Yeah, he's the worst. I knew him in YC, and actually liked him. But I watched him spiral as he wasn't able to raise money for his startup, including starting to go to Trump rallies "out of curiosity". His FB posts began to include worse and worse rhetoric. It was crazy to watch him get radicalized in realtime. It ended in him harassing some (minority) YC founders who said they were scared by saying we should "Build the wall".
This thread is really eye-opening about how stagnant the discourse around free speech/wokeness/political correctness has been. Four years later and the conversation would be exactly the same today.
It's cultural trench warfare. We're in a very profitable (for media companies that harvest clicks off of outrage) stalemate.
We need to develop new rhetorical and ideological tools too push the conversation in any meaningful direction. We also need to be able to disseminate them.
I really hate how Sam didn't respond on the first objection about double standards when other founders openly sexually harassed women on the streets and got nothing for that.
Like...what, commentator just made it all up and nobody noticed? Or it actually happened and Sam doesn't have even the minimal plausible excuse?
He really drunk the kool-aid becoming part of the cult.
It is not everyday you see the CEO of a company saying "Gab Does Not Negotiate With Criminal Demons".
It is a strange use of language so it would be interesting to see what he defines a demon as. If he has said “Gab does not negotiate with evil people” no one would have cared but saying demon criminals brings forth images of horned beings we all see in fantasy movies, perhaps that’s the imagery he was going for.
Someone got freaked out because he said "build the wall"? Oh come on, I think its a magnanimous monument to stupidity but surely someone wouldn't actually be -afraid- after hearing that. Anger, resentment, disgust I understand. However being afraid of these people is ridiculous. Thanks for the article!
Edit: read the article. YC threw him out because he was harassing people, not because he was conservative or threatened anyone. Obviously you have to be respectful and tolerant in a group like YC regardless of your political leanings. I see why he got the boot, his comments were hot garbage.
I'm a minority, and I feel really fucking stupid that I have to say that so I don't get banned, but how on earth can anyone get expelled for saying they support the policy of the US government?
That is insular to the point of caricature for out of touch democrat staffing aids, not people trying to make money.
Private groups don't have to swear fealty to the government. Individuals are allowed and encouraged to dissent, form groups of dissention, and don't owe it to anyone to grant them access to that group.
Regardless of one's personal politics, insisting "if the government says it's ok, you shouldn't be allowed to reject someone who supports it" isn't really in line with the core ideals of the US, where YC is organized.
Alienating 50% of customers, and lets be honest these are the stupider customers you can more easily monetize, is not a good move for anyone trying to make money, which is the point of a startup.
A well thought out Gab that was politically neutral will be able to steal the most engaged facebook users and then then sell them gold, guns and bibles, or whatever else those folks enjoy in their spare time.
This isn't an issue of morals, it's an issue of money.
> Torba had also tweeted a screenshot of another founder’s Facebook comment (the founder’s name was removed) that “being a black, Muslim or woman in the USA is going to be very scary” with his own comment: “Build the wall.” Then, in another thread, a YC alum alluded to Torba’s behavior without mentioning him by name, prompting him to jump in: “Say my name when you talk about me, coward. Build the wall.”
He wasn't just publicly supporting Trump's border wall policy, he was doing it in an assholeish way, and directing that towards other YC founders. If he'd cut out the assholeish manner and the direction towards fellow founders, and just kept the publicly supporting Trump's policies part, I doubt YC would have responded in the same manner. That's consistent with Kat Manalac's email quoted in the same article – he was banned for behaving in a hostile way, not purely for his political beliefs.
Getting into the realm of Reddit tier comments in replying to this...
But in a genuine attempt to clear you up -
The people who made Nazi Germany a thing were "just citizens of Germany supporting the policy of the German government."
Institutions, such as YC, typically tend to have a set of morals/guidelines that they follow (and usually clearly state)
If it so happens that a policy of the US government goes against said morals/guidelines and you're in support of them... as what most see as a pretty important part of being in the US, they're free to give you the boot from their institution.
If they who be booted perceive their bootening as something that is illegal, they're also free to sue. Whether or not that lawsuit is credible/goes anywhere is up to a judiciary.
Replying to both your nearly invisible comments: On the one hand, yes, selling things to people is the point.
On the other hand, one does not need to be an ass to one group just to get trade from another. Tim Cook was part of the big tech group that used to meet with Trump, yet managed to maintain corporate policies that are (from my non American POV) stereotypical of the American left.
As both an former art student and Austrian living in Germany I don't think it is forbidden to think about how Hitler became Hitler.
Because for some time of his life Hitler was just some angry guy until he turned to a fully fledged genozidal fascist dictator.
Hitlers antisemitism was partly created by his rejection in the viennese academy and his hurt ego made him want to pay them back for the rest of his life.
Why should forbid ourselves from talking about that psychological mechanism? Because Hitler is not seen as a human but a demon? Because accepting Hitler as a human would mean this could happen again, with us in the role of the baddies?
