Cancel Culture

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"
 
Berbasbullet said:
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?
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Let's see what she says:


dumbo said:
Try and change the minds equals cancel culture wokists snowflake cry to daddy Peterson feck you.
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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.
JPRouve said:
Blocking bots and people she doesn't want in her feed. She should be quartered.
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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.
 
Revan said:
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.
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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.
 
Revan said:
Let's see what she says:



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.
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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.
 
JPRouve said:
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.
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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.
 
Revan said:
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.
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What are your intentions, what are you trying to achieve in this thread?
 
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:


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:


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.
 
Berbasbullet said:
I know, just being a touch hyperbolic for fun.
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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
 
Marcosdeto said:
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
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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 said:
@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.
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So you assume that in this case she is lying and these accounts are neither alt right infuencers nor bots?
 
jojojo said:
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:


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:


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.
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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.
 
JPRouve said:
So you assume that in this case she is lying and these accounts are neither alt right infuencers nor bots?
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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.
 
JPRouve said:
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.
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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
 
JPRouve said:
So you assume that in this case she is lying and these accounts are neither alt right infuencers nor bots?
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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?
 
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Revan said:
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.
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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?
 
Marcosdeto said:
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
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What are the both sides that you are talking about?
 
JPRouve said:
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.
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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!

JPRouve said:
And again what is your goal here?
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In a thread about cancel culture, I am giving an example of cancel culture. Doh.

What is yours?
 
Revan said:
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?
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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.
 
JPRouve said:
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.
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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.
 
JPRouve said:
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.
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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.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
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.
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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.
 
JPRouve said:
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.
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I think it has a very practical and easy to understand meaning. Anyway, the thread is about cancel culture. So will obviously involve discussion of incidents which don’t end in the specific outcome that fits your definition of being cancelled. Not everyone the mob tries to cancel will end up getting cancelled.
 
I don't know if this is cancel culture, or what cancel culture really is.

But, the self-importance of tweeting something like that is amazing.
 
BD said:
I don't know if this is cancel culture, or what cancel culture really is.

But, the self-importance of tweeting something like that is amazing.
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It is not only self-importance. She is a professor at Caltech and a Director of Research at Nvidia. Also the person who changed the name of NIPS to NeurIPS after the people voted to keep the name NIPS.

She is important, which is why it makes this problematic.
 
BD said:
I don't know if this is cancel culture, or what cancel culture really is.

But, the self-importance of tweeting something like that is amazing.
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It’s everything that is wrong with Twitter. Seeing it as some kind of battlefield where you use your army of followers to “change minds”. Which obviously never happens. Vindictive shit like this just makes the differences more entrenched and the participants more bitter and angry.
 
Asking your followers to bully people who don’t agree with you is never a good look.


Unfortunately this is the society we live in.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s everything that is wrong with Twitter. Seeing it as some kind of battlefield where you use your army of followers to “change minds”. Which obviously never happens. Vindictive shit like this just makes the differences more entrenched and the participants more bitter and angry.
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That's the thing that bothers me, don't these followers have their own free will? That's where I have an issue with the definition of cancel culture that you are using, it's essentially based on the idea that while you are a sentient being others aren't, they just follow mindlessly someone else.

That's why I said that she shared her bias, you may agree or disagree with her but she is free to express it and we are free to eventually sanction her own behaviour too.
 
JPRouve said:
That's the thing that bothers me, don't these followers have their own free will? That's where I have an issue with the definition of cancel culture that you are using, it's essentially based on the idea that while you are a sentient being others aren't, they just follow mindlessly someone else.

That's why I said that she shared her bias, you may agree or disagree with her but she is free to express it and we are free to eventually sanction her own behaviour too.
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Actually, that’s a fair point. Although I do think people behave a bit differently (i.e. nastier) en masse than they do as individuals. A tendency which is exacerbated by the anonymity of online interactions
 
hobbers said:
She's basically doing a Milo Yiannopoulos.

Don't think the people defending her here were too cool with it when he was sending his twitter army out to troll and bully people.

To behave like that on twitter you do have to either have a screw loose or be a massive narcissist.
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He's male and alt-right = bad. She is female and alt-left = good.

For a lot of people (both here and on Twitter) it is as simple as that. The capacity to think has been long delegated.
 
Revan said:
Fair enough, I do.

I do not see much difference in its mirror version though.
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I'd be interested to know what you think the mirror version is and why this woman is a part of it.
 
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