Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 708 posts

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#431

Post by o-__-o »

masonic wrote: post #337
dragontamer wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gitmo’s a great example. Under Bush it was immoral. Under Obama? Barely heard a thing. Your history is off. Obama tried to shut it down until it was overturned by Congress. As soon as the political reality of transferring the prisoners became apparent, all Congressmen blocked the closure of Gitmo. No one wanted to take the prisoners into their own state. No one wanted to be the Senator or Representative to say "I a…

Obama tried to shut it down It originated under Obama, and his party controlled Congress at the time.

"On 20 May 2009, the United States Senate passed an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 (H.R. 2346) by a 90–6 vote to block funds needed for the transfer or release of prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp" [0]

[0] - https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/senate-overwhelmingly...

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#432

Post by Frondo »

opnitro wrote: post #416
jimbobimbo wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should that baker bake the cake or not?

I mean, we carve out special exceptions for race, gender, sexual orientation, etc... Beyond those special carve outs, laborers should have the freedom to follow their ethics.

We carve out those special exceptions for reasons of striving to create a fairer world for everyone: people in this country have historically been (and contemporarily are) discriminated against for race, gender, sexual orientation. The discrimination, both from people personally and encoded into laws and large-scale businesses processes, makes society unfair for those groups, e.g. redlining put people of color at a significant disadvantage for home-buying and building intergenerational wealth for their communities. Those are also things people are born with. Discriminating against people for how they're born, individually and systematically, runs counter to creating a fair, just, equal society.

Additionally, the freedom argument in the Jim Crow era, "let racist businesses remain racist and eventually they'll be replaced by non-racist businesses" was tried out for a hundred years, and the status quo did not change for people of color. It took the civil rights era and outright banning of discriminatory behavior by businesses for the status quo to change for the better/fairer/more equal. I don't think it would be a good idea to return to that older state of affairs, even if it means business owners must serve people of color, gay people, whatever, because, from my reading of history, that experiment failed.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#433

Post by userbinator »

supernova87a wrote: post #348

I question how much an employee should concern him/herself with how a product is used once it's created. You have to let certain control go after a point. Or if your product is open to everyone, you'll have to live with the fact that people may use it in ways you disagree with. Xerox or Canon (or whoever) probably makes copiers that ICE uses to make copies. Lenovo or Apple probably makes hardware that they use also t…

This politicisation of tech that's happened at a surprisingly rapid rate since a few years ago is scary, because it threatens to split the industry and maybe even eventually society into a number of opposing factions.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#434

Post by andrei_says_ »

slykat wrote: post #425
dunstad wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I would love that actually. ICE runs concentration camps. Not enough people treat them how they deserve.

Ok so would you ok with a restaurant not serving republicans because the party currently supports ICE's actions?

A bit of Slippery Slope combined with Strawman fallacy here.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#436

Post by zer00eyz »

shaftoe wrote: post #415
p1necone wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "narrow spectrum of progressive viewpoints" Oh fuck off, the way the US government is currently treating asylum seekers and immigrants is horrifying. Only within the bubble of American politics could someone brush complaining about it off like that.

These aren't people fleeing genocide. These are people leaving Mexico. And they're being put in hotels and buses. It's easy to pretend you're fellow Americans are monsters, but they're not.

Hotels? If you call jail (on a good day) a hotel then I have a bridge to sell you. And yes we put them on busses to get them back because it is cheeper than flying them.

> These aren't people fleeing genocide.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...

You as an American should not go there, but them fleeing here is problematic?

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#437

Post by bsagdiyev »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #391
tomschlick wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees? Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to? Why is ICE the only company that they object to? Why do some causes get their favor and not others? Wokeness and the recent trend of trying to cancel anything that doesn't align within a narrow spectrum of p…

This is a garbage opinion. Opposing concentration camps is not a "narrow progressive viewpoint"

I didn't realize ICE was rounding them up within our borders, killing the ones unable to work immediately and making the others work to their death.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#438

Post by tomschlick »

chillwaves wrote: post #409
tomschlick wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees? Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to? Why is ICE the only company that they object to? Why do some causes get their favor and not others? Wokeness and the recent trend of trying to cancel anything that doesn't align within a narrow spectrum of p…

You are defending literal slave labor. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/us/immigrant-detention-forced...

It looks like that lawsuit is alleging that prisoners only making $1-4 a day is slave labor when to my knowledge that's common in almost all prisons in the US.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/

That's not to say its a good practice or policy but nothing there looks like its any different for ICE detainees.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#439

Post by cscurmudgeon »

_7bxa wrote: post #395
slykat wrote: post #381

I find it ironic that the same people protesting the contract would also protest a bakery that refuses to sell a product for say a same sex couple (or if you were in the 60s, restaurants that refused to serve blacks). You either have a viewpoint that: 1) a business shouldn't make a moral judgement on its customers and be accessible to all 2) A business can make moral judgements on its customers and choose not to do b…

The difference is not serving black or queer people isn't a moral judgement -- it's just discrimination (there isn't anything inherently wrong with being Black the same way there isn't anything wrong with being queer or Asian or Indian, those things aren't a choice unlike being a Nazi). At best, not serving minorities is a shitty moral judgement. Not serving ICE is a more legitimate moral judgement because ICE has th…

So can a business refuse to serve democrats?

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#440

Post by root_axis »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #439
_7bxa wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is not serving black or queer people isn't a moral judgement -- it's just discrimination (there isn't anything inherently wrong with being Black the same way there isn't anything wrong with being queer or Asian or Indian, those things aren't a choice unlike being a Nazi). At best, not serving minorities is a shitty moral judgement. Not serving ICE is a more legitimate moral judgement because ICE has th…

So can a business refuse to serve democrats?

Yes, they can, and should have that right.
Post reply on HN