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This is not a false dichotomy at all. Businesses should have a moral position, sure. That moral position should be right? According to who? The business itsel

This is not a false dichotomy at all. Businesses should have a moral position, sure. That moral position should be right? According to who? The business itself? Then that second point is redundant. Everybody thinks their moral position is right, that's what morals are. It's a tautology otherwise. GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like. Replace Github with bakery refusing to serve same-sex couples. Bakery thinks they're right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like. You only think it's a false dichotomy because you personally disagree with the bakery and (presumably?) agree with Github. By saying "the moral position should be right", is you simply saying "and they should agree with me otherwise they are wrong".

sascha_sl 7y ago
To draw a parallel between an organization that runs concentration camps (in a similar state to early nazi camps before they were extermination camps, nuance please) and one that refuses to provide services based on an anarchic justification for bigotry is either truly vile or exceedingly cynic.
- Thorentis 7y ago
  You can disagree with somebody's set of morals all you like. You can draw analogies to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, whoever. But: why should a private business only be allowed to choose its clients, if their morality aligns with yours? EDIT: And the down votes begin the moment I don't agree with somebody's comparison to Hitler. Godwin's Law never fails to deliver.
  - slykat 7y ago
    What bothers me the most is how myopic people are about this. Does anyone not see how dangerous it will be if we have the world's largest companies choosing to do business based on their internal moral grounds? Do we really want tech companies to have moral councils that vet customers? If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the ACLU and other lobbyists fighting the good fight. Write your congressman. Call your congressman. VOTE! Campaign for the correct congressman. Code for your congressman. Push for policy that makes ICE employees (and all government employees) more accountable for human rights abuses. All of these actions will be more effective than campaigning for ICE, who will just migrate to a different cloud code review tool if the contract is cancelled (gitlab, bitbucket, or whomever else).
    - mattigames 7y ago
      I see you as the myopic here; by pretending you only have to the long term stuff (votes, campaing) and that the short term stuff doesn't matter or shouldn't be done (like the employees complaining in this case) like these kind of protests live in a vacuum; when artists in the 50s refused to play in segregated crowds you think they didn't ALSO advocate for the long term stuff like voting for congressmen in favor of less racism? Absolutely nothing lives in a vacuum, and creating noise against ICE like they are doing in this case can help even more than doing the politics part themselves, because the exposure they get influences other people reading such news.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - slykat 7y ago
        I actually don't think this is a short term action. I think of this as a non-action. If Github pulls the ICE contract they will just use a competitor (Gitlab has already gone on record saying they will not restrict customers based on moral viewpoints). And regardless of which cloud code collaboration tool ICE uses, they will still be locking kids in detention camps and trampling human rights. No behavior change will happen at all at ICE if they have to change their git cloud provider. This is a non action move in my opinion. I see it as slacktivism, if Github pulls the contract, people will pat themselves on the back, and count it as a win. You could argue the exposure might have some effect, but given that ICE human rights abuses have been very well documented by the leading publications, I'm unsure if additional exposure will bring change. I do strongly believe that funding lobbyists is the a great short term thing we can do. From an exposure viewpoint, I think the best thing we can do is raise exposure and support in the blue areas of the country. However, these protests are not doing that.
