Here’s how I see it:
- Some person posts criticism of Kagi
- CEO of Kagi emails the person saying, I think some of what you said is factually inaccurate and I’d like a chance to talk to you about why
- Person angrily refuses to do that
- Mod of !techtakes publicly posts screenshots in his sub instead, calls the CEO an unhinged narcissist and his email a “harangue”
- People come in the thread and say, actually what the CEO said sounds “totally hinged” and the rude response seems un called for
- Mod starts banning people and deleting comments of people who are arguing with him, leaving up his own side of the conversation.
Why am I forced to listen to the owner of a company ramble off selling points of his product if I don’t want to? If I say fuck Nintendo they’re a shit company do I have to listen to Gary Bowser list off every Nintendo game that sold over a million copies?
The person who posted the thread did so on mastodon, to their 1200 followers, who maybe half of them even saw it and then another half of that even engaged with it. That is not going to materially impact anyone.
It wasn’t selling points though, it was specific rebuttals to specific things that someone had said about his company in public.
It should cut both ways. If you want to publicly say “hey this is what I think of company X,” people with company X should be able to say “hey what you said is bullshit, and now that you started the conversation I’m going to explain why, whether or not you feel like the conversation needs to continue after your side and only your side has been expressed.” I mean, the CEO was way more polite about it than that for understandable reasons, but I think some level of that frustration is probably behind him wanting to be able to explain himself even after she said she wasn’t interested.
Such is my opinion at least. As long as nobody’s getting sued or silenced or harassed at length beyond a few emails, he who opens the slinging of ideas that aren’t friendly, should be prepared for responses to their ideas to come back at them that might not be friendly. This whole “free speech for me but then shut the fuck up and don’t tell me anything back about what I said” seems unfair. At least, in my opinion.