Cancel Culture

[Gehrman]

Employees at Penguin crying about Penguin Random House Canada publising Jordan Petersons newest book and want it cancelled. I havn't actually read any of his books so I don't know really know what all the fuss is about.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5b...ront-publisher-about-new-jordan-peterson-book

 

[KirkDuyt]

I love it when hatemongers whine about people wanting them cancelled. Making people hate others is your business model, stop your fecking whinging bunch of Hitlershaped snowflakes.

Everyone's entitled to his opinion, but that doesnt mean your opinion cant make you a shite person who should be taken out back and shot. Let alone lose some ad revenue. I try to argue with these people sometimes, but I can barely make out a word they say towering above them from the high horse on top of my moral high ground.

 

[sullydnl]

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[fergieisold]

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provocative video titles but when you dig into his content most of the time it makes atleast some sense.

edit: are the videos even real? Can’t find them

 

[Sweet Square]

Only in 2020 could a self help guru who ended up in a Siberian rehab centre bring out a new book called 12 More Rules For Life.

 

[fergieisold]

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the videos were not from Peterson. They were an INCEL that made up the titles. He was banned and the videos removed.

 

[sullydnl]

Tbh I was laughing at the idea of Jordan Peterson asking why women don't watch his videos in and of itself.

 

[Revan]

Director of AI research at Nvidia, ladies and gents:

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Publicly making cancel list, posting to her tens of thousands of followers, calling them dangerous alt-right influencers.

What did they do? Liked a post of some other professor with whom she had a twitter fight. Of course, the list is not meant to be 'punitive', might contain false-positive (for example some poor student who might want to do an internship there, good luck with it now), and she will remove them if they reflect and self-improve.

And here I got told that cancel-culture does not exist and it is just right-wing media propaganda.

 

[Berbasbullet]

Blocking someone on Twitter = proof cancel culture is a thing?

 

[Revan]

Blocking someone on Twitter = proof cancel culture is a thing?

Posting lists of hundreds of people that she blocked in a single day to her 40K followers, calling it a cancel list and urging her followers to help those people to change their views (while also calling those people alt-right) while you're a professor at Caltech and a director in one of the most important Silicon Valley companies? Yes, that is cancel culture.

 

[Berbasbullet]

Posting lists of hundreds of people that she blocked in a single day to her 40K followers, calling it a cancel list and urging her followers to help those people to change their views (while also calling those people alt-right) while you're a professor at Caltech and a director in one of the most important Silicon Valley companies? Yes, that is cancel culture.

Doesn’t she refer to it as a block list? And not a cancel list? Or are you making things up to try and prove some sort of point? Genuine question by the way.

Regardless though, one person blocking people and encouraging others to do so = cancel culture is without a doubt a thing?

 

[dumbo]

Try and change the minds equals cancel culture wokists snowflake cry to daddy Peterson feck you.

 

[JPRouve]

Blocking bots and people she doesn't want in her feed. She should be quartered.

 

[Marcosdeto]

well, the cancel culture is the idea of some idiots that they can say who can be heard and who can't
if you are going to denounce people for not sharing your ideas, do it, doesn't prove that cancel culture exists, it just proves you are an idiot and that you can't respect other people ideas
to say if cancel culture exist, we must first agree on the meaning of the word "culture"

 

[Revan]

Doesn’t she refer to it as a block list? And not a cancel list? Or are you making things up to try and prove some sort of point? Genuine question by the way.

Regardless though, one person blocking people and encouraging others to do so = cancel culture is without a doubt a thing?

Let's see what she says:

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Try and change the minds equals cancel culture wokists snowflake cry to daddy Peterson feck you.

Ironically, she called the other researcher with whom she had a spat 'a snowflake', while tagging his ex-university to distance themselves from him. Irony lost somewhere.

Blocking bots and people she doesn't want in her feed. She should be quartered.

