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It would be very concerning (and in violation of the First Amendment) if the government forbade you from talking about politics at work. But this is not that —
by gnicholas 3y ago
It would be very concerning (and in violation of the First Amendment) if the government forbade you from talking about politics at work. But this is not that — it's a company saying that at their company, they don't have political debates on their internal communication systems. This is different in both degree and kind.
Are you concerned that if too many companies take this approach, it will become the norm, like it was before about 10 years ago, and that then there will be attempts by politicians to codify it into law?
- somewhereoutth 3y agoIf it became the norm, politicians wouldn't need to encode it into law - they'd have 'won' already. The question I suppose really is to what extent society (through the agency of the law and elected representatives) can police (or more precisely in this case to prevent the policing of) private forums like company internal communication systems. I'd argue that simply being privately owned does not put up a perfect barrier to society, and that society does have a legitimate interest in how such forums are run. There seems to be this idea in the US that any form of tyranny and oppression is ok, so long as it is not the government that is doing it.
- gnicholas 3y ago> If it became the norm, politicians wouldn't need to encode it into law - they'd have 'won' already. This was the norm until recently. Would you say that these politicians (who are they, by the way?) had already won during that time?