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He decides because he believes something strongly it permits him to publicly attack someone he works with... Imagine having to deal with this guy in a team when he has a strong opinion on something the team disagrees with ...

Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. Personal politics should be just that, personal.

Politics by definition cannot be personal. It's the practice of resolving conflict within society; if you don't interact with society, there is no politics possible.

(Note: this doesn't mean I agree with the behaviour shown in this case - nobody says politics between colleagues must be done over Twitter.)

(edit: sad downvotes without actual logical counterpoint are sad.)

politics are profoundly personal but also pervades the whole human-organizational stack. conflict resolution might be one of its applications, but make no mistake, politics is primarily concerned with power and its application.

(human) politics requires just 2 people, not a whole societies’ worth; even zero people at the limit, since politics happens in and with other species too.

Politics at the workplace should be kept personal. Politics between colleagues should not be done at all.

I disagree. With that outlook, we would never have had the social movements that changed Europe for the better in the XIX and XX century. In modern terms, stuff like BLM influences who your colleagues are, how you treat them, and how you react to their demands for fairness.

The world would be a better place if both Russia and Germany kept a lid on the practice of pressuring people into a political stance in the first half of the 20th century.

OTOH MLK did not have his followers pressure coworkers - they kept it in the public, not behind doors.

That's not how it went down - what happened between 1900-1950 was the culmination of more than a century of struggles in industrial relations (where labor had no power unless it organised), the rise of mass-media, and the end of monarchies as a viable system of government.

> BLM influences who your colleagues are

Does someone need to 100% support BLM (the political movement) to make an acceptable colleague?

What if someone: opposes racism and thinks police's use of force should be more regulated, but disagrees with some BLM tactics/approach to achieving change?

For example, what if the destruction of property from the protests, or calls to defund the police, actually cause a backlash at the next election and it reduces the chances of anything actually being done. Is someone allowed to make a critique like that?

The bottom line is there actually needs to be a diversity of thought to solve problems, and if you silence anyone who isn't 100% behind your message your not going to make change.

> Does someone need to 100% support BLM (the political movement) to make an acceptable colleague?

No, and I never said as much.

My point is that stuff like BLM is relevant enough that should not be considered a taboo subject between reasonable adults on the workplace. Nobody should be forced or publicly shamed into agreeing on this or that action, and there are well-known ways of resolving this sort of disagreement (i.e. voting) while respecting each other.

I am not supporting what happened in this case, I am only disagreeing with people in the thread turning it into an excuse to never talk about politics on the workplace. If we don't face problems and talk about them, we will never solve them.

> I am only disagreeing with people in the thread turning it into an excuse to never talk about politics on the workplace.

If I was running a company, I would prefer employees not to talk about politics because it will create needless arguments that have nothing to do with the job at hand. If I am an employee, if there is a disagreement about something, how do I know there is not going to be a long-standing hatred from a colleague about my position on a topic that will manifest itself in unpredictable ways.

There are too many activists which make every topic good vs evil and life vs death.

No but the issue is a statement on the project’s page, which is a public good. Expressing support for a just and important movement for social progress like BLM is, in this respect, expected and thus asked. It has nothing to do with politics. It’s a social movement that the right is trying to vilify and turn into a political wedge issue, as well as cultural “Other”.

> Politics between colleagues should not be done at all.

Hear, hear.

In fact, it's an age-old addage that politics and religion should never be discussion topics at work because of how easy these discussions can spiral down to hostile work environments due to assholes like this guy.

And this case is just yet another example reinforcing the addage.

It's always been this way.

Politics is intensely personal. It's not so much about conflicting ideas, but rather loudly delineating social groups and whose camp you're in.

Pushing beliefs to simplistic extremes and demanding declarations of beliefs is an efficient way to make clear where yourself and others stand socially. Truth has little to do with it.

Politics seems "stupid" because we're putting the cart before the horse.

I think what's different now is how many strangers you're exposed to. A century ago, analogues to context-less twitter rage pile-ons were likely smaller and rarer.

> Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo.

I'm not sure we should mark this down as a political and cultural climate thing. I'm more convinced the guy was simply an asshole and it so happens that he felt strongly about politics.

The thing is... he's not the only one. It's been happening for a while now at Google and other big tech companies - if your personal ideological views don't conform with the majority's... prepare to be browbeaten into conformance.

