What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it.
I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies).
But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.
We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings.
But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. The employees are putting their employer in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I love the vision of a world where executives don't take actions their workers will protest. I think that in order to get there, the protests need to be reasonable, and I think this one isn't.
EDIT DISCLAIMER: I own a small amount of MSFT stock, which was not on my mind as I wrote this. I use GitHub's free service and have no other relationship I can think of with MSFT or GitHub.
I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics. Because once you set a precedence then people will use that as to push their own political agendas. I personally don't like the slippery slope argument since it's very lazy and justifies inaction in many cases. But at the same time when I see news like this, I just wonder how long it will take two different subgroups trying push their own conflicting agendas and how the company should react in such a case.
We are going through a very strange and extreme period in US History. Corporations are a huge part of the political landscape. Of course workers who are powerful will demand things of their workplaces.
All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.
This isn't people pushing their own political agenda; this is a consequence of the political stance they took. When a company takes a political stance, they should be held accountable for it.
One side gets de-humanized and shown the door. I'll let you guess which side that is.
This is why I think good people prefer a-political companies.
It is sad, that there are people who have commitments/families, and they are taken hostage by this.
> I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics
Literally everything a corporation does is politics. Every hiring decision, every office they open or close, every client they take on, every vendor they ditch, every ad they publish. It literally all has political implications and messaging. Why is there an expectation on companies to "not be political" whenever one of those inherently political decisions intersects with something that happens to be a hot-button issue? Like wtf does that even mean?
I think the slippery slope argument is actually quite relevant here. In my opinion it is about how you argue things. If the CEO or who has power just says "I decided to drop this client because of my personal advocacy" then there is no slippery slope, if they say "this client is too immoral we cannot support them" then you are very easily open to direct comparisons.
I do in fact agree with you, but I'm coming from the opposite side of the spectrum.
Companies do in fact involve themselves with politics quite a bit. It's called lobbying. I do think that lobbying is the single most important threat to Democracy, in the US and everywhere else. I do wish that companies stayed out of politics in that way.
I also think that when one side is literally putting children in cages it's not a "slippery slope".
Corporations are most definitely NOT staying out of politics. All of them are actively lobbying the government for numerous different kinds of policies, from immigration and trade to environmental control and taxes. In fact, corporations are the main driving force behind almost all policy decisions in some way or another.
Usually token action is taken ahead of time in the form of donations and community service work instead of hurting bottom-line profit. IMHO this is an irresponsible rookie CEO not knowing that he’ll have to fold to future political movements if he folds to this one.
There is no such thing as "staying out of politics". Everything involving people is a political act, and if you don't notice it it's because you have status quo politics.
> I just wonder how long it will take two different subgroups trying push their own conflicting agendas and how the company should react in such a case.
Probably side with the one arguing that we should not commit atrocities.
> then people will use that as to push their own political agendas
It's always a very small number of very loud people too. Worse yet, these people have mastered the art of silencing dissent from their colleagues by using kafkatraps.
There are tons of republicans and libertarians in tech, but in the average office, you wouldn't know that given how effectively such people have been silenced for fear of being accused of thoughtcrime and heresy.
“Thank you for the question. Respectfully, we’re not going to be reconsidering this,” he said on the videoconference call. “Picking and choosing customers is not the approach that we take to these types of questions when it comes to influencing government policy.”
Sounds reasonable. Imo GitHub should be a neutral platform rather than trying to deny service to those they don't agree with. I'm sure electricity and internet companies have lots of contracts with the ICE, no one criticizes that because those are utilities which aren't expected to descriminate based on the views and actions of their customers. I think there is value in having platforms like GitHub with the same approach, you shouldn't have to worry about your code being taken down because it doesn't match the values of a private company. Once you start denying certain customers based on their actions, you implicitly support the actions of all of your other customers, which quickly becomes a very difficult position to be in.
Doing cheap PR moves like blacking out logos or posting Twitter "support" posts from CEO accounts or announcing the end of default branches named "master" is, as I said, cheap. The real issue is dealing with the elephants in the room, such as the aforementioned ICE contract of GitHub.
It is about time that corporations, with GitHub here as an example, noticed that backing this or that or another minority or "trying" to solve some medial issue only where it suits them PR-wise is simply abusing that minority in yet another way; it is a means of using that minority, and all the people who constitute that minority, as a tool for public relation stunts and political "but we support X, see?" newspeak that brings no actual change.
