SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/03/21/sendgrid-fires-adria-richards/ <comment><USER2> I really wish that this whole thing could have ended amicably (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs [by the way, the guy who was fired _has_ already publicly apologized]).

It's too bad that sendgrid had to fire her, I would never wish that somebody had their livlihood taken from them like that, but her job was to be a developer evangelist, which is a job she isn't realistically capable of performing anymore.

I would feel _really uncomfortable_ if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?

And honestly, she can't even function as a sort of "women's tech evangelist" anymore. Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are _furious_ with her over how badly this portrays women.

It sucks...but this is on par with firing a dev who can't program.

<comment><USER3> > "Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious > with her over how badly this portrays women."

Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online _to her_ is what takes my breath away. Comments calling her a "cunt" and saying she should be raped (this I found on her blog, presumably before she had a chance to delete it.)

As a woman in tech, I deal with sexism all the time. And it's usually not blatant, "blah blah a woman's place is in the home get out of my office" type of stuff. That's egregious and I would shut that down. It's usually less obvious. Like the guy at a conference I went to recently (with my fiance, Brian) who asked me my name, asked Brian his name, and then proceeded to spend 10 minutes talking to Brian and trying to figure out why he (who is a front- end developer at a startup) was at an entrepreneurial conference.

My fiance: I'm here because of Erica. (points at me)

Guy: Oh. But I don't get it. Why are you here?

Brian: She comes here because she's a successful entrepreneur and likes to hang out with other entrepreneurs. I'm tagging along with her.

Guy: Oh. But you're not an entrepreneur...so why are you here?

This went on like this for several minutes. Dude never said a single word to me, and finally wandered off, confused.

Or a more recent scenario at SXSW where I was talking to a huge, well-known tech big-wig (founder of a multi-billion-dollar tech company) who proceeded to make a flippant, condescending remark about his wife--and then stared at me, the only woman nearby, to gauge my reaction. Borderline sexist, but definitely unprofessional. What do I do? Do I call him out by name? Right now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action. I'm horribly disappointed because this is someone I looked up to and hoped to have as a mentor.

These are just recent examples. I am hard-pressed to name a conference I've attended where one of these "borderline" sexist issues hasn't happened. Oh, wait, I can...the coworking conference I recently attended, where nearly 50% of the attendees were women.

Was Adria's reaction, to _this_ as an isolated event, out of hand? Yes. But when this happens to you every single day--and in her case, multiple times a day!--sometimes you can't take it anymore and you just snap. I get where she's coming from, even if I wouldn't have done the same thing in her situation.

This doesn't portray _women_ as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly. It's as frustrating to me as it is to anyone else. The blatant sexism is mostly gone, but the undertones remain. And that makes it harder than ever to gauge what the "right" reaction is as a woman when one of these events happens around you.

<comment><USER4> You think women are having hard time in tech ? then you sure dont want to be black like me ,with people refusing to work with "niggers" ...

<comment><USER5> Discrimination is not a zero-sum game.

Just because people are talking about the way women are treated doesn't mean that people don't care about or are ignoring how black people are treated.

Your experience does not negate the offenses directed at women, nor does their experience negate yours.

It's unacceptable to treat people like this full stop, whether you're in tech or not.

<comment><USER6> A) 2nd wave feminism is a zero-sum ideology. Try talking about the education gap in public education or male rape and see how fast it turns into a victim- hood pissing contest.

B) 2nd wave feminists see gender as the most fundamental form of discrimination with economical and ethnocentric discrimination being derivative and secondary. I can see why an African-American individual would be offended by middle class white women portraying their victim-hood as equal in severity to his.

Not that the OP is guilty of either offense but it's cliche behavior in feminist circles.

<comment><USER5> Which feminist circles are these?

How many 2nd wave feminists do you know? The only ones i know of live in all female enclaves in rural areas.

I kind of regret the knee jerk posting, because i think camus intent wasn't to convey what i was accusing him of conveying. I think it was just a poor choice of words.

But I do think that equal attention isn't necessarily paid to issues of discrimination against white women vs women (or anybody) of color. But that doesn't negate the legitimacy of the offenses that folks have to bear.

But solidarity in the face of discrimination is like one of the most important things for actual equality. If those who believe in equality don't support each other, then we're all really up shit creek.

<comment><USER6> >How many 2nd wave feminists do you know? The only ones i know of live in all female enclaves in rural areas.

I live next to a women's college and my ex-gf comes from a family of 2nd wave feminists.

>But I do think that equal attention isn't necessarily paid to issues of discrimination against white women vs women (or anybody) of color.

That's an understatement. Look at the aftermath of raising rape awareness in America. Majority of the resources have gone to college campuses and middle class white areas. Even though these are the groups of women least likely to be the victims of abuse. Feminists have monopolized these resources to women of their own class and ethnicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whether you agree with what she did, she was their "developer evangelist", and there is no chance she'll ever be able to effectively do that job for them ever again.

<comment><USER8> Or any company for that matter. She's alienated herself among the developer community at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given the way this has escalated I'm expecting it to have engulfed the entire civilized world by the end of the week. You Americans are crazy.

<comment> mkr-hn We didn't invent sensationalist media.

<comment><USER10> There's only five things we do better than everyone else: music, movies, microcode, high-speed pizza delivery, and sensationalist media.

<comment><USER11> For the ones in the unknown, it's a quote from Snow Crash. Liberal one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel that all the threats and horrible comments she received are disgusting.

I didn't find their joke offensive. But thats irrelevant. She had a right to complain. But not by posting their picture on twitter.

Posting that picture was a really rotten thing to do. Its an act of bullying. I can take a picture of anyone and they would have said whatever I put on the caption. And its up to them to prove to the internet that they didn't do it.

<comment><USER13> She had a right to complain, but not like that, not with a smug attitude, the oddity of taking a photo of two guys having a private conversation (although she heard them, does not make it a open conversation).

Those two guys could easily be and my partner making silly phallus jokes because we fucking like to.

You have no right to be offended. Which is why KKK and Westboro has freedom of speech.

What she did was beyond that, it was publicly hang two guys who did not even speak to her, or about her. For her own amusement and branding. Good riddance. People like that are scum.

<comment><USER14> "Those two guys could easily be and my partner making silly phallus jokes because we fucking like to. You have no right to be offended. Which is why KKK and Westboro has freedom of speech."

Sure, you can make jokes about wangs as much as you want. Do so in a public setting and yes you can and will offend people. And yes, they have a RIGHT to be offended by it.

It's inappropriate behavior in a public setting ESPECIALLY when you're representing your employer at a conference.

However, frankly, the resulting firing's on both sides of the table demonstrate the immaturity of each sides employers - and that is what people should be raging about.

<comment><USER13> Sorry I wasn't making my point across. Lets put it this way, taking a photo of two guys (probably geo-tagged) and uploading on internet because they said something you generally don't like.

_That is what happened_

How does she know those two guys aren't on protected identity, or have issues with being online on social media? I don't have Facebook because I don't want to be tagged on anything.

She had no fucking right to do so. And it's incredibly offensive. Some asshole turns around and takes a photo of you and uploads it, even though you had _NOTHING_ to do with that asshole.

There was no bi-directional communication between them. No argument. In fact, there wasn't even a path of communication between them. She heard words that triggered her and decided to act on it.

Not to mention.... it was not an insult towards her or about her. It was an immature joke. I personally _LIKE_ immature jokes, so does my partner. I don't say them about other people. I have a penis, and I reserve the right to make penis jokes.

You can move to a different chair. Or you can tell him to stop for a moment.

She fucked up, not a little, but big time. She's the fucking "villian" here.

I am OK with her getting fired, but not the other guy. He seriously did nothing wrong and got hatched for something as trivial as a fucking joke.

I can't post this enough: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gciegyiLYtY>

You have no fucking right to upload a photo of two people that LITERALLY did nothing to you.

<comment><USER14> I agree with you that her actions were a bit on the obscene side.

However, you are failing to see the import here.

"because they said something you generally don't like. _This is what happened_"

No, this is not what happened. The developer said an offensive joke, as a representative of his employer, at a conference full of his peers. He behaved in a disrespectful and unprofessional manner and deserves all the shame heaped on him (aside from being fired).

Dick jokes are not something that people "generally don't like". They are inappropriate in this setting. Joke around with your buddies at the bar all you want, but on company time and when you're in a professional setting, SHUT UP.

<comment><USER13> I really don't agree. The jokes (I read them) are not offensive. Even Github sells <http://shop.github.com/products/fork-you-shirt-mens-medium>

And I really dislike the Python Goons for kicking those guys out.

It would be one thing if they said something about gender or racial stuff that actually targets people.

I can fork both genders, especially if one of them has a big dongle, so forking as a joke, is gender-free.

But this was just fucked up. I am glad she got fired. People like that are jaded and will be difficult to be around. I would not want to be around someone I need to tip toe around.

Dongles für alle!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> After reading her full explanation of the "incident" and the PyCon code of conduct, I have to disagree completely with what Adria did.

