Here’s how I see it:
- Some person posts criticism of Kagi
- CEO of Kagi emails the person saying, I think some of what you said is factually inaccurate and I’d like a chance to talk to you about why
- Person angrily refuses to do that
- Mod of !techtakes publicly posts screenshots in his sub instead, calls the CEO an unhinged narcissist and his email a “harangue”
- People come in the thread and say, actually what the CEO said sounds “totally hinged” and the rude response seems un called for
- Mod starts banning people and deleting comments of people who are arguing with him, leaving up his own side of the conversation.
That thread is fucking bizarro, and is itself unhinged.
The CEO seemed fairly reasonable to me (if someone were bashing my company on their blog I’d like a chance for rebuttal), though they did ignore the “please stop emailing me” request.
It almost feels like everyone involved from the blog post to the thread comments are in the middle of a manic episode. What in the heck is going on?
If anything I bet this results in a net subscriber gain for Kagi.
I mean, the CEO’s response seems a little over the top, unless you bear in mind that this is his livelihood.
Everyone’s within their rights to say whatever they want about whatever private company, whether it’s accurate or not, of course. But imagine that someone made a post at your workplace that was filled with things that weren’t true about what you were doing in your job performance, and then you reached out to them to say “yo what’s up with this” and they refused to talk with you about it. Given the context, I think the CEO’s response is perfectly sane and that response of, no I’m not interested in talking with you on any level get away from me, is totally irresponsible and unreasonable.
I tend to agree
The response of “I’m not debating this with you” is sane. You don’t owe that to anyone. However, I still see the ceo’s point in that he thinks his product is good, and he worked hard on it, so he’s going to defend this. Imo he should’ve just let the guy be after he told him to not contact me again, but the linked thread seems insane to me.
Not really. Or, not reasonable or responsible, I would say.
Not wanting to have a public debate about it sounds fine. Hearing the CEO out and then saying “I’m sorry but it sounds like we’re just not on the same page on this and talking more is not productive” sounds fine.
Deciding to make statements in a public forum that could materially impact someone’s livelihood, and not being at all open on any level to someone who wants to tell you hey I think some of these statements are just factually wrong and this person you’re convinced is a bad person and are publicly saying is a bad person, is not actually a bad person, that seems like middle-school levels of weird and hostile and self-centered.
Yeah. In my armchair mode, I feel like at that point you should back off and maybe make a short public response like “Hey I saw this and tried to reach out privately, not to get into a big back-and-forth but here’s why I think most of this is a misunderstanding of what we’re about. (point a, b, c) Happy to talk more if you change your mind.”
Yeah you’re right. I think the original author is also trying to hide behind the fact his post didn’t get traction to make this “actually this was quite private” when it wasn’t.
I’m not defending anyone here but if consent is not given it’s a full stop. If ands or buts don’t matter if there isn’t consent. The moment the person replied via email that they weren’t interested that was a clear no. What the ceo should have done is just make a public statement on their socials as is their right and not continue to privately message the person.
Again I’m not on anyone’s sides, it’s just a consent issue for me.
Why am I forced to listen to the owner of a company ramble off selling points of his product if I don’t want to? If I say fuck Nintendo they’re a shit company do I have to listen to Gary Bowser list off every Nintendo game that sold over a million copies?
The person who posted the thread did so on mastodon, to their 1200 followers, who maybe half of them even saw it and then another half of that even engaged with it. That is not going to materially impact anyone.
It wasn’t selling points though, it was specific rebuttals to specific things that someone had said about his company in public.
It should cut both ways. If you want to publicly say “hey this is what I think of company X,” people with company X should be able to say “hey what you said is bullshit, and now that you started the conversation I’m going to explain why, whether or not you feel like the conversation needs to continue after your side and only your side has been expressed.” I mean, the CEO was way more polite about it than that for understandable reasons, but I think some level of that frustration is probably behind him wanting to be able to explain himself even after she said she wasn’t interested.
Such is my opinion at least. As long as nobody’s getting sued or silenced or harassed at length beyond a few emails, he who opens the slinging of ideas that aren’t friendly, should be prepared for responses to their ideas to come back at them that might not be friendly. This whole “free speech for me but then shut the fuck up and don’t tell me anything back about what I said” seems unfair. At least, in my opinion.