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Comment by Gargoyle | Hacker News Reader

You're also on the side of every political campaign in America. Collecting and/or modeling this information is standard practice in the industry.

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Yes, for internal use is fine and dandy, but revealing it to the world is scummy, a violation of privacy, and can lead to retribution.

That's like saying "it's OK to have racist thoughts, just don't say them out aloud". Whether it's revealed or not is secondary to the act of compiling itself.

So, you would have ruled for Alabama so the KKK and Jim Crow supporters could get the list and "talk" to the businesses and people supporting the NAACP?

It is ok to have any thoughts you like about anything. Once you act on them, that's when other people have to take into consideration their consequences. And speech is certainly something with consequences.

Likely still covered by the aforementioned 'on the side of some pretty unpleasant folks.' ;)

Well, the KKK and Jim Crow supporters were a bit farther up the ladder of 'unpleasant'. 'Unpleasant' being used in the same meaning and tone as a southern lady saying "aren't you special".

In their day they were only mildly unpleasant. Furthermore, those groups they believed they were acting to promote policy that believed was in the best interest of the nation, regardless of how we see them in hindsight.

Imagine if there existed similar databases then. Would you hire someone if you knew they were firmly pro-segregation at age 20-something in 1950-something?

Seems I have a different definition of 'mildly' since I have some strong opinions on burning crosses in peoples yards and other violences.

The context of the time doesn't make the actions of the KKK any less unpleasant or disgusting. Lynchings and laws codified to keep non white people sub citizens are and were far beyond unpleasant, whether the majority of white people at the time believed so or not.

policy that believed was in the best interest of the nation

Which nation, exactly?

Imagine if there existed similar databases then. Would you hire someone if you knew they were firmly pro-segregation at age 20-something in 1950-something?

Probably not, not. I would certainly probe very carefully to see whether they had abandoned such a stance, since many aspects of personality and and political attitude are formed early in life. If you go back and look at documentary footage from around the time schools were integrated, in the 50s, you can see many youngish people protesting that and waving placards with swastikas and so forth on them (this less than 2 decades after the Nazis were defeated in WW2). A lot of those people held on to those ideas and passed them onto their kids.

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