Two guys were making some silly, completely non-sexist jokes between themselves that mixed 'dongles' and 'forking' with a bit of innuendo. Despite the fact that they weren't directed at her -- or anyone, for that matter -- she took personal offense and decided the best course of action was to publicly shame them (picture and all).

Her reaction was far more immature than the humor that triggered it. If you're 30-something years old and still can't handle overhearing a bit of lighthearted middle school humor, it's probably time to move into a cave and cancel your internet service.

</comment><comment><USER16> Although this would seem to be another knee-jerk, exaggerated reaction, and I personally believe that she shouldn't have been fired (and that the first guy shouldn't have been either), we should also consider the SendGrid CEO's position; his company is under attack, might fail, so getting rid of the person whom this attack is targeting seems like the obvious thing to do.

I'm guessing that SendGrid will loose some other customers now, as a result of this last action. Suspending her would be more reasonable.

<comment><USER17> The DDOS attack on SendGrid's web and mail servers stopped about an hour and a half after they announced that they were firing Richards. Also the community backlash against Richards was huge, while there weren't many supporting her actions. From SendGrid's point of view, this was a good business decision.

<comment><USER14> No, it sure as hell was not a "good business decision".

They got attacked by errant children expressing sad rage at something that while bad, was not deserving of retaliation against the company. So the result: the company ditches one of their employees for very dubious reasons.

Basically they caved to internet bullying and validated every sexist moron on the internet. Well done Sendgrid. Well done.

<comment><USER18> No.

She made a big stink about what she overheard in a private conversation between two friends, and posted it on Twitter. Probably would not have been a big deal except that one of them, a father of three, was fired as a result. Not her direct doing, but seemingly a consequence of her actions.

She then was found to be a bit of a hypocrite, based on her own tweets: <https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425> (she makes her own dick joke)

Some more digging found that she's made some strangely bizarre comments about racism, saying "Black people can't be racist". <https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858>

She then says that her company stands behind her, bringing them into the mix. <https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328>

That was her undoing.

She made a big deal out of something that shouldn't have been, handled it in a totally unprofessional manner, brought a bunch of unwanted attention to her and her employer, and made her association to her employer a problem for her employer.

She was the author of her demise, nobody else.

EDIT: Edited to better reflect the timeline, which I totally mis-tense-ified initially.

<comment><USER16> > She then makes some strangely bizarre comments about racism

Actually, that was not "then", that was 4 years ago. Doesn't make it any less wrong or racist, just saying that it's not connected to this scandal.

<comment><USER18> True. My bad, and edited previous comment appropriately.

Seems that she got the attention she sought, but it quickly became a case of "be careful what you wish for". A little bit of digging into her tweet history brought some real gems to the forefront which didn't help her current situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The way heads are rolling, I wonder if I'm next?

I'm the guy in green in the center of the photo (completely oblivious to this whole situation).

<comment><USER20> Did you notice this whole thing going on while it was happening? Did you hear the jokes? Where these guys obnoxious etc? Or was she?

<comment><USER19> I didn't hear a thing. The keynote and/or lightning talks that were happening during this were pretty loud, and I was paying attention to those (although it certainly doesn't look it from this snap, heh).

<comment><USER21> Yeah, maybe it's because I'm hard of hearing, but I find that I _never_ hear inside-voice comments from the audience when I'm listening to a presentation. I actually have some pity for those whose hearing is so acute that they suffer from such distractions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't help but feel that if I, as a male, had posted the same tweet in response to some obnoxious guys behind me making situationally inappropriate comments and I was in her shoes as an evangelist at the time, no one would have batted an eye.

Granted, I probably wouldn't have written a long blog post about it, but I've certainly talked to event organizers in the past about obnoxious people before and had them ejected.

<comment><USER23> Talking to event organizers is an order of magnitude different from what happened here. I'd like to believe the same outcome would have happened in this instance even if it were you.

<comment><USER24> It most certainly wouldn't have. There are legions of morons shouting about feminists in almost every discussion about these events, even when Adria said she doesn't identify as one.

After this whole debacle, I've given up hope for both the self-proclaimed "hacker" community and the tech industry at large. The response to a woman posting a photograph of two people and reporting them to convention staff should not be "send her death and rape threats," "dig up every bad thing she's ever done in an attempt to discredit her," and "DDoS her employer."

It's disgusting, and I'm not going to cop-out and say, "Well both sides were at fault!" No, the side that stirred this non-story into a full-on witch hunt resulting in her harassment and termination is the side at fault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One thing I'm really trying to fathom here is that people really think the dongle joke, in this context, was sexist and not just mildly so.

Let's say a presenter put up a slide where Florida was pink and and somebody said to their buddy, "Ok, now it really looks like a penis."

Are large numbers of us really taking the side that this joke would be incredibly offensive, abusive and oppressive to women and should result in the pair being ejected from the conference.

Because that _seems_ to be the stance many are taking. And I'm bewildered. To be clear, it's juvenile. I'd personally say "Are you guys 12? Cut it out."

Can we reserve our moral outrage for the people saying "That's so gay." or "She wants the 'D'" or "At least it's not black" in the same situation? You know, things that are actually offensive and problematic.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does it really matter _why_ she was fired? I don't understand why these two companies, SendGrid and PlayHaven couldn't have gotten together, with these two employees, and communicated about the entire incident and publicly come to an amicable resolution over it.

It seems that knee jerk reactions from everyone has done little to foster workable environments for anyone. I will say this though, it's out of control.

Firing employees on either side just screams of "we don't know how to deal with this..." All of this has descended from a fucking private dongle joke amongst peers.

</comment><comment><USER27> This post contains no more information than did the other deleted threads. The past threads were deleted because HN mods think that the announcement is fake. This Mashable story adds no new reporting.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, a verbal confirmation seems justified under the circumstances.

<comment><USER29> From SendGrid's Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/SendGrid/posts/10151502570463967>

Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.

<comment><USER28> By verbal I meant spoken, in person or over the telephone. there was some confusion earlier about the authenticity of the FB posting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> She could have simply turned around and told them that she found what they were saying offensive and that would have been the end of it. Instead she choose to publicly humiliate and shame them, at the cost of one man's job, and that was going to far. Frankly, she acted like a bully.

When I saw some other post she'd made on Twitter where she joked about telling a guy to stuff a sock in his pants for TSA searches I really felt like she was the bad actor here... it made her seem more than a little hypocritical.

</comment><comment><USER31> <http://imgur.com/5tbXR2c>

<comment><USER32> I don't understand what's wrong with this. This is quite literally the definition of racism in a sociological context: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Sociological>. You're going to need to disprove a lot of social science before you tackle this definition.

<comment> josh-j That's all a bit silly. We have a common understanding or definition of what racism is and it connotes something immoral. _Some_ sociologists define racism as something else which also connotes something immoral. The common thread is that both definitions connote immorality, and so if something falls under either definition, it's still bad and so the whole arguing over which definition to use is moot.

For example, if an organized group of American Asians began touting their superiority over other races and advocated and lobbied for more Asians in positions of power because they're superior, wouldn't you still consider their actions to be immoral?

People can use whichever definition they like, but they need to be open about it, and they need to realize by using another definition they're not also redefining or constraining the connotation -- that's begging the question.

So, black people cannot be sociologically-racist-therefore-immoral against white people, but they can be common-usage-racist-therefore-immoral against white people.

(I should also note that labeling something with a word that connotes a negative or positive affect isn't much of an argument for the applicability of that connotation to that something. It's a heuristic more than it is an argument.)

<comment><USER32> No, you're missing that racism is a systematic oppression of a certain group or people. HN isn't the best place for speaking about social issues, so I won't write you an essay about what's wrong about what you're saying. I'll just say I believe you and others are conflating the terms prejudice and racism. I'm guessing that's what you're describing by "common-usage-racis[m]." Indeed, black people can be prejudiced against white people, and that prejudice can be because of race. Racism, however, needs a little bit more than that. Particularly, institutionalization.

<comment> josh-j You're lacking an understanding of linguistics and philosophy. Both usages are no more correct than the other, and the point of such usages is to ascribe a connotation to a cluster of things along a continuum. Arguing over definitions is pointless (I can create my own definition of racism and it will be equally valid), the point is what they connote.

<comment><USER32> We'll never agree because I'm arguing about what racism is (a semantic argument) and you're arguing about how racism is defined (a pedantic argument). Perhaps my original post was a red herring. I was merely justifying that what she said lines up with a known definition, not that it is the ONLY correct definition.

Also, your definition of what racism connotes is severely lacking as well. Simplifying racism to "something that connotes immorality" is a gross oversimplification.

<comment> josh-j You have it backwards. I don't care how racism is defined. I care about whatever the word "racism" points to in the real world. But you have to realize that a word can point to anything you want it to point to.

And not only that, but words have denotations and connotations. "Ugly", in common usage, denotes and points to a set of subjective physical characteristics. "Ugly" also connotes and points to a negative affect that isn't explicit in its denotation.

