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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

#541

Post by [deleted] »

ericdykstra wrote: post #520
kelnos wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The telephone analogy is terrible. Phone calls are usually between two people, or a small number of people. At the very least, they're bounded to some relatively small number. When you post something on Twitter, unless your account is private, you've broadcasted your speech to anyone in the world who cares to see it. Not moderating any speech at all is a quick way to allow a community to turn into a cesspit of spam a…

Twitter isn’t a phone call, but it also isn’t a message board. You only see the tweets of the people you personally choose to follow; it doesn’t matter if there are 100 billion spam accounts posting ads to nobody. There are millions of Twitter accounts in Japanese, but if you don’t follow any of them, and nobody you follow retweets them, you’d never know they exist. You can also block or mute specific accounts, mute…

[deleted]

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#543

Post by scarejunba »

kemenaran wrote: post #99

Technical professions are generally held responsible for what they enable. Biology: researchers can't do anything they want on plants, animals or humans. Medicine: doctors are expected to follow strict guidelines with their patients. Even engineering: implementing a cheating system for diesel tests will (rightfully) get engineers into trouble. But software engineering seem to have a pass on how the things we build is…

This fetishization of these "professional careers" has got to stop. Particularly this fictional glamourization of the philosopher professional who is held responsible for all outcomes of his work. To this day, Dr. Jeffrey Glassberg roams free despite mistaken forensic DNA tests putting so many innocent people in jail. That is one, but I could produce hundreds. As a matter of fact, I challenge you to name a single inventor (who, for sake of this argument, we may choose to be also a 'professional') who is innocent by this metric.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#544

Post by Gunax »

ggreer wrote: post #495
earthscienceman wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which actually really boils down to what the word "white male privilege" really means. If you think politics is annoying, then it's because you're privileged enough for it to not matter. ^^^ privileged white male

I've worked at a company that heavily encouraged discussion of politics at work, and it was a nightmare. The things management sponsored (at the request of employees) included: - A women-only Slack channel. - Women-only events, such as a free screening of Wonder Woman. The men at the company were expected to work during that time. - An "ally skills workshop"[1], which attempted to indoctrinate us with an explicitly r…

That doesn't sound so much like that's discussing politics at work' so much as it's 'indoctrinating' at work.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#545

Post by snowwrestler »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #465
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…

> We can’t improve without discussion, and it’s unfortunate that these type of issues are so divisive. Except Cancel Culture is making it that these can't be discussed without complete agreement. Take for example, "Women in Tech", personally I don't see underrepresentation of women in tech as a problem that can be or should be 'solved'. For the better part of 15 years, there has been a massive movement to encourage w…

When people go and talk to women who started out in the tech pipeline but left, many say that the reasons they left are that they felt unwelcome in some way: they were harassed, under-valued, talked over, stalked, underpaid, etc.

Too many women choose to leave not because they didn't like the work, but because they didn't like all the bullshit they were implicitly asked to put up with, in order to do the work.

If very few women expressed these sentiments; if the tech workforce pipeline was a safe and fulfilling place for everyone, then at that point, I think it's fair to question whether 50/50 should be the goal. But we're not nearly at that point, and IMO it is counterproductive to talk like we are. For now, the numbers imbalance is a simple and obvious way to measure and talk about the cultural factors that exclude women (or certain ethnicities, or backgrounds) from equal participation in this industry.

One reason 50/50 makes a fine straw goal is that there is no obvious reason that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry. It's not like the NFL, where well-understood human sexual dimorphism is relevant. Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#546

Post by philwelch »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #334
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 problem with at least Facebook and Twitter (and possibly Google) in this analysis is that their attention-grabbing model requires them to analyse and interfere with the data which is coming through their systems. The only way not to do that would be for FB timelines and Twitter feeds to be strictly sequential feeds which at some point in the past they may have been but they are not now. Once you start basing your…

I don't think it's been convincingly argued that ranking or recommendation algorithms necessarily represent any sort of editorial bias. The purpose of these algorithms is to rank content based either on a prediction of what the individual user would want to see based on their existing history or on which content is more broadly engaging in general. In other words, if YouTube decides I really like to watch Ben Shapiro owning the libs with FACTS and LOGIC, that doesn't mean YouTube is making an editorial decision to promote that content, it just means YouTube has profiled me as some sort of conservative. If YouTube profiled me differently, they would be equally happy to recommend TYT videos or whatever.

