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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

#481

Post by AnthonyMouse »

colanderman wrote: post #461
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not relevant that "the system" has already done what you wanted in this case and constitutionally recognized gay marriage? You're asking for something you already have.

You say that like LGBT individuals don't continue to face legal challenges at the state level [1], or the threat of reduced protections at the federal level [2]. Anyway, the answer is no, because the discussion is about the impact of denigrating political stances on individuals generally. My example is one of many illustrating the importance of a greater principle: a workplace that supports the parties that work to f…

But now you're moving the goalposts. It's no longer about making life decisions for your own family and avoiding homelessness, now it's about forcing another person to do something against their will even though similar services are available elsewhere. Your position is no longer as convincing.

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

#482

Post by brandonjm »

sjg007 wrote: post #416
mc32 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up front, I believe it's for the good of American society that more women should be in tech in America. That said, I think companies should go out there and ensure they engage people at the start, in Elementary school. Be they women, blacks and even whites (see the many H1Bs we need to shore up demand). But... I don't think this should be a PR stunt. Or should be politicized. Go out there, and do the hard work. Engag…

Recruit in elementary school? Seriously? How about pay more taxes to provide a better k-12 education so the kids have a baseline on which they can learn the skills they need to succeed in tech.

I believe that is exactly what they mean. They aren't proposing that Google etc. hire 6 year olds, they're proposing that the companies get involved in promoting what they do and how to get there. If these companies spent more of the billions they earn on enhancing education, showing off what they do and getting young kids involved in Tech then we may see a change in representation for these underrepresented groups.

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

#483

Post by Const-me »

mcphage wrote: post #328
_8j50 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only say that because it's convenient for you. You would not like it one bit at the conservative places I worked at. It really is a two way street and u-turns are allowed.

> You would not like it one bit at the conservative places I worked at. So the commenter says that he looks forward to the next generation of developers not experiencing the hate that he has experienced. You say, he’d be unhappy at conservative places, presumably because he’d still experience that hate. So then why do you wonder why he pushes for politics in the workforce? His goal—hell, it should be all of our goal—…

> why do you wonder why he pushes for politics in the workforce?

Because he doesn’t understand that these places openly hostile towards gays are likely formed by white heterosexual Christian conservatives defending their identity and pushing for politics at workplace.

> it should be all of our goal—is to stamp out places where such hate is encouraged

You can’t stamp out people. You forcibly convert that one place to your faith, people will likely change jobs or move to other states.

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

#484

Post by dang »

charmides wrote: post #250

When intelligent animals pay their lives for their presence on your plate, then your dinner choice is no longer an entirely personal decision.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864655 and marked it off-topic.

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

#485

Post by stale2002 »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #463
stale2002 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine to believe this, but don't pretend like the person you are responding to is "privileged". That is what the person was arguing against. Yes, a company can fire you for basically any reason, even of it is because you wore a blue shirt or voted for the wrong person. But don't pretend that workers are "privileged" or the people in power in this situation.

What Im against is these morons that think they're entitled to a space to excercise their bigotry despite the obvious capital costs of it. It's not a question of privilege it's a question of what is your value system. Do you believe in organizational power of free markets? If so you are by definition for these types of tolerance programs. Corporate social responsibility isn't charity; it's just good business sense. U…

The original poster was responding to someone who explicitly was bringing up the ideas of privilege.

Example quote from above "If you do not perceive that imbalance, it means you are on the better end of it, and your lack of stand is simply apathy for the status quo."

This was the topic that was brought up, and the original poster was responding to this.

Like I said, it is perfectly ok for you to not care about the ideas of power and privilege. Although I will say that many people on the left claim to care about these ideas, so it make sense to bring these ideas up when discussing things that happen at large, left-wing companies.

But the point that the OP was making is that it is very ironic to bring up these concepts. It is ironic because the suppression of dissent is very real power.

It is not a judgment on whether this is right or wrong. It is merely a statement of fact, that quite the opposite to what people claim about "privilege" and power, that if you are afraid of disagreeing with the powers that be, then you are definitely not "privileged".

