2w ago

Guy explains to CEO of Signal (messaging) that it's going to add "AI" to the service. She says no. He insists, not knowing or caring who he's talking down to.

mastodon.social

Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor@mastodon.social)

human-driven technology goes brrrrr

Confidently Incorrect @lemmy.world

Lemminary @lemmy.world

2w ago

Guy explains to CEO of Signal (messaging) that it's going to add "AI" to the service. She says no. He insists, not knowing or caring who he's talking down to.

mastodon.social /@dangillmor/114701270370709694

Don’t You Know Who I Am? @lemmy.world

hungryphrog @lemmy.blahaj.zone

2w ago

Guy explains to CEO of Signal (messaging) that it's going to add "AI" to the service. She says no. He insists, not knowing or caring who he's talking down to.

mastodon.social /@dangillmor/114701270370709694

Netzkultur / Netzpolitik @feddit.org

Der aus Aux @feddit.org

2w ago

Weil auf DACH unerwünscht mal hier was zum Lachen: Mansplaining at its best

mastodon.social /@dangillmor/114701270370709694

83 comments

This is almost as good as the jackass who tried to tell Margaret Atwood that "the woman who wrote that book was talking about Muslims, not Christians"
- That sounds good. Got a link?
  
  https://www.spottednews.com/politics/whos-going-to-tell-him-man-explains-the-handmaids-tale-to-atwood/
If the owner of signal commented in this thread I would have no idea lol
- There is no owner, it's a 501c3. Meredith is the CEO.
  
  Double-secret
  
  Same difference
- She posted with a "we" statement about her own company. If someone did that, you might think about who they are but this guy completely assumed she was a know nothing nobody.
  https://bsky.app/profile/meredithmeredith.bsky.social/post/3lrqccvwnqs2z
- Well now you would ;)
  
  No lol
To be fair, as soon as Signal chooses do to so, they can walk back any statement. Her words don't hold much value either...
I guess people forgot how Mozilla not that long ago simply went ahead and deleted mentions of 'never selling your data'
- That's why I embraced xmpp. I liked what Signal is doing, but I don't believe any company, or anyone that owns one.
  It's why a lot of you are here lol
- Lemmy users will really do anything before they believe a woman, won't they?
  "The man is still correct because the Signal CEO may claim that TODAY that engineers are not currently working on adding AI, but that doesn't mean in the future she won't say it was worked on in the past!"
  
  Lemmy users will really do anything before they believe a woman, won't they?
  What a weird take on this.
  
  I'll do anything before I believe a CEO. Gender is a social construct.
In all fairness, if a CEO doesn't introduce themself as a CEO, there's really no reasonable expectation for random internet strangers to know that.
I would have had no idea who that was.
- funny story, I insulted a Microsoft exec, to their face, because they introduced themselves as "working for Microsoft".
  I told them in response, " Don't worry, I won't hold that against you." To which they asked, "What's that supposed to mean?" I said, "You work for them and don't even know? you certainly drank all the koolaide."
  almost lost my job over that when my employer found out.
  
  If I found out I was talking down to a Microsoft exec when I thought I was talking to a regular employee, I'd double down.
  
  I would have told them to bring back Clippy 📎 as an AI companion, but inappropriately erotic. 👠
- I think key context is that the guy is representing himself as having special knowledge about what Signal is doing internally and what they'll do next.
  It's not "you bump into some rando on the street. Don't you know she's CEO of Signal??"
  It's "you're giving a Ted Talk about Signal. The woman in the front row offers a correction and you're like, 'shut up, dummy.'"
  
  the guy is representing himself as having special knowledge about what Signal is doing internally and what they’ll do next.
  I didn't get that impression- to me it just came off as him being cynical about platform enshittification.
  Like, with recent news of Nexus being sold, my reaction was to join a chorus of others excplaiming that Nexus is about to be shit. We don't know that - we just know it's being sold. But we've all seen a ton of services follow a similar path, so the assumption feels justified. If a Nexus employee came out and said "Don't panic, literally nothing is going to change!" Whether that came from the janitor or CEO, I'd have a similar knee-jerk as the dude in the OP.
  I also have no idea who the old or new CEO of Nexis is. If it happens to be a woman, me arguing with her wouldn't be from sexism, it'd be because Nexus is setting the stage to go down the toilet.
  Dude in OP absolutely could just be a misogynistic prick, but there's certainly not enough info in the screencap to say so with any certainty.
- He replied to her post about how signal won't use AI and she said "we". He 100% assumed a woman was a nobody so he paid no attention. This is all on him.
  https://bsky.app/profile/meredithmeredith.bsky.social/post/3lrqccvwnqs2z
  
