Already down playing it, later the article admits over 100 joined the post. Wile 'Dozens' is correct, it most certainly was meant to belittle and down play the group.
But ... given that Facebook has around 25,000 employees and the article said "more than 100" I think the word "some" kind of overplays it. A few 10ths of a percent pretty much rounds to 0.
>This month, the social network barred the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a move that critics seized on as further evidence that the company harbors an anti-conservative bias.
Banning someone like Alex Jones is not an anti-conservative bias. It is an anti-asshole bias. No one is going to ban you for discussing tax policy.
Sure, but I'm not the one who lumped those two together. That quote in the article says the conservative critics are the ones jumping to use Jones' ban as evidence of anti-conservative bias. The "critics" are self-identifying as Jones' allies. That is a red flag in my book since many of Jones' views don't deserve respect.
Alex Jones is not respected by most conservatives (even the hypothetical person who agreed with every single one of his views would still think that his delivery was a bit hammy). If conservatives are rallying around him, it's based on the idea that as soon as the least defensible person is gone, the least defensible person becomes whoever used to be the second least defensible, and so on, and so on...
It's almost the mirror image of the NRA strategy of saying, "don't ban any guns," because if you ban only the worst guns then a new set of guns becomes the worst guns, until you've banned every gun.
There is a poem by Niemoller that seems relevant[1]. The point of the poem is that if you don't speak up against actions taken against groups, you may not have support when action is taken against you.
What is going on appears to be people standing up and saying "enough". Which is good. If they are hauled away and fired, well, then not so good.
This is not the first time I've seen somebody attempt to align this quote with groups that sympathize with other neo-nazi sympathizers (I mean, knowingly or not). If this group is allying themselves with Alex Jones, then I would hesitate attributing this quote to their cause.
This quote was explicitly about the nazis. [Utilizing it this way] It seems to do Niemöller a disservice, IMO.
I sympathize with people are shut out of civil conversation just for holding views on the other side of the spectrum— that shouldn't happen. Allying with Jones was either a crucial mistake for optics here, or outs the real beliefs inherent—that they're not just wanting to discuss conservative policy.
Banning Alex Jones from FB being a core piece of evidence that somehow FB is anti-conservative doesn't sound to me like concern over civil conversation. Jones was banned for inciting violence against innocent parties amongst other things.
This is not the first time I've seen comments construed to mean something completely opposite from what was intended. This seems to be the argumentation tactic of this time.
The poem was specifically about purging targets not aligned with the thought processes of those in power. When you leverage your power to come for the next group, and take them out of play with ostracization, ridicule, etc., or in the case of the actual nazis, murder and genocide, then you have abused your power and made other groups outside your group afraid.
This is the uncomfortable truth of the poem.
I personally cannot stand AJ and his kooks. But I am against deplatforming, as kooks tend to self-identify, and I want to know exactly where they are and what they are doing at all times.
I wasn't criticizing you. I just wanted to add clarity.
I likewise don't think Jones or his ilk deserve a free spot on primetime television or editorial column in a major newspaper or journal, nor do I think any media network owes it anyone to the extent that they need to provide them with a platform. Seems more in that camp to me.
Now that we're here, I do disagree with using the poem to defend the ideological kin of those he was discussing. If the group hadn't listed Jones amongst their list of the prosecuted then this wouldn't be a point of concern for me, and I'd think you had a point by employing the poem.
I think we're getting off the subject of the main thread, and the discussion surrounding your latter point is another separate and rather large one. I'm not sure we'd get very far here. But cheers.
I think the Democratic Socialists of San Francisco deserve no respect; and their policy advocacy will only lead to higher rents, more homelessness and more despair.
But I'm not going to take their ability to use the internet away. In High school I really hated NetNanny - I'm not sure why so many people are so determined to become NetNanny.
No one took away Alex Jones' ability to use the internet. They took away his ability to use their platform to spread his message after violating their TOS.
He is free to start his own Facebook, Twitter, etc.
I am a Democrat who has been elected in the past, I agree with the conservative argument that: Corporate censorship dampens the spirit of free speech.
While Alex Jones is a nut case (And shouldn't be defended), other less publicized incidents of censorship by Social Media companies has occurred (related to picking winners between Israel and Palestine)
The spirit of free speech is defending the least defensible.
> Corporate censorship dampens the spirit of free speech.
I agree!
> The spirit of free speech is defending the least defensible.
I also agree!
However, I personally believe that if corporate censorship has a meaningful impact on the freedom of speech in a society then the fundamental problem is the amount of influence said corporation has on that society. The issue is the size and influence of the private entity - society-altering censorship is just a more visible manifestation of the root problem.
The problem is who decides what views should or should not be tolerated? Some would say if you eat meat you should not be tolerated. Others might think pro-choice ideas should not be tolerated.
That aside, we really need to figure out as a society how to fix a few notions. 1) You have some sort of right to not be offended. 2) You must get outraged at anything you disagree with.
There once was a time when two people with different ideas could be in the same room as each other. But long are those days. Now we live in a time where simply having your name printed next to somebody's name who made a joke you were offended by calls for public outrage and immediate removal of the offending persons name from said list.
There was never a time when different ideas were tolerated. The things we tolerate have changed. Maybe the time you speak of was the time when all of your ideas were tolerated.
In the past people tolerated the idea that it was OK to own slaves, now we dont. In the past people did not tolerate the idea that it is OK to be gay, now we do.
This is a very strange opinion to take. What do you think parliaments do and/or did, declare their opinions and then bring out the swords and pistols?*
I grew up with the understanding that just because someone thought differently to me didn't mean they were wrong, and that it's OK for people to agree to disagree on some things while still remaining friends. This view has definitely gone out of vogue in the past 10 years.
Nothing has changed with regard to reasonable people reasonably disagreeing over reasonable differences. The Overton Window has changed for sure, but that's what it does. I struggle to think of any perspective that has moved out of the Overton Window over the past 10 years that I regret losing. If anything the Overton Window has moved backwards in recent years to better accommodate the Alex Joneses of the world, but I don't see how that's a good thing.
Peoples' definition of 'reasonable' has absolutely changed. That's essentially what the Overton Window describes: The set of viewpoints which are considered 'reasonable'.
>The Overton Window has changed for sure, but that's what it does. I struggle to think of any perspective that has moved out of the Overton Window over the past 10 years that I regret losing.
Honestly, I want the Overton Window to be consistent with what people actually do in real life. I've begun to grow uncomfortable with a political environment in which we all need to hash-tag #AbolishICE, when we all know that the actual abolition of the American border is outside the Overton Window for the solid reasons that nobody has come up with a plan to do it, including the people leading the hash-tag campaigns.
If we are to have an Overton Window, I want it to be the same one for rhetoric, actions, and policies. I don't want this world we're getting where we all mouth extremist rhetoric and then pass mild reformist touch-ups to the status quo.
* Abolishing ICE doesn't require abolishing the border entirely, just abolishing a police force that gets as much funding as the FBI even though it is dedicated to one small subset of violations.
* It is OK to have ideals that you work towards while knowing that you won't necessarily reach them.
So you are saying that +10 years ago, someone could tell their friends and coworkers that they were transgender and everyone would just reply "yeah alright, whatever is best for you"
10 years ago? Yeah that is exactly how it was. We had no less than 3 transgender coworkers at any given time. And that was in Texas of all places. I don't know what sort of experience you had but I have a feeling you are letting it cloud your judgment.
That's a view that's very fine in the abstract but breaks down when you try to apply it to reality.
There has never been a time when a white supremacist and the target of his ire could sit down and "have a free exchange of ideas"; those interactions ended with the poor soul on the end of a rope.
There likewise has never been a time when LGBT individuals could sit down with radical evangelicals and discuss the finer points on how the fomer are evil sinners who should die in hellfire.
Workers formed unions and striked rather than calmly discuss their differences of labor policy opinion with business owners.
No one has any right to demand civility for ideas that reject it on principle. When you pine for the "good old days" what you're saying is "I wish it was the fifties when those women/coloreds/gays would sit down and do as their told under threat of violence; we had such a good market place of ideas back then."
If you fix number one above, number two almost certainly will be fixed too. Maybe we need more and more "offensive" comedians and everyday people. The only way to fix a phobia like this is to super expose people to it. In this case, expose those offended to things that offend them. Over and over again. That's always been my thinking when I create literature for example. Shock people until they are numb. Because no one has a right not to be offended.
Your gut reaction to "not left-leaning views" was "not all views deserve respect", implying they are awful, unconceivable ideas that they want to express. Not a personal attack because, right now, this is the only non-greyed message in this thread, which means most people agree with you. That's bad.
It depends on who you ask. Saying something in public or doing something against some of the hot, left-leaning ideas of this time (feminism, or homosexualism) could very well get you fired. I'm sure you can think of examples...
Problem is that some people want to lump, for example, "abortion is murder" and "burn all niggers" together so nobody can ever make the former point.
Western feminism is no longer a movement that does any appreciable work towards equal rights for women. They, uhh, kind of already have that in the developed world.
The fact that "western feminism" doesn't appear to believe that women have achieved equal rights seems to me like maybe there's some more discussion to be had and changes to be made?
Feminists are still trying to change society and still have a narrative of being about "equal rights" as a concept. They have equality under the law by any reasonable definition. Reproductive health access and family leave laws are the best example I can think of, and even that's a stretch. Do you have better examples?
See, you're doing it too. You're assuming that ALL feminist ideas are morally invincible on the grounds that they are championing "equal rights for women" (whether that's actually true or not) and shaming GP for implying differently
I downvoted you (and I assume others did too) because your assertion is only half true and that makes it pretty misleading. The other valid reply presented was about "homosexualism" (not sure what that means exactly) and in that context "feminism" means "rights," thus "equal rights."
So ya, I think 1800s is a pretty fair (albeit satirical) statement/question.
That feels like a strawman. When people want to debate feminism nowadays they don't want to talk about whether women should have equal rights or not. For example some people say abortion is part of feminism. Some are for it some are against it. That doesn't mean they want to keep women as sex slaves.
Well, the author of the FB memo apparently is starting from Ayn Rand, so there's no need to imply what doesn't deserve respect.
Google Ayn Rand and William Edward Hickman if you don't understand why.
EDIT: Ooo, downvotes on a thread about people being silenced. This comment may be slightly on the aggressive side, but it has enough content that it's well within the guidelines for the site, so my assumption is that Rand devotees can't be bothered to engage on any other level than hitting a down arrow, which I suppose, to be fair, is entirely consistent with the philosophy unless they'd get some personal utility out of articulating whatever they might be able to come up with.
Care to quote any specifics? I always... appreciate... how it's hearsay as opposed to just citing first party documents / quotes / material and letting people decide for themselves.
The first three are deeply problematic and rooted in deep-seated white supremacist beliefs and absent mitigating circumstances I’d consider firing people who held them. Sorry, that’s just how I have to feel given everything that’s been going on these days.
This is exactly the kind of intolerance this memo is advocating against. If you genuinely would fire all the 45% of people that voted for Trump, anyone who disapproves of the rhetoric of BLM, or considers Islam to have a poor human rights record then I would suggest you take a look in mirror before trying to find intolerance in your employees. Easily the majority of the US population would hold at least one of those views. Heck, even the first almost brings it to 50%.
> Easily the majority of the US population
> would hold at least one of those views.
If the majority of the country holds a philosophy that favors the majority of the country, that doesn't automatically make it ethical. I won't insult you by bringing up obvious examples from American history. If you want to calibrate your moral compass, the right way to do it isn't always a show of hands.
Sure, but saying you'd fire the majority of the US population in the name of tolerance is absolutely contradictory. The notion that a blanket firing of 45% of the adult population is an act of tolerance is ridiculous.
Sure I do think there are some views that should not be tolerated and employees who advocate them should be removed - none of the four listed there come close to it, though.
> The notion that a blanket firing of
> 45% of the adult population is an act
> of tolerance is ridiculous.
Nope. It's perfectly moral, logical, and whether it's 45%, or 1%, or 99% makes no difference. The examples from history are too numerous to mention. You have to decide what your values are and stand by them.
I'm not talking about morality or ethics, I'm talking about tolerance. Only tolerating the things you think are morally right isn't tolerance - quite the opposite. Tolerance entails tolerating things even when you don't find them morally right. For instance, I think a closed border is morally bad - it's still an act of intolerance if I were to fire someone for supporting enforcement of immigration laws.
This warped definition of tolerance particularly worried me. The growing notion that tolerance means snuffing out views one disapproves of, rather than tolerating them is the root of much of the growing political division in my opinion. And not to mention, there's a big risk that this will hurt liberals in the long run. It's easy to forget that this line of thinking also empowers conservatives to snuff out views they don't like - and look at who's in control of the White House, Congress, and (likely soon to be) the Supreme Court.
I wanted to counter your points by presenting a hypothetical hiring example (one employee from a certain group, and another who votes a particular way), but that gets into an argument over whether certain US government policies are racist, and that's off topic for HN.
As a general rule, I lob complaints at private companies. So I care at lot if Company X is doing ill to society (what I consider ill, at any rate). Whether the government should step in is a separate, and more dangerous, issue to me.
> I wanted to counter your points by presenting a hypothetical hiring example (one employee from a certain group, and another who votes a particular way), but that gets into an argument over whether certain US government policies are racist
This is not the case, I have discussed affirmative action and discrimination without repercussions (presumably what you're talking about). No policy I'm aware of prohibits it on HN.
If I ran an English business in 1968, I probably wouldn't hire an Enoch Powell supporter.
I'm fine if an employee disagrees with me over how high income tax should be, or whether or not healthcare should be privatized. People are allowed to have different views. However if I think someone is intolerant, I don't want to help them. That kind of tolerance is tolerance in name only.
I wouldn't want to associate my business with, or financially support, an employee who, say, spends the weekends rallying to kick West Indians out of the country. Whether such rallies draw sparse, or teeming crowds, doesn't make a difference to me.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic? Without additional protections, such as a bill of rights, "democracy" is stupid. But most us live in "liberal democracies", which are as good as it gets.
I didn't put a "/s" because doing so would convey an inaccuracy.
> Without additional protections, such as a bill of rights, "democracy" is stupid. But most us live in "liberal democracies", which are as good as it gets.
Our Bill of Rights doesn't say squat about what happens when 51% of the population decide that they want to steal all of your possessions for themselves. If a dispute-resolver (especially a monopolistic one, aka a government) does not purport to protect from even the simple crime of theft, then it is most stupid.
I have a feeling that the majority of the commenters here would not be happy with the results of an armed revolution. You can be snarky on the internet all you want, but guns win wars, and there's a hell of a lot more guns in Texas than California.
Hell, if you want to go down a very concerning rabbit hole, look up youtube videos of people prepping for a communist revolution. There's a lot of mass murder pre-planned for the end of democracy.
I don’t agree that all criticism of misogynistic divorce laws, violence against “immodest” women, and application of the death penalty for homosexuality or apostasy is driven by “deeply-rooted white supremacy.”
I would fire anyone who held such a belief, as I would not trust them around female, gay, or ex-Muslim co-workers.
If you feel I’ve misunderstood your comment, or that you did not fully articulate your point, please feel free to elaborate. I’m not overly swayed or impressed by drive-by disparagement.
> misogynistic divorce laws, violence against “immodest” women, and application of the death penalty for homosexuality or apostasy
It is a caricature. You have been reading the internet too much and spent too little time talking to actual Muslim people. However, if you find out that one of your employees is a member of the taliban, feel free to fire him.
There are 13 Muslim-majority countries where apostasy is punishable by death, including Malaysia, Iran, Nigeria, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan only imposes the death sentence for blasphemy.
The UK has many sharia courts which act as marriage and divorce authorities, where women often have far fewer rights than men. (This sounds hysterical and far-right-ish, but it’s true)
I’ve heard horror stories of ex-Muslims in the US who were kidnapped and physically abused by their family when they tried to leave Islam.
Between mass-rape attacks in Germany, the many, many grooming gangs in the UK, and the latest sexual assault statistics from Sweden, I think it’s fair to take a skeptical eye towards mainstream Islamic male culture. Moderate and reformist Muslims in the West, for context, comprise a small majority of the faithful.
The Christian and Jewish faiths have reformed and lightened up with the liberalization of Western society. I think it’s fair to expect and allow adherents to the Islamic faith to walk a similar path.
EDIT: And for the record, I get along great with my Muslim co-workers. Please stop moving goalposts; to reiterate, your premise was that criticism of Islam's human rights record is driven by deep-rooted white supremacy.
Sure. Pew Research, a widely-respected nonpartisan fact tank, has conducted several studies in this area. They found that roughly 70% of Muslims worldwide support Sharia as the law of the land, coming out to just over 1.2 billion people.
I don't have to tell you that for women, gay people, and ex-Muslims, this isn't great news. Sometimes facts like these can be uncomfortable, but if we ignore them, things don't improve and real people suffer.
How was the human rights record in Malaysia before Islam? How do the countries you listed compare in terms of women’s rights with their non-Islamic neighbors? Pakistan is a rough part of town for women, but isn’t India dealing with their own women’s rights issues around rape, and honor killing? How much of what you’ve described is a religious issue, versus cultural or socioeconomic?
Disclaimer: I’m not Muslim, or from the regions described.
That's a great question. I would hope that if it ever came up in a work context, one hypothesis would not automatically be assumed without an open and honest and conversation.
It’s also probably the kind of thing you need to know a lot about before you start accusing a religion which represents a sizable fraction of the world, and which has many existing sects and interpretations, of being a causative agent in so many ills. An open and honest discussion is fine, but when one person has a strong position staked out without having done the requisite “homework” it’s not unrealistic that people will draw conclusions about their motives. Someone who has wondered about the relationship between Islam and women’s rights, modesty and so forth, and then taken the time to learn about where Islam vs. local pre-Islamic traditions stand on the issue might draw conclusions as well. Others, who note the intolerance for gay rights throughout much of Africa, in Islamic, Christian, and other religious frameworks might start to suspect that Islam wasn’t the active ingredient. Someone who noted the appalling history of women’s rights in much of Asia regardless of religious context might do the same.
Such a person would almost certainly be wary of engaging in debate, however open and honest, with someone who came to their strong conclusions in the face of such easily available evidence to the contrary. You also have to remember that some people use the framework of an open and honest discussion to proselytize, or rant. The archetypical bigot who “wants a fair debate about immigration” while really just wanting to express their bigotry without getting heat for it is one example. The antisemite who talks in terms of “bankers” and “globalists” is another. It’s unfair, but we all have to share a world with them, and so even when we really want to have an open and honest conversation we have to go that extra mile to prove it in cases like these. Otherwise people who don’t act in good faith can effectively mount a DOS on our time and attention through our goodwill.
Edit: Downvotes in lieu of something to say is something I’m becoming depressingly familiar with here. I can see why some people revert to low-effort posting when it’s going to be met with zero-effort. Oh well, I’m not sure what I expected.
I know a fair bit about Islam, but I'm always ready with an open mind to hear out different points of view, which is the ultimate topic of this submission. I'm also not even able to downvote, so take that as you will.
> The UK has many sharia courts which act as marriage and divorce authorities, where women often have far fewer rights than men. (This sounds hysterical and far-right-ish, but it’s true)
Point out one of these Sharia courts on Google maps please.
I'm done talking with someone who out-and-out lies.
"I later saw the Islamic Shari’a Council of Leyton. This community has religious, educational, business and legal institutions to maintain a separate identity."
Equating 'misogynistic divorce laws, violence against “immodest” women, and application of the death penalty for homosexuality' with an entire religion of 1.6 billion people is the issue, not criticism of a specific country's human rights record. You should not come to work and rail against a major world religion...
You saddle up to a co-worker at the water cooler. Hi Yasir (he's from the Bay Area), you know your religion has a terrible record of human rights? Yeah? Cool, see you at the standup in 30 minutes.
I think we both agree that's a ridiculous and unrealistic example.
I'm not the type to raise political or religious issues at work, unless it relates to the decision or task at hand. If my company were to consider donating to a conservative Islamic charity for International Women's Day, for example, then I might offer my perspective. Otherwise, why start workplace conversations that are likely to be divisive, distracting, and unproductive?
Yes that's how it plays out. A lot of Muslims (and ex-Muslims) desperately want to reform that religion. They often emigrate to the US to get away from that crap. Go on youtube and search for "ex muslim"
Views are free to be had, and command no respect whatsoever. I respect criticism of any human rights violation, the rest of the list doesn't pertain to me. I support the freedom of people to have those views, but also welcome the prudent choice of restricting the ability to utilize the most powerful medium of our time to spread hatred. Hate all you like, but you don't get the platform on the count of first amendment.
Disclosure: I spent a bunch of time in 2016 and 2017 reporting European hate groups and pages for violations of TOS. Video montages that recycled unrelated footage for misinformation about the immigrant crisis (for fear-mongering purposes) weren't enough to achieve a takedown, but gradually most
of them progressed far enough in their rhetoric, to objectively deserve removal (Look up European identity movements).
Downvoters: I'm also talking about private Fb groups where assaults on asylums were organized.
Sure, not all views command respect, but would you actually fire an employee if a co-worker showed you records of a campaign distribution to Trump? Or if they showed you a post criticizing a Saudi cleric's views of women's rights or LGBT rights?
This memo isn't about what Facebook allows on it's platforms it's about policing the views of it's employees.
I'm genuinely curious what "All lives matter" stands for except for being opposed to the idea that "Black lives matter".
There's a key difference here - "Black lives matter" attempts to point out that there is discrimination in law enforcement that seems to single out minorities. Correcting this discrimination would be good. What policy change does "All lives matter" advocate? Do those policy changes indeed benefit "all lives" or are they more designed to take away focus from legitimate problems minorities face due to racism or inequality?
To be honest I quite suspect it is the latter, and that is why I frankly suspect that "All lives matter" is racist at it's core. After all, if the movement doesn't really advocate for policy changes that benefit all lives but instead is just a reaction to attempts to fix discrimination, that is pretty racist.
The fact that you're being downvoted indicates just how troubled and just how racist our society still is. Good luck all. Either hackernews has been infiltrated by a slew of far right wing posters or the general public has become so dumb that it's sweeping into this forum.
Either wait I'm inclined to post here less and read the comments here less.
One could argue that "black lives matter" is exclusory to all other races. "All lives matter" is often meant as a means to include the rest of the population (and thus, have better chances of creating change). It's viable to argue that sticking with the former is worth the exclusive rhetoric because Black people suffer disproportionately. But the notion of actually _firing_ someone over using "all lives matter" as the memo alleges seems absolutely insane.
One absolutely could. Black lives matter is a strict subset of all lives matter. Any life being covered by "black lives matter" is also covered by "all lives matter". In that sense, it cannot diminish "black lives matter" because "black lives matter" is wholly contained within "all lives matter". Furthermore, the portion of the population that has a direct interest in the movement succeeding is expanded by 5-7x. Seems like a pretty big gain to me
For what it's worth, I approve of both "all lives matter" and "black lives matter" since both are working towards positive goals, they only differ in specificity. I do, however, disapprove of trying to pressure people into substituting the latter with the former or vice versa.
You're completely ignoring the subtext from the All Lives Matter folks.
Saying "all lives matter" in response to "black lives matter" implies that the BLM folks are saying that only black lives matter, which they are not saying. It also implies that all races in america face similar struggles, which is also not totally true.
It seems you don't actually object to "all lives matter" - just the messages you're injecting in your interpretation. Nothing about "all lives matter" says that all races suffer equally. Nothing about it says that "black lives matter" is denying the worth of non-black lives.
Appeals to judge based on subtext is often an excuse to construct a strawman. A good analogy is criticism of "listen and believe". Many of it's critics complain that it has the subtext that we should do away with the priciples of innocent until guilty and due process. But the phrase says nothing of the sort - just that we should support and listen to victims. Some, perhaps even a significant portion, of those saying "listen and believe" may have used it to further those notions, but it is not correct to pass judgement on the phrase itself.
And for what it's worth I do think that those two messages you outlined are not okay. As stated earlier. That's why I disapprove of "all lives matter" folks from trying to tell "black lives matter" to say "all" - because doing so is depriving people of a voice to more specifically highlight the discrimination Blacks face. Similar I disapprove of the reverse, because it gives credence to the notion that "black lives" is in exclusion of other groups.
> Appeals to judge based on subtext is often an excuse to construct a strawman.
I disagree. Subtext and context are immensely important when judging a message like "all lives matter". Judging it based solely on the literal meaning is the strawman.
> Nothing about "all lives matter" says that all races suffer equally. Nothing about it says that "black lives matter" is denying the worth of non-black lives.
"All Lives Matter" came about as a response specifically to "Black Lives Matter". What other possible reason could you have for saying "All Lives Matter" in response to "Black Lives Matter" if you don't think "Black Lives Matter" denies the worth of non-black lives?
I don't understand why you're so set on interpreting both "Black Lives Matter" and "All Lives Matter" as if they only meant what they literally said.
Let me explain something you seem to be missing: subtext.
Subtext is what is being said without being said. So, when I say, "break a leg" to an actor most people pick up on the subtext, and realize I'm not wishing the actor actually break their leg.
When someone responds to "Black lives matter" with "All lives matter", most people get the subtext is that assuredly racist. I know that might seem confusing, because they're saying one thing, while meaning something very different.
> So, when I say, "break a leg" to an actor most people pick up on the subtext, and realize I'm not wishing the actor actually break their leg.
Incorrect, this isn't subtext, this is an idiom.
> When someone responds to "Black lives matter" with "All lives matter", most people get the subtext is that assuredly racist.
Complaints about "subtext" is often an excuse to construct and attack a straw man. Consider the phrase "listen and believe". Plenty of critics complained that this had the subtext of taking actions against the accused on testimony alone, and doing away with the principles of due process. Some users of the phrase may have attempted to advance those views, but "listen and believe" in and of itself is not about eroding due process - just that we should support people who believe they are victims. Similarly "All lives matter" is not a racist viewpoint - unless someone genuinely believes that the idea that any unjustly extinguished life is a tragedy is somehow racist.
"All lives matter" when specifically used to the exclusion of "black lives matter" (e.g. telling BLM activists to say "all lives matter" instead) may have a racist subtext. And as I have mentioned repeatedly elsewhere, I do not approve of these usages. That said, the blanket statement that "all lives matter" is racist is as wrong as saying "listen and believe" is about punishing people on baseless accusations.
> One could argue that "black lives matter" is exclusory to all other races.
Is it solely the name that you object to, or the idea that discrimination in law enforcement against minorities should be rectified? If it's the former, it seems like such a minor point, like saying you don't like Twitter because the name is dumb. The fact that you don't like the marketing name of a non profit / activist movement seems like such a trivial thing to start an entire counter-movement over. If it's the latter, and you think that discrimination against minorities isn't worth making a fuss over, that is actually pretty racist.
All lives matter argument is one of the dumbest things i've ever heard. It's like responding to a "Save the whales" movement, with "all endangered species matter".
It's ridiculous to diminish the plight of whales because smallpox are also nearly extinct. Go for "smallpox matter" instead, and see what people really think.
"How about pangolins then? Or giraffes? I know, let's start a moment to protect all endagered species - including whales!" How is this "all endagered animals matter" a bad thing?
For what it's worth, I don't object to either "all species" or just whales. Regardless of whether someone is trying to protect all or focus their attention on one specific species, they're both working towards a good cause - though I do disapprove of the former trying to substitute the latter or vice versa.
Just do something for endangered species then. The problem with your entire line of thought is, that you're trying to make it seem like we shouldn't allocate more resources to pertinent causes. Save pangolins (and smallpox) if you really care about them. What is it about whale penises that's causing all this jealousy and needless arguments about semantics?
> Just do something for endangered species then. The problem with your entire line of thought is, that you're trying to make it seem like we shouldn't allocate more resources to pertinent causes. Save pangolins (and smallpox) if you really care about them.
I agree - this is exactly what "all endagered species matter" is is doing.
> What is it about whale penises that's causing all this jealousy and needless arguments about semantics?
This notion of jealousy of genetalia is something you brought up on your own initiative. Also, how is it relevant?
Endangered species matter. I've never seen an animal rights activist dispute the fact that endangered species matter more than the rest. What is the charter of "All lives matter"? What is the objective output of that movement other than negating the fact that endangered lives matter more?
Interesting point of view. Presumably, the views you agree with deserve respect, the others not so much. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Oh dear ... we seem to have found an accidental logical inconsistency in the universe. Prepare for reboot in 3 .. 2 ..
More seriously, I can and do disagree strenuously with friends, family, coworkers over many things.
I value opposing viewpoints, as it helps me think through my own views. Without those opposing viewpoints, we get echo chambers. These echo chambers decide to not respect viewpoints not in agreement with their own.
It is inevitable that Godwin's law is somehow invoked these days, almost by reflex. In the US, we have the right to speak freely without interference from the government with very specific limited exceptions. So we cannot make the most odious speech illegal. We can protest such speech, but we need to do this within the bounds of the law.
Regardless of my views, I find myself censoring what I say aloud, or write in posts like this. As the narratives do shift, and one day, I may find my views which were one day mainstream, are now deep into fringe territory.
This is not good. Anyone thinking that shutting someone down hard by means other than a better argument, needs to be prepared for when their views are on the outside.
Put another way, this is a very slippery slope. We really don't want to continue down this path.
I applaud the FB group, hopefully they can make a difference.
"Free speech" as a general principle isn't about respect. It's a practical cease-fire: we agree to not try to censor your views even while it's within our power, and you agree to not try to censor our views even while it's within your power.
If Facebook has the right to set up their workplace such that mainstream right-of-center views are excluded, then other companies have the right to set up their workplaces such that mainstream left-of-center views get excluded, too. IMO, it's far better to cut as much of the political BS as possible so that the greatest number of folks can get along and work together - this is why a lot of workplaces have a professional norm against talking politics in general.
No, he's probably afraid of someone playing Internet Detective against him for his audacious behavior of going against the currently-approved orthodoxy... and then doxxing him and his employer and starting a manufactured outrage campaign on Twitter until he gets fired.
I'm not following you? Is the point of your post that liberals can hold bad views(which I agree with) or is your point that you might be criticized? If it's the latter then I think that in fact you have proved my point - that holding back your opinions here is stupid. I guess it could be some mix of the two, but wouldn't that make the other point just some tool for you to express that HN is left leaning? What exactly is wrong with that (other than, you know, someone might disagree with you)?
And if you think HN is left leaning...I think that's insane. Just look at the comments here, read about you the blind libertarianism in almost any other comment section here. Are you kidding!?
In any case, I can't see how I "literally proved your point" unless the point of your post was something other than what it is overtly- and if that was your point then I still think being afraid of being criticized here is stupid.
I'd love to reply further but i feel you've put words in my mouth I did not say. If you'd like discuss in person, I wouldn't mind continuing a civil discussion. www.keybase.io/exabrial
I disagree. Not all actions deserve respect. If facebook has some official views, and then an employee goes and publicly states 'I, an employee of facebook, think X', where X is counter to those official views, then they should absolutely be disciplined and/or fired. However, internally, there is no reason not to let people express whatever ideas they choose.
There is a difference between "respect" and "tolerance". You don't have to 'respect' anyone's speech, but if we live in a country with Freedom of Speech, then you for sure have to tolerate things you don't agree with. Even if your company decides to ban certain speech, you can't avoid it forever...
51% of the voting power (probably) isn't available on the public markets. It's dual structured with Zuckerberg having special shares that make him king.
It actually is a sign of something terribly wrong with the company's culture. If a notoriously liberal company determined that complaints about "racially offensive" posts in this group were false, then one can reasonably believe that the complaints were indeed false. That means that other employees were simply lodging false complaints to interfere with this group's right to exist.
Think about that for a second. Other employees were so outraged by a tiny handful of their colleagues banding together to express mildly conservative views that they lied to the company about the content in this group in an attempt to eradicate them from existence. That is the opposite of tolerance, and it is reveals a toxic underbelly at a disturbingly powerful company. Everyone, regardless of political affiliation, should be concerned by that.
If you're a social media platform that possesses such a vast, overwhelming monopoly as what Facebook has, then you are capable of censorship. Your status as a monopoly means the normal market rules no longer apply to you. That you comply with the first amendment should properly be a pass-through legal requirement as a condition of your status as a monopolist.
If they resist cooperating with that designation, despite their monopoly, then we must regulate them.
Split off Instagram and WhatsApp from the core Facebook platform as an anti-trust action. At a minimum legally mandate that all monopolist platforms must equally enforce all of their terms of service for all users and must do so in a publicly verifiable manner. If they fail at that task, drown them in fines until they go bankrupt or stop selectively punishing some groups while allowing others to do the exact same things without punishment. Ideally, regulate Facebook and all such monopolist platforms that deal with speech as a form of public square.
I dislike Roy Moore and his politics. That doesn't mean I think it's ok for all the car companies to conspire together as a group monopoly and deny Moore the ability to purchase a new vehicle to punish him. Or that it's ok for the couple of telecom monopolies to get together and deny him access to the phone networks.
Denying voices access to the public square - Facebook's social monopoly - is equally reprehensible. The most important speech we protect, is the speech of the ugly minority, which is what both the far left and far right often represent.
I don't like seeing Antifa clad in black body armor, marching around with Soviet flags urging the adoption of Communism and the overthrow of the US Government. I similarly don't like to see it on Facebook. I fundamentally disagree with them. We should protect their right to that speech and their right to have access to Facebook's monopoly platform.
Could you explain how Facebook has a monopoly on the public discourse?
Jones was banned from YouTube, Twitter, Spotify, and itunes. That's 4 other platforms controlled by four other entities.
For many people, Twitter and YouTube will both have larger reach than Facebook (yes fb has more users, but people don't go to Facebook to catch up on news from big influencers like they do on Twitter), so what makes Facebook the monopoly?
Good for them. The structural change needed in our industry is for labor (or, to use a term we're apparently more comfortable with, "talent") to reassert itself, and for tech giants to reconcile themselves to the fact that they're accountable not just to their shareholders but to their employees. I hope this gets nasty, and that these FB employees ultimately find recourse in the NLRA.
We forget that this industry is still young. It's probably not even in its adolescence. When I started working, there was no such thing as an Internet giant. There was Intel and Microsoft and 30 different PC clone vendors and a bunch of small software shops competing to get their boxes on the shelves at Microcenter. A lot of ideas we take as axioms --- for instance, the idea that developers can't organize to coerce changes in their working environment --- haven't earned that status, and deserve to be challenged.
We're all generally well-paid (even with respect to the value we create). But this whole message board is practically dedicated to the ways in which our industry pisses us off, from confiscatory IP clauses to open offices to death march projects. Who's to say labor can't organize simply for a better shop to work in? That's not unprecedented.
Same thing with Reagan and Russia. But I think it's perfectly understandable. If Team Red is for X and Team Blue is against X, then it takes someone with street cred on Team Blue to make X happen, because they're the only one who can get Team Blue to stop the kamikaze opposition to X.
I agree about the irony. I think it's pretty sad that in the last 12 months, the two major tech/labor stories have been about conservative employees pushing back against supposedly-liberal corporations. But, whatever. A wakeup call is a wakeup call. I think these FB people can succeed, and should succeed.
The key word being supposedly. None of these "liberal" corporations have been left-liberal in terms of workers' rights or well-being. They want a rainbow of representation among the top-10% stratum of elite professionals to whom they pay enough to not need food stamps.
The party platform isn't the beliefs of every member of the party. Indeed, it's be absurd if every member of either party agreed with every line from a multi hundred page platform.
FB is monopoly at this point. Very few people there are irreplaceable. If this was was a startup you might have more leverage. Mr. Amerige probably doesn't have much here. Mr. Amerige is probably making good money. If he gets fired good luck trying to get another job. Companies hate controversy.
