Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>It's not about differing opinions, it's about actions which exclude and/or oppress people.

Well, for me the Republican party excludes and oppresses people. If MANY MANY more ways than banning gay marriage ever did. From starting all those wars under false pretexes that resulted to tens of thousands of casualties to everyday issues like health coverage.

Should we fire every CEO/CTO that's donated to it?

Or is it only an "action which excludes and/or opresses people" if you specifically disagree with it?

(Oh, and I don't have than much better an opinion on the Democrats either, just think the Reps are like a few percentage points worse -- plus it would get more people to agree with my statement).

View on HN

The point here is that "we" did not fire anyone. Members of the Mozilla community expressed an opinion that they didn't want a CEO who had previously acted to restrict the rights of a particular group. Some expressed this by ceasing their use of Mozilla products, and some of those people also encouraged others to do the same.

Mozilla (and Eich) decided that this expression from the community was sufficient for Eich to step down as CEO. No one forced them to do it, much like no one forced them to make Eich CEO in the first place.

This is exactly how public dialogue is supposed to work. If you find that a particular executive at a company has taken actions you disagree with and this upsets you to the degree that you wish to stop using their products, you're free to do so. You're also free to talk to others and encourage them to do the same. The company is free to retain that executive or remove them depending on how they feel about the public outcry you've raised.

This is free speech and public dialogue. It's people deciding what products they want to use and talking about it. It's companies deciding what to do based on what's good for them and their objectives. Which one of those things do you object to?

It wasn't free speech and public dialogue, it was a spineless witchhunt. Quit trying to sweeten the cyanide.

Of course it was free speech. Every party involved were well within their rights to act as they did. What crimes do you believe were committed by those who voiced their displeasure?

None at all, by many.

A number, though, arguably violated California Penal Code Section 422 (I say "arguably" because whether they did depends on how seriously the threat recipient took them). Of course they may not be in California, but many other jurisdictions have similar laws.

Can you point to any of the specific comments that you think arguably threatened others?

I did not see any such comments on HN, although admittedly I did not follow the story closely on reddit, tumblr, or twitter.

There were no such comments on HN, thankfully. I didn't follow the story on reddit or twitter much myself, but I _did_ talk to a fair number of people at Mozilla during the goings on. (I work at Mozilla, if that wasn't clear.)

There were certainly mails or blog comments (I'm not sure which, and the two are equivalent anyway when comments are moderated) with such threats in response to Lars Lohn's blog post (quoted near the bottom of <http://www.twobraids.com/2014/04/back-into-light.html>).

Of course I have no way to prove that to you. An earlier version of Lars' post (before he deleted it in his fit of pique) had an explicit edit mentioning the threats, but even Google's cache now only has <http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eKzKHuO....

I'm told (more second-hand than in Lars' case, but by people I trust) that others received similar threats as well. Again, I have no way to convince you that this is true.

You must have never had the "I'm not touching you" game played to you.

Surely you all are not imaginative enough if you think that the union of the set of behaviors one can form that are within their rights are all desirable behaviors.

I mean, strictly speaking the NSA was well within its legal rights to do what it did. But what was that quote by Jon Stewart, "I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to."

> You must have never had the "I'm not touching you" game played to you.

> Surely you all are not imaginative enough if you think that the union of the set of behaviors one can form that are within their rights are all desirable behaviors.

I didn't say that all of behaviors seen were desirable, and upon rereading my comment, I have no idea how you got the impression that I was.

> I mean, strictly speaking the NSA was well within its legal rights to do what it did. But what was that quote by Jon Stewart, "I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to."

Exactly which behaviours seen during that scandal do you think should have been illegal or were borderline illegal? I am getting the feeling that you saw something that I did not.

Bear in mind that I draw a strong distinction between "undesirable" and "should probably be illegal".

> Exactly which behaviours seen during that scandal do you think should have been illegal or were borderline illegal?

I wish you the best of luck with this argumentative approach -- I've been trying it for weeks, and no one on the other side appears to realize that legally or socially preventing what happened with Eich and the Mozilla community would be far, far more destructive to discourse, speech, etc than what happened here. The position itself (that what happened to Eich was somehow wrong, in a sense that can be well-defined) is internally inconsistent.

How about, nobody fucking makes another guy lose his job for what he votes or backs?

Does that sound incosistent?

I should probably stop replying, but again, what specific thing that happened (as a step in the process that led to Eich stepping down as CEO) do you actually want to stop? You can't just wave your hands and say you don't want people to lose their job because of their opinions. The series of steps that happened here each make sense and taking action that would somehow prevent what happened would have to stop one of those steps from occurring. Which step? How would you stop it without banning speech or preventing companies from acting in their own best interest?

> How about, nobody fucking makes another guy lose his job for what he votes or backs?

So, if it came out that an executive at some company had donated money to the KKK, they should be somehow forced to keep him on? This position isn't inconsistent, it's incoherent.

> So, if it came out that an executive at some company had donated money to the KKK, they should be somehow forced to keep him on?

What if it came out that an executive at some company had donated money to the Republican Party?

But either way, no one is saying Mozilla should have been forced to retain Eich against their will. Rather, Mozilla's Board had decided he was the best guy for the job, despite his thoughtcrime, until enough people and companies started ganging up on them and threatening the viability of the project.

