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Mr. Kaplan’s surprise appearance prompted anger and shock among many Facebook employees, some of whom said they took his action as a tacit show of support for J

by dvtrn 8y ago

Mr. Kaplan’s surprise appearance prompted anger and shock among many Facebook employees, some of whom said they took his action as a tacit show of support for Judge Kavanaugh — as if it were an endorsement from Facebook itself. This is about as far removed as I can possibly take myself from casting value judgement in one direction or another wrt Kavanaugh and the allegations against him but there's something weird in the air when one can't even be seen in the same vicinity as someone accused of {thing_goes_here} without someome somewhere connecting all sorts of dots that have no business being connected and being one reflexive twitch away from having their character assassinated in the worst possible ways.

lenzm 8y ago
It's not just being seen with someone. He went to a public, televised hearing to sit behind him. It's a show of support coming from a public face of FB.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  "him" is his friend FTA. I feel like there's a gap between appearing at these hearings at surface level and showing up because its your friend giving testimony. Maybe I'm being too nuanced and applying too much of the human element by looking at it like so but it's that very gap between supporting Kabanaugh the nominee who lost his temper in a SJC hearing and supporting Kavanaugh his friend accused of sexual assault and the focus of a Senate confirmation and FBI investigation that makes me take the position I have here.
  - paulmd 8y ago
    It's pretty well-established that you can be fired or suffer repercussions by your employer, for things that you do on your own personal time. There's plenty of people who did something shocking or offensive, a video went viral, and they found they'd lost their mcjob, so let's not pretend this is unusual at all. If anything stricter standards should be applied to upper management than to the rank-and-file, because part of the job is absolutely to be publically representing facebook, so it's really unsurprising that people are perceiving it as such. Keeping your nose clean is part of why they pay you the big bucks. Kaplan is free to go to this as a private citizen, people are free to be shocked by it, and Facebook is free to do something about it if the negative attention becomes a liability. That's how things work. Unlike the McJob worker, if they do want to get rid of him, he'll have a nice golden parachute, I'm sure.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      I would love to be a fly on the wall in whatever court room is utilized for the inevitable lawsuit that comes from someone getting fired for attending a government function that is arguably in the interest of public policy like a SCOTUS confirmation hearing. Especially when that person has the job title of "VP of Global Public Policy", at-will or right-to-work laws be damned. Edit: And no. This isn't me saying that's what should happen or even trying to publicly litigate whether or not such a person would win or should win. Just that that behavior sounds like something that would immediately get an employee sued and I'd really be interested to hear the legal arguments from both sides and the opinion of the court.
      - paulmd 8y ago
        So we pivot from "he's just a private citizen supporting his friend on his own time, nothing to do with Facebook!" back to "he's representing Facebook in his professional capacity as a senior management figure"? You can't have it both ways. Being honest here, there is no direct connection to Facebook's interests. This is not a court case in which Facebook has some stake, at best they would just be there to "show the colors". Either way you take it, someone is supporting Kav here. It's either Kaplan personally, or Facebook professionally. (and again, I am also not commenting here about whether he should be confirmed or not, but let's not pretend that everybody just showed up for a free 8oz bottle of water. Whether Kaplan's interest is personal or official, there is an interest.)
        dvtrn 8y ago