Trump won because of Facebook. I don't know why these guys are complaining.
Ah, but they're not replaceble fast enough. It's hard to get a scab up to speed quick enough. It could take weeks before someone's able to come in at short notice and replace a sysadmin. Hence the employees could take the website down for an hour or so...
> Trump won because of Facebook. I don't know why these guys are complaining.
You tar with rather a broad brush. Is it really so inconceivable that there are conservatives who disapprove of Trump and the far-right? Is it really so inconceivable that there are long-time liberals who don't agree with significant aspects of current liberalism?
Modern liberals should be wary of a hardline "us-vs-them" mindset lest they come to discover that there are more of "them" than there are of "us".
for one, American right wing conservatism is strongly anti-union and anything that diminishes the employers agility to conduct business as they see fit, so the idea of a bunch of well paid conservatives banding together to collectively argue against their employers is very ironic.
But is conservatism against regulating monopolies?
Facebook seems to be a natural monopoly. People only want one social network, and they want everyone they know to be on it. If it's a natural monopoly it should be regulated and, like other utilities, required to provide service to everyone.
I associate unions with homogenized labor, stratus of equivalent positions, but we’re all too unique 10x butterflies for that. I mean, what part of your career arc would have been better served in a unionized environment?
Who says it has to be an according-to-Hoyle union? The NLRA covers all concerted organized action. Start a professional association. The doctors and lawyers have them. We don't get one? Why?
The ACM is an academic association. The IEEE should be more important professionally than it is; one problem with the IEEE is that you have to have a related bachelors degree to join.
Developers should start a new organization that represents the interests of employees of the technology industry.
For people who are supposedly so highly paid the majority of my peers can't afford children. The rent of a two bedroom flat/house and the price of daycare means the household needs to earn close to $600,000/y for two children. That's maybe the top 10% in most companies. If a class in society can't afford to reproduce itself it is underpaid regardless of how many trinkets it can afford compared to the median.
People forget how much of entertainment is unionized. Like, Lebron James and Aaron Rodgers are members of their unions. Tom Cruise is a member of a union. Steven Spielberg is in a union.
I still think the vast majority of software engineers are either 1) Thankful (if they take a few minutes to consider the unique time in history in which they are employed) that given their relatively modest education investment, they are making the salaries they are. And these are probably your non-high-ranking-university CS majors, those without a college degree, L.A. majors, etc or 2) Graduates of top C.S. programs who are making really great salaries.
What real incentive do they have to unionize even along a professional path? I just don't see having their political views stifled at work to be a big motivator.
It's a cart/horse position problem. If we had to go to school for 7-10 years to be a doctor or lawyer, then of course, we'd want the protection and insurance of a professional licensing organization. But if I can make half the money of a doctor or lawyer without all the hassle, then why bother?
same here. some liberals are so fanatic that they can't hold a dialogue with a person of opposing views. I've got a friend who stopped speaking with their father because of Brexit.
I have no issues being friends with right wing people, even if they're more extreme. I just don't very often discuss politics with them, but we hang out a lot.
The history of unions in the US is based around highly paid incumbents forming “good ole boy networks” when people [of color] started migrating from agricultural areas into big cities and accepting lower pay.
The history of almost every institution in America is that of non-blacks forming overt and covert alliances to arrest the progress of black people. For over a decade after the civil rights act, mortgage lending was organized to keep black people out of "white" neighborhoods. Shall we do away with the 30 year fixed mortgage?
Who says that these software engineers have to be necessarily "conservative"? I'll be perfectly frank. I'm a liberal. I've voted Democratic as long as I've had the right to vote. But I look at what's happening to politics the West Coast with a mixture of disgust and horror. People are losing their jobs for saying the wrong things, donating to the wrong causes, or because they've offended the wrong people. And far from being concerned at the excesses of this politics, activists are gleeful, and are saying that these are just desserts for "oppressors".
It's possible to be a liberal and be less than 100% on board with defining everything in terms of intersectional oppression. It's possible to be a liberal, and still think the left has gone too far. It's possible to be a liberal and think that people should only be punished for actions, not beliefs. And I believe that the people standing up at Facebook are, by any standard outside of San Francisco, liberals.
> The structural change needed in our industry is for labor (or, to use a term we're apparently more comfortable with, "talent") to reassert itself, and for tech giants to reconcile themselves to the fact that they're accountable not just to their shareholders but to their employees.
My read on this was that the conflicts is as much between different groups within the "labor" than between management and labor. And within the article it seems that other employees are the ones really pushing for this to be shut down, while managements response is "they haven't actually broken any rules."
Other employees requesting management to shut down a group asking for diversity suggests that there is a problem with diversity. They think that they're a majority and that management would be receptive to such a request.
Of course management refuse to take action. They're already under public scrutiny and it seems the rebels have just expressed their desire to speak, they haven't spoken yet, so it would be a little harsh to crush them so soon.
If you've browsed a lot of NYTimes articles without a paid account, then you'll get paywalled. Using a fresh incognito window usually takes care of the problem. If that doesn't work, I've found that visiting their articles from a Google News link will remove the paywall for the first article you visit.
TBH if you visit them enough to get the paywall, then you probably ought to just pony up the reasonable monthly subscription fee.
Maybe the whole topic is a long-con to incept traditional liberal values back in conservatives, repairing the damage from both ignorance parties having trashed the word.
Kind of moot considering how hard Zuckerberg stanned for Peter Thiel. How much was that Palmer Luckey payout?
I'd argue that if you're working for Facebook you're kind of superficially liberal to begin with. Zuckerberg is only liberal until he has to worry about his bank account.
Right? I'm always super confused when people profess to know a super liberal Facebook. I've yet to hear/see an actual super liberal defend Facebook as such. It's just whatever conveniently fits the narrative at hand.
Also...Oculus' Head of Computer Vision was busted in an underage prostitution ring after all the Palmer non-sense. Yay.
Not sure how the prostitution bust relates to politics? Pretty sure liberals and conservatives are equally pervs. The latter just tends to be more oppressed about it.
I was responding to OP's Palmer reference, not asserting an opinion about the sexual proclivities of right/left cohorts. Apologies if it came across that way.
Usually means an obsessed superfan but have evolved to mean someone with unwavering support of a person or entity. Came from the Eminem song "Stan" about a crazy fan.
>The name of the eponymous character has given rise to a slang term online which refers to overzealous, maniacal, overly obsessed fans of a celebrity or personality; the term has been included in the Oxford English Dictionary.
yes, and the reason is that you are getting paid a lot to create a “product” that will surely be a net negative when all is said and done (if not, then the point doesnt stand obv) so its getting rich at the expense of greater good, which is disqualifying. your choice of work, and how you carry it out, is perhaps the most political thing you do
Regarding 'only 100+ people out of 25,000 employees' comments - I would bet that the total number of employees who disagree with mainstream PC liberal views so prominent in our industry is about half, at least one third. However - most are choosing to stay quiet.
I am posting this anonymously as well. While I don't work at FB, I work at a 'hot tech startup', and cannot risk being 'outed' as a conservative. I would categorize my views as 'slightly right of center', very moderate, but it seems like anything not agreeing with Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders' socialism is equal to being called a 'nazi' in our industry.
I feel very sad about this state of affairs, and I applaud Mr. Amerige for his bravery to do this. I applaud everyone who chose to publicly join him in this effort, putting their careers and livelihoods at danger, risking never being employed in Silicon Valley again.
As I have mentioned in other threads, of the dozens or possibly hundreds of co-workers I've worked directly with during my time so far in Silicon Valley I have met exactly one who disclosed conservative views and support of the Republican party. Either one, there really is a massive lack of political diversity to the extent that less than 1% SV developers are conservativez or (more likely in my opinion) two, there is widespread fear of retaliation and discrimination for making even relatively mainstream conservative views known. And I wouldn't blame them for the latter. I routinely see thinly veiled threats against conservatives in company slack channels (e.g. threatening "Nazis" while subsequently calling border control proponents "Nazis" not long after).
I find this incredibly surprising. Do you give them a chance to?
So many of my colleagues (at a big tech co) have expressed various conservative views. Granted, I live in NYC, but this feels a bit like you're experiencing confirmation bias.
Yes, I've discussed politics with many of my coworkers. Few of them have any hesitation discussing liberal standpoints. I can only assume that conservatives are staying silent.
I can't claim to speak for conservatives, but I can totally understand why they would stay silent given the atmosphere. See the reply to my other comment, where a HN poster straight up says they would fire any employees that support Trump: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864280
> Yes, I've discussed politics with many of my coworkers. Few of them have any hesitation discussing liberal standpoints.
If the linked commenter were to say nobody would express their conservative views to them, that wouldn't surprise me.
However, it seems like you'd be a bit more sympathetic (than the linked commenter). I've found a number of colleagues from red states who supported/support Trump (often for reasons posted in Altman's article about crossing the aisle - single issue voters etc).
Lots of conservatives on Wall Street, too (many leave for big tech cos after a few years).
Finally, I see a bunch of tech-libertarians, which is sort of a hybrid of some conservative financial ideas and some progressive social ideas.
I don't disagree with your experience in NY, but it isn't a very good counterexample to my experiences in Silicon Valley. For what it's worth, I grew up in and routinely visit the Seattle area and I don't think it has the same atmosphere as the San Francisco and Silicon Valley area. I have met plenty of conservatives in Seattle (well, mostly in the outer metro areas of Bellevue, Kirkland, etc.).
I don't work in the Valley, but in my large Facebook-analogous Seattle tech company my experience reflects his. I actively (and successfully) avoid discussing politics at work (I'm closest to a classic liberal fwiw). My company lobbies for and promotes several left-leaning positions (e.g. immigration, which I agree with) in official communications, and I've been on both the passive and active receiving-end of multiple left-leaning political rants since I've joined.
I've never heard any such officially expressed views or political rants from coworkers expressing right-leaning views.
Just a data point but I suspect it's not an uncommon one.
The Republican Party has moved further and further right for the last 30+ years. When one side of an argument goes extreme it almost forces the other side to react severely. A similar stressor works on young adults. They’ve spent almost the entirety of their lives up until the point they move out or go to college at their parents’ discretion(s).
I don’t think this is true at all, I think it’s the middle that’s moved. I was quite left leaning when I was a teenager, but some of my views would be called ‘alt-right’ or extreme today. My values haven’t really changed that much, but they’re much more aligned with the right today. (Downvoted within seconds, very nice).
Believing in near-absolute protection of free speech is a lot easier when you're not the direct target of that "free speech." Not trying to assume your specific social location, but I know a lot of centrists who feel as you do, and they are white men. They might be repulsed by Nazi's who advocate ethnic cleansing, but I have to actually worry about what those people might do if they take power. I have a vested interest in making sure they cannot radicalize more people, and as such I am firmly for censoring them.
No there isn’t. People who oppose free speech have claimed to be protecting people from just about anything you can imagine. “I’m protecting you from...” is how every censorship effort in history has been framed.
It’s not the government’s job to protect you from ideas you don’t like, and people who live in a free society have the responsibility to think for themselves.
> Believing in near-absolute protection of free speech is a lot easier when you're not the direct target of that "free speech."
Which is why I have a hell of a lot of respect for David Goldberger, the Jewish lawyer for the ACLU who defended the free speech of Neo-Nazis in 1977: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html
The problem with your line of reasoning is that it forces you into what most on the left consider a very difficult fork.
PREMISE: Imposing both government sanctions and private sector no-platforming is a justifiable response to murderous ideologies.
(This is a decent, good-faith attempt to interpret the basic principle that seems to motivate people who say the things you say. In isolation, before you read the rest of my argument, I'm willing to bet that you would accept this premise as written. If you didn't, let me know.)
1. Communism is a murderous ideology. (See: all historical records of the 20th century.) Therefore, McCarthy did nothing wrong, and the members of the Hollywood Blacklist were merely the Alex Jones of their time.
2. Communism is not actually a murderous ideology. Therefore, Stalin did nothing wrong.
The fork is basically that, once you accept the premise that allows you to censor and no-platform Nazis, you either have to be a McCarthyist or a Stalinist, or at least an apologist for one of them.
While I do agree with your stated premise, I disagree with the notion that agreeing with the premise forces me to choose between McCarthy and Stalin. My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well. It's my impression that people advocating socialist policies (or any policy not strictly capitalist) were also targeted. I feel I can object to this, while also objecting to horrors wrought by Stalin. I'm not advocating the censorship of conservative views in general, just the murderous views expressed by a small faction.
As a personal side note, I've been enjoying this discussion with you. If you are interested in keeping it up, I'll reply sometime in the morning EST.
> My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well.
Well, maybe. It turns out that the much-condemned “Hollywood blacklist” (which was not government action, just the act of private businesses!) only listed card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA, which was directly bankrolled from Moscow. Which makes those screenwriters far, far, far worse than, say, Alex Jones or James Damore, to name two recent victims of the current left-wing “witch hunt”.
The main reason the various bans on political parties in Europe haven’t devolved into witch hunts is because the bans are in name only. The former communist states in Europe tended to ban the communist party, which immediately went back into business under another name, and no one cared. And, sadly, the crypto-fascist parties like BNP and FN and AfD are probably even more powerful than they would be if you just let them be honest about being fascists. At that point you’re just tabooing words and symbols. If you followed the same policy in the US, you wouldn’t actually end up censoring any KKK or neo-Nazis, because they would just rebrand as “pan-European nationalists” or something and pursue the same platform.
It’s most reasonable to set that bar, if it must be set, at direct and unambiguous incitement of violence, which would not include things like flying swastika flags. Communist Party USA was never banned, unlike Nazi, fascist, and communist parties across Europe, and I agree with that policy. The marginal risk of Stalinism that is incurred by not outlawing CPUSA is much smaller than the marginal risk of totalitarianism inherent in ever allowing or normalizing the censorship of any political ideology. And honestly, neo-Nazis are an even bigger joke.
Any ideology that’s unpopular enough to ban isn’t popular enough to represent a real threat. The people banning it, though—they’re the ones to keep an eye on. Antifa literally march down the street wearing black shirts and beating up people they perceive as enemies, and they don’t see the irony in that. Sure, they should go to jail as soon as they lay hands on anyone, just like anyone else should, but I’m not going to begrudge their right to wear ridiculous black outfits and wave black-and-red flags around, and they’re a lot more likely to end up sending folks to death camps than those neo-Nazi clowns.
> Which makes those screenwriters far, far, far worse than, say, Alex Jones or James Damore, to name two recent victims of the current left-wing “witch hunt”.
I'm honestly surprised to see Jones and Damore mentioned in the same sentence. Jones deliberately spreads misinformation and personally response for directing a lot of hatred and harassment towards innocent people. Damore just published some unpopular (and in my opinion, harmful) views. I lean far left, and even I think that situation was mishandled.
> It turns out that the much-condemned “Hollywood blacklist” (which was not government action, just the act of private businesses!) only listed card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist:
Scholar Thomas Doherty describes how the HUAC hearings swept onto the blacklist those who had never even been particularly active politically, let alone suspected of being Communists: "On March 21, 1951, the name of the actor Lionel Stander was uttered by the actor Larry Parks during testimony before HUAC. "Do you know Lionel Stander?" committee counsel Frank S. Tavenner inquired. Parks replied he knew the man, but had no knowledge of his political affiliations. No more was said about Stander either by Parks or the committee – no accusation, no insinuation. Yet Stander's phone stopped ringing. Prior to Parks's testimony, Stander had worked on ten television shows in the previous 100 days. Afterwards, nothing."
> And, sadly, the crypto-fascist parties like BNP and FN and AfD are probably even more powerful than they would be if you just let them be honest about being fascists.
This is speculation. I'm aware that these groups will continue rebranding and resurfacing, but I don't think a passive approach is effective here. I think a perfect example of this is the Unite the Right rally 1 year ago, vs the reunion this past year. After the events a year ago, many white supremacists were doxxed, shamed, and fired. This year, no one came out to the reunion. If the rally a year ago was a success, do you think that would be the case? I think its reasonable to expect that more people would come out for the event, embolden by previous successes. I know that all the people involved in the rally last year are still white supremacists. My concern is them indoctrinating more members and growing in power. And I think passively letting them have a platform enables them to reach more people, embolden more people, and generally grow in strength.
> The marginal risk of Stalinism that is incurred by not outlawing CPUSA is much smaller than the marginal risk of totalitarianism inherent in ever allowing or normalizing the censorship of any political ideology. And honestly, neo-Nazis are an even bigger joke.
Sure, they may be a joke now. But they are less of a joke now than the were 10 years ago. They have a larger microphone, and while I can't speak for enrollment numbers, the members they have are more active and more visible. They have someone in office that they view as "their guy". By letting them have their platform, we risk letting them grow more. And that is not a marginal risk to me. For me, the marginal risk is that we will ban a non-murderous ideology. I see that both less likely, and safer for me personally, than the alternative.
> Scholar Thomas Doherty describes how the HUAC hearings swept onto the blacklist those who had never even been particularly active politically, let alone suspected of being Communists...
I was referring more to the original Hollywood Ten. Although, I'm curious to hear how the witch hunt you describe would not, in fact, happen with a similarly concerted attempt targeted at far-right views.
> I think a perfect example of this is the Unite the Right rally 1 year ago, vs the reunion this past year. After the events a year ago, many white supremacists were doxxed, shamed, and fired. This year, no one came out to the reunion. If the rally a year ago was a success, do you think that would be the case?
If anything, that's an argument that we don't have to ban Nazis, because all of that happened without any kind of laws in the first place.
Although, I think this also demonstrates what complete rank amateurs the Charlottesville crowd really was. If they had followed the most basic precautions taken by the antifa/black bloc crowd and just covered their faces, it would have been a lot harder to dox them.
The only reason these people are more visible is because the media is putting a spotlight on them to drive the narrative that they're a growing and increasingly dangerous group. It's very reminiscent of the opening stages of the McCarthyist witch hunts.
> Although, I'm curious to hear how the witch hunt you describe would not, in fact, happen with a similarly concerted attempt targeted at far-right views.
This is a concern of mine, which is why I took time to differentiate Jones and Damore. I see one as having a legitimate cause for deplatforming, and the other as reactionary.
> If anything, that's an argument that we don't have to ban Nazis, because all of that happened without any kind of laws in the first place.
I'm curious, do you see a difference between social deplatforming, and a technological deplatforming? Those Nazi's are no longer able/willing to express their ideas in physical space because of pressures exerted by private citizens and institutions. As a society, we've limited these peoples' free speech, and I view that as A Good Thing because it has resulted in lower attendance at subsequent rallies. In the same vein, big tech companies may also be limiting the access to free speech of these people, but I'm okay with that given the views of the people they are limiting.
> This is a concern of mine, which is why I took time to differentiate Jones and Damore. I see one as having a legitimate cause for deplatforming, and the other as reactionary.
Well, isn't that the thing? If you already accept as a given that censorship is legally and morally justified and you turn it into a mere policy decision of who is worthy of censorship, there is a real and present danger of that mere policy decision turning into outright and explicit oppression.
It's like a lot of the classic civil liberties scenarios, like how the "ticking time bomb scenario" can justify torture. So let's talk about that case, by way of analogy. If there's a ticking time bomb, and you can verify within minutes where the bomb is, you can just club someone with a wrench or something until he tells you, and if it turns out the bomb isn't where he told you, you keep torturing him until he tells the truth. In that single, specific, narrow circumstance, you might be able to justify torture. But once you've made a policy of "torture is sometimes justified", how the hell are you going to make sure they only use it in the extreme edge cases where it's called for? More likely, from a rule-utilitarian standpoint, you just end up causing a lot more pain and suffering by letting a bunch of people get tortured unnecessarily.
So, even if there are individual cases where you can have a net reduction in expected totalitarianism and state murder by censoring totalitarian, murderous ideologies, allowing such censorship risks those exact ideologies sneaking in through the back door.
In the free speech case, it's even more dire, because the standard propaganda narrative of murderous, totalitarian ideologies seems to be, "$BOOGEYMAN is murderous and dangerous and we need to restrict civil liberties in order to protect you from them". Nazis never campaigned for universal liberties; they just campaigned for installing themselves as the oppressors and their perceived oppressors as the victims, while pooh-poohing anyone who did advocate for universal liberties.
> I'm curious, do you see a difference between social deplatforming, and a technological deplatforming?
I'm actually idealistic enough that I don't think anyone, even literal Nazis, should be fired for their political views as long as they don't bring those views into the workplace.
I think the pattern of tabooing certain forms of extremism causes more problems than it solves. If you don't actually let racist people say overtly racist things, they're going to say racist-adjacent things that are moderate enough to be held in good faith, like "unrestricted immigration is culturally disruptive" or "the Muslim world doesn't seem to share our cultural values when it comes to respecting women", and then you can't tell the racist trolls apart from people who genuinely hold those moderate views, and now we're at the point of absurdity and indirection where the racist trolls themselves post slogans like, "it's OK to be white", which makes it really, really awkward for those of us who aren't racist trolls, but don't have any rhetorical space left to argue against the scores of far-leftists who regularly state that, actually, it isn't OK to be white.
> It's like a lot of the classic civil liberties scenarios, like how the "ticking time bomb scenario" can justify torture...
That's all good, but we still have a bomb to find. If we say censorship is off the table of acceptable methods to combat Nazis, what are our tools? I'm going to stress again that I haven't seen any convincing argument that a passive approach will work here. The arguments all sound great ("Just ignore them and let them fizzle out!") but I'd like some historical precedents to look at before I can believe that's true. Additionally, the passive approaches don't mention that these groups are active and recruiting. They have plans and playbooks for radicalizing more members. I feel it is legitimate to worry that they will continue to galvanize and grow in power unless we stop them. But I am open to hearing alternative solutions to censorship, as long as they are more thought out and convincing.
> If you don't actually let racist people say overtly racist things...
I've got almost the same question here. In your ideal world, how do we respond when someone says something racist? Do we ignore it? Do we try to teach them why they're wrong? Do we denounce them and call it a day? These are serious questions.
> In your ideal world, how do we respond when someone says something racist? Do we ignore it? Do we try to teach them why they're wrong? Do we denounce them and call it a day? These are serious questions.
Well, there are two options:
If a lot of people seem to give credence to their ideas, then we absolutely have to debate those ideas in the public sphere, as overtly as possible, and because we happen to be right, we will prevail in an open debate.
If, as seems to be the case today, almost nobody gives credence to their ideas, then we just let them make fools of themselves, kind of like how no one minds David Icke's claims about how the British royal family are secretly reptilians from outer space.
> Additionally, the passive approaches don't mention that these groups are active and recruiting. They have plans and playbooks for radicalizing more members. I feel it is legitimate to worry that they will continue to galvanize and grow in power unless we stop them. But I am open to hearing alternative solutions to censorship, as long as they are more thought out and convincing.
I would actually question the notion that these groups are growing in size and influence. While it's hard to have a perfectly controlled experiment, here's an interesting data point. One of the most politically successful overt white supremacists, David Duke, has run for political office on numerous occasions, including two campaigns for a US Senate seat in Louisiana. Duke went from polling at 11.5% (141,489 votes) for a Louisiana US Senate election in 1996 to 3% (58,581 votes) for a Louisiana US Senate election in 2016.
> If, as seems to be the case today, almost nobody gives credence to their ideas, then we just let them make fools of themselves, kind of like how no one minds David Icke's claims about how the British royal family are secretly reptilians from outer space.
Is that really the same though? The key differences as I see them: 1) History. Racism has been taught for many years (for a long time "scientifically proven"). I'm guessing Icke's views are rather new. The leads to 2) Cultural relevancy. There are plenty of racist people out there, each generation teaching the next. I'm not sure how many people believe that about the royal family, but I'm guessing not as many. This matters because 3) Racists are harmful. Unless Icke is about to break into the palace to prove his theory, he seems pretty harmless. We can leave him alone to make a fool of himself. Discrimination and hate crimes are not things I want to leave alone, I'd like them to end.
> I would actually question the notion that these groups are growing in size and influence.
While size may be debatable, I think influence is less so. The data I've seen says hate crimes are up in numbers. The president refuses to call these groups terrorists. Social media is filled with their propaganda and troll mobs. This doesn't feel like a group that is losing power or influence.
Fun Fact: A lot of people, when discussing Free Speech, bring up Nazis and how some views should be banned. In fact, Weimar Germany, although much more liberal than the republic under Bismarck, cracked down on hate speech and jailed many Nazis, which only led to them getting a more sympathetic hearing and a broader audience:
"Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective pubic relations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate.
In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews."[1]
This pattern has been repeated in other countries as well. So, it's really a shame that people aren't looking back to history's lessons here. I understand that when you see something really offensive, your reaction is to ban it, but there are all sorts of unexpected things that happen when you do that, from the Barbara Streisand effect, to driving discussions underground, where they tend to become more extreme because they are only debated in an echo chamber with like minded individuals rather than brought out to the public square.
I am obviously not talking about employer code of conduct. In my opinion, there should be no place for politics on the job site, but just be aware that you are not actually stomping out any offending beliefs by punishing those who express them -- at best you are driving those beliefs underground where they will go unchallenged, and at worst you are also creating a much wider audience of sympathetic ears, mostly drawn from a public who doesn't like to be told what to think.
>at worst you are also creating a much wider audience of sympathetic ears, mostly drawn from a public who doesn't like to be told what to think.
I very firmly believe that if it we're for the chorus of media outlets and public voices pushing the idea that anybody who didn't like Hillary, or who did like Trump, were all racist, sexist, deplorable... That Trump probably wouldn't have been elected.
I think that was part of it -- the "deplorables" line really hurt her. Hillary didn't have anywhere near the political talent that Bill had, where by "political talent" I mean being able to connect with people and bring you over to their side. I was stunned when she was nominated, because I couldn't imagine her winning a national election.
I think Al Gore had similar issues vis-a-vis Bush. He was just robotic, condescending in his stump speeches and debates. He was the exact wrong person to nominate to run against Bush, just in terms of his public persona.
The TV age really changed politics, and treating people with respect and not talking down to them matters. I think this rules out a lot of people who would otherwise make capable administrators, but that's how it is. And all of these people may be great one on one, but stick them in front of a camera, and man, they are cringe-worthy.
While I'm at it, Elizabeth Warren has the same problem. She comes off as a schoolmarm, constantly talking down to people. Please don't nominate her, Democrats, don't keep doing this. It would be nice to bring two party rule back to this country, so get someone who can win -- someone in the Bill Clinton, Barack Obama mold, who is able to be passionate about something while at the same time doesn't sound like they are scolding you for having the wrong views.
>I was stunned when she was nominated, because I couldn't imagine her winning a national election.
I think the way she got herself nominated didn’t do her any favors either. It was quite transparently corrupt and must’ve flipped a good amount of Bernie supporters.
> Only extremists on the left would disagree that sex differences are partially/fully biological (depending on how you're defining biological and sex).
Unfortunately, there were enough “extremists” to get both Larry Summers and James Damore fired.
Summers and Damore exercised their first amendment right to free speech.
Their employers decided they did not want to deal with the entirely predictable controversy both caused and exercised their first amendment right to freedom of association.
> Summers and Damore exercised their first amendment right to free speech.
Since the government had no part in what happened to them, this is true in a trivial sense. However, it does not support whatever argument you are trying to make.
> ... first amendment right to freedom of association
People like to trot this out as an defense but they forget that freedom of association is not unlimited precisely because of its use in the past for discrimination. (Deeply ironic, is it not?) For example, the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Fair Housing Act of 1968 restrict freedom of association in that they require businesses and landlords / property sellers to serve people in protected classes in a fair manner.
Having also read Damore's memo, it's not categorically false.
His stance was that women are, on average, more cooperative, more prone to anxiety, and less driven by status than men. He says that those traits explain the gender gap in tech employment because the current tech culture is high stress, requires long hours and hard work, and is highly competitive.
In other words, women are (on average) less suited to work in technology and leadership positions because of their biologically determined personality traits.
The overall conclusion, which I seem to recall Damore taking great pains to clarify, is that individual women who happen to be competitive, driven, and resilient to stress can and do thrive in the tech industry, while individual men who lack those traits can and do struggle, but the differing distribution of those traits across the entire population will affect population-level statistics even absent overt discrimination.
Rounding that off to "women are less suited to work in tech" is completely dishonest, because there was never any claim that each and every woman is less suited for the tech industry than a man. A more accurate summary would be, "fewer women are suited to work in tech".
I can maybe think of a few. In the 90s, the Democratic line was against giving most favored trading status to China, and the republicans wanted free trade with China. Paradoxically, Clinton let that through, IIRC. The reasoning was basically the US will be dwarfed by China’s size sooner or later - the best position for the US to maneuver to was as the strongest partner of them. I’d argue that’s changed more for reasons exogenous to the US political system and not representative of the total.
You're right, in terms of some social policies. We've gone from it being a left leaning thing to not support assaulting out LGBT people to tacit mainstream support of the idea of having equal rights.
In terms of economics and power, the rich have gotten richer, the republicans have gotten ruthlessly more fundamentalist. Reagan raised taxes. Nixon proposed universal healthcare. Obamacare/Romneycare was originally a Heritage foundation "we wish" policy document. Trump has added a trillion dollars to the deficit for a tax cut, without a peep from the "deficit hawk"s.
We’ve actually moved from a society that was openly intolerant of liberal values, to one that is openly intolerant of conservative ones. Neither of those scenarios are better, it’s just putting the shoe on the other foot. When I was a kid I had to worry about some coalition of Christians or moms petitioning congress to prevent me from listening to rage against the machine. Now I have to worry about a mob of liberals branding me a Nazi and trying to get me fired for supporting free speech. I’ve always supported freedom of expression and tolerance to other world views. When I was younger, that made me a liberal. Today, that makes me a conservative (or an extremist depending on who you ask).
Please, there’s a government literally ordering people to prop up alt-right viewpoints. Anecdotally, anytime I voice any criticism IRL and online of anything alt-right I’m immediately refuted forcefully and/or downvoted. My OP probably has more negatives than yours.
I’ve never experienced a scenario where the government has forced a view point upon me, and I’ve never heard of that happening to anybody else. What I do experience on an ongoing basis is pressure to keep my views secret, under thread of an often played out form of mob justice. The only thing that’s changed is the group of people who believe they have the moral authority to dictate my views to me.
Has Facebook ever had anything close to cultural principles? At least Google had "don't be evil" for a while.
This is such a clear mirror for what Facebook is going through itself. As a company it never stood for anything except for growth and engagement at all costs. When leadership doesn't stand for anything, it invites others to try to guide culture.
If Zuckerberg had come out to say either the product or the company's culture stands for something, it would put this all to rest...but he won't, because growth and engagement at all costs.
I don’t buy that zuvkerberg is a liberal. He’s made it clear he doesn’t respect anyone’s privacy nor honor their trust. He seems highly manipulative wrapped in whatever phrasing works at the moment.
Respecting personal privacy and honoring individual's trust is hardly a liberal policy plank. For better or worse, the platform is predicated on the state generally knowing better than the individual on social policy.
I'm aware of classical liberals, but minus some minor differences the contemporary term for them is "libertarian"; in my experience the only people who use the term 'classical liberal' are libertarians seeking to distance themselves from their own cohort.
It should be noted that many views espoused by what Americans call 'liberals' or 'left-leaning' people are in fact the mainstream in the EU (such as issues about abortion, gun control, death penalty, healthcare, and so on) and commonly accepted by almost all parties except what we'd call 'far-right' ones. So I'm wondering: when those articles pop up calling the tech world/the Valley/company X a 'liberal monoculture' or whatever, are they implying that it is also the case for the entirety of a continent? Or is it simply that, as in Europe, a minority of people with fringe and socially unacceptable views is wishing rather loudly that their views weren't so fringe and socially unacceptable?
> It should be noted that many views espoused by what Americans call 'liberals' or 'left-leaning' people are in fact the mainstream in the EU (such as issues about abortion, gun control, death penalty, healthcare, and so on) and commonly accepted by almost all parties except what we'd call 'far-right' ones.
That's a massive oversimplification:
* Ireland only recently legalized abortion, which has been legal in the United States since 1972. The legal status of abortion in the United States is in some ways far more liberal than in many European countries, and in other ways less.
* American courts have routinely protected levels of civil liberties that are beyond those recognized anywhere in the EU.
* Unlike some EU countries, the United States neither has a state-established religion, nor regulates or prohibits the public exercise of religion.
* The United States has stricter corporate regulations and higher corporate taxes than many EU countries. The right-wing Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" ranks the United States 18th, below Switzerland, Ireland, Estonia, the UK, Iceland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the Netherlands. According to actual American conservatives, countries following the famed "Nordic Model" are in fact, even more capitalist than the United States!
>Ireland only recently legalized abortion, which has been legal in the United States since 1972. The legal status of abortion in the United States is in some ways far more liberal than in many European countries, and in other ways less.
Abortion was supported by the majority of the Irish for a while. That it became legal recently is only mildly correlated with the social acceptability of the view itself, and prior to legalization many women would simply fly to England or wherever to do what they had to do.
>American courts have routinely protected levels of civil liberties that are beyond those recognized anywhere in the EU.
>Unlike some EU countries, the United States neither has a state-established religion, nor regulates or prohibits the public exercise of religion.
>The United States has stricter corporate regulations and higher corporate taxes than many EU countries. The right-wing Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" ranks the United States 18th, below Switzerland, Ireland, Estonia, the UK, Iceland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the Netherlands. According to actual American conservatives, countries following the famed "Nordic Model" are in fact, even more capitalist than the United States!
I'm not sure how that relates to my point. I never said Europe is consistently more left-leaning than America on every political issue, which would be a very silly point indeed that'd require twisting the definition of 'left-leaning' to the point of meaninglessness. I'm saying that many views considered left-leaning or liberal in America are the norm in Europe, and I'm raising the question of whether that makes Europe and its ~500M inhabitants a monoculture equivalent to that of tech companies.
* Women only achieved the federal vote in Switzerland in 1971, and the for local votes the last hold-out was forced to acquiesce by the Supreme Court only in 1991.
* There is no country in Europe with abortion laws as permissive as those in the United States (or Canada, but that's it's own strange case). Portugal didn't legalize abortion until 2007, and it is only available on-demand up until the 10th week. Abortion is still illegal in Ireland (in the process of reform after last May's referendum). In Germany abortion-on-demand is only legal in the first 12 weeks, and requires mandatory counselling with a 3-day waiting period.
* While no EU states practice the death penalty because it is a condition of membership, majorities in France, the Baltics, Czech Republic, and several Eastern European countries still [support it](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/55sze2/support_for...), and in the UK support was up around 70% less than a decade ago. Current support for the death penalty in the US has registered as between 49 and 55% in the last few years. Not totally out of line in terms of public opinion, though there are more states that have the death penalty in the US obviously.
* I was stunned to be in a German class in Berlin with students from several EU countries, most of them in their early 20s, and also be the only one present who had no problem with homosexual adoption, which was most stridently opposed by representatives of catholic countries. I was the only North American.
In practice, many US states have arbitrary barriers to abortion that make it harder to actually get one in parts of the US than in parts of the EU, so I didn’t want to make too strong of a statement. But certainly, I don’t know of any European countries with a national or federal law regarding abortion that is as permissive as the federal statutory and case law of the United States.
I'm European. Yes, we think abortion, gun control, no death penalty and public healthcare are normal things. But European companies, or European work colleagues, don't think that (conservative) Americans are unhireable, or that they should be fired just because they're Americans and hold American political views.
