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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

#411

Post by umvi »

joshuamorton wrote: post #391
umvi wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in this case since they showed me video evidence of murder, I would call the police (assuming I don't live in a CHAZ zone). This is bogus though. Will Home Depot allow me to buy some rope if I declare to a random employee that I plan on using it to do a lynching on my local colored neighbors? Yes, they will. Does that make Home Depot an immoral organization? Nope.

> if I declare to a random employee that I plan on using it to do a lynching on my local colored neighbors? Yes, they will. Does that make Home Depot an immoral organization? Nope. I'd hope (and expect!) that home depot employees would ask you to leave if you made those statements while trying to purchase rope.

They might, but I doubt it. Especially if I made the comments in jest. "What's all that rope for?" "A lynching wink"

Home Depot (the company) will not make any effort to ban me from using their chain even if an employee did make me leave the premises. I could just go home and order it online from HomeDepot.com and have it shipped right to me.

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

#412

Post by jmeister »

drocer88 wrote: post #202
mchanson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civility has already broken down because of the US government’s actions. Schools and other parts of the government are ending their contracts with police. People all over the country and looking hard at their actions and the actions of those companies or other entities they associate with. When the government is acting this badly the social contract gets weaker and begins to fall apart. This is just a reaction to tho…

Like they it did in 1968. Which gave us Nixon and Reagan.

Both sides are so convinced of their moral superiority that they just can’t empathize with the other or anticipate their reaction. God save this country

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

#413

Post by newman8r »

ChristianBundy wrote: post #371
newman8r wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think OP meant it's lunacy because of any legal obligations private companies have to a federal organization, but rather due to the message it would send to current and future customers.

> the message it would send to current and future customers What exactly is that message? Maybe: "If you make your money by separating families, putting kids in cages, and deporting asylum-seekers to places where they're in danger, then we don't want your money." Do you see anything wrong with that message?

The message I was implying was that github would no longer be seen as a viable option for government agencies.

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

#414

Post by jmeister »

syshum wrote: post #88
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…

>> I can't see how this helps improve immigration, In many ways it does the opposite, for reforms to work you need to build coalitions from all political segments of society, vilifying political opponents (the ones that believe in some kind of immigration control and do not support fully open borders) does not build that coalition that is need to fight the unethical and illegal acts. Instead it puts people on the def…

I thought the left would learn the need for coalition-building from 2016, but unfortunately they seem to have doubled down on their old hostile ways.

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

#415

Post by claudeganon »

rattray wrote: post #356
cameronfraser wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Simple: some customers are more expensive to serve than others. Maybe they use a lot of a free service you provide that costs you money. Maybe they require too much customer support. Maybe they return most of the products they buy from you. I've looked at a few datasets where profitability by customer varied pretty widely, including many that were clearly in the red. Most companies just don't break out their costs by…

Spot on. I’ve worked for companies that have “fired” customers for being more trouble than they’re worth. Generally, it was because of unreasonable support or product demands (e.g. “we need this boutique feature added now,” filing countless tickets for outstanding issues we were working on and had communicated as much to them, etc).

If more companies were forced to pause and consider whether taking on certain customers would cause their workers to revolt, we’d all be better off.

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

#416

Post by Miner49er »

adwn wrote: post #373
Miner49er wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes way too far in limiting freedom IMO. It makes sense to not let people discriminate on things that are immutable (like skin color), but it's crazy to not let discrimination happen on things that are a choice. Just like I can decide not to let people not wearing shoes or shirts into my business, why shouldn't I be able to deny entry to a neo-Nazi? What if I'm losing black customers because I have racists regu…

> [...] but it's crazy to not let discrimination happen on things that are a choice. Religion is a choice. Does that mean that you're fine with discrimination based on one's religion?

yes

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

#417

Post by joshuamorton »

umvi wrote: post #411
joshuamorton wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I declare to a random employee that I plan on using it to do a lynching on my local colored neighbors? Yes, they will. Does that make Home Depot an immoral organization? Nope. I'd hope (and expect!) that home depot employees would ask you to leave if you made those statements while trying to purchase rope.

They might, but I doubt it. Especially if I made the comments in jest. "What's all that rope for?" "A lynching wink " Home Depot (the company) will not make any effort to ban me from using their chain even if an employee did make me leave the premises. I could just go home and order it online from HomeDepot.com and have it shipped right to me.

