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We are going through a very strange and extreme period in US History. Corporations are a huge part of the political landscape. Of course workers who are powerfu

We are going through a very strange and extreme period in US History. Corporations are a huge part of the political landscape. Of course workers who are powerful will demand things of their workplaces. All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.

ancorevard 6y ago
"By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political." Just a reminder that government entities like ICE are executing the current laws of the land.
- e40 6y ago
  That's a stretch. Many think what they are doing is not legal. And I doubt that everything they do is spelled out in law. There is a lot of policy to what happens in ICE.
- klyrs 6y ago
  I think that a large part of the issue is that ICE is violating human rights on a massive scale. Where they might be executing some laws, they're violating others. And just a reminder, "just following orders" brings up some scary historical context that a lot of people don't want to help recreate.
- drunkpotato 6y ago
  Demonstrably and rather obviously untrue. They're violating the law in many instances, including but not limited to the cases of asylum seekers and current green card holders; it's just they're following the evil, xenophobic whims of the current political leadership, who are failing to hold themselves or ICE accountable to the rule of law, so they are, for the moment, getting away with their lawlessness. I hope we can change this with voting in new leadership, but I fear it may be too late. Aside and personal observation: it's interesting how the same people so vigorously crying for "law and order" are rather particular about which laws they care about enforcing, and which they're willing to overlook. Of course I'm not the first to make this observation.
  - ancorevard 6y ago
    ICE arrests are significantly down under the current administration compared to the previous administration.
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      This omits the important fact that ICE arrests steeply decreased year–over–year for seven out of Obama’s eight years in office, while arrests have increased year–over–year for two of Trump’s three years [0]. That doesn’t exonerate Obama, but it does say something about the administration that a new president inherits. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/02/how-border-apprehensions-ice-arrests-and-deportations-have-changed-under-trump/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/02/how-border-...
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      And why is that relevant? Age you assuming that most people in this thread liked Obama's immigration policies?
  - zdragnar 6y ago
    Given that the pictures of kids in cages came from before our current president was in office, this is the first time I've heard anyone call president Obama both evil and xenophobic.
    - coffeemaniac 6y ago
      Yes, Obama is evil and xenophobic, and a war criminal by every standard. That anyone still listens to him is a testament to how broken our politics are in the US.
      - drunkpotato 6y ago
        Sadly very true.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cyphar 6y ago
  And who writes the laws of the land? Slavery and Jim Crow were also laws at certain periods of American history. I'd hope it's pretty uncontroversial to say that those laws were also very divisive political issues at the time.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    Correct. Not all laws are good or morally acceptable, and they need to be changed. If Github was to pull out, ICE could simply find someone else willing to sign a contract with them, except it will make things worse, as that other provider will not be as diligent or reliable (if it was just as good, it would have been picked in the first place instead of Github). When you see an unjust law, it should be pushed to get changed. Back when gay marriage was illegal, it made more sense to push for its legislation, instead of providers refusing service to state governments where it was illegal. People need to protest, call their elected officials, sign petitions, etc. Most importantly, people need to regularly vote, not just during general presidential elections. That has nothing to do with Github. As a customer, I want to be confident that my service won't get terminated for some arbitrary reason, as long as I obey terms of service and don't break any laws. Giving providers the ability to cancel my service due to random whims in their workforce isn't something that I want to see in tech.
    - cyphar 6y ago
