Protests Continue Against Dropbox After Appointment of Condoleezza Rice to Board | Hacker News Reader

Protests Continue Against Dropbox After Appointment of Condoleezza Rice to Board

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

34 pointsbane28 comments

This may be a case where Dropbox feels it's more important to keep her around than kowtow to activist's principles.

Individuals have feeling and morals, etc., and may cancel accounts. Businesses do not, though, no matter how much we try to make them people. Ultimately, Dropbox wants businesses, not people.

That's my take on it.

> Individuals have feeling and morals, etc., and may cancel accounts. Businesses do not, though, no matter how much we try to make them people.

All actions attributed to businesses are actions of people, who have feelings and morals. Now, for certain businesses, management may be effectively serving the shared interests of the owners/shareholders, and those shared interests may be limited to maximizing material returns, which certainly creates a common pattern of behavior...

I don't think owners/shareholders of a business care much about which cloud service the business uses. It is extremely unlike for them to force the business to change cloud service just for this kind of reasons.

I agree. I believe that, to businesses, perception is reality, and Rice's appointment will give the perception of increased data security. People may value privacy, but businesses value security.

What makes you think they're focused on businesses? I've always thought it was the opposite. You make a pastel-colored website with super-simple file-sharing software because you want to attract individual users. If anything, I'd think businesses would find Dropbox irritating, because it makes it easy for their employees to leak documents, intentionally or otherwise. It's simple enough to setup a corporate file server for file-sharing needs.

Dropbox has learned the lesson of the Komen and Mozilla affairs. The minority who are protesting will not become customers again if their demands are met. (Many aren't even customers to begin with.) If Dropbox caves, however, they stand to lose far more customers.

> If Dropbox caves, however, they stand to lose far more customers.

Why? (Curious, not being an ass)

I mean, more than they have already lost. People who have left because they object to Rice's politics, are not going to come back. People who respect Condi Rice (or dislike her detractors) (or are disgusted with the politicization of everything in life) may leave if Dropbox caves.

Same story when Susan G Komen decided to stop funding abortion, then reversed its decision. Same story when Mozilla promoted Brandon Eich, then fired him.

I disagree. Dropbox's customer base are techies, and techies tend to dislike Rice's politics. You're right in that Dropbox would get some backlash for letting Rice go, but I doubt much of its current or future customer base would be upset.

I think you're making a set mistake. The set of "techies" doesn't as a whole dislike Rice's politics. The set of "people who live around San Francisco and Seattle" dislikes Rice's politics. Elsewhere I think techies tend to lean more to the right... certainly on university campuses the most likely place to run into a Republican is in an engineering department... <flamebait>...probably because engineers have to understand math!</flamebait>

I was a Dropbox customer. I think they provide a very useful, inexpensive, and well-implemented service. But I've uninstalled their software and cancelled my account, because otherwise I'd be a hypocrite or someone who considers a file-sharing service more important than privacy or punishing a proponent of torture. If they fire Rice, I would likely resume using their service, but as long as she's on their board, I'm going to do everything I can to cost them business.

Well, I'm a Dropbox customer, and I've just upgraded from a free account to the $100/year plan. If they fire Dr. Rice, I doubt you'll resume paying for Dropbox, but I definitely won't renew.

I don't understand the background she brings which makes her a valuable member of the board? The article failed to address that too.

Sure, I understand the gripe against mass surveillance, but if you don't think that was already going on you have issues.

Probably gov't connections and therefore possible gov't contracts.

And not just in the US, but around the world. It's really not hard to see the value someone like Rice adds to a company with global aspirations.

Not saying it should outweigh the other aspects, but her value add is pretty clear.

can this principled stand outlast the public increasingly short memory?

magic 8-ball says...don't count on it

These "principled stands" seem very selective and subjective. It looks a lot like the online version of mob justice.

What do you even mean by that? Statements like that make no sense at all to me. Do you not believe that those who organise this are principled? Why exactly?

Also, you see exactly how powerless they are. Mobs tend to have power through violence. That’s just not to be found here. It’s just some people not using the product and being open about their dissatisfaction …

Really, this line of argument confuses the hell out of me.

Perhaps I should clarify... It's almost certain that you could find fault with someone involved with virtually any major organization, or their business practices if you look long and hard enough. Singling out one organization among hundreds of thousands of others in the world seems completely arbitrary.

In terms of the mob justice reference, it's largely to do with the mob anger that gets whipped up in forums such as this one. It may not be physical violence, but it does seek to damage the "target" economically.

What exactly does an organized boycott have in common with "mob justice"? They seem like polar opposites to me.

A large group of people getting whipped into a righteous frenzy to punish a "target" for some perceived wrongdoing?

Mobs rape and pillage. They don't organize peaceful boycotts in protest of government surveillance.

Probably not, but surveillance is being subjected to "death from a thousand papercuts". While we probably won't ever put the cat back into the bag, these smaller protests add up to a greater cumulative sum, reminding politicians that there are at least some kind of consequences to their actions.

It isn't the large-scale surveillance rollback we are looking for, but it's the next best thing.

what does this accomplish, exactly? is it just another slactivist outrage to feel like you're participating in something that feels meaningful?

It’s civil society in action. This is how it’s supposed to work, you know.

Someone does something you don’t like, you state that openly and publicly.

Does it matter? Politicians who do stupid things deserve this kind of negative attention, no matter how insignificant it is. It's a good thing that this is even being mentioned by some of the domestic news agencies.

Even if nothing further comes of this, we as a society will have benefited from some tiny percentage of the population becoming aware of the Dropbox->Rice relationship.

Are you implying that if a company does something we dislike, we should just shut-up and mind our own business? What's up with the general theme on ycombinator of defending these people? Is everyone here a fan of Rice, or do you simply have no moral principals you think are worth protesting over?

Be condescending and label them as slactivists all you want. This protest is a proportional response to a perceived mis-step by a company. Would you take them more seriously if they had torches and pitchforks?

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