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

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

#191

Post by malandrew »

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…

> then people will use that as to push their own political agendas

It's always a very small number of very loud people too. Worse yet, these people have mastered the art of silencing dissent from their colleagues by using kafkatraps.

There are tons of republicans and libertarians in tech, but in the average office, you wouldn't know that given how effectively such people have been silenced for fear of being accused of thoughtcrime and heresy.

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

#192

Post by microcolonel »

sergiotapia wrote: post #145

Is the US the only country on _earth_ where the media is so hellbent on propaganda for opening the borders? I can't think of another nation that does this. Not brazil, not bolivia, certainly not argentina, not spain, hell no japan lol, russia of course not. What makes the US so special in this unique problem with the media?

They hate America for being great, it's like the British intelligentsia who were pressuring the country to disarm while Hitler was arming. The institutional narrative is often suicidal like this.

They don't actually want the full consequences, but they get a kick out of embarrassing their country.

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

#193

Post by seph-reed »

NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #155
mchanson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are going through a very strange and extreme period in US History. Corporations are a huge part of the political landscape. Of course workers who are powerful will demand things of their workplaces. All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.

Providing standard, regular service to anyone willing to pay for it is almost always the "default" non-political way of doing business. Do you want an ideological purity test to buy a bagel or a car? Refusing to provide a service when you have the capacity to provide it is a much stronger political act because it essentially implies "I hate you so much that I'm willing to harm myself (foregoing profit) in order to th…

I'm sorry, but with power comes responsibility. The poor little CEOs are going to have to recognize that their decisions have consequences, and those consequences must be thought through. They don't just get to play Capitalist without any repercussions because they call themselves non-political.

If you have power, you are responsible for what happens with it. It's not just free money.

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

#194

Post by tssva »

rattray wrote: post #103
jobeirne wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. Um, think you've got this backwards. Private entities shouldn't have to take on anyone they don't want as customers (for whatever reason - do you have to justify who you do or don't want in your livingroom?), but publicly-funded institutions shouldn't be able to deny service o…

That is true – businesses are legally allowed to refuse service to anyone (apart from protected classes like race or political affiliation, but that probably does not apply here). It's an important right, and probably many businesses would be more profitable and happy if they exercised that right more often. It's still politically dangerous, and would earn a company a lot of enemies and mistrust (as well as some alli…

In the US at least political affiliation is not usually a protected class.

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

#195

Post by jrochkind1 »

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…

So not to go all Godwin, but take an extreme example...

Do you think a company in 1930s Germany should have ethically refused to provide software that was used in concentration camps? [In fact, there was a bit of "IT" then, used for such, but it was provided by IBM. But to make the analogy closer, let's imagine a hypothetically Germany company].

("Companies" don't do anything by themselves, so I guess the question is if the decision-makers in such a company should refuse to sell software to the German government for such purposes, and if the employees should try to pressure the decision-makers to).

If we agree that in that case the ethical choice is to refuse to supply the software, and that it would in fact be unethical to sell software for such a purpose...

Then we already agree that there is some case where a company should refuse to provide services for 'political' reasons, even to a government agency of the country it's located in.

So it's no longer a question of if a company should ever be "expected"to do this -- but if they should in this case, if this particular scenario is such an example. People can disagree on that, can think that obviously this is unlike the Nazi example, that this example does not rise to that level. I'm not trying to insist that this is definitely a "Nazi-like" example.

But once we agree there is at least one such case, it's not a categorical dispute about whether business decisions should be "politisized" ever -- it's a debate about the particular ethics of the specific situation we (or github) finds themselves in, if this example is one that requires us to ethically refuse cooperation or not. Very particularly. I think that is a fine debate to have. I think the debate about whether a company should ever do this sort of thing is not so much, because really we should all be able agree there are some lines that should not be crossed there, there are some cases where, yes, a company should be expected to refuse service to it's own government, once we examine the historical examples that are obviously beyond the lines.

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

#196

Post by ckocagil »

jjice wrote: post #175
shaggyfrog wrote: post #77

There are a few comments in here already decrying “politicization”. Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to “avoid” them; even suggesting you can be politically neutral is a political stance that comes from a place of privilege, because only the privileged can avoid experiencing negative political consequences inside their bubble. Collaboration with ICE is collaboration…

Not a direct reply to your comment, but more of an adjacent one. > Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to “avoid” them; But I do choose to avoid them in my personal life. A private company can do whatever the hell they want, whether I approve or not, it's their right. I also believe it is my right to not care about politics and continue moving forward with my own life.…

You can ignore politics, but politics will not ignore you. What you're doing is burying your head in the sand, not avoiding.

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

#197

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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"…

While I may not totally agree with you on the politics, I do totally agree that I have a large discount for words made by corporations when it is the popular thing to do and when there are few negative consequences of them doing it. Yes, words of support matter, and I see nothing wrong with wanting to rename blacklist->blocklist and whitelist->allowlist, but I also can't help but roll my eyes a little when I see a LinkedIn post about this terminology change with 40 responses commending how great an action that was. It feels like the ultimate in slacktivism to me.

For example, at an individual level, there is a lot of good research about how housing segregation is one of the largest continuing drivers in systemic racism in the US. So if you have a bunch of BLM posters in your yard, but at the same time fight tooth-and-nail against any increased density in your neighborhood that might actually lower housing costs where you live, well you should just STFU, or at least realize the underpinnings of your blatant hypocrisy.

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

#198

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

mchanson wrote: post #31
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…

We are going through a very strange and extreme period in US History. Corporations are a huge part of the political landscape. Of course workers who are powerful will demand things of their workplaces. All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.

>All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.

This is only the case if you can find a substantial number of customers Github has turned away. As long as the stance was "as long as it's legal," they stayed out of politics. They were willing to take ICE on as a customer, and they would have been willing to take on organizations fighting against ICE (if for some reason they needed software). That's impartial.

Trying to say that taking on the contract is a political decision just sounds like your forcing your political stances on Github itself... Github had never implied they took politics into account when taking on a customer.

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

#199

Post by NE2z2T9qi »

couchand wrote: post #115
mtgp1000 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All corporations are political This is a meaningless statement that people use to justify railroading their personal politics into everything. By making my services available to everyone equally I am emphatically not making a political statement. This same sentiment is effectively turning an increasing proportion of consumers away from entertainment media.

Just because you aren't thinking about the implications of your decisions doesn't make the consequences any less real.

I guess when they start administering ideological purity tests at the bagel shop, I'll know who to thank. After all, providing any type of sustenance or service to a person with the wrong political beliefs helps enable their wrong-ness, doesn't it?

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

#200

Post by intarga »

jjice wrote: post #175
shaggyfrog wrote: post #77

There are a few comments in here already decrying “politicization”. Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to “avoid” them; even suggesting you can be politically neutral is a political stance that comes from a place of privilege, because only the privileged can avoid experiencing negative political consequences inside their bubble. Collaboration with ICE is collaboration…

Not a direct reply to your comment, but more of an adjacent one. > Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to “avoid” them; But I do choose to avoid them in my personal life. A private company can do whatever the hell they want, whether I approve or not, it's their right. I also believe it is my right to not care about politics and continue moving forward with my own life.…

You don't avoid them, you ignore them, and being able to ignore them is a political privilege. A child in an ICE internment camp does not have that privilege.
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