Blocking people is not the same as sharing the list of people she does not like to her fans, and asking them that the list should serve for cancelation.

I mean, isn't it ironic that you and the others here are defending her that she is not actually doing cancellation while she is tweeting that she is doing exactly that?

Bear in mind, we are talking for a person with relatively high-power (at least in AI and Silicon Valley circles), not for a nobody.

 

[dumbo]

:ironicpetersonemote:

 

[JPRouve]

Blocking people is not the same as sharing the list of people she does not like to her fans, and asking them that the list should serve for cancelation.

I mean, isn't it ironic that you and the others here are defending her that she is not actually doing cancellation while she is tweeting that she is doing exactly that?

Bear in mind, we are talking for a person with relatively high-power (at least in AI and Silicon Valley circles), not for a nobody.

She is sharing a list of accounts she doesn't like, she is free to publicly critcize them and everyone is free to agree with her or not. What she did isn't different to what you did when you shared her tweet and criticized her on the caf.

 

[Berbasbullet]

Let's see what she says:

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— Twitter API (@user) date

Ironically, she called the other researcher with whom she had a spat 'a snowflake', while tagging his ex-university to distance themselves from him. Irony lost somewhere.

Blocking people is not the same as sharing the list of people she does not like to her fans, and asking them that the list should serve for cancelation.

I mean, isn't it ironic that you and the others here are defending her that she is not actually doing cancellation while she is tweeting that she is doing exactly that?

Bear in mind, we are talking for a person with relatively high-power (at least in AI and Silicon Valley circles), not for a nobody.

Fair enough, I didn’t read anything outside your initial post (regarding the word cancel).

Okay we get it, sharing a list of people she doesn’t like is absolutely representative of an entire culture.

 

[Revan]

She is sharing a list of accounts she doesn't like, she is free to publicly critcize them and everyone is free to agree with her or not. What she did isn't different to what you did when you shared her tweet and criticized her on the caf.

She shared a list of people she blocked because they liked one (or more) tweets from some other account, and asked her followers to 'help them improve' and if that fail, cancel them.

It is literally spelled in the tweet.

I am not asking anyone to cancel Anima (and well, I have 200 followers in Twitter and am not high in a top SV company). I am just giving a plain example of cancel culture that is happening in my field and in SV.

 

[Marcosdeto]

Fair enough, I didn’t read anything outside your initial post (regarding the word cancel).

Okay we get it, sharing a list of people she doesn’t like is absolutely representative of an entire culture.

i don't think he is saying that

 

[Berbasbullet]

i don't think he is saying that

I know, just being a touch hyperbolic for fun.

 

[JPRouve]

She shared a list of people she blocked because they liked one (or more) tweets from some other account, and asked her followers to 'help them improve' and if that fail, cancel them.

It is literally spelled in the tweet.

I am not asking anyone to cancel Anima (and well, I have 200 followers in Twitter and am not high in a top SV company). I am just giving a plain example of cancel culture that is happening in my field and in SV.

What are your intentions, what are you trying to achieve in this thread?

 

[jojojo]

On the other hand there's the situation of:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/04/timnit-gebru-google-ai-fired-diversity-ethics
who researched AI and AI ethics.

Summarising: Google didn't like her research on ethics in AI systems and particularly in language analysis models and told her not to publish the paper she'd written. What happened next is open to interpretation, Timnit argued that the objections to publication were motivated by PR (not academic quality) - her bosses argued that she hadn't emphasised the strides made by Google researchers to improve things.

But then we get another Google AI researcher comment:

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Which suggests that Google were only sensitive to contents when it suited them. Or this from a former Google PR manager, in response to Google's defence that it was all normal procedure and that Timnit was late submitting the paper:

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So did Google cancel her? No, they just told her to stop publishing or risk being in breach of contract and now they're trying to PR their way out of the problem they created for themselves.

Somehow that seems like a bigger deal to me than someone putting out a list of twitter trolls that she no longer wanted to help jump up the twitter search algorithm because they'd piggybacked on her posts.