Hence, many people are very secretive of their beliefs if they don't conform, and they may even "play along" like Winston does during the "Two Minutes Hate" (1984). Unlike 1984, we don't have a state or federal "thought police" but we kind of have something similar - a "thought mob" that patrols coworkers for evidence of thought crime.

It's not mob rule it's those who run the outrage-triathlon where those with the highest blood pressure and boil over tops win. If they can't steam anybody up to join them from their effervescence alone they deserve to fall to the wayside and get out the way. The outrage train is coming.

We must ask ourselves daily, "what am I supposed to be outraged about now?"

I can easily imagine dealing with a tweet that asks me to do something, and then another tweet that says that I didn't do the thing that was asked of me. That doesn't sound too bad to me. What am I missing?

Public shaming and the invocation of a mob against you?

> This is specifically targeting an individual front-end engineer at FB, which in my own estimation crosses the line from criticism of executives or general policy, to specifically trying to instigate public outrage against a co-worker.

More importantly, it sounds like he was bullying colleagues to force them to comply with his personal desires on how to do activism by proxy.

Worse, he was trying to force colleagues to risk losing their job in the process just so that they could cater to his whims.

"bullying" is definitely the word. And no one should be forced to take a political position, especially in a work context. There's a reason why our forbears left their politics at the workplace door.

Beyond that, I'd be nervous that a co-worker like this might advance to physical violence.

And he seems from replies and subsequent tweets to still be taking shots at the former coworker. I passively wonder if there wasn’t already some history between the two we just aren’t privy to

Or this guy could just be a total asshole. Think of it another way: If you so demand that everyone post messages of support for your political stance, those messages completely lose all meaning. Does anyone in North Korea really give that much of a shit about all the praise for their "Dear Leader"? No, they just don't want to be killed or sent to a prison camp.

Exactly!

Politics should be kept out of the workplace.

I'm sympathetic to this opinion just for worrying about clashing cultural expectations with co-workers. In communicating ideas in a way what may be obvious to me (because of my culture), it might not always obvious to someone else and easy to mis-interpret.

At best, you're never going to change somebody's mind in a political discussion (you can only change people who are not directly participating), and at worst, there's the risk of being raked over the coils by HR or even losing your job.

Normally sure, but when politicians are using your platform (paying you) to further their own narratives, it's fair game.

That depends on if you are a platform or a publisher.

"I disagree with what this platform I'm working on allows," is a valid statement an employee can bring up and unavoidably political when in reference to political speech or something that is being used to some political end. A section of some arbitrary law from the 90's doesn't define what an employee can be concerned about.

That seems like a fine way to state your political stance on the platform. But as has been brought up in other comments and the article, it is not the manner in which the dismissed employee did it.

Even still, there are appropriate channels and using a public platform to personally attack someone is a nuclear option that you should expect consequences on.

e.g. government employees initially raise concerns on policy privately, then resign and speak out when the discussions fail.

Personal politics, and hopefully politics in general, have nothing to do with the policies that result.

Maybe the workplace should stop spending millions of dollars a quarter on political lobbying, then.

Was a famous IBM motto in the thirties. You dont receive der Fuhrer's "The Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star", granted to 'honor foreign nationals who made themselves deserving of the German Reich.' by talking bad about political leaders now do you.

IBM commercial from 1934 'Übersicht hollerith lochkarten' https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/im...

IBM CEO photo-op with the leader https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/punched-cards/2/1...

Honestly I wasn't going to reply to any comments on the thread, but this is so odious and completely stupid I believe I should address it.

Not talking politics in the workplace doesn't mean not taking a stand outside of the workplace it just means you're at work to get work done not talk politics and I as a potential coworker frankly don't want to hear your politics in the workplace and, I'd have no problem letting you know that fact if you act in real life like you post, hyperbolic and unwaranted.

In fact, taking a stand for what you believe in is one of the fundamental rights the US protects and I think you should participate in any protest, march or riot you want to. I just think you shouldn't do it at work, and if you do, for people not to be surprised that it get's you fired at a few places because people don't want you disrupting their business.

> It all strikes me as a modern-day example of "Havel's greengrocer"

While partially agreeing, i would note that "Havel's greengrocer" was more about situation where boths sides consired that speech act just as expression of power relations and loyality, ignoring its meaning. In this case it is more a case of "true believer".

I initially thought it was about not taking a stance on BLM publically.

EDIT: It is indeed about that!

Why push for a statement on Recoil docs instead of on the front page of FB?

Because bullies pick on people smaller than them.