When your main reaction to personal rejection is to search for a scapegoat, because you can't handle it otherwise you are going down a similar path. Surely most will calm down on the way, surely most will not do so in a political and historical environment that allows them to become violent or even genocidal, but why not talk about it?
There are many, many, more people who blamed scapegoats or were angry than became Hitler or Hitler-like figures. Likening Torba to Hitler because both of them are angry is an extreme and unproductive association. I think it's enough to say "You should treat people with respect" or "You shouldn't say that Mr. Torba", or even "Andrew Torba is a racist/transphobe/etc" without having to liken him to Hitler.
Hitler didn't switch from angry guy to legitimate problem overnight. He did things like forming a political party replete with armed forces and attempting a coup. I don't think building a mostly-failed Twitter clone is comparable.
Exactly this. Opinions apart, the guy is just a giant pain in the behind
If he was that obtuse and verbose about picking website colours he would have been booted the same way but of course a-holes pick the topics they know will cause the most controversy.
Just for context, the situation being referenced here is that Gab claims Donald Trump is verified on the platform but the address associated with the account is really the CEO's email (Kuhcoon was his YC company).
Maybe I'm missing some context, but what about that Tweet was disgusting versus just trashy or in poor taste? Compared to some of the crap on Twitter it's pretty tame.
SF (and the US tech sphere at large) isn't an environment where people are taught to bridge the divide and understand others who think differently than they do. But booting someone from YC for simply supporting a pretty mainstream viewpoint would be surprising, even in that environment.
Then again, I was downvoted for requesting confirmation of a statement that turned out to be inaccurate. So maybe SF (and the tech zeitgeist to which it is fused) has fallen off that cliff already. He wasn't booted for supporting the wall. He was booted for being an obnoxious asshole to many others, including YC peers.
I don't believe anyone in this thread has expressed surprise that racism and support for building the wall often go hand in hand.
But that doesn't mean all comments supporting a wall are necessarily racist. If you say "we need a border wall to stop cartels from profiting off of human trafficking, and should instead offer more visas for migrant workers from Central America," that's not a particularly racist view.
> SF (and the US tech sphere at large) isn't an environment where people are taught to bridge the divide and understand others who think differently than they do.
You're painting a very diverse group with quite a broad brush. People in SF and the US tech sphere come from all over the place (even outside the US) and from many different backgrounds. People in US tech circles live and work side-by-side with people from all around the world, many of whom have been directly materially harmed by the right's politics. That's not an opinion or some kind of political position; it's a fact of life. From that, I can only assume that most Trump supporters either don't know people who come from different backgrounds, or simply don't care about or actively dislike such people. (And yes, of course there are exceptions to that! I know some of them.)
For my part, I try very hard to understand why people support Trump. The fact that a quarter of the country voted for him last November frankly scares me, and I want to understand why, and find ways to bridge the gap. I personally find support for him back in 2016 pretty understandable (if still a bit gross), but I'm scared for the future of the country that he still maintained so much support through 2020 despite his alarmingly high number of daily lies while he was in office, and his overwhelmingly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-science, anti-rational attitude. Over the past few years, I've talked to several people in person about their support of Trump (and right-leaning policies in general), but (with one single exception) they were all obstinate and unwilling to accept objective facts that conflicted with their ideology, to the point that they'd get defensive and angry and make further conversation pointless.
At this point the only reason I can see to support Trump is that you're so fed up with the establishment that you just want to watch the world burn, even if the guy doing the burning has based nearly all his policy positions on lies, and doesn't actually intend to help his supporters at all.
> But booting someone from YC for simply supporting a pretty mainstream viewpoint would be surprising, even in that environment.
As you noted, he wasn't booted for supporting a mainstream viewpoint; he was booted for harassing other YC founders with his political views, harassment that took a decidedly racist/xenophobic turn.
> But that doesn't mean all comments supporting a wall are necessarily racist. If you say "we need a border wall to stop cartels from profiting off of human trafficking, and should instead offer more visas for migrant workers from Central America," that's not a particularly racist view.
True, but unfortunately the overtly racist calls for a border wall tend to drown out the people who are attempting to be reasonable, so it's understandable for nearly anyone -- especially an immigrant -- to have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the topic.
Beyond that, where's the evidence that a border wall even helps with the things you're talking about? From what I understand, most human (and drug) trafficking takes place by plane or boat, or over land using legal ports of entry. And that's the thing that a lot of us find suspicious: the reasons stated for building a border wall might sound reasonable on the surface, but when you dig more, you find that a border wall doesn't actually make a meaningful dent in the problem being talked about. So then you can only draw one of two conclusions: either the person is woefully ignorant about the benefit of a border wall, or they know that a border wall isn't helpful and are just promoting it for xenophobic reasons. And when someone in the first camp still supports the wall after you give them evidence that it won't solve what they're talking about, they somehow still support it, so you naturally assume that they've actually been in the xenophobic camp the entire time.