I'm not simply saying that racism is "something that connotes immorality", but that is what we're connotating when we use that word in its various denotations (although, it's not necessarily the case). Racism's denotation can be literally anything. I can say, for example, that it's racist to call Canadians effusive pushovers even though "Canadian" is a nationality rather than a race.

And people do exactly that. In the U.K., for example, it's common for people to call people that insult the French "racist."

Language is fluid.

So, I think you can see why people are affronted when someone says "black people cannot be racist" without putting it within a certain context. The implication is that it's not immoral for black people to act denotatively common-usage-racist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The internet does a lot of good but times like this it can be scary – or just plain wrong.

Once the wheels of motion are turning there is _nothing_ anyone can do, even the way Hacker News behaved with it's mob mentality was absurd – two people got fired, SendGrid was brought offline, some poor lady received death threats, everyone was humiliated in some capacity, and by the looks of the comment thread on the SendGrid facebook page, equality in tech has been notched back a few decades.

Talk about blowing something out of proportion: some guy made a _dongle_ joke to a friend of his at a conference. It's kind of terrifying if you think how easily you could have been one of the characters in this. You see so many times when some poor person has his personal details spread over the internet based on a rumour. What do you even do when this happens?

Mountain. Mole hill.

</comment><comment><USER34> In events like these I'm glad I'm living under protective labor laws and not in the US. That would have forced all parties involved to talk it out like grown-ups instead of resorting to terminating those involved.

Now there is no kind of resolution, but two people are unemployed and two companies are damaged. Nice going.

<comment><USER35> This is the second post I've read recently about the US having no labor laws. Is that what everybody outside the US thinks?

There's tons of laws and certain types of jobs are very difficult to fire people (unionized industries and govt. jobs). And there are laws and lawsuits for wrongful termination.

Private companies still have labor laws they have to obey. Except for certain types of issues employees can be fired. Depending in the size of the company things may be more or less formal.

<comment><USER36> If I had to guess, Adria at least has a pretty easily won harassment lawsuit against SendGrid for this. She was fired for speaking out about an instance of sexually inappropriate humor while she was acting in a professional capacity. Um? Even if you think the _way_ she spoke out was not appropriate, you can't fire someone for this without running some serious risks of large lawsuits.

For anyone who's curious, the texts I'm working off of are <http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm> and <http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/facts-retal.cfm>. It seems pretty clear that Adria is a covered individual and that an adverse action has been taken. SendGrid is almost certainly a covered entity. The remaining question is whether Adria has engaged in a protected activity and if that is what she was fired for.

The protected activity I think most closely matches what she did is, "Complaining to anyone about alleged discrimination against oneself or others." Now, in the case of this document, what they mean by alleged discrimination is any harassing behavior. But, I believe it is also typically only such behaviors by someone working at the covered entity. So the open question in my mind is whether the law covers adverse actions for complaints about harassment by third parties. I guess we'd have to ask a lawyer.

To the question of whether that is what she was fired for. If it isn't, it's quite a coincidence. I think it would be hard for SendGrid to convince a judge that she was fired for something other than her complaint.

<comment><USER37> It's retaliation if Adria filed a charge against SendGrid and _then_ was fired.

"because they filed a charge of discrimination, because they complained to their employer or other covered entity about discrimination on the job, or because they participated in an employment discrimination proceeding"

I don't think this holds water.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, if this is a total statement of the law's provisions, then it is probable that this is not retaliation. However, if discrimination covers making complaints about the discriminatory behavior or harassment of third parties (i.e. the gentlemen she posted the picture of), then it would. I would be interested to find out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing that I haven't seen anyone here comment on: so much for company loyalty.

Say or do something wrong and your company will not even remotely try to get your back. You will be dumped as soon as feasibly possible.

Both companies involved here are disgusting.

<comment><USER38> On the upside, this means that employees don't owe their companies any loyalty either. Fair play, and all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When the dust settles, all that will have really changed is male workers being even more overly-sensitive to every syllable they utter when a female colleague is within earshot.

I've personally said "Just fork her" many times at work in front of my female co-workers without an afterthought. While I will continue to do so, if a new female employee starts after today I may just wait for her to make a penis joke before I feel comfortable enough to suggest copying someone's repository to their personal one for the sake of code contribution and/or modification.

Sweet cake-frosting-Christ - this all could have been avoided with a head turn and a "Hey, do you guys mind not speaking like that here? It's making me uncomfortable".

</comment><comment><USER40> This reminds me why I hate real names on public social networking when talking about these types of issues.

Whatever this woman's original motive was got immediately lost in the shallow exchanges which follow, but the commentary becomes important because it is now personal.

I feel more contempt for the real name trolls now gloating over her firing too. None of whom I assume were present at the original event. The internet is full of bile, but I'm happier with anonymous bile.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does work fairly well as a honeypot though.

</comment></comment><comment> shawn-butler Can you imagine how bad this is going to get when Google glass is on every nose?

I'm usually the guy seeing opportunity in every "doomsday" prediction but, I really see no upside for most people in being recorded all the time.

This is going to compound cyber-bullying effects by orders of magnitude.

I find the focus on her gender irrelevant. Is the story any different if it is a man vilifying and excoriating women he overhears? No. She is/was basically incompetent. A tech evangelist is basically a salesperson, her job is to create goodwill. You don't report your customers as offensive even when you think they are. And you especially NEVER bring bad will on your company brand. You deal with it and move on.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is bad. How many people really care about the story ? The culprits aren't either parties but the people who helped to blow that story out of proportion and the companies who doesn't have the guts to stand behind their employees.

We should be allowed to express ourselves and to make mistakes in the process. More tolerance please. I don't want to live in a world where we can be threatened by a virtual mob for 140 characters that we wrote.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if you could re-create this whole debacle in 3 months with fake people; you could use your post-mortem to tell people that you faked them out and announce your startup PR firm.

</comment><comment><USER43> Keep in mind that Adria Richards was acting in an official capacity as a representative of SendGrid at PyCon. SendGrid's business is transactional email, and one of their public spokespersons happily outs private conversations on social media, even distributing photographs of people without their permission -- as a SendGrid customer who takes privacy _very_ seriously, I found this concerning, and I have been looking at alternatives since this fiasco.

<comment><USER44> It _is_ concerning, but it's concerning about Adria and people like her, _not_ about SendGrid. It's irresponsible to assume that, because someone has represented a company poorly, that that is a poor company.

People mess up, and in this situation either Adria messed up or whoever hired her did. That's not to say either party is stupid or a "bad person" or any such thing... it's to say that Adria did something that most of us consider clearly wrong/unprofessional, and if there was a clear indication that she'd do such a thing, the hiring manager should not have brought her on. I'm inclined to think there was no such indication and this is just her personally doing something irresponsible, but then we don't know.

Immediately making that a reflection on her employer is invalid and makes things worse than they already are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Right now it looks like SendGrid fired her because of the DDoS they suffered a few hours ago. Once you can blackmail a company into firing someone like this .... I think it's dangerous for the company.

<comment><USER38> > Right now it looks like SendGrid fired her because of the DDoS they suffered > a few hours ago.

Do you have evidence for this? If it were me, I'd fire her because she caused a huge wave of negativity toward the company. I don't know what an "evangelist" does, but I'm pretty sure this is the opposite of it.

<comment><USER45> I don't have evidence but the timing speaks for itself - in the middle of a DDoS because of recent events they fire her.

I'm not saying they weren't right in doing so, but _it looks_ like they cave to blackmail.

<comment><USER46> > but it looks like they cave to blackmail

I'm sorry, but there is zero reason to believe this over other plausible explanations given in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> If SendGrid did not offer to let Adria resign, shame on it. If she refused, shame on her.

Shame on her for not apologizing immediately when the firestorm broke out. I suspect this would have preserved two jobs.

</comment><comment><USER12> The worst part is that she will now become a spokesperson or write a book because of this. There is a #teamadria on twitter.

So sad...

</comment><comment><USER48> Well played SendGrid, well played. Evangelist she was not.

</comment><comment><USER49> Let's not forget she wasn't the only one who lost her job because of this whole debacle.

<http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/>

</comment><comment><USER50> this is exactly why I dont use any social media in my real name, and I especially dont ever reveal who I work for. the moment you stick your company name on your twitter/fb profile you are now their spokesman and they can legally fire you for just about anything.

media will make this a womens rights false argument and she will get a book deal plus her 15mins.

glad my 3 contractors i hired are remote, degenerate neckbeards who dont use anything besides degenerate filled IRC channels. media doesnt give a shit about IRC

</comment><comment><USER26> Did not expect this outcome. Live by the sword...die by the sword.

</comment><comment><USER51> All of this absurdity is why we have a legal system, not mob rule.

<comment><USER5> Except that what we really have is like 50/50 legal system / mob rule.

The legal system isn't protecting Sendgrid from having the awesome day they're enjoying right now.

<comment><USER51> And that's why there's the computer fraud and abuse act...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> While misogyny has gone on for centuries and needs to be stopped, obsessing over two (relatively) harmless jokes that aren't sexual in the _slightest_ pales in comparison to the genuine problem, which is verbal abuse and sexism, as clearly evidenced on Richards' blog.