        I'm not trying to have it both ways, I'm remarking that there may be a very simple and good reason for Kaplan to appear while recognizing there could be very interesting outcomes if-as you put it-he or anyone else were to lose their job for it. This isn't a remarkably difficult exercise of mental plurality. Nor is it one of partisan critique. If someone attends a government function as a private citizen and is fired for it, I think that would make for an interesting set of legal questions with regards to employment law. If someone were fired for doing the same even in an official capacity, that-to me-would be even more interesting. Since you brought up strict standards for certain levels of employees, I responded to that. You can't very logically say my response to this is trying to have it both ways if all I've done is respond to your talking points. That's all there is to that, imo. Don't read between the lines here because there's really nothing there to read; I am positing that one really doesn't need to connect many dots for Kaplan's attendance at these hearings, but I can entertain the idea you presented: that being fired for attending a government function would make for interesting legal theater as an impartial and dispassionate onlooker.
- woodpanel 8y ago
  To be fair, would anyone have recognized him there without this article pointing it out? To make this claim valid, that this is a public show of support a multiple of stars would have to align here: Joel Kaplan must have thought that he's famous enough that people will recognize him in public, better yet the third row of that testimony AND know that he's not a bystander or supporter of the alleged victims, but of the accused. And that he wanted to antagonize half of FB's staff about it.
nemothekid 8y ago
I don't understand how you believe it's a stretch that these dots are being connected. Why else would he have been there? He wasn't "in the same vicinity" as Kavanaugh. You make it seem like Kaplan decided to shadow a active court case and it "just happened" to be Kavanaugh's.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  "Why else would he have been there?" Because Kaplan and Kavanaugh according to the article are personal friends. I think to willfully ignore this is exactly what I mean by connecting dots that have no business being connected. Maybe I shouldn't be so eager to invoke Occam's Razor here but I am.
kbenson 8y ago
I agree. At last Friday’s staff meeting, Mr. Zuckerberg defended Mr. Kaplan’s appearance as a personal decision that did not violate company rules. Mr. Zuckerberg also said he trusted Mr. Kaplan’s judgment, even though he himself would most likely not have chosen to attend the hearing, said two people who were at the meeting. The messaging backfired. Some employees — particularly women — said it came across as if Mr. Zuckerberg was shrugging off Dr. Blasey’s comments about sexual assault, saying that the chief executive’s remarks had caused “stress and trauma” and were “painful to hear.” If you have a policy that people can have their own beliefs and opinions, you need to hold to it regardless of whether you like how it's used. It's like free speech (is is free speech), and I suspect all these same people would also be very upset if someone faced repercussions from management for supporting or appearing with a person or cause very strongly associated with liberalism. And they would be right to be upset in that case. But you can't have it both ways. Freedom of speech is one of our most important rights, and if you find yourself at odds with it, you should really examine if your feelings are just. They might be, but in my opinion, the cases where that's true are fairly rare.
- pjc50 8y ago
  What infringement of freedom of speech is there here? Kaplan is free to go to this event, and Facebook employees are using their free speech to complain about him. Besides, it matters how this turns out. Supporting an innocent man wrongly accused and supporting someone who turns out to be a rapist are two different things.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > Facebook employees are using their free speech to complain about him. But they aren't, they are also complaining about the CEO standing up for Kaplan's right to espouse his views, or in this case stand by a friend. Just standing by the principle of free speech, which is very clearly what's being asserted by Zuckerberg here, is what's causing problems in the specific portion I quoted. > Supporting an innocent man wrongly accused and supporting someone who turns out to be a rapist are two different things. If you know the person who ends up being found out as a rapist, and beforehand you believe them, then no, there's no difference. I will not condemn anyone that stands by their beliefs if they are founded on evidence (even if it's personal knowledge of someone's character over a couple decades) and based on just principles. Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying anyone's first amendment right was infringed, I'm saying that a company espousing similar rights for its employees with regard to employment is usually a laudable thing, and coming out against that should make one think carefully.