        mattigames 7y ago
        If I have learn anything about politics is that very well documented facts don't always have more importance in the public eyes than the noise made about a subject, the full political campaign of Trump had practically 0% of any truth whatsoever, just rambling insults and other easily-repeated slogans void of any truth but emotional appeals to a big chunk of the voting population; and he won with millions of votes. So no, I think stuff like this does a bit more than "some effect".
  - Rapzid 7y ago
    I understand what you are saying but I do not believe all morals and values are created equal. For one, many disparate cultures have separately developed values that are very similar. In a lot of these cultures values intersect more than diverge. Second, I do not believe discriminating on an entity based on the perceived harm it is causing others is the equivalent to discriminating on an individual or group based on intrinsic characteristics the individuals were born with. Further, I believe it's potentially desirable to attempt to derive a set of values and morals based on reasoning; attempting to maximize for the constructive and empowering and minimize the destructive and oppressive.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      > "perceived harm" That's the entire problem isn't it? Perceived by who? Do people actually know the truth or is it just what they assume? How is this kind of policy not immediately susceptible to all sorts of abuse?
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Such discussions are repetitive and predictable and deteriorate as they go along. That makes them off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - sascha_sl 7y ago
    dang, this is clearly on-topic. ICE is in the title of the post. Not every response to a political post that is apathy incarnate is an "ideological flamewar". Some things have to be named as what they are, this is not hyperbole. This is happening right now. And I'm sorry anything but your typical "but what about refusing services to the gays" makes you uncomfortable.
    - dang 7y ago
      What makes political flamewars off topic on HN is that they are repetitive and therefore predictable. There's no curiosity in that, and HN is a site for curiosity. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Substantive conversation about the specifics of the OP is different; that's possible, and if people can do it, it's on topic here. But it takes discipline not to devolve into flame-throwing. When a thread gets to the level of name-calling about concentration camps, there's no substantive discussion left to be had. Internet forums as a medium are quick to become vessels for venting rather than information sharing. That's what we want to avoid here. If your wish is to fight battles and smite enemies, please do so elsewhere. I'm sure there are many good reasons to smite them; we are certainly not saying that these issues are unimportant.
      - iron0013 7y ago
        dang, it's not name-calling to call concentration camps what they are. ICE literally runs concentration camps. There's no exaggeration, trolling, or flame-warring involved in saying so. It's simply the same way that it's not libelous to call someone who committed murder a "murderer"--because they earned the title when they committed the murder.
mattigames 7y ago
> GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like. A lot of music artists in the 50s and 60s refused to play on segregated crowds (where black people is separated from white people, usually blacks in the back), they did it because they though they were right and should be able to boycott doing business with those who disagree (despite their record-label or manager thinking otherwise) you think those artists should have done otherwise?
- Thorentis 7y ago
  I didn't say they should have done otherwise. I'm actually arguing in favour of private individuals/businesses being able to make the decision on what they sell and who they sell to. I'm simply pointing out what is almost definitely hypocrisy on the part of these Github employees. Tech companies are usually more progressive, and no doubt these employees would object to a private company, such as a family run bakery, choosing who they sell to. When the Github employees are advocating for their own company to do just that.

