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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

#831

Post by ryandrake »

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…

In all of your example topics (and others), there are clear sets of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" opinions, and if you share an unacceptable one, you face all kinds of potential work-impacting repercussions ranging from "sad faces" to getting fired.

In the spirit of imagining you're in the out group: Imagine you're a Trump supporter and work in a big-name SV tech company. Someone asks you at work "Boy, Trump is a bonehead, isn't he?" Well, now you're put in a no-win situation: You have to either lie about your beliefs to keep everyone happy, share your beliefs and risk getting fired or some other type of discipline. Or, you'll need to dodge by saying "I don't think it's appropriate to talk about politics at work," leaving it to the asker to speculate about your views.

Remember "Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" At the end where most people are aliens and the few real humans have to put on a fake persona in order to walk around freely? If you slipped up and dropped the persona for an instant they'd all point at you and make that alien noise, and you're done for! That must be what it feels like to hold unorthodox political views working in a Silicon Valley tech company these days.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#832

Post by grier »

The idea that even spam is does not fall into "content moderation" is very interesting.

A fake Rolex email is an interesting advertisement to some people and belongs in the garbage for others.

Research has shown that buyers of spam advertised products will literally dig through their spam folder to find a store to buy from.

As this (naturally, pun intended) expands to green coffee, açai, news articles about Florida man, and on up to what we see as disinformation, the difficulty in identifying intent becomes equally as challenging.

There's no way to "just host content", and anyone attempting to do this will face a range of laws, user challenges, and more that introduce "content moderation" into the platform.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#833

Post by InfinityByTen »

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…

Finally I read a comment on a platform and I can listen to ideas and deep understanding. Thanks for sharing that interview!! You won Naval a fan already :)

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#834

Post by dang »

kgwxd wrote: post #809
dang wrote: post #2

This is a divisive topic, but the story seems to pass the interesting-new-phenomenon test ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). If you comment, note this guideline: " Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. " We've changed the title in accordance with https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html , but if anyone can suggest a better (i.e. more a…

If they no longer have that policy then it no longer passed the interesting-new-phenomenon test and almost all of the article is irrelevant.

I don't think I agree. For a tech company to officially say "don't discuss politics at work" is also a phenomenon I don't think we've seen before, and in the context of recent events/trends it seems significant.

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#839

Post by philwelch »

alisonatwork wrote: post #620
TeMPOraL wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others made good general and specific arguments for avoiding such discussions at a workplace, but I'd like to offer a thought experiment that can help understand it better. Imagine yourself noticing that people around you start to reveal themselves as strongly religious - and not in your religion, if you subscribe to any - and very much into proselytizing. Not a day goes by without someone approaching you to convince…

This is not a fair comparison. The OC was not talking about proselytizing, they were talking about how to create an inclusive environment at work. We cannot create an inclusive environment at work if we are not allowed to openly talk about groups who currently do not feel included and why that is.

I think you've somewhat missed the analogy. There's a specific system of beliefs that insists upon bringing up these subjects, framing them in terms of collective privilege and oppression, and silencing anyone who disagrees with that framing. This ideology is ultimately no more "inclusive" than Agile processes are "agile" or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is "democratic".

Re: Gitlab: don't discuss politics at work

#840

Post by adrr »

sparrish wrote: post #598
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?

Carriers can't be sued for the content they carry. It's been tried many times and so long as the carrier acts like a carrier (neutral channel), it fails.

Working at MySpace and getting sued by all the state attorney generals, that defense doesn’t work. We were ultimately responsible for the actions of our users including exploitation of minors which triggered the investigations.
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