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Re: Drop Dropbox

#821

Post by bowlofpetunias »

grellas wrote: post #538

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center in the apparent belief that ideological purity is now a litmus test for who can serve on a board of directors in the startup world. In a free society, people can unite in their business ventures even though they might be far apart in how they v…

Deceit, torture, violation of civil rights, homophobia.

These things are not about politics or religion. This is about willfully and intentionally hurting others.

Please stop representing this as being merely about the personal political or religious views of the people involved. This is about people who either have, or had the intention of inflicting very real pain on others.

Others that include our friends, our families, our neighbors. People have every right and reason to protest putting these people in these position, and it has nothing to do with political intolerance.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#822

Post by TylerE »

secstate wrote: post #205
TylerE wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rapidly turning very ugly, and I can't stand it. Is being "anti-gay" or "pro-war" or even just "republican" the new Communism? The new witchcraft?

No. For the same reason that being a white supremacist hasn't really ever been "okay." Eich was not anti-gay, he was anti-civil rights. Legal marraige and religious marriage are unfortunately poorly named, but two very different things. If Eich doesn't understand that, he's got bigger issues than being dumped by Mozilla. I have plenty of good friends who do not agree with the idea of homosexual religious marriage and…

Would you boycott any company with a Muslim, or for that matter, fundamentalist Christian, executive because of their doctrinal sexism?

Re: Drop Dropbox

#823

Post by orblivion »

pohl wrote: post #560
orblivion wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny I feel the opposite way. I (barely) decided the opposition to Eich was okay because of the nature of Mozilla as a company, and the progressive culture around it. (I'm not a progressive myself, which is why I was iffy about it). But if it's any other organization, I decided, it actually starts to become bullying.

That's the perfect meme to consolidate power at the top. First we get the Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC rulings, making money "free expression" for the rich. And now we associate the Little Guy's "free expression" with their meager consumer dollars with "bullying", "witch hunts", etc... Bravo, I say. Machiavellian!

If there's Machiavellian here it's not me. I'm just a dude trying to keep things in perspective in a sea of passion and fanaticism. I'm not a conservative either, in case that's what you inferred; I'm a libertarian. I don't care much for the Bush administration either. Perhaps I just didn't pay enough attention to what Condi had to do with the war to have the same negative passion about her.

I'm quite fond of boycotts. I'm just afraid that the passions will get to the point where boycotts are used to imply that a difference in opinion is unacceptable. I don't have a huge problem with boycotting Condi per se, that's just fine. I'm just afraid of the swell of power of the mob mentality over people's thinking.

If this is really about the big guy vs the little guy (or gal, here), are you ready to protest if Eric Holder joins the board of Dropbox? If you are, then I can get behind it.

EDIT: I would cite Jon Stewart, I suppose, at the big speech at the end of his rally a few years back. His point is that we all get things done outside of Washington. Sure, we may disagree a lot and our disagreements may be a fundamental threat to each other. However if we let that decide who we engage in commerce with, we lose out on a lot of the benefits of commerce, and it doesn't really solve our differences anyway. I rather prefer boycotts over actions. Chick Fil A was a boycott (iirc) over a policy of the company. Even if it was in response to something that the president said, he's an acting president as he's saying it, a boycott there makes some sense.

But it's not cut and dry. If Hitler joined the board of Dropbox I could probably get behind a boycott.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#825

Post by brokenparser »

mattzito wrote: post #299
mcv wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is she a board member? Who hired her? You make it sound like she was forced on Dropbox by outside forces, and they completely disagree with her. In reality, Dropbox hired her, so they do not completely disagree with her. It's not just about Rice, it's about what this says about Dropbox.

I did not mean to give the opinion that I thought Dropbox was forced to hire Condi. Nor did I intend to suggest that Dropbox agrees or disagrees with her. Here's what I think . I think Dropbox said, "As we try to beef up our credibility with large enterprises and government agencies vs. Box.net and Google and other companies, it would be helpful if we had a board member with some street cred that we could use as a se…

Thank you. Mrs Rice isn't what would make Dropbox unsafe, it's their lack of encryption and other insecure practises. A quick DuckDuckGo search yielded these articles:

http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-and-threats/dropb... http://www.wired.com/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/ http://thehackernews.com/2013/07/hacking-dropbox-account-vul...

(This is just a semi-random selection.)

Re: Drop Dropbox

#826

Post by cmiles74 »

belovedeagle wrote: post #768
Karunamon wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich's documented actions, not his private views, are the primary thing that got him drummed out of Mozilla. While on a whole different level than being a participant in one of the greatest losses of life in human history, let's call it what it is. Eich's defenders have been quick to spin this as an ideological thing, when at its core, it really isn't.

