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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

#771

Post by couchand »

mtgp1000 wrote: post #227
couchand wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you thinking about the consequences of your breathing? Because every breath grants you the oxygen that your body needs to metabolize the food you eat into useful energy for you to fight the power. So even breathing is political! Again, it's a meaningless statement. We deliberately draw the line somewhere, partly to avoid incessant infighting over pedantic "political" but not actually political things. Do you want…

Your sarcasm is not appreciated. This is a serious matter, and that fact that you can't bring yourself to empathize with people being brutalized reflects very poorly on your ethical code. It's not meaningless at all to point out that actions have consequences, and in this case they are measured in human suffering.

If folks at GitHub believe they offer a product of value (which I suspect that they do), then the necessary corollary is that by offering that product to an agency responsible for a reprehensible abrogation of human rights makes it easier, cheaper, and/or faster for that agency to degrade humanity. To stick one's fingers in one's ears and claim that it is "apolitical" to continue to do business with such an agency is embarrassingly similar to the defenses that IBM executives must have made in the 1930's.

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

#772

Post by st1ck »

prepend wrote: post #713
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…

For me, I think it’s completely inappropriate to equate ICE with 30s nazi germany state. I think its appropriate to refuse to work with nazi germany, apartheid south africa, khmer rouge, etc. But I don’t think ICE is anywhere near those regimes. If GitHub staff equate them, then I question the logic of any organization that makes those comparisons. Mainly because it they aren’t operating rationally then perhaps next…

GP isn't literally equating ICE with Nazis. But it's pretty realistic to expect (extrapolating from current trends) that if left unchecked, ICE will get more and more abusive, eventually matching Nazi level.

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

#773

Post by mtgp1000 »

couchand wrote: post #771
mtgp1000 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you thinking about the consequences of your breathing? Because every breath grants you the oxygen that your body needs to metabolize the food you eat into useful energy for you to fight the power. So even breathing is political! Again, it's a meaningless statement. We deliberately draw the line somewhere, partly to avoid incessant infighting over pedantic "political" but not actually political things. Do you want…

Your sarcasm is not appreciated. This is a serious matter, and that fact that you can't bring yourself to empathize with people being brutalized reflects very poorly on your ethical code. It's not meaningless at all to point out that actions have consequences, and in this case they are measured in human suffering. If folks at GitHub believe they offer a product of value (which I suspect that they do), then the necess…

>This is a serious matter, and that fact that you can't bring yourself to empathize with people being brutalized reflects very poorly on your ethical code

1/3 of my people were subject to genocide infamously by oven, more recently than slavery, but I'm not expecting people to remove any reference to fire or pizza from my life, that would be absurd. So is this. None of the people coding were slaves, I guarantee it, and they can move past it just like all other populations move past various atrocities that they experience. This focus on blacks is a fad, you can arbitrarily define a near infinite number of "marginalized" groups if you carve up 360MM people.

But what does make it difficult is being told all your life that you are a victim, held back by something about yourself that you cannot change; that's how you breed weakness and teach learned helplessness.

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

#774

Post by goatinaboat »

sukilot wrote: post #634
goatinaboat wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source code is a company’s Crown Jewels. Who can take the risk that their business will be shut down because an employee tweeted something 8 years ago that is now out of favour? At least Git by it’s very nature protects you but you would still have your issue tracker and CICD pipeline held to ransom.

It's GitHub. As in git. If losing GitHub makes you lose your source code, you're gitting it wrong.

That is why I wrote Git by it’s very nature protects you but you would still have your issue tracker and CICD pipeline held to ransom ???

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

#775

Post by couchand »

mtgp1000 wrote: post #773
couchand wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sarcasm is not appreciated. This is a serious matter, and that fact that you can't bring yourself to empathize with people being brutalized reflects very poorly on your ethical code. It's not meaningless at all to point out that actions have consequences, and in this case they are measured in human suffering. If folks at GitHub believe they offer a product of value (which I suspect that they do), then the necess…

>This is a serious matter, and that fact that you can't bring yourself to empathize with people being brutalized reflects very poorly on your ethical code 1/3 of my people were subject to genocide infamously by oven, more recently than slavery, but I'm not expecting people to remove any reference to fire or pizza from my life, that would be absurd. So is this. None of the people coding were slaves, I guarantee it, an…

For what it's worth I was talking about ICE tearing apart families and laughing at people dying in their custody.

Treating other humans with respect is a core value of mine. I try as much as I can to listen to their concerns and be mindful of them. I'm truly sorry that you seem to only see this long-awaited reckoning with America's deep white supremacist roots as a "fad".

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

#776

Post by psychoslave »

jobeirne wrote: post #187
the-dude wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are carefully tiptoeing around race & gender here.

Nope - in free societies you should be able to refuse service on any grounds, including those things. Otherwise you're permitting the government to forcibly compel you to allocate your time and resources to ends they define. In free societies, governments should only be able to forcibly compel people not to do things (murder, threaten, steal, etc.) - see the concept of "negative rights."

>Nope - in free societies you should be able to refuse service on any grounds, including those things.

You know, in free societies, there is society. That is very different from "wild reign of every impulse going through the head of an individual", which of course would be impossible anyway as an individual is itself permanently full of conflicting impulses.

Not to do things and do things is only a matter of wording. Forbidding to kill people is equivalent with compelling to do something: people are compelled to repress their possible will to kill other people. Accepting to follow an interdiction is doing something. Only something that doesn't exist won't act in any way or an other.

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

#777

Post by rmc »

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 [denying ICE access to Github service] helps improve immigration … great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time

You've proven your point. Paying customers would be afraid of doing things ICE is (in)famous for, lest they are “separated from their code”. i.e. Denying ICE means people will act nicer in general!

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

#778

Post by dang »

afiori wrote: post #601

> I think if the bar is "don't kill minorities" Take this as my personal possibly wrong opinion, but this kind hyperbolic phrasing is only going to hurt your cause. The same as people defending "punch a nazi" slogans. They will give your tribe influence, but also steadily decrease your chance at long term victory. Honestly I cannot understand how many people (I don't care about sides) can believe in progress via viol…

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're never interesting and they never end well. Even in the context of the current thread, this subthread stands out as off topic.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529671.

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

#779

Post by ElFitz »

mc32 wrote: post #617
jancsika wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it within their moral rights for backhoe operators demand manual ditch digging too because that will benefit their friends who lost jobs to powered equipment? This seems like an unfruitful digression. OP already agreed that the actions of ICE are immoral and that this action is within the moral rights of the workers. The main question is about efficacy. That isn't elucidated by introducing a thought experiment w…

For most Americans and, I’d guess most citizens of most countries, enforcing immigration laws isn’t a big debate and enforcement is routine and companies don’t question enforcement by their government. So the question is can employees who have diverging moralities have direct input on what a company considers moral and immoral outside the common take of the population at large?

Can they? It seems so, yes.

Should they? Well, one hardly can force someone to work for one's self nowadays.

Companies aren't democracies. Why should "the population at large"'s opinion matter in anyway? Most people don't even know Github exists, let alone what it's for.

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

#780

Post by JBSay »

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.

That's absurd. If a baker sells bread to a democrat politician it means he supports the Democratic party?
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