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Re: Drop Dropbox

#941

Post by EliAndrewC »

elbear wrote: post #919
EliAndrewC wrote: post #901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

grellas' argument doesn't sit right with me either, but I disagree that his argument was tactless or intended to derail anything. When grellas writes: > Principle is more important here than a particular outcome. What happens with Ms. Rice is not the issue here. I get why you'd see that as trying to derail more specific discussion, and why you'd disagree with that statement in general. However, I see it as part of a…

In what way is it harmful to society?

grellas makes two basic arguments in the post I replied to, which I will attempt to summarize:

1) Refusing employment based on beliefs has been historically bad, e.g. Christians refusing to hire or do business with Jews, and blacklists for suspected Communists. Such things are in fact SO bad that they outweigh any/all good that might be done by applying such filters in cases where we feel they're justified.

2) Startup culture specifically is about joining together diverse people to build great things. Even if we stipulate that filtering out business leaders with "bad" political beliefs had some benefit, there's disproportionate harm done by the startups that will not succeed because they handicapped themselves in this way.

I'm not sold on either of those arguments, though I think they both have merit.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#942

Post by sigzero »

EliAndrewC wrote: post #839
grellas wrote: post #538

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center in the apparent belief that ideological purity is now a litmus test for who can serve on a board of directors in the startup world. In a free society, people can unite in their business ventures even though they might be far apart in how they v…

Debates on Brendan Eich and Condoleezza Rice seem to boil down three separate questions: 1) Is there any belief or action not directly related to someone's job that should disqualify them from their position? 2) If the answer to #1 is yes, does this specific issue cross that threshold? 3) Does the answer to #1 change based on their position within a company, e.g. a regular employee vs a CEO? I've seen well-reasoned a…

What about people that can separate their personal from their business? Eich never did anything at all at Mozilla to push his point of view on gay marriage. If #1 is true, then that plays to him not doing so as well as CEO.

Rice is a different story I guess. You have to decide if you think #2 is right or not. I don't happen to think she is but I can see why people are hesitant for her to be on the board.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#943

Post by sigzero »

smtddr wrote: post #895
burntroots wrote: post #875

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't fool yourself: they're both corporations and thus money making entities. Clearly, the difference is minor at best, since this behavior is spreading beyond the community based organizations.

Don't agree. I like to see tech companies trying to become more than the old-fashion 9-to-5 grind without morals/ethic and only interested in the money. We have enough of those ruining the world already. I'm happy to see mozilla rise above bigotry and get Eich out and I hope similar happens to Rice. It's one thing to have your private opinion, I'm not calling for stormfront.org to be shut down (as extrememly disgusti…

They didn't rise above it. Eich stepped down. He should not have had to do that. He was CTO for many years. He was at Mozilla for many years. During that time he never tried to codify his beliefs into Mozilla corporate policy and I have zero reason to believe that he would have done so as CEO.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#944

Post by sigzero »

gress wrote: post #755
mrweasel wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry.... You're going to show discontent with the actions of Rice and Bush by boycotting Dropbox. It's not that I disagree with you in terms of the consequences of the actions of the Bush government, but boycotting Dropbox is like hitting a "Like" button on Facebook to "cure cancer".

I disagree - it's a lot more powerful than that. If it becomes generally known that politicians unethical actions will limit their opportunities in the corporate world after they leave office, it produces a strong incentive to behave more ethically.

Does it? She probably thinks she behaved ethically. It sure hasn't done anything for politicians in general either.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#945

Post by lohankin »

If I open a thread "Drop HN", will it be published here? The site did more than enough during the last week to promote hate and intolerance. What do you think?

Re: Drop Dropbox

#946

Post by pbiggar »

burntroots wrote: post #875
peteretep wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is a community with a corporation attached. That community (as with most communities) is built on a set of shared values, and arguably needs to be led by someone sharing those values. Dropbox is a company who exists to enrich their shareholders, and has customers, not community members. That's the fundamental difference here.

Don't fool yourself: they're both corporations and thus money making entities. Clearly, the difference is minor at best, since this behavior is spreading beyond the community based organizations.

It sounds like you're not aware of how the non-profit Mozilla Foundation own the for-profit Mozilla Corporation. This is not a minor difference.

(former Mozilla employee here)

Re: Drop Dropbox

#947

Post by sroerick »

rbanffy wrote: post #832
nilved wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope this extends to opposing the Obama administration, which has continued and extended war, torture, and the patriot act. Of course it does. That's the logical conclusion. Why wouldn't it? There isn't any informed person in 2014 who is unable to realize Obama has been worse than Bush as far as torture and war go.

> Obama has been worse than Bush as far as torture and war go Please remind me how many wars did Obama start based on fake intelligence. Obama may not be the president the world hoped he would be, but Bush is on a whole different league. If the US is much less secure today than it was before 9/11, you can thank Bush and his cronies (Rice included) for that. That situation also severely limits what your current presid…

Do you consider the drone campaigns in Yemen, Pakistan and Somilia to be wars?

Re: Drop Dropbox

#948

Post by amorphid »

netcan wrote: post #350
gnufied wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed and this begs the question where does Dropbox sits with surveillance thing because US govt. makes it clear that non-americans are fair game. So as a non-american I am asking - will Ms. Rice work to protect data that we trust Dropbox with or when Dropbox is asked to turn over our data (of non-americans) will she advise Dropbox board to play along and not give a damn about our data. Knowingly I will not support…

IMO, it's a fools game trying to figure out what exactly Rice & dropbox are getting from eachother. In the absence of knowledge, it's easy to just jump to a conclusion that it has something to do with one's pet issues. On HN that's probably NSA/privacy DMCA/copyright stuff, etc. In reality it could be to do with anything. Think of all the powerful people she has access to. It could be nonspecific. I think we can be p…

I'm also not trying to figure out why Rice is on the board. I'd like to think she's on the board because she has intimate knowledge of how Washington works, and how privacy van be invxed. I seriously doubt she's been hired to promote a serious agenda.

On a more practical note, I've stopped using Dropbox (and any other cloud service) for storing the few things that I really want to be kept private.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#949

Post by johnpowell »

On 20 March 2003 I was a student studying accounting at Portland State University. By the end of the night I tried to block the Burnside bridge and the cops beat the shit out of me on the south-side steps for protesting the war..

Re: Drop Dropbox

#950

Post by [deleted] »

pauleastlund wrote: post #646
ForrestN wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is proposing laws about who can hold given positions. There is no free speech angle here. What's happening on HN is exactly what our system wants to happen: answer speech you don't like with more speech! There's a lot at stake here, which is why people are reacting so forcefully. What kind of values does the SV community have? What kind of values do Y Combinator and HN have? People are coming here because HN a…

> No one is proposing laws about who can hold given positions. There is no free speech angle here. This is a total straw man. The comment you are responding to does not mention "free speech" once. The point is: you are part of a significant, vocal group that is enjoying using its clout to blackball public figures from the tech industry over certain political views that are only held by a minority in tech. Should any…

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