sascha_sl 7y ago

To draw a parallel between an organization that runs concentration camps (in a similar state to early nazi camps before they were extermination camps, nuance please) and one that refuses to provide services based on an anarchic justification for bigotry is either truly vile or exceedingly cynic.

Thorentis 7y ago
You can disagree with somebody's set of morals all you like. You can draw analogies to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, whoever. But: why should a private business only be allowed to choose its clients, if their morality aligns with yours? EDIT: And the down votes begin the moment I don't agree with somebody's comparison to Hitler. Godwin's Law never fails to deliver.
- slykat 7y ago
  What bothers me the most is how myopic people are about this. Does anyone not see how dangerous it will be if we have the world's largest companies choosing to do business based on their internal moral grounds? Do we really want tech companies to have moral councils that vet customers? If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the ACLU and other lobbyists fighting the good fight. Write your congressman. Call your congressman. VOTE! Campaign for the correct congressman. Code for your congressman. Push for policy that makes ICE employees (and all government employees) more accountable for human rights abuses. All of these actions will be more effective than campaigning for ICE, who will just migrate to a different cloud code review tool if the contract is cancelled (gitlab, bitbucket, or whomever else).
  - mattigames 7y ago
    I see you as the myopic here; by pretending you only have to the long term stuff (votes, campaing) and that the short term stuff doesn't matter or shouldn't be done (like the employees complaining in this case) like these kind of protests live in a vacuum; when artists in the 50s refused to play in segregated crowds you think they didn't ALSO advocate for the long term stuff like voting for congressmen in favor of less racism? Absolutely nothing lives in a vacuum, and creating noise against ICE like they are doing in this case can help even more than doing the politics part themselves, because the exposure they get influences other people reading such news.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - slykat 7y ago
      I actually don't think this is a short term action. I think of this as a non-action. If Github pulls the ICE contract they will just use a competitor (Gitlab has already gone on record saying they will not restrict customers based on moral viewpoints). And regardless of which cloud code collaboration tool ICE uses, they will still be locking kids in detention camps and trampling human rights. No behavior change will happen at all at ICE if they have to change their git cloud provider. This is a non action move in my opinion. I see it as slacktivism, if Github pulls the contract, people will pat themselves on the back, and count it as a win. You could argue the exposure might have some effect, but given that ICE human rights abuses have been very well documented by the leading publications, I'm unsure if additional exposure will bring change. I do strongly believe that funding lobbyists is the a great short term thing we can do. From an exposure viewpoint, I think the best thing we can do is raise exposure and support in the blue areas of the country. However, these protests are not doing that.
      - mattigames 7y ago
        If I have learn anything about politics is that very well documented facts don't always have more importance in the public eyes than the noise made about a subject, the full political campaign of Trump had practically 0% of any truth whatsoever, just rambling insults and other easily-repeated slogans void of any truth but emotional appeals to a big chunk of the voting population; and he won with millions of votes. So no, I think stuff like this does a bit more than "some effect".
- Rapzid 7y ago
  I understand what you are saying but I do not believe all morals and values are created equal. For one, many disparate cultures have separately developed values that are very similar. In a lot of these cultures values intersect more than diverge. Second, I do not believe discriminating on an entity based on the perceived harm it is causing others is the equivalent to discriminating on an individual or group based on intrinsic characteristics the individuals were born with. Further, I believe it's potentially desirable to attempt to derive a set of values and morals based on reasoning; attempting to maximize for the constructive and empowering and minimize the destructive and oppressive.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    > "perceived harm" That's the entire problem isn't it? Perceived by who? Do people actually know the truth or is it just what they assume? How is this kind of policy not immediately susceptible to all sorts of abuse?
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Such discussions are repetitive and predictable and deteriorate as they go along. That makes them off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sascha_sl 7y ago
  dang, this is clearly on-topic. ICE is in the title of the post. Not every response to a political post that is apathy incarnate is an "ideological flamewar". Some things have to be named as what they are, this is not hyperbole. This is happening right now. And I'm sorry anything but your typical "but what about refusing services to the gays" makes you uncomfortable.
  - dang 7y ago
    What makes political flamewars off topic on HN is that they are repetitive and therefore predictable. There's no curiosity in that, and HN is a site for curiosity. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Substantive conversation about the specifics of the OP is different; that's possible, and if people can do it, it's on topic here. But it takes discipline not to devolve into flame-throwing. When a thread gets to the level of name-calling about concentration camps, there's no substantive discussion left to be had. Internet forums as a medium are quick to become vessels for venting rather than information sharing. That's what we want to avoid here. If your wish is to fight battles and smite enemies, please do so elsewhere. I'm sure there are many good reasons to smite them; we are certainly not saying that these issues are unimportant.
    - iron0013 7y ago
      dang, it's not name-calling to call concentration camps what they are. ICE literally runs concentration camps. There's no exaggeration, trolling, or flame-warring involved in saying so. It's simply the same way that it's not libelous to call someone who committed murder a "murderer"--because they earned the title when they committed the murder.

mattigames 7y ago

> GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like. A lot of music artists in the 50s and 60s refused to play on segregated crowds (where black people is separated from white people, usually blacks in the back), they did it because they though they were right and should be able to boycott doing business with those who disagree (despite their record-label or manager thinking otherwise) you think those artists should have done otherwise?

Thorentis 7y ago
I didn't say they should have done otherwise. I'm actually arguing in favour of private individuals/businesses being able to make the decision on what they sell and who they sell to. I'm simply pointing out what is almost definitely hypocrisy on the part of these Github employees. Tech companies are usually more progressive, and no doubt these employees would object to a private company, such as a family run bakery, choosing who they sell to. When the Github employees are advocating for their own company to do just that.