Perhaps say something positive too? People have worked hours on end, built stuff and presented it "hacker peers" and this the best and only comment you could come up with?
For someone that has done a couple of Show HNs [1][2] I would assume you know better.
People plan for their submissions and look forward to reading the comments. You can and should do better.
For specific context: a tweet that was deemed threatening and inciteful to a segment of the country - the south east (where I'm from), was sent from the President's account.
After sustained uproar and outrage, Twitter deleted the Tweet.
Blocking Twitter is the response.
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For background context: This government is very unpopular. Twitter has been the medium where the atrocities of the government has been publicized. Last year there was a very popular protest #ENDSARS (campaigning against police brutalization and killings) to which Jack Dorsey made a donation.
Earlier this year, Twitter opened their West African office in Ghana. It was seen as a massive snub and embarrassment to Nigeria. So the government has had a hurt ego brewing for a while.
PS: The great irony is that this government used the influence of social media to get into power. So this is them throwing down the ladder after using it.
Also worth noting that the Nigerian government has explicitly been using China/the CCP as an inspiration for its information & communications policy for a while now.
Alas, they're not interested in copying the economic growth or infrastructure development to go with the authoritarianism. Not even a crumb of carrot to go with the stick.
Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey personally donated money to groups organizing protests in Nigeria.
Twitter also created a special emoji just for the protests.
For a bit more context, the protests that Jack Dorsey donated to were against a police unit that regularly terrorised, extorted (ahem, robbed) and sometimes murdered young people based almost entirely on profiling such as "having locs" and "using an iPhone"[0].
From the point of view of a European living in America the #ENDSARS protests looked very similarly motivated as the #BLM protests in America and Europe. #BLM got their own emoji, so why wouldn’t #ENDSARS?
Speaking as a Nigerian, somehow I'm not quite sure we're thought of as real communities with real people living real lives and not just a vague political blob on a map.
You also see this in many people's inability to mentally separate a government from its citizens - they themselves know that they don't fully agree with everything their own governments do (even the ones they like), but other places get treated as monoliths whose governments' actions and opinions are obviously completely representative and in the best interests of the whole.
The government whose action you're commending quite literally has a history of arresting & detaining its critics, extorting & sometimes murdering its citizens in the street, supporting blasphemy laws, and blocking content and even financial transactions that it deems dissident (and those blocks are implemented with such a wide brush that plenty of completely unrelated sites often get caught in the net).
But of course, the real censorship is when a foreign social media platform that's used by a few percent of the population at maximum takes down a post.
It's always funny to see people cosplay at caring about censorship by...jumping to support the first actual authoritarian in sight.
And all that's beside the fact that this had nothing whatsoever to do with elections.
> The government whose action you're commending quite literally has a history of arresting & detaining its critics, extorting & sometimes murdering its citizens in the street, supporting blasphemy laws, and blocking content and even financial transactions that it deems dissident (and those blocks are implemented with such a wide brush that plenty of completely unrelated sites often get caught in the net).
So has the US. Americans, and their mega corporations, have no moral high ground to lecture others.
> But of course, the real censorship is when a foreign social media platform that's used by a few percent of the population at maximum takes down a post.
Who elected Jack Dorsey and his band of far-left censors king? Twitter is a guest in every foreign country, as we're seeing play out.
> It's always funny to see people cosplay at caring about censorship by...jumping to support the first actual authoritarian in sight.
No. Rather the pot should refrain from calling the kettle black
> And all that's beside the fact that this had nothing whatsoever to do with elections.
Censoring politicians has everything to do with elections.
> So has the US. Americans, and their mega corporations, have no moral high ground to lecture others.
That's nice, but considering that I am a Nigerian I don't really see what that has to do with me.
> No. Rather the pot should refrain from calling the kettle black
"On the one hand we have a former military dictator currently heading a regime that has repeatedly shown that it has no qualms using its security forces to kill civilians in order to keep the populace in line (besides starving them of resources). On the other we have a social media platform deleting a post because people reported it. These two things are of course the same."
> Censoring politicians has everything to do with elections.
