Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#241

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

EtrianWizard wrote: post #197

holler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. Personal politics should be just that, personal.

It's always been this way. Politics is intensely personal. It's not so much about conflicting ideas, but rather loudly delineating social groups and whose camp you're in. Pushing beliefs to simplistic extremes and demanding declarations of beliefs is an efficient way to make clear where yourself and others stand socially. Truth has little to do with it. Politics seems "stupid" because we're putting the cart before th…

I think what's different now is how many strangers you're exposed to. A century ago, analogues to context-less twitter rage pile-ons were likely smaller and rarer.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#242

Post by baddox » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

cellularmitosis wrote: post #235

baddox wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that not okay? Do you think that is sensitive private information? Or do you believe that no content of any private conversation should ever be publicized?

They could be privately supportive of Black Lives Matter, donate to bail funds, spread the word under anonymized accounts, etc. But they might also work/live in a deeply conservative office/neighborhood. Forcing their hand at going public with their support could get them fired, or get their ass kicked the next time they go to the bar or get pulled over by a cop. And "find another job, then" isn't always practical, e…

> They could be privately supportive of Black Lives Matter...

Of course they could. This person didn't claim anything to the contrary. The complaint was not about the webmaster's personal beliefs, but rather about the webmaster's decision in their capacity as webmaster.

> Forcing their hand at going public with their support could get them fired

The request was to change the website of an open source project, not for the webmaster to personally declare anything about their beliefs. Of course it is possible (though unlikely) that there is some threat to the webmaster's safety or livelihood that would prevent them from taking certain actions regarding the project's website, but in that case, the responsibility over the project's website should probably be more evenly distributed.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#243

Post by kortilla » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #112

dekhn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I'm personally against the electoral college (have been since I was a kid). However, it's still not mob rule, by the virtue of the fact that mob rule is necessarily non-legal, while the electoral college is the essence of "legal". And the people who set up electoral college (the authors of the constitution) explicitly added a mechanism to change the system via amendments (it's just very hard to get one passed). C…

> However, it's still not mob rule, by the virtue of the fact that mob rule is necessarily non-legal, while the electoral college is the essence of "legal". Okay. I'm not attached to the particular semantics of "mob rule," but if you define it deliberately such that it doesn't apply in this scenario, then of course it doesn't apply. I just meant, very simply, that it's rule by someone other than who the people expres…

You’re not really grokking “mob rule”. “Mob rule” can easily even be putting someone in charge that a majority of people want. The point is that it’s done outside of the legal system.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#244

Post by pnw_hazor » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #186

waterhouse wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also told the following rationale: If elections are decided entirely by popular vote, then candidates are incentivized to campaign in population centers, and have no incentive to ever visit sparsely populated states. (Like, bringing your margin from 70% to 85% of 4 million people is worth more than going from 0% to 100% of 400k people.)

That only makes sense if you believe that land area is the appropriate unit to attempt to equalize political influence over, rather than people. If you think the people are who should have political influence in a democracy, rather than units of land, then it should be desirable that politicians campaign to as many people as they reasonably can.

Land area is not the appropriate unit. States are the appropriate unit.

Absent the electoral college there would not be a United States of America.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#245

Post by geodel » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

Well world has not really changed in thousand years. is it? If one can't sign letter to believe in one true God/Kind, they deserve to die.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#246

Post by symlinkk » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

cmdli wrote: post #114

derision wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read "young hoodlums" and think of certain race maybe it's your own bias shining through. Where I grew up on Ohio the kids I considered "young hoodlums" didn't happen to be any specific race

From context, it's pretty clear who he is talking about.

Oh I see. Well if it’s “pretty clear” then I guess that’s it then, discussion over.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#247

Post by sebastialonso » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #180

devmunchies wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re purposefully using language to make it seem like not a big deal. It was clearly more aggressive than simply asking. And, again, context for where you are “saying they didn’t do it” matters. If it’s an internal company board vs Twitter or github matters.

It is not clearly more aggressive. What part of his language do you think are in any way aggressive?

> Intentionally not making a statement is already political. Consider that next time you think of Recoil.

This part right here, pal. Asking is proposing something, and politely accepting whatever answer is given back.

What he said was closer to coercing and appealing to community shaming, which is evidently not professional.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#248

Post by 908087 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #72

_b3dj wrote: post #30

> “Intentionally not making a statement is already political,” Dale wrote in the tweet No it’s not. And this reminds me of the Dictatorship of the small minority [0] from NN Taleb. There are small intolerant minorities who are extremely vocal on certain matters to the point their opinions resemble a dictatorship [0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Almost every day on HN I read that multiple flavors of "FB/Palantir/Google/MS engineers who do nothing while Zuckerberg/USG/China invades more and more of our privacy are complicit in the cog that is Zuckerberg's ambition", but when it comes to race relations, suddenly engineers should be allowed to work in silence. I understand there's nuance, but I only hope the hivemind considers this nuance the next time they pil…

Building facial recognition databases for the NSA is not "staying silent", it's "actively participating".

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#249

Post by thrwaway69 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #144

dvt wrote: post #45

I'm so over this political posturing. I can't wait for ~2 weeks when everyone's going to go back to their lives like nothing happened (remember #OccupyWallStreet?). People that actually change the world don't need to advertise it on Twitter. I have friends that volunteer in Watts and Compton every other weekend (and have done so for years ) that don't need to share it on social media. I can't help but think that this…

The thing is these really are issues that need to be talked about and addressed, and they really have fallen on deaf ears in the past because of lack of popular force. The people in charge just keep posturing, brushing it off, saying "yeah yeah we'll get to it", and waiting for the news cycle to move on. Nothing ever changes. But the problem is that society at large, especially on the internet, apparently just sucks…

Sometimes I wonder if answer to all of these problems is to divide lands based on ideology, politics and other factors. People are then given a choice to migrate between them every 5 years or so.

Nations shouldn't be so big and migrating shouldn't be that hard. Just divide and divide until the group of people stop complaining.

Racists can live with racists. Progressives can live with progressives.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#250

Post by dk8996 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

In general this is such a mess. Every four years these topics are framed in a such a divisive manner that the end result is that it rips friends, families and communities apart. I really loathe these times and it's becoming harder to avoid it.