Before going into the details of the new Rust release, we'd like to draw attention to... [political cause]
The cause in this case is undeniably worthy, its an awful situation in an often crappy world, but what does it have to do with this release? Where do you start and stop with the issue-raising in technical release news?
Thanks, I feel like people are always trying to make sure everything is done in some super formal way. The authors decided to put this in so they did, they don't need some formalized criteria for "Good Movement" or whatever.
Its common place these days for tech organizations to promote social and political issues. The issue for me here is - what if hypothetically the political viewpoint is misguided?
What if this was 2003 and the statement said "Due to the newly found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we stand in solidarity with the American government for its war against terror"?
I don't think a tech organization should be making such statements in their release notes, which is essentially telling people what should be thought of as right, or wrong, or how to think about a particular issue.
To me its reflective of a potentially dangerous trend that everyone _must_ be an activist and have some kind of alignment.
All I care about is the new and improved logic flow syntax of Rust.
I feel like this trend is starting to come full circle. We went through a time where companies and organizations felt like they needed to be political activists in all their docs and announcements. And for a while it felt like questioning the activism was questioning the validity of the cause. But it feels like more people are recognizing that politics doesn't need to pervade every part of our lives. It is okay for technical release notes to only be technical release notes, regardless of what current events are.
Unlike Rust code, activism is an area where statements have a chance to be incorrect or misguided. And just like Rust code, you're welcome to review anything you read, and see if you like it or not.
The whole point of activism is to bring issues to an audience that wasn't prepared to hear such statements at a given time: this is why some people get annoyed when they read Notepad++ release notes for the first time!
Being "right" doesn't have anything to do with activism: there's lots of activism within, say, flat earthers, but that doesn't make Earth any less round. Still, in this particular point in time, stating support for women in Iran is probably the mildest form of activism anyone could push for.
> The issue for me here is - what if hypothetically the political viewpoint is misguided?
Then you stay away from engaging with the underlying community that issues such statements (which might just be a smaller sub-community of the project's wider community).
> All I care about is the new and improved logic flow syntax of Rust.
And you are free to care only about that, use it as a purely technical product and just ignore any political statements (which shouldn't be too hard).
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While I don't think every organization intends to have some kind of alignment, they ultimately will all have one, since people do, and organizations are made up of people.
Sometime in the last week, there was an open source federated social network project posted on HN. They have a very political stance when it comes to their developer community, which causes many people to stay away from contributing to the project, to a level where I think it might be the project's long-term demise. While it's never a nice sight to see "wasted effort" like that, given the high level of transparency and contributors willingly joining and staying in the community, that seems like a decent mode of operating.
Where I live, there's a Kony2012 guy still in town. I respect his resolve. I could let it get to me but he seems passionate so meh, let people do what makes them happy. I can skip the rhetoric if it bothers me.
That paragraph also got me wondering why they're not drawing attention to, for example, the Human Rights situation in China. Maybe because that might draw the ire of the powerful Chinese state? Or to the situation in Saudi Arabia, where women have even fewer rights than in Iran. Maybe because Saudi Arabia, unlike Iran, is a US ally?
These types of messages carry more weight when they're not too frequent; in the history of Rust we've posted three such messages. If we posted them too frequently they would lose impact. So we draw attention to things that have had recent developments/events, and where fresh attention seems like it may prove helpful. (See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33453262)
If we started posting about every terrible wrong in the world, we'd have multiple announcements per day, and they'd have zero impact.
Rust is an international project with participation from all over the world. Whether any particular country is allied with another has zero impact on the discussions that lead to these announcements.
Drawing attention has zero impact no matter how often or how rarely you do it. Unless the Rust team has privileged knowledge that they're releasing, or are directly acting in the interests of known individual contributors, donating any amount of money to a cause is worth far more than tens of thousands of people becoming informed that the world is slightly worse than it was yesterday.
