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Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

nytimes.com

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Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#201

Post by casiotone »

_8j50 wrote: post #185
gameswithgo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there are many valid reasons to disrespect a coworker, and being a neo-nazi is one of them. You cannot hide a violent philosophy behind a shield of "it is my beliefs". None of us shall ever accept it. If it becomes the law that I must accept neo nazis, I still will not.

No,they are your coworker. Period. They're not your friend. They are not promoting neo-nazi beliefs at work or direspecting other coworkers,what business of yours is their neo-nazi activity? Peace has a price.

Pathetic. Their neo Nazi activity is my business because it’s infecting my community, it’s beating members of my community up and leaving them dying in the street. It’s making my community unsafe for people who have done nothing wrong. This capitulation of yours to dangerous, vicious belief systems is beneath contempt. We fight intolerance because it is never benign. It does not affect you but it affects others and you are willing to turn a blind eye and pretend everything is fine, because when YOU walk home, nobody is going to stomp your head into a curb.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#202

Post by jmeyer2k »

kronin wrote: post #181
jmeyer2k wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gay/LGBTQ rights and tolerance in the workplace is way different than donating to Trump. I understand if you don't think a company should support a political party, but LGBTQ/gay tolerance meetings don't fall into that category. If you put this into the context of some other progressive social movement such as giving women equal opportunity to men, it makes more sense. A company would not be out of line giving semina…

"tolerance" swings both ways. Unless you choose to be intolerant. The majority of people who spout tolerance and acceptance at me are the least tolerant and acceptant of other beliefs.

That's an interesting point, however I disagree it's tolerance of one group that makes someone intolerant of another group. In other words, I don't think being tolerant of black people means I must be intolerant of white people.

Karl Popper wrote about this idea called the paradox of tolerance [0] asking if you should be tolerant of intolerance.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#203

Post by majos »

aluren wrote: post #170
_8j50 wrote: post #84

Worked across very liberal and very conservative places in tech. Neither is pleasant. In my opinion, the American self-image and self-worth largely characterized by subscription to a political ideology is the problem. What bothers me is not dress codes,free meals,open offices,etc... But the very idea that a company would display or promote politics in the work place. Why are companies promoting "pride",donating to tr…

I don't mean any offense, but it has been my experience that people who can afford to "put politics aside", so to speak, are people from demographics who didn't have politics "happen" to them. When you are gay or trans and a significant chunk of people find your mere existence revolting, when you are black and a significant chunk of people believe you are innately less intelligent and more prone to violence, when you…

To add to some good points, people from various minority groups may be particularly keen on getting formal institutional buy-in (e.g. mandatory diversity meetings) because they have not been well-served by informally letting stuff play out in the past.

There is a line somewhere here, but it's not unreasonable for affected parties to pursue bureaucratic solutions.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#204

Post by wwweston »

mychael wrote: post #160
wwweston wrote: post #142

A couple of thoughts: * As much as I enjoy forwarding and debating my own political ideas in settings where I think there's an opportunity, I've never considered work a primary venue for this, and the premise that political diversity should be a priority for a business is one that doesn't seem to have any kind of supporting argument. Companies exist to organize an economic activity. Other activity is incidental. Idea…

> If Mr. Amerige is a fan of Rand, perhaps he should consider ... That makes no sense. It would be against the company's interest to do that for many reasons.

That might be the case under some systems of thinking.

In this case, though, it doesn't have to make sense to you, or anyone else, anymore than dynamiting a building based on plans that you made but found unacceptably altered has to make sense to anyone but a fictional jury. It just has to fit the preferences and power-reach of anyone who has authority over a given individual in the company, assuming that individual cares about their employment status.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#205

Post by aluren »

philwelch wrote: post #117
aluren wrote: post #68

It should be noted that many views espoused by what Americans call 'liberals' or 'left-leaning' people are in fact the mainstream in the EU (such as issues about abortion, gun control, death penalty, healthcare, and so on) and commonly accepted by almost all parties except what we'd call 'far-right' ones. So I'm wondering: when those articles pop up calling the tech world/the Valley/company X a 'liberal monoculture'…

> It should be noted that many views espoused by what Americans call 'liberals' or 'left-leaning' people are in fact the mainstream in the EU (such as issues about abortion, gun control, death penalty, healthcare, and so on) and commonly accepted by almost all parties except what we'd call 'far-right' ones. That's a massive oversimplification: * Ireland only recently legalized abortion, which has been legal in the Un…

>Ireland only recently legalized abortion, which has been legal in the United States since 1972. The legal status of abortion in the United States is in some ways far more liberal than in many European countries, and in other ways less.

