It's reasonable to assume at this point that Mozilla's next CEO will have their political opinions thoroughly vetted, overtly or covertly. In fact, it's reasonable to assume this will become a higher priority at all tech companies. Who wants to be the next Mozilla, after all? You pretty much have to do this now.
And that's an awful place for us to be. It's going to go too far, because these things always do. Once you make something a corporate risk, corporations go too far in reducing it. So we're going to get the blandest, most milquetoast candidates possible. And it's going to hurt people on all sides of the political spectrum.
It's also going to make people with ambitions of CEOhood hold back from any political support of anything, liberal or conservative or whatever.
There's a definite chilling effect at work here. An internet mob has forced out a major company's CEO over a political issue.
Yes, for many it's more than just politics. But that's not my point. My point is that it's also a political issue, and that's the lesson that's corporations are going to take here. They aren't going to limit it to issues some people see as human rights issues, they're going to apply it to all political issues, because overcompensating is what large corporations do.
It's worrying, and ultimately a step in the wrong direction.