10 ms·

They fired a founder for retroactive wrongthink (post ex facto). That's pretty disturbing. Hard to trust someone like that. Meanwhile, Google doesn't return re

They fired a founder for retroactive wrongthink (post ex facto). That's pretty disturbing. Hard to trust someone like that. Meanwhile, Google doesn't return results for guns in the shopping section. So I get to search a bunch of sites and call people like i'm on astalavista in 1998. Sad Truth: both companies inject a brand of exclusionary (read: discriminatory) politics into their products. I don't trust either.

Frondo 10y ago
Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. He wasn't imprisoned, nothing was done to him with the force of law. He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like?
- gnarbarian 10y ago
  >I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like? It's called not talking politics or religion at work. Or not discriminating against someone because of something unrelated to their job. There is zero conflict of interest between Eich supporting prop 8 and heading the Mozilla foundation. Same as there is zero conflict of interest for Palmer Luckey supporting the leading candidate in the presidential election.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    You can't police people's thoughts/feelings. Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations). Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech.
    - gnarbarian 10y ago
      >You can't police people's thoughts/feelings. Cheers, Of course not. >Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech. Fair point. Riddle me this: Should we force a baptist cake company to bake a cake for a gay wedding, force a Jewish bakery to bake a swastika cake, and force a Nazi bakery to bake a Jewish cake? If not one. Why should we force one and not the others? If you think the government should force nothing on any baker I agree with you. >Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations). Which people? As far as I know there wasn't any actual fallout beyond saber rattling.
      - stephenr 10y ago
        > Which people? Reich and the guy from oculus who supported the trump group. > Riddle me this What is a "cake for a gay wedding" compared to any other kind of wedding cake? Is there same-sex marzipan I'm not aware of? A baker refusing to bake a cake for someone because they're gay/Jewish is discrimination, and bigotry/racism (religious discrimination if you consider Judaism purely a religion and not an ethnicity/race) Refusing to bake a cake for neonazis would also be discrimination. Refusing to bake a cake of a swastika isn't exactly the same thing - a swastika is imagery associated with one of the greatest war crimes of recorded history. Also, you're in the wrong direction anyway. A business refusing service isn't the same as a consumer refusing to use a business.
        gnarbarian 10y ago
        >Also, you're in the wrong direction anyway. A business refusing service isn't the same as a consumer refusing to use a business. I'm trying to establish an objective rule for what kinds of discrimination you believe should be legal. You described each situation but you didn't actually make a value judgement (which was the whole point of the question).
        csallen 10y ago
        Being gay/black/female/disabled/etc isn't a choice, therefore I don't believe businesses should be able to discriminate on that basis. Being a neo-nazi, a racist, a nudist, a hippy, a Michael Jackson fan, etc are choices, therefore it doesn't make sense for the government to make laws protecting such groups imo.
  - glogla 10y ago
    There are limits to that kind of tolerance, though. You shouldn't care what politicians your coworker likes. You shouldn't care what religion your coworker follows. You should care if your coworker is neo-nazi or if he is supporting Islamic State or Westboro Baptist Church. The only diagreement is whether Eich was closer to the former or the latter. I can perfectly imagine people whose rights he wanted to take away to think he's the latter.
    - gnarbarian 10y ago
      If you can't draw an objective and distinct line in plain English between where it is acceptable to discriminate and where it is not you shouldn't draw one at all.
    - ZoF 10y ago
      You have no evidence he is closer to the former and all this is is justification for cultural Marxism. The only thing that an individual should be judged on at work is actions/comments/etc. made at work. If you'd like to argue otherwise I'd hope you at least have something more formally define-able than 'he was trending towards being a neo-nazi'. I'd also expect you to be able to point to an authority for defining these ideological limits other than the currently loosely defined group-think. Please answer these few scenarios: -Should someone believing and actively promoting pro-life stances(outside of work) be fired? -Should a casual narcotics user on weekends be fired once it's found out he/she uses? -Should someone be fired for having a confederate flag hanging in their living room? What if they're black?
      - orf 10y ago
        Nobody black would hang a confederate flag in their living room.
        ZoF 10y ago
        Ironically I asked that the because the black people living in the apartment next to me do have a confederate flag in their living room(among _many_ others). They also scream white power around the campfire when drunk though so perhaps not typical.
- tnone 10y ago
  Funny how at the same time, those spouting this tired refrain scream bloody murder when this logic is applied to themselves rather than the usual punching bags. "Never" is a strawman, but I imagine that would be a world where academia doesn't feel a need to protect its students from ideas, and where people of different viewpoints can work alongside each other instead of shaming groupthink into existence.
  - gnarbarian 10y ago
    Because according to @the_moviebob "there is (almost) no such thing as a bad tactic - only bad TARGETS". AKA the ends justify the means.
