go completely dark, just their home page.
Top tweet reply Twitter fed me was on point -
Replying to @rustlang
"The world is bigger than just the USA."
There are a lot of problems in the world, Syria pops into mind or a billion people who can't fully feed their kids.
But they are not a viral Twitter sensation. Gotta be 'cool'
If you apply this criterion consistently, nobody would be allowed to protest anything
If I may this does not apply here. The tweet was formulated as "Since issue X is more important than our tweets etc." so the criticism of "Also issue Y was more important" is not baseless.
This would not apply if they just supported the cause, or even decided to join the protest. For how international it can be the rust organization is intrinsically based in the US so it is understandable why they might want to make a statement about the current events.
Nevertheless the criticism has a basis in how the tweet was formulated, as the way it was written transforms a perfectly reasonable position of "we cannot and shouldn't fight every battle" into "that other issue was less important".
I would say this was a case where a bad argument was worse than no argument.
Just to repeat myself one more time if the tweet was only "In support of current protests we chose to stop tweeting until further notice" then your comment would be completely right.
I interpreted OP in the following way - US influence on tech shoehorn their politics in every other place. If something happens in Syria or other third world countries, it won't get recognition or will inconvenience people outside of their countries. So I am guessing OP is upset about that. I do think US influence on tech to this degree is bad given the recent years and political environment. Most of the web is controlled by US companies and affects people living in other countries.
I have seen a few mobs attacking people from other countries because they couldn't get the current political environment in US. And why would they? They don't live in the US and thus don't get everything happening in US.
I'm not sure what the problem is. No one can be can make a statement about any bad thing unless they make statements about about all bad things equally?
How about as part of the tech world you are part of the global community.
If you think "taking a stand against X is more important than sharing tech knowledge" then it needs be well thought out before you shut down your global "sharing tech knowledge" over that issue.
Or people like me think you are just part of the vileness the makes Twitter work where everyone is just part of the lynch mob, without thought jumping on, looking for outrage, and a reason to hurt people rather than help people.
Absolutely, and this occurs all the time. Something happens in the US especially, but perhaps also Western Europe and it is spun into a huge issue. Something worse happens somewhere and it is barely reported, if at all.
This is the sad irony of making a huge fuss of "black lives matters" when really they (or non-Armerican/non-Western) don't. What matters is the American village.
This is virtue-signalling and will actually anger, as it always does, many who are not part of the worthy few.
You should try not to be easily swayed by whataboutism.
So, if YOUR family members were being hunted and murdered by a gang of thugs who operate with impunity, you would be wrong to be angry and fed up, as the 10th cousin of yours gets shot by this gang?
Why would this be about "being cool" and not the rage of being constantly targeted and NO systemic change since the Jim Crow law era?
It's been the same since Emmett Till, and frankly, your reaction is a bit hard to believe. Can a human truly be ignorant of the facts on the ground in the USA of being black or white and the differing treatment you get?
I'll wager that you don't watch CNN, as you smell a little Foxy, but they had 2 reporter crews on the ground 1 block apart in Minneapolis, and the black anchor and his crew got arrested ON-AIR, and the white guys crew got politely asked to move after their credentials were checked.
>Rust believes that tech is and always will be political
As long as it is about American politics. Shame.
I'm not even following the rationale. They're angry at Twitter? For what, exactly?
I would assume that it is in the same rationale as "taking a minute of silence". It is a statement and a public ritual to both express and show seriousness of an event.
Obviously they are not the same thing, but it is not trivial to find a precise rationale under things that have no need to be 100% rational, such as showing public support.
Stupid, whoever controls that account, please hand it over to someone else and use your personal account to post nothing.
Americentrism.
> Rust believes that tech is and always will be political- take some time today to invest in your community.
Non-violent protesters were getting killed by Hong Kong's police in broad daylight for the last few months. Were the Rust people not aware of them?
Same reason why sectarian violence in the west garners more sympathy than similar amounts of sectarian violence in africa, the middle east, or asia.
This is YOUR domestic problem, it hits home for many people. If Rust made the same for every injustice in the world, there would be no more tweets from them ever.
Apparently, whoever is running that account wants to be part of the current thing and making an enemy of China might not be good for Rust's development.
I'm a bit bitter because they haven't given a fig about the minority most likely to be killed by law enforcement than any other racial or ethnic group and even use a license from an organization that domain squats on the very same minority.
[edit: yep same as it ever was]
There are no reports of people killed by the police in the HK protests.
Source:
U.S. Department of State
https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-country-reports-on-human-...
"There were no credible reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings."
Edit: hate to say that, but why instead of clicking the damn downvote button don't you go and actually check if there are recorded deaths?
You're using an outdated document as your source.