      Would you have held the same opinion if you were around in the US in the 1930s and discovered that IBM was developing a new-fangled census system for the newly-elected German government[1]? Or after the news of the death camps was made public, you discovered that IBM had continued to maintain the system they'd created to help track people for the Nazis? Would you have worked for IBM at the time, knowing this was going on? If you would've spoken out, then you agree with the principle but don't agree that ICE is "bad enough" to warrant this treatment. If you wouldn't have spoken out but wouldn't have worked for them, then you agree that working on these systems is clearly unethical (and thus IBM was acting unethically) but feel that ethics are less important than not disrupting the freedom of a company to sell their services to whoever they like. If you would've worked for them and wouldn't have spoken out, then we have very different views on ethics and I'm not sure we're going to agree on anything. Yes, laws should be changed but businesses should be held accountable for who they do business with. You'd better believe that the US government wouldn't have the same rosy outlook you do if they discovered that GitHub was selling software to known terrorist groups. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- tekromancr 6y ago
  Just a reminder that choosing to obey and assist in the execution of unjust laws is a political act.
fennecfoxen 6y ago
The idea that all corporations are political is obviously quite true, especially insofar as potentially-everything is political. What's interesting is erosion of the norm that corporations should not be particularly political (picking and choosing customers based on politics, touting allegiance to one specific side). This was once a somewhat stronger (political) norm that has fallen by the wayside as the nation has grown more bitterly divided. I would be happy to see it come back somewhat; I am not convinced that corporate CEOs having an outsized influence on politics is going to take our nation to a healthy place in the long term, either politically, economically, or intellectually. I also expect that the demands of the new orthodoxy will get much, much worse before the situation gets any better.
- vkou 6y ago
  Corporate CEOs have always had an outsized influence on politics, it's just now that said influence is not all pro-right-wing (because many of the right's social stances are completely intolerant), Republicans have started wringing their hands, and clutching their pearls, and predicting bedlam, cats and dogs living together, etc, etc. Were the outsized influence limited to run-of-the-mill pro-corporatism politics (Or anything that aligned with their social agenda, as in the case of firms like Hobby Lobby), we wouldn't be hearing a peep from that camp on the subject. (As if that's somehow apolitical.)
- munchbunny 6y ago
  I think this ultimately comes down to where individuals see effective levers for expressing political opinions at a policy level. There is very little trust across the entire political spectrum that the US government is an effective policy maker and enforcer. It often feels like our representatives at the state and federal levels no longer represent individuals, and so we've turned to corporations and US government suppliers looking for leverage to force change instead.
- dgellow 6y ago
  > This was once a somewhat stronger (political) norm that has fallen by the wayside as the nation has grown more bitterly divided. Just a thought: what if the nation's divide comes from companies taking more political stances, instead of the opposite? As an example to entertain the thought, when Nike takes a political position through their advertising on social platforms, people react to it by taking side. If done at a scale big enough, with enough companies pushing their customers to take a side, would that be enough to result in visible divide in the country?
e40 6y ago
Especially given the fact of unlimited political donations by corporations. Anyone who says "let's not make this political" is very naive.
jm4 6y ago
How is it political to accept business from a federal agency? One could argue it’s more political to pick and choose which federal agency to work for - or whether to do it at all - based on whether you agree with that agency’s mission. This is really getting out of hand. Now businesses have to let the world (and mostly people who are not customers) know where they stand by choosing customers based on where those customers stand on various issues? This is insanity.
mtgp1000 6y ago
>All corporations are political This is a meaningless statement that people use to justify railroading their personal politics into everything. By making my services available to everyone equally I am emphatically not making a political statement. This same sentiment is effectively turning an increasing proportion of consumers away from entertainment media.
- couchand 6y ago
