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jpdb

> Why is a company wanting to be apolitical is controversial?

Because there's really no such thing as, "apolitical."

If you offer web-hosting to a group of white nationalists, this is a political action.

"Apolitical" is what people who are ok with the status quo use as a dog-whistle to avoid responsibility.

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> If you offer web-hosting to a group of white nationalists, this is a political action.

no it's not - you're just offering a service for a fee. As long as the service is not illegal, and you're not under-charging (which can be considered a political donation), then it's apolitical.

Deliberately choosing not to conduct business with a certain group because of their political ideology, on the other hand, _is_ a political action.

I don't agree. Selling a gun to a hunter is not the same as selling a gun to a known child murderer. Both is "just" selling a gun but they are very different in practice.

You can't take responsibility for what someone will do with your product. This is insane. If someone buy your car, how can you make sure he will not use for kidnap someone?

Of course you can. We just sell cigarettes it’s not our fault problem of people smoke them and get sick?

Society is much better when we have individual freedom and responsibility, which includes the ability of people to make bad decisions.

And here “freedom” means you are forbidden from discussing certain topics at work?

Yes. The environment and time is controlled by your employer to maximize productivity for the business. You're free to do whatever you want on personal time, including not working for a company you don't like.

Usually people making your argument also say that private corporations can and should moderate speech. Do you support that? If so, then why do you disagree with workplaces banning topics?

Setting aside whether business can or should regulate employee speech: can you expand on how them doing so makes people more free?

You're misunderstanding the concept. Individual freedom means you're free to make your own choices and then take responsibility for those choices. This freedom is protected by your rights granted by the state.

Corporations setting workplace rules have no impact on your freedoms. You're free to work there or quit, or suffer the consequences of breaking their rules.

People make dumb things like smoking. We already know that prohibition doesn't work. Putting warnings in the cigarets doesn't work either. So, the next thing would be the seller give a speech about how bad cigarets its for each sale?

If you take a look at the history of smoking, it's very clear that education and taxes DO work.

Absolutely that yes. Cigarette salesmen are performing a valuable service.

Yes you can, and this is why know-your-customer laws exist. This isnt black and white, and depends on the kind of transaction. But if I’m selling cars, and someone comes in looking shifty, and says they want a big SUV to mow people down with, then claiming “I’m just a merchant with no responsibility on end use” is honestly weak bullshit.

> looking shifty

How do you decide this? Your intuition? The clothes someone is using? The way his talk?

If seller offers guns to general public (e.g. gun shop) and child murderer does not have restriction on gun ownership as a part of their sentence, then not selling gun is not a political action, it is an extra-judicial punishment.

Yes, but this distinction doesn’t require a corporate policy to implement. One transaction is legal and the other is not.

Would you like to mandate background checks for every potential customer?

ya, one would be illegal

Does your view change if the gun was sold to a republican vs a democrat? Or a communist?

Deliberately choosing to not not conduct business with certain groups on the basis of their political ideologies is a political action. It implies a disposition toward trade and exchange that is itself political.

Consider the fact that you cannot legally offer a service or a fee to terrorist groups (however that may be defined), money launderers, industries from countries under sanctions... the list goes on.

These limitations are political in nature and could be revised, expanded, or eschewed via political action. But even if they were all eliminated, this would not constitute a "depoliticization" of trade: such an action could be characterized variously as libertarian, free-market, laissez-faire, or something of that nature but it would nevertheless be explicitly political.

This is on-point. Others here seem to be oblivious to reality:

White guy at webhost: We took the white supremacists' money, so this is totally legal.

Black colleague: Sure, but now they're using the website to display anti-black ideology and actively plan rallies to remove my rights.

White guy: This is politics and I'm trying to be apolitical. Please lobby the courts if you have a problem.

That's exactly how it should work.

> using the website to display anti-black ideology and actively plan rallies to remove my rights.

When it's not a crime and it's completely based on your subjective view: you're kidding yourself if you think that process is going to be a just measure. Likely, it's just going to be a free for all, whoever gets offended at what.

Let me add another colleague to your mix.

Asian guy: I don't agree on these statements. I'm quitting if we remove this content.

You see where this is going?

Objectively speaking, it's your privilege that makes this issue seem subjective enough to dismiss it so.

Seems like you are just gaslighting this person rather than explaining your position.

What would you say if these grassroots movement talked webshots into taking down all BLM sites for promoting an officially recognized terrorist organization? Would you still be in favor of workplace politics?

