Weekly roundup #1: Real people don't have an int stat
On DEI and meritocracy, the current TikTok situation, and other topics I'm reading about
I'm trying out something new - I find I post to LinkedIn a lot more often than here because it's easier to toss off a short post than something long enough to feel worthy of putting here. I want to have my content more accessible to browse later, though, so I'm going to try doing a weekly newsletter which pulls together anything I put on LinkedIn (slightly expanded), plus links to anything else I've read and found interesting. Let me know what you think!
DEI is meritocracy
LinkedIn post. Trump's recent orders are of course absurd, and I'm very concerned that even industry leaders who have supported DEI in the past will fall in line without protest because in their hearts they believe it is a nice thing to do that is counter to real meritocracy.
That is, of course, stupid. "Merit" is a concept with many complicated dimensions that is different depending on the demands of each role, which is extremely difficult to define and even more difficult to measure. If you look at "DEI hires" and state with no hesitation that they are obviously less qualified than other candidates, when you have no way to tell that except by what they look like, that is textbook racism/misogyny.
The *whole idea* of DEI is that our current systems are not meritocratic. They are biased towards the culture and social networks of the people that currently dominate them! This is natural in all systems, and it is not necessarily condemnation of those people. All human judgment is biased - the idea of DEI is to be aware of those biases and not perpetuate them, and strive for equity as much as possible.
The anti-DEI take seems to be that if you are Really Smart you somehow can achieve a perfectly objective, accurate, and universal perspective, but truly smart people can understand that the world has complexity and nuance and there are things they don't know. I hope more leaders have the insight and courage to stick to that.
I of course also wrote about this six months ago, when I was a lot more willing to be charitable about it:
The TIkTok cultural divide
LinkedIn post. There is a lot to be said about the TikTok situation, but I want to comment specifically on the phenomenon of RedNote having been #1 in the Apple App Store for the last week, because there is an aspect I feel is obvious if you are very online that hasn't come through in a lot of takes I've read.
First, context: RedNote is a Chinese social media app that is very popular in China (300m+ users) but not so much outside of it. Leading up to the apparent shutdown of TikTok, US users started downloading it en masse, and it hit #1 in the Apple App Store last Tuesday. Notably, the app's interface is fully in Mandarin. (Duolingo saw a 216% spike in users learning Mandarin last week as well.) Many have noted that this is an ironic unintended consequence of the TikTok ban, since RedNote is much more directly monitored by the Chinese government than TikTok (which is not even available in China).
That is certainly true, but some people don't seem to realize that... is deliberate. That is the point.
The people moving from TikTok to RedNote are not sheep who looked up from their dance app one day, realized it was going away, and migrated to the next app they saw, which happened to be even worse. They are people who spent many hours of their lives on a platform that hosted all sorts of content, from wildlife sanctuary fundraisers to live political debates to comedic skits about medical residency. Many of them built successful businesses there. (TikTok helped small businesses in the US make $14.7B in 2023.) And these people saw a (bi-partisan!) government effort to rip this platform out from under them for, as far as they could tell, no real reason. And so these people, out of frustration and a bit of spite, decided it would be funny and express how stupid the whole thing was if they moved to another Chinese app. Then more people saw the appeal of this, and it became a trend.
(Also, I am not a big TikTok user myself, but the evidence seems to be on their side here! At no point did the government provide any evidence of actual adversarial influences - the concern seems to be purely hypothetical. Most people in favor of the ban seem to have only a vague sense of the youth being corrupted by TikTok and nothing of value being lost by removing it, which is really not a great reason for infringing on the First Amendment.)
The cross-cultural interactions and jokes about meeting their Chinese spies on RedNote are very funny and touching. However, consider for a moment that a bipartisan effort of the federal government enacted a rule that so many people think is so stupid that their pointed flaunting of the spirit of it vaulted an app to the top of the app store. I think it really highlights a huge generational/societal gulf in understanding that is much more concerning to me than anything TikTok is doing.
Other Stuff I am Reading/Listening To
Female founders just took in their smallest share of VC deals in five years. Analysis from Pitchbook. I've written a lot about this trend on LinkedIn, so I might do a post just for that soon.
TIkTok's "Cute Winter Boots" Trend Explained. Taylor Lorenz's User Mag. People are using "Cute Winter Boots" as code for political activism on TikTok, to avoid moderation/censorship and widen their reach. In general I find TikTok "algospeak" (like "unaliving") to be a little silly and dubiously effective, but I have to say that making it seem like your post is a product pitch and including a link to your TIkTok store as a way to get exposure for your political resistance info is pretty clever.
Costco Faces Down Anti-DEI Group as Trump Stokes Backlash. Bloomberg. Costco has been one of the few companies to stand firm on their DEI approach, and an anti-DEI proxy proposal was voted down by 98% of shareholders.
Hundreds of Subreddits Are Considering Banning All Links to X. 404 Media. In the wake of Elon Musk's Nazi salute, subreddit moderators are taking action.
Patreon's CEO on the existential threat to creators no one is talking about. Jack Conte on Taylor Lorenz's Power User podcast. Every time I hear Jack talk I feel like he has great insights and mental models about creators, which makes a lot of sense. I've thought of a lot of the issues here before, but they're laid our extremely well.
Absolutely Preposterous. Molly White's Citation Needed. Even some big crypto proponents are offended by Trump's memecoin launches.
We Don't Want Your Password. 404 Media. This is an older piece on why they use magic login links via email rather than a password login. I'm putting it here to remind me I want to write in more depth about this idea broadly. They captured it really well on their podcast when they mentioned a complaint that they were "outsourcing security to Gmail" - yes! That's good! Google is much better equipped to handle password security than a 4-person media company!
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That's all for now. More next week??