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Comment by writepub | Hacker News Reader

If the intersectionalists had it their way, they'd ban Amazon from selling any and all services to all agencies and people whose politics they disagree with. They're yearning to stop serving Republicans and conservatives - almost 50% of the population.

That's OK, just as long as these intersectionalists are the first to go when revenue declines from their extremist philosophy stops supporting Amazon jobs. I think they should take their activism to it's logical conclusion and start cannibalizing both revenues and operations with their manufactured outrage and activism - only then will this reach fever pitch and force management to openly call this group's hypocrisy out.

We really need center of the aisle, common sense to be popular again in this country

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"Intersectionalist" isn't synonymous with "leftist" or whatever you're trying to say. It's hard for me to see how intersectionality is relevant to the subject of Amazon's work with ICE.

It's VERY relevant - regular Amazonian employees do not care about selling to US law enforcement - the agencies that protect and allow Amazon to thrive and exist. This whole anti law enforcement narrative has been popularized by inter sectionalism - in whose heads law enforcement is full of majority race, privileged individuals oppressing the minorities.

> regular Amazonian employees do not care about selling to US law enforcement

Sorry but you don’t speak for regular Amazon employees. You’ve just made that up.

And what data can you offer to prove that a majority of Amazonians support not serving law enforcement?

You made the claim first mate.

Don't weasel out of supporting it by asking him to prove a negative as a response.

Convenient. You refute something, as if you have data to back it, and when asked for evidence, you weasel out on technicality.

Please, go play partial judge elsewhere. Oh BTW, your friend just implied I was a fascist, (see quote).

> The logical conclusion of your arguments basically Fascism - putting profit above people, which isn’t remotely close to common sense.

1. When everyone's fascist, no one is.

2. Name-calling is just an absolute no no on HN.

3. Your friend doesn't know the definition of fascism.

Current AMZN employee here. I can anecdotally say that I personally see no problem with selling the technology.

There was a extremely active discussion on an internal mailing list when "the letter" came out that was signed "Amazonians." While there were a small number of very vocal proponents of stopping the sale of the technology, the prevailing opinion was split between indifference and anger by less than 400, mostly young and relatively new Amazon employees, representing themselves as anywhere near a significant portion of "Amazonians" (however much that was intended versus sensationalism, I refuse to speculate).

I think you're speaking too broadly. I for one am very concerned with facial recognition, but it has nothing to do with immigration/left-right/minorities.

I think the government having too much power is more of a liability than it is a benefit.

I can agree with this wholeheartedly. But the opposition at Amazon is not what you stated. Anyways, I concur.

The logical conclusion of your arguments basically Fascism - putting profit above people, which isn’t remotely close to common sense. Nor is labelling those who oppose locking children in cages as “extremists”.

Shouldn’t businesses be free to serve who they want to?

> The logical conclusion of your arguments basically Fascism - putting profit above people

Fascism is about putting profit about people? I thought Fascism was commonly associated with National Socialism which doesn't sound very pro profits.

On the contrary the entire philosophy was built around the idea that every sector of society -- business, labor, churches, and so on should serve the end goals of state and more abstractly the nation/race. But today ignorant people use the term "fascism" to mean "something I don't like". It's a shanda.

"Extremists" are those who compel, nay blackmail, their corps. to stop selling to agencies and people whose politics and world views differ from theirs. 100% of law enforcement isn't in the business of caging children. Please stop making straw-mans - your security is also the responsibility of the agencies who you demonize as "child cagers". These same individuals will protect and serve you, while you take away their ability to use technology to do their jobs

ICE was specifically called out and have indeed been caging children - not a straw man. The people doing that neither serve nor protect me and should not have been given that “job to do” in the first place. Making something “a job” doesn’t suddenly make it ok. That’s just an argument from authority - you might want to look that term up.

Law enforcement in the broader sense is a different matter - there’s obviously legitimate use cases. But extreme caution needs to be exercised. Those folks do indeed have a valuable job to do - but within reason and never beyond reproach.

Also I don’t think you know what blackmail is. Now if I had a penny for every conservative boycott of some “liberal” company... I guess those folks are all “extremists”.

Please please explain how rekognition aids ICE in caging children. This is indeed a strawman, unless you prove a direct connection.

And then there's the deathly silence on actual evidence that a majority of Amazonians even want this. Instead, it's very likely the voice of a radical, but vocal minority, quite literally blackmailing the company.

Here's the blackmail clause - "deny ICE rekognition access, or we'll leak confidential company information to BuzzFeed (and the media) and make a hit piece of your policy in an echo chamber that sympathizes with our politics"

I could give a crap about conservatives protesting companies for politician reasons. I don't believe a baker should be able to deny a gay couple a wedding cake, and I certainly don't believe Amazon or valley intersectionaliats should have the power to deny the government of the United States, whose policies have checks and balances in 3 branches of governece, access to tech.

If, on the contrary, you proposed a legal challenge in the courts on constitutional merits, I'd support that. But this power trip of valley intersectionaliats de-platforming everything they disagree with is exhausting, in a free and mature democracy like the US.

> We really need center of the aisle, common sense to be popular again in this country

Okay, so left of the democrats.

I'd be fine with that.

I don't think you know what intersectionality is.

Not giving law enforcement broad surveillance capabilities hardly seems like a position conservatives would oppose. As usual the ones who yell loudest about tyranny are also the ones who cheerfully fight for it.

What tyranny and who's cheering for it? No one here wants anyone's constitutional rights violated. Pro tip - if there was brazen constitutional violations arising from this tech, Amazon lawyers would probably be the first to sue the government over it

This is all about the letf's power tripping political opponents out of a platform. It's a 180 phase shift of a scenario where some employers deny insurance coverage of birth control on religious or moral grounds.

I do not agree with either side on this behavior, and frankly find this a hole in the Constitution where a company can simply deny a legal transaction because they disagree with the recipient of the service

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