Expressing your speech is one thing, boycotting is one thing (indeed, think of all the people now boycotting Mozilla), but trying to burn down a project a là OkCupid is a whole 'nother bag.

> What if it came out that an executive at some company had donated money to the Republican Party?

Then... people would be free to boycott them? The company would be free to decide, like Mozilla did, whether it's worth keeping that executive on?

I agree that the OKCupid thing was a little distasteful, but that's mostly because it was so blatantly a ploy to get themselves some of the press surrounding the situation. I still wouldn't want to enact any policy that would ban them from doing so, however.

At what point will people understand that someone saying "You should not do this thing" DOES NOT mean "This thing you do should be banned"?

> Exactly which behaviours seen during that scandal do you think should have been illegal or were borderline illegal?

Not a single one. Now I'm also wondering what you're seeing.

> Bear in mind that I draw a strong distinction between "undesirable" and "should probably be illegal".

Great, because that's what the opposition to the witchhunt has consistently been: Not that the majority of the witchhunt activities have been technically illegal, but that the acts themselves are undesirable in a community of differing views.

The precedence set by what happened to Eich because of his bigoted views (again, legal or not) should be sending panic through the progressive communities. But instead it's the opposite, people claiming that hunting this witch is OK because look, he's actually a witch.

And it's usually the same kind of people who will trot out the quote about "First they came for the Jews, ..." who are hypocritically clawing down the door to catch this particular member of the untermensch.

I don't understand the "witchhunt" terminology you're using. Want to run for Grand Dragon of your local KKK chapter? Fine, knock yourself out, but you're delusional if you think that won't come up when you're running for mayor several years later.

Actions have consequences.

>Actions have consequences.

That's also what KKK said, when lynching someone.

The KKK, like Eich, is motivated by hatred for what certain people are, not what they do. They may claim otherwise but nobody with a three-digit IQ believes them.

If you think your argument through a bit further, I'm sure you'll see the distinction.

>The KKK, like Eich, is motivated by hatred for what certain people are, not what they do. They may claim otherwise but nobody with a three-digit IQ believes them.

Well, zealot Christians (and organisations like the Inquisition) hated people "for what they did" (e.g extra-marital affairs, being an atheist, not going to church enough, magic spells, etc) not for what they were. I don't see how that's any improvement over hating them for what they are. Hate is hate.

I also have a three digit IQ and I don't believe Eich hates gay people. In fact he has worked closely with lots of them perfectly for ages (by their own admission). He might love marriage too much as a specific, and historically specified, tradition though, which is a different thing.

He might love marriage too much as a specific, and historically specified, tradition though, which is a different thing.

Sounds like we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

> Mozilla (and Eich) decided that this expression from the community was sufficient for Eich to step down as CEO. No one forced them to do it, much like no one forced them to make Eich CEO in the first place.

You should research the labor concept of "constructive dismissal".

As it stands it wasn't just an outcry. You had companies like OKCupid hounding Firefox users who had nothing to do with Eich's donation. It was a pitchfork-and-torch expedition through and through, despite the fact that it all falls under the letter of the law regarding freedom of speech.

But as I tried to point out when this was all going on, freedom to speak does not imply that all speech is necessarily right.

What I don't understand is how the same people who will talk about "chilling effects" from government surveillance fail to understand the same exact principle applied elsewhere.

Since you talked around my question by falsely equating governmental and private action, let's revisit -- which of:

People deciding what products they want to use and talking about it. Companies deciding what to do based on what's good for them and their objectives.

Do you object to? (OKCupid's actions, of course, fall under both categories.) The consequences of any action you could take to prevent this type of behavior would be much more dire, chilling-effect-wise, than the occasional troubling instance such as this one.

> Companies deciding what to do based on what's good for them and their objectives.

As a long-time user of alternative browsers (e.g. Konqueror) I certainly object to companies deciding to take specific actions on their web sites for web browsers for reasons that are not clearly technical. If for no other reason than as a net neutrality issue.

Again, just because people and companies technically have the legal right to do something doesn't make it a good idea.

Companies can be as powerful as states. Heck, some companies have budgets larger that many states. And historically they have been involved from getting laws passed to their favor, to actually putting their own people in power. Search "banana republic" in wikipedia for some of the most known examples of that.

So I don't see anything better from the state bullying people to a private company doing the same. If anything it's worse, since the state has some democratic controls in place (at least in theory) and the majority elects their policies and representatives. A private company can be the rule and whimses of just one jerk.

You, like many others, are pretending like this was all polite discussion and ignoring the death threats various people received just for saying in public that they supported Brendan as CEO. This is _not_ "exactly how public dialogue is supposed to work", though sadly it's exactly how it usually works in the US nowadays. And the part I object to, in case it wasn't clear, is precisely the intimidation tactics used.

Might want to read a bit of history on Vietnam, the Civil War, gun control origins, and the KKK. The Democrats don't have a very good record either.

Also, on the Republican side search for Dakota 38 and find out why some think very poorly of Abe's character.

false analogy. it's not like eich donated money to the mormon church who then used it to do bad things. he donated directly to the prop 8 people, which was pretty much all bathwater and no baby.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com