Sorry to say, but forking and dongles are just bad jokes. Not sexual or inappropriate ones. If Richards wished to take action against sexism in the technology field, she could have spoken out against it with proper evidence, because getting fussy over harmless fun is not the way to deal with it.

I understand her predicament. Sometimes you have just had enough to deal with, and you can't stand it. You have to release. But reason triumphs over emotion. You can't just go completely nuts over the wrong problem. Calculate your objective and create a plan; if you can't do that, honestly you don't deserve to be in the software field.

</comment><comment><USER53> I think the end result is so dumb. People from both sides got fired, a lot of angry tweets and comments, DOS attacks, etc. I think the whole thing could have been avoided by 1) Not making a private conversation public 2) Solving any issues privately between the involved parties.

</comment><comment><USER54> I shared this on a previous thread that was removed:

Wow, just wow. Five wrongs don't make a right.

      1. Two men make crude jokes to one another at conference.
      2. Adria shames them.
      3. PlayHaven fires one of them.
      4. Internet goes berserk and threatens her.
      5. SendGrid fires Adria.

I bet all parties wish that either these men didn't joke around like this or that she would have simply turned around and said "Y'know, boys, I'm trying to watch this lightning talk can you keep it down or keep your jokes to yourself for now?" Or, even kept her twitter posting to simply asking Pycon to take care of it.

Sad. This is a net negative.

</comment><comment><USER55> I think she got the "evangelist" word wrong since the beginning. And well deserved at the end. Congrats sendgrid.

</comment><comment><USER56> Please let's just let this topic die. I think I have seen 4 high-ranking HN threads about this already. Probably, this comment of mine is not helping the situation either. sigh.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think Playhaven owes everyone involved with this a better explanation on exactly why this employee was fired. Were they just looking for a reason to get rid of him in the first place, or did what happened at PyCon really justify his termination? Let's not forget - there's a lot of Sendgrid customers who have become collateral damage in this fiasco who have nothing to do with any of it, and probably still have no idea what's going on.

<comment><USER58> If PlayHaven had reasons to fire someone, that is private between them and that person: just because it affects you does not mean it suddenly that person should have to lose their privacy. PlayHaven should not divulge any more information than they already have on this matter: it would be up to the person fired to authorize that and provide an explanation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> None of them could have got fired in Sweden. Do you think as an american that US should have stronger protection for the employer?

<comment><USER60> Is that true? I recently listened to a story about one of the Nordic countries, it may have been Denmark?, and how employers can easily fire employees. They argued that this, along with really good unemployment benefits, actually helps the economy by making the work force more fluid.

<comment><USER61> Probably Denmark. They call it flexicurity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Lets play my favorite game: _How should it have happened?_

Acceptable case: Adria turns around to the guys in question and politely lets them know that she is not cool with middle-school humor at a professional event. They are embarrassed, and think twice about it next time.

Best case: The _guys_ around them do this first.

What actually happend: A chain-reaction of explosive over-reactions.

</comment><comment><USER63> Smart move by SendGrid. The short term windfall for having ditched her is easier to swallow than having your brand name attached to this whole fiasco. After the DDoS attacks I am sure they lost paying customers, and as a startup they cannot afford to continue to take a hit like this.

</comment><comment><USER64> The voluminous Internet reaction is an example of bike shedding, I think. We don't have strong opinions on a given topic that we don't know much about, but we all know what it's like to be ourselves in social and professional situations, and we all have strong opinions about that.

</comment><comment><USER65> I don't understand why this whole issue is being looked at from a feminist Angle. What would the reaction be if a guy has tweeted the same thing? I am not sure if what she did was right/wrong. deciding if she is right or wrong considering it a action of a women saddens me.

</comment><comment><USER66> There seems to be a massive trend of people getting in hot water because of Tweets, then going into damage control mode to provide context for their remarks. Part of the problem is the medium itself. Arguments, especially those that are interesting and meaningful, aren't always meant to be condensed into 140-character snippets.

Take this story, for example. While I'm not taking anyone's side, I think that if Adria had been able to provide context for what happened (i.e. saying more about the nature of the employee's comments and why it offended her), this discussion would have been more meaningful from the get-go. Maybe it wouldn't devolve so quickly into speculation.

</comment><comment><USER67> 1) Dongle, penis, vagina, balls, etc are NOT SEXIST JOKES. "Get in the kitchen and make me a pie." is an offensive and sexist joke. 2) She was not fired for standing up, she was fired for dragging her employer into the fight on twitter. 3) What can you tell me about her before this incident? 4) She sensationalized the incident in ways that Fox News couldn't even top. 5) SHE IS AN EVANGALIST/communicator. Are you telling me she is intimidated or doesn't know how to converse with people?

"Yesterday the future of programming was on the line..."

In the end, everyone lost here, but she did start the fire.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm late to the party, but I feel the need to put my voice on the other side of what seems to be prevailing opinion.

She was not wrong to mention inappropriate jokes. Anyone that has done sexual harassment training will know that ANYTHING that can be taken the wrong way in not acceptable. Because of the nature of sexism and sexual harassment you have to have a zero tolerance policy.

Going out with pitchforks regarding this incident is sending an absolutely terrible message to current and future generations of women in tech.

</comment><comment><USER69> I just hope this 'story' ends here. Both parties having learned a lesson and walking away a little bit humbler and thoughtful.

I would absolutely HATE to see this become a drawn out legal battle comedy. And I would hate it even more to see Adria end up playing the victim and become some sort of 'women's advocate' showing up in some morning show couch crying and blaming 'the male tech industry'.

Then again, no high hopes on it being over.

</comment><comment><USER70> This thing is completely ridiculous. Dear PlayHaven and SendGrid, hire both of your ex-employees back, publically apologize, and start making sense.

</comment><comment><USER71> Statement on their website: <http://blog.sendgrid.com/sendgrid-statement/>

</comment><comment><USER72> Huh? WTF?

My impression is that inappropriate jokes were specifically targeted at a woman seated nearby. In an all male company (of 13-year old youths) it just does not happen.

The people that did this deserved to be reminded that it was not acceptable (although not by firing).

Now, firing Adria Richards is entirely beyond my understanding. Seriously, WTF? Well, this whole story is sad. Blame the messenger now?

</comment><comment><USER73> It would be extremely cool if now it turned out that Adria and this guy were actually friends who came up with a plan how to troll everyone who has stick up their ass and/or is afraid of his/her own shadow when it comes to gender.

</comment><comment><USER74> I followed the whole thing and however I am sad that this stuff still happens, it was inevitable that she was fired. I do hope people got more aware what social media can do now..

</comment><comment><USER75> This is a situation where somehow EVERYONE managed to over-react.

</comment><comment><USER76> as someone else said, they better call their lawyers. if adria is really the stereotypical hyper-feminist she seems to be, she's gonna sue them soon.

</comment><comment><USER77> We had some emails delivered yet. While the drama was fun to watch, I'm a little annoyed with the kiddies who decided a DDOS was a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER78> tragedy of overreactions?

</comment><comment><USER79> So, both companies lost valued employees. All over a penis joke - i think it is just stupid.

</comment><comment><USER80> A joke that gets 3 people fired and blows up the internet!?! I GOTTA HEAR THIS JOKE!!

</comment><comment><USER81> One over-reaction lead to another, which lead to another.

</comment><comment><USER82> That is just wrong.

</comment><comment><USER83> PG, please don't delete this submission.

</comment><comment><USER13> Github sells "fork you" shirt. <http://shop.github.com/products/fork-you- shirt-mens-medium>

Can someone please fire whoever is responsible for that? I am offended.

</comment><comment><USER84> I'm guessing it was related to her invoking her employer publicly and saying they support her.

<comment><USER85> I suspect the same thing. I appears that the DDoS started after she claimed they supported her. This could be a coincidence though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> "@SendGrid supports me" Goodbye Adria. Welcome to your new career as a blogger/muckraker.

</comment><comment><USER87> Why were the three previous HN items about this deleted?

<comment><USER88> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5416908>

<comment><USER87> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> I for one am glad that everyone overreacted and the situation blew up. If this was swept under the rug or if there was an apology, this would have been a one-off event. The fact that people are overreacting, I hope, forces the community to have a larger discussion regarding gender issues.</comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with the anxiety of having imperfect education? - <AUTHOR> There's a certain level of stress that comes with not having a degree, having a non-technical degree and working in a technical field, dropping out, bad grades, not getting an advanced degree or not going to a top university.<p>Has anyone experienced this? How do you deal with it? Are you somehow intimidated by all the famous people in the community who went to top universities and often also have PhDs? Do you feel like even if you manage to have a decent job, there will always be a cap to you career potential? Do you feel "stuck" with the education that you got because practically you can't go back and change it? Is it a problem for you when applying for new jobs? <comment><USER2> This is a very interesting question.

