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Comment by steven2012 | Hacker News Reader

steven2012

The argument could be made that she was mislead by the CIA, just like Colin Powell was. I do agree that the Iraq War was a crime against humanity. Personally, I admire Rice, and don't think I would personally boycott Dropbox because of that choice. But I understand why some/many people would boycott Dropbox, and I don't think they're wrong to want to do so.

The hypocrisy isn't in that the OP feels stronger about the Iraq War than gay marriage. The hypocrisy is because he thinks it's okay to boycott Dropbox because they chose someone for the Board of Directors that he disagrees with, but he thought it was wrong that people boycott Mozilla because they chose a CEO that they disagreed with.

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Opposing gay marriages and killing people aren't the same, and the magnitude at which both of these events took place is also important. Prop 8 was a legal process, you could've successfully opposed it (and it was). But going to war isn't something the public could vote on.

Also Eich's donation was $1000, Rice's War was several billions and massively haemorrhaged US Economy.

The magnitude is absolutely irrelevant. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy, and the core issue here is whether or not people have the right to boycott a product over the beliefs or actions of the people who are associated with the product.

If I believe that cars are causing global warming, I have the right to boycott the uses of cars and to publicize it. If I believe that eating meat is wrong, I have the right to boycott meat and to publicize it. If the CEO of a company supports a campaign that I believe infringes on human rights, I have the right to boycott that product and to publicize it. If the company of a product I use adds a person who was involved with what I believe was an unjust war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, the I have the right to boycott them and to publicize it.

Eich's issue was irrelevant to the Mozilla product line

Rice's issue (about data, not the others) is directly related to the core of Dropbox's product.

Eich is the direct CEO of Mozilla.

Rice is not a direct member of the management team of Dropbox, and her past experience is not related at all to Dropbox's product.

TIL two things:

1. Everyone gets a clean slate the moment they change jobs and

2. Supporting your beliefs with a $1000 donation is the equivalent of going to war, supporting torture, and illegal wiretapping.

Get real.

Rice is a director. Sure, it's not a CxO, but directors wield significant influence over the path of a company. It's why they're called directors. As a director, she can use her influence to open channels for external surveillance (of course, using nicer terms than that). I don't mean "open a port on the firewall", I mean saying "hey, it's okay if org Foo gets this kind of data". This is the kind of strategic stuff that directors do. It doesn't matter how solid your sysadmins are if your directors hand over the keys to the castle.

And I guess we'll just have to disagree that her past experience has nothing to do with maintaining private data security.

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