That's a good point. I believe it's due to the fact that American-style conservative views are so fringe in Europe that no one takes them as a threat no matter outlandish they are. But in many European companies, signaling yourself as a supporter of the local far-right party (whether it be the AfD or the FN or the SD or whatever) can be grounds for blacklisting and ostracization. Still, the question remains: does that make Europe a monoculture?
I think that outlawing hate groups and proscribing their speech is an appropriate function of the state. It's an instrinsically public, political function. That's why it shouldn't be done by company management: it rightfully falls to a democratic institution that's accountable to the whole of the public.
I must be naive, because I cannot think of any political topic I would be discussing at work. How is this intolerance of right-wing ideology being expressed? What views specifically are being not-tolerated?
Without these specifics, it's hard to understand the problem.
At a company like Facebook, I could imagine how politics enter into work discussions about trending story ranking or news site bias warnings, for example.
I can't speak for Facebook, but I've seen political drama on GitHub before. Certain people would go around and open issues on repos that had contributors deemed -ist or -obe and call for their removal. Opal comes to mind
Usually, it's a conservative saying in front of his group of foreign co-workers "I think it's great that Trump is cracking down on all these foreign workers stealing our jobs".
Then they wonder why nobody wants to get lunch with them.
Diversity practices in hiring, for example. In the case of Facebook, things like moderation/curation of the various news feeds and arguments around "suppression" of certain topics.
I’m a hiring manager, but I don’t work in HR. I follow HR guidelines and ask relevant policy questions. Nothing more. I don’t express an opinion about our hiring practices around diversity.
>moderation/curation of news feeds
The article doesn’t say that all these individuals raising the issue work on one feature. That would be a relevant detail. My reading of this piece suggests that a swathe of individuals don’t like company culture — the bits that bind employees above the work itself - and that’s the part I can’t grasp. I work at a Fortune 50 company and I have no idea the political or religious affiliations of my coworkers. I could guess, but don’t want to.
I just don’t see how a company culture can have an impactful political bias to people who mind their own business. The article doesn’t specify any specific instance, so I can’t form an opinion on the validity of their claims.
Worked across very liberal and very conservative places in tech. Neither is pleasant.
In my opinion, the American self-image and self-worth largely characterized by subscription to a political ideology is the problem.
What bothers me is not dress codes,free meals,open offices,etc... But the very idea that a company would display or promote politics in the work place.
Why are companies promoting "pride",donating to trump,telling workers to attend 'lgbt tolerance' meetings,etc... Wth!!!!
If you are my coworker,I respect you as a colleague and a human being. Your private life and beliefs are not mine to police or encourage in anyway. Left,right,etc... Who cares? You're at work!
Look at it this way,if your company is pro something,it can be anti- that same thing as soon as it becomes profitable to do so. Imagine not being able to work in tech because how you vote,pray or who you associate with becomes inconvenient to the industry.
This is my question for you: Are you willing to surrender your right to believe what you want,associate with whom you want and support the political causes that matter to you in exchange for your political views and ideology becoming the norm you can't deviate from?
What is the alternative? Do politics with your friends, family and community,associate with whom you want and believe what you want. When at work respect your colleagues,not because of their politics and beliefs but because
1) they're human
2) you would want to be respected if you were in their shoes
3) out of respect for your own self
This isn't about left vs right or kkk vs blm. It's about corporations vs individuals,who decides what views,beliefs and associations are acceptable. Should society be run by the people or by the ruling class and their corporate machine?
Same as conservative. Someone telling me what is ok and not ok to believe. I did not show up to work to get a brain-wash. I joined a company,not a cult.
There is the unreachable ideal of political neutrality, then there are the achievable murky states of "neutral enough" that we can strive to achieve in daily life.
A workplace should be, first and foremost, a place where work is done. The march of history has proven that allowing people who are mistaken in their beliefs to contribute positively has achieved great things. Consider, for example, Fritz Haber - many of his beliefs and principles are clearly bad ideas, and his overall contribution is overwhelmingly positive. This is a particularly good example of a general principle that exists up and down the industrial underpinnings of modern western civilisation.
Politics entering the workplace, and monocultures in particular, represent a threat the the mechanisms that allow corporations to drive good outcomes. Nobody should want that, especially considering that even apparent fact sometimes turns out to be wrong.
Not the OP, but twofold: Being told that certain hobbies/beliefs I had were explicitly disallowed to be discussed, whereas comparable statements on the other side were perfectly OK, and having the situation escalated on me aggressively when I asked to understand the apparent hypocrisy. (These were not radical things, by the way, take an example as 'laser tag'; I'm leaving out detail as I'll mention in my second point)
Secondly, following from the first, the fact that I have to post something even as innocuous as this this anonymously out of fear of retribution of it was linked with my professional identity.
Absolutely. I completely disagree with the whole "bring your whole self to work". No! Bring your professional self to work.
The counter-argument is that the causes relate to discrimination in the workforce. I.e., BLM needs to be supported because blacks are underrepresented in the American tech workforce. I disagree these need to be equivalent. It's possible for a company to promote hiring underrepresented minorities without allowing employees to advertise their political beliefs.
What happened to never talking about politics on the first date or at your job?
It's called corporate social responsibility. Companies advocate for their bottom line and their employees at the same time.
As a gay dude that grew up in Ohio -- and had people yell "fag" when I got my diploma at graduation -- I'm beyond happy that the next generation of LGBTQ engineers won't grow up with the same level of hate I experienced.
The arc of moral justice is only bent when force is applied.
You only say that because it's convenient for you. You would not like it one bit at the conservative places I worked at. It really is a two way street and u-turns are allowed.
This is an important question - how much personalization is ok within a workplace? I am grateful I've worked in really professional environments - nothing overtly political or anything. It might have been a bit bland, but honestly it helped us stay focused on the work.
> You would not like it one bit at the conservative places I worked at.
So the commenter says that he looks forward to the next generation of developers not experiencing the hate that he has experienced. You say, he’d be unhappy at conservative places, presumably because he’d still experience that hate.
So then why do you wonder why he pushes for politics in the workforce? His goal—hell, it should be all of our goal—is to stamp out places where such hate is encouraged.
I don't think the presumption is that he would still be experiencing the hate. But neither might his lifestyle be celebrated at work. And why should it be?
If you hate conservatives and want to stamp them out, then by your own logic they’d be completely justified in preemptively stamping you out before you get the chance to do it to them.
> why do you wonder why he pushes for politics in the workforce?
Because he doesn’t understand that these places openly hostile towards gays are likely formed by white heterosexual Christian conservatives defending their identity and pushing for politics at workplace.
> it should be all of our goal—is to stamp out places where such hate is encouraged
You can’t stamp out people. You forcibly convert that one place to your faith, people will likely change jobs or move to other states.
I don’t think the right way to solve this is oppress, stamp out, or discriminate people positively or negatively. The right way is promoting tolerance (the good one i.e. civilized behavior towards people despite different positions, not the bad one that says everyone must express the only true position), and most importantly following the laws.
Democracy + judicial system worked OK for centuries. IMO it’s the only working mechanism invented so far how a society can function despite different people have different identities and beliefs.
> Recently however, in places like Bay Area, the conservatives are no longer a majority, and consequently the treats became quite real
Spoiler Alert: the current threats to their identity are just as imaginary. White heterosexual conservatives will eventually learn how to be a minority, just like every other identity in this country has.
What, precisely, about other minorities existing threatens that identity?
You keep repeating this claim of threats, but haven't been able to articulate any.
> I don’t think the right way to solve this is oppress, stamp out, or discriminate people positively or negatively.
And yet that's precisely what the Google engineer linked to was doing by circulating his memo describing how he and others believed women weren't as "qualified" to be programmers based solely on their biology. Hence, why he was fired.
The only thing that cannot be tolerated in a tolerant society is intolerance itself.
See the link in the previous comment. Being fired for expressing a political viewpoint is a classic example of discrimination. Also because the subject was about work conditions, the firing was illegal in California jurisdiction.
> describing how he and others believed women weren't as "qualified" to be programmers
Apparently, you have not read that memo. He never said that (I’ve just downloaded the memo and searched), nor anything similar to that. And IMO he never meant that either.
That really doesn't describe a threat to the "white heterosexual Christian" identity. In fact, you're free to be a white heterosexual Christian at Google or anywhere else for that matter.
> Being fired for expressing a political viewpoint is a classic example of discrimination.
Again, the viewpoint on women and minorities was an intolerant one. Please study the Paradox of Tolerance.
> He never said that (I’ve just downloaded the memo and searched), nor anything similar to that.
You're right, he made a much more broad statement about the gender gap in the tech industry. Although there is this section:
> Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
>○ These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
He's regurgitating the idea that biology, rather than society, is what is holding women back in the tech industry. This is an intolerant viewpoint, as it suggests that there is something inherent about being female that makes them inferior at participating in the tech industry.
> The conclusion you’ve made in this and previous comments is about abilities.
This is the conclusion the author of the memo reaches as well. His suggestions are not to fix the culture surrounding these preferences, but instead to simply "give women what they prefer", which inherently limits their experience and makes an implicit claim on their ability without that compensation.
He makes observation of women's preferences, based on data. You claim he is "suggesting" something that is not there (seems like projection). Is this really the best argument for Damore's "intolerance" (in the memo) you can make?
Because you really sound like making stuff up, just to confirm your bias against Damore. The whole memo was about something else, yet you claim that because:
> He then prescribes things based on that generalization that make implicit claims about the ability of women to work without said compensation.
(whatever that actually means)
he is:
> He's regurgitating the idea that biology, rather than society, is what is holding women back in the tech industry.
That's gross hyperbole at best, and, considering you have not provided single citation (even after being called out), seems like random baseless belief you hold.
Frankly, now your two liner applies wonderfully:
> You are free to believe whatever you want. Just be prepared for your ideology to be called out for what it is if you choose to publicly stand for it.
> And yet that's precisely what the Google engineer linked to was doing by circulating his memo describing how he and others believed women weren't as "qualified" to be programmers based solely on their biology. Hence, why he was fired.
After all discussions on the HN on the topic you still hold this view? When you paint the dissenting view in the worst possible light (and imagine a few things just to be sure), you will be seen as the oppresor.
>So then why do you wonder why he pushes for politics in the workforce? His goal—hell, it should be all of our goal—is to stamp out places where such hate is encouraged.
How do you think a person who wore a MAGA hat to Google or Facebook would be treated? What about someone who advocates that people who entered the country without permission should be charged with a crime? I think the point being made is that be careful how the minority is treated because one day you might be in the minority. The best way to do that is to keep out politics out of work.
That an individual would "not like it one bit" at a politically-active conservative company for no reason other than that they are gay, is an argument against modern American conservatism, not against corporate social responsibility.
> You only say that because it's convenient for you.
I’m a heterosexual white male. It’s convenient for me to ignore the hardship of people who are outside my demographic.
I went for smoothies with a work friend who was outwardly gay and heard him called a faggot by a couple of random people when I realized how different life might be for someone who is not me. It was not great. It would be more convenient if I hadn’t heard that. The fact is, it happens.
I'm not saying you and others shouldn't be politically involved. I'm not even saying companies shouldn't contribute to political causes. I'm just saying they shouldn't encourage their workers to do so in the workplace.
You shouldn't be called a slur at work not because of the type of slur, but the fact that it is a slur at all.
> Companies advocate for their bottom line and their employees at the same time.
Pretty much just their bottom line. Companies advocate for whatever position makes a large majority of people think of them as the "good guys". How many companies did you see advocating for gay marriage before the political zietgeist shifted in favor of it a few years ago?
Rest assured that all these "socially conscious" corporations will have a sudden and miraculous change of heart the instant the sociopolitical winds shift on any given issue. And you will be expected to fall in line or keep your opinions to yourself.
Personally, I don't want my career success or failure to depend on my willingness to pledge fealty to whatever insincere political opinion my employer thinks is currently expedient.
I don't agree with this "professional self" thing. I think you should bring your whole self to work...but sure, as with everything that should come in moderation. We all go to work to do a job, after all. But maybe the core problem is that we can't just agree to disagree, on some things. We have gotten to the point, as a society, that if you are right of center (in some circles), you're batshit alt-right crazy. And that's honestly just another form of discrimination.
Why can't you talk about politics at work? We spend most of our waking hours at work. There should be basic ground rules for civility and then people should be free to say what they want, without fear that they'll be fired because they donated to some GOP candidate.
That's tolerance, and honestly, that's America. What the hell happened where everyone's trying to bite each other's heads off all the time?
It's not that people disagree with you; it's just that your ideas aren't adding much to the conversation. You've got piles of misinformation, no sources, that beautiful demand for civility in the face of categorically uncivil views, and then the wonderful demand for "tolerance". Tolerance has limits and you can't allow tolerance of ideas that exist in mortal opposition. IE there is no room for white supremacists in a multicultural world. That's why you've been downvoted. Your dog whistles are too obvious for even this forum.
Labeling someone a white supremacist and dog-whistler in response to that comment is an outright personal attack. We ban users who do that, regardless of how right they are or feel, and regardless of their politics. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
It's hard enough for a topic this divisive to show up on HN; stooping this low just sets the whole place on fire.
> What the hell happened where everyone's trying to bite each other's heads off all the time?
Here is the issue: while the left is saying "we need better healthcare, immigrants are a part of this country's foundations, and student debt will cripple the nation", the right firmly supports a POTUS that says "Mexicans are rapists, peaceful protesters are a disgrace, and the media is the enemy of the people."
And the reason people are biting each other's heads off is because the right firmly believes their bigoted racism is just an "opinion" that's as open to discussion as the left's progressive agenda.
Karl Popper intelligently realized this is unsustainable[1], and that the only solution to prevent a complete collapse of a tolerant society is the crushing of the intolerant.
Like expelling men accused of sexual misconduct without allowing them to defend themselves, while demanding that "people of color" be allowed to break the law without consequence (eg, trespassing, immigration).
Like forbidding hate speech, unless it's anti-white, anti-male speech, which will get you a job as an editor at the NY Times.
> That's tolerance, and honestly, that's America. What the hell happened
Don't even go on Twitter, listen to mainstream media and see how much negativity is pumped out 24/7 in industrial quantities. It's an information analogue of First World War industrial warfare, and the effects are devastating.
Look at the comment here just below here - I am sure this guy who thinks half of the country is bigoted racists who needs to be crushed - is a nice person in real life who is a pleasure to be around. As long as he/she doesn't see you as an outgroup. And you probably would get along just nicely if you do not discuss things that reveal you as an outgroup. But if you and them bring your whole self to work, and turns out that person thinks you need to be crushed - would it be easy to get along, going forward?
I think a lot of it stems from the dorm-ification of workplaces. Because the ROI is so good, employers want you to think of work as more of an institution that is heavily tied to your identity rather than just a place of business. You're not an employee at Google - you're a Googler. Once you leave, you are a Google Alumni. The end result is that your whole self is brought into work because the boundaries between personal and professional life are heavily eroded.
Except that it was never like that. In the old times when conservative beliefs were the norm, discrimination was brought to the workplace. There was no standard saying that you should leave your racist, misogynistic views out of the office.
I think this only makes sense if you see corporations as entities completely separate from the people who work for them.
The way I see it, corporations are the people who work for them and their relationships. And since politics deals with peoples and their relationships, politics in an inherent aspect of corporations. And all attempts to separate the two by promoting politics that differ from the politics of the people in the organization is an act of propaganda.
Up front, I believe it's for the good of American society that more women should be in tech in America. That said, I think companies should go out there and ensure they engage people at the start, in Elementary school. Be they women, blacks and even whites (see the many H1Bs we need to shore up demand).
But... I don't think this should be a PR stunt. Or should be politicized. Go out there, and do the hard work. Engage all people and recruit the whole eligible population. It's in our interest, but don't politicize it and don't introduce politicized quotes. Do it methodically without pretenses.
Recruit in elementary school? Seriously? How about pay more taxes to provide a better k-12 education so the kids have a baseline on which they can learn the skills they need to succeed in tech.
I believe that is exactly what they mean. They aren't proposing that Google etc. hire 6 year olds, they're proposing that the companies get involved in promoting what they do and how to get there. If these companies spent more of the billions they earn on enhancing education, showing off what they do and getting young kids involved in Tech then we may see a change in representation for these underrepresented groups.
Pay more taxes so kids can "learn" more common core bullshit? Why on earth should the institution of force in our society have a monopoly on funding our schools and legislating what's taught in them? The tacit statism on this forum is just absurd...
> That said, I think companies should go out there and ensure they engage people at the start, in Elementary school. Be they women, blacks and even whites (see the many H1Bs we need to shore up demand).
This appears to be a form of the "pipeline" argument, that the problem with low participation rates by some demographic groups is due to a lack of those people in the earlier stages of the career pipeline to the workplace.
The thing to understand about the pipeline problem is that it is the same thing as the hostile/discriminating workplace problem. The pipeline leaks at every stage, from kindergarten to the boardroom, because some demo groups are supported, assumed capable, etc, and others are not.
So the solutions are the same at every level: workplace and school policies that explicitly correct the inequitable treatment, both structural and individual.
"It's possible for a company to promote hiring underrepresented minorities without allowing employees to advertise their political beliefs."
That's only true with extreme censorship. If a company I was working for was hiring people based on race, I would call that out for the blatant racism that it is (under the disguise of "hiring underrepresented minorities"). Would that be an inappropriate airing of my "political" beliefs. It may be construed as "political", but really it's just pointing out a tautology and making a very obviously true value judgement (people ought not to be hired or not-hired based on their race).
I don't agree with the sentiment, but you're absolutely right that "non political" can only be achieved by strict definition and enforcement of what is and isn't political, which of course is itself a political act.
If my coworker doesn’t believe I have a right to not die from a chronic illness, thinks I shouldn’t have the right to get married, or thinks less of someone because of the color of their skin, then I don’t respect them as a coworker or a human being.
That this is downvoted here is really a depressing thing. Does hackernews actually represent the average, highly educated tech professional? If so we are in for a very bad time.
Keep politics out of the workplace. Just because you support the things listed, it doesn't mean everyone has to hear about it and succumb to your outspoken politics. Go out on the street, go home, go anywhere else and be political. At work, just shut up and work.
I wasn’t talking about thinking that taxes are a little high.
We’re talking about fundamentally bigoted and hateful beliefs. I refuse to believe that someone who holds those beliefs is able to separate those beliefs from how they treat others in the workplace.
Well, here's the deal. The employer gets to decide, since it is their company. Before I retired, there were a lot of things I didn't like about work. I thought management regularly made bad decisions, in a number of different areas. But if you are an employee, you go along with what management wants, or you move along.
That’s only half of the deal. The employer can’t take the employees for granted any more than the employees can take the job for granted. So the other half of the deal is that the employee had better be offering a worthwhile opportunity. Employee turnover is not cost-free. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be perfect. But it is a two way street.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing.”
Politics does come into work with things like family leave policy, hiring, promotions, corporate giving, corporate mission, etc.
It’s inescapable. Even denying it doesn’t make it go away.
Feel free to take your own advice and shut up yourself, but it’s up to other people to decide for themselves what they will speak up about, knowing the price they may pay for, in some cases, confronting whatever they are up against.
You don't get. That isn't why you should respect them!!
Their beliefs are not grounds to or not to respect them. Their beliefs are part of their private life. You are able to change what rights and liberties are allowed to you because you can participate in society and politics without getting fired from your jon and exiled for your unpopular beliefs.
Just because you find it difficult doesn't mean everyone does. Oh, I know you don't consider that bigotry... But I'm sure someone will.
EDIT: It should probably be pointed out that the definition of bigotry is "intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.", pulled straight from Google. "If my coworker doesn’t believe ... then I don’t respect them as a coworker or a human being" (pulled from the great-grandparent post, from the same author as the parent) fits that perfectly, no matter what the opinion in the middle is.
Is being intolerant of racism the same thing as being intolerant of racists, though? In my opinion, it's not - and you can be intolerant of racism while still working with a racist. If none of the actions they take at work are racist, then that's all that should matter. Would I be friends with them though? Not knowingly!
There are unpopular beliefs, and then there are beliefs that lead to the infringement of civil and human rights. Everyone has a right to their beliefs, but even bigot snowflake racist republicans do not have a right to be free from consequences for their beliefs. One such consequence is they are not as likely to earn the respect of respectable people.
Gay/LGBTQ rights and tolerance in the workplace is way different than donating to Trump.
I understand if you don't think a company should support a political party, but LGBTQ/gay tolerance meetings don't fall into that category.
If you put this into the context of some other progressive social movement such as giving women equal opportunity to men, it makes more sense. A company would not be out of line giving seminars about gender equality in the workplace even though some people may disagree. It's not a partisan issue. It's about acceptance and tolerance.
That's an interesting point, however I disagree it's tolerance of one group that makes someone intolerant of another group. In other words, I don't think being tolerant of black people means I must be intolerant of white people.
Karl Popper wrote about this idea called the paradox of tolerance [0] asking if you should be tolerant of intolerance.
Intolerance of anti-black people makes you intolerant,not tolerance of black people. That intolerance would be fine(I certainly don't tolerate anti-black people in my personal life) but I would want to make every effort to be professional and respectful towards a skinhead at work.
I presume you would only complain about the workplace behaviour of this skinhead.
If your target skinhead kept all his skinhead behaviour out of the workplace, and only displayed respect and tolerance to his colleagues, would you still organise to get him fired?
To be clear skinhead is sort of ambiguous. I'm reading neonazi and I think you meant neonazi but people do actually use the term to mean other things it seems.
If you mean neonazi I would for no reason I can imagine tolerate them. Would you tolerate someone who hated and wanted to subjugate or murder some portion of your loved ones because they were polite at work so they could earn a living?
I do not intend to have a Philosophy 101-level debate here, but would like to say that some things are not morally ambiguous. It is fine and good to be disrespectful towards skinheads at work, on the bus, or anywhere else. It is not fine or good to be respectful towards skinheads. Someone who wishes violence against a class of people based on their race does not have a place in a well-functioning society for these beliefs to be openly tolerated and accepted.
Popper was wrong - or, perhaps, not specific enough. The paradox only arises when you tolerate intolerant actions. But it does not arise at all if you tolerate intolerant opinions - which is the relevant part in this particular case.
If my co-worker is donating to Trump, and talking about kicking foreign workers out of America, they're literally talking about kicking ME out of the country. They're donating money to a politician who wants to make my life harder, and make my visa process less pleasant.
I can tolerate my co-worker all day, but if they're working to make my life less pleasant and workable, they're going to feel some chill.
Sorry you're eating alone conservatives, but you're working at a place with thousands of foreign co-workers, what did you think was going to happen?
Let's turn that around. In case it's not clear, these aren't my beliefs:
If my co-worker is opposing Trump, and talking about bringing more foreign workers to America, they're literally talking about lowering MY wages. They're donating money to a politician who wants to make my life harder, and make my work environment more competitive.
I can tolerate my co-worker all day, but if they're working to make my life less pleasant and workable, they're going to feel some chill.
Sorry you're eating alone immigrants, but you're working at a place with tens of thousands of native co-workers, what did you think was going to happen?
Oh, I'd agree it's not quite as strong an argument. But it's not a slight on your worth - if anything it's saying you're worth enough to not want to compete against! Legitimacy, sure. I'd still rather people end up at least being exposed to opposing arguments, even if they aren't ones I'd make or agree with. And if it convinces someone that perhaps they're in a MAD situation instead of one where they're ensured a win, well... It's probably worth it.
Personally, I think that high-skill immigration is a very good thing for the country, and not a bad thing for the workers in the sectors they'd be joining. It's a globalized economy - competing with an engineer from Korea when they're 50 feet down the street isn't that far from competing with them while they're in Seoul.
Thanks for this.
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance."
It seems to hinge on "rational argument" to base determination on whether tolerance is warranted, lest intolerance creep in. I wasn't able to discern the bar for "rational argument". Do you have some more info?
I love discussing politics with co-workers that don't agree with me. You have to be careful to respect the person and not make it personal but it's really fun to explore complex ideas.
I think we just need to learn how to disagree in a friendly and constructive way. But also learn when to drop something and just get on with work.
I don't mean any offense, but it has been my experience that people who can afford to "put politics aside", so to speak, are people from demographics who didn't have politics "happen" to them.
When you are gay or trans and a significant chunk of people find your mere existence revolting, when you are black and a significant chunk of people believe you are innately less intelligent and more prone to violence, when you are a woman and a significant chunk of people believe you have no business starting a career or working in tech or people don't believe you when you claim to have been sexually assaulted, it's hard to treat "politics" as an abstract debate where free-thinking intellectuals joust in the marketplace of ideas. In these contexts, you actually live "politics" - every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep. You can't opt out of it.
I am taking these examples because they resonate best with what are considered "political" subjects in the West, but in more gruesome contexts, such as the situation of Syria, "politics" is whether you are pro-Assad, pro-rebel, which rebel group you are part of, etc. You can see how silly (at best) or insulting (at worst) it can be to try and dismiss politics when they are actually a matter of life or death.
Whenever there is a struggle, whenever there is an imbalance of power perceived by some to be unfair, there is politics. If you do not perceive that imbalance, it means you are on the better end of it, and your lack of stand is simply apathy for the status quo. I don't seek to judge you for that, but hopefully you may understand that some people are unhappy with the status quo and wish that it change, and that's why they're getting political.
To add to some good points, people from various minority groups may be particularly keen on getting formal institutional buy-in (e.g. mandatory diversity meetings) because they have not been well-served by informally letting stuff play out in the past.
There is a line somewhere here, but it's not unreasonable for affected parties to pursue bureaucratic solutions.
Imagine a white man lecturing a room that's mostly people of color or women about the importance of including all people as equal peers in discussions. Toss in a few incredibly loaded questions with Very Obvious Right Answers to round it out.
It's obviously just me, but I have a difficult time imagining anyone being well-served by that particular "bureaucratic solution". Which, caricature though it might be, is also an accurate representation of a lived experience.
The act of defining what and isn’t “political” - is itself a political act. It used to be unacceptably “political” in the majority of Anerican businesses to be against racial segregation. Now it’s the other way around. Whether you agree with that change or not, you can’t deny that the boundaries of what is or isn’t acceptable discourse at work have changed over time. When you’re bringing up a topic or opinion at work that makes others uncomfortable, you’re trying to move that boundary, which is a political. When you’re complaining that the topic is “too political” and doesn’t belong in the workplace, you’re trying to keep the boundary where it is, which is also a political act.
I would disagree, if you don't bring up any politics at all then you don't move the boundaries as the boundaries do not exist. There is no minimum level of acceptable politics to move any boundary. In that case, defining "political" is no longer a political act.
On the other hand you can also simply ban all tribal issues, ie the ones that cause coworkers to go at eachothers throats. This would be minorly political but the workplace atmosphere would improve greatly.
This line of reasoning is implicitely making the false equalence of "everyone who isn't with me is, by default, against me". Going down this route, you are forcing me to take a position on issues I don't nearly feel having sufficient amount of data, or nuance; nor motivated to acquire them, because giving a shit is a rapidly depletable resource, and I have my own life, and my own stuff to take care of.
Please do not take the position of neutrality away from me. Anyone who forces me using the reasoning above, is, by default, an enemy of mine, regardless of coincidence of wants.
In way of a reply, I will juxtapose two quotes from your post above. I think it preserves context, but please tell me if you think I left out something important.
Quote 1:
> This line of reasoning is implicitely making the false equalence of "everyone who isn't with me is, by default, against me"
Quote 2:
> Anyone who forces me using the reasoning above, is, by default, an enemy of mine
> please tell me if you think I left out something important.
You did: the position of neutrality. The position of not taking a stance either way. The position of actually doing stuff, like, in the real world, orthogonal to that of politics. The area outside of politics.
I observe, based on your comment 3 above, that you consider politics as all-encompassing. I reply: politics, as practiced currently, is a virus, which attempts to stick itself to everything, every act, every stuff; and until nuance, tolerance, and understanding re-enters the picture, I will not take any part of it.
I understand you personally don’t want to engage in what you consider politics at work. I don’t think anyone here has a problem with that. But you seem to feel like other people are forcing you to say or do political things.
I don’t understand who those people are, or how they force you to say or do political things. All I see are people who are saying things at work, like “everyone should march for lgbtq rights next weekend”, and those things annoy you because you don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss them at work. So, in this scenario, now you’re annoyed by unwanted speech... what happens next? Are you forced to go march, or forced to say outloud that you agree, under threat (explicit or implied) of retaliation? That might be illegal depending on where you work, but ianal. If that’s not what’s happening, then can you explain in more detail what harm is done to you, beyond being annoyed?
> You did: the position of neutrality. The position of not taking a stance either way. The position of actually doing stuff, like, in the real world, orthogonal to that of politics. The area outside of politics.
Everything is political. Pretending it isn't is a luxury that you yourself have, as a person who is privileged enough that they aren't in any way forced to think about the politics of any action they take.
> politics, as practiced currently, is a virus
Again, it always was. You were just privileged enough that you could safely ignore it without it impacting any part of your life.
I'm a conservative Christian. I believe that homosexuality is a sin. The one co-worker who I knew was gay, I told him that straight out. I also continued to work with him, and kept him as my friend. (Lots of my friends are sinners. For that matter, so am I.) I continued to be someone he felt he could confide in - he'd come talk to me when he needed to gripe, because he knew he could tell me sensitive stuff and I wouldn't burn him with it.
Now here comes company diversity training. It includes LGBTQ stuff. If it says "treat people professionally; whether they are LGBTQ or not is not something that affects how you treat people in the office", well, I'm fine with that. It's what I do anyway.
But if the diversity training moves on to "you should have a positive view of gay marriage" or some such, well, that's forcing a political position on me.
Note well: I have never experienced that. But I think I've heard of such things happening (and no, I can't document even hearing it).
Sin is not for you to judge though. That is for your G-d alone if you follow your scripture as I assume you assume you do.
"He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored."
He's not judging though. Judging someone and knowing how the god you believe in judges something are two different things, and it's not really fair to conflate them.
His interactions with his coworker illustrate this pretty well. Isn't that all we can ask of someone with a different view?
I understand your position. But too often people who have legitimate gripes with society (like you say) are quick to classify legitimate disagreement with an attack on their identity. Disagreement over a company's diversity policies (for example) is not inherently an attack on anyone's personhood, but it is frequently interpreted as one, and with great rancor.
One definition of power that is sometimes given: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." If the climate around things such as diversity policies effectively suppresses dissent, then the advocates of such policies have real power, whether or not they psychologically perceive it.
What does that even mean? Of course your job has power over your employment that's tautological. And given how expensive hiring people is there's a market interest in making sure "free thinkers" don't drive entire groups away in their vain attempt to pretend it's the 19th century.
If you feel you have a right to bull others and to deny that is to restrict your ability to "dissent"; if you feel that you have the right to spread false information (women aren't welcome in tech, any given race isn't welcome, any given sexuality isn't welcome, etc"; then you should perhaps sit down and remember your company is going to exercise its free speech and kick you too the curb. The cost of giving you a "safe space to dissent" isn't worth reducing the hiring pool.
That's fine to believe this, but don't pretend like the person you are responding to is "privileged".
That is what the person was arguing against. Yes, a company can fire you for basically any reason, even of it is because you wore a blue shirt or voted for the wrong person.
But don't pretend that workers are "privileged" or the people in power in this situation.
What Im against is these morons that think they're entitled to a space to excercise their bigotry despite the obvious capital costs of it.
It's not a question of privilege it's a question of what is your value system. Do you believe in organizational power of free markets? If so you are by definition for these types of tolerance programs. Corporate social responsibility isn't charity; it's just good business sense. Unless you're a conman preying on fear, bigotry is categorically bad for business.
The original poster was responding to someone who explicitly was bringing up the ideas of privilege.
Example quote from above "If you do not perceive that imbalance, it means you are on the better end of it, and your lack of stand is simply apathy for the status quo."
This was the topic that was brought up, and the original poster was responding to this.
Like I said, it is perfectly ok for you to not care about the ideas of power and privilege. Although I will say that many people on the left claim to care about these ideas, so it make sense to bring these ideas up when discussing things that happen at large, left-wing companies.
But the point that the OP was making is that it is very ironic to bring up these concepts. It is ironic because the suppression of dissent is very real power.
It is not a judgment on whether this is right or wrong. It is merely a statement of fact, that quite the opposite to what people claim about "privilege" and power, that if you are afraid of disagreeing with the powers that be, then you are definitely not "privileged".
>One definition of power that is sometimes given: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."
I'm pointing this out because I see no one else did, but that quote is from Kevin Alfred Strom, a neo-Nazi convicted for possession of child pornography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom) and he really meant to convey not-so-subtle antisemitic undertones with it. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but I thought you'd wanted to know so you won't have this pointed out in a more formal context by less charitable people.
Appreciate the heads-up. I think it is a legitimate point despite its unsavory origins. But I agree that its origin makes invoking it a poor choice in low-trust discussion.
>I think it is a legitimate point despite its unsavory origins.
It's actually not. It's dismissive of the lived realities of people marginalized by unchosen structural norms. You can deny that identity has tangible effects, but that doesn't make what you say true. It only serves to demonstrate your blindspot. It is one that is commonly shared by people whose identity is considered the default.
Some people that are loudly ignorant, especially those that defend their ignorance vigorously, face consequences in professional settings. As they should. It's a waste of everyone's time and effort.
> Some people that are loudly ignorant, especially those that defend their ignorance vigorously, face consequences in professional settings.
Sort of like Galileo did?
Sometimes the societal norms of what is considered "ignorant" are wrong.
If you haven't come across it, I would highly recommend the book Galileo's Middle Finger. It was written by a lefty who started her career as an activist fighting for the humane treatment of intersex people (a marginalized group). But later in her career she discovered lots of people who were accused of being ignorant had actually been unfairly smeared by people whose accusations didn't stand up to scrutiny.
Who said anything about genocide? The only specific position I have mentioned on this thread is dissenting from a corporate diversity policy. Do you have a genuine desire to understand what I am saying? If so, why would you suppose I am talking about positions that advocate genocide?
You can spend all day criticizing people and organizations in power in the US. The most powerful people, the most powerful companies, and everything else. How is it true except as a dog whistle for conspiracies? You can literally spend all day calling whichever president happens to be in power a cunt, along with every congressperson, judge, General, and CEO. The people who literally have the power of life and death over the citizenry are constantly criticized.
Maybe the origin of the quote is important to understand what it really means. It’s a dog whistle to claim that insertgroup is really the power behind the throne. It was a way of saying that because it’s considered bad form to be a Jew-hating Nazi, and most of society will despise you for that, it means that Jews really run things. Changing Jews to some other group doesn’t change much. Claiming that gays or blacks or “lefties” or whichever group you think are really in charge because you’re not supposed to denigrate them, isn’t a good point, and using a Nazi pedophile’s quote to make it is telling.
>I am taking these examples because they resonate best with what are considered "political" subjects in the West, but in more gruesome contexts, such as the situation of Syria, "politics" is whether you are pro-Assad, pro-rebel, which rebel group you are part of, etc. You can see how silly (at best) or insulting (at worst) it can be to try and dismiss politics when they are actually a matter of life or death.
Speaking as, as I am, an Israeli citizen, I have to say: having people yell at you to get bombed and die because you can't opt out of politics is actually pretty unpleasant. I can't imagine Syrian exiles like it much either.
People's politics are mostly determined by where they live, and maybe their age. If you insist on fighting over politics, you should at least recognize that's what you're fighting over.
It's not about life and death or oppression, it's just about where you're from. And you're just fighting with people who live somewhere else than you.
People's actual concrete opinions on issues change with time, with their social circle, etc. The issues are not as important as people think they are, and there are lots of life and death issues which don't elicit churlish behavior the way politics does.
