Sunday 13 January 2019

Sunday Short: Saying no to hatred

Today's Sunday short is brought to you from a Facebook post originally shared on the 10th January. 


Screen shot of a Twitter Post from user Casey Forbes (@caseyf) that reads: I deleted that Build the W*ll hat that was posted to @Ravelry. It goes in the bin along with the confederate flag patterns. I'm especially thankful for the latinx ravelers who toot the time to write me about it and I'm sorry that you had to look at that shit. The tweet is dated Jan 9 2018 from 1L35PM


This is how you do it if you are a website owner/manager/moderator or any organisation really.
You don't just have T&C that say no racist content. You stand by your policies. When somebody violates those policies, you don't look for a loophole, you don't look for an excuse, you don't play devils advocate.
You stand by your policies and principals and you take action.

In this case that means deleting a knitting pattern which supports a racist and xenophobic policy and person.

Remember this is nothing to do with free speech. This is a website owner who has said "I will not tolerate intolerance on this website". If that knitter wants to knit and wear their hat in their own time off of Ravelry, they can. But other people have every right to call them out on it. And a content manager has every right to say "you have broken our terms and conditions and we well not allow that.".

I haven't knit anything or even been on Ravelry in ages. But this is why they are awesome. Even if you don't do any sort of fibre art, there's a lot we can learn from Ravelry.

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