I will not post direct links. Instead, I invite you to browse tags like #HongKongPoliceTerrorism, #HongKongPoliceBrutality, #HKpolice, etc. on Twitter.
We all know not to trust COVID death counts from China. HK police brutality is something like that. We have video evidence of a few murders. As for the actual count, no one knows.
And many major tech companies (Apple, Google, YouTube, Bytedance) were censoring the HK protestors with China, Even when a protestor was shot with a live round on Facebook Live.
Sounds like double standards with the current action with tech companies.
No not double standards. They are absolutely consistent standards. Zero principles. Pure profit motive. You don't have to run your company like that. This was a choice they have made. (Note that the profit motive isn't always the profit of the shareholders, it is the profit motive of the powerful inside the company).
Don't miss the point though. Cannot, under any circumstances be trusted. If they are sufficiently pressured they might do the right thing, or at least pretend to in public. Assume they are lying about everything until proven otherwise is a statement of the obvious.
> You're using an outdated document as your source.
You're right, the document is outdated. I've searched further and while I did find a few instances of police shooting at protesters, I didn't find deaths.
> I will not post direct links.
Please do instead. And no, I don't think twitter is a reliable source, twitter is an information battleground, you should know it.
> HK police brutality is something like that.
HK citizens have all the means and the interest to spread knowledge of police brutality in their protests. I don't think the comparison with China and covid holds any water (even assuming that what you say about China's covid numbers is true, as "everybody knows" is not a proof).
> I've searched further and while I did find a few instances of police shooting at protesters, I didn't find deaths.
Not to deemphasize the seriousness of an actual death, but the difference between shooting at protestors (especially if in a crowd, but I have not seen the video) and casualties is a matter of luck.
True of course. For example a police agent shot at close range a protester that was attacking him with an iron bar [1]. Luckily it seems the protester survived.
But again, over many months of mass demonstrations, sometimes violent, the number of zero or very few actual deaths is significant.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/world/asia/hong-kong-shoo...
Not related to the topic but seeing this posted under my username this caused me a LOT of confusion until I counted the number of times the letter “A” occurred.
I know this will get accused of being whataboutism, but isn't it a bizarre sort of leftist chauvinism to make gestures like this about issues in ones own country in spite of similar things happening across the world on a weekly basis - especially for a project that touts itself as very international in scope?
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/6/1/21275944/chicago-weeke...
20 dead people in a week-end. Apparently, Blacks lives don't matter that much in Chicago. I guess it's only in the particular case that a white cop brutalizes a black suspect, in America, that the entire fucking world, from Germany to Tokyo, needs to be indignant, for some reason. It's totally organic and not a political manipulation at all /s
On what platform will the further notice be given?
Assuming you're still looking at Twitter for reasons other than @rustlang, the notice will be on Twitter when the tweets start again.
This is a "who shaved the barber?" puzzle; that situation should be forbidden by the content of the tweet - they're not allowed to tweet again until after they've given notice.
your noticing the notice and them resuming tweets are asynchronous. If we want to bring some logic inferences the only thing we can say is that their next tweet must say something about restarting to tweet.
Actually no, the only thing we could hold them up to is that before any tweet on the usual topics there should be a notice that normal tweets have begun again. It would be perfectly reasonable to now defend their position without a prior notice that they are going to also defend their position.
I’m assuming the notice exists independently of whether I see it or not. If the notice is a tweet then submitting the tweet happens before anyone could read it and the account has resumed tweeting before giving notice.
If the position is “we won’t tweet again until we do” then this is a meaningless announcement because that’s the default position of every twitter account.
The reason you are deriving a meaningless statement is because “we won’t tweet again until we do” is a terrible synopsis of that tweet. How about "we suspend how usual operation until further notice"?
If tomorrow morning they were to comment a justification of their choice that would still be outiside of the normal rust-related news the account concern itself and thus allowed.
Treating languages as naive logic statements is doing a disservice to both language and logic.
If it's doing a disservice to language and logic, why are you engaging with it talking about what would be "thus allowed"? Because it's fun, is why. I'm not confused by it, I'm taking their word as literal and asked a non-serious question that would go well with a thinking_face emoji.
Well the reason on my part is quite simple: I am quite pedantic on semantics :)
Another reason is that I would say I do not particularly like the part "let's take words literally stripping the intended meaning", my intention was at least to show an opposition to such interpretation.
If you were having just fun then don't take this as a criticism, but I will continue to oppose such interpretations :)
I guess they could have said "This account will pause tweeting until we start tweeting again" but that's a funny turn of phrase.
Progress need not be stopped or crippled because something sucks somewhere. In fact, progress should be focused on, in spite of the suck.
A break in posting to twitter isn't going to stop progress.