Why don't we ask electricity companies to drop ICE, if you're trying to be effective through logistical stress? While GitHub is useful, relatively speaking, isn't this like asking a plastic bag company to stop working with ICE? Or are we just saying that ICE should use GitLab?

It’s not clear to me how we should handle these problems. Infrastructure-providing companies are credited with their users’ ethical successes and ethical failures alike.

1. Should engineers be expected to incorporate ethics in their work, beyond following laws? Should businessmen? (I personally feel compelled to incorporate morality in my work - but I know a fair amount of incredible engineers and businessmen who I would not trust to harmoniously engage morality/ethics short of trying to follow the law, and I do want our society to benefit from their unique skills.)

2. Might there be a better path forward than pulling the rug out from under ICE? I worry that children could die from terminated service, and that our society might miss the opportunity to inject/facilitate transparency into this morally-bankrupt operation.

(These are genuine curiosities - I don’t know and I’d love to learn.)

One thing that is certain: it is great that we put pressure on these infrastructure providers, for they are a powerful point of leverage in the system. Hence, I appreciate the letter’s second bulleted demand: “Commit yourself to a higher ethical standard with all of your business dealings, and share that standard with the open source community, the same way you do with your Terms of Service and other community standards.” It keeps them vulnerable to what I hope is a righteous public interest.

I don't really understand the rational of trying to boycott ICE and deny them access to services. I'm all for legislative and executive reform of the rules and procedure for our immigration and deportation policies. When we make it harder for ICE to do their job, don't we increase the number of mistakes they make and thus the amount of injustice? We need to make our border control policies better, not worse...

This is a genuine question, I'm looking for an explanation of the rationale behind these sorts of efforts. (edit: I understand and support efforts to avoid weaponizing AI, but this sort of denial of logistics seems entirely different to me.)

edit: I guess people would rather downvote than answer an honest question. I am fine with the downvotes as I know that this is something people feel strongly about. I personally support opening borders for people and making immigration easier. I just which I would ALSO get an answer to my question about why I should support a boycott like this one.