We get into tricky territory when we de-platform people based on their beliefs with which we disagree, or their behaviour outside the Haskell community. It’s a slippery slope. How unpleasant does a person need to be before we de-platform them? Who decides which beliefs or behaviours are OK and which are not?
It’s very different if toxicity is carried out on Haskell media, or against other Haskellers. That is covered by our guidelines for respectful communication. As Julian says above, those guidelines specifically written in a way that makes clear we do not want to constrain what people think, but how they behave towards us.
That’s not to say that anything (at all) goes. In Britain “hate speech” is illegal: “A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if (a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or (b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby”. I think there is a case for de-platforming people who actively engage in hate speech. But its a fairly high bar. If Michael were living in Britain, would he be arrested for hate speech? No, not even close.
Finally, the Oct 7th massacre was a deeply traumatic event in a very small country. Trauma absolutely does not excuse bad behaviour, but the situation of Israelis is viscerally different to ours.
@tomjaguarpaw I am really disappointed that you found it appropriate to spend your time doing some armchair linguistics while not addressing the content of Michael’s posts. If you haven’t seen them already:
Where I’m from, racism is grounded in dehumanisation. From one citizen of a former colonial empire to another, I am asking you to trust me on this matter.
Joking about what one’s neighbours get up to with domestic animals is an old tradition in many parts of the world; there’s no need to take it too seriously.
Edit: In particular, the evidence at hand is too meagre to call “racism”.
Sorry I forgot that the Western world calling us arabs goat-fuckers since the first invasions of Iraq is just a joke, absolutely nothing more to it, just dropping a few kilotons of bombs on innocents and calling them goat-fuckers.
The foundation implicitly endorses their podcast guests, or specifically their public image. I don’t see any calling in this thread for Michael to be de-platformed on a general scale (“cancelled”?), rather not be endorsed in the first place. (Apologies if that’s what you meant by de-platformed, I felt it was ambiguous.)
I find it perplexing that some posts in this thread seem to equate Hamas with Palestinians. Making crude and obscene jokes about Hamas (a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, US and EU) could be disgusting, but it can hardly be classified as racism.
I’m not checking people’s twitter posts when using their libraries or collaborating with them. But inviting someone to e.g. a podcast should have higher standards regarding their public behavior.
But this is ultimately the decision of the Haskell Interlude team and I think we should accept whatever their decision is.
If it was me running a podcast, I probably would:
keep the episode online… it’s done anyway
make sure I do some basic research about guests in the future and inform them about it
Not to go too far afield but even if we uphold speech we shouldn’t gloss the actual state of speech protections in Britain, which are highly arbitrary and selective, especially since the Public Order Act 2023. Last year a woman was arrested and charged, though acquitted, for holding up a placard with a coconut. Hundreds of peaceful nonhateful protesters have been arrested in the past month alone.
I oppose that, and out of a sense of consistency I’m not advocating deplatforming here. Just registering frustration and disappointment, and a hope we can find a path to do better.
Could we have a “non-endorsement disclaimer” from the podcast, in the future?
IMO, it would be an unreasonable burden to ask the foundation to thoroughly check the guests’ background, including whatever the guest may have said on all corners of the internet.
Having to deal this situation, in absent of such a disclaimer, seems also burdensome.
It’s nothing like as obscure as that. It’s not like Snoyman is posting on Twitter in a clearly personal capacity. (So I’m most surprised at his apparent naïveté wrt social media.) It’s only a couple of links to get to “a deep passion for Rust and functional programming,“ then to his profile at FP Complete, and then to Haskell.
So is FP Complete aware of those Twitter posts? Are their clients aware? Do they share the views expressed? The posts have been there a couple of months, in effect under FP Complete’s name. I know my employer would insist I remove any such posts, and indeed not post under my own name/traceable back to being their employee.
retired headmaster arrested under Terrorism Act at Leeds demonstration for holding sign making joke about Palestine. [my emphasis on joke; quoting The Guardian Jul 23]
I agree that Hamas should not be equated with Palestinians in general. However, I included that first link with the NSFW picture because of its context. It is a reply to this comment:
Saying “I stand with Palestine” is the same as saying “I stand with goat rape.”
It’s arguably less obscene, but as a reader, my instinct would have been to check his social media posts as well. Checking guests official blogs isn’t very hard. It’s maybe 15-30 minutes of research.
(The twitter posts however were published after the recording date.)
Now it’s up to the podcast/foundation to decide on the policy, be it “non endorsement” or guest invitation standard. Personally, I think the latter is a slippery slope as SPJ pointed out, and we could see how it often doesn’t work out no matter how good the intention was from most people.
Perhaps, Snoyman could also come forward to this thread to speak for himself too, as a “fair public trial” that this seems descending into.
I edited my comment to make it clearer what precisely I was responding to, and what my point was. It applies regardless of the context, which I noted and endeavoured not to comment upon.
Of course it’s not about goats, but I don’t think it’s about that either—certainly not to my reading.
I fear you’ve picked up a mutant thought-germ.
I’m not sure if my language is not precise enough. I was expressing that I do not find the blog post particularly obscene, but it triggered some doubts inside me. I was even tempted to comment when I first read it, but you know how political debates go on the internet.
My point was merely that: if I was checking a guests background, this post would definitely trigger a more thorough social media investigation.