by dvtrn 8y ago

lenzm 8y ago

It's not just being seen with someone. He went to a public, televised hearing to sit behind him. It's a show of support coming from a public face of FB.

dvtrn 8y ago
"him" is his friend FTA. I feel like there's a gap between appearing at these hearings at surface level and showing up because its your friend giving testimony. Maybe I'm being too nuanced and applying too much of the human element by looking at it like so but it's that very gap between supporting Kabanaugh the nominee who lost his temper in a SJC hearing and supporting Kavanaugh his friend accused of sexual assault and the focus of a Senate confirmation and FBI investigation that makes me take the position I have here.
- paulmd 8y ago
  It's pretty well-established that you can be fired or suffer repercussions by your employer, for things that you do on your own personal time. There's plenty of people who did something shocking or offensive, a video went viral, and they found they'd lost their mcjob, so let's not pretend this is unusual at all. If anything stricter standards should be applied to upper management than to the rank-and-file, because part of the job is absolutely to be publically representing facebook, so it's really unsurprising that people are perceiving it as such. Keeping your nose clean is part of why they pay you the big bucks. Kaplan is free to go to this as a private citizen, people are free to be shocked by it, and Facebook is free to do something about it if the negative attention becomes a liability. That's how things work. Unlike the McJob worker, if they do want to get rid of him, he'll have a nice golden parachute, I'm sure.
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    I would love to be a fly on the wall in whatever court room is utilized for the inevitable lawsuit that comes from someone getting fired for attending a government function that is arguably in the interest of public policy like a SCOTUS confirmation hearing. Especially when that person has the job title of "VP of Global Public Policy", at-will or right-to-work laws be damned. Edit: And no. This isn't me saying that's what should happen or even trying to publicly litigate whether or not such a person would win or should win. Just that that behavior sounds like something that would immediately get an employee sued and I'd really be interested to hear the legal arguments from both sides and the opinion of the court.
    - paulmd 8y ago
      So we pivot from "he's just a private citizen supporting his friend on his own time, nothing to do with Facebook!" back to "he's representing Facebook in his professional capacity as a senior management figure"? You can't have it both ways. Being honest here, there is no direct connection to Facebook's interests. This is not a court case in which Facebook has some stake, at best they would just be there to "show the colors". Either way you take it, someone is supporting Kav here. It's either Kaplan personally, or Facebook professionally. (and again, I am also not commenting here about whether he should be confirmed or not, but let's not pretend that everybody just showed up for a free 8oz bottle of water. Whether Kaplan's interest is personal or official, there is an interest.)
      - dvtrn 8y ago
        I'm not trying to have it both ways, I'm remarking that there may be a very simple and good reason for Kaplan to appear while recognizing there could be very interesting outcomes if-as you put it-he or anyone else were to lose their job for it. This isn't a remarkably difficult exercise of mental plurality. Nor is it one of partisan critique. If someone attends a government function as a private citizen and is fired for it, I think that would make for an interesting set of legal questions with regards to employment law. If someone were fired for doing the same even in an official capacity, that-to me-would be even more interesting. Since you brought up strict standards for certain levels of employees, I responded to that. You can't very logically say my response to this is trying to have it both ways if all I've done is respond to your talking points. That's all there is to that, imo. Don't read between the lines here because there's really nothing there to read; I am positing that one really doesn't need to connect many dots for Kaplan's attendance at these hearings, but I can entertain the idea you presented: that being fired for attending a government function would make for interesting legal theater as an impartial and dispassionate onlooker.
woodpanel 8y ago
To be fair, would anyone have recognized him there without this article pointing it out? To make this claim valid, that this is a public show of support a multiple of stars would have to align here: Joel Kaplan must have thought that he's famous enough that people will recognize him in public, better yet the third row of that testimony AND know that he's not a bystander or supporter of the alleged victims, but of the accused. And that he wanted to antagonize half of FB's staff about it.

nemothekid 8y ago

I don't understand how you believe it's a stretch that these dots are being connected. Why else would he have been there? He wasn't "in the same vicinity" as Kavanaugh. You make it seem like Kaplan decided to shadow a active court case and it "just happened" to be Kavanaugh's.

dvtrn 8y ago
"Why else would he have been there?" Because Kaplan and Kavanaugh according to the article are personal friends. I think to willfully ignore this is exactly what I mean by connecting dots that have no business being connected. Maybe I shouldn't be so eager to invoke Occam's Razor here but I am.

kbenson 8y ago

I agree. At last Friday’s staff meeting, Mr. Zuckerberg defended Mr. Kaplan’s appearance as a personal decision that did not violate company rules. Mr. Zuckerberg also said he trusted Mr. Kaplan’s judgment, even though he himself would most likely not have chosen to attend the hearing, said two people who were at the meeting. The messaging backfired. Some employees — particularly women — said it came across as if Mr. Zuckerberg was shrugging off Dr. Blasey’s comments about sexual assault, saying that the chief executive’s remarks had caused “stress and trauma” and were “painful to hear.” If you have a policy that people can have their own beliefs and opinions, you need to hold to it regardless of whether you like how it's used. It's like free speech (is is free speech), and I suspect all these same people would also be very upset if someone faced repercussions from management for supporting or appearing with a person or cause very strongly associated with liberalism. And they would be right to be upset in that case. But you can't have it both ways. Freedom of speech is one of our most important rights, and if you find yourself at odds with it, you should really examine if your feelings are just. They might be, but in my opinion, the cases where that's true are fairly rare.

pjc50 8y ago
What infringement of freedom of speech is there here? Kaplan is free to go to this event, and Facebook employees are using their free speech to complain about him. Besides, it matters how this turns out. Supporting an innocent man wrongly accused and supporting someone who turns out to be a rapist are two different things.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > Facebook employees are using their free speech to complain about him. But they aren't, they are also complaining about the CEO standing up for Kaplan's right to espouse his views, or in this case stand by a friend. Just standing by the principle of free speech, which is very clearly what's being asserted by Zuckerberg here, is what's causing problems in the specific portion I quoted. > Supporting an innocent man wrongly accused and supporting someone who turns out to be a rapist are two different things. If you know the person who ends up being found out as a rapist, and beforehand you believe them, then no, there's no difference. I will not condemn anyone that stands by their beliefs if they are founded on evidence (even if it's personal knowledge of someone's character over a couple decades) and based on just principles. Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying anyone's first amendment right was infringed, I'm saying that a company espousing similar rights for its employees with regard to employment is usually a laudable thing, and coming out against that should make one think carefully.