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by jasonwatkinspdx 2021 days ago
Last I saw the internal petition supporting her was at above 1,200.

Stereotyping is doing a lot of work here, driving people's assumptions about Gebru.

2 comments

There are significant incentives for anyone critical of Gebru to remain (publicly) silent.

1. If someone is to sign a petition for Gebru, what could they lose?

2. If someone were to speak out, under their name, against Gebru, what could they lose?

3. If someone is neutral on the issue and a pro Gebru petition gets passed around asking for support, what is the path of least resistance?

See also https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...

I mean, there’s no counter petition (nor should there be) so it’s pretty tough to know whether those 1,200+ are representative.

Where I work, if someone is ousted, people might talk about the person’s toxicity or whatever got them fired one on one or in small groups, in a pretty off the record kind of way.

I’d bet the people who agree with the petition think it’s representative and the people who disagree think it’s not representative (“people are generally like me” is a reasonable prior).