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Blackmailing? You have a very odd definition of blackmail.

Do you consider it blackmail when people refuse to buy Apple gear because of their patent trolling? How about people who refuse to buy Chik-Fil-A because of their donations to homophobic groups?

Sendgrid keeping on Adria after her actions would appear to a casual observer to be tacit acceptance of her actions. A stance, which after the thread yesterday, would seem to be morally unacceptable to a great deal of people.

There is nothing immoral about refusing to do business with a company based on their actions or inactions. Welcome to the free market!

I'm talking about the DDoS the company is suffering: http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/21/sendgrid-under-ddos-attack...

The refusal to do service with a business is fine, free will and all that, the problem is that people are attacking the business and preventing them from doing any business with people that want to. This is a reaction to the DDoS...

>This is a reaction to the DDoS...

You do not and can not possibly know that.

Sure, it's speculation, that goes without saying but I'll put a lot of money on it.

Situation happens -> posts are made -> drama drama drama -> days go by -> Adria tweets that Sendgrid support her -> Sendgrid is taken offline, company suffers -> Adria is publicly fired.

There's no way she was going to be fired for her actions at the conference, however shitty they were she explicitly stated that Sendgrid supported her: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328 unless she's delusional too...

It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. The DDOS attack is disgusting and the instigators of the attack should be ashamed of themselves.

It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. Anyone that boycotts a company because an employee used her bully pulpit to call out someone's misogyny is an asshole. Any company that reacts to that loss of business is also a company full of assholes.

It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. The DDOS DID happen and anyone that says that it didn't influence their poor decision, is very confused about the world.

It doesn't matter if it's speculation or not. Everyone has lost in this situation. The original dickhead that didn't have enough sense to keep his misogyny out of ear shot which cost him his job, the company that fired him because they didn't want the exposure of keeping a sexist who was caught red handed being a sexist, the woman who has had to put up with some of the worst trolls on the web because she called out someone making sexist jokes, and the company that felt that they had to fire her because of the exposure of keeping her on the payroll AND because of the vicious disgusting amoral assholes that have attacked that companies servers.

Frankly. Frankly it doesn't matter. This situation sucks and the trolls are behind the steering wheel nearly every step of the way.

I really think you should check the definitions of misogyny and sexism

misogyny n.: The hatred of women by men. sexism n. : Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, on the basis of sex.

Now go back and read what the men were actually making jokes about. As much as I hate to burst your bubble, dick jokes, as crude and inappropriate as they may be for a professional setting, do not show any "hatred" or "discrimination" towards women. Hell, women can make them as much as men can too. If a male overheard two women making vagina jokes do you think they would start to claim they have a "hatred (or discrimination) towards men"? Hell no. I thought the feminist movement was supposed to be about equality?

she went to the internet instead of actually speaking to the men. as she stated in her blog it was a `calculated` decision... she forgot that there are many other people outside of her twitter circle that could interpret this incident differently than herself. every company involved had to react to the PR storm that adria had caused. no one has gained anything from her actions, and it is a step backwards. the only good thing to come of this is PyCon amending their CoC.

So what, they're going to give her a hidden paid vacation for a while and hope the attackers just forget about the whole thing? It'd seem to me if they are doing this to give into a demand, then they'd just get DDoS'd after it was found out they lied. Right?

Maybe SendGrid found out more information or found more persuasive arguments and changed their stance of support.

It is blackmail when you DDOS a company until it capitulates to political demands.

Actually, there is another name for the use of force against soft targets in order to get capitulation to political demands

She's been fired because SendGrid doesn't need a "Developer Evangelist"

If she was an indispensable asset they would have found another way to handle the situation.

What? How can that make any sense? If they didn't need a Developer Evangelist then why did they have one in the first place? Are you seriously suggesting that their timing in firing her is completely coincidental?

No, what I'm saying is that she was expendable.

It's always an equation. If someone is not worth the trouble they represent in the situation at hand -- this is the result.

> If she was going to be fired for it should have been because of her actions, not because some dickwads are blackmailing the company.

Why are we assuming that it was the second and not the first?

They would not have made a public statement if this wasn't a response to the public actions.

I agree that this is probably a response to public actions - the public actions she made as a public representative of their company.

Even if that is not THE reason, it's certainly a plausible reason, and one I find much more likely and commendable than reacting to a DDoS. However, perhaps we shouldn't just jump to conclusions ahead of a comprehensive statement.

Perhaps it's a reaction to the public firing of the guy she posted a picture of on Twitter and accused of harassment?

She was fired for being totally clueless about the medium in which she claimed expertise. Your job is to make negative things go away quietly and to amplify the positive, not the opposite.