Yes I think you are right. Even a super ethical company can be taken over. There may be exceptions but it is more luck. I work for a SP500 that absolutely won't dont this and locks down prod access so a rogue staff can't do it. But if Larry or Zuck or Bezos buys them out, who knows.
I'd rather the symbol be there and occasionally see this discussion happen then the symbol be omitted and occasionally have the discussion where we try and figure out if the person was serious. When talking in person there are all sorts of visual and vocal cues and the speaker has cues in response to confirm the sarcasm was received. There are two parties that can correct that misunderstanding and have well established tools to do so.
/s is basically the internet-enabled equivalent of a sarcasm tone or a wink - it is much more difficult to detect genuine subtle sarcasm on the internet because of the absence of common communication tools. /s is also a valuable accessibility tool for those that might have difficulty with social cues and subtlety so, for all my autistic friends, I'm happy to defend it.
I think the sarcasm indicator is useful especially for some neurodivergent folks who may not pick up on social cues well. And the sacram indicator does not in any way detract from the joke.
Yeah it does. If you have to explain the joke, it makes it not funny. In the real world, people don't have explicit sarcasm markers, you have up deduce it. As a neurodivergent person, I reflexively downvote on /s because coddling people isn't going to help them grow or deal with the real world.
In the real world we have things like intonation, facial expressions, body language, and other indicators to denote sarcasm.
On the internet it is very possible and often plausible that someone can very much believe what may appear to a reasonable person to be sarcasm. Having a crutch online does not equate to an equivalent crutch offline.
Anecdotally, neurodivergent folks I know prefer, and some even require, a sarcasm indicator online.
There's even more to it — real conversations are interactive, so if a statement causes confusion, it can be cleared up immediately. Forum posts, however, must stand alone for the most part.
You probably also know the person you're talking to irl, so it's way easier to make the judgement call on whether they're serious or not, compared to a random person online.
I'm sure had you omitted it - instead of that reply there would have been a series of comments talking about how Microsoft actually has a track record of doing things like this. It's impossible to please everyone on the internet but I very much appreciate when people lean towards making their communication clearer.
