Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work • Hacker News Board

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#471

Post by dangthecoward » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

iikoolpp wrote: post #63

dang wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are great questions. But please omit the flamebait. (Edit: dvt kindly took the flamebait out—see below.) If flames take over, only the people who enjoy flaming will remain in the debate. That's a strict loss for thread quality, which is one reason for the guideline I asked everyone to remember above: " Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. " https://news.y…

Or, reworded: "Please put 300 weasel words to sneak it past the Civility Detector 3000"

lol, flagged for truth.

I've seen people here advocating for crazy far right talking points. Eugenics, race based IQ, all sorts of crap.

It's absolutely about civility.

Course the left, the actual left, gets shut down right quick. Why? Because dang is a lib and libs are cowards.

Scratch a lib, a fascist bleeds.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#472

Post by KirinDave » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

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…

But don't you think individual employees have a responsibility to recognize when they're contributing to causes they don't like, and possibly resigning?

Doesn't this rule therefore forbid employees from discussing and acting collectively over this, which in the US is a federally guaranteed right?

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#473

Post by loceng » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

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 you don't want to act as a steward of society - with your own leadership, governance, as a lead - if you don't want to be accountable to potential societal consequences, then sure, ignore the behaviour of bad actors or the irrational.

The problem has been lock-in and users unable to "take their network with them."

The idea of decentralization to me is being fully mobile and having the decision to be able to choose what network(s) you're part of, and in part that would be based on leadership, governance, rules that each platform can have in place - and ideally enforcing and evolving as necessary.

Imagine you could have Facebook but immediately you can decide who's leadership you're following for moderation and all other settings/decisions of the platform - and thus who your attention, money, goes to.

The government being in charge of moderating free speech - except for perhaps acting along with, setting rules for authority like police - is going to be very inefficient, bureaucratic, not leveraging the efficiencies of free market systems, capitalism.

Government could potentially play an important role, however private sector options are likely to exist sooner and be better. Let people choose who moderates their community, networks, allow the best options to naturally rise to the top - to act as role models for competitors to take notice and attempt to mimic the best parts.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#474

Post by positr0n » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

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.…

> "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 is not possible to do that and make as much money as google, fb, etc. The end result of unmoderated public places on the internet is always this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

Which is great! But not for making money. From that article:

> Allowing any aspect of your brand to come anywhere near something unpopular and taboo is like a giant Christmas present for people who hate you [...] It doesn’t matter if taboo material makes up 1% of your comment section; it will inevitably make up 100% of what people hear about your comment section and then of what people think is in your comment section.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#475

Post by awinder » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #370

alkonaut wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely right. Saying “don’t talk politics at work” seems to assume that politics is something that goes on on the outside. A stream of news on divisive topics. In reality, politics happens everywhere and you can’t really avoid talking about it. “Don’t talk about politics not relevant for the workplace” could be reasonable (most poltics is after all not related).

To me this (news not your comment) sounds like a very slippery slope. What happened to freedom of speech? And who is to decide what is "political" what is not? As long as speech is not offensive, I think it should be protected.

The text of the 1st amendment discusses the Congress not passing laws that abridge the freedom of speech. It’s origin is for a people’s right to protest the government without retribution from the government. It has nothing to do with private actors having rules about what happens in their private property, and for good reason — that would unduly restrict a persons freedom to enjoy their property.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#476

Post by dang » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #151

So when do you imagine they'll be implementing Navajo language support in their UI? Or is someone going to have to make the judgement call that Navajo users don't constitute a big enough political block to influence their l10n priorities? Someone has to make those calls

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21275269.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#477

Post by dang » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #240

Did I miss something? Is there a reason why you have to qualify that you're not advocating for Joe Rogan? Did he get "cancelled"?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21275269 and marked it off-topic. The comment originally said something like "Not advocating for Joe Rogan but..."

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#478

Post by ryanackley » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #168

Without trying to be inflammatory in any manner, I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work. If you disagree I’m happy to discuss this viewpoint rather than being downvoted to oblivion. Lots of issues are deemed “political”, but imagine you fall into one of the marginalized groups: — lgbt: Don’t discuss the possibility about being fired for your sexuality becau…

By "discussing" do you mean a bunch of people getting together to agree with each other on these topics? I ask that because I can't see a socially well-adjusted person openly opposing any of these ideas. This is the curse of political correctness. The topics you list carry the weight of such moral certainty in most peoples' minds that opposing someone's opinion on the topic will immediately trigger a negative reaction. This makes it "political"

For example, if someone at an office in downtown SF openly announced they didn't want to work with an lgbt person, would their coworkers look at that person and be like "Aww, poor thing, lets discuss this with him or her so I can understand his way of thinking" or would they just think "bigot! I knew something was off about him"

Btw, I think these are all important topics and I agree that we should be trying to educate people via discussion and empathy.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#479

Post by dmode » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

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.…

Naval, like most VC investors, think too highly of themselves and go on twitter tirades in areas where they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. The quote above is a real example. Their views are tinged by living in advance Western societies, and in their libertarian bubbles. In real life, a platform like Google and Facebook, that has unprecedented reach globally, is the opposite of a private phone call. ISIS rode YouTube's lax enforcement policy to create a Caliphate and slaughter millions of people. Was Naval advocating Google to wait for an order from the Syrian government before taking out beheading videos ? In India, WhatsApp is used by religious extremists to form lynching mobs, resulting in deaths of multiple people just based on rumors. We are living in a world, where we have software platforms that hold unprecedented leverage to alter people's lives. We should try to move away from some one size fits all simplistic policies that are created in Sand Hill road thought bubble

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#480

Post by luckydata » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

sonotathrowaway wrote: post #207

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #168

Without trying to be inflammatory in any manner, I will say that it takes a certain level of privilege to say one shouldn’t discuss politics at work. If you disagree I’m happy to discuss this viewpoint rather than being downvoted to oblivion. Lots of issues are deemed “political”, but imagine you fall into one of the marginalized groups: — lgbt: Don’t discuss the possibility about being fired for your sexuality becau…

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a po…

One thing I learned: if you can hope for something in life that never disappoints, then you can count on the white moderate to disappoint you every time.