I'm genuinely curious if GitHub does support Black and Brown people enough to actually make that support noticeable for everyday lives of these folk.
This seems to be a consequence of the de-professionalization of corporate Tech. “Bring your whole self to work” and all that.
While it seems good natured in this specific case, it can very quickly turn into a small percentage of squeaky politically-minded wheels turning a non-political company into an monoculture activist one.
Personally, I wish we just went back to a professional/private distinction. Keep your politics out of the workplace. Otherwise, I don’t see this ending well.
Our medium sized company created a simple policy in early 2016 -
No religion - no politics in the office.
I never dreamed that policy would pay dividends so profoundly. The distraction of having activists within your company trying to actively pressure the company via public channels - I mean it's almost unbelievable that this is the new norm. ...an I am so very thankful we seemed to have sidestepped it.
Personally I wouldn't want to work for a company actually detaining people, but call me terrible but I'm not sure I'd feel the same about letting them pay to host some code...
If your government isn't willing to compromise with you but desires something from you, it's pretty straightforward that you should withhold as much as you can until they decide to compromise.
This is a genuine question. I want to immigrate to USA, but currently there is no easy way to immigrate to USA. On the contrary Canada has a fair immigration system that allowed me to stay, work and eventually be citizen.
Why don't people push for a fair immigration system in USA instead of abolishing ICE? What exactly am I missing here?
Well, there's the people putting people in camps, the people tattooing numbers on those folks' arms, and the people developing the software and hardware to keep track of those people.
Now this isn't quite the IBM nazi connection - but the government snatching up people, then paying private corporations to intern them, in turn apparently using them for forced labour... Is pretty bad.
I'd be surprised if software isn't essential to keeping the machine going - and I'd not hesitated to call taking money for tooling "being a collaborator".
Maybe it's a spectrum thing, and everyone has a line they don't want to cross. There are people and organizations that don't align with my beliefs, but sure, it's cool they use my tools.
However, would you be ok with Hitler hosting code on your service if it contributed in some small way to genocide? That _does_ make me feel ick. Tacit support by large numbers of "not really effected" people is what made the holocaust and slavery and jim crow, etc, possible.
I'm not comparing ICE to Violent White Supremacy... but it's worth staying informed and revisiting our own boundaries as the situation changes.
Skin color, nationality and ethnicity are playing a huge role in how we're treating people right now, and the spectrum of human<>inhumane is getting wider and wider with tacit support :-(
Great! This seems like a perfect example of (employment) markets working in a good way. If the employees want the company to act a certain way or take a certain stance, or don't like a contract the company is engaging in, they can first lobby the company to change, and if enough are dissatisfied with the response they can vote with their feet and leave. I realize it's not always so simple, but I see this as a positive sign of workers using our market power.
I would have thought that the workers at GitHub would know as much as anyone that restricting access to one Git service would have a negligible impact on ICE. The real impact would be on GitHub themselves, as they would lose any opportunity to help guide policy or technology at ICE or any other government agency.
It may feel better to watch and yell from the outside, and you may have the moral high ground in doing so. But change happens from the inside. We need more companies like GitHub working with agencies to reform their policies.
Also, change is slow. Protests are step one, but there are probably 235 more steps until change is realized. Slow and steady, my friends.
EDIT: To answer the questions about how a company influences policy. Companies influence policy all. the. time. Look at ALEC[1] look at PACs. Look at the fact that Microsoft is not going to be offering facial recognition tech until privacy protections are passed. Not saying ALEC is good, but it exists.
How is GitHub supposed to change ICE's policies by working with ICE?
"Hey, you see this part of the code where you sort through the parents, to separate them from their children? Maybe don't do that?"
ICE is going to ignore any unprofessional suggestions, that's not what they hired GitHub to do.
In fact the usual argument employers give when you don't do exactly they hired you to do - "that's not what we hired you for" - is pretty strong. And unless GitHub sabotages their own work (which they won't), then their work will simply be in service to ICE's goals. There's no room left over for contributing non-work opinions.
> The real impact would be on GitHub themselves, as they would lose any opportunity to help guide policy or technology at ICE or any other government agency.