Even if drawing attention was worth anything, I think you are assuming the wrong frequency - the Rust technical release notes may contain few calls to political action, but everyone reading them spends enough time online to be constantly bombarded with them.
No, it is not. Marketing is about making you want to buy something, and appeals to your materialism. Raising awareness is about making you Aware that something is happening, and appeals to your altruism. There is a heck of a lot more of the former, and the latter doesn't actually make you want to perform any specific action (if it results in action at all, frequently, the action is just sharing it again).
In other words, we bang our drum when we feel like it and really have no meaningful metrics or A/B measurements to gauge whether or not our announcement has made any actionable positive impact vs just irritating people who are solely interested in the technical release topic.
Some colleagues in Toronto were telling me about how there was a demonstration there last Saturday morning pertaining to this situation.
The demonstrators lined up along the sidewalk of one of the main streets, and were loudly chanting and screaming for a few hours. Others drove by and honked their vehicles' horns.
This was apparently done along stretches of the street with large residential complexes nearby, too.
Based on the bystanders, residents, and other people that my colleagues talked to, they seemed to think that this disruption likely alienated far more people than it attracted to support this particular cause.
> Based on the bystanders, residents, and other people that my colleagues talked to, they seemed to think that this disruption likely alienated far more people than it attracted to support this particular cause.
Same rhetoric used during the civil rights movement.
This whataboutism is pointless. It is not their duty to refer to each and every issue in the world. It is their right however to express the view for whatever they choose.
Why read further into it? They never said they don’t care about those other things. It is possible for humans to mention a specific cause without also negating all others.
Seriously, what is wrong with the logical reasoning of some people?
I could be wrong, but I think people get irked by shallow virtue signaling, especially when it's combined with superficial thoughts-and-prayers type of aid/advice, more than the the choice of political issues.
Although, I suppose recent political issues that everyone's already talking about, and a project tries to "raise awareness" reeks of a misguided virtue signaling PR stunt than when one talks about long-standing issues. Not saying this is the case here, though, as Rust is hardly something that needs PR.
I'm sure part of the reaction is that Twitter is full of this type of virtue signaling, and people have become allergic to it. I remember the whole "Yeah, this little master->main change will be a tectonic shift. Back pats all around! We did it people; we solved racism!" attitude that Twitter had during the main/master debate lol. Yes, make changes in what is probably the most progressive industry (since we nerds are generally more tolerant/progressive), like that's gonna make a difference in the morally decrepit police force, which the protests were about to begin with.
Anyway... I'm not sure what the word is, but I feel it's a next door neighbour to hypocrisy? And hypocrites annoying everyone.
Personally though, I think it's always good to talk about human rights or mental health issues! I'm not sure a paragraph everyone will skip is an adequate place for that, but it's a nice token effort, and it's somewhat commendable someone cared enough to put it in.
Anyway, this is all a bit incoherent, but I don't care enough to wordsmith the comment, only to share some of my opinions.
Ok, I belive they do on some superficial level. I mean, people virtue signal about things they care, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. If they actually cared, why not try and do something meaningful about it[1]? When I cared about issues, I put effort into trying to change things a even on a meager/local scale. As a teen I volunteered at a library to teach children how to behave online. Later I helped refurbish a homelessness shelter in my home town. I've taught programming at an LGBT community centre.
Maybe I've done these for selfish reasons because they are things that personally affected my own past/development, and doing them made me feel good and significant. These are all small things, but at least I hope I've made a difference to a small number of people. So, in my books a tweet or a driveby paragraph in release notes doesn't really make a difference. Tell me, how did GitHub help make black people feel more comfortable on the streets of America? How did these release notes help people's rights in Iran?
[1]: Also, to be fair, I don't know who put that paragraph in. Maybe they did do meaningfully contribute (i.e. by setting up VPN networks or something), and maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh. But in my limited experience, the people who preach the loudest do the least, but also herald of their preaches and coat themselves with efforts of others. Sadly
No, people do not "virtue signal" about things they care about. Perhaps they used to in the past, but language has moved on. The phrase is now understood to carry with it an accusation of insincerity. Therefore virtue signaling and actually caring are contradictory.