You're sort of moving the goalposts here: when/if you have knowledge that someone is going to do something immoral, there may be an expectation to avoid supporting it. If you can't reasonably have been assumed to have knowledge of the bad thing, then there can't be an expectation to have done anything different, because you couldn't have known.

So, much as after you kick someone out of your store they could order on the home depot website, they could also just go to Lowe's and say nothing. Neither company is really to blame in that case. On the other hand, I wouldn't say that you shouldn't escalate to law enforcement if someone is threatening to go lynch someone in your presence.

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

#418

Post by monocasa »

zentiggr wrote: post #365
monocasa wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state, county, and local govs are a part of the US government. The supremacy clause sees to that.

"Part of" certainly does not mean "controlled by". Powers are generally enumerated or reserved to the states. Plus and minus lots of interpretive scotus precedents.

The US government has a lot of dimensionalities to it. HUD, the Post Office, the parks service, and the US military are all parts of the of even the purely federal government without one "controlling" another, and have fairly different polices between them. State and local orgs fit into the same scheme just fine.

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

#419

Post by umvi »

karpierz wrote: post #398
umvi wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in this case since they showed me video evidence of murder, I would call the police (assuming I don't live in a CHAZ zone). This is bogus though. Will Home Depot allow me to buy some rope if I declare to a random employee that I plan on using it to do a lynching on my local colored neighbors? Yes, they will. Does that make Home Depot an immoral organization? Nope.

You've avoided the question. Suppose that they'd already been on trial for it, found guilty and served their time. Do you sell them the gun, knowing that they intend to use it for violence? If you showed Home Depot sufficient evidence that you intended to lynch someone with it, and it was Home Depot's policy that we sell rope even if it's used for murder, then yes. I think the issue in your example is that you haven'…

Your examples are extremely contrived.

> Suppose that they'd already been on trial for it, found guilty and served their time

Ok, so I'm supposing a convicted felon is trying to purchase a gun, which is illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

> Do you sell them the gun, knowing that they intend to use it for violence?

No, I do not sell them the gun, because it would be illegal to do so.

===

Bottom line, I believe in "innocent until proven guilty." I don't deny services or tools to someone legally able to purchase it because I think they might use it to commit a future crime. I might report them to authorities if my suspicions are backed by evidence, but it's not my job to prevent future crimes. If I work at a glass blowing shop and someone wants me to create a custom bong for them, I wouldn't deny them because they might use it to smoke illegal drugs. Who knows, they might be scientists that need it to conduct a study.

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

#420

Post by zaroth »

I see this as a parallel to deplatforming, but instead of working to silence a particular speaker by shutting off access to popular distribution channels, here we have calls to shut off a company/government's access to basic software development tools.

I think this is a particularly distinctive case, for example, by comparison to the recent news that Amazon is blocking law enforcement access to Rekognition (facial recognition). Facial recognition and AI in general is fraught with massive ethical concerns to the point where leading developers/researchers in the field are actively abandoning it (e.g. YOLO). There's no such concern about development of source control, certainly no more so than would apply to any business productivity software, or virtually any networking, infrastructure, or database projects. Interestingly, this may signal a developing rift between Open Source licensing ethos which strictly forbids limitation on use, running head-on with political agendas which would seek to limit access to software based on the user. Licensing isn't really a concern in Github's case, but will be a consideration that developers have to make when choosing a license in the future, namely... do I release my software as Open Source and give up my right to stop Bad People from using it for their own benefit?

For a company like GitHub (owned by Microsoft lest we forget) to cut off access to a branch of the Federal government would be extremely foolish, but I believe also not only counter-productive, but also ethically questionable and politically dangerous. I don't believe Github (or most any workplace) should be a political battleground for debates over border policy, and I believe that a vocal minority attempting to weaponizing neutral parties like Github leads to bad business outcomes (lost income, hostile workplaces) as well as bad political outcomes (breeding resentment and polarization).

As far as the particular issue of cutting off ICE from its source control software, I think a less political assessment would find that it's in the best interest of immigrants and refugees for ICE to have top-notch software custom built for the populations that they oversee. I'm not particularly familiar with the many tasks that ICE officers perform on a daily basis, but I know that things like trying to process hundreds of thousands of refugees applying for asylum, or trying to place ~50,000 unaccompanied minors in homes throughout the country is a truly massive logistical challenge, and we don't want a single child slipping through the cracks. Cutting off ICE access to software development tools IMO is actively harming these populations.

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