Update: we received an email from someone claiming to be the author. I've copied it below with their permission.
Of course we can't tell anything for sure, but in my experience, this kind of thing is usually authentic. For me it changes the balance of probability enough to justify guessing differently again, so I'm going to take [flagged] off the thread now.
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Hey,
I recently wrote an article which was posted on HN and is now flagged for the use of a link to a website called Daily Stormer (article title is, “GitHub, f*ck your name change”). Obvs this is you guys community and I didn’t mean for a post I wrote to seem trolly. I just wanted to clarify the situation.
I had genuinely never heard of Daily Stormer or ever been on the website until the time I was writing the post. I use DuckDuckGo, which evidently doesn’t ban gnarly websites the way that Google does. I was looking for articles written about the misidentification of black people as gorillas in facial recognition systems. The DS article came up as one of the top results, I read the first paragraph and it seemed on topic so I used it. I have since removed the link from the post.
I’m not trying to justify the use of the website, it 100% my fault for not doing better due diligence. I just wanted to say I’m sorry as I didn’t mean for the post to come across as trolling.
For what its worth, I am black, I live (born and raised) in London and work as a SWE. Nothing in the post was a lie.
Of course we can't tell anything for sure, but in my experience, this kind of thing is usually authentic. For me it changes the balance of probability enough to justify guessing differently again, so I'm going to take [flagged] off the thread now.
------
Hey,
I recently wrote an article which was posted on HN and is now flagged for the use of a link to a website called Daily Stormer (article title is, “GitHub, f*ck your name change”). Obvs this is you guys community and I didn’t mean for a post I wrote to seem trolly. I just wanted to clarify the situation.
I had genuinely never heard of Daily Stormer or ever been on the website until the time I was writing the post. I use DuckDuckGo, which evidently doesn’t ban gnarly websites the way that Google does. I was looking for articles written about the misidentification of black people as gorillas in facial recognition systems. The DS article came up as one of the top results, I read the first paragraph and it seemed on topic so I used it. I have since removed the link from the post.
I’m not trying to justify the use of the website, it 100% my fault for not doing better due diligence. I just wanted to say I’m sorry as I didn’t mean for the post to come across as trolling.
For what its worth, I am black, I live (born and raised) in London and work as a SWE. Nothing in the post was a lie.
Thanks for reading,
Moosey