While I agree with your general sentiment, the case of Ms Rice is more substantial. She has a track record of relevant actions (not views), such as legal support of warrantless wiretapping, that have a direct relation to DropBox's core business of storing users' information.

OTOH I wonder why people are so upset about perspectives of snooping on their data stored in DropBox and its likes. If the data can be snooped on, it will be, should the powers that be decide so.

I suppose that you consider any data you store in a public cloud also public, and not expect much privacy. The only way to store data in a private way on machines you don't control is to store it encrypted, and never trust the encryption key to anyone. This is how SpiderOak works, for instance: they are incapable of disclosing any clients' data even if they badly wanted to.

Indeed, I have a large problem with giving my money to somebody with whom I hold partly responsible for the deaths and misery of hundreds of thousands. I have a large problem with giving all my data to somebody with a track record of illegal wiretapping. And I have the possibility to change this with little to no impact for myself.

Could you please elaborate on how that makes me childish? - Maybe I misread your comment.

Also I found your last sentence somewhat ironic, because yes, we live in a world were lots of people actually die from wars originated by disagreements. I'd say that's worse than tragically childish.

Except her opinions have far reaching consequences, such as killing people.

Am I not allowed to blacklist her because of that? I'm sure the people she's indirectly killed would blacklist her. No?

What I'm seeing is minorities and people who care about human rights finally getting fed up with the status quo and at least trying to get people to talk about it. I'm sorry that makes people like you feel threatened.

Right, because nothing encourages open discussion more than blacklisting everyone you disagree with.

I don't think people's hearts are in the wrong place. I think most people try to do good. I also think that the behaviors in question are trading small short term good for catastrophicly massive long term harm.

Edit: Yes, also downvote people you disagree with. This will also encourage more open discussion.

Why is it that the people in power get to act, kill, discriminate, and control... but the minorities have to discuss?

In my experience, this is because people who agree with whatever the status-quo currently is erroneously believe their views to be "apolitical" while everything else is "political." Having views or opinions that are "political" is branded as bad by those in power since it threatens their control.

Judge ideas and actions based on their merit rather than whether they line up with current trends.

Downvoting comments because of disagreement is common in this thread. If you think about it, it is consistent with blackballing.

I, for one, will upvote any well written comment I find at zero or negative values here.

I don't care if I agree with the comments or not, I don't like this face of HN. I vote comment quality, not content.

Your predicted dystopian future is laughable to anyone who is outside the sphere of "straight, white, affluent, and male." That "blacklisting" already occurs all around us... Bigots and warmongers aren't the first people to have these problems.

>People are increasingly incapable of living and working with people with whom they deeply disagree.

You mean like people that complicit with the death of thousands of people and don't get the benefit of the doubt because they were lying to everyone all along?

The older I get the more I realize that adults don't exist. The world has always been run by children pretending to be adults.

...too true :(