This is how language works. Usage is meaning. A change in usage is a change in meaning. Language doesn't care about your opinions on the matter, it simply is. The phrase "virtue signaling" now carries with it an accusation of insincerity. If you don't mean to level such an accusation, you're going to need to find a way to communicate what you do mean that isn't encumbered by connotations that have recently become standard.
Expressions of solidarity with the powerless can help them weather the storm: they buoy hope, they increase perceptions of connection and of agency. I have witnessed this repeatedly over decades, including at first hand in this very specific instance. If everyone kept quiet about everything they could not immediately, materially, "fix", the world would be a far more desolate place for many. I guess there's no particular obligation for you to care, but would it actually be such a privation for you to stoically weather your indignation about others doing so?
> Expressions of solidarity with the powerless can help them weather the storm: they buoy hope, they increase perceptions of connection and of agency
I agree that solidarity can help. But none of that's going on here... This pathetic attempt at shallow expression isn't going to reach the people who need it (or probably anyone in Iran for that matter, due to the Internet situation there).
> I guess there's no particular obligation for you to care, but would it actually be such a privation for you to stoically weather your indignation about others doing so?
This is degenerating into gaslighting and you trying to put words into my mouth, so I will let the thread rest. I guess I'm happy to agree to disagree on the effectiveness of online virtue signaling[1].
I'm not even judging these people that hard, I think. I'm just describing the response their shallow behaviour elicits in other people. I don't even get such a strong response myself, I just think it's worthless
[1] To avoid confusion I mean "pathetically shallow attempts at trying to make a difference to improve their colleagues perception of their (shallow) morals"; with malicious intent or without, the action is the same. But that concludes me playing online word/semantic lawyer
> This pathetic attempt at shallow expression isn't going to reach the people who need it
You have no idea. As I said, I have personal experience of this particular instance of what you stereotype, sans evidence, as 'virtual signalling', having a genuinely heartening effect on a friend whose nephew was killed recently in Iran. This is the trouble with you internet snarlers. You have so little knowledge of physical reality.
You call me an Internet snarler, but isn't what we're discussing Internet snarling? Anyway, I'm glad you have a friend who was touched by this and I'm sorry for your friend's loss.
Maybe because selectively caring about specific issues while ignoring others is a form of political bias. I know people love to shout whataboutism whenever someone points out legitimate hypocrisy rather than confront the hypocrisy.
Where’s the hypocrisy? You’re projecting that they don’t care about the other causes.
That’s your own fault not theirs.
Maybe they have some women on their team who are particularly moved by this event? Maybe they have some Iranian expats? Maybe they’re unaware of the extent of other issues? Maybe it doesn’t matter because again , saying one supports a specific cause doesn’t mean they don’t support others.
There is zero hypocrisy here. There are only logical fallacies from people reading too far into things.
> Maybe because selectively caring about specific issues while ignoring others is a form of political bias.
There's generally three options when it comes to politics; do nothing, do something, do everything.
The first does not help anyone, and the last; being impossible - is a path back to the first (via burn-out, apathy or simply inefficiency ("scope creep").
So the only real option is to do "something" - and champion a few causes.
Preventing some abuses can be worse than nothing. Imagine the following.
Your friend Adam hits Bob. You do nothing. Bob tries to hit back but you grab his arms so he can't. Adam hits Bob. You do nothing. Bob still can't hit back because you are preventing him.
Another possibility:
A Corp in which you are a stockholder is polluting the environment. You do nothing. B Inc pollutes the environment but not as much. You step in to stop them which causes B to lose out on a lot of profit. A Corp outcompetes B Inc. You become rich.
