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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

#311

Post by moolcool »

overgard wrote: post #237
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…

So who decides? Do companies now need a chief political officer? Do they do some sort of political review of each new customer? What issues do they use to decide on? Do they deny Apple or Nike because of overseas labour conditions? IMO it's foolish for a company to wade into these waters at all unless activism is part of their brand. If you signal you're going to take a stand it ends up having to be around everything…

> So who decides? Do companies now need a chief political officer?

Companies make "political" decisions every single day, in literally everything they do. Just as Apple and Nike make the _decision_ to employ the questionable overseas labour practices, providing services to them is also a _decision_. The whole point of the corporate executive branch is to make decisions for the company, it's the difference between McDonalds and a bunch of random stores making hamburgers. You can't hand-wave your way out of accountability with statements like this whenever you start having to face hard decisions like this.

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

#312

Post by tsimionescu »

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…

There is almost no such thing as standard contracts in b2b and especially business-to-government segments. You'd best believe that ICE has a special contract that it negotiated with GitHub/MS, and it would not be out of the ordinary for the terms to have been influenced by political favors at some level of the negotiation.

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

#313

Post by jrochkind1 »

Wohlf wrote: post #246
jrochkind1 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think your argument is a better fit for the Chinese government which is currently running concentration camps for Uyghurs.

I think you are misunderstanding my argument. My argument is you (and github employees) should feel free to raise that about the Chinese Government vis a vis the Uyghurs too.

If we agree that there are any circumstances where a company is ethically required to refuse selling it's software to a national government, then we can look at the particulars of any specific instance and decide if we think that's such a case, but we don't need to argue about whether it's appropraite to "to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity," becuase we've all agreed that there are at least some circumstances where it is.

What is in fact inappropriate is to argue that a company should never be expected to deny service to a government, no matter what they do.

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

#314

Post by lurknn »

Latty wrote: post #164
lurknn wrote: post #99

If working with ICE is so reprehensible, why are none of these employees taking advantage of their in-demand skillset and moving on to companies that better respect their values? I'm sympathetic with those who point out that corporations typically have more leverage than individual employees, and that changing jobs is not so easy for those who are less privileged. That category, though, of "less privileged" with rega…

It seems weird to expect them to jump directly to the nuclear option of quitting. Making a demand like this is a first step, and it may turn out not to be necessary to quit if the employer caves.

Fair enough! Though, you do realize that the whole ICE thing has been baking for nearly a year now? The central question I think is: at what point does the employee realize that discussion is more for his/her sake than for the sake of actual change?

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

#315

Post by Klinky »

DudeInBasement wrote: post #36
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…

The taxpayer/citizens should influence ICE/government. Not GitHub. Government should serve/fear the people, not corps. And people wonder why there is a military industrial complex.

Corps don't just get to magically do whatever they want without repercussion. The purpose of corps is to better humanity, and they should certainly fear "the people" if they are are doing the opposite.

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

#316

Post by cameronfraser »

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…

How would businesses be more profitable if they exercised the right to refuse service more? You also realize the people who exercise this right the most do it for reasons you likely don't agree with.

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

#317

Post by mahart »

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…

>As developers we are no longer seeing our actions as “politically neutral” and are starting to understand the power we yield collectively to make positive change to our industry.

The only thing it changes in the industry is who gets a contract.

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

#318

Post by insulanus »

swebs wrote: post #151
johncena33 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>but currently there is no easy way to immigrate to USA The USA has the most immigrants than any other country in the world at almost 47 million residents. That's 4 times higher than the second place country. And the vast majority of them came perfectly legally. For every one person that immigrates to Canada, 6 immigrate to the USA. I don't really know what people are asking for here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li…

It's number 67 in the world, using immigrants per capita. Still, a pretty high rate of foreign-born population.

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

#319

Post by karpierz »

oh_sigh wrote: post #297
karpierz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose that: 1. You provide tools to a group. 2. You believe (in a informed way) that the group intends to act immorally. 3. Your tools will make the group more effective at acting immorally. Do you have any responsibility for what happens?

If you do have that responsibility, then a huge swath of open source developers in the world are guilty of abetting pedophiles, rapists, and terrorists.

Do these open source developers:

A) Have a means of identifying which of their users are pedophiles, rapists, and terrorists? B) Have a means of selectively denying people access to the tools? C) Have a means of determining which of these users would using their tools to rape, produce child porn, and enact terrorism?

If so, then yes, I would say they're guilty.

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

#320

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

akerro wrote: post #209
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…

>Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. Yes, but also companies exist literally only to make money. Companies can't exist without workers. Once a company finds itself in a position of conflict of interest between political views of workers and point of existence of the company - where contracts bring money... we're going to see interesting things. I wonder, who will break first? The company…

> Yes, but also companies exist literally only to make money.

Companies exist because society, represented by elected governments, considers them a useful concept. Their activity is assumed to be beneficial to society without any explicit requirements to that effect, because they operate in a free market where Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand generally applies.

It is strange how this is always being used to justify any and all morally reprehensible behavior by companies. If you expect people to, on occasion, go above and beyond the minimum required by law, there is no reason to hold companies to a lesser standard.

There are infinite examples where society noticed some less-than-ideal behavior in the pursuit of profits and acted on it, by, for example, legislating environmental, labor, or consumer safety standards.

At the other end of the spectrum, companies do regularly consider ethics in their decisions. This happens so often in fact, most any American CXO would be in jail if the crowd that keeps repeating that any consideration but shareholder value is prohibited by law were right. Google left China at some point for ethical reasons. Apple has invested earlier and more than competitors into environmental improvements. On labor issues, they have often done the right thing where a company like Nike, faced with very similar questions, has not.

Almost tautologically, any publicly known selfless act I could give as an example can be dismissed as still being done solely in the pursuit of money, by being PR exercises. But that just points at how easy it is to get around this fictional requirement to be amoral caricatures of capitalists: do as much good as you want, and call it PR!

Or, in Github’s case, point out how reliant you are on attracting talent. And ditch ICE in the name of recruitment, and, therefore, future profits.

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