[gavanwoolery]

Yep, in fact he supposedly supports Ron Paul, but Nimble America is definitely a more Trump-ish, alt-right-ish type of thing.

According to Luckey, they made some memes that he liked. Maybe they were not racist memes, but I do not know. Maybe Luckey did not know about some of their worse memes. Anyhow, he threw them a chunk of money. We can infer without greater evidence that Luckey is racist simply because he donated to something.

All of that said, the one and only attack on free speech is censorship. Censorship comes in many forms, including the form of shaming people. I think what the alt-right does is dumb, but at the same time, they hide in their own dark corner of the internet and I never have to interact with them so I am fine carrying about my business. Luckey donating to Nimble America had a similar lack of effect on me.

[jaredklewis]

Shaming people is censorship? I mean maybe, but then the spectrum is rather large.

When I think censorship I think people being fined, thrown in cages, or even killed for saying or writing the wrong kind of thing.

That is a very different thing than, "Shame on you! What would your mother think?"

[gavanwoolery]

I totally agree with you, bad phrasing on my part. I'm talking about the less trivial aspects of "shame" as it applies to carrying a reputation, say, in Silicon Valley - thus affecting who will hire you, who will fire you, even who will refuse to connect with you in business.

Of course, you are totally free to develop opinions about people - but at the same time laws for slander, libel, and defamation exist for a good reason. Many people made Luckey out to be Hitler, but if you met him in real life you'd probably find it hard to insist on this comparison.

[wccrawford]

I think we've reached a point in society where having your livelihood taken from you is the same as being jailed, aka "thrown in cages".

The difference, of course, is that it isn't the government doing it. It's the general population.

I'm of 2 minds about it because I don't want to support anyone that supports racism.

But I also feel that people deserve second chances. People do learn from their mistakes, and they have to be allowed to continue on afterwards or there's no point in changing.

I haven't heard of Luckey apologizing, but that isn't surprising because the media doesn't think that's good enough news to broadcast. They only publish the worst stuff, not the best. He might have done so and I'd have no idea.

[shepardrtc]

>I think we've reached a point in society where having your livelihood taken from you is the same as being jailed, aka "thrown in cages". >The difference, of course, is that it isn't the government doing it. It's the general population.

That's society saying that one's behavior is unacceptable and that it won't do business with them. I find that perfectly acceptable. Its not being forced by a single entity, but rather a general consensus is reached among everyone.

> I haven't heard of Luckey apologizing

Because he hasn't.

[psyc]

It isn't behavior anymore. It's political opinions. Usually mainstream ones. Often witch-hunt style - i.e. the victim didn't even hold the opinion attributed to them by the mob.

This isn't a good norm.

[shepardrtc]

> It isn't behavior anymore. It's political opinions. Usually mainstream ones.

Empowering groups with money is a behavior.

> Often witch-hunt style - i.e. the victim didn't even hold the opinion attributed to them by the mob.

What opinion was attributed to Luckey that he didn't seem to hold or support?

[wccrawford]

I don't think he was talking about Luckey for the attributed opinion bit.

I've seen a lot of social media that's based on a misinterpretation of a Twitter comment, and people screaming for them to be fired for some kind of prejudice that never actually existed. It quickly got to the point that I no longer trust the general public to be right about anything that involves social media. Even cursory sanity checks fail.

[sangnoir]

> The difference, of course, is that it isn't the government doing it. It's the general population.

Do you honestly think this socio-political pressure is new? It's now visible due to how well-connected the world is now and it resonates a bit because the victims are people HN potentially identify with.

This has been going on for ages and is not limited to the left or right, labels have been flying for ages: n!@@&^-lover, RINO, fascist, cuckservertive, racist, and on and on.

[hyperdunc]

> We can infer without greater evidence that Luckey is racist simply because he donated to something.

No we can't. And this is the kind of lazy reasoning that has already diluted the word "racist" significantly.

[hitekker]

> We can infer without greater evidence that Luckey is racist simply because he donated to something.

Snark punctuating a hazy, misinformed comment is ironically one of the calling cards of the alt-right: incoherency of speech to provoke incoherency of thought.