- tracker1 10y ago
  So you want a view where everyone with a controversial view to loose their job? And who decides what a controversial view is, or if it is or is not controversial enough to lose their job? In the end, I don't think one's views outside of the workplace should necessarily relate to their work performance. Eich was close to a public figure, that doesn't make the witch-hunt any better.
  - Frondo 10y ago
    I don't want a world where "everyone with a controversial view" loses their job, but neither do I want one where no view is controversial enough to incur consequences. If I had a coworker who habitually made racist statements, for example, and I liked my job, I'd want them to lose their job. That kind of work environment would be quite unpleasant for me and probably a lot of other people. To generalize, I have no problem saying I want to live in a world where employers feel comfortable firing racists who openly air those kind of distasteful remarks. (I didn't say, "I think all racists should be unemployed," mind you.) What constitutes "controversial enough to merit consequences" and what those consequences would be (i.e. the world as we now have it), that, I think, there'll never be a single set of rules. It'll always be up to contemporary society, the employer, etc.
- gnarbarian 10y ago
  Thought experiment: I think excessive welfare does more harm than good. Should I politically screen my employees to ensure that they don't hold views that contradict mine?
  - chongli 10y ago
    No, because screening your employees is an action on your part. Mozilla took no action against Eich; he chose to resign himself. He could have elected to stay on, instead choosing to accept all of the consequences his views may or may not have for the company. The equivalent situation in your case is having your views on welfare known and your employees (and anybody else transacting with your company) deciding whether or not they want to associate with you. Others' views on welfare would not be a valid reason to fire or refuse to hire them.
    - gnarbarian 10y ago
      >Mozilla took no action against Eich; he chose to resign himself. He could have elected to stay on, instead choosing to accept all of the consequences his views may or may not have for the company. That is a very convenient interpretation of how things went down. They forced him to resign. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=smsm42 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=smsm42 said it best: >... a group of political activists put pressure on Mozilla to fire Eich because of his political views, for political reasons, and Mozilla as organization caved. There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his job, and no single instance or evidence of any problem with his job. It was a political decision that being friends with political activists is better than keeping Eich. >The equivalent situation in your case is having your views on welfare known and your employees (and anybody else transacting with your company) deciding whether or not they want to associate with you. Others' views on welfare would not be a valid reason to fire or refuse to hire them. It certainly would be a valid reason to not hire them if I had to fear them ousting me from my company for holding opinions unpalatable to them.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      That is disingenuous. Eich was forced to resign in a way that would be called "constructive dismissal" in some jurisdictions.
- smsm42 10y ago
  > Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. This is a very disingenuous way of describing it. More proper way to describe it would be that a group of political activists put pressure on Mozilla to fire Eich because of his political views, for political reasons, and Mozilla as organization caved. There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his job, and no single instance or evidence of any problem with his job. It was a political decision that being friends with political activists is better than keeping Eich. For me, that ruins the trust in the organization. If they are ready to sacrifice their own top management, would they really stand up for me as a user if that would cost them anything? I don't think so. > He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. And now Mozilla has to accept consequences of being the organization which will fire you because you hold unpopular political views. As a person who holds plenty of unpopular views (different from Eich's but still largely unpopular) I want to do as little as possible with such organization.
  - Frondo 10y ago
    "There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his job, and no single instance or evidence of any problem with his job." I don't know if that's true. I don't know how many gay folks work for Mozilla, but I'm 100% it's a non-zero number. They might have had a real problem with his donating to Prop 8. I couldn't say whether they did, being neither gay nor a mozilla employee, but I could imagine it might make them uncomfortable, just from the conversations I had with my gay friends when gay marriage was becoming a thing. Given that, I kinda think your confidence that there was "no single instance" of a problem is probably misplaced. "Mozilla has to accept consequences of being the organization which will fire you because you hold unpopular political views." Mozilla didn't fire him. He resigned of his own volition, as I and many others have pointed out. You're free to want as little to do as possible with that organization, or with any organization, but usually when I boycott something it's for real stuff, not stuff I just made up in my head. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
    - icelancer 10y ago
      "He resigned of his own volition..." Yeah, I'm sure he just up and decided to resign with zero pressure from political insiders and the flash mob causing outrage. That's probably what happened.
- donw 10y ago
  > I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like? It would be a much less divided and angry place. One of my most important life lessons was to learn how to argue in support of positions that I strongly oppose or dislike. If I only seek to deeply understand things that I support or agree with, then I will struggle to communicate with people from different cultures, or from people that have backgrounds that differ to my own. This does not require that I agree with things that I oppose or dislike, but it does require that I understand why people disagree with me. Never have I found the answer to be "they are ignorant idiots and/or outright horrible people" Making it a point to do this has helped me to develop a more nuanced view of the world, and has been essential as a manager, as I can not effectively communicate with the people that work with me unless I am willing to try and deeply understand them. Effective management requires dealing with all manner of politics, and it helps build bridges and find mutually acceptable solutions when you can speak to both sides in their own language.

