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Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

>I'm not sold on the idea that "violations of this code outside these spaces" is a bad thing,

Let's frame it in a more relatable context.

Your employer can fire you for violating the company code of conduct, despite your behaviour having absolutely nothing to do with the company or its business.

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> Your employer can fire you for violating the company code of conduct, despite your behaviour having absolutely nothing to do with the company or its business.

In particular, if you're in favor of both this CoC and of labor unions, then your beliefs are inconsistent, since one of the things labor unions do is try to prevent their members from being fired without legitimate, work-related reasons.

This is completely commonplace. Yes, you can be fired for doing something outside of work that would bring your employer into disrepute.

If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay.

> If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay.

Do we really want to go back to those times?

Your comment is a bit cryptic, but I assume you're trying to make an equivalence between, say, someone being fired for being gay in the 1970s and someone now being fired for saying hateful things about trans people. These scenarios are only comparable at a level of abstraction that's not useful. It's only inconsistent to oppose one thing and not the other if you think that employers should be barred from firing people for anything that they say or do outside of work. I don't think there has ever been a society where this was the norm. Looking at the big picture, people nowadays have far more freedom in this respect than they ever did (e.g. women are not fired when they get married).

How many people are fired for saying hateful things about trans people?

vs.

How many people are fired for saying things that many trans people disagree with?

There's a lot of overlap between those two categories, so I'd assume about the same number. But like many others in this thread you're choosing to make your point in a cryptic way. I'm sure you know that statistics on this aren't available, so what is the point that you really want to make here?

If you can be fired for doing something in private, then your work intrudes and takes over your personal life. If it happens, than it's a huge mistake on the part of the society, as it robs humans of their life outside of work, and turns them into half-slaves where their workplace has a say over their entire life.

Instead of continuing this practice, we should work to stop it and restore the private sphere.

> This is completely commonplace.

Not in EU.

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