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I don't understand how you could come to that conclusion, they are referring to a sweatshop employee by a number and humiliating him for bad performance to the audience. How much more explicit would their demo have to be in order for you to believe they understand how their tech will be used?

Edit: They know exactly what they are doing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175023#43176516




I don't mean to disagree with you. I have my own snap judgments, but trying to temper them at the moment. When I commented, I thought there was already more than enough people piling on to condemn, so I thought I should take a deep breath, and make some complementary points.

(Though, one of my snap judgments is that this is probably worse than they realize, over 0.6 probability, unless they're far into their sales meetings, or have a lot of world experience. The impression in the video is that they're imagining a class-based dynamic, with someone from a lower class than them being a lazy and unmotivated problem worker, and how they think is culturally appropriate to interact. That might actually be what they envision. But we have enough analogous examples, for decades, to assume that many customers will use it even worse. And with interaction flavors that are more culturally familiar and recognizable to us in the US.)

Edit: I didn't see your edit link when I responded. Yes, I think that link fits my first impression. I'll stand by my position that the condemning comments have been done enough, and that some other nuance and alternate interpretations might apply, and are worth mentioning, for this case and in general.


I have an incredible amount of respect for you for that, most of the time it's the right thing to do. However, I would encourage you to tune that reflex here since as the other user I linked to previously found, all the founders come from families that run sweatshops that they have had access to from a young age. They are imagining nothing, this is at best their actual views of the world and how it should work and at worst what they believe is a palatable view of sweatshops for the western audience they're seeking funding from.


I should add that, re-reading my initial comments, in light of some of the information I didn't have before, I see how some of my comments now miss the mark. I think the comments are still valid for general situations, and I'll leave them without edits or clarification. I just wish I'd picked better timing to mention them.




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