randrews

  Location: Houston area, TX
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Primarily Rust, Ruby, JS / TypeScript, Postgres, GraphQL, many others
  Résumé/CV: http://sevendral.com/resume-aug-2026.pdf
  Email: [email protected]

Developer with 26 years of experience who's just been told he can't progress because he's "indispensable" in his current role. I'm looking for a role as a team lead or similar, a career path beyond individual contributor. Deep knowledge and experience with many tech stacks.

Looking back at what I've said in this thread, it's "free speech is a societal value like honestly and politeness, not just a constitutional right," "I would be in favor of lifting bans on cigarette ads," "people don't like watching ads but we shouldn't ban them anyway," "I don't think we should be banning any speech," and "the point of a free country is to have a good standard of living for its citizens more than to make money."

There's only one thing in there that I think any reasonable person could think is extreme, and that's having no bans on speech. I'm overall happy making the concessions to this that America already makes.

As for the rest of it: if that sounds extreme to you then I really don't think I'm the one with biases, and I really don't think there's going to be much common ground between us. It's cliche at this point but do you talk about this stuff to a lot of people who aren't on the internet? Because outside the bubble of social media and this website, nothing I've said here would be controversial at all.

I also notice that you think I'm misinterpreting what you said, but still won't say how... Which makes me think that I'm not misinterpreting it at all, you just don't like having a corollary of your beliefs pointed out to you.

Anyway this has been fun but I'm finished now, the anti-flame-war filter is making it take forever to post replies.

We do not live in a pure democracy, we live in a constitutional republic. Our lawmakers aren't able to create certain laws because of limits on their power in the constitution; one of those limits is that no law can be passed abridging the freedom of speech. No matter how many people vote for it, without amending the constitution to remove that protection first, it will not happen. And the process for passing that amendment is intentionally cumbersome, for that reason.

> 4Chan, Parlor, Truth, or any other "free speech" platform. It ends up being toxic and noisy to the point that the vast majority of people will not use it.

4Chan and Parler seem to exist just fine. 8Chan doesn't, or was killed and then revived, or something, I'm not sure, but it wasn't due to lack of users; their host canceled them. Never heard of Truth before now, it seems to be Trump's Twitter clone that contains just Trump?

Anyway, my point is not that these free-speech-platforms are more successful than curated ones. My point is that that's the wrong metric to judge whether free speech is a good value to have in a society. I don't care if there are costs to it any more than I care whether the post office is profitable: I don't want to live in a society without freedom of speech, no matter how efficient it is, any more than I'd want to live in one without a post office or a fire department. I am willing to pay for the externalities because the alternative is much, much worse.

From your other reply: if I'm letting my bias in, then how am I misinterpreting what you say? I genuinely want to understand your position.

Hmm. So the way I interpret this is: true free speech lets people say things that are wrong, and leads to people believing things that are wrong. A company that allows it will perform worse in a market because of people believing those wrong things. An analogous thing would happen to a society allowing it, so, to have our society be stronger economically, we should have limits on speech. Is that close to right?

If so, my argument is this: a company and a country have different goals. Many things that a country might provide (welfare programs, democracy, public services) are expenses that don't make us economically stronger. But, we do anyway because that's not the point of a country: the point is to provide the best quality of life for citizens. I'm happy to accept the drawbacks of free speech (people believing in Q, or that the Apollo landings were faked) in exchange for being able to say whatever I want. If you aren't, then there are other countries that make the other tradeoff.

I think this is the core of what's going to be a big debate over the next decade or two, though: is it better to be less productive and free (America), or more efficient but authoritarian (China)?

Ads in general are probably something society doesn't want, because you have to pay people (in the form of ad-supported content) to look at them. You might say that most people in society think cigarette or gun ads (or DNC political spots) are particularly objectionable. But, I don't believe that that's a reason to ban them.

I'm completely in agreement that the law doesn't compel speech, or publication, especially of ads. Hulu is completely legally in the right to not carry DNC ads, Google and Facebook are completely legally in the right not to carry Colt or Remington ads. They'd also be in the right not to carry Altria ads. But the question is what speech do we want to ban by law... and I think the only answer to that for a healthy, free society is "none."

I even go further and say that respecting free speech exists outside the first amendment as a societal value that we should all hold, like "politeness" and "honesty," and that it should be kept even when not legally required... So Hulu _should_ run the ads, even though they are not _required_ to.

I actually think we should allow cigarette ads again, I don't think anyone is harmed by being able to see a sign telling them something.

But also, think about it this way: isn't this the other side of the slippery slope argument? I'm sure when cigarette ads were first banned, people made the argument that it would be used to justify banning other ads later, and were told that was a slippery slope fallacy... Now, you're essentially saying "we've already banned cigarette ads, if we're not going to ban gun ads too then we might as well re-allow cigarette ads!"

I really don't think you're arguing in good faith here. This is a very common tactic for people of your political alignment, at least on HN: to nitpickily demand sources for completely obvious facts, and then if provided, shift the argument to discrediting those sources instead of engaging with the actual philosophical points being made.

I could probably write everything else you're going to say in this thread myself, so, I'm not going to bother continuing to argue with you. If you'd like to respond to the core point, which is why are Democrats justified in complaining about their own ads being refused while they celebrate Republican content being deplatformed, then we can continue.

Yep. The answer here is that Hulu should probably run the ads. Free speech is more than an amendment, it's a social value that should be respected by everyone, not just the government. I'm sure I'd disagree with every one of these ads but I would still like to see them run, because allowing people I don't like to speak is what protects MY right to speak.

Pretty predictable responses.

> Are you somehow implying Google and Facebook are run by Democrats

Again, there was a White House office made specifically to coordinate these platforms banning "disinformation" content. It was later shut down, but its creation in the first place shows that the Democratic party wants to censor discussion it doesn't like. Or are you somehow implying the White House is not run by Democrats?

> That sounds like a law to regulate advertisements, not a deplatforming

Which is exactly what we're talking about here: these are advertisements, Hulu doesn't want them on their platform. You're fine with Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, banning advertisements from gun manufacturers and retailers, presumably pro-gun, but you have a problem with Hulu not wanting advertisements that are anti-gun.

Absolutely. Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill to ban ads for firearms. Google and Facebook already ban that as well. If you have no problem with that then why should you have a problem banning ads against guns?

More right-wing personalities than I can even remember have been banned from various media, not least being a sitting President of the United States. The same platforms also have policies against certain "disinformation" that target anyone discussing some issues or events like the Hunter Biden laptop which were later determined not to be disinformation at all. As for it being Democratic policy, there was (briefly) a White House office under a Democratic president to coordinate these policies.

Perhaps Hulu recognizes that some people just want to watch TV and not be bothered by campaign ads.

Also perhaps I'd be more sympathetic to the Democrats here if exactly this sort of deplatforming hadn't been part of their own playbook for years.

Parts are, but other parts, like the gulf coast, have plenty of water. Texas is not the giant desert you see in cowboy movies.

I think we're arguing over terminology. But "it takes resources to create" is not the same thing as "it stores those resources." That's the whole misconception with Bitcoin. It takes a lot of resources to make one and that value is lost forever, instead of being used on something productive.