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

#486

Post by DuskStar »

bobdole12345 wrote: post #427
DuskStar wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's turn that around. In case it's not clear, these aren't my beliefs: If my co-worker is opposing Trump, and talking about bringing more foreign workers to America, they're literally talking about lowering MY wages. They're donating money to a politician who wants to make my life harder, and make my work environment more competitive. I can tolerate my co-worker all day, but if they're working to make my life less…

Here's why those are different: One is an abstract affect on your paycheck that may, or may not be real. And the other is a definitive slight against my worth and my legitimacy as their co-worker.

Oh, I'd agree it's not quite as strong an argument. But it's not a slight on your worth - if anything it's saying you're worth enough to not want to compete against! Legitimacy, sure. I'd still rather people end up at least being exposed to opposing arguments, even if they aren't ones I'd make or agree with. And if it convinces someone that perhaps they're in a MAD situation instead of one where they're ensured a win, well... It's probably worth it.

Personally, I think that high-skill immigration is a very good thing for the country, and not a bad thing for the workers in the sectors they'd be joining. It's a globalized economy - competing with an engineer from Korea when they're 50 feet down the street isn't that far from competing with them while they're in Seoul.

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

#487

Post by dang »

haha99 wrote: post #112
_mhyx wrote: post #87

The comments in this thread are shocking, Inquisition level stuff. I can't believe I spend time here. Remember when HN was tech stuff? Now it's: manfredo 16 minutes ago The following views were listed on the memo: * Support of President Trump (e.g. This and Palmer Lucky's campaign contributions) * "All lives matter" * Criticism of Islam's human rights record. * Calling the company's art politically radical . Which, i…

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".

That's quite untrue. Anyone who looks through the moderation comments sctb and I post can see that we ban accounts that break HN's rules regardless of ideology. And you can read this very thread (or many others) to see plenty of comments which "move beyond the left", whatever that means, which are neither flagged nor banned.

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

#488

Post by dang »

_mhyx wrote: post #87

The comments in this thread are shocking, Inquisition level stuff. I can't believe I spend time here. Remember when HN was tech stuff? Now it's: manfredo 16 minutes ago The following views were listed on the memo: * Support of President Trump (e.g. This and Palmer Lucky's campaign contributions) * "All lives matter" * Criticism of Islam's human rights record. * Calling the company's art politically radical . Which, i…

There are two factors here. First, nostalgia bias. HN was never apolitical and a lot of the stuff that used to appear here was just as intense. I wrote about this recently so I could regurgitate the link when this perception pops up. Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

The other factor is that society has been repolarizing ideologically. That's a massive macro trend and HN, alas, is not immune from those.

We're probably in for rougher waters, which is why we're trying to set down stronger markers about what's unacceptable here. The idea of HN has always been that a place for substantive, thoughtful discussion on the internet is probably doomed, but let's try to survive as long as we can. We'll do our best, but Cnut cannot command the waves to stop.

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

#489

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dang wrote: post #469
ralusek wrote: post #235

And it has been my experience that people who have politics "happen" to them from "the moment [they] wake up to the moment [they] sleep" in large part simply perceive that to be their existence. I have read countless articles and posts at this point claiming that "America doesn't care about black bodies" and that black people in America should "fear for their lives every day," all in regards to the perceived danger o…

Since this subthread went into generic ideology, we've detached it from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864539 and marked it off-topic.

Isn't that story actually about generic ideology?

The premise is that there is a set of acceptable ideas and people who disagree are unwelcome. Obviously people are going to want to talk about specific examples. Half this thread is about Damore, which is directly on point.

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

#490

Post by philwelch »

krrrh wrote: post #408
philwelch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'll add a few of my favourites: * Women only achieved the federal vote in Switzerland in 1971, and the for local votes the last hold-out was forced to acquiesce by the Supreme Court only in 1991. * There is no country in Europe with abortion laws as permissive as those in the United States (or Canada, but that's it's own strange case). Portugal didn't legalize abortion until 2007, and it is only available on-demand…

In practice, many US states have arbitrary barriers to abortion that make it harder to actually get one in parts of the US than in parts of the EU, so I didn’t want to make too strong of a statement. But certainly, I don’t know of any European countries with a national or federal law regarding abortion that is as permissive as the federal statutory and case law of the United States.
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