Twitter removed a tweet that can very credibly be read as threatening genocidal action after Nigerians reported it to the platform as threatening violence.
I am still very patiently waiting for you to explicitly explain how, precisely, this is interfering with the country's elections.
We are speaking of the platform that find it ok to ban a legally elected president because they disagreed with him politically. Twitter needs to be controlled more effectively to remain politically neutral, or they should register themselves as a political organization instead of pretending to be a business.
Do you expect a peaceful resolution? It’s great to tell a bully to calm down, but you want either them to calm down (which doesn’t seem likely here) or more reasonable people to take over.
To be honest, we don't know where this is going. We all want a peaceful outcome.
The next elections are in 2023 so there is no near resolution by the ballot.
There is over 50% unemployment, mega inflation, currency devaluation etc and yet a consistent clampdown on anything deemed progressive by the government.
The truth is, if anything happens to the peace of Nigeria and if only 5%, of its occupants get displaced (10million people) the world will feel it's impact in a very negative way.
Unfortunately, thanks to COVID, Brexit et al, no one is paying attention so the government assumes it has it has a freehand.
Unfortunately for them, our population is very young, quite adept at adapting, innovative etc. So I do not see us backing down. Despite the worst of policies, there has been unprecedented growth in our tech startup scene (YC can testify)
Personally, I believe Mighty is basically a new type of browser. What Chrome OS is supposed to be.
Of course the business model limits the number of people that would try it however, perhaps the target market would be businesses interested in controlling the browsing of their employees. For security and other purposes.
All the best Suhail and congratulations on your launch.
This is brilliant and looks well executed. It is definitely well positioned to replace the wish list, review list, registry etc.
How do you avoid the distraction that comes with solving a problem that can pull you in too many directions? This can easily become a Pinterest, Affiliate shops, Price monitoring, coupon code sharing etc.
What are your plans to stay focused while listening to your users?
I signed up and sent you guys an email too!
PS: You may want to make referral links vs text (we pay per text message in many countries). A link will let up put it on our WhatsApp status etc.
Thank you so much. The way we've been solving the problem so far is listening to what users want and making changes they ask for (if those changes are in the direction we want it going). I think there is no easy way to do this - it's just talking to tons of users and having a clear internal vision of where we are going with it. We see a big opportunity and have a vision of what it looks like so we're just trying to optimize for that and balance feedback.
Statistically, the American immigrant population from Africa (around 2 million people) seems to have a very different background from most American born African Americans (around 40 million people).
Overall, African immigrants (like many other immigrant groups) tend to have very high education/economic mobility, due to the selection effect - if you don't have those characteristics, it's hard to immigrate to the US.
But if you lump both groups together as "black", the likely result is that tech companies trying to make up for lack of representation in American born African Americans, will end up filling most of the gap with African immigrants, because immigrants are more likely to have the background tech companies are looking for.
Which is great for immigrants, but does it end up helping African Americans?
I live in Lagos, Nigeria but visit Silicon Valley frequently and follow the situation closely.
Being near but far, has given me unique perspectives on these type of issues.
I sent my report to 22 US media companies (the ones covered, NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, Guardian, Wired etc) and was essentially blackballed. Thankfully we can self-publish.
I am here in the comments and happy to answer any questions you may have.
thanks for this great post. I was wondering how does the Tech community in Nigeria feel about the renaming of Tech jargon as currently implemented by Githab, Redhat, Twitter and others (links below). Do you think this is something companies should be doing? It seems like a cheap shot to me personally and it would be cool to get your opinion on this in a future post on your blog.
While some terms can be improved or neutralized, it’s also true that people in Africa like any other place, are also afraid of the dark. It’s part of the human experience. And lack of light or darkness is one ingredient in how or why people perceive things in particular ways.
GP is saying that most terms using black with a negative connotation, like "black list", didn't originate from racism towards people with dark skin, but from the fear that many people have of darkness. GP is suggesting that this is pretty universal across humanity, including among African cultures.
Most cultures including european have mythologies and folklore around the dark. So there is psychology surrounding this. It’s why a good portion “scary movies” involve darkness. But it’s also prevalent in other cultures.
