He probably being sincere. If you're logged in (or use something like xcancel), you can see the full thread, where he starts off with
> Flock Safety currently solves 700,000 reported cases of crime per year, which is about 10% of reported crime nationwide
> And they're just getting started
His profile also says:
>President & CEO @ycombinator —Founder @Initialized—designer/engineer who helps founders—SF Dem accelerating the boom loop—haters not allowed in my sauna
It's really interesting the different cultures "YCombinator the startup incubator" and "Ycombinator/HN the internet forum has". A comment being so oblivious about surveillance would probably be flagged here, at least heavily downvoted, while this guy is actively the president and CEO of Ycombinator today?
pg, what happened? Ycombinator used to be a beacon of sense in a sea of uselessness, but now uselessness is running Ycombinator?
Another case in point is most commenters are incredulous about AI, often coming from people who try and use it and see its shortcomings. Then you scroll over YC startups and I believe every single one at this point is some dumb AI startup.
Don't look to pg for anything that can be seen as "woke" - he wants that mind-virus eliminated forever[0]. Many billionaires revealed their true colors after November 2024, remember this when they adjust their public posture to follow the political winds.
This is not woke, no matter how large you define woke. You can see links with the ACLU or various human rights defense groups, but those groups may have become woke, without “global surveillance” becoming a woke topic.
Wokism is about making racist accusations of dominance over an audience who didn’t do it. It’s about unfairness and hyping factions against each other. The global surveillance is not about pitting groups against each other. To wit, 1984 has always been a very right-wing torpe.
"Wokism" is an amorphous culture-war weapon that can be anything an author wants it to be. Diversity is woke, equity is woke, inclusion is woke, non-heteronomative relationships are woke, movies that are barely critical of unbridled capitalism are woke. Not being onboard with "law and order" is woke - and not being 100% onboard with Flock can be reframed as being pro-Criminal and "woke"
> global surveillance is not about pitting groups against each other.
And yet this is exactly how the surveillance companies sell their global surveillance tools. Ring, Flock are all about keeping an eye on "outsiders" - see Nextdoor for examples on how people justifying surveiling others.
Many gays (or “non-heteronormative” as you say) are anti-woke. You’re operating a dichotomy between your opponents and you, trying to paint them as sweeping generalizators. But this is not wokism. Wokism is when you take “gays” and attribute them to your side, painting the others as nazis.
I’m gay and the single most powerful harm that was made to my life was the emergence of wokism.
> Many gays (or “non-heteronormative” as you say) are anti-woke.
That doesn't mean other conservatives dont see gay rights and marriage equality as "woke". You just proved my point though, "woke" is the bespoke set of things you don't like.
Do you want links to the numerous instances of conservatives lumping the existence of gays with being "woke"? Or before they hijacked the term, derided the "gay agenda"? Even the Log Cabin Republicans cried uncle[1]
Did you link the right comment? He seems to argue against "aggressively performative moralism", something a lot more specific than the common "woke-ism" conservatives in the US is yelling about which is basically about anything with "social" in it's name (for them, in their eyes).
> Flock Safety currently solves 700,000 reported cases of crime per year, which is about 10% of reported crime nationwide
> And they're just getting started
His profile also says:
>President & CEO @ycombinator —Founder @Initialized—designer/engineer who helps founders—SF Dem accelerating the boom loop—haters not allowed in my sauna