What? Code of Conduct says stuff like, don't be mean to other people. It's a lot like: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
HN ideology is basically "we're all adults here, act like one". People that push for stuff like code of conducts usually consider that these guidelines are not enough to protect marginalized people. So they add stricter rules about how to act. That means that you have to agree with them about who is marginalized, that they need protection and how to protect them. I don't think any of this is universal. Note that I don't mean that this is a good or a bad thing, just that it's politically charged in some way. That's nothing new, since free software has always been politically charged. But the values conveyed by code of conducts are not always the same as the "old values of free software/open source". This is of course very vague, because everyone has their own values and most projects aren't very clear about what their values are. But you can see the consequences of that change when you see how the opinion on Richard Stallman changed, or how Linus evolved. Again, I'm not saying any of this is good or bad. I'm saying that things are changing and not everyone agrees with it.
Now on the American-centric part. I don't think I can add anything worthwhile to what's already in this article: http://antirez.com/news/122.
They are US based, yes, but they are usually good rules. Whether a CoC is bad or good is in the hands of the humans enforcing it. The .NET Foundation shows terrible human to human handling of a non CoC related topic.
Edit: What good does a commitment do anyway, if it guarantees nothing and changes nothing? It's just someone shouting, hoping someone else hears and approves. If anything, that underlines my point about the fundamental immaturity of the decision to introduce a CoC.
Edit2: I understood your point to be that introducing a CoC means a commitment, which is somehow something that is good. When all this commitment does is deflect responsibility, that is not a healthy result. I feel like that addresses your point fine.
I happen to have gained a moderator role in a community that has a pre-existing CoC. I'm not sure why I would "hide behind" or "point at" the CoC when acting in that role, I'm perfectly fine with telling people off (or more if necessary) without doing so.
And yes, if you assume the worst of everybody commitments don't have any value. But people generally attempt to actually uphold things they commit to, and thus it is seen as a positive signal, even if it's not a guarantee. (Ideally we wouldn't need CoCs because the baseline established by them would be such a universal commitment in society that you could just assume it to be valid everywhere, but experience shows that's apparently not the case) Several community members told me that it has been relevant to their decision to interact/join.
EDIT: and even if you say just a commitment is worth anything (as said above, I personally also don't think "has a CoC" is that much of a signal without seeing how mods actually act, but clearly other people do), that's quite a difference from a blanket "CoCs are always toxic".