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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

#261

Post by siruncledrew »

_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…

Honestly, having to worry about politics and beliefs at work only makes work more stressful. I just want to go to work so I can do a good job then go home. Stuff can still be accomplished and people can still be treated with respect without having to dive into their personal lives to judge them first.

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

#262

Post by eli_gottlieb »

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…

>I am taking these examples because they resonate best with what are considered "political" subjects in the West, but in more gruesome contexts, such as the situation of Syria, "politics" is whether you are pro-Assad, pro-rebel, which rebel group you are part of, etc. You can see how silly (at best) or insulting (at worst) it can be to try and dismiss politics when they are actually a matter of life or death.

Speaking as, as I am, an Israeli citizen, I have to say: having people yell at you to get bombed and die because you can't opt out of politics is actually pretty unpleasant. I can't imagine Syrian exiles like it much either.

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

#263

Post by CharlesW »

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.

> "tolerance" swings both ways.

It doesn't, which is the "paradox of tolerance".[1]

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

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

#264

Post by BadassFractal »

topspin wrote: post #239
_mhyx wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But absolute freedom of speech IS A LEFT WING OPINION! Is no one here old enough to remember the fight over pornography or offensive language in art/music/movies? That was the right trying to shut down speech they disagreed with via corporate power! These people are _not_ liberals, they're something else that's new and terrifying

"But absolute freedom of speech IS A LEFT WING OPINION" That only holds if you're willing to perform enough mental gymnastics to somehow transmogrify the gulags, mass graves, firing squads and famines that the USSR, Mao Zedong, Cuba, Pol Pot, etc. employed to deal with dissenters into features of right wing governance. Or just pretend these things don't count...

One could argue they were "punching a nazi" of their time. The establishment of a dictatorship of the working class was a mission for which no human sacrifice was too great.

Obviously we're nowhere near that in modern US, BUT the hints of "violence in exchange for a dissenting opinion" and "what I don't agree with is Nazism" are unpleasant to say the least.

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

#265

Post by smhost »

woodruffw wrote: post #208
_8j50 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fact that this has to be explained at all shows just how much hacker news is overrun with fascist moral relativism. There's even a guy equating nazis with jews. What the fuck happened to you people?

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

#266

Post by _8j50 »

nostromo wrote: post #195
_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…

In general I agree with you, but neither pride nor tolerance training is political. Pride is like St. Paddy's Day or Chinese New Year: it's neither left or right. Tolerance training isn't political either. If an employer wants their employees to be comfortable at work, it's within their right to train employees to be tolerant of each other. It has nothing to do with politics. It's strange how gay people just being ga…

I will not respect or tolerate a person because they are gay. I will respect and/or tolerate them because they are human and a colleague.

Tolerance training is political because the employer wants employess of a certain belief,affiliation or private association to feel welcome. For example,tolerance training for vegetarians would also be political.

Pride also is supporting a political movement much like supporting 'alt-right'.

It's not gay people being just gay,but a company telling workers personal sexual lives of their colleagues is a basis for tolerance or intolerance and that the company favors tolerance in that particular case. By that same right,they can hold gay intolerance training.

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

#267

Post by methodover »

_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…

You might not realize this, but you come off a little bit anti-gay in your post.

> Why are companies promoting "pride"?

First of all, you don't need to put pride in safety quotes.

Second of all, gay rights are human rights. Companies promote them because it's the right thing to do, and because they want all the good things that come along with doing the right thing. I don't think it's all that complicated.

Edit: If you're gonna downvote, at least say why you're downvoting.

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

#268

Post by happytoexplain »

_mhyx wrote: post #165
haha99 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enable "showdead" in your profile and you will see that anything that moves beyond the left is promptly flagged and, sometimes, the account gets banned for "starting flames".

But absolute freedom of speech IS A LEFT WING OPINION! Is no one here old enough to remember the fight over pornography or offensive language in art/music/movies? That was the right trying to shut down speech they disagreed with via corporate power! These people are _not_ liberals, they're something else that's new and terrifying

I think you've convinced yourself of something horrific for reasons that I'm not seeing from what you're writing. "Absolute freedom of speech" is a satisfying way to describe a righteous movement like the one you mentioned, but it's not a real thing. Nobody is for "absolute" anything, though they may shout as much from a podium. I think it would not at all be a contradiction if many of the same people who fought against censorship of "offensive" material in the arts would opt not to fight for the right to incite direct violence. On the other hand, would they be against whatever it is these employees are upset about? Possibly - the details are fuzzy - but if it's general political workplace hostility, then that seems to happen just as much in conservative workplaces, where I've personally seen people express a shocking degree of public hatred for other people based on the perceived liberal nature of their opinions, to the point of destroying working relationships.

The things that scare ME are:

A. Some people seem to be practically unable to engage with dissenting opinions without claiming to have been "shouted down".

B. There seems to be less disagreement about the how to achieve what's right (i.e. we both agree on what's right, but disagree on how to get there), which can realistically be argued about in good faith, and more disagreement about what's right in the first place (e.g. person X thinks gay marriage, abortion, etc should be legally prohibited, and person Y does not), about which good-faith arguments are vanishingly rare for perhaps unavoidable reasons.

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