But to answer it, could you define how does a "perfect education" looks like for you?</comment>


Iceland's Ghost Planes - <AUTHOR> https://warisboring.com/icelands-ghost-planes-63147a860163 <comment><USER3> Iceland makes it very explicit that emergency assistance is free of charge and that if you're in trouble, you should call without hesitation (they even have an app where you click a button and your position is transmitted to the SAR center).

This policy saves lives, but unfortunately there's a tendency these days in some countries to back-charge for SAR ops when they are a result of irresponsible choices like many mentioned in the article.

Thumbs up for Iceland!

<comment><USER4> That's what we do in Slovenian alps. Rescue is free and immediate. Just call and volunteers come get you.

But if you're in trouble because of negligence or improper equipment - <USER2> hiking at 6000ft in high heels [1] - then we send you a receipt.

[1] some of the stories that make it into the news are really crazy. Like a group of high school students that went on an half day hike without food or water just in their t-shirts. By the time they were rescued, after getting lost, almost all of them had hypothermia. I think criminal charges were brought against the teacher.

<comment> saiya-jin France has free chopper rescues from, well anywhere, no questions asked (the line between uninformed decision and negligence can be pretty blurry especially if a lot of cash/criminal charges are floating around).

There are cases of inexperienced climbers (one I know from Poland) where reluctance to call chopper in critical situation due to worries of costs (plus losing the face) cost 3 young guys lives. Too many like these.

Chopper rescues in alps are in almost daily order (especially in winter in places like Vallee Blanche, best and longest of-piste in Europe). A friend of mine was rescued like this in Calanques next to Marseille after she broke her feet after climbing accident. Chopper was called due to inaccessible terrain, and she had a cool ride hanging from chopper by harness over Mediterranean sea.

<comment><USER5> > Vallee Blanche, best and longest of-piste in Europe

Longest, by virtue of being very flat. Scenery is great, but the ride is (sometimes literally) pedestrian.

<comment> saiya-jin well, you do some 2800m altitude difference in 21 kms. math is clear there, no magic involved :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is some amazing journalism. I learned a ton of things I never knew about Iceland, and a fair bit about what happens when Justin Beiber is filmed in your plane. Dude has to rescue tourists every single day? That's not a very sustainable solution. Hopefully a locked gate and a tourism company selling ATV tours outta help.

<comment> lloyd-christmas It's sheep country. There is a tractor preventing vehicles from accessing it, but on foot it's just 3-wire sheep fences as far as the eye can see. At a 2 hour drive from Reykjavik and a 5 mile round trip walk, it's not exactly a massive trek. I was with a bunch of city-folk and they wanted to do it. The problem is that the terrain is moon-like with grey dust/rocks in every direction and completely flat. I can see how easy it is to get disoriented in the summer, let alone when there is snow on the ground.

As an aside, visiting it was the worst part of my trip. I honestly don't recommend it to anyone. 5 minutes down the road is a gorgeous waterfall you can walk up that provided infinitely more pleasure than walking 5 miles round trip through unchanging landscape. Granted, I didn't want to go in the first place, so grain of salt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "no country has attacked Iceland in the last 70 years"

This isn't strictly true: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars)

<comment><USER8> Access to cod-rich waters was something the US insisted on in the treaty of Paris that ended the revolutionary war. By "the US insisted", I mean "John Adams insisted", because he was from Massachusetts, which has an eleven-inch carved-wood cod sculpture hanging in the legislature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Greenland also has a pretty interesting one. The Kee Bird. There's a really cool documentary on it here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kee_Bird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kee_Bird)

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/b29-frozen.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/b29-frozen.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> You would think that after such a long time Medium would have fixed this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10573027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10573027)

I mean, if you try to skim quickly through the article all you see is blurred rectangular stains

EDIT: sorry for being OT, the article itself is very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is that a Wartburg 353 in this photo: [https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/2000/0*L7BcV-FTlF0fu5xL....](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/2000/0*L7BcV-FTlF0fu5xL.jpg) ? It looks like one to me, and I had no idea that they imported Wartburgs into Iceland.

<comment><USER12> It likely wasn't anything particularly organized. When I was growing up in the early 90s in a small fishing village in Iceland I remember that Russian ships would dock from time to time to sell hundreds of used cars from the Soviet Union.

I wouldn't be surprised if this specimen arrived in Iceland like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What the HDR did to this photo made me think at first that it was a fake: [https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/0*siYQW-p1KCi78K9P....](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/2000/0*siYQW-p1KCi78K9P.jpg)

The edges are completely messed up.

<comment> lloyd-christmas From off my phone, here's a healthy dose of realism: [http://i.imgur.com/VALSKcb.png](http://i.imgur.com/VALSKcb.png)

and the surrounding landscape: [http://i.imgur.com/Be9c5Nb.png](http://i.imgur.com/Be9c5Nb.png)

<comment><USER13> Haha, i wasn't thinking anything there was fake.

And thanks a lot, those shots are really beautiful. I much prefer the simple bright daylight over the shots in the article. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am like the worlds worst tourist. Whenever I go someplace new I end up coding in my hotel room or drinking in the local establishment, which is the summary of my five day trip to iceland in 2010. After reading this article I don't feel so bad about it.

<comment><USER15> Why waste the money?

<comment><USER16> The same could be said about any tourism. It's value is not measured by which checkboxes of tourist things you fill, it's whether or not you enjoyed visiting somewhere new. Drinking at the local bar in another country is a good way to get a feel for life there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Amazing article, gave me chills. "The weather is about to turn." Truly these people have the utmost respect for nature and the tourists could stand to learn some of it.

<comment><USER18> The joke about England is "Don't like the weather? Wait a few minutes; it will change."

The response for Iceland is "Wait a few minutes; it will get worse."</comment></comment>


How Accurate Is Israel's 'Terrorist-Tracking' Tech? - <AUTHOR> https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-isolated-after-waving-at-corona-patient-is-israeli-phone-tracking-tech-accurate-1.8698946 <comment><AUTHOR> Same technology used for targeted assassinations of Palestinians in the name of "national security".</comment>


YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqbsph <comment><USER2> I have a feeling that the internet will get outraged about this for one reason or another, but just from looking at this, it actually seems like a sensible policy designed to keep YouTube out of trouble. Nothing extreme or unfair, just avoiding to show ads next to stuff advertisers would not want to see their ads next to, while also making an effort to avoid offending or censoring youtubers.

Probably won't be flawless, because things rarely are, but seems pretty reasonable.

<comment><USER3> The real problem with these rules is subjectivity. Something you would consider offensive is probably not from my perspective. In the end it will be a moderator bias galore. I can easily see a Christian mod demonetizing atheist videos, democrat <\--> republican, prude <\--> free, etc etc etc.

I'd like to see a true free speech platform with violence/nudity sectioned off according to the local laws, and then let the advertisers decide where they want to spend the money, instead of treating them as children who don't know better.

<comment><USER2> That makes sense. The problem is that at the end of the day the decision will have to be made either by algorithms or by people. Algorithms are less nuanced, hard to write, and will often fail, people are expensive and biased.

With the amount of videos youtube has to process, and without an almost human- level AI, I don't think there's a perfect solution.

Algorithms flagging videos for review, and then humans making decisions based on some basic set of principles seems right.

Also, to let advertisers decide where to spend their money there's targeting tools...

<comment><USER3> The solution is obvious - tag/categorize the videos, according to very strict rules, let the advertisers decide which tags to serve. Allow the publishers to dispute the tags.

For instance, "nudity" can be defined as "visible genitals, female nipples" in the US.

"Controversial" tag should not even exist, it makes no sense, any non-trivial subject is controversial.

And honestly, YouTube can benefit from a more precise tagging/category system, it's currently extremely crude.

<comment><USER4> Where would this fit in?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R5w-PIzlUk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R5w-PIzlUk)

It's a clip-art style "coloring video" drawing a baby with a lot of syringes, which then each empty their colored liquid into the baby. Technically, perfectly innocent. In context of a positive flood of videos with an undertone ranging from brain damaging to abusive targeted at little kids it doesn't seem that innocent to me. The sum isn't larger than the whole, but it's larger than each individual piece seen in a vacuum. However, where to draw the line? I would draw the line at "if it targets little kids, demonetize it", not even because of the content of such videos, simply because I think marketing to little kids is immoral no matter in what context, but I know that's not going to fly. But there could be a category for it, and then people could check out which advertisers advertise to little kids and let that inform their wallet voting.

For me, YT is just totally ruined anyway. Yeah I still watch videos on it, 99% of the video material on the web is on YT, but even using an ad-blocker what used to feel lame now feels positively fucked up considering how horribly bad YT has handled this before it blew up as well as after advertisers started retracting ads. I want to turn my back on it for good, and if we can't find a way to self-host and directly pay what we watch, I'll find a way to live without video on the web.

<comment><USER3> Since the number of categories is limited, even if large, there will always be weird videos that don't strictly fit into any category. It's a slippery slope argument, it doesn't mean we shouldn't organize information better.

This particular video can be under

 _Art > Drawing > Coloring_

I don't see anything damaging about it. Yes, it's weird, but so what?