The politics that's happening to you, if you're in a western republic or democracy, is one that created and maintains unprecedented safety and freedom otherwise alien to human existence.
Whoops. That you would condemn a perfectly reasonable comment like that speaks volumes about your character and the political leanings of whomever is paying for your coffee.
It's routine moderation and has nothing to do with which politics are being trumpeted—only with the dumbing-down effects of generic comments on the internet. The internet message board is not a medium that can handle grandiose rhetoric without breaking down.
The internet will break down if someone makes a grandiose statement? Uh huh. We need to get you a mirror. If your bias can’t be called into question, your competency must then be.
I personally do not find a reminder of what actual human oppression looks like throughout the world in a discussion on why white male re-education courses should be mandated in the workplace (and the irony certainly doesn’t escape me). Ignoring that fact betrays the underlying entitlement of the claim.
The people who put politics aside may have had politics from both leading sides happen to them. I'm utterly disillusioned with both parties and have leanings that go in all directions. Many people just don't care enough to understand the failings of their side because it's safe in their community of equally deluded people.
"When you are gay or trans and a significant chunk of people find your mere existence revolting, when you are black and a significant chunk of people believe you are innately less intelligent and more prone to violence, when you are a woman and a significant chunk of people believe you have no business starting a career or working in tech or people don't believe you when you claim to have been sexually assaulted, it's hard to treat "politics" as an abstract debate where free-thinking intellectuals joust in the marketplace of ideas. In these contexts, you actually live "politics" - every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep. You can't opt out of it."
This is an absurd dramatization. Really, what percentage of people at Facebook do you think believe that stuff? 0.0001%, or 0.00001%? Later in the post you indict apathy for the status quo, but this sort of left-leaning dramatic nonsense is as status quo as it gets.
> Really, what percentage of people at Facebook do you think believe that stuff?
The very act of filtering against it at recruitment and when it occurs in the workplace /is/ "politics". And post-Weinstein scandal it's disingenuous to think that the workplace can't have such a toxic culture. Just the other day a Riot employee's post about Riot's uncomfortable "bro culture" was discussed on HN.
It’s just great that you have an entire spiel devoted to justifying how people should get indoctrinated into your political beliefs in the work place. Make no mistake, people like you (eventually) cause many more problems in this world than you would like to self righteously pretend you solve.
To every person who is unprejudiced, not politically inclined, and is forced to take part in your rallies, there is nearly nothing separating you from your reactionary counterparts.
I’ll go even further to suggest that the prevalent attitude among your ilk implicating those who are not actively involved in your political movement are somehow culpable is enough to make evangelicals seem like the side to choose moving into the rest of this century.
Wrong,you're being presumptuous. I would not be 'tolerated' in most workplaces either 60+ years ago. Even now I face difficulties. Please don't be presumptuous.
One of the most offensive things I experienced in a liberal workplace was being treated differently(for my benefit) because of the 'group' I belonged to.
You show up to work to do a job not to struggle in politics. I should be accepted as a human and a coworker,not as a member of whatever group I belong to. You have the right to earn a living and feed yourself and family because you are human and you have the skills and qualifications for the job. Your membership to some socio-political group neither qualifies nor disqualifies you.
Having politics ‘happen’ to you is exactly the reason to put advocacy aside at work. Because hopefully it helps you empathize with people who have had ‘different’ politics ‘happen’ to them.
E.g. There’s a lot of Asian Americans from impoverished immigrant backgrounds who experience reverse affirmative action at American universities. They may still vote liberal, but for very different reasons as people pursuing social justice.
The issues are hardly black and white, and a workplace environment where people are forced to pick sides is inherently unhealthy, not to mention anything but diverse.
> When you are gay or trans and a significant chunk of people find your mere existence revolting, when you are black and a significant chunk of people believe you are innately less intelligent and more prone to violence, when you are a woman and a significant chunk of people believe you have no business starting a career or working in tech or people don't believe you when you claim to have been sexually assaulted, it's hard to treat "politics" as an abstract debate where free-thinking intellectuals joust in the marketplace of ideas. In these contexts, you actually live "politics" - every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep. You can't opt out of it.
I've never seen any of these ideas openly expressed in the workplace, or for that matter, anywhere.
You know what's more dangerous than treating politics as an abstract debate? Treating it as a constant life-and-death struggle where enemies must be destroyed before they destroy you. The ideas you're talking about aren't even the ideas being expressed by anyone of importance: they're straw men arguments that propagandists falsely accuse people of perpetuating via "dog-whistles" so that you ignore and dismiss what they're actually saying.
> I've never seen any of these ideas openly expressed in the workplace, or for that matter, anywhere.
Animus against minorities is real. It's not made up. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't real.
Is this animus experienced by every member of every minority for every waking moment? No, that was a bit of an exaggeration, sure. But the animus is definitely not zero, like you suggest.
You might benefit from educating yourself about feminism, race relations, and gay rights.
I’m not saying that animus doesn’t exist. Overt animus shouldn’t be tolerated in the workplace and deserves social condemnation, but the existence of animus doesn’t automatically bless or justify any and every political ideology that markets itself as “anti-Xist”.
I have personally experienced animus based on my sex, race, and sexuality before, but I don’t want to be in a politicized workplace just because the governing ideology is supposedly for my benefit.
> I don’t want to be in a politicized workplace just because the governing ideology is supposedly for my benefit.
Workplaces need to say openly and often that, for every minority that's traditionally experienced discrimination in this country, "<minority> are equal and will always be treated with dignity, will be afforded the same benefits, and animus against <minority> will never be tolerated."
If this count as "politicizing" the workplace, then, well, I'd say politicize away.
I'm not arguing in favor of racial discrimination, so I'm not sure what straw man you think you're arguing against.
I am noticing an implication on your part that animus against white people, or animus against men, is acceptable and welcome in the workplace. That's definitely a politicization I'm uncomfortable with.
Oh, I see. You think that when I said that companies need to say openly and explicitly that they're cool with minorities, that this was a complete description of everything the company should do and say about the issue of unjust discrimination. Of course, I didn't say that. You read that in. It wasn't a complete description, just something I thought companies should also be doing. But that's fine, let me be clear now: In addition to minority outreach and accommodation, there ought to exist a clear anti-discrimination policy saying that no one should be discriminated against for their race or gender.
> In addition to minority outreach and accommodation, there ought to exist a clear anti-discrimination policy saying that no one should be discriminated against for their race or gender.
And my contention is that “no one should be discriminated against for their race and gender” is both necessary and sufficient. No need to give special treatment or attention to supposed “minorities” (note that women are in fact a majority).
I'm rolling my eyes at your "supposed minorities" comment. Women are a minority in tech, as I'm sure you know, and this is a forum that mostly targets tech. The rest of the groups that we're talking about are also minorities in the population as a whole.
As to your contention, I'm still not getting it. Why don't we play a game? I list off a few things that I've known companies to do in the past as a way of reaching out to or accommodating minorities, and you tell me which ones are objectionable to you and why. Here goes:
1. A company makes a prayer room available for their Muslim employees to do their daily prayers
2. A company hosts a Women in Tech conference
3. A company hosts a GLBT in Tech mixer during Pride Week
4. A social media company creates a couple special features for Black History month (e.g., Twitter's @Blackbirds bot)
Let me jump in in the discussion and answer why those are objectionable and how to fix them so the same objective can be achieved while not be discriminative.
> 1. A company makes a prayer room available for their Muslim employees to do their daily prayers
Services and gifts are from a practical point of view just different forms of bonuses given to employees. A extra room cost money to rent, and if employees are given free time in there then that also cost the company money. The solution is to calculate how much the prayer room cost, divide it per employee that wish to use it, and give each employee that money to do as they wish. The Muslim employees can pool their bonus for the room, and the rest can either pool it together for something else or increase their individual pay check. This way the company do not discriminate and a person who believe in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has the same benefit and support at the company as a Muslim.
> 2. A company hosts a Women in Tech conference
If you have to ask attendees or speakers if they identify as a woman, then what you are doing is explicit discrimination. This is objectionable so simply don't. Organize event instead so that you reaching out to intended minorities by looking at what works and interests those groups.
> 3. A company hosts a GLBT in Tech mixer during Pride Week
Same as #1. If a company spend money on one group, then that is an indirect bonus to those employees who belong to that group. If its not possible to provide every employee the same benefit, at least make the selection process transparent and as fair as possible so both a GLBT mixer as well as a nudist mixer can be created if both exist as groups at the company.
> 4. A social media company creates a couple special features for Black History month (e.g., Twitter's @Blackbirds bot)
Very similar to the above one. Who decide which group deserve the special feature? I would suggest something similar to Wikipedia's featured articles, where any topic can be suggested and a fair process decide which one get selected. The more transparent the better.
In case not, you’re way over thinking this. In points one and three, you’re looking to try and give something like compensation for these individual things. You’re not looking at (1) the value of being an accommodating, inclusive company or (2) that an individual who doesn’t take advantage of those particular accommodations enjoys other ones.
Your whole point about point four is silly. You don’t need some gigantic transparent democratic process to let some enterprising employees take it upon themselves to do a cool project like blackbirds. Just let them go do it.
About the women in tech conference, Grace Hopper allows men to attend; seems reasonable to follow their lead.
Bonuses and gifts are a real problem, and is recognized as taxed income here in Sweden. Just a few weeks ago I had a similar situation at work where a coworker said "I would be fine if they just gave it as a bonus to every one", so discriminative gifts is very noticeable for those not being in the receiving end. Gifting one group might feel very accommodating and inclusive for them, but it is no different than raising the wages based on religion identity no matter how one tries to dress it up.
If a company want to discriminate and gift a selected people based on gender, race, religion or sexual orientation then naturally they don't need any gigantic transparent democratic process. They can just do what past discrimination has done, flying as close to the law of illegal behavior as they can. I don't agree with it and I find it wholly immoral.
And yes there are conference and people who has learned to be less discriminative when doing outreach programs. However allowing men to enter a conference is a rather low bar, just as it would be if the genders were reversed. My personal line is if Grace Hopper has "only if you identify as women then..." in the way they operate. Looking at the scholarship application it does seem to say that both men and women can apply, but given the image on the site it seems that only women has ever been awarded scholarships. If there is a unofficial rule that only allow women then that is discrimination as any other.
> The solution is to calculate how much the prayer room cost, divide it per employee that wish to use it, and give each employee that money to do as they wish.
No, the solution is to call it a "wellness room", and have it be open to anyone who needs it: diabetics who need to inject their insulin, nursing mothers, Muslims who need prayer time, etc.
> If you have to ask attendees or speakers if they identify as a woman, then what you are doing is explicit discrimination.
Why do the majority (men in tech) always have to insert themselves into a minority's (women in tech) space to discuss issues intrinsic to being a minority in a field? What valuable input on a subject do you believe that a member of the majority could give to members of said minority?
> If a company spend money on one group, then that is an indirect bonus to those employees who belong to that group.
It's just as much a bonus to the company, who wishes to attract more LGBT folks.
> as well as a nudist mixer can be created if both exist as groups at the company.
In most tech companies, if you wish to create a nudist group and organize a nudist mixer, you're more than free to do so, provided you can acquire a space that will allow you to be freely nude.
> Who decide which group deserve the special feature?
So the fact that it's Black History month isn't somehow deserving of this special feature?
A rather common solution that partly solves the issue of making the service universal. It could easily benefits one group more than an other, but at least it would be equally accessible for any religion to use as their space. Historically through there hasn't been many churches that successfully served multiple religions at the same time. My hat is off to those Muslims that will share pray room with nursing mothers at the same time.
> What valuable input on a subject do you believe that a member of the majority could give to members of said minority?
That the majority and minority belong to the common group called human, where everyone share more in common than not. Why do people in progressive topics (women in tech) think that people should be treated different based on gender? To quote Carl Sagan, gender stereotyping and reducing people down to a single bit, male or female, is lazy thinking.
> It's just as much a bonus to the company, who wishes to attract more LGBT folks.
They would get the same bonus if they wish to attract any other group in the world. There is an infinitive number of grouping and classification that humans being can sort them selves in, and thus a company has by this logic a infinitive amount of bonus to get. Is one group more worthy than an other?
> if you wish to create a nudist group and organize a nudist mixer, you're more than free to do so, provided you can acquire a space that will allow you to be freely nude.
Same is true for the LGBT folks. Everyone should have the same liberty to to organize events if they can acquire a space to do so.
> So the fact that it's Black History month isn't somehow deserving of this special feature?
Every month is a special month for some group. Every day is "day of X". There is not a single day on the year that don't get celebrated by one group or an other. Should we start ranking those, and if so, where does Black History month rank up compared to other special days, weeks or months? Lesser than Christmas but better than Thanks Giving? This not something that is measurable but rather completely up to the ever changing local culture to define how special it is.
> Historically through there hasn't been many churches that successfully served multiple religions at the same time. My hat is off to those Muslims that will share pray room with nursing mothers at the same time.
In our company, there are multiple wellness rooms big enough to house a handful of people, with a queueing system managed via iPad. This solves the problem quite nicely.
> That the majority and minority belong to the common group called human
Just being human doesn't give someone the knowledge/experience of being on the lesser end of a power binary. If their conference is specifically to talk about, commiserate, and discuss strategies around being on the lesser end of a power binary, then what unique perspective would those on the greater end of said binary bring to the table?
If the only thing they have to contribute is the fact that they're human, then they have absolutely no unique perspective to give, and are thus unnecessary.
> Why do people in progressive topics (women in tech) think that people should be treated different based on gender?
Should be? No. They're recognizing the fact that they are treated differently. That's not a "should be" situation.
Much like recognizing and calling out racism doesn't make one racist.
> They would get the same bonus if they wish to attract any other group in the world.
Indeed, however this particular group has been historically discriminated against on a systemic level. Therefore, additional steps must be taken to ensure their inclusion.
> Is one group more worthy than an other?
Is your world really so simplistic that every attempt at inclusion is a zero-sum game?
> Everyone should have the same liberty to to organize events if they can acquire a space to do so.
They are, generally. So I don't really see why you're upset.
> Every month is a special month for some group. Every day is "day of X".
Are you seriously comparing Black History Month with something like International Bagel Day?
> Should we start ranking those
Nope. But some are bigger than others, so some will take priority.
> This not something that is measurable but rather completely up to the ever changing local culture to define how special it is.
> I've never seen any of these ideas openly expressed in the workplace, or for that matter, anywhere.
Probably because none of them apply to you.
> The ideas you're talking about aren't even the ideas being expressed by anyone of importance
You need only look at the president of the United States (or the GOP running for governor in Florida) to see that these ideas are expressed by a ton of people who have power.
In general I agree with you, but neither pride nor tolerance training is political.
Pride is like St. Paddy's Day or Chinese New Year: it's neither left or right.
Tolerance training isn't political either. If an employer wants their employees to be comfortable at work, it's within their right to train employees to be tolerant of each other. It has nothing to do with politics.
It's strange how gay people just being gay is often seen as a political act -- but that's never the case for straight people.
I will not respect or tolerate a person because they are gay. I will respect and/or tolerate them because they are human and a colleague.
Tolerance training is political because the employer wants employess of a certain belief,affiliation or private association to feel welcome. For example,tolerance training for vegetarians would also be political.
Pride also is supporting a political movement much like supporting 'alt-right'.
It's not gay people being just gay,but a company telling workers personal sexual lives of their colleagues is a basis for tolerance or intolerance and that the company favors tolerance in that particular case. By that same right,they can hold gay intolerance training.
> I will respect and/or tolerate them because they are human and a colleague.
Congrats, you just passed every tolerance course ever, and all without bringing politics into it.
While you may be high minded and professional, not all workplaces are, and it's fine for the company owners to ask that employees keep a professional environment around everyone -- including people that may make some feel uncomfortable.
> a company telling workers personal sexual lives of their colleagues is a basis for tolerance or intolerance
It's weird that you jump right to sex. Being gay is about a lot more than sex.
If a woman tells me she went skiing with her husband last weekend, my mind doesn't rush to thinking, "gee, why is she talking about her personal sex life at work?"
> Pride is like St. Paddy's Day or Chinese New Year
Having worked in Northern Ireland I can tell you that St Patrick's Day is loaded with politics there.
The company got around it by giving both St Pats and 12th July as public holidays but allowing staff to voluntarily work them in lieu.
Hence staunch loyalists could work on St Pats and take the holiday another time, whilst nationalists could work on Orangefest. Neither felt compelled to celebrate the other's festival.
Being a naive Englisher 'Hun' I just took both days off and offended both groups equally.
All discussion of politics and sports was banned at all times. That seemed quite easy to enforce.
Chinese New Year can be political. Why is it celebrated under that name in Western countries, rather than Tết or Korean New Year or just Lunar New Year? And then add Chinese money funding the events for some soft power propagation...
It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political-ideological-national battle. That's a violation of the site rules, and we ban accounts that do it, so if you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and please stop doing it, we'd appreciate it.
Okay. I'm very intellectually curious about China, and I hope other people are too. I mostly comment on these sorts of topics because, relatively speaking, I know slightly more than the average HNer, but I'll take this into consideration.
> When at work respect your colleagues,not because of their politics and beliefs but because 1) they're human 2) you would want to be respected if you were in their shoes 3) out of respect for your own self
You cannot escape politics no matter the environment. Your personal political views are a reflection of your core values, ethics and morals. I'd much rather have companies take a stand than try to appease everybody. If anything, it would let me know which businesses should get my money and which I should avoid (as well as which I'd work for and which I'd avoid).
> Imagine not being able to work in tech because how you vote,pray or who you associate with becomes inconvenient to the industry.
That is a slippery slope. Certain political viewpoints should be shunned and outcast from polite society...
> Your personal political views are a reflection of your core values, ethics and morals.
That's a pretty bad way to view politics, IMO. It not might be what you mean (in which case, sorry!), but the phrasing you used makes it seem like anyone who disagrees with your politics has different morals (or values/ethics).
That might sometimes be true, but you're leaving no room for differences of opinion that have nothing to do with morality! When Galileo said the Earth goes around the Sun, he wasn't saying it because he had different morals/values, he was saying it because he had a different belief about the world.
When the left and right disagree (in America), it's sometimes about morals/values, but it's also sometimes an honest disagreement about how the world works!
> the very idea that a company would display or promote politics in the work place
If only we could seal off the workplace from the rest of the world and keep it unsullied by politics.
The trouble is that if your work is meaningful, it's making changes in the world. Making changes in the world is a political act.
Online platforms make billions of decisions every day and they need a point of view to guide their decisions. Having a point of view is necessarily and inevitably political.
Pretending your choices aren't political is itself a political act. It's inescapable.
Your mistake is in thinking that you can separate out politics from "work" or any other concept.
What you fail to realize is that everything is political. Everything. Politics isn't some concrete, easily identifiable thing you can point at. You can't separate out things into a "Politics" bucket and a "Not Politics" bucket.
No, politics pervades every single human interaction. Politics is in everything and everything is inherently political.
My preference for the scent of lavender over cinnamon -- political. I'm against the designated hitter rule. Political too. I think my dog should not get into the trash. It's all politics.
Of course not directly, but even the tinyiest things can and do become political. Hand gestures, clothing, music, choice of cars, choice of food, choice of words.
Would it benefit some group more than the other? Then it has political consequences.
Logic seems fairly apolitical, but logicians rarely. Thus it's pretty reasonable to think of circumstances where simply stating a fact turns out to be political.
Why are stupid things like politics being proclaimed as the universal influencer behind behavioral decisions? If this is a side effect of putting fairness on a pedestal, then I don't think optimizing for fairness is the right way for society to develop.
Whatever happened to a society that has its roots in "love your neighbor and pray for those who persecute you"? Irrespective of religious beliefs, this is exactly what politically minded people want, but they go about it by hating other people and treating people as non-people - it's a huge hypocrisy and disgraceful behavior.
What? No. Politics has no bearing on any number of technical discussions. Why should I consider liberal/conservative ideology when deciding if the CFoo should inherit from CBar.
Because the concept of inheriting things from your ancestors is reflective of your white male heritage that doesn't have a slave-ship shaped hole in your family tree.
We should find more inclusive semantics for programming languages, or else risk perpetuating inherited racist cultural assumptions.
OP obviously, not everything is directly about politics, but evrrything can and does become a political battleground.
Think about how Master/Slave vs Primay/Secondary is an issue. It's technical, but at the same time choice of nomenclature reflects about those who chose them.
Part of American conservatism is the moderate but solid consensus that homosexuality is morally wicked. Some people want to stay true to their convictions, rather than ignore the moral deviancy of the world. Some people truly believe that homosexuality is a danger to children and the spiritual health of society. Sometimes they feel like they can't speak out against homosexuality just because they work at a liberal workplace.
Another part of American conservatism is the dignity of the white race and the heritage of whiteness. That includes proud narratives of true heroic sacrifices against the brutish north, and a discussion of how blacks and other minorities play the victim card to create an emotionally hostile atmosphere for white youths. An unjust atmosphere where blacks, asians, and latinos are promoted at the cost of white children.
On a front page Reddit post on the top comment with regards to NYT's hiring of an asian intern who suggested that white people had biological deficiencies due to sunburning vulnerability, was a discussion of the extinction of the white race, and how white reproductive rates have been going down. As well as a discussion how blacks, asians, and latinos cheat their way into college through blind liberal favoritism, an ideology which seems to dangerously ignore that race is the fundamental way human relations work, and that the suggestion that we should all hold hands and put aside our racial differences is an unrealistic Disney vision.
And of course there is a discussion on the biology of sex, and whether liberals are being blind in thinking that women need active promotion in the workplace. That's of direct workplace concern. And do black and Latino people need active intervention in tech, like women?
Americans need to resolve their issues beyond rolling up their sleeves and going to work. There are decade-long wounds coming. Voting is not political negotiation with your peers. It's just an up-or-down bullet.
A lot of Americans also think it's their prerogative to form a religious business, especially a Christian-oriented business. On the flip side, is it okay to have a Muslim-oriented Google? Or a Christian oriented Chick-fil-A which donates to ban gay marriage?
Does this understanding of American conservatism not describe effective points for voter galvanization? In other words, it's an operational definition in tune with American voter behavior. One might point to the rallying cry for a US Constitutional ban to gay marriage, during the Bush presidential candidacy.
Did that not serve to rally the American conservative base? Is Alex Jones not representative of effective (meaning the kind that wins elections) conservatism? Isn't Alex Jones, perhaps the #1 most popular media personality of today, being censored part of the reason why people are concerned?
As far as I know (which is not much), opinion on gay rights has shifted drastically in the last 10-20 years, both among democrats and republicans.
And I really don't think that Alex jones is the #1 most popular media personality today, not by a long shot (where did you get that statistic?). And him specifically being censored is not why many people are concerned, except insofar as it is indicative of how other people are treated. Most people that I listen, on both the left and the right, absolutely abhor him.
No, it didn't. Even Obama said he was anti-gay marriage in 2008.and California, one of the most liberal states, banned gay marriage in 2008 with prop 8: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(20.... Gay marriage divided people on both sides of the aisle. Conservatives were slower to move in favor of it...but that's sort of the definition of conservative (keep things status quo). It wasn't a major platform for Trump, who chose to make immigration a much bigger issue.
Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist shock jock. He's no more representative of conservatism than Howard Stern is of liberalism. He is not representative of the kind of conservatism that wins elections. Trump being an anomaly (and I wouldn't say Trump is nearly as batty as Jones), you've got a history of folks like Romney, McCain, Bush 1 & Jr, Dole, and Reagan in recent history carrying the election. Even those names though, don't encompass the nuance of the range of views of tens of millions of people in this country.
I view Alex Jones as relevant to the prediction of future elections not because he is vulnerable to criticism of being a "conspiracy theorist shock jock", but simply because of the scale of his influence. That's what makes him far more relevant as a conservative voice than Rush Limbaugh, Bill O Reilly, or Steve Bannon.
And if you're viewing President Trump as an anomaly, then you have to view this whole period as an anomaly, because Trump-like candidates are bluntly replacing low energy Jebs. I remember one recent advertisement where a candidate teased how different they were from Trump with an imaginary childhood rearing situation involving building a wall, and learning language by talking about making America great again.
The latter is relevant as Alex Jones has a popular mobile app, YouTube, and podcast presence, which is not captured entirely by radio presence. If only he weren't banned, we could see how the popularity spike would've resolved.
The quote I shared above included online numbers (not just pure AM/FM), by Talkers methodology. I don't know about YouTube. But search trends aren't a complete metric either, as even critics of Jones could be searching for things related to him. A search is not necessarily a sign of support or devotion, just a sign of curiosity.
Honestly, having to worry about politics and beliefs at work only makes work more stressful. I just want to go to work so I can do a good job then go home. Stuff can still be accomplished and people can still be treated with respect without having to dive into their personal lives to judge them first.
I think that is ultimately everyone's goal. I doubt many people go into work wanting to deal with politics and beliefs. Unfortunately, the reality for many groups that these social/tolerance programs target is they cannot escape politics in the workplace due to being a woman/lgbtq/etc.
You might not realize this, but you come off a little bit anti-gay in your post.
> Why are companies promoting "pride"?
First of all, you don't need to put pride in safety quotes.
Second of all, gay rights are human rights. Companies promote them because it's the right thing to do, and because they want all the good things that come along with doing the right thing. I don't think it's all that complicated.
Edit: If you're gonna downvote, at least say why you're downvoting.
The right thing to do is not letting any one special cause dominate.
My guess is that you arent tolerant of everyone either.
Gays are humans they have human rights not gay rights its this idea thats gays are somehow more worthy of our support than say a conservative at a liberal workplace thats the crux of the problem. I dont care what people are, who they sleep with, what they believe, as long as i am not asked to offer them special considertations i wouldnt extend to others.
Thats the right thing to do, not forcing conpanies to take up social caused for a small privileged group of vocal people.
1. No one's saying that companies ought to only advocate for gay rights and leave behind every other issue.
2. I am tolerant towards everyone. It's actually not that difficult.
3. You seem to be a little confused on what gay rights are. Here's a summary: Gay people want to be treated fairly. We want our partner/spouse to be treated equally. We want our children to be treated equally. We want to not be fired for being gay. We don't want to be called names for being gay. We don't want people to hate us for being gay. These things are not special considerations. These things are basic rights.
4. The right thing to do is to be in favor of gay rights.
1. No but you will have to prioritize which is exactly what is happening right now. That's a problem.
2. I agree so why question the Parents motives?
3. Not confused at all. Those are not gay rights they are human rights. You can replace the word gay with more or less anything and you will have the same. (Try read headed, try white, try black, try Swedish, try freckled, try fat). If you are a human you should have those rights no matter what you are and what you look like and what you believe.
4. The right thing to do is to be in favor of human rights. I see no reason why I should prioritize one thing over another. That's the very discrimination you seem to be advocating against.
You are misusing the English language. When a minority is targeted with animus and their rights are systematically violated, we tend to label the campaign to fight back against those things: Gay rights/Pride, Women’s rights/Feminism, African American’s rights, etc. This is done as a matter of pragmatism.
There’s no priortization of one group’s rights over another. Are you trying to say that when a minority is called out as being supported, that it makes you, who is not a member of that minority, feel left out? If not, then what is it? Be specific.
Unless you are telling me that Gays have rights other people don't have then no I am not misusing the language. I am simply saying that there is no difference between gay rights and human rights. It's a human right to marry no matter your sexual orientation.
Yes there is a prioritization of one groups rights over another and if you don't see that you need to look more careful.
Do you think it's easy being fat, Ugly, Short, Stupid, Too skinny?
You are proving my point.
Supporting one group but not another i.e. putting resources into fighting for the acceptance of one group but not another is the very difintion of prioritization.
How many more fat people do you think there are than LGBTQ+
The right thing to do is accept them all, not focus on one group instead of another. Treat them as humans give them the same rights, treat them with equal respect, because they are human not because they are gay or straight or black or white or asian or fat etc.
It's about what I feel it's about what it is by definition when a workplace prioritizes the hardship of one group and not another. It goes deep into the corporate culture when it comes to hiring and decisions of who gets which position in the company etc.
Thats exactly the opposite of what humanism is. It doesn't divide it includes it doesn't prioritize it simply treat everyone the same and that is not done by making on groups hardships more important than others. At least not in any form of humanism I am prepared to support.
> I am simply saying that there is no difference between gay rights and human rights. It's a human right to marry no matter your sexual orientation.
Sure. But the term "X rights" is emphasizing that X are being denied those human rights.
The problem with saying you're in favor of "human rights" is that everyone will agree with you, even the ones causing the problems. They don't realize you're telling them to stop that discrimination, that that type of discrimination counts.
That's why this language exists.
And it's not a bad thing to prioritize groups that are being treated worse. Because when you try to prioritize no one, you often end up using the majority as the barometer of whether things are fine. The fact that some people have it a lot worse gets forgotten, and the problems go unfixed.
In many of those companies where X are celebrated the most they aren't an issue. That's the irony of it all.
You don't need to focus on gay rights in Google, FB, etc they are non issues there and thus it becomes a political statement were open doors are kicked in because it's popular NOT because it's important in those companies to focus on "gay rights".
So it's not really a solution to anything but rather just a way to do virtue signalling in companies.
> In many of those companies where X are celebrated the most they aren't an issue. That's the irony of it all.
It's not ironic. It's causal. Discrimination against minorities is less of an issue in companies where minorities are explicitly and openly accepted. There's a causal relationship there.
> You don't need to focus on gay rights in Google, FB, etc they are non issues there
They might be for now, but the world outside is less accepting. So long as the world outside has a problem with minorities, companies need to be steadfast about ensuring that the animus outside doesn't survive inside. Think of it like a vaccine.
> So it's not really a solution to anything but rather just a way to do virtue signalling in companies.
Uhh, virtue signaling is still a great reason to be supportive of minorities?
We aren't talking about just accepting them we are talking about making it specific issues to fight for. So no it's not causal, it's exactly the opposite correlational.
Since when was being a gay a problem any of the SF/SV based companies we are talking about?
This is what is absurd about it. Gays are not minorities in SF/SV companies, conservatives on the other hand are. And no I am not a conservative.
Virtue signaling is nothing but that. It's dishonest. It helps no one and alienates everyone who doesn't agree. The exact opposite of what it's preaching.
> We aren't talking about just accepting them we are talking about making it specific issues to fight for.
Huh? I think you're missing some key words in this sentence. You're trying to say that it's inappropriate for a company to "fight for" gay acceptance? Is that it? That could have many different meanings, depending on who you ask. Why don't you show me a specific thing a SV company has done that you find objectionable?
> Since when was being a gay a problem any of the SF/SV based companies we are talking about?
Already addressed this issue. Current existence of anti-gay animus IS NOT a prerequisite for inoculating a company against anti-gay animus.
It's like I'm saying "Let's make sure the kitchen has a fire extinguisher" and you're saying "But the kitchen isn't on fire yet."
Anti-gay animus exists outside of the workplace; it is a threat, even in the SF bay area. (Heck, I was called a faggot on MUNI the other day for holding hands with my partner.) It's important to keep it outside the workplace. This is a point you've neglected.
> Gays are not minorities in SF/SV companies
??? Gay people are not in the majority, what are you talking about?
> Virtue signaling is nothing but that. It's dishonest. It helps no one and alienates everyone who doesn't agree
Virtue signaling is ... dishonest? What? If a company advertises that they're cool with gay people, and they are actually cool with gay people, that is not dishonest.
As far as alienating people who disagree, GREAT! That's the whole point! Those people who have a problem with gay people should find somewhere else to work.
A company can do what it wants but when it decides to fight for one cause then it's ignoring others by definition or it won't be in business for long. You claimed you can fight for more things at once I am saying you can't fight for all things and thus you will be ignoring some by favoring others.
In this case, it's especially absurd as those companies that are most vocal about supporting ex "gay rights" didn't have the problem to begin with.
And no it's not addressed and you are setting up a strawman.
No, it's like saying. Let's make sure the kitchen has a fire extinguisher only for gay people. That's what you are saying and that illustrates exactly the problem here.
What about the fat? the ugly? The introvert? the short, the stutters etc. That's why fire extinguishers are for EVERYONE not just one type of person.
You don't have to advertise that you are cool with gay people to be cool with gay people that's the point.
You don't have to celebrate gay, white, black, Hispanic, straight, man, woman to be cool with any of them.
And that' brings us back to the beginning. You don't have gay rights, you have human rights. Unless you don't subscribe to being a human which would be odd then you don't have rights I don't have. You don't have your own fire-extinguisher in the kitchen. But the reality is that today that's exactly what's happening and that's sad because life is complicated for everyone, not just gay people or minorities.
You’re wrong about minority rights. They ought to be specifically labeled and supported under that label.
You’re wrong about the benefits a company and its workers enjoy from specifically protecting itself against allowing in the animus that exists outside the workplace. Being an inclusive workplace which goes out of its way to accommodate minorities carries a small price — but pays excellent dividends. Doing this in no way would alienate any prospective employee — except a person like yourself, which seems 100% okay to me.
What things ought to be is a moral question so far you haven't given me a single reason to support that idea.
I repeat. I am for human rights I don't discriminate and I don't favor people. I treat everyone the same. That's a perfectly ethical position and I am no more villain than someone a saint regardless of whether i choose to prioritize one group of minorities over another.
It pays dividends to those who are favored by the rights yes. It's still discriminatory towards a bunch of other minorities.
> As far as alienating people who disagree, GREAT! That's the whole point! Those people who have a problem with gay people should find somewhere else to work.
This is glorious! Thanks for great illustration of problems with politics at work / US* politics in general. You are winning, but at the cost of alienating opposition. You will never convince anyone outside of your social "tribe", and therefore you are just sewing conflict.
And THAT is the biggest problem in politics today.
* of course this tribalism is natural to humans, therefore everywhere. But few "democratic" countries are as polarized as USA.
> Unless you are telling me that Gays have rights other people don't have then no I am not misusing the language. I am simply saying that there is no difference between gay rights and human rights. It's a human right to marry no matter your sexual orientation.
You’re in favor of gay rights. I don’t get why you’re so opposed to using the phrase gay rights. If you think gay people are equal, and gay relationships should be treated the same as straight ones, then you’re in favor of gay rights.
I have already explained why I have a problem with it. Gay s don't have rights because they are gays they have rights because they are humans. So yes it's not that complicated.
If politics were "playing basketball" or "solving crosswords," I would agree. The problem is that reality and politics share the same space.
Alex Jones is a liar and manipulator. He goes on the air and presents theories for which there is not even superficial evidence as news and established fact. I'm not trying to be political, those are just the facts as I see them.
Just because I show up at work doesn't mean I become some sort of mechanical money making machine. If I was a TV executive at a company running that show, I would want to the show canceled, no matter the ratings or revenue. I suppose many would say I was bringing "politics" into the work place, and maybe I would be, but what's the alternative?
And sorry if upsets someone's political viewpoint, but there is scientific consensus for global warming, and in America we should probably cut back our energy consumption a bit. So, if I advocate that dress codes be relaxed in the summer so the thermostat can go up a degree, I guess it's political, but I'm not advocating it to piss off conservative people. It's just how I see the world.
I think the internal memo linked in the report makes the ever valid point to argue and attack ideas, not people. But honestly, that issue seems to be pervasive in our culture, so it does not seem specific to workspace behavior.
I think most people are just fighting for the world they want to live in. Why should that only be to do that outside of work, when we spend half our waking time at work?
> But the very idea that a company would display or promote politics in the work place.
This is indeed not a good development, but I think it already happens literally everywhere. It happens in hi-tech, it happens in restaurants, it happens in entertainment (massively), it happens in payment processing, it happens in travel... Literally every industry I interact with had done some political action lately.
