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Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#351

Post by spamizbad »

neonate wrote: post #280
anm89 wrote: post #129

I personally think this is awesome. I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal mea…

Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company.…

Doesn’t make sense: a phone conversation is more akin to a gchat or messenger convo. A Facebook page or wall is more akin to publishing... and historically publishers have used considerable discretion about what gets published.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#352

Post by pas »

neonate wrote: post #280
anm89 wrote: post #129

I personally think this is awesome. I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal mea…

Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company.…

They fucked up when money entered the picture. Naturally some companies don't want their ads next to ISIL/ISIS beheading/recruitment videos for some reason... and it's allegedly bad for growing the audience too.

The bottom line is, that G/FB/Tw did not remain neutral, because that hurt the aforementioned bottom line. Now, of course - as you said/transcribed - the problem is that if fascism becomes profitable then what?

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#353

Post by weberc2 »

padraic7a wrote: post #322
neonate wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company.…

Being a publisher might get you off in the States, but in a lot of countries publishers are held to be legally culpable for material they publish. So publishing nazis, online abuse, illegal content etc is a legal issue.

> If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#354

Post by detaro »

dang wrote: post #347
midnighttoker wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've changed the title in accordance with the site guidelines You've change it away from the story title, which is normally the site guideline isn't it?

The site guideline is " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. " Since Gitlab retracted that part of their policy, that part of the title became misleading. That's why I edited it. As always, we're open to suggestions for a better, i.e. more accurate and neutral, title. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Since Gitlab retracted that part of their policy,

Must have missed something - what was retracted?

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#355

Post by anm89 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #326
neonate wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company.…

The phone company analogy doesn't really work, because phone calls are by default private, between exactly two parties, usually just two people. If you look at the tech company equivalent of that, like FB messenger, or Hangouts, or other messaging systems, they behave more similarly to the phone company. It'd be difficult to get in trouble for something you said in a private message. If you want the analogy to make s…

Disagree with this.

First off, in the world of VOIP and conference calls this isn't true anymore, and we still don't censor VOIP providers.

The point is you can choose to be a carrier or you can chose to be a service.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#356

Post by _kxbd »

justinmchase wrote: post #276

This article seems to be laced with innappropriate bias. It appears to be judging gitlab for this decision. Beyond that, its weird that this is not only an uncontroversial position to take but anything other than the only legal option. The government should be the only arbiter of morality with regards to business, where judging your business or actions to be illegal and/or issuing a court order to a company to stop s…

Hypothetically, why is it so unreasonable that you would ban someone who advocated for genocide from participating on your platform?

The government is not supposed to legislate all morality. There's plenty of awful things you can do that are perfectly legal. Companies can and should be able to choose who they do business with.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#357

Post by nullc »

I find it kind of weird that this has to be stated.

Work-- and commerce in general-- should be a place where people can put aside differences which are irrelevant to their enterprise and work together for a common benefit.

Extensive discussion of divisive topics which are unrelated to working conditions can really get in the way. Twenty+ years ago it seemed like it was the norm to me, I'm not sure why people seem to have lost this insight.

This doesn't mean that you have to be totally neutral to mass murderers or what not, but it's prudent to think carefully about where your political and moral hard stops are. If they're not significantly more extreme than your preferred views then you're probably adopting a position which is overly intolerant to a diversity of opinions and you're probably wasting a lot of time by failing to cooperate with others.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#359

Post by namirez »

neonate wrote: post #280
anm89 wrote: post #129

I personally think this is awesome. I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal mea…

Wow, that is such a clear analysis that someone should transcribe it. Here's the main part of what Naval says: "If Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it." It's like the phone company.…

> If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it.

Interestingly the underlying assumptions in most analyses like this is that everyone lives in US and obeys US laws. What if China goes after a political dissident through Facebook? Even worse, what if Facebook propaganda is used to incite genocide by the government of Myanmar? Where do you get the court order to take it down?

Unfortunately the business model of Silicon Valley is at odds with this simplistic first-amendment/court-order sort of argument.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#360

Post by p4bl0 »

anm89 wrote: post #129

I personally think this is awesome. I don't wan't some git hosting startup to be the arbiter of morality for society. The engineers, designers, and PMs shouldn't have an outsized voice in society because they have a specialized useful skillset and ended up on a successful product. If these users are breaking laws, then put them out of business via the courts and sieze the assets (the repos in this case) via legal mea…

That's one part of it. The part were employee cannot discuss politics at work is very problematic however. What about unionizing?
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