>> That you had to take the extra 60 seconds to follow the links is not a failure on Harris's part.
> It's absolutely a failure on Harris's part.
Let me be clearer: Harris stated exactly what you said he didn't state. You either failed to click the link or dismissed it. That you do not agree with what Harris said does not mean he didn't say it.
> If Harris thinks 12 months is not enough, he can say that.
It's obvious he thinks that, and I'm pretty sure you know that, even if he didn't use those literal words. You're implicitly criticizing Harris for an ungenerous reading of deBoer's commitment ("obviously it's absurd and unreasonable to expect he really meant 'permanently' when he wrote 'permanently'"), which I don't object to -- but I do object to you not in turn extending the same generosity to Harris.
For whatever it's worth, I doubt "permanent exile" is reasonable, either. But barely a year later deBoer was writing for the Washington Post and the New York Times, publishing a best-selling book, and starting a newsletter that now brings in a six-figure income. Barely two years on and deBoer is writing, in so many words, "I've already apologized, why won't all you cancel-culture jerks leave me alone".
So, yeah, sorry: if I was Harris, I would probably be tempted to make a few tweets questioning just how sincere deBoer was about the whole apology thing.
> Today he got fired from everything that he's involved with. The apology was career suicide.
I'm obviously not familiar with the exact situation, but I'd be willing to bet money that he had received word that it was going to become public and the apology was an attempt to appear proactively remorseful and to circumvent the consequences resulting from the forthcoming publication. (In other words, the "apology" was not the precipitating action.)
> If you're fine with that, cool, but don't pretend he didn't do anything.
Don't speak for me. I never said he did the right thing. I said stop spinning what-ifs about it, but clearly what I should have said is STFU and do something about it. People getting in each other's grill isn't doing something about it. It's blaming others for whatever issues we, as a group, find polarizing.
> You apologized for lacking nuance on Twitter with your "announcement" and yet continue to do so.
I saw parallels of this earlier this year against Richard Dawkins, when the NECSS uninvited him over twitter, followed it with a longer post on their blog[0]. After their actions caused a blowback, they apologized for their lack of professionalism. NECSS backtracked on their position[1] because the blowback was from prominent people.
I don't think prominent people in CS will band together like that, so I don't think the Nodevember folks will backtrack either.
> It's one thing for a person to atone for their mistakes.
It sounds more like he tried covering up his mistakes once he became a public figure, which was his decision. He could’ve acknowledged it during any of his media appearances, which would’ve allowed him to discuss the issue on his own terms instead of letting a devastating article dictate the tone of his past. He chose to hide it instead.
There’s nothing wrong with publishing this kind of information, it’s absolutely in the public interest when a CEO of a successful company was involved in white nationalism. Nobody is explicitly demanding an apology, the public just demands to know these things.
> Given the prevalence of comments like this, I wonder why any company would ever bother offering an apology or retraction.
I wonder why anyone would ever place a non-zero value on an apology from an organization acting in its own interests. A company isn't a single person acting in isolation and ignorance. It's a profit-seeking entity organizing a whole number of people of various levels of conscientiousness and intelligence, and pointing them at a single profit-seeking goal.
When that many-limbed organism grabs at a profitable course of action, it's not an impulsive accident of blind flailing. If that turns out to be a problem and they have to reverse course, it's not because of remorse.
They did what was in their interest then; they did what's in their interest now. People confusing corporations for actual, you know, people absolutely baffles me. Their apologies mean absolutely nothing, good or bad, but how bad a hit their business appeared to take and how good their copy writer was. That is all.
As another poster said, and I agree wholeheartedly, I don't care for apologies, I care for post-mortems. The only thing that matters is what operations led to this action, and what change in those operations will prevent it happening again - if any such change can prevent it. A public mea culpa with an executive's signature on it means... well, nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's the cheapest possible way of reclaiming good will, and worth the paper it's written on.
>If he wanted to rectify his "mistake" he could've at least attempted to do so, yet I see no signs of that, so I'm not buying this story.
How does one rectify this issue? Destroy a public company with a lot of shareholders?
Removing the centralization in Twitter and adding the levels of censorship resistance her prefers would have been a massive gamble with a high probability of failure and would have eventually gotten him ousted.
IMO the only way he could proceed is build on a clean slate without destroying the existing value it took a decade to accrue.
> I absolutely think that anyone with half an ounce of emotional intelligence should have anticipated that reaction, and should have known that writing that as he did would have been completely counter-productive and cause a huge shit show for the company.
He wrote it in an internal group dedicated to the very subject he wrote about. It got leaked and distorted, and I can't even count how often the whole context got twisted in the exact same way as you just twisted it.
Who leaked it? Dunno. What's so bad about it? Can't say. But one thing is sure, the person who ended up losing their job is to blame. And of course the people who just can't even be bothered to get fact one of it straight while signing it off aren't spineless in the least. How would that even work, all people have spines.
>Were this almost any other founder or top executive, there already would have been meetings about demanding an apology. At the very least.
Why do we place such great value on bullshit apologies written by PR? Everyone knows that the actual people saying the words from the apology note don't mean it, so what's the point? Liturgy?