<comment><USER4> > _"We are shocked and appalled to see that our adverts have appeared > alongside such exploitative and inappropriate content," said a Mars > spokesperson in a statement. "We have taken the decision to immediately > suspend all our online advertising on YouTube and Google globally. Until we > have confidence that appropriate safeguards are in place, we will not > advertise on YouTube and Google."_

[http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/11/24/advertisers-suspend- you...](http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/11/24/advertisers-suspend-youtube- elsagate/)

> I don't see anything damaging about it. Yes, it's weird, but so what?

So you don't, probably not having looked at thousands of video descriptions and thumbnails on hundreds of channels featuring bondage, pregnant children, adults and children impregnated after having been drugged, dolls in bath tubs filled with things, objects and persons under car wheels and feet, drinking urine and eating poop, dominance and submission, binge eating of candy or just objects, objects being removed from a body or lumps removed by getting a syringe, babies faking their death, adults and kids with pacifiers, maggots, people being eaten, limbs being removed, unresolved tension, and dozens of other concepts [you see, that stands for something, there is just no space to expand all placeholders, just like when I said "flood" or "targeted at little kids"] repeated ad nauseam, across live action, claymation, 2D and 3D "art", all underlaid with the same handful of music and audio samples, produced on all continents except Africa maybe. So what?

Like many forms of abuse, e.g. mobbing or sexual harassment, each individual act can be explained away, and people who don't really look into things just see the one-off "weird thing". So what?

Then there's all the stuff that's neither here nor there, like making people jealous by drawing a heart on someone's belly, or a million "finger songs", or "Jony Jony Yes Papa". That's how babies learn colors. It's just copycats that experiment with the medium while not straying from the script that doesn't exist.

And of course, it's just the brains of toddlers, those aren't sponges or anything, and quite obviously, if it's not traumatizing to you, there can be no damage. We know that even "just" too much lack of healthy interaction can stunt development, but what's millions of hours of low-effort, "weird" content gonna do?

Anyways, I'm not here to tell you how you live your life, I'm just stating how I live mine. If you're not at work and not easily grossed out, maybe enjoy this 0.01% slice: [https://i.imgur.com/MziRRQw.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/MziRRQw.jpg) \-- but that's still just images, that's without the deceptive music and channel descriptions that advertise themselves as great entertainment for kids. And you can always find something there or in the ElsaGate subreddit that can serve as lightning rod, to say oh, this is overreacting, let's dismiss it all out of hand.

<comment><USER5> Your entire argument is "won't somebody think of the children".

<comment><USER6> You do realize that sometimes it's actually acceptable to be concerned for the well-being of children?

<comment><USER4> Not even once. Not even in the context of something called "Youtube for Kids". Pearl-clutching consideration for others: not okay. Pearl-clutching shock over people having consideration for others: totally on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing I really, really don't get about modern media companies (IE. YouTube, Facebook, etc.) and their approach to advertising is their almost universally puritanical policies. I mean I get it to a point, they're trying to mitigate the risks of someone getting offended and suing them or something, but at the same time its such a lazy and one size fits all approach.

They have all this data about people, yet they're too lazy, or too genuinely puritanical, to actually use that data to show the right ads to the right people. Take for instance the category of drug "paraphernalia," (not to mention actual drugs). Neither Facebook, YouTube or Google will allow advertisers to advertise for these kinds of products, even in markets where they are completely legal. You'd think a more reasonable, and profitable approach, would be to use all that data to only allow advertisers to target these kinds of ads to people of legal age, in markets where these products are legal, but no, no-one can advertise them to anyone, anywhere, ever.

And what about sex toys? Why can't videos of say sex toy reviews, be age- gated, and then so called "Adult ads," you know, only be shown to the verified adults watching those videos? I'm sure there are lots of sex toy companies who would love to advertise to that audience, and I'm sure someone watching a sex toy review video would much rather see an ad for a sex toy than for another fucking Nissan, but yet again, Google et all would rather impose their bizarrely puritanical morality on the world, than do their jobs and build a system that actually works.

<comment><USER8> >use that data to show the right ads to the right people

To expand on what you're saying here, YouTube allows offended people to bully them by contacting advertisers and saying things like, "YouTube is putting ads for your company in front of videos about hitler!!" And YouTube just immediately caves to that.

YouTube's response from day one should have been, "no, we don't put ads in front of videos, that's not how this works. This isn't tv where the ad is broadcast whether someone is watching or not. This is a website that plays videos you ask for. We (youtube) have data about you. We (try to) select an ad specifically for you. We did not play that ad for Pepsi because it has anything to do with hitler. We played it because (our data suggested) the ad is relevant to you. And then afterward, we played the Hitler vid because that's what you clicked on."

That seems like such an obvious, slam dunk response to me. I think the reason YouTube didn't push back in that manner is that they welcomed the excuse to start pushing political content they don't like off their platform.

<comment><USER9> Based on what do you think Google is pushing off political context they do not like? We can see the screen here that there is nothing like that. Would suggest your allegation is untrue and Google is doing g nothing like you suggest and is the exact opposite.

<comment><USER10> On one of the images, they advise the moderators to demonetize controversial content, and then make exceptions for certian controversies (which Google does not feel it would be right to suppress). This is _obviously_ bias; it's the definition of bias. It just doesn't feel like bias to us because if we were made autocrats and instructed to rule as undemocratically as possible, we would enforce the _same_ bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google is an American company. Their "rules" are extremely embedded in a US culture. Unfortunately YouTube is a product that is consumed worldwide. Many of the regions where it has a dominant market share for web VoD do have cultural palates that are very different from the US. I feel Google should embrace their international position and be less biased in it's reasoning.

<comment><USER12> What culture-specific reasonings are you referring to, exactly?

<comment><USER13> The US is unusually sensitive about naked bodies and swearing for instance.

In most countries it's unusual to _BEEP_ swear words on TV, and in some other countries nobody will bat an eye at casual nudity, even in TV shows aimed at children.

<comment><USER14> Meanwhile excessive violence is permitted on regular TV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Any language intended to spread hate." Could that be any more vague? Does encouraging people to hate DRM or hate cancer count under that? Clearly not. So what does 'hate' even have to do with it?

Really its because "Hate speech" in and of itself is a dumb phrase. AFAIK It only refers to an incredibly small subset of hate. It does not refer to hate. And often refers to mean-speech instead of referring to the emotion hate at all, which is even more frustrating.

I'd rather we just throw the phrase into the dumpster where it belongs and come up with something better. Good terminology combats extremism.

<comment><USER16> "Hate speech" isn't a dumb phrase, it's a newspeak phrase perfectly designed for its purpose - to strike fear in the heart of anyone accused of it, and for it to be spoken with an undeserved sense of self-evidence.

You'll not find anyone outside of the "anyone who disagrees with my political opinions is inherently evil" group using it.

<comment><USER17> Put more bluntly "hate speech" is a term constructed exclusively to justify censorship against any group the political left disagrees with.

Anyone using it _hates_ actual democracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe this is real, but it doesn't seem to line up with what I have heard from other Youtubers.

Firstly it is almost certain that a video is initially demonetized by an algorithm. Only during a manual review is it looked at by a human.

The main complaint from Youtubers is that the algorithm is way too strict and inconsistent. But the manual review process is pretty fair and the vast majority of videos get remonetized. The issue here being that by the time a manual review is complete most of the views for a video have already happened.

I could of missed it, but I have seen very few complaints about the manual review process being overly strict or biased.

<comment><USER19> Couldn't the algorithm give its judgement before the video goes live?

<comment><USER20> YouTube's advice to creators is to do exactly this - post the video privately to let the algorithm and potentially the human review go through before making it public.

Sadly, since this process can take up to 48 hours, this doesn't work if your videos have any kind of time sensitivity.

It also doesn't help with videos of streams, which are automatically posted immediately after the stream's conclusion.

<comment><USER21> It also doesn't work - uploading a video privately passes monetization, uploading the same video pubically has the video monetized. It's completely arbitrary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My take on the demonetization controversy is that it is too coarse: the output is a boolean, is it advertiser friendly or not so, to say nothing of the preferences of individual advertisers.

To me it seems that even assuming the current single set of criteria for advertiser friendliness (with all of the other problems discussed in the other comments regarding subjectivity) that different advertisers might or might not be willing to be exposed to it given different prices. Right now there's no escape hatch, so instead we've seen content chilling effects and a ton of new customers for Patreon, something that is starting to exert some degree of competitive pressure on YouTube.

I'm not familiar with the AdSense interface on YouTube, but I'm guessing that it's some sort of keyword bidding model. If advertisers could bid on keywords with with or without the friendliness bit turned on, then market prices could emerge. I can see an incentive on the part of advertisers to be willing to take a bit more "friendliness-risk" if they can get access to a valuable demographic with valuable keywords at a better price.

Hardly a perfect solution (the friendliness bit itself remains the real issue). Even better would be a set of several different friendliness scores that advertisers can make decisions about and thus allow prices to emerge.

edit: spelling.

