Interesting how many people in a hacker forum seem to be so pro-establishment and instead try to denigrate the goals of this initiative because of the chosen character. I guess that's how many earn their dollar after all?

Sure, if it had been today, Clippy would have been evil but that's the point, it wasn't back then. Why are we so accepting of the change?

> instead try to denigrate the goals of this initiative because of the chosen character

Incorrect. Nobody is denigrating the goals of the initiative. All criticism I see is directed at the choice of the mascot only.

You know... people can love an initiative and criticize its mascot at the same time. The two are not incompatible.

> Clippy would have been evil but that's the point, it wasn't back then.

I was around when Clippy was introduced. It was universally hated. If anything, Clippy would be a good mascot for intrusive AI tools and services that harvest our data without regard for our privacy, not least because Clippy constantly monitored user actions just so that it could interrupt them.

If we want a mascot for tools that respect our data, it should definitely be something far less evil than Clippy.

Clippy was pretty universally hated back in it's day though. The way it just refused to let you do anything without it's help was annoying.

People complain about getting AI shoved down their throats. Clippy was worse in this regard. At least AI doesn't have a dancing animated character that eats up half your processing power with it's silly animations.

Seems possible to say Clippy is a poor mascot for this and also not be shilling for the establishment.

None of the comments I've read thus far are criticising the goals, just the figurehead.

This is a marketing initiative to push opinion on an important issue and people are criticizing the marketing.

You seem to think that people should approve of an advertisement if they approve of the product.

I think this speaks to one of the tensions at the heart of HN and Silicon Valley as a whole: it's borne out of both the counter-cultural hacker mentality and the SV venture capital industry and the big tech behemoths that proceeded them. Strange bedfellows.

hackernews is a wanabe venture capitalists/techbros who want to roleplay/feel like hackers site and on the way picked up a few random people like hackers/hobbyists/devs