Abortion was supported by the majority of the Irish for a while. That it became legal recently is only mildly correlated with the social acceptability of the view itself, and prior to legalization many women would simply fly to England or wherever to do what they had to do.

>American courts have routinely protected levels of civil liberties that are beyond those recognized anywhere in the EU.

>Unlike some EU countries, the United States neither has a state-established religion, nor regulates or prohibits the public exercise of religion.

>The United States has stricter corporate regulations and higher corporate taxes than many EU countries. The right-wing Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" ranks the United States 18th, below Switzerland, Ireland, Estonia, the UK, Iceland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the Netherlands. According to actual American conservatives, countries following the famed "Nordic Model" are in fact, even more capitalist than the United States!

I'm not sure how that relates to my point. I never said Europe is consistently more left-leaning than America on every political issue, which would be a very silly point indeed that'd require twisting the definition of 'left-leaning' to the point of meaninglessness. I'm saying that many views considered left-leaning or liberal in America are the norm in Europe, and I'm raising the question of whether that makes Europe and its ~500M inhabitants a monoculture equivalent to that of tech companies.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#206

Post by ianai »

whatshisface wrote: post #110
Analemma_ wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name me a couple of these views which haven't changed, and qualified you as left-leaning as a teenager but alt-right today.

A person who believed in socialized healthcare but did not support gay marriage could well have been considered left-leaning in the US a decade ago.

That’s more of a cultural change than political on gay rights.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#207

Post by evil-olive »

ericdykstra wrote: post #128
megaremote wrote: post #108

> Why are companies promoting "pride"...telling workers to attend 'lgbt tolerance' meetings,etc... Wth!!!! You ask this question, then answer it in your very next line. People don't respect everyone. They are intolerant.

If an employee is harassing or demeaning their coworker based on their beliefs, that's enough grounds to fire an employee. Is there any evidence that promoting "pride" and "lgbt tolerance" makes employees treat each other well in cases where they otherwise wouldn't have?

It's not black & white. There isn't just "acceptable behavior" and then "behavior so bad you should be fired on the spot for a first offense". There is a large grey area in between of behavior that might be inappropriate, depending on context, or that might be problematic but easy to correct by saying "here's why that's bad, don't do it again".

To think of it another way - you'll get fired for sexual harassment, but companies still give mandatory training about what exactly sexual harassment is and how to avoid it. Why should this be any different?

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#208

Post by woodruffw »

_8j50 wrote: post #185
gameswithgo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there are many valid reasons to disrespect a coworker, and being a neo-nazi is one of them. You cannot hide a violent philosophy behind a shield of "it is my beliefs". None of us shall ever accept it. If it becomes the law that I must accept neo nazis, I still will not.

No,they are your coworker. Period. They're not your friend. They are not promoting neo-nazi beliefs at work or direspecting other coworkers,what business of yours is their neo-nazi activity? Peace has a price.

It's my business because, should they have it their way, I wouldn't be alive.

Asking people to be tolerant of ideologies that pose an existential threat is contradictory at best.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#209

Post by ericdykstra »

gameswithgo wrote: post #175
ericdykstra wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an employee is harassing or demeaning their coworker based on their beliefs, that's enough grounds to fire an employee. Is there any evidence that promoting "pride" and "lgbt tolerance" makes employees treat each other well in cases where they otherwise wouldn't have?

>If an employee is harassing or demeaning their coworker based on their beliefs, What does beliefs mean to you? Beliefs cast a very wide net. Is there no point at which a coworker should be cast out? Perhaps it is their religious belief that women should not be allowed to work. May such a person remain? Are we not to push back?

If a religious man believes women should not be allowed to work, why would he join a company that hires women in the first place?

If he does, anyway, does it matter what he believes if he treats his coworkers (male and female) with respect anyway? If the belief doesn't manifest itself in negative actions, I don't really care what's going on in his head.

Re: Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture

#210

Post by fizwhiz »

adrr wrote: post #193
landryraccoon wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious what "All lives matter" stands for except for being opposed to the idea that "Black lives matter". There's a key difference here - "Black lives matter" attempts to point out that there is discrimination in law enforcement that seems to single out minorities. Correcting this discrimination would be good. What policy change does "All lives matter" advocate? Do those policy changes indeed benefit "…

All lives matter argument is one of the dumbest things i've ever heard. It's like responding to a "Save the whales" movement, with "all endangered species matter".

don't all endangered species matter though?
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