  Just because you aren't thinking about the implications of your decisions doesn't make the consequences any less real.
  - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
    I guess when they start administering ideological purity tests at the bagel shop, I'll know who to thank. After all, providing any type of sustenance or service to a person with the wrong political beliefs helps enable their wrong-ness, doesn't it?
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Equating government contracts to service at a bagel shop is naive at best.
      - mtgp1000 6y ago
        You're right - they affect the livelihoods of far more people.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        Sure, that's one difference. The other is that it usually takes serious labor and negotiation to land a government contract. It's not like ICE went to some Web UI and bought GitHub Enterprise with a company credit card, and now we're asking GitHub/MS to ban them from the e-store.
  - 6y ago
NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
Providing standard, regular service to anyone willing to pay for it is almost always the "default" non-political way of doing business. Do you want an ideological purity test to buy a bagel or a car? Refusing to provide a service when you have the capacity to provide it is a much stronger political act because it essentially implies "I hate you so much that I'm willing to harm myself (foregoing profit) in order to thereby harm you."
- seph-reed 6y ago
  I'm sorry, but with power comes responsibility. The poor little CEOs are going to have to recognize that their decisions have consequences, and those consequences must be thought through. They don't just get to play Capitalist without any repercussions because they call themselves non-political. If you have power, you are responsible for what happens with it. It's not just free money.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
    And if you don't get your way, what's next? Shutting off ICE employee's water, electricity, and telephone service? And why not kick them out of their apartments too since sheltering an ICE officer helps enable them.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      No one is going for ICE employees, at least in this thread. They are proposing going against ICE as an institution.
      - zaroth 6y ago
        ICE as an institution doesn’t even know what Github is, and they won’t blink an eye if suddenly it goes away. It’s ICE engineers lives which are suddenly miserable because they would have to deal with setting up new systems and processes for source control and bug tracking on top of whatever else they were working on. Cutting off GitHub access to ICE engineers is like sitting outside their offices banging pots and pans together for a few weeks. A lot of people are generally worse off for a short while, GitHub revenue goes down, maybe they lay off a few engineers who were supporting that customer, a few news articles are written alternatively praising another step towards corporate activism or bemoaning cancel culture. The most important part of convincing GitHub to cancel ICE to those who are rooting for it isn’t so much ICE losing access to GitHub, but another drop in the bucket toward normalizing the politicization and disruption of basic services to deplorable customers.
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
>All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray. This is only the case if you can find a substantial number of customers Github has turned away. As long as the stance was "as long as it's legal," they stayed out of politics. They were willing to take ICE on as a customer, and they would have been willing to take on organizations fighting against ICE (if for some reason they needed software). That's impartial. Trying to say that taking on the contract is a political decision just sounds like your forcing your political stances on Github itself... Github had never implied they took politics into account when taking on a customer.
conradev 6y ago
Haven't corporations always been a huge part of the political landscape? Lobbying is not a new practice.
alexandercrohde 6y ago
>> All corporations are political Almost no corporations are overtly political in who they service.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
austincheney 6y ago
I find that completely absurd. I work at a large bank. If my employer provides services to ICE am I practicing politics by showing up to work? Is my employer practicing politics by providing loans at the standard rate and standard anti-discriminatory process equally to all applicants? To be free of politics should my employer stop providing loans to everybody? At what point does this make sense in an objectively measurable way?
JBSay 6y ago
That's absurd. If a baker sells bread to a democrat politician it means he supports the Democratic party?