What successful paths have you encountered in Nigeria that propels local disadvantaged populations into areas of the economy that would typically be out of reach to them and which may be applicable in the US?
When it comes to economic growth, Nigeria is so far behind policy wise. Sadly, there is nothing I can offer you around policies that can or should be replicated.
On the individual level, I have seen people transform the lives of their families by learning to code.
Honest question - Is that a racist term? Doesn't appear to be based on Google search, but I see people removing words with black in them such as "blacklist" so I am curious.
No. It refers to a supposed part of the process of joining the Freemasons. The members of the lodge vote anonymously whether to accept a prospective member by depositing a white or black ball into a closed box, with the black ball representing a “no” vote. So “blackballed” refers to some exclusive group excluding outsiders.
I’m not a Mason so I don’t know if this factual, but that’s the idea.
Of course, someone could be blackballed because they are black—if a particular Masonic lodge had racist members—but it’s not inherent to the concept.
That’s more the general case of the word “black” being used both to denote bad/negative/disallowed and to denote people of African ancestry. But there isn’t a specifically racial meaning to either “blackballed” or “blacklist”.
Please try your luck with Quillette[1] - it's a dissident media magazine, not only open for, but indeed interested in, publishing articles that go against the popular narrative.
The nation is pretty evenly divided so I wouldn't say that they go against the popular narrative, instead they go along with one of the two popular narratives.
I want to learn the wonderful field of phrenology of course. :)
But seriously, I've seen that claim previously, but never pointing to original source (unless the article was deleted?). I didn't carefully read the articles you provided, so sorry if it is in there somewhere.
Not surprising, HN loves Claire and her Murrayan novelists.
Here you go[0].
Out of the links I shared[parent], the former link takes a deep dive into Quillette authors (one of whom wrote the article I cite below), the latter delves into the actual arguments they make in advancement of "neophrenology".
To reiterate my initial comment (I am not here to make a value judgement on phrenology), this does not seem like a publication the OP would like to submit to.
Thanks. I skimmed the article and the author seems to be bashing a book (with some good arguments, but since I didn't read the book itself, I can't tell how justified they are). So the main problem is that he published something worse somewhere else?
You have a point that OP might not want to submit there, guilt by association is all the rage nowadays. I mean they are currently trying to cancel Chomsky for signing an open letter on freedom of speech, just because some other people also signed it. This is literally Hitler liked pippies situation...
The main problem (and again, I shouldn’t be doing a value assessment of Quilette sticking to my original point, but you’ve asked) is that Quilette “scholars” seemed to have started from 1700s race research, jumped to Jim Crow-era race research, and seemingly skipped everything before and after The Bell Curve(1994) research that does not suit their argument of genetic determinism.
To my initial point, value-arguments aside(I’m certainly not going to convince you), does an African developer want to seek out Quilette to publish?
HN downvotes me because Claire Lehmann is a Paul Graham darling, but the only thing "Libertarian" about Quilette is the fact they bypass violation of the NAP with the argument the black people are either (A)not people or (B)"less than" people.
>HN downvotes me because Claire Lehmann is a Paul Graham darling
I don't speak for HN, but I can speak to why I personally downvoted you. I downvoted you because of the hostility and passive-aggressiveness, the scare quotes and browbeating of your respondent. I think it's reasonable to discourage that sort of behavior, because it's one of the leading causes of long term forum degradation.
It's more of a comment on your previous response than a question.
1. Older companies tend to have wider footprint of real world use in various contexts thereby having a wider "body of work" for objective analysis and review.
2. There is switching cost when you get the 'thank you from the incredible journey" email or blogpost. So it is important to have companies that are self-sufficient and aren't at the risk of being acquired and shutdown which new companies are much more prone to.
PS: It is acknowledged that new companies most likely have fresher takes on old problems but you should also cater for their negatives enumerated above.
For someone that has done a couple of Show HNs [1][2] I would assume you know better.
People plan for their submissions and look forward to reading the comments. You can and should do better.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799830 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9840990