<comment><USER23> >My take on the demonetization controversy is that it is too coarse: the output is a boolean, is it advertiser friendly or not so, to say nothing of the preferences of individual advertisers.

Different metrics matter more/less to different advertisers/industries/audiences and the more niche it is the less it matches up with the global average that is a "general audience"

This. If there's a video of some guy laying in the mud welding some piece of heavy equipment back together in the middle of nowhere whether or not he's swearing like a sailor probably doesn't matter at all to Hobart or Lincoln or some other company that might be advertising their line of welding consumables with the video.

Likewise I'm sure some companies that sell products that make us less afraid of unlikely events (fire extinguishers, life insurance, etc) would have little problem with their ads appearing in conjunction with violent content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> To demonetize "sensitive topics (such as abortion, suicide)"

and then there is a mention: "Does not include: Content made by gay ..." or whatever else.

I understand what they want, but these guidelines are somewhat problematic, at least.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone have any idea about why these rules would be secret?

The only thing I can think of is that YouTube is not confident in their guidelines & categorization, and does not want to defend these choices publicly.

<comment><USER26> > any idea about why these rules would be secret?

Don't work for youtube, but I'm guessing they would be secret for a couple of reasons.

1\. If made public, people could post violating content and work around it by making sure they won't get flagged with carefully crafted thumbnails, content etc. Ex: Take a look at the 'Nudity' section. There are examples of 'Partial nudity' in which a guy wearing underwear is deemed inappropriate because it looks 'Vulgar'. So one could, in theory avoid such thumbnails, and still post vulgar content in the video and get by their censors.

2\. It would also open Youtube to criticism, just like the Facebook breastfeeding content was, a whiles back.

<comment><USER27> I think you're spot on. I manage an online game, and we don't have rules. We have somewhat vague guidelines, and moderators we trust to enforce them.

Rules are open to arguments, and with dozens of bans/appeals a day, it'd be ridiculous to do that. We tried strict rules, and they are both too restrictive and ineffective.

Humans need to make judgements, and guidelines give you the latitude to do that.

<comment><USER28> People who skirt those judgement will always exist, but having the 'we are the law' kind of rule sucks for a community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> These rules seem incredibly strict, in a way that could seriously limit original content.

If I was to make a show similar to Trailer Park Boys, about a bunch of comedic stoners bumbling around and swearing a bunch, it would be demonetized.

Trailer Park Boys is a good example, since it's a show that you could produce on a minimal budget and try to launch on Youtube.

<comment><USER30> I wonder if they could get outside sponsorship. Many creators show ads (sorry, "sponsorships") in their own video, outside of YouTube's ad system. Apparently YouTube has been saying they want the advertiser to pay for YT ads on the channel, but if the videos are demonatized, I wonder if that still holds?

<comment><USER31> Outside sponsorship is explicitly prohibited by section 4 of YouTube's TOS.

"YouTube creators can not include promotions, sponsorships or other advertisements for third party sponsors or advertisers in their videos where YouTube offers a comparable ad format" [https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3364658?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3364658?hl=en)

(Patreon, as a way to make money as a YouTube creator occupies a gray area but this restriction hampers their potential for growth since YouTube could just shut them down.)

<comment><USER30> It's not that simple: [https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/154235](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/154235)

You can't splice an actual ad into the video (although channels do, and they haven't been banned), but you can have outside sponsorship. I believe stuff like vloggers cooking using a meal kit sponsored by the company is OK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't understand what the term "demonetization" means in this context.

When a video is flagged for "demonetization" what are the immediate consequences? I've never actually met anyone who got paid for something that happened on YouTube, so I just don't understand how the business side of YouTube even works.

For the life of me, all I've ever directly witnessed is the occassional friend who received a DMCA notice, because they uploaded an audio rip of an album they wanted to listen to from a work computer, as a public video.

<comment><USER33> It means the video won't have ads and thus the creator won't earn any money from ads. It's very difficult to make a lot of money from YouTube ads, but some people are doing it and getting "demonetized" really hurts them.

<comment><USER34> > _It 's very difficult to make a lot of money from YouTube ads_

Like anything else, I think you have to find your audience. A 6 year old apparently made $11 million this year off his YouTube channel:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2017/12/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2017/12/11/6-year-old-made-11-million-in-one-year-reviewing-toys-on- you-tube/)

<comment><USER35> That's news precisely because it's rare.

<comment><USER36> Not rare, just extreme.

If you see a YouTube channel with 250,000 subscribers or more, they are probably taking in around $10,000 a month from YouTube (assuming they post regularly.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The rules to flag videos is here: [https://imgur.com/a/uTLTS](https://imgur.com/a/uTLTS)

and they seem quite vague. Stuff like "Regular TV" is not something many people can understand.

That said, is there a way to find the demonetized videos?

<comment><USER38> creaters can find the monetary status of the videos in their dashboard. They get notified whenever any of their video is demonitized.

<comment><USER37> Thanks but is there a way for non-creators to find it?

<comment><USER28> may be probablistically by loading up an incognito window (or use a vpn), and see if ads show up (removing adblock of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't really understand why advertisers would have a problem with "objectionable content" (obviously excluding fradulent websites that might be faking ad views).

If someone is viewing the content, they presumably like it, so there doesn't seem to be any difference compared to people viewing advertisement on "non- objectionable" content.

If someone else sees the content along with the advertisement, they can just truthfully say that the advertisements are placed by an automatic algorithm and that they don't endorse the content.

What's the problem?

<comment><USER40> Partially, I think "they presumably like it" is an invalid assumption, as evidenced by the many youtube videos with more downvotes than upvotes.

More importantly, the argument made by campaigners looking to stop ads on objectionable content is that placing ads in association with objectionable content constitutes funding that content; whether you do that via an algorithm or manually makes no difference, the point is that the advertisers choice of how to place ads is paying out money to producers of objectionable content.

That, in turn, makes those advertisers liable to explain to their regular customers, who are now vicariously funding objectionable content by paying money to the advertiser, why they are placing ads as they are.

All-in-all, it'd be much easier for a generic advertiser to just avoid objectionable content; but that isn't properly possible on Youtube, which is what I suppose is what this whole scheme is trying to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I find it very strange that one of the criteria is if you would want to watch it in public. There are many thing on regular TV I'd never watch in public.

I'm also baffled by the levels of fear naked skin seems to solicit in the US, how common is this? Often you can have extremely violent games/movies with teen rating, but the moment you show a tit it's instantly adults only.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't see anything wrong with that. Google did this before to fight search engine spam. Top positions for money keywords in search results were manually reviewed by humans. Now advertisers do not want to be advertised on specific videos to avoid risk of brand damage.

<comment><USER43> This isn't true.

Top positions were reviewed to determine the best parameters.

A review didn't affect that one individual sites ranking, but all sites as a whole.

<comment><USER42> check this out [https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-search- qu...](https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-search-quality- raters)

edit: i am pretty sure the websites that were marked as low quality lost their rating on next google search update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What I don't understand is why don't they allow advertisers to accept showing their ads on these more explicits videos? They were ok with it for a decade but all of sudden they're not? I'm sure most non-American brands would be ok with it, even many American brands would be ok with it. I'm sure Google has the ability to add such a simple feature to their video ad platform (it's basically a checkbox with a boolean that would say "restrict to family friendly content" or something). Am I missing something?

<comment><USER21> The advertisers themselves saying they don't want their ads shown on this content.

<comment><USER44> All millions of them? I know Amazon still advertizes on Breitbart and they're one of the biggest advertisers in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> There is a compromise that would work for YouTube and its "less desirable" creators.

YouTube can stop monetising those channels with advertising it has sold. That keeps YouTubes normal advertisers happy.

The owners of those channels could instead sources their own advertisers and use the YouTube ad management systems to inject the adverts in to their videos - with YouTube taking a cut of the revenue.

This way everyone is happy, the channel owners get revenue, the advertisers know exactly where their adverts are appearing and YouTube gets a cut too.

</comment><comment><USER46> I know some people are happy about this happening because currently the demonetisation matches their own beliefs/politics/dislikes.

What happens though if this is outsourced out from Americans doing the moderation to cheap labour in other nations that don't share your beliefs or politics.

If one thing is clear it's that we need competition in this space.

<comment><USER9> Any other provider would have the same issues with advertisers.

<comment><USER47> Who says the other provider needs to use advertising?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> oh-kumudo So there isn't too much juicy stuff here. They decide to manage out some unwanted channels, the list seems regardless of the channel's political affiliation, then I didn't really see a problem with that.

</comment><comment><USER48> On a different YouTube note if they want to continue being a powerhouse they need to also get rid of all those robot voiced bot created videos. Also those videos that are clickbait and play only an image of a website to go to.

Youtube for me is being plagued by the above videos.

</comment><comment><USER49> Fantastic news. Though a conspicuous absence is lack of any classification that deranks videos in the search results or recommendations.

Even if it's largely financially motivated, it's still nice to see some kind of assessment of what kind of content they are willing to enable.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wish Youtube had a real competitor to stop them from doing things like this.

