Are you concerned that if too many companies take this approach, it will become the norm, like it was before about 10 years ago, and that then there will be attempts by politicians to codify it into law?
The question I suppose really is to what extent society (through the agency of the law and elected representatives) can police (or more precisely in this case to prevent the policing of) private forums like company internal communication systems. I'd argue that simply being privately owned does not put up a perfect barrier to society, and that society does have a legitimate interest in how such forums are run.
There seems to be this idea in the US that any form of tyranny and oppression is ok, so long as it is not the government that is doing it.
This was the norm until recently. Would you say that these politicians (who are they, by the way?) had already won during that time?
This was voluntary, and there is no evidence that it was anything but internal.
Do you have something that would point to a specific politician or party being involved?
As a counterpoint, the liberalization and allowing of corporate lobbying and speech has made it much easier to manipulate political agendas, and remove agency from the population.
As for companies not talking about politics, I don't care what companies have to say. They're the mouthpieces of their owners. As can be seen in this case, when the owner dictates that the company doesn't participate in politics unrelated to its business. Should companies have the right to speak about arbitrary subjects, but not the right to silence? How can an employee feel like they'll be treated fairly if they don't agree with the company line (issued yesterday) about apricots in Africa?
I'd go farther and say that the list of subjects that a company opines in public about is the same as the list of subjects an employee can feel like they're not free to have an opinion on that anyone at their job could hear about without risking their livelihood.
The fact that DHH goes on and on about politics in his personal life but keeps it away from the company is a positive indicator that it's not opinions that are being suppressed, but opinions about business-unrelated political matters on internal systems.
edit: I feel that a priority for any sort of socialism, or civilization for that matter, is to figure out how to work productively with people you don't like or agree with. And psychologically, not being able to cooperate with people who differ from you is an issue of autonomy and boundaries.
Of course we should balance this with the needs of the business in keeping company communications 'on topic' as it were, and to avoid damaging professional relationships.
I guess my take is that if you want to have a truly personal blog or social media channels, it should be as anonymized as possible. (Which has pros and cons.) Certainly, there are a ton of things I wouldn't write on a public channel even if I weren't technically violating any company policy because they would bite me.
When I was an analyst, I would absolutely not write anything about a CxO that differed from what I would put in a research report.