> If you are my coworker,I respect you as a colleague and a human being. Your private life and beliefs are not mine to police or encourage in anyway.
That is a nice sentiment, with which I agree. But imagine proponents of some ideology - say, people that are opposed to wearing hats - do not subscribe to that. To the point they'd refuse to hire anyone who have ever worn a hat (either overtly, or by subtle sabotage if they can't do it legally in the open), would stage a public spectacle if they notice their coworker wears a hat, would sponsor company hat-burning parties (or call for a boycott of the company if the company refuses to sponsor one), adorn their workplace with anti-hat posters and loudly discuss how people who wear hats are just lowlife scum.
Would you wear a hat in such a workplace if you think wearing a hat is OK? Would you feel comfortable even mentioning you know someone who might wear one from time to time? Nope. So, some of the people would feel happy and supported in their private beliefs in the work place, and actively sharing and promoting them, while others would secretly terrified that someone would discover their instagram account and find out they wore a hat once. Not a good position to be in.
So, how you keep your right to your private beliefs and not bringing politics to work if the politics is already there? I don't know the right answer.
Human resources deal with humans. Humans are not always so keen to leave their feelings at home, despite how capable you are of such things. Considering that there are a lot of opinionated people that exhibit displays of disgust and actions motivated by said disgust toward the LGBT community, then, in order to maintain a safe work place, human resources needs to address the issues of treating your LGBT coworkers with respect, much in the same way as they've had to do with minorities and female coworkers entering the work place back in the day (which sadly they still must address, because small minded bigots persist).
You may be perfectly fine, but one of your more conservative coworkers might be a talented bigot hiding their bigotry in the closet until such time that it might present itself, and human resources has to get ahead of that before it becomes an issue.
This isn't bringing politics into the work place. This is making sure hostile politics (i.e. bigotry) doesn't affect the workplace.
I've noticed this for a while now. I moved beyond the old left/right political football team-style arguments long ago because the political landscape has changed and become much more muddied.
I don't think the traditional spectrum applies anymore and I'm noticing more and more that others are seeing the same thing.
It still seems like most of the populace is stuck slinging shit at the 'other' though.
Honestly if a person still thinks in terms of left/right I don't think they are contributing anything whatsoever to any current political debate.
If, as seems to be increasingly the case these days, someone's sincerely held belief is that some particular group of people should be marginalized, punished, deported, left to abusers, or even killed... is that all simply “politics”?
> Why are companies ... telling workers to attend 'lgbt tolerance' meetings
Often, companies requires employees to undertake training in this area because the company is legally required to provide a workplace that is free from anti-LGBT discrimination (likewise, anti-racism, sexual harassment, etc)
I worked for Facebook for almost 6 years and I wouldn't say it's culture is any more liberal than the rest of the SF bay area.
For this population, they see their own views as normal and the center. While from the outside conservatives think it's far left of center, the "dozens" of employees who don't feel this way are the outliers. There are "dozens" of employees who feel FB's culture isn't liberal enough. With an employee base of tens of thousands you are going to have disagreements in philosophy, but Facebook does nothing to hide the company culture in it's hiring practice. There is no bait and switch going on. Other voices are heard, but if you have a minority viewpoint you shouldn't expect the world to pivot around what you think is right.
The comments in this thread are shocking, Inquisition level stuff. I can't believe I spend time here.
Remember when HN was tech stuff? Now it's:
manfredo 16 minutes ago
The following views were listed on the memo:
* Support of President Trump (e.g. This and Palmer Lucky's campaign contributions)
* "All lives matter"
* Criticism of Islam's human rights record.
* Calling the company's art politically radical .
Which, if any, of these views don't deserve respect?
reply
brainkim 9 minutes ago |
The first three are deeply problematic and rooted in deep-seated white supremacist beliefs and were it up to me
I would fire anyone who held those views.
Sorry, that’s just how I have to feel these given everything that’s been going on these days.
Who are these people? Is this just satire? Am I just getting old, and no one cares about freedom to disagree, debate, etc? Do people not have historical context about suppressing dissenting opinions, even if you hate them?
Am I crazy, and the world has just moved on to be horrible?
Enable "showdead" in your profile and you will see that anything that moves beyond the left is promptly flagged and, sometimes, the account gets banned for "starting flames".
But absolute freedom of speech IS A LEFT WING OPINION! Is no one here old enough to remember the fight over pornography or offensive language in art/music/movies? That was the right trying to shut down speech they disagreed with via corporate power! These people are _not_ liberals, they're something else that's new and terrifying
"But absolute freedom of speech IS A LEFT WING OPINION"
That only holds if you're willing to perform enough mental gymnastics to somehow transmogrify the gulags, mass graves, firing squads and famines that the USSR, Mao Zedong, Cuba, Pol Pot, etc. employed to deal with dissenters into features of right wing governance.
One could argue they were "punching a nazi" of their time. The establishment of a dictatorship of the working class was a mission for which no human sacrifice was too great.
Obviously we're nowhere near that in modern US, BUT the hints of "violence in exchange for a dissenting opinion" and "what I don't agree with is Nazism" are unpleasant to say the least.
>the hints of "violence in exchange for a dissenting opinion"
I couldn't agree more. I've seen both actual violence and extreme glorification of violence against people of the opposite political affiliation more and more over the past couple years. Many people seem to dismiss the calls to violence as "trolls", which is actually probably true, but I have to wonder if there is much of a difference between a troll who calls for violence and loves to see people get attacked at rallies, and a person who would actually be happy about these things if they became worse than they are now. I feel like there used to be a solid distinction, but I'm not sure any longer that there's really a hard line between all "trolls" and people who would actually enact these things, given the power (and given no significant threat to themselves, of course).
In addition to the violence aspect, there's also total power asymmetry in bigoteering. Calling someone a Nazi, a white supremacist, a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a transphobe, a cultural appropriator, whatever other trendy moral shortcoming du jour, with no need for supporting evidence whatsoever, has no downside to the accuser. Accuse away. You're doing a service to society.
The entirety of the burden is always on the accused.
I think you've convinced yourself of something horrific for reasons that I'm not seeing from what you're writing. "Absolute freedom of speech" is a satisfying way to describe a righteous movement like the one you mentioned, but it's not a real thing. Nobody is for "absolute" anything, though they may shout as much from a podium. I think it would not at all be a contradiction if many of the same people who fought against censorship of "offensive" material in the arts would opt not to fight for the right to incite direct violence. On the other hand, would they be against whatever it is these employees are upset about? Possibly - the details are fuzzy - but if it's general political workplace hostility, then that seems to happen just as much in conservative workplaces, where I've personally seen people express a shocking degree of public hatred for other people based on the perceived liberal nature of their opinions, to the point of destroying working relationships.
The things that scare ME are:
A. Some people seem to be practically unable to engage with dissenting opinions without claiming to have been "shouted down".
B. There seems to be less disagreement about the how to achieve what's right (i.e. we both agree on what's right, but disagree on how to get there), which can realistically be argued about in good faith, and more disagreement about what's right in the first place (e.g. person X thinks gay marriage, abortion, etc should be legally prohibited, and person Y does not), about which good-faith arguments are vanishingly rare for perhaps unavoidable reasons.
"The left" became "the progressive left" which became "progressives". The actual liberal left still believes in freedom of speech, the public perception of it has just been co-opted by militants with a different social agenda (conformity to progressive values, rather than liberal values).
Yep, at this point I, and I imagine many others, have experienced first-hand that HN is not the right place to be having this sort of discussions. There's a certain orthodox Overton window to the conversation here, and stepping outside of it is often punished with flagging.
Ultimately I don't care, I don't have a horse in the race of keeping HN a safe, civilized, good-faith neutral space for conversation. It just means this sort of dialogue has to be moved elsewhere. I'm happy to talk purely tech, but politics seeps into everything these days, so it's hard to avoid.
That's quite untrue. Anyone who looks through the moderation comments sctb and I post can see that we ban accounts that break HN's rules regardless of ideology. And you can read this very thread (or many others) to see plenty of comments which "move beyond the left", whatever that means, which are neither flagged nor banned.
>Am I crazy, and the world has just moved on to be horrible?
Lol I got fired for making a joke after-hours over beers to a guy that wasn't politically aligned. It's wild. To mess with someones livlihood because of a political opinion.
I can see a possibility where manfredo's perspective is genuinely naive of context surrounding of his first three bullet points, and may not be acting in bad faith - and I can see a possibility where brainkim's real feelings aren't as hard-line as the shortened, perhaps understandably heated version.
To call these comments "inquisition level", and potentially ignorant of the catastrophic history of suppressing dissenting opinions, is a pretty wild attack based on what they said. Your hyperbole seems far more damaging and dismissive than their comments.
Regarding support of Trump, Facebook indeed had an overt internal tone of enmity toward Trump, to the point that admitting to having voted for Trump would have been a frightening prospect in most circles. (I can't speak to the specifics of Palmer Luckey's foibles, only to the general tone regarding Trump.)
Regarding "All Lives Matter", there was indeed inquisition-level blowback. I vacillated between abhorrence, anguish, and rage as I watched the drama unfold.
For context: I was a Facebook employee at the time, and although I tend toward liberal ideals (despite a very conservative upbringing), I was appalled at the level of intolerance toward conservative views. Though I could not in good conscience vote for Trump (nor even throw away my vote on a third-party candidate), I continue to respect other humans who voted for Trump. That felt like a dangerous view to espouse as a Facebook employee, and I saw other employees behave with unease regarding their personal political views. Intolerance is dangerous all around, and in my opinion Facebook's internal politics have fallen (mostly unwittingly) into the trap of "not tolerating intolerance", using a liberal (pun intended) -- IMO overly broad -- definition of intolerance.
Naive how? Other than the 3rd, which I consider overly broad to pass judgement and the 4th which I lack the appropriate context, I do consider these points morally bad. That doesn't give me license - or anyone else - to fire someone over these views. Sure it may be legal, but I'd be aghast if it is has become socially acceptable to do so. Seriously, how is explicitly firing people over their choice of candidate a remotely defensible position?
There are two factors here. First, nostalgia bias. HN was never apolitical and a lot of the stuff that used to appear here was just as intense. I wrote about this recently so I could regurgitate the link when this perception pops up. Here you go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.
The other factor is that society has been repolarizing ideologically. That's a massive macro trend and HN, alas, is not immune from those.
We're probably in for rougher waters, which is why we're trying to set down stronger markers about what's unacceptable here. The idea of HN has always been that a place for substantive, thoughtful discussion on the internet is probably doomed, but let's try to survive as long as we can. We'll do our best, but Cnut cannot command the waves to stop.
If an employee is harassing or demeaning their coworker based on their beliefs, that's enough grounds to fire an employee. Is there any evidence that promoting "pride" and "lgbt tolerance" makes employees treat each other well in cases where they otherwise wouldn't have?
"Results from our experiment involving 118 undergraduate students showed that taking the perspective of LGBT individuals or racial minorities — by writing a few sentences imagining the distinct challenges a marginalized minority might face — can improve pro-diversity attitudes and behavioral intentions toward these groups."
It's certainly not total evidence, and I rather imagine there are limits to the effect if it exists at all.
But 118 students isn't that small of a sample (if I'm picking a methodological criticism, it'd be that it's a sample of college students rather than the general population).
And the exercise seems reasonably likely to provide some of the reported effect, and those effects fit with other studies that hold reading/writing fiction improves people's ability to model others better and some degree of empathy.
you asked if there was any evidence and then when evidence was given you dismissed it. do you know what the word "any" means? also this is argument in bad faith (asking for evidence and then discounting validity).
It's bad faith to ask for evidence, then when provided with bad evidence, to say that it's bad?
I've read a good amount of the literature on this subject, and haven't found any compelling evidence that diversity training does anything but shield companies from lawsuits to some extent.
you really don't see how this is circular? how do you feel about this paraphrasing of climate change denial?
"I've read a good amount of the literature on this subject, and haven't found any compelling evidence that climate change is an anthropogenically driven process."
or this one of heliocentrism
"I've read a good amount of the literature on this subject, and haven't found any compelling evidence that the sun is at the center of the solar system."
or this one of
"I've read a good amount of the literature on this subject, and haven't found any compelling evidence that the earth is round."
You're comparing apples and oranges. What we know about our ball earth and heliocentrism are as close to solved science as it gets. I don't know much about climate change theory, but for the purposes of this conversation let's just say it's less settled than heliocentrism (we know and can predict patterns of the Earth's movement around the sun into the far future with great accuracy, but there is no such accuracy with prediction of climate change).
But you compare those to diversity training efficacy, which has no empirical evidence, and the controlled studies examining effects have conflicting results. This is just not an honest comparison at all. I dismissed your study because it literally doesn't tell me anything about the real world, not because I hand-waive anything that I don't agree with.
Would you change any of your own life habits based on how 100 college kids subjectively reported on their feelings? It's ridiculous to compare the amount of information that kind of study tells us to the astounding accuracy of how our heliocentric model of the solar system can and has predicted where and when solar eclipses will happen down to the minute.
>If an employee is harassing or demeaning their coworker based on their beliefs,
What does beliefs mean to you? Beliefs cast a very wide net. Is there no point at which a coworker should be cast out? Perhaps it is their religious belief that women should not be allowed to work. May such a person remain? Are we not to push back?
If a religious man believes women should not be allowed to work, why would he join a company that hires women in the first place?
If he does, anyway, does it matter what he believes if he treats his coworkers (male and female) with respect anyway? If the belief doesn't manifest itself in negative actions, I don't really care what's going on in his head.
It's not black & white. There isn't just "acceptable behavior" and then "behavior so bad you should be fired on the spot for a first offense". There is a large grey area in between of behavior that might be inappropriate, depending on context, or that might be problematic but easy to correct by saying "here's why that's bad, don't do it again".
To think of it another way - you'll get fired for sexual harassment, but companies still give mandatory training about what exactly sexual harassment is and how to avoid it. Why should this be any different?
Companies give mandatory training for sexual harassment and diversity because it's either a legal requirement or a preemptive legal defense against lawsuits.
Why is disrespecting or demeaning a coworker for any reason allowed? If I disrespect you because your haircut is unfashionable,would that be ok? If the meeting was about supporting neo-nazis ,would that not be saying the conmpany tolerates neo-nazis and does not welcome those who hate neo-nazism? Yet, you should respect your neo-nazi coworker,even if you were not told so.
It seems there are many valid reasons to disrespect a coworker, and being a neo-nazi is one of them.
You cannot hide a violent philosophy behind a shield of "it is my beliefs". None of us shall ever accept it. If it becomes the law that I must accept neo nazis, I still will not.
No,they are your coworker. Period. They're not your friend. They are not promoting neo-nazi beliefs at work or direspecting other coworkers,what business of yours is their neo-nazi activity? Peace has a price.
Pathetic. Their neo Nazi activity is my business because it’s infecting my community, it’s beating members of my community up and leaving them dying in the street. It’s making my community unsafe for people who have done nothing wrong. This capitulation of yours to dangerous, vicious belief systems is beneath contempt. We fight intolerance because it is never benign. It does not affect you but it affects others and you are willing to turn a blind eye and pretend everything is fine, because when YOU walk home, nobody is going to stomp your head into a curb.
The fact that this has to be explained at all shows just how much hacker news is overrun with fascist moral relativism. There's even a guy equating nazis with jews. What the fuck happened to you people?
This is a difficult question. Communism has led to countless unjust senseless deaths. Many people alive would be dead in a traditionally communist regime. Should we make communism objectionable as a political ideology? (note: I am not saying naziism should not be objectionable, just that we have an equally deadly ideology that has some acceptance)
Communism, expressed as the kind that killed all those people, is objectionable. I object to it, and it seems like a broad segment of the population agrees.
However, that just isn't the same as what I'm describing. There is nothing analytical about communism that poses an existential threat to me. Neo-Nazism, on other other hand, is a priori incompatible with my existence.
I do see this difference. However, in practice communism and faschism are pretty much two sides of the same coin. One has specific victims (though like communism, none stated, but there is always the out-group, I mean, you see Black African nazi sympathizers in Africa) communism also has an out-group: whether it be the owner-class or people who get in the way of their ideology.
Sure, there's plenty of violence in the world. I am opposed to most forms of it.
But no, there is no equivocation here. One of these things (Neo-Nazism) is fundamentally incompatible, even just on the linguistic level, with my existence. The other (Communism) is undesirable and even reprehensible, but doesn't threaten the mode of discourse itself.
Put another way: proposing tolerance towards analytically intolerant ideas amounts to an "disagreement" between a linguistic claim and a claim about the language itself. I wrote about the danger of viewing these as normal "disagreements" about a week ago[1].
All Communism leads to that. Every single instance has led to suppressing, sacrificing individuals for the Collective.
Forcing someone at gunpoint to be "kind" to their neighbor because it is their "duty" is never a good starting point.
The whole premise is messed up. Taking peoples houses, possessions and giving it to others is a sure fire why to demotivate people and slam the brakes on the economy.
People have cooperated with existential threats for economic gain for a very long time. Trade today, kill each other tomorrow. It's not contradictory at all.
Perhaps you could also put "Don't equate Nazis with the people they genocided" in there. I will not apologize nor will I stop attacking abhorrent people like this. It says a lot that my post is your priority and not the rest of the comments in this dumpster fire of a comment section.
It's not possible for us to read all the comments, which is what prioritizing them properly would require. Nor is it necessary, since other people breaking HN's rules doesn't authorize you to break them as well.
But if you look upthread you'll see that I was careful not to single you out, and if you read the thread as a whole you'll see that we put hours of effort into moderating it (though you'll need 'showdead' set to 'yes' in your profile, as well as to uncollapse a bunch of comments, to see a lot of it).
I just want to make an addendum here before you inevitably ban me. What is guaranteed to lead to the "Flaming shit" you see is the fucking Nazis. Ban them you cowardly fuck
Racists aren't (usually) racists for the fun of it. Racists are racists because they feel threatened by or lack sufficient exposure to / understanding of other races. If your goal is to cure racism, then making racists feel even more threatened is probably the least productive way of going about it.
Instead, the trick is to befriend them. Show them that there's nothing to fear. These people are more often than not just scared and confused; they're usually otherwise-decent people, and putting them at ease goes a long way toward letting them realize on their own that "hey, maybe my Jewish neighbors ain't so bad after all".
I know full well that the above is a lot easier said than done, but if you want a growling dog to stop growling at you, giving it treats is at least slightly more effective than yelling at it. On the former path, you might eventually tame the dog and get a friend out of the deal. On the latter path, it'll just growl louder and louder until it bites you.
No, the "trick" is not simply to befriend them. That is an incredibly simplistic and naive way to interpret hate, and it shows you haven't had to deal with racism strongly impacting your life. Not all bigotry is based in innocent misunderstanding. Sometimes it's intentionally strongly held convictions of derision and superiority.
The answer isn't to spew hate back at them, but it certainly isn't to make friends.
In my experience, the vast majority of my racist family members and other acquaintances are such specifically because of a lack of understanding of and positive exposure to individuals of other races. Even the "strongly held convictions of derision and superiority" are more often than not compensation for a sense of fear rather than genuine belief in superiority.
I never said it was innocent misunderstanding, but it is still misunderstanding nonetheless, and it is still possible to at least start to correct this misunderstanding by alleviating the fear underlying it, thus making it easier for a racist individual to expose oneself to those "inferior" races and realize that they're just fellow human beings and not scary job-stealing world-order-establishing criminal boogeymen.
When has this ever worked at scale? All major social change to end oppression has been associated with large scale disruption and unrest.
How nice it must be to be in a group with power, where even if you are an unrepentant asshole and deny the humanity of others, those other people are obligated to be nice to you.
It's not about obligation. It's about strategy and PR.
Re: whether or not it works at scale, it seems to have worked for Irish-Americans. It took awhile between the height of Irish immigration and the present day, but unlike in the 19th Century you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone unironically demanding Irish people to be deported or claiming Irish immigrants are stealing jobs. Similar deal for other previously-persecuted European immigrants and their descendants (Italians and Germans both come to mind). Asians are getting to that point, too; not really free of discrimination/prejudice, but even my most hatefully-racist acquaintances seem to at least tolerate their existence.
None of the above groups (to my knowledge) were all that socially disruptive (at least not intentionally); instead, they gradually integrated and blended with the existing demographics. Instead of Irish or German or Italian or English or French or Polish or Russian or what have you, we ended up with kind of a blended European demographic. I have a feeling Asians are on track to be part of that, too, and end up in a sort of blended "Eurasian" demographic. We ain't quite there yet, but I'd give it a couple decades before we are.
The price of peace with these people was a world war. I’m not eager to see the price paid again, and I want to live where they want me dead. You can feel morally superior and hug a Nazi, I’ll stick with the more practical “Hetzjagd and Nazis.” I’m not interested in principle where people with no conscience or principles of their own are concerned, and I’m an adult who has standards in a world of standards. They’re not perfect, but they tend to get better with time and freedom to discuss them. “Kill the Jews/Blacks/Gays/etc” has been discussed extensively, then a war was fought. It’s over, the standard around Nazism is established as zero tolerance, and I for one am in favor of that. I’ll leave it to the paralytically anarchist/libertarian moral relativists to die on the hill of defending Nazis on principle.
In other words, my grandfather already paid the price for this peace in WWII, I’ll do my best to uphold it even in the face of the ideology which started that war.
I love how people get all up in arms about tolerance training. It's literally "hey these people are people too and here are ways to act so you don't inadvertartly contribute to an environment that might make them less productive workers". If your coworker is upset because they feel like they have to hide their significant other, their gender, etc at work everyone loses. This is in contrast to politics; you can decide to break from the GOP you can't decide to be less trans. The morons that equate the two are almost beyond hope.
> If I disrespect you because your haircut is unfashionable,would that be ok?
No, that would be inappropriate. It would be equally inappropriate for someone to call a person who called out your inappropriate behavior disrespectful or intolerant. Similarly for your concern regarding neo-nazis.
> Yet, you should respect your neo-nazi coworker,even if you were not told so.
Uh fuck no. They deserve no respect. They deserve to be fired. They deserve to be constantly told their ideology is wrong, they deserve to be shouted down when they try to spread it, and if they won't repent they deserve to die lonely and sad with a life full of regrets.
That's much too shallow, generic, and flamebaity a tangent to lead anywhere other than a stupid ideological flamewar, which is what we got.
Ideological flamewars are stupid, even if the people contributing to them are smart. They're also repetitive, which makes them off topic here. So could you please not post like this again to HN?
The reason Facebook is so politicised and stuff like this comes up is because it hosts user-generated content, and has explicitly chosen to decide what it deems allowable beyond actual law. That makes it nearly impossible to keep the politics out of it.
In contrast, something like a machine shop (random example) won't be politicised much if at all, because the work doesn't revolve around making political decisions.
During machine down time I've heard some of the most radical Stalinist politics coming from people who you would think are only interested in football and beer while trying to fix the lathe for an order that's due in 3 hours. By the same token I've heard some of the most extreme fascist views too.
I have no doubt that political conversations do come up, but they don't really factor into the actual work that takes place --- probably because, as someone who lead me through one warned, "the machines don't care who you are or what you think. Get yourself in the wrong place and they'll eat you alive."
* As much as I enjoy forwarding and debating my own political ideas in settings where I think there's an opportunity, I've never considered work a primary venue for this, and the premise that political diversity should be a priority for a business is one that doesn't seem to have any kind of supporting argument. Companies exist to organize an economic activity. Other activity is incidental. Ideally your employment status is not affected by outside expressions. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you expect to accomplish internally. Especially if the gestalt is different.
* If Mr. Amerige is a fan of Rand, perhaps he should consider that those who own FB would, under Rand's philosophy, apparently be quite entitled to do whatever the hell they feel like with the company, obligate employees to take whatever position they like or leave.
* I've spent time arguing center-to-somewhat-conservative views on liberal websites like Metafilter. I've spent time forwarding nuanced religious or rationalist points in congregations of believing Mormons. I lean center left among family and friends who often lean pretty right. I know exactly what it's like to have to make a case in front of an audience that's not at all sympathetic to your point of view. Yep, sometimes it's super frustrating. I'm not seeing any discussion of particular consequences at Facebook, though, so it's impossible to tell if Amerige and any who agree with him are facing anything more difficult than the near inescapable social accountability for expressing a view where the stakes are a loss of some respect and gaining a bit of baseline hostility/distrust. And my experience is that even if it's an uphill battle, if you're patient and your position is genuinely well thought-out, it's often possible to make some measure of persuasion to people who you're giving both a reason to like you and a reason to think about what you're saying.
That might be the case under some systems of thinking.
In this case, though, it doesn't have to make sense to you, or anyone else, anymore than dynamiting a building based on plans that you made but found unacceptably altered has to make sense to anyone but a fictional jury. It just has to fit the preferences and power-reach of anyone who has authority over a given individual in the company, assuming that individual cares about their employment status.
According to the article the problem is not that the owners are doing what they want like Rand espouses, but hypocrisy, namely that they claim to be tolerant and are in fact acting intolerantly: “We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.” (But I'm guessing Mr. Amerige wouldn't be much happier if were authentic and open about not tolerating dissenting views, so you have a good point there.)
I don't see the need to debate political ideas at work, either, but if work claims to offer an all-ideas-welcome forum, then it should actually be that. My observation is that liberals tend to talk loudly about "tolerance" but are pretty intolerant of ideas they don't like. Not that conservatives are necessarily less intolerant, they just don't go around claiming to be tolerant. Authentic intolerance, if you will.
"Authentic intolerance" made me laugh and there's some truth to it.
The tolerance paradox comes up a lot, but I don't think it's that hard to decode, really. Nobody has universal "tolerance" -- everyone has things they consider intolerable if they have values at all. Characterizing someone as intolerant is essentially a somewhat pejorative way of saying that you've found a boundary value for them and you don't think it's drawn in the right place because it trespasses on some liberty you think you or someone else should have. How defensible that is depends partly on the strength of the case for the value and partly on whether any observing jurors share your temperament.
And I think tolerance happens on different axes. For some people, tolerance means allowing space for all kinds in society. For some it means maximal ability to live as you choose. For some it means a free expression of ideas.
Whatever you call people who value one or more of these things (conservative, liberal, progressive), if someone trammels in action or expression on any of those values, it's not terribly surprising they might face some hostility rather than conversational/social tolerance because they're challenging a value of tolerance.
When conservatives accuse left-leaners of intolerance, what I usually observe is that a conservative has forwarded some sort of idea under which space for all kinds in society or certain bands of acceptable behavior are limited, and then they're surprised that they face hostility and dismayed that they can't even say whatever they like without social consequences.
It's tempting to put conservatives as champions as speech at this point based on the fact that left-leaners see some ideas as not just points of debate/exploration but as attacks on values (which they do)... but of course there's plenty of ideas conservatives don't like to the point they'll engage with similar or greater hostility (see: kneeling during the national anthem). I think very few people are fully tolerant of any idea, and many of those who are probably have been in a fortunate position in life where ideas rarely have concrete consequences for them.
Your point about the values Facebook claims is well-taken, of course. This discussion arguably takes on a different aspect to the extent that Facebook tries to be quite liberal in its approach to speech and ideas. If that were to apply internally, if it were to take the shape of a policy where employees could openly discuss politics without fear of affecting their employment status, that'd be quite remarkable considering how incidental at best (and more likely friction-inducing) that is to the activity of most companies. Perhaps FB claims it as an ideal without a whole lot of care about how it actually plays out, perhaps it's just a PR move, or perhaps they genuinely consider it as important. But even if they do... there's simply no way to guard against diminished respect among co-workers if you're fond of Ayn Rand and they've assessed her and found her severely lacking, and little way to eliminate consequent individual hostility.
Is there any evidence that Mr. Amerige or others he holds solidarity with have faced anything else?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 388 ms ] threadI am glad it's voted down. If I have Reddit for that kind of comments already.
From the article:
>This month, the social network barred the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a move that critics seized on as further evidence that the company harbors an anti-conservative bias.
Banning someone like Alex Jones is not an anti-conservative bias. It is an anti-asshole bias. No one is going to ban you for discussing tax policy.
It's almost the mirror image of the NRA strategy of saying, "don't ban any guns," because if you ban only the worst guns then a new set of guns becomes the worst guns, until you've banned every gun.
What is going on appears to be people standing up and saying "enough". Which is good. If they are hauled away and fired, well, then not so good.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
This quote was explicitly about the nazis. [Utilizing it this way] It seems to do Niemöller a disservice, IMO.
I sympathize with people are shut out of civil conversation just for holding views on the other side of the spectrum— that shouldn't happen. Allying with Jones was either a crucial mistake for optics here, or outs the real beliefs inherent—that they're not just wanting to discuss conservative policy.
Banning Alex Jones from FB being a core piece of evidence that somehow FB is anti-conservative doesn't sound to me like concern over civil conversation. Jones was banned for inciting violence against innocent parties amongst other things.
The poem was specifically about purging targets not aligned with the thought processes of those in power. When you leverage your power to come for the next group, and take them out of play with ostracization, ridicule, etc., or in the case of the actual nazis, murder and genocide, then you have abused your power and made other groups outside your group afraid.
This is the uncomfortable truth of the poem.
I personally cannot stand AJ and his kooks. But I am against deplatforming, as kooks tend to self-identify, and I want to know exactly where they are and what they are doing at all times.
I likewise don't think Jones or his ilk deserve a free spot on primetime television or editorial column in a major newspaper or journal, nor do I think any media network owes it anyone to the extent that they need to provide them with a platform. Seems more in that camp to me.
Now that we're here, I do disagree with using the poem to defend the ideological kin of those he was discussing. If the group hadn't listed Jones amongst their list of the prosecuted then this wouldn't be a point of concern for me, and I'd think you had a point by employing the poem.
I think we're getting off the subject of the main thread, and the discussion surrounding your latter point is another separate and rather large one. I'm not sure we'd get very far here. But cheers.
But I'm not going to take their ability to use the internet away. In High school I really hated NetNanny - I'm not sure why so many people are so determined to become NetNanny.
He is free to start his own Facebook, Twitter, etc.
While Alex Jones is a nut case (And shouldn't be defended), other less publicized incidents of censorship by Social Media companies has occurred (related to picking winners between Israel and Palestine)
The spirit of free speech is defending the least defensible.
I agree!
> The spirit of free speech is defending the least defensible.
I also agree!
However, I personally believe that if corporate censorship has a meaningful impact on the freedom of speech in a society then the fundamental problem is the amount of influence said corporation has on that society. The issue is the size and influence of the private entity - society-altering censorship is just a more visible manifestation of the root problem.
good point, do you feel this way about people who say 'punch a nazi'?
A related example: Antifa.
When a group expressing an extreme ideology begins to use violence against those who oppose it, is it acceptable to use violence in retaliation?
Historically, the answer is "after a while, yes". But it's a slippery slope towards becoming that which you oppose.
That being said, there is a very real difference in scale between a punch and assault with a lethal firearm.
That depends on whether assholes holding other political beliefs get banned at the same rate, or not.
For example, is economic inequality primarily natural or due to injustices? these things don’t have knowable answers - with current technology.
That aside, we really need to figure out as a society how to fix a few notions. 1) You have some sort of right to not be offended. 2) You must get outraged at anything you disagree with.
There once was a time when two people with different ideas could be in the same room as each other. But long are those days. Now we live in a time where simply having your name printed next to somebody's name who made a joke you were offended by calls for public outrage and immediate removal of the offending persons name from said list.
Things are in a very bad way...
In the past people tolerated the idea that it was OK to own slaves, now we dont. In the past people did not tolerate the idea that it is OK to be gay, now we do.
* excluding that one time with Charles Sumner.
Honestly, I want the Overton Window to be consistent with what people actually do in real life. I've begun to grow uncomfortable with a political environment in which we all need to hash-tag #AbolishICE, when we all know that the actual abolition of the American border is outside the Overton Window for the solid reasons that nobody has come up with a plan to do it, including the people leading the hash-tag campaigns.
If we are to have an Overton Window, I want it to be the same one for rhetoric, actions, and policies. I don't want this world we're getting where we all mouth extremist rhetoric and then pass mild reformist touch-ups to the status quo.
* It is OK to have ideals that you work towards while knowing that you won't necessarily reach them.
There has never been a time when a white supremacist and the target of his ire could sit down and "have a free exchange of ideas"; those interactions ended with the poor soul on the end of a rope.
There likewise has never been a time when LGBT individuals could sit down with radical evangelicals and discuss the finer points on how the fomer are evil sinners who should die in hellfire.
Workers formed unions and striked rather than calmly discuss their differences of labor policy opinion with business owners.
No one has any right to demand civility for ideas that reject it on principle. When you pine for the "good old days" what you're saying is "I wish it was the fifties when those women/coloreds/gays would sit down and do as their told under threat of violence; we had such a good market place of ideas back then."
It's not a who, it's a what: context. To the degree it's a who, you're talking about the ethics of everybody within earshot, including the speaker.
You can't believe in gun rights if you are making the world a better place, dontcha know.
Problem is that some people want to lump, for example, "abortion is murder" and "burn all niggers" together so nobody can ever make the former point.
>equal rights for women
>equal rights for people regardless of their sexuality
What is "this time"? The 1800s?
Changing the law is one thing; changing culture and expectations is another.
So ya, I think 1800s is a pretty fair (albeit satirical) statement/question.
Google Ayn Rand and William Edward Hickman if you don't understand why.
EDIT: Ooo, downvotes on a thread about people being silenced. This comment may be slightly on the aggressive side, but it has enough content that it's well within the guidelines for the site, so my assumption is that Rand devotees can't be bothered to engage on any other level than hitting a down arrow, which I suppose, to be fair, is entirely consistent with the philosophy unless they'd get some personal utility out of articulating whatever they might be able to come up with.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
* Support of President Trump (e.g. Thiel's and Palmer Lucky's campaign contributions)
* "All lives matter"
* Criticism of Islam's human rights record.
* Calling the company's art politically radical .
Which, if any, of these views don't deserve respect?
Sure I do think there are some views that should not be tolerated and employees who advocate them should be removed - none of the four listed there come close to it, though.
This warped definition of tolerance particularly worried me. The growing notion that tolerance means snuffing out views one disapproves of, rather than tolerating them is the root of much of the growing political division in my opinion. And not to mention, there's a big risk that this will hurt liberals in the long run. It's easy to forget that this line of thinking also empowers conservatives to snuff out views they don't like - and look at who's in control of the White House, Congress, and (likely soon to be) the Supreme Court.
As a general rule, I lob complaints at private companies. So I care at lot if Company X is doing ill to society (what I consider ill, at any rate). Whether the government should step in is a separate, and more dangerous, issue to me.
This is not the case, I have discussed affirmative action and discrimination without repercussions (presumably what you're talking about). No policy I'm aware of prohibits it on HN.
I'm fine if an employee disagrees with me over how high income tax should be, or whether or not healthcare should be privatized. People are allowed to have different views. However if I think someone is intolerant, I don't want to help them. That kind of tolerance is tolerance in name only.
I wouldn't want to associate my business with, or financially support, an employee who, say, spends the weekends rallying to kick West Indians out of the country. Whether such rallies draw sparse, or teeming crowds, doesn't make a difference to me.
Congratulations, you've discovered why democracy is stupid.
I didn't put a "/s" because doing so would convey an inaccuracy.
> Without additional protections, such as a bill of rights, "democracy" is stupid. But most us live in "liberal democracies", which are as good as it gets.
Our Bill of Rights doesn't say squat about what happens when 51% of the population decide that they want to steal all of your possessions for themselves. If a dispute-resolver (especially a monopolistic one, aka a government) does not purport to protect from even the simple crime of theft, then it is most stupid.
