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by DashAnimal 1510 days ago
I don't know Timnit so I won't argue she is the most toxic or the events were correct/incorrect. However, your reply made me recall this thread from July 2020 (before Timnit and Google parted).

https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1278565265135906816?t...

I just cannot imagine calling someone in your company out like that on a public platform, especially for the crime of not speaking. Both are seniors and that behavior seemed anything but, to me anyway.

2 comments

I do wonder if mid 2020 will go down in history as peak cancel. I definitely have a sense that it is becoming less acceptable to publicly air one's grievances in the name of social justice. "Silence is violence" is another phrase that was very popular at that time. From my limited perspective, it seems like that same slogan today would be much less acceptable and get much less play.

Of course, two years is far too small a lag to do any real historical analysis of the situation. But it seems like the winds are blowing in a different direction now. I wonder where they will take us. Surely we live in exciting and interesting times.

Calling both "seniors" is a bit of a misnomer, like it's technically true but at the time Jeff was, if memory serves, Timnit's manager's manager's manager (maybe one more?), the level of seniority is not the same.

And the callout was explicitly for (internally) claiming to want to be supportive, but failing to do so externally. It doesn't seem unreasonable in context.