ancorevard 6y ago

"By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political." Just a reminder that government entities like ICE are executing the current laws of the land.

e40 6y ago
That's a stretch. Many think what they are doing is not legal. And I doubt that everything they do is spelled out in law. There is a lot of policy to what happens in ICE.
klyrs 6y ago
I think that a large part of the issue is that ICE is violating human rights on a massive scale. Where they might be executing some laws, they're violating others. And just a reminder, "just following orders" brings up some scary historical context that a lot of people don't want to help recreate.
drunkpotato 6y ago
Demonstrably and rather obviously untrue. They're violating the law in many instances, including but not limited to the cases of asylum seekers and current green card holders; it's just they're following the evil, xenophobic whims of the current political leadership, who are failing to hold themselves or ICE accountable to the rule of law, so they are, for the moment, getting away with their lawlessness. I hope we can change this with voting in new leadership, but I fear it may be too late. Aside and personal observation: it's interesting how the same people so vigorously crying for "law and order" are rather particular about which laws they care about enforcing, and which they're willing to overlook. Of course I'm not the first to make this observation.
- ancorevard 6y ago
  ICE arrests are significantly down under the current administration compared to the previous administration.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    This omits the important fact that ICE arrests steeply decreased year–over–year for seven out of Obama’s eight years in office, while arrests have increased year–over–year for two of Trump’s three years [0]. That doesn’t exonerate Obama, but it does say something about the administration that a new president inherits. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/02/how-border-apprehensions-ice-arrests-and-deportations-have-changed-under-trump/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/02/how-border-...
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    And why is that relevant? Age you assuming that most people in this thread liked Obama's immigration policies?
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Given that the pictures of kids in cages came from before our current president was in office, this is the first time I've heard anyone call president Obama both evil and xenophobic.
  - coffeemaniac 6y ago
    Yes, Obama is evil and xenophobic, and a war criminal by every standard. That anyone still listens to him is a testament to how broken our politics are in the US.
    - drunkpotato 6y ago
      Sadly very true.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cyphar 6y ago
And who writes the laws of the land? Slavery and Jim Crow were also laws at certain periods of American history. I'd hope it's pretty uncontroversial to say that those laws were also very divisive political issues at the time.
- filoleg 6y ago
  Correct. Not all laws are good or morally acceptable, and they need to be changed. If Github was to pull out, ICE could simply find someone else willing to sign a contract with them, except it will make things worse, as that other provider will not be as diligent or reliable (if it was just as good, it would have been picked in the first place instead of Github). When you see an unjust law, it should be pushed to get changed. Back when gay marriage was illegal, it made more sense to push for its legislation, instead of providers refusing service to state governments where it was illegal. People need to protest, call their elected officials, sign petitions, etc. Most importantly, people need to regularly vote, not just during general presidential elections. That has nothing to do with Github. As a customer, I want to be confident that my service won't get terminated for some arbitrary reason, as long as I obey terms of service and don't break any laws. Giving providers the ability to cancel my service due to random whims in their workforce isn't something that I want to see in tech.
  - cyphar 6y ago
    Would you have held the same opinion if you were around in the US in the 1930s and discovered that IBM was developing a new-fangled census system for the newly-elected German government[1]? Or after the news of the death camps was made public, you discovered that IBM had continued to maintain the system they'd created to help track people for the Nazis? Would you have worked for IBM at the time, knowing this was going on? If you would've spoken out, then you agree with the principle but don't agree that ICE is "bad enough" to warrant this treatment. If you wouldn't have spoken out but wouldn't have worked for them, then you agree that working on these systems is clearly unethical (and thus IBM was acting unethically) but feel that ethics are less important than not disrupting the freedom of a company to sell their services to whoever they like. If you would've worked for them and wouldn't have spoken out, then we have very different views on ethics and I'm not sure we're going to agree on anything. Yes, laws should be changed but businesses should be held accountable for who they do business with. You'd better believe that the US government wouldn't have the same rosy outlook you do if they discovered that GitHub was selling software to known terrorist groups. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
tekromancr 6y ago
Just a reminder that choosing to obey and assist in the execution of unjust laws is a political act.

fennecfoxen 6y ago

The idea that all corporations are political is obviously quite true, especially insofar as potentially-everything is political. What's interesting is erosion of the norm that corporations should not be particularly political (picking and choosing customers based on politics, touting allegiance to one specific side). This was once a somewhat stronger (political) norm that has fallen by the wayside as the nation has grown more bitterly divided. I would be happy to see it come back somewhat; I am not convinced that corporate CEOs having an outsized influence on politics is going to take our nation to a healthy place in the long term, either politically, economically, or intellectually. I also expect that the demands of the new orthodoxy will get much, much worse before the situation gets any better.

vkou 6y ago
Corporate CEOs have always had an outsized influence on politics, it's just now that said influence is not all pro-right-wing (because many of the right's social stances are completely intolerant), Republicans have started wringing their hands, and clutching their pearls, and predicting bedlam, cats and dogs living together, etc, etc. Were the outsized influence limited to run-of-the-mill pro-corporatism politics (Or anything that aligned with their social agenda, as in the case of firms like Hobby Lobby), we wouldn't be hearing a peep from that camp on the subject. (As if that's somehow apolitical.)
munchbunny 6y ago
I think this ultimately comes down to where individuals see effective levers for expressing political opinions at a policy level. There is very little trust across the entire political spectrum that the US government is an effective policy maker and enforcer. It often feels like our representatives at the state and federal levels no longer represent individuals, and so we've turned to corporations and US government suppliers looking for leverage to force change instead.
dgellow 6y ago
> This was once a somewhat stronger (political) norm that has fallen by the wayside as the nation has grown more bitterly divided. Just a thought: what if the nation's divide comes from companies taking more political stances, instead of the opposite? As an example to entertain the thought, when Nike takes a political position through their advertising on social platforms, people react to it by taking side. If done at a scale big enough, with enough companies pushing their customers to take a side, would that be enough to result in visible divide in the country?

e40 6y ago

Especially given the fact of unlimited political donations by corporations. Anyone who says "let's not make this political" is very naive.