Frondo 10y ago

Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. He wasn't imprisoned, nothing was done to him with the force of law. He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like?

gnarbarian 10y ago
>I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like? It's called not talking politics or religion at work. Or not discriminating against someone because of something unrelated to their job. There is zero conflict of interest between Eich supporting prop 8 and heading the Mozilla foundation. Same as there is zero conflict of interest for Palmer Luckey supporting the leading candidate in the presidential election.
- stephenr 10y ago
  You can't police people's thoughts/feelings. Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations). Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech.
  - gnarbarian 10y ago
    >You can't police people's thoughts/feelings. Cheers, Of course not. >Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech. Fair point. Riddle me this: Should we force a baptist cake company to bake a cake for a gay wedding, force a Jewish bakery to bake a swastika cake, and force a Nazi bakery to bake a Jewish cake? If not one. Why should we force one and not the others? If you think the government should force nothing on any baker I agree with you. >Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations). Which people? As far as I know there wasn't any actual fallout beyond saber rattling.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      > Which people? Reich and the guy from oculus who supported the trump group. > Riddle me this What is a "cake for a gay wedding" compared to any other kind of wedding cake? Is there same-sex marzipan I'm not aware of? A baker refusing to bake a cake for someone because they're gay/Jewish is discrimination, and bigotry/racism (religious discrimination if you consider Judaism purely a religion and not an ethnicity/race) Refusing to bake a cake for neonazis would also be discrimination. Refusing to bake a cake of a swastika isn't exactly the same thing - a swastika is imagery associated with one of the greatest war crimes of recorded history. Also, you're in the wrong direction anyway. A business refusing service isn't the same as a consumer refusing to use a business.
      - gnarbarian 10y ago
        >Also, you're in the wrong direction anyway. A business refusing service isn't the same as a consumer refusing to use a business. I'm trying to establish an objective rule for what kinds of discrimination you believe should be legal. You described each situation but you didn't actually make a value judgement (which was the whole point of the question).
        csallen 10y ago
        Being gay/black/female/disabled/etc isn't a choice, therefore I don't believe businesses should be able to discriminate on that basis. Being a neo-nazi, a racist, a nudist, a hippy, a Michael Jackson fan, etc are choices, therefore it doesn't make sense for the government to make laws protecting such groups imo.
- glogla 10y ago
  There are limits to that kind of tolerance, though. You shouldn't care what politicians your coworker likes. You shouldn't care what religion your coworker follows. You should care if your coworker is neo-nazi or if he is supporting Islamic State or Westboro Baptist Church. The only diagreement is whether Eich was closer to the former or the latter. I can perfectly imagine people whose rights he wanted to take away to think he's the latter.
  - gnarbarian 10y ago
    If you can't draw an objective and distinct line in plain English between where it is acceptable to discriminate and where it is not you shouldn't draw one at all.
  - ZoF 10y ago
    You have no evidence he is closer to the former and all this is is justification for cultural Marxism. The only thing that an individual should be judged on at work is actions/comments/etc. made at work. If you'd like to argue otherwise I'd hope you at least have something more formally define-able than 'he was trending towards being a neo-nazi'. I'd also expect you to be able to point to an authority for defining these ideological limits other than the currently loosely defined group-think. Please answer these few scenarios: -Should someone believing and actively promoting pro-life stances(outside of work) be fired? -Should a casual narcotics user on weekends be fired once it's found out he/she uses? -Should someone be fired for having a confederate flag hanging in their living room? What if they're black?
    - orf 10y ago
      Nobody black would hang a confederate flag in their living room.
      - ZoF 10y ago
        Ironically I asked that the because the black people living in the apartment next to me do have a confederate flag in their living room(among _many_ others). They also scream white power around the campfire when drunk though so perhaps not typical.
tnone 10y ago
Funny how at the same time, those spouting this tired refrain scream bloody murder when this logic is applied to themselves rather than the usual punching bags. "Never" is a strawman, but I imagine that would be a world where academia doesn't feel a need to protect its students from ideas, and where people of different viewpoints can work alongside each other instead of shaming groupthink into existence.
- gnarbarian 10y ago
  Because according to @the_moviebob "there is (almost) no such thing as a bad tactic - only bad TARGETS". AKA the ends justify the means.
tracker1 10y ago
So you want a view where everyone with a controversial view to loose their job? And who decides what a controversial view is, or if it is or is not controversial enough to lose their job? In the end, I don't think one's views outside of the workplace should necessarily relate to their work performance. Eich was close to a public figure, that doesn't make the witch-hunt any better.