This is exactly what top parent comment was talking about. If someone from ideological group A dislikes something from group B and calls that out, then it's "discrimination against private views", and wrong and evil and "an ideological thing". But if someone from group B calls out group A, then it's "documented actions" which are the cause and suddenly it's absolutely okay to lock group A out of polite society on tho…

During the Eich and Mozilla debacle, one comment that made sense to me was along the lines of "Eich may enjoy his free speech and donate his personal resource to whomever he likes. I dislike his speech and am free to immediately stop using Firefox, Thunderbird, etc."

In this case, I'm saying that "Rice may enjoy expressing her professional opinions to newspapers, etc. as part of her job function. I dislike her professional opinions and fear that she may actually believe them, thus degrading the privacy that I enjoy as provided by Dropbox. For that reason, I will stop using Dropbox, Mailbox, etc."

The only additional piece that I was trying to get across was that, with Eich, we had little insight into this thought process, motivations, etc. The only bit of information we had was the knowledge that he had donated the money and the amount (as far as I know). With Rice, on the other hand, we're talking about a position she publicly held as part of her job function; we have interviews, press releases, etc. To me, it seems a bit more reasonable to think that she may bring some of these opinions to bear in her role as a Dropbox board member.

Re: Drop Dropbox

#827

Post by bambax »

grellas wrote: post #538

Think about what it means to the HN culture to have a subject that normally would have been flagged out of existence as overtly political suddenly be featured front and center in the apparent belief that ideological purity is now a litmus test for who can serve on a board of directors in the startup world. In a free society, people can unite in their business ventures even though they might be far apart in how they v…

Does this line of reasoning always work though? Would you mind using Dropbox if they hired a convicted child rapist, or a white supremacist, as a member of the board and a likely spokesperson for the company?

Or is it just that you personally consider that the past actions of Ms Rice weren't a big deal, and that you don't understand why anyone would feel differently?

But holding people responsible for their questionable political views happens all the time; in 2010 Rick Sánchez was fired for calling Jon Stewart "a bigot". Once. Outside of his regular show. Were you upset then? (Maybe you were, I don't know; but it seems you should have been.)

Re: Drop Dropbox

#828

Post by [deleted] »

HNJohnC wrote: post #551
sreya wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't believe every country in the world doesn't try to bug any country they have an investment in, rather it be ally or enemy, you're naive. I can't believe it even came as surprise that US bugged its allies, you don't believe our allies do the same thing, or at least try to, to us?

"Everyone else does it so it's ok". Well we know where your moral compass points at least.

[deleted]

Re: Drop Dropbox

#829

Post by mindcrime »

vdaniuk wrote: post #814
dragontamer wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll publicly state my support of your viewpoint. All this political talk has poisoned Hacker News for me. It has been a constant onslaught. Instead of a focus on building cool stuff, Hacker News is becoming a location for internet activism.

Oh no, now you can build cool stuff and be an internet activist on HN. Waaait a minute.. Now I get it. These sly HN activists are forcing you to go into political threads, read them and participate in the discussion and you don't have time left for reading about cool stuff. Damn these poisonous activists!

To be fair, you have a point. But, IMO, there actually is something almost "poisonous" in a sort of insidious way, about having an influx of political articles. It seems to contribute to a slow - but perceptible - overall drift in the tone/spirit of the site and the community.

It's almost like, people come here, see the front-page at a point in time, and use that to make a snap judgment about the character and tone of the site. So if random new user A comes along and the front-page is all Erlang, Javascript, Groovy, "Foo acquired Bar for $123MM" and "Google IO tickets go on sale today" and "New advance in 3D printing", etc., they will reach a certain conclusion which will - in my theory - influence their behavior and manner from then on. OTOH, if the front-page is about Condelezza Rice, minimum-wage controversy, environmental issues, etc., that same user comes in with a whole different mindset.

Or maybe more to the point, those different front-pages attract a different category of people who stick around and become regulars. In either case, you get "scope drift".

Honestly, what this reminds me of is when Slashdot took a pronounced turn towards a more openly political "flavor" and developed a much stronger leftist bias and became what people were calling "SlashKos".

Re: Drop Dropbox

#830

Post by aryastark »

facepalm wrote: post #413
pvnick wrote: post #253

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I absolutely agree with most of the opposition to Condi Rice wrt the illegal war, warrantless wiretaps, torture, etc. On the other hand, I threw a hissy fit over the opposition to Eich based on his beliefs. I'm not sure how I can oppose Rice while standing up for Eich without inconsistency. Anybody else feel conflicted and have some insight? I'm still probably goin…

I suppose everybody has to draw their own line. I feel differently about Eich because I think he just participated in a democratic process and he has an unpopular opinion. I can understand reasons to be against gay marriage (even though I am personally in favor of it). But it seems to me he always was honest and upfront. There is no reason for me to believe he would not accept a democratic vote pro gay marriage. I wo…

> participated in a democratic process and he has an unpopular opinion

It may be unpopular in certain circles, but the majority of California first voted yes on Prop 22 and then again on Prop 8. Hard to get more mainstream than that.

But then again, Bush won a 2nd term as well. I guess we can only conclude that democracy doesn't work because the masses are stupid.

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