Hell, if you want to go down a very concerning rabbit hole, look up youtube videos of people prepping for a communist revolution. There's a lot of mass murder pre-planned for the end of democracy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I would fire anyone who held such a belief, as I would not trust them around female, gay, or ex-Muslim co-workers.
It is a caricature. You have been reading the internet too much and spent too little time talking to actual Muslim people. However, if you find out that one of your employees is a member of the taliban, feel free to fire him.
The UK has many sharia courts which act as marriage and divorce authorities, where women often have far fewer rights than men. (This sounds hysterical and far-right-ish, but it’s true)
I’ve heard horror stories of ex-Muslims in the US who were kidnapped and physically abused by their family when they tried to leave Islam.
Between mass-rape attacks in Germany, the many, many grooming gangs in the UK, and the latest sexual assault statistics from Sweden, I think it’s fair to take a skeptical eye towards mainstream Islamic male culture. Moderate and reformist Muslims in the West, for context, comprise a small majority of the faithful.
The Christian and Jewish faiths have reformed and lightened up with the liberalization of Western society. I think it’s fair to expect and allow adherents to the Islamic faith to walk a similar path.
EDIT: And for the record, I get along great with my Muslim co-workers. Please stop moving goalposts; to reiterate, your premise was that criticism of Islam's human rights record is driven by deep-rooted white supremacy.
I don't have to tell you that for women, gay people, and ex-Muslims, this isn't great news. Sometimes facts like these can be uncomfortable, but if we ignore them, things don't improve and real people suffer.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and-...
Disclaimer: I’m not Muslim, or from the regions described.
Such a person would almost certainly be wary of engaging in debate, however open and honest, with someone who came to their strong conclusions in the face of such easily available evidence to the contrary. You also have to remember that some people use the framework of an open and honest discussion to proselytize, or rant. The archetypical bigot who “wants a fair debate about immigration” while really just wanting to express their bigotry without getting heat for it is one example. The antisemite who talks in terms of “bankers” and “globalists” is another. It’s unfair, but we all have to share a world with them, and so even when we really want to have an open and honest conversation we have to go that extra mile to prove it in cases like these. Otherwise people who don’t act in good faith can effectively mount a DOS on our time and attention through our goodwill.
Edit: Downvotes in lieu of something to say is something I’m becoming depressingly familiar with here. I can see why some people revert to low-effort posting when it’s going to be met with zero-effort. Oh well, I’m not sure what I expected.
Point out one of these Sharia courts on Google maps please.
Islamic Sharia Council 34 Francis Rd, London E10 6PW, UK +44 20 8558 0581 https://goo.gl/maps/uVXqgkMMTYx
The Islamic Sharia Council is a community centre for Muslims in the local area, offering various services.
It has nothing to do with implementing Sharia law in an extra-judicial court.
Please stop with the fear-mongering.
If you don't believe me, take it from Trevor Phillips, the former UK minister who coined the term "Islamophobia."
https://www.newsweek.com/muslims-are-creating-nations-within...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQcSvBsU-FM
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-visit-to-islamic-england-1535...
There are no laws against that, or wearing religious clothing.
"I later saw the Islamic Shari’a Council of Leyton. This community has religious, educational, business and legal institutions to maintain a separate identity."
You saddle up to a co-worker at the water cooler. Hi Yasir (he's from the Bay Area), you know your religion has a terrible record of human rights? Yeah? Cool, see you at the standup in 30 minutes.
I'm not the type to raise political or religious issues at work, unless it relates to the decision or task at hand. If my company were to consider donating to a conservative Islamic charity for International Women's Day, for example, then I might offer my perspective. Otherwise, why start workplace conversations that are likely to be divisive, distracting, and unproductive?
On pain of Poe’s law, are you being sarcastic?
Disclosure: I spent a bunch of time in 2016 and 2017 reporting European hate groups and pages for violations of TOS. Video montages that recycled unrelated footage for misinformation about the immigrant crisis (for fear-mongering purposes) weren't enough to achieve a takedown, but gradually most of them progressed far enough in their rhetoric, to objectively deserve removal (Look up European identity movements).
Downvoters: I'm also talking about private Fb groups where assaults on asylums were organized.
This memo isn't about what Facebook allows on it's platforms it's about policing the views of it's employees.
On the other hand, how many Marxsists are hired into Wall Street companies, and what is their sway on the company culture?
There's a key difference here - "Black lives matter" attempts to point out that there is discrimination in law enforcement that seems to single out minorities. Correcting this discrimination would be good. What policy change does "All lives matter" advocate? Do those policy changes indeed benefit "all lives" or are they more designed to take away focus from legitimate problems minorities face due to racism or inequality?
To be honest I quite suspect it is the latter, and that is why I frankly suspect that "All lives matter" is racist at it's core. After all, if the movement doesn't really advocate for policy changes that benefit all lives but instead is just a reaction to attempts to fix discrimination, that is pretty racist.
Either wait I'm inclined to post here less and read the comments here less.
For what it's worth, I approve of both "all lives matter" and "black lives matter" since both are working towards positive goals, they only differ in specificity. I do, however, disapprove of trying to pressure people into substituting the latter with the former or vice versa.
Saying "all lives matter" in response to "black lives matter" implies that the BLM folks are saying that only black lives matter, which they are not saying. It also implies that all races in america face similar struggles, which is also not totally true.
Appeals to judge based on subtext is often an excuse to construct a strawman. A good analogy is criticism of "listen and believe". Many of it's critics complain that it has the subtext that we should do away with the priciples of innocent until guilty and due process. But the phrase says nothing of the sort - just that we should support and listen to victims. Some, perhaps even a significant portion, of those saying "listen and believe" may have used it to further those notions, but it is not correct to pass judgement on the phrase itself.
And for what it's worth I do think that those two messages you outlined are not okay. As stated earlier. That's why I disapprove of "all lives matter" folks from trying to tell "black lives matter" to say "all" - because doing so is depriving people of a voice to more specifically highlight the discrimination Blacks face. Similar I disapprove of the reverse, because it gives credence to the notion that "black lives" is in exclusion of other groups.
I disagree. Subtext and context are immensely important when judging a message like "all lives matter". Judging it based solely on the literal meaning is the strawman.
> Nothing about "all lives matter" says that all races suffer equally. Nothing about it says that "black lives matter" is denying the worth of non-black lives.
"All Lives Matter" came about as a response specifically to "Black Lives Matter". What other possible reason could you have for saying "All Lives Matter" in response to "Black Lives Matter" if you don't think "Black Lives Matter" denies the worth of non-black lives?
I don't understand why you're so set on interpreting both "Black Lives Matter" and "All Lives Matter" as if they only meant what they literally said.
Subtext is what is being said without being said. So, when I say, "break a leg" to an actor most people pick up on the subtext, and realize I'm not wishing the actor actually break their leg.
When someone responds to "Black lives matter" with "All lives matter", most people get the subtext is that assuredly racist. I know that might seem confusing, because they're saying one thing, while meaning something very different.
Incorrect, this isn't subtext, this is an idiom.
> When someone responds to "Black lives matter" with "All lives matter", most people get the subtext is that assuredly racist.
Complaints about "subtext" is often an excuse to construct and attack a straw man. Consider the phrase "listen and believe". Plenty of critics complained that this had the subtext of taking actions against the accused on testimony alone, and doing away with the principles of due process. Some users of the phrase may have attempted to advance those views, but "listen and believe" in and of itself is not about eroding due process - just that we should support people who believe they are victims. Similarly "All lives matter" is not a racist viewpoint - unless someone genuinely believes that the idea that any unjustly extinguished life is a tragedy is somehow racist.
"All lives matter" when specifically used to the exclusion of "black lives matter" (e.g. telling BLM activists to say "all lives matter" instead) may have a racist subtext. And as I have mentioned repeatedly elsewhere, I do not approve of these usages. That said, the blanket statement that "all lives matter" is racist is as wrong as saying "listen and believe" is about punishing people on baseless accusations.
Look at the people saying "All lives matter", then look at the people saying "Black lives matter".
Lo, and you are enlightened my child.
Is it solely the name that you object to, or the idea that discrimination in law enforcement against minorities should be rectified? If it's the former, it seems like such a minor point, like saying you don't like Twitter because the name is dumb. The fact that you don't like the marketing name of a non profit / activist movement seems like such a trivial thing to start an entire counter-movement over. If it's the latter, and you think that discrimination against minorities isn't worth making a fuss over, that is actually pretty racist.
Not without ignoring the context, meaning, and focus.
> "All lives matter" is often meant as a means to include the rest of the population
No, it's a dismissal of the central problem that BLM is organized to address.
For what it's worth, I don't object to either "all species" or just whales. Regardless of whether someone is trying to protect all or focus their attention on one specific species, they're both working towards a good cause - though I do disapprove of the former trying to substitute the latter or vice versa.
I agree - this is exactly what "all endagered species matter" is is doing.
> What is it about whale penises that's causing all this jealousy and needless arguments about semantics?
This notion of jealousy of genetalia is something you brought up on your own initiative. Also, how is it relevant?
More seriously, I can and do disagree strenuously with friends, family, coworkers over many things.
I value opposing viewpoints, as it helps me think through my own views. Without those opposing viewpoints, we get echo chambers. These echo chambers decide to not respect viewpoints not in agreement with their own.
It is inevitable that Godwin's law is somehow invoked these days, almost by reflex. In the US, we have the right to speak freely without interference from the government with very specific limited exceptions. So we cannot make the most odious speech illegal. We can protest such speech, but we need to do this within the bounds of the law.
Regardless of my views, I find myself censoring what I say aloud, or write in posts like this. As the narratives do shift, and one day, I may find my views which were one day mainstream, are now deep into fringe territory.
This is not good. Anyone thinking that shutting someone down hard by means other than a better argument, needs to be prepared for when their views are on the outside.
Put another way, this is a very slippery slope. We really don't want to continue down this path.
I applaud the FB group, hopefully they can make a difference.
If Facebook has the right to set up their workplace such that mainstream right-of-center views are excluded, then other companies have the right to set up their workplaces such that mainstream left-of-center views get excluded, too. IMO, it's far better to cut as much of the political BS as possible so that the greatest number of folks can get along and work together - this is why a lot of workplaces have a professional norm against talking politics in general.
* anti-vaccination * anti-gmo
I have a few others, but it saddens me to admit I don't have enough faith that HN is free speech forum.
And if you think HN is left leaning...I think that's insane. Just look at the comments here, read about you the blind libertarianism in almost any other comment section here. Are you kidding!?
In any case, I can't see how I "literally proved your point" unless the point of your post was something other than what it is overtly- and if that was your point then I still think being afraid of being criticized here is stupid.
What a controversy.
Think about that for a second. Other employees were so outraged by a tiny handful of their colleagues banding together to express mildly conservative views that they lied to the company about the content in this group in an attempt to eradicate them from existence. That is the opposite of tolerance, and it is reveals a toxic underbelly at a disturbingly powerful company. Everyone, regardless of political affiliation, should be concerned by that.
Look at the product and the mission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
https://xkcd.com/1357/
If they resist cooperating with that designation, despite their monopoly, then we must regulate them.
Split off Instagram and WhatsApp from the core Facebook platform as an anti-trust action. At a minimum legally mandate that all monopolist platforms must equally enforce all of their terms of service for all users and must do so in a publicly verifiable manner. If they fail at that task, drown them in fines until they go bankrupt or stop selectively punishing some groups while allowing others to do the exact same things without punishment. Ideally, regulate Facebook and all such monopolist platforms that deal with speech as a form of public square.
I dislike Roy Moore and his politics. That doesn't mean I think it's ok for all the car companies to conspire together as a group monopoly and deny Moore the ability to purchase a new vehicle to punish him. Or that it's ok for the couple of telecom monopolies to get together and deny him access to the phone networks.
Denying voices access to the public square - Facebook's social monopoly - is equally reprehensible. The most important speech we protect, is the speech of the ugly minority, which is what both the far left and far right often represent.
I don't like seeing Antifa clad in black body armor, marching around with Soviet flags urging the adoption of Communism and the overthrow of the US Government. I similarly don't like to see it on Facebook. I fundamentally disagree with them. We should protect their right to that speech and their right to have access to Facebook's monopoly platform.
Like this here.
Freedom of expression doesn't equal a right to distribution.
Jones was banned from YouTube, Twitter, Spotify, and itunes. That's 4 other platforms controlled by four other entities.
For many people, Twitter and YouTube will both have larger reach than Facebook (yes fb has more users, but people don't go to Facebook to catch up on news from big influencers like they do on Twitter), so what makes Facebook the monopoly?
We forget that this industry is still young. It's probably not even in its adolescence. When I started working, there was no such thing as an Internet giant. There was Intel and Microsoft and 30 different PC clone vendors and a bunch of small software shops competing to get their boxes on the shelves at Microcenter. A lot of ideas we take as axioms --- for instance, the idea that developers can't organize to coerce changes in their working environment --- haven't earned that status, and deserve to be challenged.
We're all generally well-paid (even with respect to the value we create). But this whole message board is practically dedicated to the ways in which our industry pisses us off, from confiscatory IP clauses to open offices to death march projects. Who's to say labor can't organize simply for a better shop to work in? That's not unprecedented.
Edit: why the heck am I being downvoted? I'm literally just explaining what I assumed the GP was referring to.
Trump won because of Facebook. I don't know why these guys are complaining.
Ah, but they're not replaceble fast enough. It's hard to get a scab up to speed quick enough. It could take weeks before someone's able to come in at short notice and replace a sysadmin. Hence the employees could take the website down for an hour or so...
But they love skills.
You tar with rather a broad brush. Is it really so inconceivable that there are conservatives who disapprove of Trump and the far-right? Is it really so inconceivable that there are long-time liberals who don't agree with significant aspects of current liberalism?
Modern liberals should be wary of a hardline "us-vs-them" mindset lest they come to discover that there are more of "them" than there are of "us".
Facebook seems to be a natural monopoly. People only want one social network, and they want everyone they know to be on it. If it's a natural monopoly it should be regulated and, like other utilities, required to provide service to everyone.
Developers should start a new organization that represents the interests of employees of the technology industry.
For people who are supposedly so highly paid the majority of my peers can't afford children. The rent of a two bedroom flat/house and the price of daycare means the household needs to earn close to $600,000/y for two children. That's maybe the top 10% in most companies. If a class in society can't afford to reproduce itself it is underpaid regardless of how many trinkets it can afford compared to the median.
What real incentive do they have to unionize even along a professional path? I just don't see having their political views stifled at work to be a big motivator.
It's a cart/horse position problem. If we had to go to school for 7-10 years to be a doctor or lawyer, then of course, we'd want the protection and insurance of a professional licensing organization. But if I can make half the money of a doctor or lawyer without all the hassle, then why bother?
I'm a liberal and I'd join this group in a heartbeat.
I have no issues being friends with right wing people, even if they're more extreme. I just don't very often discuss politics with them, but we hang out a lot.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1913/06/the-neg...
It's possible to be a liberal and be less than 100% on board with defining everything in terms of intersectional oppression. It's possible to be a liberal, and still think the left has gone too far. It's possible to be a liberal and think that people should only be punished for actions, not beliefs. And I believe that the people standing up at Facebook are, by any standard outside of San Francisco, liberals.
They aren't. At least, not any more than previously when they mostly also weren't.
My read on this was that the conflicts is as much between different groups within the "labor" than between management and labor. And within the article it seems that other employees are the ones really pushing for this to be shut down, while managements response is "they haven't actually broken any rules."
Of course management refuse to take action. They're already under public scrutiny and it seems the rebels have just expressed their desire to speak, they haven't spoken yet, so it would be a little harsh to crush them so soon.
If anything I'd say the organized actions by googlers against military contracts shows the actions you seem to be looking for much better.
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/201-facebook-politic...
TBH if you visit them enough to get the paywall, then you probably ought to just pony up the reasonable monthly subscription fee.
Some Facebook 'Employees' Unite to Challenge Its Intolerant Liberal Culture
Some Facebook Employees 'Unite' to Challenge Its Intolerant Liberal Culture
Some Facebook Employees Unite to 'Challenge' Its Intolerant Liberal Culture
Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its 'Intolerant' Liberal Culture
Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its Intolerant 'Liberal' Culture
Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its Intolerant Liberal 'Culture'
I'd argue that if you're working for Facebook you're kind of superficially liberal to begin with. Zuckerberg is only liberal until he has to worry about his bank account.
Also...Oculus' Head of Computer Vision was busted in an underage prostitution ring after all the Palmer non-sense. Yay.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Stan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_(song)
>The name of the eponymous character has given rise to a slang term online which refers to overzealous, maniacal, overly obsessed fans of a celebrity or personality; the term has been included in the Oxford English Dictionary.
I am posting this anonymously as well. While I don't work at FB, I work at a 'hot tech startup', and cannot risk being 'outed' as a conservative. I would categorize my views as 'slightly right of center', very moderate, but it seems like anything not agreeing with Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders' socialism is equal to being called a 'nazi' in our industry.
I feel very sad about this state of affairs, and I applaud Mr. Amerige for his bravery to do this. I applaud everyone who chose to publicly join him in this effort, putting their careers and livelihoods at danger, risking never being employed in Silicon Valley again.
So many of my colleagues (at a big tech co) have expressed various conservative views. Granted, I live in NYC, but this feels a bit like you're experiencing confirmation bias.
I can't claim to speak for conservatives, but I can totally understand why they would stay silent given the atmosphere. See the reply to my other comment, where a HN poster straight up says they would fire any employees that support Trump: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864280
If the linked commenter were to say nobody would express their conservative views to them, that wouldn't surprise me.
However, it seems like you'd be a bit more sympathetic (than the linked commenter). I've found a number of colleagues from red states who supported/support Trump (often for reasons posted in Altman's article about crossing the aisle - single issue voters etc).
Lots of conservatives on Wall Street, too (many leave for big tech cos after a few years).
Finally, I see a bunch of tech-libertarians, which is sort of a hybrid of some conservative financial ideas and some progressive social ideas.
But I am still a bit surprised that you haven't at least run into some libertarians in CA.
I've never heard any such officially expressed views or political rants from coworkers expressing right-leaning views.
Just a data point but I suspect it's not an uncommon one.
1. Believing in the near-absolute protection of free speech, even that which I find repugnant.
2. Acknowledging that sex differences are less than 100% culturally determined.
It’s not the government’s job to protect you from ideas you don’t like, and people who live in a free society have the responsibility to think for themselves.
Which is why I have a hell of a lot of respect for David Goldberger, the Jewish lawyer for the ACLU who defended the free speech of Neo-Nazis in 1977: https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html
The problem with your line of reasoning is that it forces you into what most on the left consider a very difficult fork.
PREMISE: Imposing both government sanctions and private sector no-platforming is a justifiable response to murderous ideologies.
(This is a decent, good-faith attempt to interpret the basic principle that seems to motivate people who say the things you say. In isolation, before you read the rest of my argument, I'm willing to bet that you would accept this premise as written. If you didn't, let me know.)
1. Communism is a murderous ideology. (See: all historical records of the 20th century.) Therefore, McCarthy did nothing wrong, and the members of the Hollywood Blacklist were merely the Alex Jones of their time.
2. Communism is not actually a murderous ideology. Therefore, Stalin did nothing wrong.
The fork is basically that, once you accept the premise that allows you to censor and no-platform Nazis, you either have to be a McCarthyist or a Stalinist, or at least an apologist for one of them.
As a personal side note, I've been enjoying this discussion with you. If you are interested in keeping it up, I'll reply sometime in the morning EST.
Indeed. Which has a lot a parallels to the current political witch hunts going on today, regarding right wing views.
Well, maybe. It turns out that the much-condemned “Hollywood blacklist” (which was not government action, just the act of private businesses!) only listed card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA, which was directly bankrolled from Moscow. Which makes those screenwriters far, far, far worse than, say, Alex Jones or James Damore, to name two recent victims of the current left-wing “witch hunt”.
The main reason the various bans on political parties in Europe haven’t devolved into witch hunts is because the bans are in name only. The former communist states in Europe tended to ban the communist party, which immediately went back into business under another name, and no one cared. And, sadly, the crypto-fascist parties like BNP and FN and AfD are probably even more powerful than they would be if you just let them be honest about being fascists. At that point you’re just tabooing words and symbols. If you followed the same policy in the US, you wouldn’t actually end up censoring any KKK or neo-Nazis, because they would just rebrand as “pan-European nationalists” or something and pursue the same platform.
It’s most reasonable to set that bar, if it must be set, at direct and unambiguous incitement of violence, which would not include things like flying swastika flags. Communist Party USA was never banned, unlike Nazi, fascist, and communist parties across Europe, and I agree with that policy. The marginal risk of Stalinism that is incurred by not outlawing CPUSA is much smaller than the marginal risk of totalitarianism inherent in ever allowing or normalizing the censorship of any political ideology. And honestly, neo-Nazis are an even bigger joke.
Any ideology that’s unpopular enough to ban isn’t popular enough to represent a real threat. The people banning it, though—they’re the ones to keep an eye on. Antifa literally march down the street wearing black shirts and beating up people they perceive as enemies, and they don’t see the irony in that. Sure, they should go to jail as soon as they lay hands on anyone, just like anyone else should, but I’m not going to begrudge their right to wear ridiculous black outfits and wave black-and-red flags around, and they’re a lot more likely to end up sending folks to death camps than those neo-Nazi clowns.
I'm honestly surprised to see Jones and Damore mentioned in the same sentence. Jones deliberately spreads misinformation and personally response for directing a lot of hatred and harassment towards innocent people. Damore just published some unpopular (and in my opinion, harmful) views. I lean far left, and even I think that situation was mishandled.
> It turns out that the much-condemned “Hollywood blacklist” (which was not government action, just the act of private businesses!) only listed card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist: Scholar Thomas Doherty describes how the HUAC hearings swept onto the blacklist those who had never even been particularly active politically, let alone suspected of being Communists: "On March 21, 1951, the name of the actor Lionel Stander was uttered by the actor Larry Parks during testimony before HUAC. "Do you know Lionel Stander?" committee counsel Frank S. Tavenner inquired. Parks replied he knew the man, but had no knowledge of his political affiliations. No more was said about Stander either by Parks or the committee – no accusation, no insinuation. Yet Stander's phone stopped ringing. Prior to Parks's testimony, Stander had worked on ten television shows in the previous 100 days. Afterwards, nothing."
> And, sadly, the crypto-fascist parties like BNP and FN and AfD are probably even more powerful than they would be if you just let them be honest about being fascists.
This is speculation. I'm aware that these groups will continue rebranding and resurfacing, but I don't think a passive approach is effective here. I think a perfect example of this is the Unite the Right rally 1 year ago, vs the reunion this past year. After the events a year ago, many white supremacists were doxxed, shamed, and fired. This year, no one came out to the reunion. If the rally a year ago was a success, do you think that would be the case? I think its reasonable to expect that more people would come out for the event, embolden by previous successes. I know that all the people involved in the rally last year are still white supremacists. My concern is them indoctrinating more members and growing in power. And I think passively letting them have a platform enables them to reach more people, embolden more people, and generally grow in strength.
> The marginal risk of Stalinism that is incurred by not outlawing CPUSA is much smaller than the marginal risk of totalitarianism inherent in ever allowing or normalizing the censorship of any political ideology. And honestly, neo-Nazis are an even bigger joke.
Sure, they may be a joke now. But they are less of a joke now than the were 10 years ago. They have a larger microphone, and while I can't speak for enrollment numbers, the members they have are more active and more visible. They have someone in office that they view as "their guy". By letting them have their platform, we risk letting them grow more. And that is not a marginal risk to me. For me, the marginal risk is that we will ban a non-murderous ideology. I see that both less likely, and safer for me personally, than the alternative.
I was referring more to the original Hollywood Ten. Although, I'm curious to hear how the witch hunt you describe would not, in fact, happen with a similarly concerted attempt targeted at far-right views.
> I think a perfect example of this is the Unite the Right rally 1 year ago, vs the reunion this past year. After the events a year ago, many white supremacists were doxxed, shamed, and fired. This year, no one came out to the reunion. If the rally a year ago was a success, do you think that would be the case?
If anything, that's an argument that we don't have to ban Nazis, because all of that happened without any kind of laws in the first place.
Although, I think this also demonstrates what complete rank amateurs the Charlottesville crowd really was. If they had followed the most basic precautions taken by the antifa/black bloc crowd and just covered their faces, it would have been a lot harder to dox them.
The only reason these people are more visible is because the media is putting a spotlight on them to drive the narrative that they're a growing and increasingly dangerous group. It's very reminiscent of the opening stages of the McCarthyist witch hunts.
This is a concern of mine, which is why I took time to differentiate Jones and Damore. I see one as having a legitimate cause for deplatforming, and the other as reactionary.
> If anything, that's an argument that we don't have to ban Nazis, because all of that happened without any kind of laws in the first place.
I'm curious, do you see a difference between social deplatforming, and a technological deplatforming? Those Nazi's are no longer able/willing to express their ideas in physical space because of pressures exerted by private citizens and institutions. As a society, we've limited these peoples' free speech, and I view that as A Good Thing because it has resulted in lower attendance at subsequent rallies. In the same vein, big tech companies may also be limiting the access to free speech of these people, but I'm okay with that given the views of the people they are limiting.
Well, isn't that the thing? If you already accept as a given that censorship is legally and morally justified and you turn it into a mere policy decision of who is worthy of censorship, there is a real and present danger of that mere policy decision turning into outright and explicit oppression.
It's like a lot of the classic civil liberties scenarios, like how the "ticking time bomb scenario" can justify torture. So let's talk about that case, by way of analogy. If there's a ticking time bomb, and you can verify within minutes where the bomb is, you can just club someone with a wrench or something until he tells you, and if it turns out the bomb isn't where he told you, you keep torturing him until he tells the truth. In that single, specific, narrow circumstance, you might be able to justify torture. But once you've made a policy of "torture is sometimes justified", how the hell are you going to make sure they only use it in the extreme edge cases where it's called for? More likely, from a rule-utilitarian standpoint, you just end up causing a lot more pain and suffering by letting a bunch of people get tortured unnecessarily.
So, even if there are individual cases where you can have a net reduction in expected totalitarianism and state murder by censoring totalitarian, murderous ideologies, allowing such censorship risks those exact ideologies sneaking in through the back door.
In the free speech case, it's even more dire, because the standard propaganda narrative of murderous, totalitarian ideologies seems to be, "$BOOGEYMAN is murderous and dangerous and we need to restrict civil liberties in order to protect you from them". Nazis never campaigned for universal liberties; they just campaigned for installing themselves as the oppressors and their perceived oppressors as the victims, while pooh-poohing anyone who did advocate for universal liberties.
> I'm curious, do you see a difference between social deplatforming, and a technological deplatforming?
I'm actually idealistic enough that I don't think anyone, even literal Nazis, should be fired for their political views as long as they don't bring those views into the workplace.
I think the pattern of tabooing certain forms of extremism causes more problems than it solves. If you don't actually let racist people say overtly racist things, they're going to say racist-adjacent things that are moderate enough to be held in good faith, like "unrestricted immigration is culturally disruptive" or "the Muslim world doesn't seem to share our cultural values when it comes to respecting women", and then you can't tell the racist trolls apart from people who genuinely hold those moderate views, and now we're at the point of absurdity and indirection where the racist trolls themselves post slogans like, "it's OK to be white", which makes it really, really awkward for those of us who aren't racist trolls, but don't have any rhetorical space left to argue against the scores of far-leftists who regularly state that, actually, it isn't OK to be white.
That's all good, but we still have a bomb to find. If we say censorship is off the table of acceptable methods to combat Nazis, what are our tools? I'm going to stress again that I haven't seen any convincing argument that a passive approach will work here. The arguments all sound great ("Just ignore them and let them fizzle out!") but I'd like some historical precedents to look at before I can believe that's true. Additionally, the passive approaches don't mention that these groups are active and recruiting. They have plans and playbooks for radicalizing more members. I feel it is legitimate to worry that they will continue to galvanize and grow in power unless we stop them. But I am open to hearing alternative solutions to censorship, as long as they are more thought out and convincing.
> If you don't actually let racist people say overtly racist things...
I've got almost the same question here. In your ideal world, how do we respond when someone says something racist? Do we ignore it? Do we try to teach them why they're wrong? Do we denounce them and call it a day? These are serious questions.
Well, there are two options:
If a lot of people seem to give credence to their ideas, then we absolutely have to debate those ideas in the public sphere, as overtly as possible, and because we happen to be right, we will prevail in an open debate.
If, as seems to be the case today, almost nobody gives credence to their ideas, then we just let them make fools of themselves, kind of like how no one minds David Icke's claims about how the British royal family are secretly reptilians from outer space.
> Additionally, the passive approaches don't mention that these groups are active and recruiting. They have plans and playbooks for radicalizing more members. I feel it is legitimate to worry that they will continue to galvanize and grow in power unless we stop them. But I am open to hearing alternative solutions to censorship, as long as they are more thought out and convincing.
I would actually question the notion that these groups are growing in size and influence. While it's hard to have a perfectly controlled experiment, here's an interesting data point. One of the most politically successful overt white supremacists, David Duke, has run for political office on numerous occasions, including two campaigns for a US Senate seat in Louisiana. Duke went from polling at 11.5% (141,489 votes) for a Louisiana US Senate election in 1996 to 3% (58,581 votes) for a Louisiana US Senate election in 2016.
Is that really the same though? The key differences as I see them: 1) History. Racism has been taught for many years (for a long time "scientifically proven"). I'm guessing Icke's views are rather new. The leads to 2) Cultural relevancy. There are plenty of racist people out there, each generation teaching the next. I'm not sure how many people believe that about the royal family, but I'm guessing not as many. This matters because 3) Racists are harmful. Unless Icke is about to break into the palace to prove his theory, he seems pretty harmless. We can leave him alone to make a fool of himself. Discrimination and hate crimes are not things I want to leave alone, I'd like them to end.
> I would actually question the notion that these groups are growing in size and influence.
While size may be debatable, I think influence is less so. The data I've seen says hate crimes are up in numbers. The president refuses to call these groups terrorists. Social media is filled with their propaganda and troll mobs. This doesn't feel like a group that is losing power or influence.
"Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective pubic relations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate.
In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews."[1]
This pattern has been repeated in other countries as well. So, it's really a shame that people aren't looking back to history's lessons here. I understand that when you see something really offensive, your reaction is to ban it, but there are all sorts of unexpected things that happen when you do that, from the Barbara Streisand effect, to driving discussions underground, where they tend to become more extreme because they are only debated in an echo chamber with like minded individuals rather than brought out to the public square.
[1]https://www.cato.org/policy-report/mayjune-2015/war-free-exp...
I am obviously not talking about employer code of conduct. In my opinion, there should be no place for politics on the job site, but just be aware that you are not actually stomping out any offending beliefs by punishing those who express them -- at best you are driving those beliefs underground where they will go unchallenged, and at worst you are also creating a much wider audience of sympathetic ears, mostly drawn from a public who doesn't like to be told what to think.
I very firmly believe that if it we're for the chorus of media outlets and public voices pushing the idea that anybody who didn't like Hillary, or who did like Trump, were all racist, sexist, deplorable... That Trump probably wouldn't have been elected.
I think Al Gore had similar issues vis-a-vis Bush. He was just robotic, condescending in his stump speeches and debates. He was the exact wrong person to nominate to run against Bush, just in terms of his public persona.
The TV age really changed politics, and treating people with respect and not talking down to them matters. I think this rules out a lot of people who would otherwise make capable administrators, but that's how it is. And all of these people may be great one on one, but stick them in front of a camera, and man, they are cringe-worthy.
While I'm at it, Elizabeth Warren has the same problem. She comes off as a schoolmarm, constantly talking down to people. Please don't nominate her, Democrats, don't keep doing this. It would be nice to bring two party rule back to this country, so get someone who can win -- someone in the Bill Clinton, Barack Obama mold, who is able to be passionate about something while at the same time doesn't sound like they are scolding you for having the wrong views.
>I was stunned when she was nominated, because I couldn't imagine her winning a national election.
I think the way she got herself nominated didn’t do her any favors either. It was quite transparently corrupt and must’ve flipped a good amount of Bernie supporters.
You'll find absolute free speech advocates on both the left and the right. It's more of a libertarian/authoritarian issue than a left/right issue.
Only extremists on the left would disagree that sex differences are partially/fully biological (depending on how you're defining biological and sex).
Unfortunately, there were enough “extremists” to get both Larry Summers and James Damore fired.
Their employers decided they did not want to deal with the entirely predictable controversy both caused and exercised their first amendment right to freedom of association.
Seems like the first amendment is intact to me.
Since the government had no part in what happened to them, this is true in a trivial sense. However, it does not support whatever argument you are trying to make.
> ... first amendment right to freedom of association
People like to trot this out as an defense but they forget that freedom of association is not unlimited precisely because of its use in the past for discrimination. (Deeply ironic, is it not?) For example, the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Fair Housing Act of 1968 restrict freedom of association in that they require businesses and landlords / property sellers to serve people in protected classes in a fair manner.
Some states even already offer limited protection from employers who discriminate against political affiliation; see, for example http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection... .
He was also claiming that those biological differences made women less suited to work in technology and leadership related positions.
His stance was that women are, on average, more cooperative, more prone to anxiety, and less driven by status than men. He says that those traits explain the gender gap in tech employment because the current tech culture is high stress, requires long hours and hard work, and is highly competitive.
In other words, women are (on average) less suited to work in technology and leadership positions because of their biologically determined personality traits.
Rounding that off to "women are less suited to work in tech" is completely dishonest, because there was never any claim that each and every woman is less suited for the tech industry than a man. A more accurate summary would be, "fewer women are suited to work in tech".
In terms of economics and power, the rich have gotten richer, the republicans have gotten ruthlessly more fundamentalist. Reagan raised taxes. Nixon proposed universal healthcare. Obamacare/Romneycare was originally a Heritage foundation "we wish" policy document. Trump has added a trillion dollars to the deficit for a tax cut, without a peep from the "deficit hawk"s.
This is such a clear mirror for what Facebook is going through itself. As a company it never stood for anything except for growth and engagement at all costs. When leadership doesn't stand for anything, it invites others to try to guide culture.
If Zuckerberg had come out to say either the product or the company's culture stands for something, it would put this all to rest...but he won't, because growth and engagement at all costs.
That's a massive oversimplification:
* Ireland only recently legalized abortion, which has been legal in the United States since 1972. The legal status of abortion in the United States is in some ways far more liberal than in many European countries, and in other ways less.
* American courts have routinely protected levels of civil liberties that are beyond those recognized anywhere in the EU.
* Unlike some EU countries, the United States neither has a state-established religion, nor regulates or prohibits the public exercise of religion.
* The United States has stricter corporate regulations and higher corporate taxes than many EU countries. The right-wing Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" ranks the United States 18th, below Switzerland, Ireland, Estonia, the UK, Iceland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the Netherlands. According to actual American conservatives, countries following the famed "Nordic Model" are in fact, even more capitalist than the United States!
Abortion was supported by the majority of the Irish for a while. That it became legal recently is only mildly correlated with the social acceptability of the view itself, and prior to legalization many women would simply fly to England or wherever to do what they had to do.
>American courts have routinely protected levels of civil liberties that are beyond those recognized anywhere in the EU.
>Unlike some EU countries, the United States neither has a state-established religion, nor regulates or prohibits the public exercise of religion.
>The United States has stricter corporate regulations and higher corporate taxes than many EU countries. The right-wing Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" ranks the United States 18th, below Switzerland, Ireland, Estonia, the UK, Iceland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the Netherlands. According to actual American conservatives, countries following the famed "Nordic Model" are in fact, even more capitalist than the United States!