 

[Marcosdeto]

I know, just being a touch hyperbolic for fun.

haha, i got that

as i said, cancel culture, IMO is not a widespread thing
but the idea of some people that they have the prerogative to decide who can and who can't be heard, exists and there are examples of that all around
i don't think one twit proves it, but it shows that some people are fine with that
if i don't agree with you i wouldn't start a thread denouncing you and expecting every other caffite to follow my stance and insult or block you
that girl does

 

[nimic]

Here is a list of posters. Do with it what you will.

@Cina (already canceled himself)
@berbatrick
@Top
@EdWeatherall
@SteveJ

 

[JPRouve]

haha, i got that

as i said, cancel culture, IMO is not a widespread thing
but the idea of some people that they have the prerogative to decide who can and who can't be heard, exists and there are examples of that all around
i don't think one twit proves it, but it shows that some people are fine with that
if i don't agree with you i wouldn't start a thread denouncing you and expecting every other caffite to follow my stance and insult or block you
that girl does

There is a fundamental point that you missed though, it's the fact that we are talking about people or machines that are trying to impose their presence on others. We are not talking about a passive interaction but an active one. On a board an example would be a poster that posts unwanted threads over and over. That poster will be banned because he is a nuisance.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

@Revan is on about a twitter specific phenomenon. Which is when someone with loads of followers gets them to all pile on to some poor shlub. I don’t think it’s cancel culture but it’s not cool. It’s bullying, basically. It happens on both sides of the culture war.

 

[JPRouve]

@Revan is on about a twitter specific phenomenon. Which is when someone with loads of followers gets them to all pile on to some poor shlub. I don’t think it’s cancel culture but it’s not cool. It’s bullying, basically. It happens on both sides of the culture war.

So you assume that in this case she is lying and these accounts are neither alt right infuencers nor bots?

 

[Revan]

On the other hand there's the situation of:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/04/timnit-gebru-google-ai-fired-diversity-ethics
who researched AI and AI ethics.

Summarising: Google didn't like her research on bias in AI systems and told her not to publish the paper she'd written. What happened next is open to interpretation, Timnit argued that the objections to publication were motivated by PR (not academic quality) - her bosses argued that she hadn't emphasised the strides made by Google researchers to improve things.

But then we get another Google AI researcher comment:

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Which suggests that Google were only sensitive to contents when it suited them. Or this from a former Google PR manager, in response to Google's defence that it was all normal procedure and that Timnit was late submitting the paper:

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

So did Google cancel her? No, they just told her to stop publishing or risk being in breach of contract and now they're trying to PR their way out of the problem they created for themselves.

Somehow that seems like a bigger deal to me than someone putting out a list of twitter trolls that she no longer wanted to help jump up the twitter search algorithm because they'd piggybacked on her posts.

There is a lot of wrong things with this post. From an insider (personally know some of the actors in this mess including Timnit and Anima):

- Timnit and co. wrote a paper about bias in Google's NLP system. There was nothing wrong with the paper (to be fair, nothing that we also did not know) but Google did not like it. They asked Timnit to withdraw the paper, or remove her name (and the other Googlers) on it cause they do not want the paper to be associated with Google.
- Timnit put an ultimatum to Google, that they need to do a few things (including the names of the reviewers who asked for the paper to be withdrawn) or else she quits. She also sent an email to Google Brain Women list to stop working on all topics related to diversity etc, cause it does not matter and Google it is not listening.
- Google fired her though they said that they 'accepted her resignation'. Timnit never resigned, she just said 'do this or I quit' so under Cali's law, this was a firing.
- Timnit accused Jeff Dean (a white male and Senior Vice President at Google) of firing her. Later it became clear that it was Megan Kachiola (a woman and Vice President at Google) who actually fired her, but I guess that 'a woman fired me' doesn't look as nice for propaganda purpose as 'a a white male' fired me.