There may be some editorial bias introduced if the userbase of a given social media site is themselves skewed in a particular direction. For instance, there seems to be some skew in the content that shows up on my Tumblr dashboard that seems fairly irrespective of anything I've subscribed to. But even that isn't necessarily damning for Tumblr, because they're not necessarily making an editorial decision to promote that content.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#547

Post by dlp211 »

kelnos wrote: post #415
madrox wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Refusing to serve a customer when you disagree with that customer's goal is pretty far from being a "moral arbiter for society." This sounds really good until someone refuses to bake a wedding cake for a couple because they're gay. The supreme court ruled in favor of the baker. You're advocating for a world where that's ok. Is that the world you want to live in?

I think these bakers suck, but I do agree with the Supreme Court. A private business should be allowed to refuse to serve customers for whatever reason they choose. The only exception should be legal monopolies; they shouldn't be allowed to discriminate, because there are otherwise no other options.

> I think these bakers suck, but I do agree with the Supreme Court. A private business should be allowed to refuse to serve customers for whatever reason they choose.

This was not the conclusion of the SCOTUS case.

It pushed the case back down to the State on procedural consideration.

We also have a bunch of reasons (protected classes) that a company cannot refuse to do business. Colorado specifically includes sexual orientation in their definition of protected classes.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#548

Post by zamalek »

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'll openly admit that I don't have an answer for the deeper issue here (Gitlab selling software to evil customers), in terms of specifically politics:

I don't think politics should be discussed at workplaces that do not participate in political systems in an official capacity (lobbying, PACs etc.). If your employer engages in politics, then that should be an allowed topic and/or other accommodations should be made for employees who regard their employer as morally reprehensible.

> LGBTQ+, women in tech, underrepresented minorities in tech, education

I don't consider these political in any way. Employees should be able to talk about how the company can improve its own diversity policies, irrespective of what the government decides what to do. The line of thinking here is similar to "separating church and state," and also that it's easier to change company policy: changing company policy provides quick and "easy" improvements to social progress, while the longer and more difficult fights at the political level occur.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#549

Post by nullc »

neonate wrote: post #386
repolfx wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think even Google actually encouraged people to discuss politics at work. They never did when I was there. It was more a side-effect of decentralising the power to create forums. Anyone could create discussion lists there without asking permission, this was highly useful for coordination, making it easy to spin up new projects and avoiding siloing of information into people's private mail accounts. The flip s…

What's an ITT? You seem to mean none of these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT

Took me a bit to figure that out, he's referring to "Ideological Turing Tests" https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.htm... ... use of the term is kind of a dog whistly connection to a number of internet communities where that idea is considered very persuasive.

[The few times I've seen the term used have largely been cases where the speaker is really embarrassing themselves by claiming ignorance on the part of their opponents while demonstrating an absurd amount of their own...]

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#550

Post by AgentME »

clairity wrote: post #424
graeme wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised at what is "not illegal". Every community moderates. You can make an argument that some sites have moderated too much, or been too overtly political. But every community moderates, and has to. This can be demonstrated with a simple example. Guess what isn't illegal? Spam! It should be obvious that FB and Twitter etc have to take spam down though. Then there's abusive behaviour. Stalking, harassment…

good point, but from a tactical perspective, not moderating might have made sense, to force lawmakers' hands in passing stronger laws about spam, harrassment, propaganda, etc. they'd have a regulatory shield and probably retain carrier status, rather than sticking their necks out by selectively moderating content. a moderate amount of moderation is my preference, but i see the value in freer speech zones on the inter…

>good point, but from a tactical perspective, not moderating might have made sense, to force lawmakers' hands in passing stronger laws about spam, harrassment, propaganda, etc.

Why would companies find that preferable to moderating themselves? If the government makes laws prohibiting that stuff, then that means the companies could get in trouble if they let any of that through. If companies self-moderate, then there will be less pressure for laws like that to exist, and the companies won't get hit with penalties for missing a few things here and there.

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