> The last notable ban was Paul Graham for simply sharing their Mastodon handle.

Paul Graham is a man, not a plural entity.

Singular they predates singular you in the English language by about three hundred years.

That doesn’t mean the “they” here isn’t unclear. I wasn’t sure whose Mastodon handle Paul Graham shared. I certainly didn’t think OP meant he shared his own handle.

To be perfectly pedantic, this should only be confusing if referring to the Mastadon employees. Otherwise, if referring to the non-person entity, singular or plural appropriate syntax would be “it”.

They originated around the same time, but singular you was initially only used for addressing superiors/showing respect (using the plural second person pronoun as a singular for this purpose is still a thing in a bunch of languages), a few hundred years later “you” became the standard second person singular pronoun while “thou” fell out of favour.

A very modern convention is now using “they/their” when a person may not be aware of someone’s preferred pronoun. And even still, I have also seen people abandon gendered pronouns entirely.

It’s also just far easier to use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular person to reflect the idea that you’re talking about their whole persona, brand, work, etc… and not just specifically the human being, IMO.

It's also a very old method. In fact, he/she is a later evolution of the English language. "He/his" used to be more equivalent to "it/its". It wasn't until ~15th century that the modern "he/him" and "she/her" fully evolved. "They/them" meanwhile was in full use by the 14th century

No one speaks in middle english. Dead language rules and customs are irrelevant to modern language norms.

People once walketh befide their mules, but now we gots lambos

And yet, pronoun ragers cleave to Olde Anglishe in an attempte to rectifye Ye langge. Sadge.

This train of thought makes no sense. The fact that something originated in Old English doesn't at all mean it's dead. He/She also originated in Old English, just a little later. Should I make fun of people using he/him, she/her pronouns because they're "clinging to Olde Anglishe"? lol

No one made that claim.

Your comment is non sequitor

Using they/them as a neutral pronoun is not dead and never died...

Ah, "neutral"

Non-binary people tend to prefer the they/their pronoun too.

"the suspect jumped in their car and fled the scene"

In English the word can be used as a singular pronoun

John jumped in their car...

Right, so if you change it, then it's changed and it's different.

Appreciate the clarification

Yes, I suppose changing things changes them. Appreciate the clarification.

Good observation! Hope this wasn't an attempted, and failed, grammar 'correction'?

> It's interesting to see that, contrary to popular narratives, many of the international groups banned were actually far-left aligned.

The list that Wikipedia determines "notable suspensions" is probably not the best gauge to counter "popular narratives". What Wikipedia chooses to highlight is often the sum of actual popular narratives - not simply popular protests [2]- which is sourced almost entirely from the media and then filtered through the culture found among Wikipedia power users.

A raw database of suspensions and their rationale [1] would probably be the only useful analysis.

[1] recent leaks show that that the US state/federal gov employees (and other well connected power players) often sent lists of tens/hundreds of accounts to be banned and Twitter employees often retroactively found reasons to do so when the given reason wasn't justified. So both the rationale and "notable" part both have questionable value for general analysis

[2] The people most often protesting bans aren't always the people getting the most media-sourceable attention for their bans

It's also possible that wikipedia (and the editors there of) are more likely to be far-left aligned / knowledgeable -- thus leaving the far-right unaccounted for.

That said, I also see bans of accounts with few followers regularly being far-right (white supremacist jokes for instance). They may just not be able to gather large followings at this point and / or be on alternative platforms.

he didn't share his mastodon handle, since that had been prohibited; he just said he had one and you could look on his site for it

> contrary to popular narratives, many of the international groups banned were actually far-left aligned.

Massachusetts state police posted a photo on twitter from inside one of the emergency management command post whatever facilities.

In the background was a projector screen showing a web browser and in the toolbar was at least one link to a facebook group for one of the occupy movements.

Of course, no visible bookmarks to any of the state's numerous white supremacist or far right groups.

Those polo-shirt-and-khaki wearing clowns? From numerous accounts by witnesses, reporters, and photos on twitter they received what amounted to a police escort from the public transit station where they all parked, all the way into the city...and then from the transit station to their protest site. And then back again.

See: FBI report from a decade or two ago citing the huge problem with white supremacist groups infiltrating law enforcement.

I looked at the 2022 ban list and didn't see anything I recognized as "far left" until Elon took over.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446878.

too political?

I think it was just that the subthread was mostly veering off topic.

Offtopicness is fine when it's fresh and whimsical but not when a thread gets sucked into old/repetitive arguments.

Fair enough. Thanks

????? I just went through the entire table of suspended people and there were almost no far left groups besides Antifa. Most of the suspended were either far-right/alt-right, trump related, doxing related or spreading miss-information.

> Suspected members of the IRA, the Irish paramilitary organization, were also on the list.

A list that details primarily terrorists having terrorists listed on it. Colour me surprised.