There's about a 0% chance that a government agency would change anything about their policies based on what GitHub employees say. Companies that work on government contracts get "report cards" detailing the agency's satisfaction with their performance, and any other government agency can view the reports for that company, so it's in their best interest to try and get favorable reviews by doing what the agency wants.
It think it's pretty naive to expect that GitHub's contract with ICE gives them some kind of inside opportunity to help guide policy within the agency.
On the other hand, employees of ICE, who are actually inside do probably have some (admittedly limited) amount of leverage. It might by that if they are frustrated at losing access to tools that they previously thought worth paying for, they would attempt to exert that leverage for change.
Employees who want to get paid by the company and at the same time trying to control whom their company should or should not do business with should re-apply for the job that matches their beliefs.
Company cannot and should not have to comply with myriad of conflicting opinions and/or try to satisfy wishes of different opinionated groups of different flavors.
This "let's please twitter mob" mentality is hurting our country.
I don't understand the calls to abolish ICE. Open borders are simply not a realistic policy in the current world. We can barely keep things operating as it is in the US, what would happen when tens of millions of largely unskilled immigrants were to stream across the border? Do people actually think nothing negative will happen?
The specific incarnation of border controls as ICE isn't the only way to control the border.
I'm sure that some people are advocating for completely open borders without concern for consequences. But I think the larger call is saying that ICE as it currently is conceived as a paramilitary-style organization is not the way control the border and manage immigration.
There are only so many politically "inelastic" companies and organizations. Customers or employees are bound to have a political opinion that rubs against the company's line(s) of work. The only exceptions are large utilities (e.g. protesting the use of water and electricity in response to climate change) and small retail businesses (which often proudly display their politics and attract like-minded customers).
BLM platform explicitly calls for an "end to all jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them." So maybe GitHub CEO should have not said anything, but he did and its fair for the public (including GitHub employees) to drive accountability to the BLM platform.
And this says nothing of corporate political spending. From the perspective of a dissenting employee, what is the difference between having co-workers who demand an end to ICE contracts (in response to leadership public supporting BLM platform), and collecting salary from a company that donates to politicians who want to abolish ICE?
If you take a paycheck from someone, you're implicitly agreeing to carry out their instructions and their vision for their business. If, over time, you have a moral issue with that vision, the best thing for you and that company is to find work elsewhere that is a better fit for your values. It's unreasonable to agree to work for someone and then proceed to undermine their business because it doesn't align with your particular political beliefs.
This would achieve the same ends as protesting, but in a much more ethical manner. Unethical companies would eventually have a harder time finding qualified workers and would suffer accordingly. What wouldn't be happening, is a bunch of people agreeing to serve a business in exchange for money and then reneging on that agreement while still drawing a paycheck.
This is particularly true for higher skilled workers who have other options.
I’m starting to wonder if “politics” in english has a different meaning than in spanish.
“Everything is politic” is meaningless to me, in the same way that “everything is top priority” is. If everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.
Yeah this is going over the line as ICE isn’t purely used for evil purposes. They do need to protect boarders, what you need is to change some of ICE’s policies. Is sort of like demanding To end all contracts with companies that does not have a have a good diversity policy
I have no idea how these organisations can’t see that their actions turn off vast swathes of those who regard what’s happening in the west as a weaponisation of race in the furtherance of destabilising our (flawed but still the best) civilisations & by doing so, lose the trust of these folk forever.
It saddens me that we collectively rolled over & allowed our software to be politicised, by flagging or cancelling those that see through the narrative & dissented.
Illegal migration is not enforced by race. Nobody has the right to live in another country, particularly if they have entered the country without permission.
This is more an indication of how political extremists use race-baiting to push forward changes they want.
[+] [-] rattray|5 years ago|reply
I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies).
But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.
We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings.
But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. The employees are putting their employer in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I love the vision of a world where executives don't take actions their workers will protest. I think that in order to get there, the protests need to be reasonable, and I think this one isn't.
EDIT DISCLAIMER: I own a small amount of MSFT stock, which was not on my mind as I wrote this. I use GitHub's free service and have no other relationship I can think of with MSFT or GitHub.
[+] [-] johncena33|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mchanson|5 years ago|reply
All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.
[+] [-] karpierz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kinrany|5 years ago|reply
Relevant: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-...