<comment><USER9> How would it be different? Google is subject to what is comfortable for the advertisers and putting these rules in place which seem fair.

<comment><USER47> A competitor doesn't have to use advertisers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I agree with almost all points, but some are excessively restrictive in a blind way. There should be a distinction between uploading violence because there are idiots around the world wanking when they see someone killing someone else, and reporting excessive and wrongful military force or domestic everyday police abuse. By their rules one could not expose these neither, which to me is disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER52> If I was a company buying lots of ads on YouTube, I definitely would not want them next to any channel like leafy or any other troll spam channel.

</comment><comment><USER53> Could this be a way to train a demonetization AI model?

Given it's Google behind it, I don't think they are expecting to keep a work force to flag videos for the foreseeable future.

I think they are probably doing this in parallel with AI and most of the false positives are on that end, which means they hire more people to make a bigger training data set, rinse and repeat.

<comment><USER54> Yeah, considering Google has been cutting search raters' pay[1], and they tested the waters with automated moderation tools[2] earlier this year, I think it's pretty safe to say their goal is to cut out people from moderation entirely.

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives- of...](https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of-google- raters/)

[2]: [https://www.perspectiveapi.com/](https://www.perspectiveapi.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> So this "secret" meeting was just a meeting that YouTube didn't write a press release about, right? By that logic, I've endured hundreds of "secret" meetings.

If only I had known! I would have suffered much less boredom knowing I was part of yet another vast conspiracy.

</comment><comment><USER56> I would like to start an experiment where I create my own youtube/vimeo like website and run it as bootstraped buisness. For me, the hardest challenge would be getting viewers to watch the content. But the technicial side would be trivial.

</comment><comment><USER57> Seems like a reasonable solution. And that YouTube made an effort to think this through. There's no ideal solution for this problem though. And this sort of things may make you cringe but I think the alternatives are much worse.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't see the issue. Google is curating their platform and trying to remove as much un-original and reasonably offensive content. The doc also didn't seem to contain any political leanings or cultural shifters. I believe much of this is part of the service agreement on Youtube.

Only issue I see here is the manual review process and subjectivity baked into that.

<comment><USER59> Completely disagree about there not being any political leanings.

See the Controversial section here: [https://i.imgur.com/vkBrkns.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/vkBrkns.jpg)

e.g. religious videos of any sort are automatically deemed controversial (way more inclined to be right leaning), but videos about racial justice (left) are exempt (unless, of course, they are anti-racial justice videos, in which case they must be removed.)

<comment><USER9> You realize this for ads not the content to be in YT. I do not see anything that could be considered leaning right or left.

You seem to come to this with a bias that Google is left leaning and why you see a political leaning situation here. I am a centrist and do not.

<comment><USER59> Yes I am aware what demonetization means. It's a very effective way to get people to stop producing content that does not align with Youtube/Alphabet/their advertiser's values.

The problem here is the looseness of the guidelines and the complexity of navigating deep issues with nuance.

Entertain me here for a second... Let's talk about a few hypothetical videos:

"The positive contributions of undocumented migrants in the US" \- positive content about immigrants. Exempt from demonetization per the guidelines.

"The problem with illegal immigration in the US" \- antagonism of a specific group of people/xenophobia per the guidelines. Should be demonetized.

Now, do you think it's an unreasonable position to say that undocumented immigration has both pros and cons? Of course not, everything does.

Youtube's distillation of rules that only allow for discussion of one side these issues with zero nuance is the problem. Coincidentally or not, the allowed positions for discourse align with the brand's corporate values.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> What does "demonetization" mean anyway? It's the second time I read about "demonetization" and I still don't get it what does this mean at all.

<comment><USER61> A video is demometized when Youtube refuses to run ads on the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I don't see any problems with these rules in particular (I would prefer something less strict but we're talking America here), my problem is with all the seemingly innocent videos by people like EEVBlog that are purely noncontroversial tech stuff that gets instaflagged for no apparent reason.

The manual review isn't the problem it's the initial algorithm that robs creators of all the views in the initial week(s) before the review gets carried out (i.e. 90% of the revenue)

<comment><USER63> Except EEVBlog videos aren't completely innocent by these rules. I suspect a good number of Dave's past videos that have been flagged are because of cursing which he avoids today but definitely used to do occasionally.

He can be culturally insensitive at times. I don't know if to the point that I would flag him as violating the rules, but then again these people were instructed that if in doubt flag. As the father of a daughter I'm am very much aware that he can be sexist at times. In fact this is why although I will occasionally watch one of his videos I am no longer subscribed to the channel.

<comment><USER62> These regulations talk about what's common on TV, I can't recall him cursing worse than that, has he dropped an F-bomb?

Anyway that was just one example. Another who's gotten demonetized is LazyGameReviews, and he's a total kitten. Ashens is also clean and has gotten demonetized. There are countless examples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Seems very pragmatic to me.

Actually "If people feel uncomfortable watching it in public" is vague but reasonably good guideline.

It has to be nary impossible to draw the line in so many cases, but the guidelines seem reasonable and the line will roughly get drawn about there.

<comment><USER65> So if I'm uncomfortable to watch a video in public about, let's say "How to avoid getting STDs", which is clearly something me and probably a lot of people would benefit from, it should be demonetized?

<comment><USER64> " it should be demonetized?"

I don't see why PSA should be being 'monetized'.

I don't see why Coca Cola should be forced to pay for ads during this program.

This is not 'banning or censoring videos' \- this is basically 'deciding which bits of content advertisers want to pay for'.

Different game.

<comment><USER65> >I don't see why PSA should be being 'monetized'.

That's irrelevant to the argument.

>I don't see why Coca Cola should be forced to pay for ads during this program.

I didn't say that and I haven't picked up that argument anywhere else really. I merely refuted your argument that something "comfortable to watch" is a good metric for this program. I came up with this example off the top of my head. And you would find a lot of suitable advertisers for this kind of content as well.

Please stick to the original argument, that "comfortable to watch" is a good metric instead of strawmanning me with censorship and forced payments.

<comment><USER64> "I don't see why PSA should be being 'monetized'. That's irrelevant to the argument."

It's relevant because we are discussing which videos can and cannot be _monetized_ \- some are not intended to be monetized.

"comfortable to watch" \- is actually a perfect way to communicate a complex and nuanced issue, in a simple way to various audiences - internal, operational, close ad partners, long tail ad partners.

It reasonably summarizes the otherwise reasonable policy.

And yes - someone talking about explicit sexual subjects for whatever reason definitely falls in that category, because advertisers would be weary of it. Google wants it that way for obvious reasons, and it seems like it's working.

Finally - there is nothing to report here. It's great that we get some insight, but this has to be a fairly naive view of 'insider reporting'. There is no story. Google has a reasonable policy for determining which content is good for ads, in general, and which is not. They seem to be acting professionally on it. This is people doing their jobs reasonably well especially with nuanced things.

If this story were about content removal or censoring, it would be a different discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> As I just explained to my 16 year old daughter about YouTube policies. YouTube is a business. Businesses will do whatever they need to do to get customers and make money. If anyone was under some strange illusion that YouTube was a public and free platform to make money and/or create any content they wanted was naive at best.

If you want to create a channel for users to view your content, purchase a domain, buy a VM on some cloud service, and set up your own video streaming service for your own channel.

It would be interesting to see how much it cost one person versus the income generated. I'm pretty sure that anyone with millions of subscribers would be bankrupt instantly.

I think the one reasonable avenue would be to unionize all of the major content creators and invite any creator to be a part of the union. Then threaten a strike. But the content creators are probably like a herd of cats. It's unlikely any coalition is remotely possible.

<comment><USER67> > I'm pretty sure that anyone with millions of subscribers would be bankrupt > instantly.

It would be interesting to see a napkin calculation on this, because I highly doubt this is true. Bandwidth cost and video compression are both a lot better these days than people think, and if you could cut the middle man out of advertising (which you might could if you have millions of viewers) I think the benefit would be significant.

Of course, YouTube does not _only_ provide bandwidth and servers. They provide a "platform", not in the technical sense but in the broader sense. They have well working apps on all mobile platforms, they have a social network, they have editing tools and redundancy, they have so many benefits that you'd really have to think twice before taking them on.

Your idea of a strike is interesting, while I doubt it would happen I would love for content creators to team up and make common demands.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: LA area entrepreneurs/meetups - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone, I'm new to the startup scene in LA and was wondering if anyone on HN knows of any good meetups, events or groups that they can point me to. (digital media, online/mobile software, etc... really open to anything)
I've doing doing some research, but wanted to hear any suggestions from HN community as well as I would highly value the input.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> I keep a list on my site: mixergy.com/events

Shoot me an email about yourself and who you want to meet. I'll make some intros to local events.</comment>


Oil prices keep plummeting as OPEC starts a price war with the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/11/28/7302827/oil-prices-opec

<comment><USER2> Cartel enforcement notwithstanding, it's really tough to artificially inflate prices above the cost of available substitutes.

The price of oil has just been set at the breakeven cost of shale, maybe for a long time.</comment>