This in itself is a political stance.
I mean, yes? Working with China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, etc. are stances.
Imagine if companies started bowing down to this kind of behavior and stopped supporting politically contentious entities. There is a large portion of the country who would agree that Planned Parenthood is doing things just as bad as ICE. Should companies stop supporting Planned Parenthood because large groups of people are offended by their services?
The domestic government organization is highly controversial along political lines.
” There is a large portion of the country who would agree that Planned Parenthood is doing things just as bad as ICE. Should companies stop supporting Planned Parenthood because large groups of people are offended by their services?”
I mean, yes, thats exactly what happens. Planned Parenthood was dropped from the government medical service program as a provider. Several organizations are often criticized for working with the police- we have a thread on the front page right now about the DoJ being given personal info via Google.
Let's say GitHub was working with domestic intelligence agencies to add backdoors to various repos for the sake of increasing US security. Would you say that is apolitical?
Or does it only become political when you disagree with it?
You know there’s a clear distinction between directly serving an organization and serving an individual that happens to work for an organization. Don’t be disingenuous now.
They would become political the minute they make a choice of who can visit which site. Providing services to an organization is not political at all. The NRA or Chineese government using Windows does not make Microsoft political (for that reason).
The stance that you’ll sell to anyone regardless of politics is a political choice. It has, past and present, been used to absolve oneself for one’s choices and provide cover for terrible things
People react negatively to this (by downvoting my comments, for instance) because acknowledging one’s responsibility is frightening.
I'm the ISP on your area, and whoops- I won't let my internet be used by LGBT activists. I'm Tesla and won't sell cars to people who get Coal powered electricity. I'm Google and I won't let Republicans search on my site. I'm the electric company and won't let my power be used for abortion clinics. I'm Microsoft and I won't tell software to Gay people. I'm Apple not selling their phones to people who hunt.
I assume you would support those above scenarios? There are two options. Be a-political in your business dealings, or be political. There is no middle ground.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather live in a world where companies act a-politically then ones that don't.
Well yes, that's generally how moral choices work.
Not to Godwin, but it is the perfect example here: was it okay for companies to provide goods and services to the Nazi regime, which facilitated the atrocities they committed? We don't need to conjure up scenarios, we have plenty of real-world current historical ones that illustrate the point. Boycotts of South Africa in the 80s, for instance, played a part in bringing down the apartheid system. Would it have been better for the companies involved to instead declare their "apolitical" stance and make sales to that regime?
Why is "just following orders" not an acceptable defense for personal wrongs, but "just doing business" okay?
>I don't know about you, but I'd rather live in a world where companies act a-politically then ones that don't.
But again, there's no such thing as " a-politically". That's a political choice to support the status quo.
For example, the 80s and 90s the gay rights movement came to prominence, and fought against both legal and social discrimination against homosexuals. If a company said, "Look, we're not taking a position either way, we just want to do business and not get into politics, so we're not going to address this", that's a facially "apolitical" stance. But that stance, then, is then one that supports the then-current reality that legal and social discrimination against homosexuals still existed.