I don’t think they’re offended, per se — I just think they don’t want intermittent reminders of the atrocities committed against their ancestors at their workplace.

Everyone has ancestors and grievances. Hell, my country has been invaded pretty much by everyone near us at least once, and we have vocabulary from a variety of surrounding languages. Let's speak esperanto everyone.

I'm sorry, but this fixes nothing. It's just to feel good about themselves, pure virtue signaling.

Basically every single thing someone does is “virtue signaling”. Even your use of that term is meant to indicate a certain set of conservative values.

I’m glad you were able to reclaim whatever historic signifiers of oppression you’re talking about. For Black people in the US, that oppression is still ongoing, and the developers at Twitter would rather avoid using terms with that baggage in the context of their work.

> Basically every single thing someone does is “virtue signaling”. Even your use of that term is meant to indicate a certain set of conservative values.

¿? Mmm, no? You can help feed poor people or lobby for better housing regulations and you don't need to be signaling anything.

And I don't know what "conservative values" I hold, since I'm a social democrat.

> I’m glad you were able to reclaim whatever historic signifiers of oppression you’re talking about.

We didn't reclaim any historic signifiers. We have architecture, statues and museums about such invaders, everything is fine. In fact this "cancel culture" came from the anglophone world, thankfully without that much success, but enough to distract people from real issues we have here.

> For Black people in the US, that oppression is still ongoing, and the developers at Twitter would rather avoid using terms with that baggage in the context of their work.

I'm having a hard time believing that black developers at twitter are not in the top of the food chain. Also, the previous point I made about polysemic words. Knowing that words have multiple meanings seems useful for communication.

> you shouldn't be offended by them,

Why not?

I’m left handed. Should I get offended at “sinister” or “gauche”?

Isn’t this like a simple lesson from children’s Harry Potter books? Why give words like “Voldemort” so much power. Words are just pointers for communication. the contextual intent isn’t what matters not what you read into it.

Let me know when the police target you for being left handed

And therein lies the distance between this effort and what we care about.

There’s real profiling and brutality going on and having word police ain’t gonna change that.

Dispute English’s effort to demonize me, no one has even noticed.

There’s real concrete nuts and bolts problems with policing, the laws, the justice system. Swapping out a few words is less than spitting on a fire.

Ah yes, I've heard this before.

Let's not worry about this because there are much bigger problems to worry about. Never mind that those bigger problems are much harder to solve and these are quite simply and within reach.

Lol.