  Important context. Yeah that definitely reduces the benefit of the doubt, but I still wouldn't jump to sexism. People refer to the organizations they're employed by as 'we' all the time - that doesn't imply any kind of authority. He definitely assumed she was a nobody, but 99.999% of us are just peasants milking a roof over our heads from a system we have absolutely no control over... so, assuming she's a nobody is a pretty safe assumption. Were she a dude and all else the same, I don't see the conversation going any differently.
  There are tons, and tons, and tons, and tons of examples of demonstrable and absolutely clear misogyny in our dumb fucking society - it's really not necessary to try to find it by attempting to read between the lines.
  So... unless that dude has a history of misogynistic bs, imo the safer assumption is that he's being cynical about platform enshittification (and reasonably so when you consider the patterns shown by every single other platform), vs an attack based on gender.
  
  Because nobody on the internet ever talks down to a man.
!dontyouknowwhoiam@lemmy.world
- Thank you for that!
  I have been laughing for the past hour.
ROFL Reply guys, they are a special kind of dumb sometimes.
I wonder if he would have done the same thing talking to a man...
- People are putting this on sexism or whatever, but I feel like this dude is just one of those confidently wrong people and would have said this to literally anyone disagreeing with him.
  I am a man, and an expert in my field, and I get people trying to condescend semi-regularly because they think they can handwave the problems I get paid to solve. Just completely unfounded confidence.
- I wonder [whether] he would have done the same thing talking to a man...
  I was entertained to see someone get their comeuppance.
  I was disappointed to see someone else immediately go sexist on the post.
  I am now doubly disappointed that we're not better than that person, here.
  Sometimes an idiot is just an idiot. Leave room for people to grow into, okay?
  
  And sometimes idiots are sexist.
  Why are you dismissing this as a possibility?
And people still whinge about mansplaining not being a thing
- What's that?
  
  It's a phenomenon where men assume they have superior knowledge to women, even if the woman their talking to is literally an expert in her field.
People will associate what you're saying with pretty much everything even if it doesn't make sense
Like how can one say that's mansplaining and not just a baseless thought? What guarantees that they only do this with women?
- Why split hairs about what's going on rather than focusing on the fact that he talked down to a subject matter expert?
  
  True. I'm sure plenty of mansplaining comes from blistful ignorance and unawareness, rather than outright misogynisticly driven malice, which is not a valid excuse to be an asshole.
What she doesn't realize is that he's secretly leading a coup from inside the company.
/joke
i remember them saying the app wont get certain featues, cause it just makes the whole thing less secure. even tho the dude only has the pattern recognition of a dead crow, i do have to add that no company should be trusted, BUT having an open source client is a good way to win me over. and as far as i can tell, the molly devs would purge the ai implementation crazy fuckin fast anyway.
Didn't realize I clicked a link and wondered when the screenshot was going to end...
Also, even this suggestion betrays a lack of understanding about how signal works. A big part of the long term security signal offers is that they don’t store data, so LLM integration would be on-device.
His reply is moronic… but “No ❤️” isn’t a great reply either.
- I found the response humorous. I'd imagine if she felt this was actually important to address (rather than some idiot spouting BS) there would be a post from the Signal account, rather than her personal profile, and it would look very different.
  
  It’s not a personal account if she identifies herself as the CEO.
  Edit: The people downvoting me maybe forgot what happened with Proton and their CEO.
- Brevity sticks
  
  In this case brevity is not the soul of wit. It was a dumb reply to a comment that didn’t deserve one to begin with.
- "The burden of identification is not on the reply guy, but the women womst replied to..."
  
  What does this even mean or have to do with what I said?
- I'm downvoting because of your edit complaining about down-votes.
  
  I wish my instance allowed down votes for this very reason.
  
  And "I'm downvoting your downvoting because of the complaint on complaining about downvotes."
  Can we go full recursion on this bullshit?
- we downvoted because we didnt like your comment
  hope that helps
- Are you editing in all the people who is downvoting you?
  
  He is lmfao, what a dork.
  
  You can see who downvotes you on lemmy?

83 comments