[+] [-] DudeInBasement|5 years ago|reply
This is why I think good people prefer a-political companies. It is sad, that there are people who have commitments/families, and they are taken hostage by this.
[+] [-] pat2man|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moolcool|5 years ago|reply
Literally everything a corporation does is politics. Every hiring decision, every office they open or close, every client they take on, every vendor they ditch, every ad they publish. It literally all has political implications and messaging. Why is there an expectation on companies to "not be political" whenever one of those inherently political decisions intersects with something that happens to be a hot-button issue? Like wtf does that even mean?
[+] [-] afiori|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otikik|5 years ago|reply
Companies do in fact involve themselves with politics quite a bit. It's called lobbying. I do think that lobbying is the single most important threat to Democracy, in the US and everywhere else. I do wish that companies stayed out of politics in that way.
I also think that when one side is literally putting children in cages it's not a "slippery slope".
[+] [-] tsimionescu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimbob45|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thescriptkiddie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrainInAJar|5 years ago|reply
> I just wonder how long it will take two different subgroups trying push their own conflicting agendas and how the company should react in such a case.
Probably side with the one arguing that we should not commit atrocities.
[+] [-] malandrew|5 years ago|reply
It's always a very small number of very loud people too. Worse yet, these people have mastered the art of silencing dissent from their colleagues by using kafkatraps.
There are tons of republicans and libertarians in tech, but in the average office, you wouldn't know that given how effectively such people have been silenced for fear of being accused of thoughtcrime and heresy.
[+] [-] GhostVII|5 years ago|reply
Sounds reasonable. Imo GitHub should be a neutral platform rather than trying to deny service to those they don't agree with. I'm sure electricity and internet companies have lots of contracts with the ICE, no one criticizes that because those are utilities which aren't expected to descriminate based on the views and actions of their customers. I think there is value in having platforms like GitHub with the same approach, you shouldn't have to worry about your code being taken down because it doesn't match the values of a private company. Once you start denying certain customers based on their actions, you implicitly support the actions of all of your other customers, which quickly becomes a very difficult position to be in.
[+] [-] phoe-krk|5 years ago|reply
It is about time that corporations, with GitHub here as an example, noticed that backing this or that or another minority or "trying" to solve some medial issue only where it suits them PR-wise is simply abusing that minority in yet another way; it is a means of using that minority, and all the people who constitute that minority, as a tool for public relation stunts and political "but we support X, see?" newspeak that brings no actual change.
I'm genuinely curious if GitHub does support Black and Brown people enough to actually make that support noticeable for everyday lives of these folk.
[+] [-] ceilingcorner|5 years ago|reply
While it seems good natured in this specific case, it can very quickly turn into a small percentage of squeaky politically-minded wheels turning a non-political company into an monoculture activist one.
Personally, I wish we just went back to a professional/private distinction. Keep your politics out of the workplace. Otherwise, I don’t see this ending well.
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
No religion - no politics in the office.
I never dreamed that policy would pay dividends so profoundly. The distraction of having activists within your company trying to actively pressure the company via public channels - I mean it's almost unbelievable that this is the new norm. ...an I am so very thankful we seemed to have sidestepped it.
[+] [-] duxup|5 years ago|reply
Personally I wouldn't want to work for a company actually detaining people, but call me terrible but I'm not sure I'd feel the same about letting them pay to host some code...
[+] [-] Fellshard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dastbe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johncena33|5 years ago|reply
Why don't people push for a fair immigration system in USA instead of abolishing ICE? What exactly am I missing here?
[+] [-] e12e|5 years ago|reply
Now this isn't quite the IBM nazi connection - but the government snatching up people, then paying private corporations to intern them, in turn apparently using them for forced labour... Is pretty bad.
I'd be surprised if software isn't essential to keeping the machine going - and I'd not hesitated to call taking money for tooling "being a collaborator".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/coronavirus-ice-d...
[+] [-] iphone_elegance|5 years ago|reply
it makes for a very slippery slope
[+] [-] diN0bot|5 years ago|reply
However, would you be ok with Hitler hosting code on your service if it contributed in some small way to genocide? That _does_ make me feel ick. Tacit support by large numbers of "not really effected" people is what made the holocaust and slavery and jim crow, etc, possible.
