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After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

latimes.com

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Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#21

Post by jayd16 »

dominotw wrote: post #9
Kinrany wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slippery slopes are not always a fallacy, roughly the same way appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authority is indeed an expert. Relevant: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-...

> when the authority is indeed an expert. can someone be a considered authority without being an expert. edit: I am using authority from the example in wikipedia "One example of the use of the appeal to authority in science dates to 1923,[20] when leading American zoologist Theophilus Painter declared, based on poor data and conflicting observations he had made,[21][22] that humans had 24 pairs of chromosomes. From t…

Your boss, an elder, a church and lots of others can be authorities without being experts in the topic at hand.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#22

Post by flyinglizard »

dominotw wrote: post #9
Kinrany wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slippery slopes are not always a fallacy, roughly the same way appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authority is indeed an expert. Relevant: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-...

> when the authority is indeed an expert. can someone be a considered authority without being an expert. edit: I am using authority from the example in wikipedia "One example of the use of the appeal to authority in science dates to 1923,[20] when leading American zoologist Theophilus Painter declared, based on poor data and conflicting observations he had made,[21][22] that humans had 24 pairs of chromosomes. From t…

Yes; government ministers/secretaries come to mind.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#23

Post by duxup »

phoe-krk wrote: post #12

Doing cheap PR moves like blacking out logos or posting Twitter "support" posts from CEO accounts or announcing the end of default branches named "master" is, as I said, cheap. The real issue is dealing with the elephants in the room, such as the aforementioned ICE contract of GitHub. It is about time that corporations, with GitHub here as an example, noticed that backing this or that or another minority or "trying"…

I really dislike labeling any recognition of an issue as "cheap".

It was not that long ago that any positive recognition of even gay people existing in modern media outside of farce, recognition by corporations was seen as a HUGE step forward as far as making people or concerns SEEN.

Maybe some CEO's out there are all Snidely Whiplash and putting out all their messaging for free PR, but I'm not going to assume that and I think the recognition is of value.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#25

Post by fennecfoxen »

rattray wrote: post #14

What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies). But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a pri…

> It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.

Using Microsoft as your canonical code repository is already a meaningful risk to your business. It's nice that more companies are recognizing this.

They're building nice new features with their ecosystem, too, in traditional Microsoft embrace-extend style.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#26

Post by johncena33 »

duxup wrote: post #6

Is GitHub a hug part of what ICE ... does? Personally I wouldn't want to work for a company actually detaining people, but call me terrible but I'm not sure I'd feel the same about letting them pay to host some code...

This is a genuine question. I want to immigrate to USA, but currently there is no easy way to immigrate to USA. On the contrary Canada has a fair immigration system that allowed me to stay, work and eventually be citizen.

Why don't people push for a fair immigration system in USA instead of abolishing ICE? What exactly am I missing here?

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#27

Post by pjc50 »

DudeInBasement wrote: post #10
johncena33 wrote: post #2

I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics. Because once you set a precedence then people will use that as to push their own political agendas. I personally don't like the slippery slope argument since it's very lazy and justifies inaction in many cases. But at the same time when I see news like this, I just wonder how long it will take two different subgroups trying push their own confl…

One side gets de-humanized and shown the door. I'll let you guess which side that is. This is why I think good people prefer a-political companies. It is sad, that there are people who have commitments/families, and they are taken hostage by this.

> One side gets de-humanized and shown the door. I'll let you guess which side that is.

The immigrants in ICE detention centers?

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#28

Post by [deleted] »

phoe-krk wrote: post #12

Doing cheap PR moves like blacking out logos or posting Twitter "support" posts from CEO accounts or announcing the end of default branches named "master" is, as I said, cheap. The real issue is dealing with the elephants in the room, such as the aforementioned ICE contract of GitHub. It is about time that corporations, with GitHub here as an example, noticed that backing this or that or another minority or "trying"…

[deleted]

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#29

Post by toomuchtodo »

rattray wrote: post #14

What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies). But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a pri…

(Edit: Removed “people are lazy”, poor choice of words) People feel despair, hence pushing on Github instead of the political process. I’m all for unconventional leverage, but Microsoft is a trillion dollar org and has shareholders; this isn’t some VC funded dual class share startup where the founder has a blank check to do whatever they want.

Edit: Can’t give up on the political process, that’s where the change happens. Continue to apply pressure, your opponents eventually give up or die out.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#30

Post by couchand »

salmon30salmon wrote: post #5

I would have thought that the workers at GitHub would know as much as anyone that restricting access to one Git service would have a negligible impact on ICE. The real impact would be on GitHub themselves, as they would lose any opportunity to help guide policy or technology at ICE or any other government agency. It may feel better to watch and yell from the outside, and you may have the moral high ground in doing so…

It think it's pretty naive to expect that GitHub's contract with ICE gives them some kind of inside opportunity to help guide policy within the agency.

On the other hand, employees of ICE, who are actually inside do probably have some (admittedly limited) amount of leverage. It might by that if they are frustrated at losing access to tools that they previously thought worth paying for, they would attempt to exert that leverage for change.

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