Bullshit. He realized he created a monster. At that point you shut it down or you get it the resources it needs and make sure they work, because otherwise you are releasing that monster to the world. He chose option 3, get a payout and avoid responsibility.
There should be consequences for that choice, including no corporation with any moral standard ever hiring him. It’s not like he was forced to sell or something, he made the choice. Full stop.
But that’s not what happened - it was toxic. He left anyway because preserving the ideals of /b/ was more important than the reality of what he created.
Very much this. But the point is, he had the choice, decided not to kill it, and now wan’t people to forget he made that choice. But he did make the choice, and it’s still a monster, and the consequences are he (should be!) a pariah in Silicon Valley as a result.
Of course it’s hard. That’s why responsibility is a thing - he made the monster and made the wrong choice. He could have spent all the years since trying to make up for that monster but instead… silence. How is that coming to terms with what he created? He wants instead to pretend it never happened.
Fuck no we don’t. Because the mistake is ongoing! Where is he online taking a stance against the sort of garbage 4chan is now? Where is he using his influence to say “You know what, I fucked up, let’s fix this”? Nowhere. Which leads to only a few possibilities IMHO: 1) he doesn’t care, 2) He wants to forget the monster he created or 3) he’s more ok with it than it seems. I personally think #3 is most likely.
Most people who make a mess at 15 don’t do things that continue to be terrible, terrible creations years later. That’s like saying “Oh, yeah, I had an unwanted pregnancy when I was fifteen but now I abdicate responsibility to the monster my child has become since I was 15, what did I know?”
This is the part I understand the least of your argument. Why isn’t it obvious that if you create a monster, you don’t accept responsibility and begin actively trying to change the culture around that monster? Around what we consider ok in social media? He made the thing. He profited off the thing, Now he has a responsibility to get people to focus on not just dismantling the thing he created but the culture it now fosters.
This is no different than ex-gang members trying to stop others from joining a gang, or ex-extremists trying to work to ensure more people aren’t radicalized. Instead, he walks away and ignores the monster.
It takes a profound amount of privilege (or the expectation of it) to be able to create something like this and believe that they can just “ignore it and move on”, and IMHO it takes a belief that someone deserves that profound privilege to advocate that we collectively “move on” and just “be ok” with Moot doing less than everything he can to correct the situation he created.
