> Voicing these opinions would probably label me as racist in their book ironically.

Don't worry, Twitter isn't real life. People have become experts at shouting down people who disagree with them on that platform, they aren't seeking proper arguments and make disingenuous attempts to present them as honest debates.

But fortunately what's popular on Twitter doesn't translate to the average population. Plenty of completely fringe ideas get 50-100k likes/retweets. It mostly just represents the voices of various super-niches living in bubbles.

Is it not? People get fired from their real life jobs ("cancelled") for all manner of offenses on social media these days.

If you're lucky and the offense is mild you may repent, as it was suggested to Yann: https://twitter.com/le_roux_nicolas/status/12754857390238187...

I wonder how often apologies like this are genuine, versus simply bending the knee to the mob out of fear for one's livelihood.

Without taking a position on the original argument, the person involved seems to hold an influential position at Google and in the community, so I don't think this is necessarily a satisfactory response.

>>Don't worry, Twitter isn't real life. For the most part yes, but President Trump's behavior on Twitter can have serious consequences in the real world. I think that the behavioral norms of social media are penetrating deeper and deeper into culture.

You seem to be taking "not real life" too literally. I'm not saying "nothing on Twitter affects real life". The point is that it's often a poor representation of real life.

Small but highly vocal groups can have a seemingly loud and powerful voice. Yet the results of polls and other public signals (even election outcomes) are frequent reminders that what is gospel on Twitter is often detached from 'real life'.

Using a president of a major country is a poor example in this context. But if anything Trump being one of the first major Twitter users strongly reinforces my point. Prior to election he tweeted plenty of things most mainstream US republicans wouldn't touch with a 10 foot poll. Let alone what an average American would say IRL (even right leaning ones).

Not to mention Twitter is a global platform so conversation around local politics can be heavily skewed by people not even in the country.

But otherwise I agree, it is infesting real life far more frequently these days. And it is worrying. Despite everything I said above, big corporations, the media, politicians, etc can't seem to make this distinction and take what is popular there as a direct reflection of the general public. And it creates a negative reinforcing spiral.

I'm glad you are saying this. I work at Google (and so does Timnit Gebru). Recently there has been a somewhat similar discussion on an internal mailing list. A very senior person at Google got involved in the discussion and backed Timnit up.

It made me feel very uncomfortable, because I wanted to say something like "the issues you are pointing out are very important, but I don't think you are right in this instance" but I was afraid doing so might jeopardize my career at the company.