Occasionally, someone asks for a tech-only feed of mine, either because they disagree with my politics or because they simply want to avoid politics on Twitter, something I can completely relate to. Some thoughts on that. 1/
I feel unable to separate my personality into distinct parts, one of them technical, one of them political. The older I get, the more I believe the separation is artificial, anyway 2/
Specifically in a time where the type of technology I’m involved with shapes society, I feel that not speaking out about related topics, such as the influence of AI/ML, the Web as a whole, social media, data protection etc., is just plain wrong 3/
But even unrelated to technical topics, I’m convinced anyone who has a less than trivial number of followers around here needs to voice their position on some political topics loudly 4/
The most important of topics to not stay quiet about is the slow normalization of views that are right-wing, racist, fascist, misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic 5/
I try to tone it down, but if you’re really annoyed at at a couple or even a dozen political tweets a day, rest assured it’s only a tiny fraction of what I could post if I actually set my mind to it 6/
Interestingly, I’ve found that 97% of the folks I respect for their technological proficiency share a similar view. If you’re technical, and you don’t, you might want to assess whether you may be on the wrong side of history 7/
Finally, if you’re annoyed by my political views, feel free to let me know if you meet me in person and I’ll be happy to debate you face to face, but not here. //