I'm not comparing ICE to Violent White Supremacy... but it's worth staying informed and revisiting our own boundaries as the situation changes.
Skin color, nationality and ethnicity are playing a huge role in how we're treating people right now, and the spectrum of human<>inhumane is getting wider and wider with tacit support :-(
[+] [-] Fellshard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drunkpotato|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salmon30salmon|5 years ago|reply
It may feel better to watch and yell from the outside, and you may have the moral high ground in doing so. But change happens from the inside. We need more companies like GitHub working with agencies to reform their policies.
Also, change is slow. Protests are step one, but there are probably 235 more steps until change is realized. Slow and steady, my friends.
EDIT: To answer the questions about how a company influences policy. Companies influence policy all. the. time. Look at ALEC[1] look at PACs. Look at the fact that Microsoft is not going to be offering facial recognition tech until privacy protections are passed. Not saying ALEC is good, but it exists.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...
[+] [-] julianeon|5 years ago|reply
"Hey, you see this part of the code where you sort through the parents, to separate them from their children? Maybe don't do that?"
ICE is going to ignore any unprofessional suggestions, that's not what they hired GitHub to do.
In fact the usual argument employers give when you don't do exactly they hired you to do - "that's not what we hired you for" - is pretty strong. And unless GitHub sabotages their own work (which they won't), then their work will simply be in service to ICE's goals. There's no room left over for contributing non-work opinions.
[+] [-] dx87|5 years ago|reply
There's about a 0% chance that a government agency would change anything about their policies based on what GitHub employees say. Companies that work on government contracts get "report cards" detailing the agency's satisfaction with their performance, and any other government agency can view the reports for that company, so it's in their best interest to try and get favorable reviews by doing what the agency wants.
[+] [-] couchand|5 years ago|reply
On the other hand, employees of ICE, who are actually inside do probably have some (admittedly limited) amount of leverage. It might by that if they are frustrated at losing access to tools that they previously thought worth paying for, they would attempt to exert that leverage for change.
[+] [-] DudeInBasement|5 years ago|reply
And people wonder why there is a military industrial complex.
[+] [-] ivanbakel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Miner49er|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachrip|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Trias11|5 years ago|reply
Company cannot and should not have to comply with myriad of conflicting opinions and/or try to satisfy wishes of different opinionated groups of different flavors.
This "let's please twitter mob" mentality is hurting our country.
[+] [-] devalgo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgin|5 years ago|reply
I'm sure that some people are advocating for completely open borders without concern for consequences. But I think the larger call is saying that ICE as it currently is conceived as a paramilitary-style organization is not the way control the border and manage immigration.
[+] [-] thelock85|5 years ago|reply
BLM platform explicitly calls for an "end to all jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them." So maybe GitHub CEO should have not said anything, but he did and its fair for the public (including GitHub employees) to drive accountability to the BLM platform.
And this says nothing of corporate political spending. From the perspective of a dissenting employee, what is the difference between having co-workers who demand an end to ICE contracts (in response to leadership public supporting BLM platform), and collecting salary from a company that donates to politicians who want to abolish ICE?
[+] [-] hvis|5 years ago|reply
What will be next?
Gas stations and steak restaurants (or whatever businesses are considered conservative/republican) refusing to serve democrat/liberal customers?
AT&T refusing Internet connectivity to abortion clinics?
[+] [-] tharne|5 years ago|reply
This would achieve the same ends as protesting, but in a much more ethical manner. Unethical companies would eventually have a harder time finding qualified workers and would suffer accordingly. What wouldn't be happening, is a bunch of people agreeing to serve a business in exchange for money and then reneging on that agreement while still drawing a paycheck.
This is particularly true for higher skilled workers who have other options.
[+] [-] perfmode|5 years ago|reply
what makes you so sure?
[+] [-] xondono|5 years ago|reply
“Everything is politic” is meaningless to me, in the same way that “everything is top priority” is. If everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.
[+] [-] Noos|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway954|5 years ago|reply
maybe github could learn a thing or two from AA and not get involved in outside issues.
[+] [-] m3kw9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biscotti|5 years ago|reply
It saddens me that we collectively rolled over & allowed our software to be politicised, by flagging or cancelling those that see through the narrative & dissented.
[+] [-] nailer|5 years ago|reply
This is more an indication of how political extremists use race-baiting to push forward changes they want.