Re: [Gendispatch] revised

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 2:12 PM Nico Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 10:49:28AM -0700, Dan Harkins wrote:
> > Let me remind you again that disparate impact is not evidence of
> > racism and it is a fallacy (specifically, the residual fallacy [1]) to
> > claim otherwise. So, excluding disparate impact, where is this racism
> > and bias you speak of?
>
> The IETF's volunteer nature, with no gatekeepers, means that the IETF
> can neither be the cause of nor the solution to lack of diversity of any
> kind.  Though perhaps in order for the IETF to join our brave new
> age-of-the-hyper-ostrakon, we must have gatekeepers (who hopefully will
> only ever discriminate on the basis of approved criteria).
>

That is certainly not true. Particular since as with every other
international standards body working in the communications space, we have
to deal with a small number of very very well funded individuals who are
not actually individuals at all, they work for enterprises and in some
cases nation-state actors whose objectives are entirely malign.

Case in point was when IETF tried to deal with spam and of course some folk
paid by the spam kings showed up to act as wreckers.

Of course there are going to be nation state actors involved pursuing
covert agendas. It is naive to think otherwise.

Communication technology is never separate from politics. It is the very
essence.

Without gatekeepers, the field is open to those of malign purpose to bully
and disrupt.