You and Brantly should go for a Decentralised Caliphate. I heard Saudi Arabia is investing $1B in metaverse. Who knew ENS is full of fundamentalist nutjobs? Well, now we do. Your goats need herding brother. Go back to pre-web1 tribal era.
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Last time I checked you were using anything based on programming from algorithms put together by mathematician Muįø„ammad ibn MÅ«sÄ al-KhwÄrizmÄ«, damn you have to go and live in the farms with your pigs, let cancel everything no more experimental science no number no camera no ā¦ (all by muslims) donāt be a hepocrit, cancel all things
This situation seems like itās gone a bit off the rails. Currently weāre looking at a DAO vote on Brantlyās job, which is risking becoming an index on whether voters agree with, or find abhorrent, his opinions on certain very sensitive subjects. Either way that vote goes, ENS loses big time, because such a vote would be pretty obviously partisan, and would destroy ENSās neutrality in the ecosystem. We do not want a reputation (whether deserved or not) as either a community and project that supports homophobia, transphobia, and bigoted hate generally, or as a community and project that supports religious or cultural persecution via ācancel cultureā or āthought policeā. We must remain a neutral protocol that everyone can feel equally supported and advantaged in using.
What is the actual problem here, from my perspective?
Brantly, in his role as project representative, essentially the āface of ENSā, has not maintained suitable neutrality in his communications. Via his Twitter account, he posted frequent official ENS updates, mixed with various personal updates. A very early tweet espousing various exclusionary ideas may or may not be relevant, given its age dating back to 2016. But in the past 24 hours, he released several tweets and at least one Twitter Spaces, again conducted with the same Twitter account that many associated directly with ENS as a protocol, which doubled down on that early tweet.
Essentially, Brantly, in his role as Director of Operations for ENS Domains, posted his divisive and very non-neutral opinions in a manner that very directly linked those opinions to ENS itself. They could very easily have been construed to originate from ENS itself, since they were stated by an official ENS representative, using the same social media account normally used by that representative for various semi-official news and postings.
This action risks destroying ENSās extremely valuable legitimacy in the web3 space as a neutral protocol. It risks alienating a substantial subset of the ENS community. It risks politicizing ENS. Perhaps itās already too late.
To me, this is the crux of the issue. The Director of Operations chose to risk everything he has extremely adeptly and capably built, along with many others, over the years, by surfacing and re-emphasizing his personal opinions while in a role which requires strict, fastidious neutrality.
Where do we go from here?
ENS must respond in an official capacity. To do otherwise invalidates and disregards the very real concerns expressed by the LGBTQ+ community, women, and the other all-too-often-targeted demographics impacted. They form a crucial and invaluable component of the global web3 and ENS community, and deserve a real, thoughtful, non-trivializing, efficacious response.
ENS must not respond in a way that commits the opposite error: alienating the enormous global audience of people with belief systems that produce the kinds of ideas at the center of this situation. This audience also forms a crucial and invaluable component of the global web3 and ENS community, and deserves to be treated thoughtfully and even-handedly as well. These belief systems may seem incompatible with an inclusive and accepting web3 and ENS community, but rejecting them on that basis is also excluding.
The only path forward, to me, seems to be one that returns as directly and diplomatically and firmly as possible to a position of clear neutrality on ENSās part.
Evicting Brantly on the basis of his beliefs would completely fail in that. Ignoring the issue would completely fail in that.
I believe Brantly must apologize. Not for his beliefs, because I donāt think he would be willing to do that, nor should he be required to, because a personās beliefs are their own business, no matter how much many of us may vehemently disagree with them personally. I think he must apologize for discussing those beliefs while serving in an official ENS role, and from a social media account that often promulgates official ENS information. I think the apology should address the inappropriateness of those actions, and the impacts and risks that they present for the ENS protocol and web3 as a whole. I think it would be much better if this message explicitly apologized for dehumanizing and invalidating the impacted groups, but such an apology would need to be sincere, and Iām not convinced it would be in this case.
I also think that ENS itself, either the DAO or core team members, should issue an official statement on the matter. This statement should formally and clearly disavow any affiliation with the personal ideas and opinions shared by Brantly. It should be clear that ENS is a neutral protocol where all participants have equal access. It should be clear that those ideas and opinions are antithetical to this principle of equal access, but that persecuting Brantly or anyone else on the basis of holding those opinions would also be antithetical to the protocolās neutrality and principle of equal access. Lastly, it should apologize for allowing the public and private messaging of its team members to become entangled to the point where this became an issue. Official statements going forward should not be given from any individual team member social media accounts where any non-official ENS business is also discussed. To do otherwise, again, puts its status as a neutral protocol in grave danger.
I think that ENS might pursue additional disciplinary action against Brantly for these lapses in judgement, up to and including removing him from his position, but also think that this could prove too controversial and damaging and must be handled with great care if at all.
Overall, I think this is a very serious matter that must be carefully addressed by ENS if it is to maintain its legitimacy with certain large subsets of the web3 community. I would encourage the DAO to act as swiftly as it can while still achieving all due deliberation.
Thanks.