Also, to zero in on one part of it:
> "... and should instead offer more visas for migrant workers from Central America"
Where are the border-wall-supporters who also support this? I haven't heard of any, but I do admit it's possible they're much quieter voices than the people who advocate for closing the border entirely, to the point of drowning them out.
But I've really veered too far off into politics-land, which tends not to contribute to productive discussion on HN, so I should probably stop...
Diversity of opinion is about much more than ethnic background. Also, just to be clear, I haven't said anything about Trump in my three other comments in this thread. CTRL+F me.
> As you noted, he wasn't booted for supporting a mainstream viewpoint; he was booted for harassing other YC founders with his political views, harassment that took a decidedly racist/xenophobic turn.
The original comment didn't link to additional information, and simply said the dude was booted for saying "build the wall" to someone else. Seemed like an extreme reaction by YC, so I asked if that's really what happened, which is when the link was provided and more nuance was commented by others. Check the timestamp on my comment. There was another guy, too, who had the same reaction as me at around the same time, but he was downvoted to oblivion for some reason (again, the intolerant SF zeitgeist) so you may not have seen his comment.
> I do admit it's possible they're much quieter voices
Bingo. The extremists on one side are so quick to cancel the extremists on the other side, that the people in the middle just shut up and keep their heads down. The end result is actually a worse public conversation, polarized and undamped.
It actually does make sense if your goal is not to stop immigration but criminal immigration and drug trafficking. People that could never received a visa in the first place due to a criminal background are who it really keeps out.
He got expelled from YC for saying much worse than that. You can find archived copies of his old social media posts if you really feel like rolling in filth.
It's a severe disservice to non-bigoted, non-toxic people who struggle with a myriad of mental health issues to reduce a description of that specific person to "he must be mentally ill".
Though undoubtedly it's entirely possible to be a cancerous individual and also have mental health issues simultaneously.
One of the wisest things I ever heard from a mental health professional:
"There's a normal range of asshole, beyond that, it's mental illness"
There is an entire range of diagnosable mental illnesses, below that there are entire clusters of personality disorders that don't quite raise to the diagnosis of the others.
When it comes to personality disorders, especially, the current consensus of the psychiatric community (for better or worse) is that they're made and formed in childhood. Essentially, many of these people are acting out things that were done to them; quite possibly through no fault of their own in their early development.
Of course the results of their unacceptable behavior is what it is but there is some credence to the theory that these people are suffering in their own right. We're miserable just digesting their thoughts one tweet at a time. Meanwhile they walk around with that all day everyday.
When you are on receiving side of the "assholeness beyond normal range", it is significantly destructive.
It does actual real world significant damage to actual real world people who then suffer a lot. If such person have real power, say over salaries and firings, the damage is financial and long term very very quick.
It is not just it is unacceptable in abstract way. It is that innocent people are made suffer.
You’re getting downvoted but I think this actually is worth considering.
It doesn’t devalue diagnoses. These categories and labels are to some degree arbitrary, and the underlying conditions are often very elastic and amorphous.
The categories and labels are very helpful in some ways, but it’s unhelpful to rely on them exclusively to inform yourself if someone is having mental issues or not.
I’m not sure if this is what you were touching on or not.
That's what I was going for, was definitely not trying to say people don't have issues. It's helpful to try to treat conditions based on what has helped other people with similar symptoms in the past, but it's still just pattern matching, there is no hard scientific line we can point to and say "this person is bipolar".
I believe to be a cancerous individual, there is typically going to be some degree of mental illness manifesting. Most people are nowhere near as angry, aggressive, unreasonable, and perhaps delusional as he is.
He’s a professional, a CEO in the spotlight, and his response has been to act with impotent rage on the internet. There is something wrong with the picture. He’s acting way, way outside the bounds of his professional role and failing to function as a decent person as well. This often indicates some degree of mental illness.
I don’t mean to “reduce” a person to mental illness at all. I think it has broad and important implications rather than the inverse. I also don’t agree at all that one person’s illness can be a disservice to another.
not from usa, but genuinely curious. why is "not talking to X journals" disgusting? many people do that because they don't want to be on a journal with an editorial line they don't like. am I missing something about the guy or the story?
Not talking to a journalist because of their political ideology is understandable to me, although this person probably has a very broad definition of what a communist is.
Not talking to someone based on their religion on the other hand is really quite rude, shallow and discriminatory.
How is that so? Race, sexual orientation, gender, age, sure. Religion on the other hand is no different from ideology (or rather, in my view many left/right-wing ideologies are not very different from religions) - they can be chosen and abandoned freely, and they are prescriptive.
We know you're shocked but might you not have provided at least one comment (the worst, say) as a an example? On a scale of human actions from 1 to 10, how disgusting?
(Edit: His comments were worse than I let on; here's the full context https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-...)