[codyps]

I was interested in your comparison in #1, wrt "HN community overreacted".

I've been searching through old HN stories about Eich, but can't seem to find any where the comments generally supported firing him due to supporting Prop 8 (banning gay marriage).

Is there a particular thread you had in mind? Or are you stating the overreaction was being angry that he might have been fired over that support?

[StevePerkins]

I don't have a link, and I'll admit that this is subjective and anecdotal.

I just recall there being a LOT of people who found it perfectly reasonable to oust somebody for long-ago political donations, despite there being no indication that he ever actually discriminated against anyone at Mozilla.

Yeah, you can make arguments that the mere existence of a such past donation creates a symbolically hostile environment, etc. But those arguments seemed pretty thin to me. At the time Eich made that donation, every major Democratic presidential candidate (including Clinton and Obama) were ALSO publicly opposed to marriage equality. So it seemed like extreme mental gymnastics to put a "hate speech" label on Eich.

In the GitHub story today, if you were feeling charitable then you could likewise apply some positive spin too. There IS some context to those slideshow bullet-points and that tweet, which has been buried under the outrage. Once again, I disagree with these messages even when that context is considered. But my point is that it seemed like there were a lot more people willing to do mental gymnastics in the Eich case than in this one.

[gaur]

> At the time Eich made that donation, every major Democratic presidential candidate (including Clinton and Obama) were ALSO publicly opposed to marriage equality. So it seemed like extreme mental gymnastics to put a "hate speech" label on Eich.

No, the extreme mental gymnastics here involve thinking that hate speech can be defined by looking at the content of Clinton and Obama's campaign speeches.

The ouster came six years after his donation. The only way that could be characterized as "long ago" is by the use of extreme mental gymnastics.

Anyway, donating to Proposition 8 is equivalent to making the statement "I will actively work to take other people's rights away, even though it will never affect me". Is it any surprise that he was ousted? It was a disaster for Mozilla to associate with him.

[greenrd]

He was on the wrong side of history, but your last sentence was unnecessary and over-the-top. He wasn't hired as a CEO, he was promoted into it. Before he became CEO, his political donations would not necessarily have been a concern.

[cookiecaper]

>He was on the wrong side of history

Does the last 6 months count as history? I don't think enough time has elapsed to fully ascertain the merits of same-sex marriage. Changes in sexual culture take a few dozen years to propagate and get a good read on the real effects.

[gaur]

> your last sentence was unnecessary and over-the-top.

People started boycotting Mozilla after he was promoted. "Disaster" is an appropriate descriptor.

[reitanqild]

I haven't bookmarked those threads but I'm certain I saw a lot of comments here saying things along the lines of "the right to free speak only protects you against the government", strongly implying that what happened to him was fair game because it wasn't the government who staged it.

[13thLetter]

I don't recall hearing that much in the context of Eich, but it certainly is a common go-to argument more recently among those who want to see people punished for having incorrect political views. It came up a lot when Strangeloop kicked out Curtis Yarvin, for example.

[Karunamon]

I said it back then and I'll say it here: There's a difference between "having a political view" (thinking that non-heterosexual marriages are icky) and taking positive action to prevent others from having equal rights (donating money to a lobbying/social engineering group)

One is a thought, the other is an action.

Punishing people for unknowable bad thoughts is an Orwellian nightmare. Punishing people for visible bad actions is how society moves forward.

[wyclif]

"Having a political view" contra SSM might not only take the form of "non-heterosexual marriages are icky." Engaging in caricature doesn't help advance the discussion of PC in the workplace. People might believe that homosexual marriage isn't morally or ethically legit. That a company or large numbers of people disagree doesn't mean the people that have these views should be punished for thoughtcrime or for expressing their opinions, or donating to a non-PC cause.

[13thLetter]

So people are allowed to have unpopular opinions as long as they don't, you know, tell anyone else about them or anything? Sorry, but that's unacceptable.

[greenrd]

What would you propose we do - jail people who call for boycotts? Jail people who criticise corporations?

I'll spell this out very simply: the same laws and social standards that make it OK for you to criticise them, make it OK for them to criticise Mozilla.

[13thLetter]

And they also make it OK for me to criticize the people who are criticizing Mozilla, and for those people to criticize me for criticizing the people who are criticizing Mozilla, and etc. So now that we've gotten that out of our system, we can realize that there's a difference between being criticized and losing one's job because of one's political opinions, and a society where the second thing happens is a society that has real problems.

[Karunamon]

So personally involved people aren't allowed to voice displeasure at those who have taken positive steps to harm them?

Did you completely ignore the differentiation between thought and action that I just laid out?

[morgante]

> "the right to free speak only protects you against the government"

I strongly agree with that statement, but I also strongly object to the ouster of Eich. An opinion on one does not imply an opinion on the other.

I support the right of the KKK to march through the streets, but that doesn't mean I should have to hire one of their members.

[humanrebar]

> I support the right of the KKK to march through the streets, but that doesn't mean I should have to hire one of their members.

That's not the analogy. It's contrived, but to stick with the theme of white racists, is it ethical (legality aside) for a board full of clansmen to fire a CEO that donated to the ADL? To keep it simple, let's say the CEO is not Jewish, but does financially support the ADL.

[morgante]

> That's not the analogy.

I was making an oblique reference to a rather famous free speech case. [0]

> is it ethical (legality aside) for a board full of clansmen to fire a CEO that donated to the ADL?

No, but I have a hard time finding anything clansmen do ethical. If your ideology is motivated by bigotry, that's the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...

[humanrebar]

I'm familiar to the case. My point was that I don't find it particularly analogous to the Eich case. Having no relationship to some people who walk down the street occasionally is substantially different than actually having to be professionally associated with someone and practice tolerance on a regular basis. I'd also argue that free speech should be protected in both cases (socially if not legally).

> If your ideology is motivated by bigotry, that's the problem.

I agree. I'm not sure corporate leaders need legal protection. Perhaps. But the right to publicly assemble and speak absolutely needs legal protection. That's why I was trying to draw another analogy. To explore the difference between the Eich and Skokie incidents.

[morgante]

> My point was that I don't find it particularly analogous to the Eich case.

I think there's been a miscommunication, because neither do I.

They're fundamentally different cases, in that I think the NSDAP should have the legal right to march but they can absolutely be punished socially.

Likewise, I think what happened to Eich was perfectly legal but not necessarily moral. They're not the same and that was my point: invoking "free speech" as a Constitutional right has no bearing on the Eich case.

[digbyloftus]

Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be? They can fire him for any or no reason and it's completely ethical. They don't owe him employment.

[humanrebar]

> They can fire him for any or no reason and it's completely ethical.

You must have a different definition of ethics than the rest of us do. I'm having a hard time reconciling that opinion with a definition of "ethical" that actually means anything, to be honest. Would you care to provide a definition?