IMO there are big risks consuming news & opinion from any single source.

Whether it’s the CCP manipulating the TikTok algorithm, Russia buying ad space on Facebook, or American conglomerates pushing narratives on western mainstream media, there will be implicit biases everywhere.

The only real answer is to get news from multiple sources with diverging perspectives, try to find where facts overlap, challenge your own implicit biases, and form a perspective in line w/ your values.

Seeing America blame TikTok for pushing propaganda is the pot calling the kettle black – and honestly more of a distraction than anything else.

The real important issue is that people are dying, and the existing power structures are doing jack shit to stop it.

No that actually helps a lot! I was actually trying to filter an entire instance, but thought I had to do so but putting the domain of that instance into “Domain Filters”

I really hope stepping down as CEO leads to Linus surrounding himself with people he trusts to call him out when he’s missing something.

He strikes me as the kind of person who is susceptible to a few certain mental traps you kinda don’t want to see in a leader of a large influential organization:

1. Taking an “ends justifies the means” mindset (e.g. stepping on the “growth” gas pedal and accepting sloppiness because it will get better later with Labs)
2. Letting “objective facts” justify big subjective decisions w/o much consideration (e.g. thinking the Billet Labs video didn’t need to be re-shot because the “objectively” product rec conclusion wouldn’t have been different)
3. Substituting actual solutions to problems w/ commitments to solving them (e.g. implementing “Accuracy KPIs” instead of slowing the pace of video releases)

None of these constitute outright malice, IMO, but boy can they lead to a problematic working environment.

I’m sure there will be quite the flame war as a result of this, which I think is a bummer. Linus strikes me as someone who’s acting in good faith, but has an unshakable habit of making rushed decisions without considering the full scope of their impact, and is (or has been) lacking the appropriate feedback structure to help him learn to either a) make more thoughtful decisions, or b) fully delegating those decisions to folks who are better equipped to make them.

Here’s hoping this leads to positive change.

I know I’ve been commenting a lot more w/ sync.

I fully recognize I’m in a position of relative privilege, but I am more than happy paying an annual subscription of <$20 for an app like this.

Building an app of this quality with this level of polish is a massive time investment, and I’m more than happy to reward that time with less money per year than I spent doordashing lunch this afternoon because I was too lazy to make myself a sandwich.