> I simplified Pieter's story to fit the narrative I thought I saw. I was blinded by what I thought sounded like a good story. So when Pieter said he had stopped traveling temporarily, I simplified that to "He stopped being a nomad."
These are the key three sentences which betray the whole ballgame.
He bloody said temporarily. You damn near libeled the subject by changing that to your narrative. One is a temporary decision and the other is a complete lifestyle change which, oh, by the way, he has built his entire life and brand around. His alleged lifestyle change was the whole basis of your story. I'm amazed Quartz didn't retract you. This seems open-and-shut retract and rereport to me, but then again, I'm not editing Quartz and I don't have all the information.
Why are you able to feel that you missed something now? Why did you miss this during your reporting? Did you not ask the right questions? Did you pull a Erdely and write TO a desired narrative with the thinnest of support? Every answer arrives at you and is troubling, especially that you're so willing to engage the subject in public to the extent that he blocked you. You're arguing with a subject and trying to skirt his blocks in a public forum. Step back for a second and think about that; your value as a journalist is solely what information you can develop from your sources, and why would anybody source for you after this?
The tone of your self-promotion itself already gave me pause that you are pursuing journalism for the wrong reason. You have a worrying penchant for muddying marketing and journalism, and that your first hero piece was taken as a hit by the subject only reinforces that.
I don't know if I'd compare you to Glass yet, but my Erdely bells are ringing while reading all sides. There's nothing wrong with being a marketer, which seems to be your skill set and that's fine. Be very, very, very cautious translating that to journalism, though, especially since you're a few bylines in, ostensibly without training, and explaining journalism in the comments here. And blaming deadlines for grievous journalistic missteps. And claiming this sort of reaction from a subject is common for profiles. All of this greatly concerns me.
> Please stop writing mean things about me and making me feel bad.
The irony.
Also, if one subject of one story got under your skin as far as you have claimed, abort journalism as a vocation immediately. You are going to destroy yourself when the stories get bigger and controversial. Your first death threat is waiting for you in the future, so either steel yourself to the opinion of others or accept that you're not cut out for it. Imagine if you had recently "gone pro" and were assigned to the Trump campaign.
(Former short-lived investigative journalist. I was sent a link to this comment section by a metro editor with some unkind commentary added, by the way, so your self-promotion might be slightly backfiring.)
This is an unnecessary jab that violates the guidelines on HN
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
> RC also reached out to the author via e-mail, but didn't hear back until the second e-mail:
You mean, the day that they kicked him out they first reached out via email and then zulip, and you somehow think that the author not having an extremely short turn around time on checking their email makes them more at fault?
> Furthermore, apparently the author is the only person who has ever missed the orientation communications:
To be clear, when you say the first person, you mean the first person since March 30th (when they started being remote) who both missed the communication and happened to be in a timezone where they weren't just naturally up at that time. I don't imagine that there have been a lot of people placed in this situation that you are comparing the author too.
> This is about of straightforward as a "I screwed up, I own it, I apologize"
"A source provided info. Source is now discredited. I thus no longer trust the info." That's the gist of the apology. But that's neither here nor there, it does not show understanding of the fact that his reputation was deliberately used for criminal purposes.
> He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded.
September 2019 — March 2021 isn’t “several years”. Many of the othern elements of your description are similarly creative interpretations of the facts.
>He's never adequately explained from what I can tell why he made those statements in the first place. If he could provide that additional insight, I think it would help others evaluate the sincerity of his apology.
I don't think it's relevant to his work.
And if anything I said caused such a reaction from the public, I wouldn't say anything else about it either. It just is not likely to help anything.
> Yes a few missteps happened but the backlash was way out of proportion, especially given how approachable and responsive they were about all the negative feedback.
This has become standard operating procedure. Push your agenda until you receive backlash, then claim it was all a big misunderstanding, and that you are listening to feedback. Let things calm down for a few months, then push the controversial changes anyway.
People are picking up on that, and won‘t accept it anymore. I think that‘s great.
Current leadership has shown their hand and the probable long-term direction they are headed.
Maybe it‘s an honest mistake, but the community no longer seems to extend the benefit of the doubt, which is totally understandable. Fool me 42753 times, shame on me.
> It's absolutely a failure on Harris's part.
Let me be clearer: Harris stated exactly what you said he didn't state. You either failed to click the link or dismissed it. That you do not agree with what Harris said does not mean he didn't say it.
> If Harris thinks 12 months is not enough, he can say that.
It's obvious he thinks that, and I'm pretty sure you know that, even if he didn't use those literal words. You're implicitly criticizing Harris for an ungenerous reading of deBoer's commitment ("obviously it's absurd and unreasonable to expect he really meant 'permanently' when he wrote 'permanently'"), which I don't object to -- but I do object to you not in turn extending the same generosity to Harris.
For whatever it's worth, I doubt "permanent exile" is reasonable, either. But barely a year later deBoer was writing for the Washington Post and the New York Times, publishing a best-selling book, and starting a newsletter that now brings in a six-figure income. Barely two years on and deBoer is writing, in so many words, "I've already apologized, why won't all you cancel-culture jerks leave me alone".
So, yeah, sorry: if I was Harris, I would probably be tempted to make a few tweets questioning just how sincere deBoer was about the whole apology thing.
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