I'm not sure how that relates to my point. I never said Europe is consistently more left-leaning than America on every political issue, which would be a very silly point indeed that'd require twisting the definition of 'left-leaning' to the point of meaninglessness. I'm saying that many views considered left-leaning or liberal in America are the norm in Europe, and I'm raising the question of whether that makes Europe and its ~500M inhabitants a monoculture equivalent to that of tech companies.
* Women only achieved the federal vote in Switzerland in 1971, and the for local votes the last hold-out was forced to acquiesce by the Supreme Court only in 1991.
* There is no country in Europe with abortion laws as permissive as those in the United States (or Canada, but that's it's own strange case). Portugal didn't legalize abortion until 2007, and it is only available on-demand up until the 10th week. Abortion is still illegal in Ireland (in the process of reform after last May's referendum). In Germany abortion-on-demand is only legal in the first 12 weeks, and requires mandatory counselling with a 3-day waiting period.
* While no EU states practice the death penalty because it is a condition of membership, majorities in France, the Baltics, Czech Republic, and several Eastern European countries still [support it](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/55sze2/support_for...), and in the UK support was up around 70% less than a decade ago. Current support for the death penalty in the US has registered as between 49 and 55% in the last few years. Not totally out of line in terms of public opinion, though there are more states that have the death penalty in the US obviously.
* I was stunned to be in a German class in Berlin with students from several EU countries, most of them in their early 20s, and also be the only one present who had no problem with homosexual adoption, which was most stridently opposed by representatives of catholic countries. I was the only North American.
Without these specifics, it's hard to understand the problem.
https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
Then they wonder why nobody wants to get lunch with them.
I’m a hiring manager, but I don’t work in HR. I follow HR guidelines and ask relevant policy questions. Nothing more. I don’t express an opinion about our hiring practices around diversity.
>moderation/curation of news feeds
The article doesn’t say that all these individuals raising the issue work on one feature. That would be a relevant detail. My reading of this piece suggests that a swathe of individuals don’t like company culture — the bits that bind employees above the work itself - and that’s the part I can’t grasp. I work at a Fortune 50 company and I have no idea the political or religious affiliations of my coworkers. I could guess, but don’t want to.
I just don’t see how a company culture can have an impactful political bias to people who mind their own business. The article doesn’t specify any specific instance, so I can’t form an opinion on the validity of their claims.
In my opinion, the American self-image and self-worth largely characterized by subscription to a political ideology is the problem.
What bothers me is not dress codes,free meals,open offices,etc... But the very idea that a company would display or promote politics in the work place.
Why are companies promoting "pride",donating to trump,telling workers to attend 'lgbt tolerance' meetings,etc... Wth!!!!
If you are my coworker,I respect you as a colleague and a human being. Your private life and beliefs are not mine to police or encourage in anyway. Left,right,etc... Who cares? You're at work!
Look at it this way,if your company is pro something,it can be anti- that same thing as soon as it becomes profitable to do so. Imagine not being able to work in tech because how you vote,pray or who you associate with becomes inconvenient to the industry.
This is my question for you: Are you willing to surrender your right to believe what you want,associate with whom you want and support the political causes that matter to you in exchange for your political views and ideology becoming the norm you can't deviate from?
What is the alternative? Do politics with your friends, family and community,associate with whom you want and believe what you want. When at work respect your colleagues,not because of their politics and beliefs but because 1) they're human 2) you would want to be respected if you were in their shoes 3) out of respect for your own self
This isn't about left vs right or kkk vs blm. It's about corporations vs individuals,who decides what views,beliefs and associations are acceptable. Should society be run by the people or by the ruling class and their corporate machine?
Like what?
A workplace should be, first and foremost, a place where work is done. The march of history has proven that allowing people who are mistaken in their beliefs to contribute positively has achieved great things. Consider, for example, Fritz Haber - many of his beliefs and principles are clearly bad ideas, and his overall contribution is overwhelmingly positive. This is a particularly good example of a general principle that exists up and down the industrial underpinnings of modern western civilisation.
Politics entering the workplace, and monocultures in particular, represent a threat the the mechanisms that allow corporations to drive good outcomes. Nobody should want that, especially considering that even apparent fact sometimes turns out to be wrong.
Secondly, following from the first, the fact that I have to post something even as innocuous as this this anonymously out of fear of retribution of it was linked with my professional identity.
Context is important. If we're talking about the hobby of being a KKK member, I'd say that it's perfectly reasonable for that to be disallowed.
The counter-argument is that the causes relate to discrimination in the workforce. I.e., BLM needs to be supported because blacks are underrepresented in the American tech workforce. I disagree these need to be equivalent. It's possible for a company to promote hiring underrepresented minorities without allowing employees to advertise their political beliefs.
What happened to never talking about politics on the first date or at your job?
As a gay dude that grew up in Ohio -- and had people yell "fag" when I got my diploma at graduation -- I'm beyond happy that the next generation of LGBTQ engineers won't grow up with the same level of hate I experienced.
The arc of moral justice is only bent when force is applied.
So the commenter says that he looks forward to the next generation of developers not experiencing the hate that he has experienced. You say, he’d be unhappy at conservative places, presumably because he’d still experience that hate.
So then why do you wonder why he pushes for politics in the workforce? His goal—hell, it should be all of our goal—is to stamp out places where such hate is encouraged.
Because he doesn’t understand that these places openly hostile towards gays are likely formed by white heterosexual Christian conservatives defending their identity and pushing for politics at workplace.
> it should be all of our goal—is to stamp out places where such hate is encouraged
You can’t stamp out people. You forcibly convert that one place to your faith, people will likely change jobs or move to other states.
Through most of the history, the threats were imaginary, and it was conservative majority who oppressed other people.
Recently however, in places like Bay Area, the conservatives are no longer a majority, and consequently the treats became quite real, see e.g. https://www.scribd.com/document/368692388/James-Damore-Lawsu...
I don’t think the right way to solve this is oppress, stamp out, or discriminate people positively or negatively. The right way is promoting tolerance (the good one i.e. civilized behavior towards people despite different positions, not the bad one that says everyone must express the only true position), and most importantly following the laws.
Democracy + judicial system worked OK for centuries. IMO it’s the only working mechanism invented so far how a society can function despite different people have different identities and beliefs.
Spoiler Alert: the current threats to their identity are just as imaginary. White heterosexual conservatives will eventually learn how to be a minority, just like every other identity in this country has.
What, precisely, about other minorities existing threatens that identity?
You keep repeating this claim of threats, but haven't been able to articulate any.
> I don’t think the right way to solve this is oppress, stamp out, or discriminate people positively or negatively.
And yet that's precisely what the Google engineer linked to was doing by circulating his memo describing how he and others believed women weren't as "qualified" to be programmers based solely on their biology. Hence, why he was fired.
The only thing that cannot be tolerated in a tolerant society is intolerance itself.
See the link in the previous comment. Being fired for expressing a political viewpoint is a classic example of discrimination. Also because the subject was about work conditions, the firing was illegal in California jurisdiction.
> describing how he and others believed women weren't as "qualified" to be programmers
Apparently, you have not read that memo. He never said that (I’ve just downloaded the memo and searched), nor anything similar to that. And IMO he never meant that either.
That really doesn't describe a threat to the "white heterosexual Christian" identity. In fact, you're free to be a white heterosexual Christian at Google or anywhere else for that matter.
> Being fired for expressing a political viewpoint is a classic example of discrimination.
Again, the viewpoint on women and minorities was an intolerant one. Please study the Paradox of Tolerance.
> He never said that (I’ve just downloaded the memo and searched), nor anything similar to that.
You're right, he made a much more broad statement about the gender gap in the tech industry. Although there is this section:
> Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
>○ These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
He's regurgitating the idea that biology, rather than society, is what is holding women back in the tech industry. This is an intolerant viewpoint, as it suggests that there is something inherent about being female that makes them inferior at participating in the tech industry.
The conclusion you’ve made in this and previous comments is about abilities.
Huge difference between the two.
This is the conclusion the author of the memo reaches as well. His suggestions are not to fix the culture surrounding these preferences, but instead to simply "give women what they prefer", which inherently limits their experience and makes an implicit claim on their ability without that compensation.
He then prescribes things based on that generalization that make implicit claims about the ability of women to work without said compensation.
Because you really sound like making stuff up, just to confirm your bias against Damore. The whole memo was about something else, yet you claim that because:
> He then prescribes things based on that generalization that make implicit claims about the ability of women to work without said compensation.
(whatever that actually means)
he is:
> He's regurgitating the idea that biology, rather than society, is what is holding women back in the tech industry.
That's gross hyperbole at best, and, considering you have not provided single citation (even after being called out), seems like random baseless belief you hold.
Frankly, now your two liner applies wonderfully:
> You are free to believe whatever you want. Just be prepared for your ideology to be called out for what it is if you choose to publicly stand for it.
After all discussions on the HN on the topic you still hold this view? When you paint the dissenting view in the worst possible light (and imagine a few things just to be sure), you will be seen as the oppresor.
Hence the identity threat to the conservatives.
You are free to believe whatever you want. Just be prepared for your ideology to be called out for what it is if you choose to publicly stand for it.
How do you think a person who wore a MAGA hat to Google or Facebook would be treated? What about someone who advocates that people who entered the country without permission should be charged with a crime? I think the point being made is that be careful how the minority is treated because one day you might be in the minority. The best way to do that is to keep out politics out of work.
I’m a heterosexual white male. It’s convenient for me to ignore the hardship of people who are outside my demographic.
I went for smoothies with a work friend who was outwardly gay and heard him called a faggot by a couple of random people when I realized how different life might be for someone who is not me. It was not great. It would be more convenient if I hadn’t heard that. The fact is, it happens.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You shouldn't be called a slur at work not because of the type of slur, but the fact that it is a slur at all.
Pretty much just their bottom line. Companies advocate for whatever position makes a large majority of people think of them as the "good guys". How many companies did you see advocating for gay marriage before the political zietgeist shifted in favor of it a few years ago?
Rest assured that all these "socially conscious" corporations will have a sudden and miraculous change of heart the instant the sociopolitical winds shift on any given issue. And you will be expected to fall in line or keep your opinions to yourself.
Personally, I don't want my career success or failure to depend on my willingness to pledge fealty to whatever insincere political opinion my employer thinks is currently expedient.
Why can't you talk about politics at work? We spend most of our waking hours at work. There should be basic ground rules for civility and then people should be free to say what they want, without fear that they'll be fired because they donated to some GOP candidate.
That's tolerance, and honestly, that's America. What the hell happened where everyone's trying to bite each other's heads off all the time?
Disclaimer: haven’t voted anything in this thread
It's hard enough for a topic this divisive to show up on HN; stooping this low just sets the whole place on fire.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Here is the issue: while the left is saying "we need better healthcare, immigrants are a part of this country's foundations, and student debt will cripple the nation", the right firmly supports a POTUS that says "Mexicans are rapists, peaceful protesters are a disgrace, and the media is the enemy of the people."
And the reason people are biting each other's heads off is because the right firmly believes their bigoted racism is just an "opinion" that's as open to discussion as the left's progressive agenda.
Karl Popper intelligently realized this is unsustainable[1], and that the only solution to prevent a complete collapse of a tolerant society is the crushing of the intolerant.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Like expelling men accused of sexual misconduct without allowing them to defend themselves, while demanding that "people of color" be allowed to break the law without consequence (eg, trespassing, immigration).
Like forbidding hate speech, unless it's anti-white, anti-male speech, which will get you a job as an editor at the NY Times.
Are you sure American individuals' beliefs really cluster that cleanly?
In particular, I wonder if you're accidentally equating "the right" with "the stated platform of the Republican national party."
Don't even go on Twitter, listen to mainstream media and see how much negativity is pumped out 24/7 in industrial quantities. It's an information analogue of First World War industrial warfare, and the effects are devastating.
Look at the comment here just below here - I am sure this guy who thinks half of the country is bigoted racists who needs to be crushed - is a nice person in real life who is a pleasure to be around. As long as he/she doesn't see you as an outgroup. And you probably would get along just nicely if you do not discuss things that reveal you as an outgroup. But if you and them bring your whole self to work, and turns out that person thinks you need to be crushed - would it be easy to get along, going forward?
The way I see it, corporations are the people who work for them and their relationships. And since politics deals with peoples and their relationships, politics in an inherent aspect of corporations. And all attempts to separate the two by promoting politics that differ from the politics of the people in the organization is an act of propaganda.
But... I don't think this should be a PR stunt. Or should be politicized. Go out there, and do the hard work. Engage all people and recruit the whole eligible population. It's in our interest, but don't politicize it and don't introduce politicized quotes. Do it methodically without pretenses.
This appears to be a form of the "pipeline" argument, that the problem with low participation rates by some demographic groups is due to a lack of those people in the earlier stages of the career pipeline to the workplace.
The thing to understand about the pipeline problem is that it is the same thing as the hostile/discriminating workplace problem. The pipeline leaks at every stage, from kindergarten to the boardroom, because some demo groups are supported, assumed capable, etc, and others are not.
So the solutions are the same at every level: workplace and school policies that explicitly correct the inequitable treatment, both structural and individual.
That's only true with extreme censorship. If a company I was working for was hiring people based on race, I would call that out for the blatant racism that it is (under the disguise of "hiring underrepresented minorities"). Would that be an inappropriate airing of my "political" beliefs. It may be construed as "political", but really it's just pointing out a tautology and making a very obviously true value judgement (people ought not to be hired or not-hired based on their race).
We’re talking about fundamentally bigoted and hateful beliefs. I refuse to believe that someone who holds those beliefs is able to separate those beliefs from how they treat others in the workplace.
Politics does come into work with things like family leave policy, hiring, promotions, corporate giving, corporate mission, etc.
It’s inescapable. Even denying it doesn’t make it go away.
Feel free to take your own advice and shut up yourself, but it’s up to other people to decide for themselves what they will speak up about, knowing the price they may pay for, in some cases, confronting whatever they are up against.
EDIT: It should probably be pointed out that the definition of bigotry is "intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.", pulled straight from Google. "If my coworker doesn’t believe ... then I don’t respect them as a coworker or a human being" (pulled from the great-grandparent post, from the same author as the parent) fits that perfectly, no matter what the opinion in the middle is.
I understand if you don't think a company should support a political party, but LGBTQ/gay tolerance meetings don't fall into that category.
If you put this into the context of some other progressive social movement such as giving women equal opportunity to men, it makes more sense. A company would not be out of line giving seminars about gender equality in the workplace even though some people may disagree. It's not a partisan issue. It's about acceptance and tolerance.
The majority of people who spout tolerance and acceptance at me are the least tolerant and acceptant of other beliefs.
Karl Popper wrote about this idea called the paradox of tolerance [0] asking if you should be tolerant of intolerance.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
In the end after a few dozen unrelated complaints about random different things their supervisor would be thinking about getting rid of them.
If your target skinhead kept all his skinhead behaviour out of the workplace, and only displayed respect and tolerance to his colleagues, would you still organise to get him fired?
If you mean neonazi I would for no reason I can imagine tolerate them. Would you tolerate someone who hated and wanted to subjugate or murder some portion of your loved ones because they were polite at work so they could earn a living?
If my co-worker is donating to Trump, and talking about kicking foreign workers out of America, they're literally talking about kicking ME out of the country. They're donating money to a politician who wants to make my life harder, and make my visa process less pleasant.
I can tolerate my co-worker all day, but if they're working to make my life less pleasant and workable, they're going to feel some chill.
Sorry you're eating alone conservatives, but you're working at a place with thousands of foreign co-workers, what did you think was going to happen?
If my co-worker is opposing Trump, and talking about bringing more foreign workers to America, they're literally talking about lowering MY wages. They're donating money to a politician who wants to make my life harder, and make my work environment more competitive.
I can tolerate my co-worker all day, but if they're working to make my life less pleasant and workable, they're going to feel some chill.
Sorry you're eating alone immigrants, but you're working at a place with tens of thousands of native co-workers, what did you think was going to happen?
And the other is a definitive slight against my worth and my legitimacy as their co-worker.
Personally, I think that high-skill immigration is a very good thing for the country, and not a bad thing for the workers in the sectors they'd be joining. It's a globalized economy - competing with an engineer from Korea when they're 50 feet down the street isn't that far from competing with them while they're in Seoul.
It doesn't, which is the "paradox of tolerance".[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It seems to hinge on "rational argument" to base determination on whether tolerance is warranted, lest intolerance creep in. I wasn't able to discern the bar for "rational argument". Do you have some more info?
It hands people an excuse on a silver platter to exercise their bigotry.
People who have a moral excuse to engage in evil are almost always the most dangerous and evilest of the bunch.
"I'm righteously intolerant of the political right's intolerance of my beliefs."
"Oh yeah? Well, I'm righteously intolerant of the political left's intolerance of my beliefs."
In the end, invoking the paradox is just a convenient fig leaf for those who want to justify their bad behavior.
(And that's completely ignoring the fact that Popper's answer to his paradox is not the only one, as the Wikipedia article itself mentions.)
I think we just need to learn how to disagree in a friendly and constructive way. But also learn when to drop something and just get on with work.
When you are gay or trans and a significant chunk of people find your mere existence revolting, when you are black and a significant chunk of people believe you are innately less intelligent and more prone to violence, when you are a woman and a significant chunk of people believe you have no business starting a career or working in tech or people don't believe you when you claim to have been sexually assaulted, it's hard to treat "politics" as an abstract debate where free-thinking intellectuals joust in the marketplace of ideas. In these contexts, you actually live "politics" - every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep. You can't opt out of it.
I am taking these examples because they resonate best with what are considered "political" subjects in the West, but in more gruesome contexts, such as the situation of Syria, "politics" is whether you are pro-Assad, pro-rebel, which rebel group you are part of, etc. You can see how silly (at best) or insulting (at worst) it can be to try and dismiss politics when they are actually a matter of life or death.
Whenever there is a struggle, whenever there is an imbalance of power perceived by some to be unfair, there is politics. If you do not perceive that imbalance, it means you are on the better end of it, and your lack of stand is simply apathy for the status quo. I don't seek to judge you for that, but hopefully you may understand that some people are unhappy with the status quo and wish that it change, and that's why they're getting political.
There is a line somewhere here, but it's not unreasonable for affected parties to pursue bureaucratic solutions.
It's obviously just me, but I have a difficult time imagining anyone being well-served by that particular "bureaucratic solution". Which, caricature though it might be, is also an accurate representation of a lived experience.
The act of defining what and isn’t “political” - is itself a political act. It used to be unacceptably “political” in the majority of Anerican businesses to be against racial segregation. Now it’s the other way around. Whether you agree with that change or not, you can’t deny that the boundaries of what is or isn’t acceptable discourse at work have changed over time. When you’re bringing up a topic or opinion at work that makes others uncomfortable, you’re trying to move that boundary, which is a political. When you’re complaining that the topic is “too political” and doesn’t belong in the workplace, you’re trying to keep the boundary where it is, which is also a political act.
On the other hand you can also simply ban all tribal issues, ie the ones that cause coworkers to go at eachothers throats. This would be minorly political but the workplace atmosphere would improve greatly.
Please do not take the position of neutrality away from me. Anyone who forces me using the reasoning above, is, by default, an enemy of mine, regardless of coincidence of wants.
Quote 1:
> This line of reasoning is implicitely making the false equalence of "everyone who isn't with me is, by default, against me"
Quote 2:
> Anyone who forces me using the reasoning above, is, by default, an enemy of mine
You did: the position of neutrality. The position of not taking a stance either way. The position of actually doing stuff, like, in the real world, orthogonal to that of politics. The area outside of politics.
I observe, based on your comment 3 above, that you consider politics as all-encompassing. I reply: politics, as practiced currently, is a virus, which attempts to stick itself to everything, every act, every stuff; and until nuance, tolerance, and understanding re-enters the picture, I will not take any part of it.
I don’t understand who those people are, or how they force you to say or do political things. All I see are people who are saying things at work, like “everyone should march for lgbtq rights next weekend”, and those things annoy you because you don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss them at work. So, in this scenario, now you’re annoyed by unwanted speech... what happens next? Are you forced to go march, or forced to say outloud that you agree, under threat (explicit or implied) of retaliation? That might be illegal depending on where you work, but ianal. If that’s not what’s happening, then can you explain in more detail what harm is done to you, beyond being annoyed?
Everything is political. Pretending it isn't is a luxury that you yourself have, as a person who is privileged enough that they aren't in any way forced to think about the politics of any action they take.
> politics, as practiced currently, is a virus
Again, it always was. You were just privileged enough that you could safely ignore it without it impacting any part of your life.
Can you support your claim with evidence?
I'm a conservative Christian. I believe that homosexuality is a sin. The one co-worker who I knew was gay, I told him that straight out. I also continued to work with him, and kept him as my friend. (Lots of my friends are sinners. For that matter, so am I.) I continued to be someone he felt he could confide in - he'd come talk to me when he needed to gripe, because he knew he could tell me sensitive stuff and I wouldn't burn him with it.
Now here comes company diversity training. It includes LGBTQ stuff. If it says "treat people professionally; whether they are LGBTQ or not is not something that affects how you treat people in the office", well, I'm fine with that. It's what I do anyway.
But if the diversity training moves on to "you should have a positive view of gay marriage" or some such, well, that's forcing a political position on me.
Note well: I have never experienced that. But I think I've heard of such things happening (and no, I can't document even hearing it).
"He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored."
Mark 3:5
But yes, God is the judge. I'm not. But God has called something sin, I can safely rely on His judgment.
His interactions with his coworker illustrate this pretty well. Isn't that all we can ask of someone with a different view?
So, again, the concern is of a hypothetical nature.
One definition of power that is sometimes given: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." If the climate around things such as diversity policies effectively suppresses dissent, then the advocates of such policies have real power, whether or not they psychologically perceive it.
If you feel you have a right to bull others and to deny that is to restrict your ability to "dissent"; if you feel that you have the right to spread false information (women aren't welcome in tech, any given race isn't welcome, any given sexuality isn't welcome, etc"; then you should perhaps sit down and remember your company is going to exercise its free speech and kick you too the curb. The cost of giving you a "safe space to dissent" isn't worth reducing the hiring pool.
Free market baby, get fucking used to it.
That is what the person was arguing against. Yes, a company can fire you for basically any reason, even of it is because you wore a blue shirt or voted for the wrong person.
But don't pretend that workers are "privileged" or the people in power in this situation.
It's not a question of privilege it's a question of what is your value system. Do you believe in organizational power of free markets? If so you are by definition for these types of tolerance programs. Corporate social responsibility isn't charity; it's just good business sense. Unless you're a conman preying on fear, bigotry is categorically bad for business.
Example quote from above "If you do not perceive that imbalance, it means you are on the better end of it, and your lack of stand is simply apathy for the status quo."
This was the topic that was brought up, and the original poster was responding to this.
Like I said, it is perfectly ok for you to not care about the ideas of power and privilege. Although I will say that many people on the left claim to care about these ideas, so it make sense to bring these ideas up when discussing things that happen at large, left-wing companies.
But the point that the OP was making is that it is very ironic to bring up these concepts. It is ironic because the suppression of dissent is very real power.
It is not a judgment on whether this is right or wrong. It is merely a statement of fact, that quite the opposite to what people claim about "privilege" and power, that if you are afraid of disagreeing with the powers that be, then you are definitely not "privileged".
Please don't take HN threads further into the flamewar style. It's possible to disagree without doing that, and on this site, necessary.
You needn't look far for good examples: you replied to one, and it was replying to another. Please be like them and not like this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm pointing this out because I see no one else did, but that quote is from Kevin Alfred Strom, a neo-Nazi convicted for possession of child pornography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom) and he really meant to convey not-so-subtle antisemitic undertones with it. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but I thought you'd wanted to know so you won't have this pointed out in a more formal context by less charitable people.
It's actually not. It's dismissive of the lived realities of people marginalized by unchosen structural norms. You can deny that identity has tangible effects, but that doesn't make what you say true. It only serves to demonstrate your blindspot. It is one that is commonly shared by people whose identity is considered the default.
Some people that are loudly ignorant, especially those that defend their ignorance vigorously, face consequences in professional settings. As they should. It's a waste of everyone's time and effort.
Sort of like Galileo did?
Sometimes the societal norms of what is considered "ignorant" are wrong.
If you haven't come across it, I would highly recommend the book Galileo's Middle Finger. It was written by a lefty who started her career as an activist fighting for the humane treatment of intersex people (a marginalized group). But later in her career she discovered lots of people who were accused of being ignorant had actually been unfairly smeared by people whose accusations didn't stand up to scrutiny.
That you're comparing positions that advocate genocide to the thoughts of Galileo just shows your complete lack of genuine desire to understand.
Maybe the origin of the quote is important to understand what it really means. It’s a dog whistle to claim that insertgroup is really the power behind the throne. It was a way of saying that because it’s considered bad form to be a Jew-hating Nazi, and most of society will despise you for that, it means that Jews really run things. Changing Jews to some other group doesn’t change much. Claiming that gays or blacks or “lefties” or whichever group you think are really in charge because you’re not supposed to denigrate them, isn’t a good point, and using a Nazi pedophile’s quote to make it is telling.
Speaking as, as I am, an Israeli citizen, I have to say: having people yell at you to get bombed and die because you can't opt out of politics is actually pretty unpleasant. I can't imagine Syrian exiles like it much either.
It's not about life and death or oppression, it's just about where you're from. And you're just fighting with people who live somewhere else than you.
People's actual concrete opinions on issues change with time, with their social circle, etc. The issues are not as important as people think they are, and there are lots of life and death issues which don't elicit churlish behavior the way politics does.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I personally do not find a reminder of what actual human oppression looks like throughout the world in a discussion on why white male re-education courses should be mandated in the workplace (and the irony certainly doesn’t escape me). Ignoring that fact betrays the underlying entitlement of the claim.
This is an absurd dramatization. Really, what percentage of people at Facebook do you think believe that stuff? 0.0001%, or 0.00001%? Later in the post you indict apathy for the status quo, but this sort of left-leaning dramatic nonsense is as status quo as it gets.
The very act of filtering against it at recruitment and when it occurs in the workplace /is/ "politics". And post-Weinstein scandal it's disingenuous to think that the workplace can't have such a toxic culture. Just the other day a Riot employee's post about Riot's uncomfortable "bro culture" was discussed on HN.
To every person who is unprejudiced, not politically inclined, and is forced to take part in your rallies, there is nearly nothing separating you from your reactionary counterparts.
I’ll go even further to suggest that the prevalent attitude among your ilk implicating those who are not actively involved in your political movement are somehow culpable is enough to make evangelicals seem like the side to choose moving into the rest of this century.
One of the most offensive things I experienced in a liberal workplace was being treated differently(for my benefit) because of the 'group' I belonged to.
You show up to work to do a job not to struggle in politics. I should be accepted as a human and a coworker,not as a member of whatever group I belong to. You have the right to earn a living and feed yourself and family because you are human and you have the skills and qualifications for the job. Your membership to some socio-political group neither qualifies nor disqualifies you.
E.g. There’s a lot of Asian Americans from impoverished immigrant backgrounds who experience reverse affirmative action at American universities. They may still vote liberal, but for very different reasons as people pursuing social justice.
The issues are hardly black and white, and a workplace environment where people are forced to pick sides is inherently unhealthy, not to mention anything but diverse.
I've never seen any of these ideas openly expressed in the workplace, or for that matter, anywhere.
You know what's more dangerous than treating politics as an abstract debate? Treating it as a constant life-and-death struggle where enemies must be destroyed before they destroy you. The ideas you're talking about aren't even the ideas being expressed by anyone of importance: they're straw men arguments that propagandists falsely accuse people of perpetuating via "dog-whistles" so that you ignore and dismiss what they're actually saying.
Animus against minorities is real. It's not made up. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it isn't real.
Is this animus experienced by every member of every minority for every waking moment? No, that was a bit of an exaggeration, sure. But the animus is definitely not zero, like you suggest.
You might benefit from educating yourself about feminism, race relations, and gay rights.
I have personally experienced animus based on my sex, race, and sexuality before, but I don’t want to be in a politicized workplace just because the governing ideology is supposedly for my benefit.
Workplaces need to say openly and often that, for every minority that's traditionally experienced discrimination in this country, "<minority> are equal and will always be treated with dignity, will be afforded the same benefits, and animus against <minority> will never be tolerated."
If this count as "politicizing" the workplace, then, well, I'd say politicize away.
I am noticing an implication on your part that animus against white people, or animus against men, is acceptable and welcome in the workplace. That's definitely a politicization I'm uncomfortable with.
Never said that you were.
> I am noticing an implication on your part that animus against white people, or animus against men, is acceptable and welcome in the workplace.
Sorry what? You read in something that wasn’t there.
Perhaps you ought to read a bit more carefully.
So why specify minorities and women?
There. All better?
And my contention is that “no one should be discriminated against for their race and gender” is both necessary and sufficient. No need to give special treatment or attention to supposed “minorities” (note that women are in fact a majority).
As to your contention, I'm still not getting it. Why don't we play a game? I list off a few things that I've known companies to do in the past as a way of reaching out to or accommodating minorities, and you tell me which ones are objectionable to you and why. Here goes:
1. A company makes a prayer room available for their Muslim employees to do their daily prayers
2. A company hosts a Women in Tech conference
3. A company hosts a GLBT in Tech mixer during Pride Week
4. A social media company creates a couple special features for Black History month (e.g., Twitter's @Blackbirds bot)
> 1. A company makes a prayer room available for their Muslim employees to do their daily prayers
Services and gifts are from a practical point of view just different forms of bonuses given to employees. A extra room cost money to rent, and if employees are given free time in there then that also cost the company money. The solution is to calculate how much the prayer room cost, divide it per employee that wish to use it, and give each employee that money to do as they wish. The Muslim employees can pool their bonus for the room, and the rest can either pool it together for something else or increase their individual pay check. This way the company do not discriminate and a person who believe in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has the same benefit and support at the company as a Muslim.
> 2. A company hosts a Women in Tech conference If you have to ask attendees or speakers if they identify as a woman, then what you are doing is explicit discrimination. This is objectionable so simply don't. Organize event instead so that you reaching out to intended minorities by looking at what works and interests those groups.
> 3. A company hosts a GLBT in Tech mixer during Pride Week
Same as #1. If a company spend money on one group, then that is an indirect bonus to those employees who belong to that group. If its not possible to provide every employee the same benefit, at least make the selection process transparent and as fair as possible so both a GLBT mixer as well as a nudist mixer can be created if both exist as groups at the company.
> 4. A social media company creates a couple special features for Black History month (e.g., Twitter's @Blackbirds bot)
Very similar to the above one. Who decide which group deserve the special feature? I would suggest something similar to Wikipedia's featured articles, where any topic can be suggested and a fair process decide which one get selected. The more transparent the better.
In case not, you’re way over thinking this. In points one and three, you’re looking to try and give something like compensation for these individual things. You’re not looking at (1) the value of being an accommodating, inclusive company or (2) that an individual who doesn’t take advantage of those particular accommodations enjoys other ones.
Your whole point about point four is silly. You don’t need some gigantic transparent democratic process to let some enterprising employees take it upon themselves to do a cool project like blackbirds. Just let them go do it.
About the women in tech conference, Grace Hopper allows men to attend; seems reasonable to follow their lead.
Bonuses and gifts are a real problem, and is recognized as taxed income here in Sweden. Just a few weeks ago I had a similar situation at work where a coworker said "I would be fine if they just gave it as a bonus to every one", so discriminative gifts is very noticeable for those not being in the receiving end. Gifting one group might feel very accommodating and inclusive for them, but it is no different than raising the wages based on religion identity no matter how one tries to dress it up.
If a company want to discriminate and gift a selected people based on gender, race, religion or sexual orientation then naturally they don't need any gigantic transparent democratic process. They can just do what past discrimination has done, flying as close to the law of illegal behavior as they can. I don't agree with it and I find it wholly immoral.
And yes there are conference and people who has learned to be less discriminative when doing outreach programs. However allowing men to enter a conference is a rather low bar, just as it would be if the genders were reversed. My personal line is if Grace Hopper has "only if you identify as women then..." in the way they operate. Looking at the scholarship application it does seem to say that both men and women can apply, but given the image on the site it seems that only women has ever been awarded scholarships. If there is a unofficial rule that only allow women then that is discrimination as any other.
No, the solution is to call it a "wellness room", and have it be open to anyone who needs it: diabetics who need to inject their insulin, nursing mothers, Muslims who need prayer time, etc.
> If you have to ask attendees or speakers if they identify as a woman, then what you are doing is explicit discrimination.
Why do the majority (men in tech) always have to insert themselves into a minority's (women in tech) space to discuss issues intrinsic to being a minority in a field? What valuable input on a subject do you believe that a member of the majority could give to members of said minority?
> If a company spend money on one group, then that is an indirect bonus to those employees who belong to that group.
It's just as much a bonus to the company, who wishes to attract more LGBT folks.
> as well as a nudist mixer can be created if both exist as groups at the company.
In most tech companies, if you wish to create a nudist group and organize a nudist mixer, you're more than free to do so, provided you can acquire a space that will allow you to be freely nude.
> Who decide which group deserve the special feature?
So the fact that it's Black History month isn't somehow deserving of this special feature?
A rather common solution that partly solves the issue of making the service universal. It could easily benefits one group more than an other, but at least it would be equally accessible for any religion to use as their space. Historically through there hasn't been many churches that successfully served multiple religions at the same time. My hat is off to those Muslims that will share pray room with nursing mothers at the same time.
> What valuable input on a subject do you believe that a member of the majority could give to members of said minority?
That the majority and minority belong to the common group called human, where everyone share more in common than not. Why do people in progressive topics (women in tech) think that people should be treated different based on gender? To quote Carl Sagan, gender stereotyping and reducing people down to a single bit, male or female, is lazy thinking.
> It's just as much a bonus to the company, who wishes to attract more LGBT folks.
They would get the same bonus if they wish to attract any other group in the world. There is an infinitive number of grouping and classification that humans being can sort them selves in, and thus a company has by this logic a infinitive amount of bonus to get. Is one group more worthy than an other?
> if you wish to create a nudist group and organize a nudist mixer, you're more than free to do so, provided you can acquire a space that will allow you to be freely nude.
Same is true for the LGBT folks. Everyone should have the same liberty to to organize events if they can acquire a space to do so.
> So the fact that it's Black History month isn't somehow deserving of this special feature?
Every month is a special month for some group. Every day is "day of X". There is not a single day on the year that don't get celebrated by one group or an other. Should we start ranking those, and if so, where does Black History month rank up compared to other special days, weeks or months? Lesser than Christmas but better than Thanks Giving? This not something that is measurable but rather completely up to the ever changing local culture to define how special it is.
In our company, there are multiple wellness rooms big enough to house a handful of people, with a queueing system managed via iPad. This solves the problem quite nicely.
> That the majority and minority belong to the common group called human
Just being human doesn't give someone the knowledge/experience of being on the lesser end of a power binary. If their conference is specifically to talk about, commiserate, and discuss strategies around being on the lesser end of a power binary, then what unique perspective would those on the greater end of said binary bring to the table?
If the only thing they have to contribute is the fact that they're human, then they have absolutely no unique perspective to give, and are thus unnecessary.
> Why do people in progressive topics (women in tech) think that people should be treated different based on gender?
Should be? No. They're recognizing the fact that they are treated differently. That's not a "should be" situation.
Much like recognizing and calling out racism doesn't make one racist.
> They would get the same bonus if they wish to attract any other group in the world.
