Twitter CEO: conservative employees ‘dont feel safe to express their opinions’

All: Hacker News is a place for community members to hear and understand each other. If you want to fight, please fight elsewhere.<p>Regardless of how right you are or feel, if you can&#x27;t muster tolerance or empathy for the other side, please don&#x27;t post here until you can. You might not owe better to them, but you do owe it to the community.

Seeing how the quickly the comments in this thread have devolved into calling conservatives all kinds of derogatory names is a good example why conservative Twitter employees might be afraid to express their opinions. The place of my employment, like most tech companies is overwhelmingly liberal. I dont even identify as liberal or conservative and I am afraid to express any opinion that is contrary to liberal thought. The problem is not that I may have a minority opinion at work, it&#x27;s how common it&#x27;s become with people on the left to try and ruin those who hold the &quot;wrong&quot; opinions usually by trying to get them fired and going on social media to call them all sorts of nasty things. Sadly I think my anecdote is more of the norm than the exception in liberal dominated spaces.

At my work, talking about politics is just not allowed. More places should follow this. There&#x27;s nothing good that can come of it.

In order to feel safe expressing your opinions, you have to feel like you won&#x27;t raise an eyebrow. Either that, or any owner of a raised eyebrow won&#x27;t take it any further than the mild disagreement of raising an eyebrow.<p>It&#x27;s really obvious that not only is it not possible to say whatever you want at work, but that in some cases, raising an eyebrow is the last thing you will ever do, at least within the context of one&#x27;s career.<p>The tension at hand is founded in things that simply will not be happening any time soon. But unpredictable reactions to minor slights set people on edge all around.<p>The polarity is highly charged, even though no one really has murder and beatings high on their list of priorities, the paranoia and suspicion that the other side <i>does</i> is what leaves us destabilized.<p>Homosexuality, abortion, race, evolution, genetics, how the universe began, and where do we go when we die. Talking about these things at work is a mistake, but even joking about &quot;the wrong opinion&quot; will completely ruin you in less than an hour, so trying to feel safe about having an opinion is a bad idea, whether you feel you&#x27;re on the right side of history or not.

&gt; Dorsey spoke to Fox News commentator Sean Hannity on his radio show during a recent press blitz and had a number of secret meetings with conservative politicians in Washington this summer to “build ‘trust’ among conservatives who have long chastised the company,” according to the Washington Post.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;27&#x2F;inside-facebook-twitters-secret-meetings-with-trump-aides-conservative-leaders-who-say-tech-is-biased&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;27&#x2F;inside-...</a>

I am not sure work is the right place to express your opinions on controversial topics.<p>It is different though sharing your thoughts&#x2F;interest with people you trust at work.<p>Also there is assymetry of impact of ideas between two sides.<p>Independent person would probably say that conservative ideas are Perceived to be more controversial by other side then other way around.<p>Like gun debate. If co-worker comes to work and says guns are bad. Ok whatever your opinion man. But if they come to work and like yo guns are awesome, 2nd amendment bros. I own one, then for other side this person might be perceived as threat.

Conservatives are ostensibly opposed to the idea of safe spaces, so how do we reconcile that ideology with the fact that they want safe spaces in communities where they are the minority?

I notice the same dynamics are playing out on social media that played out in traditional media years ago. Conservatives cry bias, without evidence that any bias is appearing in the actual product.<p>As Rich Bond said over 25 years ago[0]:<p>“There is some strategy to it [bashing the &#x27;liberal&#x27; media] ... If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is &#x27;work the refs.&#x27; Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one.”<p>It’s a useful myth, where blatantly partisan Fox News bills itself as “fair and balanced”.<p>I’ve seen this play out in my own career where, claims of political bias was cast against algorithms I developed because random extreme partisan website wasn’t being put in the top slot for a trending topic. It was disingenuous criticism.<p>We’re seeing the same thing again because foreign troll farms are being shutdown, you find yourself in a minority, the. You have to look to some grand conspiracy because your filter bubble was popped.<p>There’s nothing here but the old tired tactic of promoting a false equivalence, which is paying political dividends. See Facebook’s fact checking partners, 4 respected non partisan orgs, and the explicitly conservativly partisan Weekly Standard, which used its veto against an explicitly liberally partisan organization.[1]<p>It’s <i>really</i> weird to have a partisan org on your ostensibly nonpartisan editorial board. It does make sense if you’re throwing conservatives a bone by giving them a vote and not a liberal org. So the refs are successfully worked.<p>When it comes to Twitter itself, Jack has shown through his actions that he either fundamentally misunderstand what is going on, or he actually supports the extreme views on his site.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archives.cjr.org&#x2F;politics&#x2F;a_cynics_take_on_media_bias.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archives.cjr.org&#x2F;politics&#x2F;a_cynics_take_on_media_bia...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;policy-and-politics&#x2F;2018&#x2F;9&#x2F;12&#x2F;17848026&#x2F;facebook-thinkprogress-weekly-standard" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;policy-and-politics&#x2F;2018&#x2F;9&#x2F;12&#x2F;17848026&#x2F;f...</a>

Is conservatism a strong or coherent identity outside of Christianity? I feel like when people say &quot;conservative&quot; it muddles what things mean to an outside audience. It&#x27;s just like when people say religious, but they really mean Christian.

Part of being a conservative is strength. If you don&#x27;t have that fortitude, you are conservative only in name.