Anyone can read the tweet and decide for themselves. To me the intended reference is clear. The “Go maintainers” are accused of doing various things in the first paragraph and are then referred to in the second paragraph as ‘lads’; no salient subset is introduced as a potential discourse referent. In any case, my comment was obviously based on my own understanding of what was said.
> the Go maintainers are now claiming that objectors to Google's opt-out telemetry proposal on the Go compiler - yes, really - are arguing in bad faith and violating the Code of Conduct, and their comments are getting hidden.
> well done lads, you just keep doing that as hard as possible. i'm sure it'll work out great.
> The “Go maintainers” are accused of doing various things in the first paragraph and are then referred to in the second paragraph as ‘lads’; no salient subset is introduced as a potential discourse referent.
The accusation does not state that each and every Go maintainer is personally doing this. The accusation is targeted at "the Go maintainers" who are (allegedly) doing this.
The poster is vague about who exactly who they’re accusing of what. I can’t read their mind, so I can’t tell you if all the people they are thinking of are men or not. But I can tell you who they refer to in their tweet: the Go maintainers. If at any point they wish to make a more specific accusation, then the full resources of the English language are available to them.
> the Go maintainers are now claiming that objectors to Google's opt-out telemetry proposal on the Go compiler - yes, really - are arguing in bad faith and violating the Code of Conduct, and their comments are getting hidden.
> well done lads, you just keep doing that as hard as possible. i'm sure it'll work out great.