The most upvoted thing I've ever written on here by an order of magnitude was a post on yesterday's story saying I applauded the move to ban politics and censorship at gitlab. But sure enough it looks like they've given in to louder angrier voices instead of holding their ground.
And that's the most insane part of how this works. They are doing this to appease people but on average people hate these kind of politically correct fear/shame tactics. But I guess it's difficult to measure that and those few people sure sound angry so they buckle not realizing that they are ultimately making a much more unpopular move.
I have to strongly disagree. Go back 200 years in any country and it had a society that was far less tolerant. Sure there are oscillations where people are less tolerant today then they were 10 years ago, but that's how any natural system works. The trend for history has always been increased tolerance. Racism is losing, sexism is losing, homophobia is losing.
Reminds me of a thesis I heard a while back about the big outbreak of Islamist terrorism: it's because they are losing. They are becoming frantic and apocalyptic because they are losing their own culture war slowly but surely.
> The irony of course is that the most intolerant and closed minded ideologies cloak themselves in the language of "tolerance" and "inclusion" while often violently shunning those who call out their lies.
The bigger irony just how much of the world they're willing to exclude in the name of inclusion, lets not stone gay people to death and lets teach women to read have not yet become universal agreements, let alone the smaller things that would put you on the receiving end of cancel culture.
Uganda's criminalizing homosexuality again, should a young Ugandan girl who publicly supports this be kicked off gitlab? What about a Saudi Arabian man who is against women driving? Privileged westerners would gladly cancel most of the world.
To be honest I'm finding the endless repetition of this debate with different actors tiresome.
But if you go and read the updated Gitlab document, it's easy to imagine how it would apply.
> We firmly adhere to laws including trade compliance laws in countries where we do business, and welcome everyone abiding by those legal restrictions to be customers of GitLab. In some circumstances, we may opt to not work with particular organizations, on a case-by-case basis. Some reasons we may choose not to work with certain entities include, but are not limited to:
> Engaging in illegal, unlawful behavior.
> Making derogatory statements or threats toward our community.
> Encouraging violence or discrimination against legally protected groups.
So yes, I read that the Ugandan in your example advocating state murder of sexual minorities (what the current bill is) would be kicked off of Gitlab. I imagine they would have to be prominent enough to attract attention for their views or explicitly using Gitlab to advance that goal.
I'm not sure why you expect people to be tolerant of that. Tolerance and a diversity of opinion is one thing, but I think you'd find many reasonable people would not extend that to cover violence, physical oppression, including the murder and elimination of classes of people, especially when the other side is just asking to exist.
Same goes for the debate about hosting white supremacist, anti-semetic etc style content.
> I'm not sure why you expect people to be tolerant of that.
Because I expect people/organisations to not be hypocritical, anyone describing themselves as tolerant and inclusive but unable to work with most people in the world are hypocritical.
> Tolerance and a diversity of opinion is one thing, but I think you'd find many reasonable people would not extend that to cover violence, physical oppression, including the murder and elimination of classes of people, especially when the other side is just asking to exist.
I don't disagree, but you have to realize that this is a minority opinion in the world and by enforcing this on people is far more exclusionary.
> Because I expect people/organisations to not be hypocritical, anyone describing themselves as tolerant and inclusive but unable to work with most people in the world are hypocritical.
This accusation of hypocrisy is thrown frequently. But I don't see Gitlab, or the vast majority of progressives claiming to be universally and unconditionally tolerant. In fact Gitlab is literally enumerating their limits with the three points I quoted above.
If we've learned anything from Blizzard it is that it is impossible to be an international company and not participate in politics. What would GitLab do if the Chinese government ordered them to take down a repository because it's being used by Hong Kong protestors? If they take it down they are saying that China should get to control Hong Kong. If they leave it up they are saying that Hong Kong should be free of Chinese rule. Either way it is a political statement. Employees are going to have to talk about this and make decisions that reflect their values.
No, if the government orders you to do something you do it. Disobeying a legal order would be a political statement. ('civil' disobedience)
The GitLab policy was meant to stop ideologically motivated employees from sacrificing the reputation and interests of the company for their own personal political objectives. Of course, enough other compainies have already been taken over by allied ideologues that they pressured GitLab into allowing politically motivated behavior.
Obeying a government order is also a political statement that you support that government. GitLab is an international company, they don't owe an allegiance to one specific country. One country might tell them to do something and another one might tell them to do the opposite. They're going to have to pick and choose sides sometimes.
If you want actual diversity, go an hour or two inland. Sacramento and Stockton are a fair bit more diverse politically/socially while having a very similar degree of diversity ethnically. I can also attest (having grown up in Sacramento, and currently living in the SF area) that there's a higher degree of ethnic integration within neighborhoods and even within households/families.
The downside of making so many internal documents public like GitLab does is that policy tweaks like this can spur more external gossip. At most companies I don't think this sort of policy change would have gotten any news coverage.
The vaguest rule to me is the one against making derogatory statements toward "our community". What community is that? Gitlab employees? Developers that upload open source software on Github? Customers that have on-prem gitlab deployments?
If a politician (or to invoke Godwin's law a literal Nazi) I don't like uses Gitlab and I say "fuck that guy", do I need to worry about my account being suspended?
That's the rule where the reality "you can't reliably encode a social decision making framework in a markdown list and need to rely on human judgement anyways" is hidden.
And that's the most insane part of how this works. They are doing this to appease people but on average people hate these kind of politically correct fear/shame tactics. But I guess it's difficult to measure that and those few people sure sound angry so they buckle not realizing that they are ultimately making a much more unpopular move.