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Comment by dgimla20 | Hacker News Reader

Is this just one of the top dogs at Stripe bigging up their own company?

Surely it's common public opinion that most social initiatives and stances major companies take are entirely about publicity and reflect whatever they think the bulk of their consumer base supports.

If tomorrow 60% or so of McDonalds (or any other company) customer-base became national socialists, McDonalds would have a red, black and white swastika-laden logo within month-end.

It's all pandering. Always has been, always will be. There's even terms for each type: pink-washing, rainbow-washing etc.

The only alternative is to take a neutral position, where you just focus on whatever product/service you are selling.

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> reflect whatever they think the bulk of their consumer base supports.

I've been trying to put my finger on what seems so strange to me and I think this is it in part.

Someplace like the US is pretty heterogeneous, and their customers' attitudes aren't going to change overnight.

I'm not naive about why some companies do what they do. What's strange to me is the speed with which some of these changes were made, and neglecting their particular customer base, which they might have built up for a long time.

In some of these cases, fear of legal persecution, maybe based on inside information, makes much more sense to me than following trends. I guess you could argue they are the same thing, to which I'd say I think that's true at one level but not at another functional level.

>What's strange to me is the speed with which some of these changes were made

That's because while the original commenter is correct in terms of companies doing what they believe their consumer base supports, they ignore half of the equation, which is that it was never JUST about the consumers. It was also about protecting the company from disparate impact lawsuits, where any difference in the makeup of a company compared to the general public could be interpreted as discrimination, regardless of whether it actually does discriminatory practices.

My guess is that these companies feel that with the new US administration the risk of these kind of lawsuits has decreased significantly.

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