The paper was okay though nothing spectacular (read the leaked version of it). Google's official reason (she did not cite some other papers that are mitigating the problems in the field) while correct, was also a bit of horseshit. They just didn't want the paper to be associated with them cause it shits on BERT (their flagship AI product). Her email (also leaked) was totally worthy of a firing, which is what happened. The propaganda that followed then, was just propaganda.

- For a start, the researcher who said that it is not the case that Google papers go into an internal review has left Google many years ago. Other researchers corrected him. From anecdotal evidence, one of the PhDs in the group I work as a postdoc, who is doing an internship there had to send his paper for internal review 2 weeks before. So, it is a policy change from Google. Timnit instead sent it just 1 day before the deadline.
- From all accounts, it was Kacholia who fired her. Just that Timnit thought that 'she cannot believe that she did it on her own' so let's blame the ultra-famous Dean (Kacholia is a VP at Google, at level 10 and the boss of Timnit's boss, with Timnit being a low-tier manager at level 6). Kacholia had the power to fire Timnit, but as I said, the propaganda of sexism won't work as well if the woman gets fired from a woman.

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The biggest irony in Anima's tweet is that she cried for years how Steven Pinker fans tried to cancel her (with Pinker simply blocking her and not even engaging when she attacked her). And what she is doing now 'self-correct comrade or be canceled'. But no, apparently it is not a cancelation despite that she is saying that in the tweet herself and everyone else is either a troll or a bot.

 

[Revan]

So you assume that in this case she is lying and these accounts are neither alt right infuencers nor bots?

How can she know that hundreds of accounts are bots or alt-right influencers? It isn't that she did a process on banning people, she just banned everyone who liked a tweet of Pedro Domingos (who started with a good point, and turned out to be a big prick in the next following day and pretty much everyone of note who was agreeing with him distanced themselves).

She even blocked a couple of people from DiversityOnAI, people who are working on the same topic that she is making this crusade. People who are her AIs. I guess false positives, right.

 

[Marcosdeto]

There is a fundamental point that you missed though, it's the fact that we are talking about people or machines that are trying to impose their presence on others. We are not talking about a passive interaction but an active one. On a board an example would be a poster that posts unwanted threads over and over. That poster will be banned because he is a nuisance.

for what i see, on both sides there are people trying to impose their presence on others
when you want to listen or attend someones lecture and some group decides he/she shouldn't be heard, that group is trying to impose their presence
I decide if i want to attend, i decide who i want to listen
no one has the right to stop me from doing it

 

[Pogue Mahone]

So you assume that in this case she is lying and these accounts are neither alt right infuencers nor bots?

I’ve no idea. I don’t really care. I was just making a general point. If I was a betting man I would put money on at least some of the hundreds of names on her list belong in the “poor shlub” category but have no intention of checking. Besides, she specifically stated that some are alt-right influencers or bots. Which imply most aren’t. She also specifically said she was setting her followers on people she would consider “junior”.

I’ve seen numerous examples of pile-ons like this on Twitter, although usually the mob are set on just one person at a time. It is unusual to get them to “change the minds” (like that’s gonna happen!) of several hundred people at once but it’s the same vibe. It always makes the person with the big following look like a bully. Punch up, not down, right?

 

[JPRouve]

How can she know that hundreds of accounts are bots or alt-right influencers? It isn't that she did a process on banning people, she just banned everyone who liked a tweet of Pedro Domingos (who started with a good point, and turned out to be a big prick in the next following day and pretty much everyone of note who was agreeing with him distanced themselves).

She even blocked a couple of people from DiversityOnAI, people who are working on the same topic that she is making this crusade. People who are her AIs. I guess false positives, right.

She shared a list of accounts that she blocked, she didn't block them for you or anybody else and she only suggested to use it however you want, including "cancelling" if that's what you choose to do. She shared her subjectivity, her own bias and she is free to share it with the world.