Currently you are privileged since the side you like has the power. If you aren't fine with the situation if you lose that privilege then you aren't fine with workplace politics.

I don't think the BLM movement is "in power". That seems woefully misinformed.

Moreover, BLM and such movements aim to overcome white privilege to enable the equal treatment of colored people. I can see why this may feel aggressive to a white person, and your argument about sides confirms that.

> I don't think the BLM movement is "in power". That seems woefully misinformed.

Then why aren't their webpages being taken down while pages from some of the opposite sides are? So to me it is pretty obvious that people supporting BLM have more power than the people supporting white nationalism.

> Moreover, BLM and such movements aim to overcome white privilege to enable the equal treatment of colored people. I can see why this may feel aggressive to a white person, and your argument about sides confirms that.

I don't even live in the US, nothing the BLM movement does affects me. I do know that Trump made it an official terrorist organization though, so it would be fairly easy to argue for takedown of their sites if you don't like them.

A white supremacist like Trump classifying an opposing movement like BLM as a terrorist organisation, is exactly the problem.

Yes, which is why we shouldn't let companies take down websites just based on workers political views, since then the BLM sites would likely get taken down if the views of their workers were right wing.

You could just as easily write an example where someone of a particular religion (pick any one, they all have a list of things they find immoral) doesn't like it when the web host takes the money of some group that furthers something the religion objects to. Everyone has to hold their nose sometimes.

I think what we're seeing these days is that people don't want to "hold their noses" any longer. It's not making the world a better place.

I see no proof the unbounded political activism is making the world a better place. For example, crowds running up onto people’s dinner and demanding fists raised in solidarity. I think videos circulating of that kind of stuff has somewhat tragically introduced regression. It definitely doesn’t belong in most workplaces.

It's easy to choose an example that you don't like. Are you sure there are no examples you can agree with?

This is not a mainstream view. Maybe it's a 2020-american thing that every action and company and invention is judged by its political potential, but most people wont agree that Gutenberg is to be blamed for what politicians did.

This is not an opinion, politics is the exercise of power. If you are making decisions, you are exercising political power. Apolitical means “We’re going to make political decisions but we are not going to engage with any debate or discussion about them and you are not allowed to either.”

people make decisions, companies don't. That's the problem, people see the company as a political vehicle, akin to a political party. That's wrong on so many levels, primarily on the level that it's a well-funded for-profit organization with the means to cause undemocratic, arbitrary political damage. Blame individuals as much as you want for their politics, don't use the overfunded big tech as a trojan horse to destroy democratic balances.

>If you offer web-hosting to a group of white nationalists, this is a political action

How so? I would say that this is a risk of exposure to politics but hardly a political action.

> a 100% chance of exposure.

Because you're providing material aid to that group, and you're saying there's nothing wrong with doing that.

But not to JUST that group. You are also providing "material aid" to every other group that uses your service which is what makes it apolitical.

We have a system for resolving political differences in America. It's called elections. There is no reason why every business transaction needs to evaluated on political grounds. In fact tolerance and commerce have historically been key to maintaining a peaceful democracy.

By offering I understand selling it the same way like selling it to everyone else. If by "aid" and by "offering" you mean giving it away as a gift or similar then yes - definitely political.

I see a case where it can be political, like creating a mechanism to protect specific group from the others however simply doing business is not a political action by itself.

There's also possibility to be a political action where it's widespread to deny services to certain groups but even that is a stretch because it can also be a good business opportunity.

> Because there's really no such thing as, "apolitical."

This a thousand times.

I've tried to be apolitical in a "least damage" way, but it is not possible. You are supporting someone who is doing something abhorrent either explicitly or implicitly.

In tech we are huge enablers, and when we support implicitly we need to accept that we are enabling behaviour that all employees would find unacceptable. Whether it is individuals, management, directors, the board - the accountability for that is at all levels but definitely starts and stops at the top.

That employees are left to fight this shows a lack of accountability at the other levels - but it isn't apolitical of the company, no... now the company has chosen to go from implicitly supporting behaviour enabled by them to explicitly supporting that behaviour.

> You are supporting someone who is doing something abhorrent either explicitly or implicitly.

This comment might make somebody have an idea which will then change the world for the worse. Have you supported that idea implicitly? I'd argue no, but if you look at it purely from an consequentialist perspective, then sure, you did.

> That employees are left to fight this

But they aren't "left to fight" anything. They're asked not to try to use the company to further their personal political goals.

All I see here is that you shouldn’t use Grafana if you don’t want to have your service arbitrarily terminated because of a random news article or a couple calls by activists.

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