Indeed, however this particular group has been historically discriminated against on a systemic level. Therefore, additional steps must be taken to ensure their inclusion.
> Is one group more worthy than an other?
Is your world really so simplistic that every attempt at inclusion is a zero-sum game?
> Everyone should have the same liberty to to organize events if they can acquire a space to do so.
They are, generally. So I don't really see why you're upset.
> Every month is a special month for some group. Every day is "day of X".
Are you seriously comparing Black History Month with something like International Bagel Day?
> Should we start ranking those
Nope. But some are bigger than others, so some will take priority.
> This not something that is measurable but rather completely up to the ever changing local culture to define how special it is.
And why is that a problem, exactly?
I'm confused. How does saying "LGBTQ people deserve respect just like everyone else" somehow bless or justify another political ideology?
Probably because none of them apply to you.
> The ideas you're talking about aren't even the ideas being expressed by anyone of importance
You need only look at the president of the United States (or the GOP running for governor in Florida) to see that these ideas are expressed by a ton of people who have power.
Pride is like St. Paddy's Day or Chinese New Year: it's neither left or right.
Tolerance training isn't political either. If an employer wants their employees to be comfortable at work, it's within their right to train employees to be tolerant of each other. It has nothing to do with politics.
It's strange how gay people just being gay is often seen as a political act -- but that's never the case for straight people.
Does the state require you to hire a quota of LGBT workers?
Does the state punish bad behaviour towards LGBT workers?
How do you handle people who hold beliefs that conflict with LGBT life styles?
Should you mandate the use of language around these topics?
Is there speech that can cause harm people and should it be protected as free speech?
Are these not all political issues.
Tolerance training is political because the employer wants employess of a certain belief,affiliation or private association to feel welcome. For example,tolerance training for vegetarians would also be political.
Pride also is supporting a political movement much like supporting 'alt-right'.
It's not gay people being just gay,but a company telling workers personal sexual lives of their colleagues is a basis for tolerance or intolerance and that the company favors tolerance in that particular case. By that same right,they can hold gay intolerance training.
Congrats, you just passed every tolerance course ever, and all without bringing politics into it.
While you may be high minded and professional, not all workplaces are, and it's fine for the company owners to ask that employees keep a professional environment around everyone -- including people that may make some feel uncomfortable.
> a company telling workers personal sexual lives of their colleagues is a basis for tolerance or intolerance
It's weird that you jump right to sex. Being gay is about a lot more than sex.
If a woman tells me she went skiing with her husband last weekend, my mind doesn't rush to thinking, "gee, why is she talking about her personal sex life at work?"
Good for you! The problem is that some people don't respect or tolerate a person because that person is gay. That's a thing that exists.
Having worked in Northern Ireland I can tell you that St Patrick's Day is loaded with politics there.
The company got around it by giving both St Pats and 12th July as public holidays but allowing staff to voluntarily work them in lieu.
Hence staunch loyalists could work on St Pats and take the holiday another time, whilst nationalists could work on Orangefest. Neither felt compelled to celebrate the other's festival.
Being a naive Englisher 'Hun' I just took both days off and offended both groups equally.
All discussion of politics and sports was banned at all times. That seemed quite easy to enforce.
You cannot escape politics no matter the environment. Your personal political views are a reflection of your core values, ethics and morals. I'd much rather have companies take a stand than try to appease everybody. If anything, it would let me know which businesses should get my money and which I should avoid (as well as which I'd work for and which I'd avoid).
> Imagine not being able to work in tech because how you vote,pray or who you associate with becomes inconvenient to the industry.
That is a slippery slope. Certain political viewpoints should be shunned and outcast from polite society...
That's a pretty bad way to view politics, IMO. It not might be what you mean (in which case, sorry!), but the phrasing you used makes it seem like anyone who disagrees with your politics has different morals (or values/ethics).
That might sometimes be true, but you're leaving no room for differences of opinion that have nothing to do with morality! When Galileo said the Earth goes around the Sun, he wasn't saying it because he had different morals/values, he was saying it because he had a different belief about the world.
When the left and right disagree (in America), it's sometimes about morals/values, but it's also sometimes an honest disagreement about how the world works!
If only we could seal off the workplace from the rest of the world and keep it unsullied by politics.
The trouble is that if your work is meaningful, it's making changes in the world. Making changes in the world is a political act.
Online platforms make billions of decisions every day and they need a point of view to guide their decisions. Having a point of view is necessarily and inevitably political.
Pretending your choices aren't political is itself a political act. It's inescapable.
What you fail to realize is that everything is political. Everything. Politics isn't some concrete, easily identifiable thing you can point at. You can't separate out things into a "Politics" bucket and a "Not Politics" bucket.
No, politics pervades every single human interaction. Politics is in everything and everything is inherently political.
My preference for the scent of lavender over cinnamon -- political. I'm against the designated hitter rule. Political too. I think my dog should not get into the trash. It's all politics.
Of course not directly, but even the tinyiest things can and do become political. Hand gestures, clothing, music, choice of cars, choice of food, choice of words.
Let me ask you: is De Morgan's theorem political? Directly? Indirectly?
Logic seems fairly apolitical, but logicians rarely. Thus it's pretty reasonable to think of circumstances where simply stating a fact turns out to be political.
Your actual publicly adopted opinion reads like a joke.
Whatever happened to a society that has its roots in "love your neighbor and pray for those who persecute you"? Irrespective of religious beliefs, this is exactly what politically minded people want, but they go about it by hating other people and treating people as non-people - it's a huge hypocrisy and disgraceful behavior.
We should find more inclusive semantics for programming languages, or else risk perpetuating inherited racist cultural assumptions.
/s
Think about how Master/Slave vs Primay/Secondary is an issue. It's technical, but at the same time choice of nomenclature reflects about those who chose them.
Another part of American conservatism is the dignity of the white race and the heritage of whiteness. That includes proud narratives of true heroic sacrifices against the brutish north, and a discussion of how blacks and other minorities play the victim card to create an emotionally hostile atmosphere for white youths. An unjust atmosphere where blacks, asians, and latinos are promoted at the cost of white children.
On a front page Reddit post on the top comment with regards to NYT's hiring of an asian intern who suggested that white people had biological deficiencies due to sunburning vulnerability, was a discussion of the extinction of the white race, and how white reproductive rates have been going down. As well as a discussion how blacks, asians, and latinos cheat their way into college through blind liberal favoritism, an ideology which seems to dangerously ignore that race is the fundamental way human relations work, and that the suggestion that we should all hold hands and put aside our racial differences is an unrealistic Disney vision.
And of course there is a discussion on the biology of sex, and whether liberals are being blind in thinking that women need active promotion in the workplace. That's of direct workplace concern. And do black and Latino people need active intervention in tech, like women?
Americans need to resolve their issues beyond rolling up their sleeves and going to work. There are decade-long wounds coming. Voting is not political negotiation with your peers. It's just an up-or-down bullet.
A lot of Americans also think it's their prerogative to form a religious business, especially a Christian-oriented business. On the flip side, is it okay to have a Muslim-oriented Google? Or a Christian oriented Chick-fil-A which donates to ban gay marriage?
Did that not serve to rally the American conservative base? Is Alex Jones not representative of effective (meaning the kind that wins elections) conservatism? Isn't Alex Jones, perhaps the #1 most popular media personality of today, being censored part of the reason why people are concerned?
And I really don't think that Alex jones is the #1 most popular media personality today, not by a long shot (where did you get that statistic?). And him specifically being censored is not why many people are concerned, except insofar as it is indicative of how other people are treated. Most people that I listen, on both the left and the right, absolutely abhor him.
Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist shock jock. He's no more representative of conservatism than Howard Stern is of liberalism. He is not representative of the kind of conservatism that wins elections. Trump being an anomaly (and I wouldn't say Trump is nearly as batty as Jones), you've got a history of folks like Romney, McCain, Bush 1 & Jr, Dole, and Reagan in recent history carrying the election. Even those names though, don't encompass the nuance of the range of views of tens of millions of people in this country.
And if you're viewing President Trump as an anomaly, then you have to view this whole period as an anomaly, because Trump-like candidates are bluntly replacing low energy Jebs. I remember one recent advertisement where a candidate teased how different they were from Trump with an imaginary childhood rearing situation involving building a wall, and learning language by talking about making America great again.
This is the best source I could find. Limbaugh has 14 million listeners, Hannity 13.5M...Alex Jones is sitting at 5.9M.
I don't know if Trumpism will last beyond Trump's term. I certainly hope not.
By search category: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F01_...
By category on Youtube: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?gprop=youtube&q=%2F...
The latter is relevant as Alex Jones has a popular mobile app, YouTube, and podcast presence, which is not captured entirely by radio presence. If only he weren't banned, we could see how the popularity spike would've resolved.
> Why are companies promoting "pride"?
First of all, you don't need to put pride in safety quotes.
Second of all, gay rights are human rights. Companies promote them because it's the right thing to do, and because they want all the good things that come along with doing the right thing. I don't think it's all that complicated.
Edit: If you're gonna downvote, at least say why you're downvoting.
My guess is that you arent tolerant of everyone either.
Gays are humans they have human rights not gay rights its this idea thats gays are somehow more worthy of our support than say a conservative at a liberal workplace thats the crux of the problem. I dont care what people are, who they sleep with, what they believe, as long as i am not asked to offer them special considertations i wouldnt extend to others.
Thats the right thing to do, not forcing conpanies to take up social caused for a small privileged group of vocal people.
2. I am tolerant towards everyone. It's actually not that difficult.
3. You seem to be a little confused on what gay rights are. Here's a summary: Gay people want to be treated fairly. We want our partner/spouse to be treated equally. We want our children to be treated equally. We want to not be fired for being gay. We don't want to be called names for being gay. We don't want people to hate us for being gay. These things are not special considerations. These things are basic rights.
4. The right thing to do is to be in favor of gay rights.
2. I agree so why question the Parents motives?
3. Not confused at all. Those are not gay rights they are human rights. You can replace the word gay with more or less anything and you will have the same. (Try read headed, try white, try black, try Swedish, try freckled, try fat). If you are a human you should have those rights no matter what you are and what you look like and what you believe.
4. The right thing to do is to be in favor of human rights. I see no reason why I should prioritize one thing over another. That's the very discrimination you seem to be advocating against.
You are misusing the English language. When a minority is targeted with animus and their rights are systematically violated, we tend to label the campaign to fight back against those things: Gay rights/Pride, Women’s rights/Feminism, African American’s rights, etc. This is done as a matter of pragmatism.
There’s no priortization of one group’s rights over another. Are you trying to say that when a minority is called out as being supported, that it makes you, who is not a member of that minority, feel left out? If not, then what is it? Be specific.
Yes there is a prioritization of one groups rights over another and if you don't see that you need to look more careful.
Do you think it's easy being fat, Ugly, Short, Stupid, Too skinny?
You are proving my point.
Supporting one group but not another i.e. putting resources into fighting for the acceptance of one group but not another is the very difintion of prioritization.
How many more fat people do you think there are than LGBTQ+
The right thing to do is accept them all, not focus on one group instead of another. Treat them as humans give them the same rights, treat them with equal respect, because they are human not because they are gay or straight or black or white or asian or fat etc.
It's about what I feel it's about what it is by definition when a workplace prioritizes the hardship of one group and not another. It goes deep into the corporate culture when it comes to hiring and decisions of who gets which position in the company etc.
Thats exactly the opposite of what humanism is. It doesn't divide it includes it doesn't prioritize it simply treat everyone the same and that is not done by making on groups hardships more important than others. At least not in any form of humanism I am prepared to support.
Sure. But the term "X rights" is emphasizing that X are being denied those human rights.
The problem with saying you're in favor of "human rights" is that everyone will agree with you, even the ones causing the problems. They don't realize you're telling them to stop that discrimination, that that type of discrimination counts.
That's why this language exists.
And it's not a bad thing to prioritize groups that are being treated worse. Because when you try to prioritize no one, you often end up using the majority as the barometer of whether things are fine. The fact that some people have it a lot worse gets forgotten, and the problems go unfixed.
You don't need to focus on gay rights in Google, FB, etc they are non issues there and thus it becomes a political statement were open doors are kicked in because it's popular NOT because it's important in those companies to focus on "gay rights".
So it's not really a solution to anything but rather just a way to do virtue signalling in companies.
It's not ironic. It's causal. Discrimination against minorities is less of an issue in companies where minorities are explicitly and openly accepted. There's a causal relationship there.
> You don't need to focus on gay rights in Google, FB, etc they are non issues there
They might be for now, but the world outside is less accepting. So long as the world outside has a problem with minorities, companies need to be steadfast about ensuring that the animus outside doesn't survive inside. Think of it like a vaccine.
> So it's not really a solution to anything but rather just a way to do virtue signalling in companies.
Uhh, virtue signaling is still a great reason to be supportive of minorities?
Since when was being a gay a problem any of the SF/SV based companies we are talking about?
This is what is absurd about it. Gays are not minorities in SF/SV companies, conservatives on the other hand are. And no I am not a conservative.
Virtue signaling is nothing but that. It's dishonest. It helps no one and alienates everyone who doesn't agree. The exact opposite of what it's preaching.
Huh? I think you're missing some key words in this sentence. You're trying to say that it's inappropriate for a company to "fight for" gay acceptance? Is that it? That could have many different meanings, depending on who you ask. Why don't you show me a specific thing a SV company has done that you find objectionable?
> Since when was being a gay a problem any of the SF/SV based companies we are talking about?
Already addressed this issue. Current existence of anti-gay animus IS NOT a prerequisite for inoculating a company against anti-gay animus.
It's like I'm saying "Let's make sure the kitchen has a fire extinguisher" and you're saying "But the kitchen isn't on fire yet."
Anti-gay animus exists outside of the workplace; it is a threat, even in the SF bay area. (Heck, I was called a faggot on MUNI the other day for holding hands with my partner.) It's important to keep it outside the workplace. This is a point you've neglected.
> Gays are not minorities in SF/SV companies
??? Gay people are not in the majority, what are you talking about?
> Virtue signaling is nothing but that. It's dishonest. It helps no one and alienates everyone who doesn't agree
Virtue signaling is ... dishonest? What? If a company advertises that they're cool with gay people, and they are actually cool with gay people, that is not dishonest.
As far as alienating people who disagree, GREAT! That's the whole point! Those people who have a problem with gay people should find somewhere else to work.
In this case, it's especially absurd as those companies that are most vocal about supporting ex "gay rights" didn't have the problem to begin with.
And no it's not addressed and you are setting up a strawman.
No, it's like saying. Let's make sure the kitchen has a fire extinguisher only for gay people. That's what you are saying and that illustrates exactly the problem here.
What about the fat? the ugly? The introvert? the short, the stutters etc. That's why fire extinguishers are for EVERYONE not just one type of person.
You don't have to advertise that you are cool with gay people to be cool with gay people that's the point.
You don't have to celebrate gay, white, black, Hispanic, straight, man, woman to be cool with any of them.
And that' brings us back to the beginning. You don't have gay rights, you have human rights. Unless you don't subscribe to being a human which would be odd then you don't have rights I don't have. You don't have your own fire-extinguisher in the kitchen. But the reality is that today that's exactly what's happening and that's sad because life is complicated for everyone, not just gay people or minorities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/technology/inside-faceboo...
You’re wrong about the benefits a company and its workers enjoy from specifically protecting itself against allowing in the animus that exists outside the workplace. Being an inclusive workplace which goes out of its way to accommodate minorities carries a small price — but pays excellent dividends. Doing this in no way would alienate any prospective employee — except a person like yourself, which seems 100% okay to me.
I repeat. I am for human rights I don't discriminate and I don't favor people. I treat everyone the same. That's a perfectly ethical position and I am no more villain than someone a saint regardless of whether i choose to prioritize one group of minorities over another.
It pays dividends to those who are favored by the rights yes. It's still discriminatory towards a bunch of other minorities.
This is glorious! Thanks for great illustration of problems with politics at work / US* politics in general. You are winning, but at the cost of alienating opposition. You will never convince anyone outside of your social "tribe", and therefore you are just sewing conflict.
And THAT is the biggest problem in politics today.
* of course this tribalism is natural to humans, therefore everywhere. But few "democratic" countries are as polarized as USA.
You’re in favor of gay rights. I don’t get why you’re so opposed to using the phrase gay rights. If you think gay people are equal, and gay relationships should be treated the same as straight ones, then you’re in favor of gay rights.
This is not complicated.
Some people will take 1 second to decide they don't like you because of stereotypes and there's nothing you can do about it.
Alex Jones is a liar and manipulator. He goes on the air and presents theories for which there is not even superficial evidence as news and established fact. I'm not trying to be political, those are just the facts as I see them.
Just because I show up at work doesn't mean I become some sort of mechanical money making machine. If I was a TV executive at a company running that show, I would want to the show canceled, no matter the ratings or revenue. I suppose many would say I was bringing "politics" into the work place, and maybe I would be, but what's the alternative?
And sorry if upsets someone's political viewpoint, but there is scientific consensus for global warming, and in America we should probably cut back our energy consumption a bit. So, if I advocate that dress codes be relaxed in the summer so the thermostat can go up a degree, I guess it's political, but I'm not advocating it to piss off conservative people. It's just how I see the world.
I think the internal memo linked in the report makes the ever valid point to argue and attack ideas, not people. But honestly, that issue seems to be pervasive in our culture, so it does not seem specific to workspace behavior.
I think most people are just fighting for the world they want to live in. Why should that only be to do that outside of work, when we spend half our waking time at work?
This is indeed not a good development, but I think it already happens literally everywhere. It happens in hi-tech, it happens in restaurants, it happens in entertainment (massively), it happens in payment processing, it happens in travel... Literally every industry I interact with had done some political action lately.
> If you are my coworker,I respect you as a colleague and a human being. Your private life and beliefs are not mine to police or encourage in anyway.
That is a nice sentiment, with which I agree. But imagine proponents of some ideology - say, people that are opposed to wearing hats - do not subscribe to that. To the point they'd refuse to hire anyone who have ever worn a hat (either overtly, or by subtle sabotage if they can't do it legally in the open), would stage a public spectacle if they notice their coworker wears a hat, would sponsor company hat-burning parties (or call for a boycott of the company if the company refuses to sponsor one), adorn their workplace with anti-hat posters and loudly discuss how people who wear hats are just lowlife scum.
Would you wear a hat in such a workplace if you think wearing a hat is OK? Would you feel comfortable even mentioning you know someone who might wear one from time to time? Nope. So, some of the people would feel happy and supported in their private beliefs in the work place, and actively sharing and promoting them, while others would secretly terrified that someone would discover their instagram account and find out they wore a hat once. Not a good position to be in.
So, how you keep your right to your private beliefs and not bringing politics to work if the politics is already there? I don't know the right answer.
You may be perfectly fine, but one of your more conservative coworkers might be a talented bigot hiding their bigotry in the closet until such time that it might present itself, and human resources has to get ahead of that before it becomes an issue.
This isn't bringing politics into the work place. This is making sure hostile politics (i.e. bigotry) doesn't affect the workplace.
I've noticed this for a while now. I moved beyond the old left/right political football team-style arguments long ago because the political landscape has changed and become much more muddied.
I don't think the traditional spectrum applies anymore and I'm noticing more and more that others are seeing the same thing.
It still seems like most of the populace is stuck slinging shit at the 'other' though.
Honestly if a person still thinks in terms of left/right I don't think they are contributing anything whatsoever to any current political debate.
Often, companies requires employees to undertake training in this area because the company is legally required to provide a workplace that is free from anti-LGBT discrimination (likewise, anti-racism, sexual harassment, etc)
For this population, they see their own views as normal and the center. While from the outside conservatives think it's far left of center, the "dozens" of employees who don't feel this way are the outliers. There are "dozens" of employees who feel FB's culture isn't liberal enough. With an employee base of tens of thousands you are going to have disagreements in philosophy, but Facebook does nothing to hide the company culture in it's hiring practice. There is no bait and switch going on. Other voices are heard, but if you have a minority viewpoint you shouldn't expect the world to pivot around what you think is right.
Remember when HN was tech stuff? Now it's:
Who are these people? Is this just satire? Am I just getting old, and no one cares about freedom to disagree, debate, etc? Do people not have historical context about suppressing dissenting opinions, even if you hate them?Am I crazy, and the world has just moved on to be horrible?
That only holds if you're willing to perform enough mental gymnastics to somehow transmogrify the gulags, mass graves, firing squads and famines that the USSR, Mao Zedong, Cuba, Pol Pot, etc. employed to deal with dissenters into features of right wing governance.
Or just pretend these things don't count...
Obviously we're nowhere near that in modern US, BUT the hints of "violence in exchange for a dissenting opinion" and "what I don't agree with is Nazism" are unpleasant to say the least.
I couldn't agree more. I've seen both actual violence and extreme glorification of violence against people of the opposite political affiliation more and more over the past couple years. Many people seem to dismiss the calls to violence as "trolls", which is actually probably true, but I have to wonder if there is much of a difference between a troll who calls for violence and loves to see people get attacked at rallies, and a person who would actually be happy about these things if they became worse than they are now. I feel like there used to be a solid distinction, but I'm not sure any longer that there's really a hard line between all "trolls" and people who would actually enact these things, given the power (and given no significant threat to themselves, of course).
The entirety of the burden is always on the accused.
One could. One would have to forego any claim to "absolute freedom of speech," however.
The things that scare ME are:
A. Some people seem to be practically unable to engage with dissenting opinions without claiming to have been "shouted down".
B. There seems to be less disagreement about the how to achieve what's right (i.e. we both agree on what's right, but disagree on how to get there), which can realistically be argued about in good faith, and more disagreement about what's right in the first place (e.g. person X thinks gay marriage, abortion, etc should be legally prohibited, and person Y does not), about which good-faith arguments are vanishingly rare for perhaps unavoidable reasons.
Ultimately I don't care, I don't have a horse in the race of keeping HN a safe, civilized, good-faith neutral space for conversation. It just means this sort of dialogue has to be moved elsewhere. I'm happy to talk purely tech, but politics seeps into everything these days, so it's hard to avoid.
Lol I got fired for making a joke after-hours over beers to a guy that wasn't politically aligned. It's wild. To mess with someones livlihood because of a political opinion.
To call these comments "inquisition level", and potentially ignorant of the catastrophic history of suppressing dissenting opinions, is a pretty wild attack based on what they said. Your hyperbole seems far more damaging and dismissive than their comments.
Regarding "All Lives Matter", there was indeed inquisition-level blowback. I vacillated between abhorrence, anguish, and rage as I watched the drama unfold.
For context: I was a Facebook employee at the time, and although I tend toward liberal ideals (despite a very conservative upbringing), I was appalled at the level of intolerance toward conservative views. Though I could not in good conscience vote for Trump (nor even throw away my vote on a third-party candidate), I continue to respect other humans who voted for Trump. That felt like a dangerous view to espouse as a Facebook employee, and I saw other employees behave with unease regarding their personal political views. Intolerance is dangerous all around, and in my opinion Facebook's internal politics have fallen (mostly unwittingly) into the trap of "not tolerating intolerance", using a liberal (pun intended) -- IMO overly broad -- definition of intolerance.
I ended up stating on most of my posts that I didn't like Trump and didn't want him to win but
- just tried to come up with an explanation for why so many others voted for him
- or tried to point out that the rules that allowed him to win had allowed democrats to win before
- etc
I still received loads of downvotes (I'd see my points rising and then falling sharply, seemingly when some part of the word woke up.)
All in all I came out positive wrt useless points but I still wondered about it.
And BTW: I still really don't like that man.
The other factor is that society has been repolarizing ideologically. That's a massive macro trend and HN, alas, is not immune from those.
We're probably in for rougher waters, which is why we're trying to set down stronger markers about what's unacceptable here. The idea of HN has always been that a place for substantive, thoughtful discussion on the internet is probably doomed, but let's try to survive as long as we can. We'll do our best, but Cnut cannot command the waves to stop.
You ask this question, then answer it in your very next line. People don't respect everyone. They are intolerant.
"Results from our experiment involving 118 undergraduate students showed that taking the perspective of LGBT individuals or racial minorities — by writing a few sentences imagining the distinct challenges a marginalized minority might face — can improve pro-diversity attitudes and behavioral intentions toward these groups."
https://hbr.org/2017/07/two-types-of-diversity-training-that...
But 118 students isn't that small of a sample (if I'm picking a methodological criticism, it'd be that it's a sample of college students rather than the general population).
And the exercise seems reasonably likely to provide some of the reported effect, and those effects fit with other studies that hold reading/writing fiction improves people's ability to model others better and some degree of empathy.
But just for fun, here's another HBR article that shows that "the three most popular interventions make firms less diverse."
https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
I've read a good amount of the literature on this subject, and haven't found any compelling evidence that diversity training does anything but shield companies from lawsuits to some extent.
you really don't see how this is circular? how do you feel about this paraphrasing of climate change denial?
"I've read a good amount of the literature on this subject, and haven't found any compelling evidence that climate change is an anthropogenically driven process."
or this one of heliocentrism
"I've read a good amount of the literature on this subject, and haven't found any compelling evidence that the sun is at the center of the solar system."
or this one of
"I've read a good amount of the literature on this subject, and haven't found any compelling evidence that the earth is round."
you get my point? "compelling" is personal.
But you compare those to diversity training efficacy, which has no empirical evidence, and the controlled studies examining effects have conflicting results. This is just not an honest comparison at all. I dismissed your study because it literally doesn't tell me anything about the real world, not because I hand-waive anything that I don't agree with.
Would you change any of your own life habits based on how 100 college kids subjectively reported on their feelings? It's ridiculous to compare the amount of information that kind of study tells us to the astounding accuracy of how our heliocentric model of the solar system can and has predicted where and when solar eclipses will happen down to the minute.
What does beliefs mean to you? Beliefs cast a very wide net. Is there no point at which a coworker should be cast out? Perhaps it is their religious belief that women should not be allowed to work. May such a person remain? Are we not to push back?
If he does, anyway, does it matter what he believes if he treats his coworkers (male and female) with respect anyway? If the belief doesn't manifest itself in negative actions, I don't really care what's going on in his head.
To think of it another way - you'll get fired for sexual harassment, but companies still give mandatory training about what exactly sexual harassment is and how to avoid it. Why should this be any different?
You cannot hide a violent philosophy behind a shield of "it is my beliefs". None of us shall ever accept it. If it becomes the law that I must accept neo nazis, I still will not.
Asking people to be tolerant of ideologies that pose an existential threat is contradictory at best.
These things are fraught with complication.
However, that just isn't the same as what I'm describing. There is nothing analytical about communism that poses an existential threat to me. Neo-Nazism, on other other hand, is a priori incompatible with my existence.
But no, there is no equivocation here. One of these things (Neo-Nazism) is fundamentally incompatible, even just on the linguistic level, with my existence. The other (Communism) is undesirable and even reprehensible, but doesn't threaten the mode of discourse itself.
Put another way: proposing tolerance towards analytically intolerant ideas amounts to an "disagreement" between a linguistic claim and a claim about the language itself. I wrote about the danger of viewing these as normal "disagreements" about a week ago[1].
[1]: https://blog.yossarian.net/2018/08/20/Disagreement-Language-...
Forcing someone at gunpoint to be "kind" to their neighbor because it is their "duty" is never a good starting point.
The whole premise is messed up. Taking peoples houses, possessions and giving it to others is a sure fire why to demotivate people and slam the brakes on the economy.
But more to the point: the contradiction isn't economic, it's linguistic. See the comment thread below.
Sorry I don't want to work for or live in that kind of setting. I wouldn't want anyone to be forced to do so.
Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow those rules when posting here.
But if you look upthread you'll see that I was careful not to single you out, and if you read the thread as a whole you'll see that we put hours of effort into moderating it (though you'll need 'showdead' set to 'yes' in your profile, as well as to uncollapse a bunch of comments, to see a lot of it).
Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow those rules when posting here.
There are lots of other places on the web where you can practice this craft, but on HN we're trying to avoid the systemic effects it produces.
Racists aren't (usually) racists for the fun of it. Racists are racists because they feel threatened by or lack sufficient exposure to / understanding of other races. If your goal is to cure racism, then making racists feel even more threatened is probably the least productive way of going about it.
Instead, the trick is to befriend them. Show them that there's nothing to fear. These people are more often than not just scared and confused; they're usually otherwise-decent people, and putting them at ease goes a long way toward letting them realize on their own that "hey, maybe my Jewish neighbors ain't so bad after all".
I know full well that the above is a lot easier said than done, but if you want a growling dog to stop growling at you, giving it treats is at least slightly more effective than yelling at it. On the former path, you might eventually tame the dog and get a friend out of the deal. On the latter path, it'll just growl louder and louder until it bites you.
This doesn’t work[1]. Allowing parasitical ideology the space to express itself only emboldens it.
[1] All of recorded history
Except it does: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...
The answer isn't to spew hate back at them, but it certainly isn't to make friends.
I never said it was innocent misunderstanding, but it is still misunderstanding nonetheless, and it is still possible to at least start to correct this misunderstanding by alleviating the fear underlying it, thus making it easier for a racist individual to expose oneself to those "inferior" races and realize that they're just fellow human beings and not scary job-stealing world-order-establishing criminal boogeymen.
How nice it must be to be in a group with power, where even if you are an unrepentant asshole and deny the humanity of others, those other people are obligated to be nice to you.
Re: whether or not it works at scale, it seems to have worked for Irish-Americans. It took awhile between the height of Irish immigration and the present day, but unlike in the 19th Century you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone unironically demanding Irish people to be deported or claiming Irish immigrants are stealing jobs. Similar deal for other previously-persecuted European immigrants and their descendants (Italians and Germans both come to mind). Asians are getting to that point, too; not really free of discrimination/prejudice, but even my most hatefully-racist acquaintances seem to at least tolerate their existence.
None of the above groups (to my knowledge) were all that socially disruptive (at least not intentionally); instead, they gradually integrated and blended with the existing demographics. Instead of Irish or German or Italian or English or French or Polish or Russian or what have you, we ended up with kind of a blended European demographic. I have a feeling Asians are on track to be part of that, too, and end up in a sort of blended "Eurasian" demographic. We ain't quite there yet, but I'd give it a couple decades before we are.
In other words, my grandfather already paid the price for this peace in WWII, I’ll do my best to uphold it even in the face of the ideology which started that war.
But people can accidentally disrespect LGBT people eg. calling trans people by the incorrect gender.
And so to foster this workplace that you want as well it’s important for people to do things like tolerance training.
No, that would be inappropriate. It would be equally inappropriate for someone to call a person who called out your inappropriate behavior disrespectful or intolerant. Similarly for your concern regarding neo-nazis.
Uh fuck no. They deserve no respect. They deserve to be fired. They deserve to be constantly told their ideology is wrong, they deserve to be shouted down when they try to spread it, and if they won't repent they deserve to die lonely and sad with a life full of regrets.
Ideological flamewars are stupid, even if the people contributing to them are smart. They're also repetitive, which makes them off topic here. So could you please not post like this again to HN?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864365 and marked it off-topic.
In contrast, something like a machine shop (random example) won't be politicised much if at all, because the work doesn't revolve around making political decisions.
During machine down time I've heard some of the most radical Stalinist politics coming from people who you would think are only interested in football and beer while trying to fix the lathe for an order that's due in 3 hours. By the same token I've heard some of the most extreme fascist views too.
Can someone remove this so we can move on and continue with rational discussions? Please? :)
* As much as I enjoy forwarding and debating my own political ideas in settings where I think there's an opportunity, I've never considered work a primary venue for this, and the premise that political diversity should be a priority for a business is one that doesn't seem to have any kind of supporting argument. Companies exist to organize an economic activity. Other activity is incidental. Ideally your employment status is not affected by outside expressions. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you expect to accomplish internally. Especially if the gestalt is different.
* If Mr. Amerige is a fan of Rand, perhaps he should consider that those who own FB would, under Rand's philosophy, apparently be quite entitled to do whatever the hell they feel like with the company, obligate employees to take whatever position they like or leave.
* I've spent time arguing center-to-somewhat-conservative views on liberal websites like Metafilter. I've spent time forwarding nuanced religious or rationalist points in congregations of believing Mormons. I lean center left among family and friends who often lean pretty right. I know exactly what it's like to have to make a case in front of an audience that's not at all sympathetic to your point of view. Yep, sometimes it's super frustrating. I'm not seeing any discussion of particular consequences at Facebook, though, so it's impossible to tell if Amerige and any who agree with him are facing anything more difficult than the near inescapable social accountability for expressing a view where the stakes are a loss of some respect and gaining a bit of baseline hostility/distrust. And my experience is that even if it's an uphill battle, if you're patient and your position is genuinely well thought-out, it's often possible to make some measure of persuasion to people who you're giving both a reason to like you and a reason to think about what you're saying.
That makes no sense. It would be against the company's interest to do that for many reasons.
In this case, though, it doesn't have to make sense to you, or anyone else, anymore than dynamiting a building based on plans that you made but found unacceptably altered has to make sense to anyone but a fictional jury. It just has to fit the preferences and power-reach of anyone who has authority over a given individual in the company, assuming that individual cares about their employment status.
I don't see the need to debate political ideas at work, either, but if work claims to offer an all-ideas-welcome forum, then it should actually be that. My observation is that liberals tend to talk loudly about "tolerance" but are pretty intolerant of ideas they don't like. Not that conservatives are necessarily less intolerant, they just don't go around claiming to be tolerant. Authentic intolerance, if you will.
The tolerance paradox comes up a lot, but I don't think it's that hard to decode, really. Nobody has universal "tolerance" -- everyone has things they consider intolerable if they have values at all. Characterizing someone as intolerant is essentially a somewhat pejorative way of saying that you've found a boundary value for them and you don't think it's drawn in the right place because it trespasses on some liberty you think you or someone else should have. How defensible that is depends partly on the strength of the case for the value and partly on whether any observing jurors share your temperament.
And I think tolerance happens on different axes. For some people, tolerance means allowing space for all kinds in society. For some it means maximal ability to live as you choose. For some it means a free expression of ideas.
Whatever you call people who value one or more of these things (conservative, liberal, progressive), if someone trammels in action or expression on any of those values, it's not terribly surprising they might face some hostility rather than conversational/social tolerance because they're challenging a value of tolerance.
When conservatives accuse left-leaners of intolerance, what I usually observe is that a conservative has forwarded some sort of idea under which space for all kinds in society or certain bands of acceptable behavior are limited, and then they're surprised that they face hostility and dismayed that they can't even say whatever they like without social consequences.
It's tempting to put conservatives as champions as speech at this point based on the fact that left-leaners see some ideas as not just points of debate/exploration but as attacks on values (which they do)... but of course there's plenty of ideas conservatives don't like to the point they'll engage with similar or greater hostility (see: kneeling during the national anthem). I think very few people are fully tolerant of any idea, and many of those who are probably have been in a fortunate position in life where ideas rarely have concrete consequences for them.
Your point about the values Facebook claims is well-taken, of course. This discussion arguably takes on a different aspect to the extent that Facebook tries to be quite liberal in its approach to speech and ideas. If that were to apply internally, if it were to take the shape of a policy where employees could openly discuss politics without fear of affecting their employment status, that'd be quite remarkable considering how incidental at best (and more likely friction-inducing) that is to the activity of most companies. Perhaps FB claims it as an ideal without a whole lot of care about how it actually plays out, perhaps it's just a PR move, or perhaps they genuinely consider it as important. But even if they do... there's simply no way to guard against diminished respect among co-workers if you're fond of Ayn Rand and they've assessed her and found her severely lacking, and little way to eliminate consequent individual hostility.
Is there any evidence that Mr. Amerige or others he holds solidarity with have faced anything else?