- Frondo 10y ago
  I don't want a world where "everyone with a controversial view" loses their job, but neither do I want one where no view is controversial enough to incur consequences. If I had a coworker who habitually made racist statements, for example, and I liked my job, I'd want them to lose their job. That kind of work environment would be quite unpleasant for me and probably a lot of other people. To generalize, I have no problem saying I want to live in a world where employers feel comfortable firing racists who openly air those kind of distasteful remarks. (I didn't say, "I think all racists should be unemployed," mind you.) What constitutes "controversial enough to merit consequences" and what those consequences would be (i.e. the world as we now have it), that, I think, there'll never be a single set of rules. It'll always be up to contemporary society, the employer, etc.
gnarbarian 10y ago
Thought experiment: I think excessive welfare does more harm than good. Should I politically screen my employees to ensure that they don't hold views that contradict mine?
- chongli 10y ago
  No, because screening your employees is an action on your part. Mozilla took no action against Eich; he chose to resign himself. He could have elected to stay on, instead choosing to accept all of the consequences his views may or may not have for the company. The equivalent situation in your case is having your views on welfare known and your employees (and anybody else transacting with your company) deciding whether or not they want to associate with you. Others' views on welfare would not be a valid reason to fire or refuse to hire them.
  - gnarbarian 10y ago
    >Mozilla took no action against Eich; he chose to resign himself. He could have elected to stay on, instead choosing to accept all of the consequences his views may or may not have for the company. That is a very convenient interpretation of how things went down. They forced him to resign. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=smsm42 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=smsm42 said it best: >... a group of political activists put pressure on Mozilla to fire Eich because of his political views, for political reasons, and Mozilla as organization caved. There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his job, and no single instance or evidence of any problem with his job. It was a political decision that being friends with political activists is better than keeping Eich. >The equivalent situation in your case is having your views on welfare known and your employees (and anybody else transacting with your company) deciding whether or not they want to associate with you. Others' views on welfare would not be a valid reason to fire or refuse to hire them. It certainly would be a valid reason to not hire them if I had to fear them ousting me from my company for holding opinions unpalatable to them.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    That is disingenuous. Eich was forced to resign in a way that would be called "constructive dismissal" in some jurisdictions.
smsm42 10y ago
> Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. This is a very disingenuous way of describing it. More proper way to describe it would be that a group of political activists put pressure on Mozilla to fire Eich because of his political views, for political reasons, and Mozilla as organization caved. There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his job, and no single instance or evidence of any problem with his job. It was a political decision that being friends with political activists is better than keeping Eich. For me, that ruins the trust in the organization. If they are ready to sacrifice their own top management, would they really stand up for me as a user if that would cost them anything? I don't think so. > He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. And now Mozilla has to accept consequences of being the organization which will fire you because you hold unpopular political views. As a person who holds plenty of unpopular views (different from Eich's but still largely unpopular) I want to do as little as possible with such organization.
- Frondo 10y ago
  "There was no instance of Eich's views ever influencing anything on his job, and no single instance or evidence of any problem with his job." I don't know if that's true. I don't know how many gay folks work for Mozilla, but I'm 100% it's a non-zero number. They might have had a real problem with his donating to Prop 8. I couldn't say whether they did, being neither gay nor a mozilla employee, but I could imagine it might make them uncomfortable, just from the conversations I had with my gay friends when gay marriage was becoming a thing. Given that, I kinda think your confidence that there was "no single instance" of a problem is probably misplaced. "Mozilla has to accept consequences of being the organization which will fire you because you hold unpopular political views." Mozilla didn't fire him. He resigned of his own volition, as I and many others have pointed out. You're free to want as little to do as possible with that organization, or with any organization, but usually when I boycott something it's for real stuff, not stuff I just made up in my head. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
  - icelancer 10y ago
    "He resigned of his own volition..." Yeah, I'm sure he just up and decided to resign with zero pressure from political insiders and the flash mob causing outrage. That's probably what happened.
donw 10y ago
> I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like? It would be a much less divided and angry place. One of my most important life lessons was to learn how to argue in support of positions that I strongly oppose or dislike. If I only seek to deeply understand things that I support or agree with, then I will struggle to communicate with people from different cultures, or from people that have backgrounds that differ to my own. This does not require that I agree with things that I oppose or dislike, but it does require that I understand why people disagree with me. Never have I found the answer to be "they are ignorant idiots and/or outright horrible people" Making it a point to do this has helped me to develop a more nuanced view of the world, and has been essential as a manager, as I can not effectively communicate with the people that work with me unless I am willing to try and deeply understand them. Effective management requires dealing with all manner of politics, and it helps build bridges and find mutually acceptable solutions when you can speak to both sides in their own language.