Comment by throwaway042122 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway042122 | Hacker News Reader

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throwaway042122

I think you're confusing two different things. Here's a New York Magazine article that goes over what happened[1]. After Shor tweeted this:

> Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests increase Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage.

A twitter mob went after Shor, including people tagging the CEO of his company (who _is_ on Twitter, not sure what the confusion is there) and asking them to "Come get your boy." A few days later, he was fired. Four days after that[2], he was kicked off the Progressphiles list for being "racist."

If you don't like New York Magazine, here's a Vox article that goes over what happened[3].

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-... [2] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/white-fragility-raci... [3] https://www.vox.com/2020/7/29/21340308/david-shor-omar-wasow...

Huh, I thought the email list stuff happened before he was fired. Guess not.

The culture didn't last long - people usually fight back at the mobs now, who have died off some. Now it only exists in minor extremist form where leftists (anti-Epstein conspiracists) and rightists (many other kinds of conspiracists) go around calling random people pedophiles. Twitter still doesn't ban them if you report them though.

Also, that research he quoted is from a Black researcher (Omar Wasow) who is still around tweeting himself and seems well respected.

Do you think Wasow would have picked that moment to promote his research?

That’s exactly when the research needed to be promoted, for the good of everyone, including advocates of policing reform. Failure to heed that advice allowed republicans to paint democrats—by doing nothing more than reposting articles from NPR and the like—as feckless enablers of their radical wing who would cower in the sidelines for months while rioters tore down city blocks.

And in the end nobody suffered as much as the folks living in these high crime neighborhoods. Not only is there evidence the riots increased homicides, https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-pr..., but also it created a backlash against police reform even in the most progressive cities in the country, like NYC and SF. Police budgets are now bigger than ever: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cities-vowed-2020-cut-po...

Bi-partisan momentum on police reform evaporated as Trump baited progressives into picking a self-destructive fight over the acceptability of rioting and the need for policing.

With no other attention? Don't know.

In our timeline he did, since I remember reading some followups he wrote about it.

It's not the real most annoying research you could post; that'd be the NBER paper finding protests reduced covid cases by getting uninvolved people to stay home.

Yes, people do fight back against the mob. But Twitter has been on the side of the mob throughout.

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