And again what is your goal here?

 

[JPRouve]

for what i see, on both sides there are people trying to impose their presence on others
when you want to listen or attend someones lecture and some group decides he/she shouldn't be heard, that group is trying to impose their presence
I decide if i want to attend, i decide who i want to listen
no one has the right to stop me from doing it

What are the both sides that you are talking about?

 

[Revan]

She shared a list of accounts that she blocked, she didn't block them for you or anybody else and she only suggested to use it however you want, including "cancelling" if that's what you choose to do. She shared her subjectivity, her own bias and she is free to share it with the world.

What is Cancel culture? I guess your arguing that there is no cancel culture is something like 'I dogmatically believe that cancel culture is a made-up thing, and I will justify everyone who argues against it by simply saying that cancel culture does not exist'.

Congratulations, we have a new religion!

And again what is your goal here?

In a thread about cancel culture, I am giving an example of cancel culture. Doh.

What is yours?

 

[dumbo]

Peterson is your religion congrats.

 

[JPRouve]

What is Cancel culture? I guess your arguing that there is no cancel culture is something like 'I dogmatically believe that cancel culture is a made-up thing, and I will justify everyone who argues against it by simply saying that cancel culture does not exist'.

Congratulations, we have a new religion!


What is yours?

The problem here is that you revan has access to these accounts, they are not blocked to you and if someone decides to block them, it doesn't affect you. Twitter could delete those accounts and then we could talk about cancellation but here it's just a case of someone sharing its bias to the world.

And my goal is to understand your point.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

The problem here is that you revan has access to these accounts, they are not blocked to you and if someone decides to block them, it doesn't affect you. Twitter could delete those accounts and then we could talk about cancellation but here it's just a case of someone sharing its bias to the world.

And my goal is to understand your point.

I agree that this is a poor example of cancel culture but you’re being very pedantic with your insistence that their Twitter account needs to be deleted for them to be considered cancelled. The way being cancelled is usually understood is when an individual is targetted by other users on social media because they’ve said or done something problematic. The pile one can end in lots of different bad outcomes for the individual at the bottom. Having their account deleted is just one of them.

 

[Revan]

The problem here is that you revan has access to these accounts, they are not blocked to you and if someone decides to block them, it doesn't affect you. Twitter could delete those accounts and then we could talk about cancellation but here it's just a case of someone sharing its bias to the world.

And my goal is to understand your point.

As far as I know, cancel culture was never about authorities (be it Twitter or governments) canceling certain individuals. It was always about famous and influential people asking their mob to do so.

To be fair, there are certain causes where I always supported cancel culture (for example, boycott NRA), but I think it just becomes too much when this could happen for simply liking a tweet or following someone you do not like. Especially when it comes from senior leaders in the field who have a lot of power. It becomes 'do as I say' or you will have trouble in your career.

I think sharing public lists of people who should be canceled from a senior powerful leader is exactly what people have been complained about. It is a soft way of social credit, where you either think like the majority (or vocal minority) or you risk trouble in your career. This is why for example, Twitter ML holds opposite views of Reddit ML (where people can be anonymous). It kills the diversity of opinion. It is a sad world where you could end on a cancel-list * from someone powerful for simply liking a tweet (which often does not require any thought) that some conference should not have had her name changed.

* Which again, it has career consequences, not simply losing 5 Twitter followers.

 

[JPRouve]

I agree that this is a poor example of cancel culture but you’re being very pedantic with your insistence that their Twitter account needs to be deleted for them to be considered cancelled. The way being cancelled is usually understood is when an individual is targetted by other users on social media because they’ve said or done something problematic. The pile one can end in lots of different bad outcomes for the individual at the bottom. Having their account deleted is just one of them.

I don't think that I'm being pedantic. Being cancelled means that you were supposed to be programmed in the first place, it means that you lost visibility from people that haven't made the choice to ignore you. Otherwise the term has no practical meaning.