Flash gets into loops all the time in the last few days. Looks like they are experimenting with other (less reliable, possibly quantized) providers?
Sometimes it's barely usable anymore.
Shopify doesn't give a fuck if Nazis are selling through their platform. Even after reporting them.
Post from one and a half months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/shopify/comments/1umibpg/shopify_hosting_nazi_brands/
This post was automatically removed from r/shopify. I wonder why...
I've been using Rails for more than 10+ years, and I've noticed DHH's blog getting... weird over the past few years to say it mildly. Like, full-on right-wing culture warrior weird. I was curious if he'd always been like this or if something changed, so I went down a rabbit hole.
Turns out, something definitely changed. And it's pretty clearly tied to the 2021 Basecamp controversy.
Before 2021: Actually left-leaning
This is the part that surprised me. In a February 2020 interview with The Politic (Yale's political journal) (https://thepolitic.org/an-interview-with-dhh-co-founder-of-basecamp-creator-of-ruby-on-rails-and-winner-of-the-fia-world-endurance-championship/), DHH was calling for a wealth tax, saying the US is an oligarchy, calling the current system "late-stage capitalist bullshit." He was defending AOC and Warren on welfare funding in 2019 tweets (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1096552325508808704.html). He was attacking Facebook's surveillance capitalism and Apple's App Store monopoly.
Like, this guy was making arguments to the left of the Democratic mainstream on economic policy. Not exactly conservative material.
April 2021: The Basecamp implosion
Here's where it gets messy. Employees had formed a DEI committee with 20 out of 58 people volunteering (over a third). They started examining company practices and found this old list of "funny" customer names that included ethnic names. Some employees posted an apology and referenced the ADL's "Pyramid of Hate" to explain how mocking names can lay groundwork for dehumanization.
DHH's response: He did a "forensic analysis" of the list, acknowledged management's failure to act on it for years, then took exception to the Pyramid of Hate graphic and called it "catastrophizing." He then dug through old chat logs and publicly posted a message from one of the complaining employees who had previously participated in the list, basically saying "you're the person you're complaining about." The Verge covered this in detail (https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406673/basecamp-political-speech-policy-controversy).
Then Jason Fried announced a ban on all societal/political discussions at work, disbanded the DEI committee, cut benefits. 20 of 57 employees left (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/technology/basecamp-politics-ban-resignations.html). Head of design, head of marketing, head of customer support, reportedly the entire iOS team. Gone.
The all-hands meeting was apparently brutal (https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22418208/basecamp-all-hands-meeting-employee-resignations-buyouts-implosion). Ryan Singer (head of strategy, 18-year veteran) objected to labeling the culture "white supremacist," got suspended, then resigned. Multiple employees were crying at their screens. Casey Newton at Platformer has the full story (https://www.platformer.news/-how-basecamp-blew-up/).
The aftermath: The shift begins (2021-2022)
So here's the thing. In February 2022, DHH reversed his position on Bitcoin/crypto after the Canadian trucker protest account freezes. Started calling it "government overreach" and framing crypto as protection against "tyranny."
Then the blog posts started appearing:
The acceleration (2023-2025)
By 2023-2024, it got more extreme. David Celis documented this shift (https://davidcel.is/articles/rails-needs-new-governance), noting posts supporting far-right figures like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, anti-trans rhetoric (including support for Graham Linehan), and nationalism.
By 2025, it went full-on. In a post called "As I remember London" from September 2025 (https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64), DHH literally uses the phrase "demographic replacement" (a debunked conspiracy theory) and says he wouldn't live in London anymore because it's "no longer full of native Brits." He also praised a Tommy Robinson march as "heartwarming" where speakers called for ethnic cleansing via "remigration" and banning all non-Christian religions. Jake Lazaroff broke down the post in detail (https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-thought/).
And in that Senra podcast clip from yesterday (https://x.com/davidsenra/status/2081956616963006913), he's literally repeating Frankfurt School conspiracy theories that Marc Andreessen gave him. Talking about "white walkers beyond the wall" and "civilizational battle."
The GNOME project even wrote a post calling it a "midlife crisis turned fash speedrun" (https://blogs.gnome.org/alatiera/2025/11/06/dhh-and-omarchy-midlife-crisis/).
The pattern
The 2021 controversy was more than a policy disagreement. When your own employees (people you've told are the best, most trusted colleagues in the world) challenge you on racial sensitivity, and you respond by shutting down the entire category of discussion and offering buyouts... you can tell that's a wound.
Then you get publicly called racist on Twitter by 40,000 strangers. That creates a grievance identity. And when you have a grievance identity, you seek out allies who validate your experience. Those allies are disproportionately right-wing because the right has built an entire media ecosystem around "anti-woke" grievance.
Andreessen didn't just offer practical help during the crisis. He gave DHH a "syllabus" on Frankfurt School conspiracy theories. And DHH absorbed it as revelation.
The economic views quietly disappeared
Notice that the wealth tax, the "late-stage capitalist bullshit," the oligarchy critiques... all gone. The 2026 DHH doesn't talk about economic inequality. He talks about immigration, wokeness, and civilizational decline. The class analysis was replaced by culture war.
His "skepticism of power" inverted. Pre-2021, he was skeptical of corporate and oligarchic power. Post-2021, he's skeptical of "woke" institutional power (DEI, academia, media). He's defending traditional power structures (borders, police, cultural homogeneity) and attacking challenges from marginalized groups.
So what happened?
Was DHH actually brainwashed by Andreessen and the right-wing media ecosystem? Or is this just a midlife crisis playing out in public?
Maybe it's both. You get burned by your own employees, you're vulnerable, and suddenly a billionaire friend hands you a framework that explains everything. The Frankfurt School conspiracy theories, the "white walkers" rhetoric... it all makes sense if you want it to.
Or maybe he's just 46, bored with Rails, and discovered that posting about civilizational decline gets more engagement than posting about database migrations.
Either way, it's wild to watch someone go from advocating for wealth taxes to supporting Tommy Robinson over the course of a few years.
What do you all think is going to happen with Rails? Are people sticking with it, moving to something else, or just trying to separate the framework from the person?
Just found this brand: https://scooterscum.com/
How can Shopify host them?? They are using obvious nazi symbols.
This stuff would be illegal to wear in most European countries!
> Laut der ersten Foresight-Hochrechnung im Auftrag des ORF erreicht die KPÖ mit Spitzenkandidatin Elke Kahr 35,8 Prozent der Stimmen, ein Plus von 6,9 Prozent im Vergleich zur letzten Wahl 2021.
So kann's auch gehen wenn man Politik für den kleinen Bürger macht. Brauchen sowas mehr in ganz Österreich!