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I think that he is entitled to his own believe, but the way that he expressed his own opinions as conclusive or true statements is off-putting.
I believe it would be appropriate for him to make clear that these are his personal believes and prefix them with āI thinkā or āI believeā and make an effort to disassociate them with ENS.
Regarding the current situation, I urge everyone to think clearly on potential cascading effects this may have on ENS and even web3. Has and will his views affect his work or the team? Will a DAO vote fragment and split the community resulting in separate name service entities? Are we signaling that only private or liberal views are preferred in this space? Does governance need guidelines for handling controversial topics or how we work with groups that have clear political, religious or moral values?
I hope the outcome of this is that if something similar happens in the future, we as a community, the team, the DAO, will have better alignment of response as a whole.
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ah I get it now, only youāre allowed to post hate speech.
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In view of the current situation, I want to bring everyoneās attention to this Community Working Group Intent (Draft) draft here which Brantly contributes to as part of the community working group. There is a proposed Pledge of Conduct which covers some of what is discussed currently and would cover him since he is a Steward.
I also call for @brantlymillegan and others who may have posted angry comments to reconsider their tone and delivery to more align with this proposed code of conduct.
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āLetās not bring toxic cancel culture to Web3.ā
Brantly is the one bringing toxic cancel culture to web3 by trying to cancel queer people. Whatās not clicking for you?
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Are you also proposing to get rid of Leon Talbert on ENS as well? He doubled down on his position of colonialism and genocide last night and after bringing it to light he deleted all his past tweets.
The entire team at this rate is just rotten to the core.
I wasnāt aware web3 was around 6 years ago
Oh no, someone has an opinion on colonialism!
Oh boy! Whatever he expressed in his tweet is the core central belief outlined in 2 holy books - Bible and Quran, followed by nearly half of the world population. So thatās hate speech, so the ones that are responsible for that are these books.
Second, if we go for the argument that because of Brants belief, ENS by association will be affected and that we must do something against Brant because of his āevilā belief (outline in 2 Holy Books), otherwise ENS supports āevilā, then all those who follow Christianity and Islam are also āevilā by association with the 2 Holy Books.
You cannot pick and choose on grounds of principle. Itās either evil and all must be condemned or itās religious freedom and one is allowed to have religious opinion you and I might not agree with, as long as that is not converting to direct physical assault.
If we are bringing politics then the core of the issue - religious belief and its source cannot be left out due to hypocritical political correctness.
Thatās my take on this whole situation.
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It would be nice if he re-stated it on the way out, but that seems unlikely at this point.
While I donāt agree with @brantlymillegan, I disagree with your conclusion that one who condemns acts they believe to be evil also believes the person committing those acts to be evil. There are many facets to a person. You can condemn one part of a personās life or choices without condemning the whole. Further, @brantlymillegan may just be expressing his sincerely held religious beliefs, consistent with his faith. Similarly, condemning @brantlymillegan for those beliefs and treating him as, somehow, an evil person would also be fallacious.
Nevertheless, we are entitled to have an opinion as to those beliefs and voice our objection, as I have done. What one may conclude is that @brantlymillegan used extremely poor judgment in expressing those beliefs in a public way that is likely to caused a negative perception of TNL, DAO, and ENS, because he failed to make clear that his tweets were not in his role as a spokesperson for TNL, DAO, or ENS, and, more importantly, it was reckless conduct, as he knew or should have known, that his tweets would have a negative impact on ENS, if the reader could not discern a distinct separation between personal beliefs and ENSās core values. To cancel him or censure him as a group could be viewed as being inconsistent with our decentralized nature, as it becomes a slippery slope of monitoring conduct deemed to be offensive. Any consequence to be suffered must be consistent with our Constitution and Code of Conduct.
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Mike drop. It would be nice if everyone would swallow their pride and look at this objectively. @brantlymillegan messed up. He should apologize. Not for holding his beliefs, but for the reasons mentioned right here by @berrios.eth If he canāt do that we likely have a problem. Ball is really in his court.
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āCancel cultureā is democracy itself in action and calling it exactly that shows poor judgement. However, that is probably the least poor judgement of many of the judgements issued here today so I can personally give it a pass. If you call it cancel culture, you do not deserve a response because no one owes you one. A mob is a mob until it is not; then it becomes civil reform.
There is no slippery slope. It is a 90 degree straight down into pure utter incompetence and gross ineptitude.
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Mic* drop bro. Dropped out of Kindergarten?
He defended pedophilia and rape. I am talking civil liability in an ongoing crisis around the world. He aint coming with his apology. He laughed at those who offered him a chance at one 12387349 times yesterday.
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Alrighty well have fun doing whatever it is you think youāre doing.
I am opening a vote for the DAO to decide as a delegate. Thatās about it. I do not decide what happens. If DAO decides to keep him, Iāll have to suck it up, admit that I was wrong against a majority of the people here in this ecosystem, and keep chugging along to build. Thatās how it works in a grown up world.
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Who is āHeā? I am merely pointing out fallacious reasoning. I have clearly voiced my opinion. Cancel culture is not democracyānothing has been put to a vote.