Do I think we are being overly harsh on Iran? No. Should we consider the possibility and try to avoid it? Yes. Should we be suspicious of other people that are biased in what they enforce? Yes.
I think it's clear these are really contrived examples built explicitly to prove an exception to the rule.
In the real world, doing something is typically better than doing nothing.
You are walking in the park and see a woman being dragged into a bush to be assaulted. Do you intervene? By doing so are you stopping all assaults against women? No, but invariably people would still say you've done more good by doing something than by doing nothing.
The protestors in Iran haven't hit Bob their government, you're not restraining an equally aggrieved party by backing them against their regime. They're if anything the long term victims of Bob's habitual violence and they're finally seeking to break free, not to hurt Bob, but to be free from being hurt themselves.
A child is starving to death in Sudan. Do you feed them or do nothing? Does feeding them feed all the children? Does feeding none of the children make the world a better place than feeding one? If you were that child, or their parents watching them die in their arms, would you hope people would step away from their completely detached hypotheticals and actually do something to save a life when they could?
When you listen to people who are pointing out that you are a hypocrite, you are platforming hateful abusers and possible Putin propagandists. Listening to negativity is platforming hate.
So now people that believe Saudi Arabia and other countries should be held accountable for human rights violations are Putin apologists? What does this have to do with Iran specifically?
It would be nice to not have politics permeate every aspect of our lives. Just to give people room to breathe. Everyone knows about whats happening in Iran already. There was no real benefit to making a declaration here via a rust release. Best keep these things for social media.
> There was no real benefit to making a declaration here via a rust release
Some people do think human solidarity, outside of stereotypically 'political' contexts, is a benefit in itself. I know many Iranians (accident of history - my mother adopted 2 Iranian refugees when I was in my teens). I showed this to one friend, who heard last week a 20 year old nephew of hers had been gunned down by the IRGC. She burst into tears and hugged me and told me how much this kind of expression kept hope alive.
Politics is physical reality, which tends to mug those who prefer to look away. If it mugs you merely via a sentence you prefer not to read, rather than a bullet or hammer, I suspect you can probably cope.
As a Rust team member, I have no earthly clue. Maybe it's the Core team? Or the blog author? Or the release team? Also no clue whatsoever as to the process for determining which cause to promote or even which causes are not allowed to be promoted (if any?). So now I'm curious... Let's look.
I believe the only publicly available output of this team has been whatever has been published to the Inside Rust blog. If you read the blog post I linked in my previous comment (their most recent one), it outlines their plans.
For full disclosure, this leadership chat was created in the fallout of the mod team resigning (of which I was a member). And I think it's a good thing, because it's getting a bunch of people talking that weren't talking before. And, as the blog post outlined, they're working towards producing an RFC to revamp part of Rust governance. Which... I think is needed.
It's just that... they are also making other decisions now. Whether that's beyond their mandate or not, I don't know. But it's certainly continuing the tradition of the Core Team, which started doing this a couple years ago. And whether they were within their mandate to do such things is also not clear to me.
To me it means that at least one person involved with developing Rust cares about this. I think skipping past it I am not personal interested is a small sacrifice for me to make, considering that I get a new Rust version for free.
I never saw Rust as political. It's maybe socially progressive in the sense that it's community shuns abusive behaviour towards minorities, but every community should strive for that, IMO.
Also, while I agree there are some horrible people who were associated with the CoC movement early on, I think it's unfair to judge the whole idea/project by those people. Also, I'm aware there are some poor CoCs that maintainers abuse, but that's true of any system!
Also, there's nothing wrong with being either leftist or rightist, as long as both sides can have a civil conversation!
And there's nothing wrong with empowerment! As an example, you're clearly confident enough to be able to voice your opinions, but some people still aren't, and some who are now but weren't before were empowered to be more confident. So there's nothing wrong with empowering people.
The cause in this case is undeniably worthy, its an awful situation in an often crappy world, but what does it have to do with this release? Where do you start and stop with the issue-raising in technical release news?