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

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#581

Post by adamsea » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #578

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.…

They did this for many years - when I moved to Silicon Valley in 2009 tech's attitude was "We just provide the mechanism, we let our users determine policy". My first couple years at Google (09-10), management was very insistent that "We don't take sides - we show the user the best result for their query regardless of how much we dislike it." There were examples like literal searches for Nazis where the top result wa…

If search engine results are a "public space", can you yell fire in a crowded theater?

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#582

Post by galaxyLogic » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #491

galaxyLogic wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> What happened to freedom of speech? It still exists. Gitlab does not infringe on your freedom of speech. The government does.

It is definitely true that Gitlab doesn't infringe on my freedom of speech, since I don't work there. But what are you referring to when you say "The government does"?

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#583

Post by thescriptkiddie » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

Regardless of whether they are just talking about not looking into the background of their clients, or they are banning all discussion of politics in their offices, this is incredibly shitty. Ignoring politics doesn't make it go away.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#584

Post by gbanfalvi » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:50 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…

> 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.

They built these services. They are, ate least in part, responsible for how they work and the consequences of what they built. The content they’re serving and data has a meaning to us.

You can’t pretend that a social network doesn’t have a role in bringing anti-vaxxers together and enabling them to organize.

You can’t pretend that an advertising platform doesn’t have a role in distributing misleading information by business or other interests.

> If these users are breaking laws...

Laws aren’t the ultimate arbiter of everything. There’s a reason they change and evolve over time. Personal responsibility is not a law, yet we expect everyone to have some.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#585

Post by growse » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #464

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?

Is this a rhetorical question? Yes, it is the world I want to live in. If the business operates within the context of healthy competition, then while they are free to refuse service, others are equally free to boycott it. This democratizes social norms. I don't want to force gun shops to sell to people they have a bad feeling about (say, because they have a racist tattoo), and I don't want a law that attempts to dist…

The problem with this seemingly simple philosophy is that it results in minorities being ostracised. "Democratising social norms" turns into "Outlawing anything the majority won't tolerate". Suddenly you have towns where black people can't live, because no-one will do business with them. Sure, "healthy competition" should solve this problem - there's money to be made! But people are not perfectly economically rational. We are tribal creatures of prejudice, predisposed to subconsciously reject and suspect anything or anyone as "different".

Laws are often made to protect minorities, because history shows us time and time again that an unchecked majority of people can be real dicks.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#586

Post by z3phyr » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

corndoge wrote: post #177

Nullabillity wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand why it’s encouraged (in some companies) to discuss politics at work in a way that leads to internal issues. Purely from a commercial stance, team cohesion has a positive impact on people and product. Why do anything to disturb that? The health of the democracy is far more important than your company's profit margin. And besides, enforcing silence is still a political move that strongly favours th…

I don't want to hear your political opinions at work. I want to work and make money for myself. Just because I have to be at work to make money for myself shouldn't mean I now have to listen to your views on politics. That is my view on it.

Democracy bestows upon you, certain responsibilities. Earlier, you did not have to worry about political stuff because someone else (the lord of the land, the king or an emperor by divine right) took care of the things for you. You just work the fields or smith around.

Since the concept of democracy, the rule of the people, politics is also one of the unwritten (or written) responsibility of the people. If you do not want to do it, then you are actively running from your responsibilities, which might make you a bad citizen in other people's eyes.

Fact: In ancient Athens, if you were a free citizen and you did not participate in politics, you would have been considered a non ideal / bad citizen

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#587

Post by lkrubner » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

There was a long stretch during the early days of the Internet when it seemed possible that tech was going to have a uniquely positive impact on the world. Certainly in the 1980s and 1990s, it was possible to think that tech was going to help people overcome the past, and move towards a world of greater understanding. These last 10 years have brought many disappointments. It is frustrating that these tech companies refuse to do the right thing. Over and over again, when we might hope they will take the ethical path, their response is something like "Don't talk about politics at work" which is the corporate way of saying that they've decided to duck their ethical obligations. Very frustrating.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#588

Post by danso » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #423

sytse wrote: post #143

Someone at GitLab just made a suggestion to change the wording of the policy that I merged https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...

The new text is on a slippery slope: "Derogatory staments", "threats" and "discrimination" are all very subjective and up to the interpretation of whoever-has-power or feels offended by anything, and we've seen this go wrong so many times recently. It's almost a complete reversal from the previous statement.

Most aspects of running an organization and having a culture are subjective by nature. The previous statement — “do not discuss politics in the workplace” — is no less prone to subjectivity and interpretation.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#589

Post by prepend » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #506

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.…

> "If it's illegal, we'll take it down. Give us a court order. Otherwise we don't touch it" I think that works better on paper than in practice. If I get offended enough by something, can't I go try to sue under the premise of defamation?

If you sue successfully you can get a legal order to take down the content as part of the judgement.

Libel, slander, and harassment are all crimes or civil offenses (illegal). They work pretty well.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#590

Post by andreimuntean » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #545

legostormtroopr wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ver…

And what happens when people go and talk to men who started out in the tech pipeline but left? Don’t they say similarly negative things?