Hi friends,
I owed you an update last week, but with everything currently going on in the United States, I felt it better to wait a little. Yet again, we’ve seen how racism permeates our society and how that translates to the murder of black people. This is a systemic issue, that is unfortunately not a bug in the system, but a feature.
When I began this idea of Bokeh, one of the core reasons was because of the way I saw Twitter and Facebook handle racism on their platform. Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have taken a lax and unethical stance on these issues, allowing people in power to spread racist and hateful speech. Racism has no place in our discourse, and if Mark and Jack weren’t morally bankrupt, they’d understand that and act on it.
But let’s be real here: the motivation is money. They refuse to kick racists and white supremacists off their platform because they can’t fathom the advertising money that they’d lose by doing it. This is what happens when your customers and stakeholders are advertisers rather than the people who actually use your social network.
As a society, we have much to do in terms of changing the systems that uphold and protect racism and white supremacy. I’m not going to claim to have all the answers. However, as a bare minimum, we as people should rightfully expect that our online communities be free of these types of hateful people and their violent rhetoric. Again, racism, white supremacy, and other hateful attitudes have no place in our discourse, nor will they ever have a place on Bokeh.
Let’s not forget friends; being anti-racist isn’t a political issue; it’s one of basic human decency and morality.
I hope this message finds you and yours well. I’ll be sending out a development update next week.
-tim
You can view the original backer update on Kickstarter.
