[woodruffw]

> I think the people involved have consumed so much American state-affiliated media that they simply don’t ask themselves these questions.

Influence is one of these “how’s the water” problems. We don’t have any evidence that Rust’s release team is getting their viewpoints from state-affiliated media any more than they’re getting them from Iranian dissidents on Twitter.

To put it another way: interests align all the time, and evidence of their alignment is not evidence of influence (much less collusion).

[pclmulqdq]

It appears that the interests of the Rust community have aligned with the interests of state-sponsored American media several times now, and on several disparate subjects, none of which are related to software.

At some point, that's not a coincidence, that's an echo chamber.

[woodruffw]

“Twice” is not several. You’re also omitting the part where the positions in question are overwhelmingly popular positions, both in the US and everywhere else (except the governments of Russia and Iran).

You can gripe about politics and software if you’d like. But there’s no evidence of an “echo chamber” (what does that even mean in this context?), much less collusion with the US government or media.

[pclmulqdq]

I don't know where you got "twice" when the article we are discussing has 3 instances, and those are only instances of political messaging in rust release logs, not any of the other myriad references to politics that appear around the Rust community.

One of the three - the police brutality statement from release 1.44 - is US-centric and very much controversial in the US. That statement was issued in June 2020, when about 40% of the US disagreed with the reference (which was a reference to a specific instance of police violence). The other two statements had about 75% support at the time they were issued (25% disagreed).

One of the problems of political messaging in evergreen things like programming languages is that you can make popular statements at the time and they can become unpopular. At this point, a majority of US residents would not support the fact that the 1.44 release had that message, and a majority may be upset with all the support for Ukraine (a recent poll said that 57% of US residents thought it was time for peace in Ukraine).

An echo chamber is a community in which people who agree with each other echo each others' views, thereby causing people in the echo chamber to believe that their views are more popular than they are. Many tech employees live in an echo chamber where US progressive politics (pushed by the US media) is the dominant view, despite being unpopular in the US and around the world.

I don't think there's any evidence of state collusion. There is a lot of evidence that the community of Rust maintainers and power-users is unfortunately insular (an echo chamber), and follows the views of US media a lot more than a healthy community probably should.