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Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

reuters.com

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Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#361

Post by onyva »

alslsls wrote: post #347
toyg wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. With that outlook, we would never have had the social movements that changed Europe for the better in the XIX and XX century. In modern terms, stuff like BLM influences who your colleagues are, how you treat them, and how you react to their demands for fairness.

> BLM influences who your colleagues are Does someone need to 100% support BLM (the political movement) to make an acceptable colleague? What if someone: opposes racism and thinks police's use of force should be more regulated, but disagrees with some BLM tactics/approach to achieving change? For example, what if the destruction of property from the protests, or calls to defund the police, actually cause a backlash a…

No but the issue is a statement on the project’s page, which is a public good. Expressing support for a just and important movement for social progress like BLM is, in this respect, expected and thus asked. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s a social movement that the right is trying to vilify and turn into a political wedge issue, as well as cultural “Other”.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#362

Post by kortilla »

baddox wrote: post #304
kortilla wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mentioning a private conversation on Twitter that didn’t go your way is 100% aggressive. There is no purpose other than to drum up harassment for the person you mentioned.

The purpose is to inform interested people of the reason for the action (or lack thereof). That is the purpose of communication. Beyond that, you are only speculating about secret intentions, with absolutely no evidence.

There is no legitimate reason to inform the public of someone else’s private conversations in this scenario. It’s not the public’s business to begin with.

I’m not speculating about secret intentions. It is the only reason to call out a private conversation that didn’t go your way.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#363

Post by deanCommie »

PiggySpeed wrote: post #21
nsainsbury wrote: post #4

I think a key phrase here is "he was dismissed for publicly challenging a colleague’s silence". In other words, he publicly harassed a colleague who (for what could be any number of perfectly valid reasons) preferred not to publicly state their beliefs. That would seem to me to be an eminently reasonable reason to fire someone. If you go around publicly harassing your colleagues to publicly state their political opin…

I'm starting a new job soon and I'm trying to figure out how I'll handle these "silence is complicit" characters. My personal policy is to not discuss political/social issues at work.

I think other people gave you some ideas already.

I'd like to portray another question for you to consider: Do you think being able to have this policy is an inherently privileged position? For the record, I don't disagree with you. I have the same one.

I don't want to assume anything about you, so I'll speak about myself: I'm a het cis white male. I'm well-educated and well paid. Politics basically don't affect me unless it's taxes (which is why our industry ends up leaning so heavily libertarian." I am able to CHOOSE when to discuss political/social issues because i am able to CHOOSE when they affect me.

This is not the case for many others, including I bet your coworkers. If you are a woman, non-hetero, non-cis, or a racial minority, you don't get to choose whether politics/society affects your life - it is automatic. There is no clean separation for a lot of people between work and life and it spills over, and even if they intend to not bring it up, it sometimes will.

I say all this not to get you to change your policy, but to keep in mind why others may not be able to have the same one. What will naturally follow from that, is that people invariably look for allies. So if someone asks you to discuss a subject, one that violates your policy, you should really consider whether your policy actually makes sense in the world, or if it only helps you while actively harming those around you.

So if you're an ally, you should consider flexing your policy, and trying to help.

And if you're not, well...then your silence IS complicit, and you shouldn't be surprised if it affects your career accordingly.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#364

Post by deanCommie »

caseysoftware wrote: post #301
baron816 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “silence is complicit” stuff does really annoy me. Shaming people for not having the same political beliefs is already one thing. But shaming them for having those beliefs, but not sharing them in arenas they’re not comfortable sharing them in is quite extreme.

This is interesting to consider in combination with the xkcd "showing you the door" free speech comic. If staying silent is unacceptable and saying something "wrong" is unacceptable, then it's in your own self interest to learn the "acceptable views" (whether you agree or not) and mouth them whenever the Powers that Be demand it. That's quite twisted.

People on hackernews really love taking the current social climate to it's 1984 extremes.

When the "acceptable views" being discussed are stuff like Black people shouldn't get murdered by the police at a disproportionately higher rate accounting for all other factors than White People.

FFS, it's not like there is a public debate about whether we should guillotine Jeff Bezos.

If you're finding yourself having to pretend to agree with the 'acceptable views' of the world today, maybe your views are actually shitty and unacceptable?

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#365

Post by propogandist »

MattGaiser wrote: post #357

The actual tweet for anyone who tried to go to the source material and found it protected. http://archive.is/QBw9h He publicly criticized a co-worker and when that co-worker tried to discuss it privately, he publicly criticized him again.

Open Source should not be politicized.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#366

Post by caseysoftware »

deanCommie wrote: post #364
caseysoftware wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting to consider in combination with the xkcd "showing you the door" free speech comic. If staying silent is unacceptable and saying something "wrong" is unacceptable, then it's in your own self interest to learn the "acceptable views" (whether you agree or not) and mouth them whenever the Powers that Be demand it. That's quite twisted.

People on hackernews really love taking the current social climate to it's 1984 extremes. When the "acceptable views" being discussed are stuff like Black people shouldn't get murdered by the police at a disproportionately higher rate accounting for all other factors than White People. FFS, it's not like there is a public debate about whether we should guillotine Jeff Bezos. If you're finding yourself having to prete…

Thanks for your analysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#367

Post by sky_rw »

paragraft wrote: post #259
DenisM wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on who are your customers, and how easily are they swayed with a twitstorm.

Quite. Plenty of people who've had their small businesses targeted by various social media bandwagons for non-business reasons in the past few years.

Sadly a valid point. However, I would submit that as a business you are less susceptible to the "silence is violence" attack than an individual would be. But who knows, the times they are a-changin.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#368

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

catalogia wrote: post #344
perlpimp wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how in soviet times and to extent how this works with china, unless you are vocally "independently" supportive of party line then you are hiding opposite dissenting view and need to be educated etc.

Unfortunately I've heard that drawing critical analogies to communist regimes is a "right-wing dog-whistle", so I'm hesitant to defend myself in public by pointing out these sort of parallels..

Usually this is spouted by people who know jack about communist regimes, much less witnessed one.
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