jm4 6y ago

How is it political to accept business from a federal agency? One could argue it’s more political to pick and choose which federal agency to work for - or whether to do it at all - based on whether you agree with that agency’s mission. This is really getting out of hand. Now businesses have to let the world (and mostly people who are not customers) know where they stand by choosing customers based on where those customers stand on various issues? This is insanity.

mtgp1000 6y ago

>All corporations are political This is a meaningless statement that people use to justify railroading their personal politics into everything. By making my services available to everyone equally I am emphatically not making a political statement. This same sentiment is effectively turning an increasing proportion of consumers away from entertainment media.

couchand 6y ago
Just because you aren't thinking about the implications of your decisions doesn't make the consequences any less real.
- NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
  I guess when they start administering ideological purity tests at the bagel shop, I'll know who to thank. After all, providing any type of sustenance or service to a person with the wrong political beliefs helps enable their wrong-ness, doesn't it?
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Equating government contracts to service at a bagel shop is naive at best.
    - mtgp1000 6y ago
      You're right - they affect the livelihoods of far more people.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        Sure, that's one difference. The other is that it usually takes serious labor and negotiation to land a government contract. It's not like ICE went to some Web UI and bought GitHub Enterprise with a company credit card, and now we're asking GitHub/MS to ban them from the e-store.
- 6y ago

NE2z2T9qi 6y ago

Providing standard, regular service to anyone willing to pay for it is almost always the "default" non-political way of doing business. Do you want an ideological purity test to buy a bagel or a car? Refusing to provide a service when you have the capacity to provide it is a much stronger political act because it essentially implies "I hate you so much that I'm willing to harm myself (foregoing profit) in order to thereby harm you."

seph-reed 6y ago
I'm sorry, but with power comes responsibility. The poor little CEOs are going to have to recognize that their decisions have consequences, and those consequences must be thought through. They don't just get to play Capitalist without any repercussions because they call themselves non-political. If you have power, you are responsible for what happens with it. It's not just free money.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
  And if you don't get your way, what's next? Shutting off ICE employee's water, electricity, and telephone service? And why not kick them out of their apartments too since sheltering an ICE officer helps enable them.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    No one is going for ICE employees, at least in this thread. They are proposing going against ICE as an institution.
    - zaroth 6y ago
      ICE as an institution doesn’t even know what Github is, and they won’t blink an eye if suddenly it goes away. It’s ICE engineers lives which are suddenly miserable because they would have to deal with setting up new systems and processes for source control and bug tracking on top of whatever else they were working on. Cutting off GitHub access to ICE engineers is like sitting outside their offices banging pots and pans together for a few weeks. A lot of people are generally worse off for a short while, GitHub revenue goes down, maybe they lay off a few engineers who were supporting that customer, a few news articles are written alternatively praising another step towards corporate activism or bemoaning cancel culture. The most important part of convincing GitHub to cancel ICE to those who are rooting for it isn’t so much ICE losing access to GitHub, but another drop in the bucket toward normalizing the politicization and disruption of basic services to deplorable customers.

ApolloFortyNine 6y ago

>All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray. This is only the case if you can find a substantial number of customers Github has turned away. As long as the stance was "as long as it's legal," they stayed out of politics. They were willing to take ICE on as a customer, and they would have been willing to take on organizations fighting against ICE (if for some reason they needed software). That's impartial. Trying to say that taking on the contract is a political decision just sounds like your forcing your political stances on Github itself... Github had never implied they took politics into account when taking on a customer.

conradev 6y ago

Haven't corporations always been a huge part of the political landscape? Lobbying is not a new practice.

alexandercrohde 6y ago

>> All corporations are political Almost no corporations are overtly political in who they service.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

austincheney 6y ago

I find that completely absurd. I work at a large bank. If my employer provides services to ICE am I practicing politics by showing up to work? Is my employer practicing politics by providing loans at the standard rate and standard anti-discriminatory process equally to all applicants? To be free of politics should my employer stop providing loans to everybody? At what point does this make sense in an objectively measurable way?

JBSay 6y ago

That's absurd. If a baker sells bread to a democrat politician it means he supports the Democratic party?