
After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract - Xordev
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-06-12/github-ceo-black-lives-matter-employees-demand-end-ice-contract
======
rattray
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.

~~~
jobeirne
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private
> entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy.

Um, think you've got this backwards. Private entities shouldn't have to take
on _anyone_ they don't want as customers (for whatever reason - do you have to
justify who you do or don't want in your livingroom?), but publicly-funded
institutions shouldn't be able to deny service on political grounds.

~~~
brabel
I am strongly against a private business being able to refuse service to a
person/organization on political grounds, even when the "victim" may seem to
be performing evil actions, as long as it is not breaking any laws. One should
not discriminate on the basis of race, political orientation, gender, origin
or religion. Refusing service is clearly a form of discrimination. When you
aim that towards your own Government, it may look like a heroic action to your
supporters, but to those who are not, you're performing discrimination on the
grounds of political affiliation against an organization that is following, as
it is obliged to, the law of the Land. If you think the ICE is doing terrible
things, you should lob the Government to take action and bring them to
justice, but given the Government is, as I understand it, actually mandating
such terrible things, you're aiming your fury at the wrong place. You should
be protesting against the Government who is mandating these terrible things.

Imagine for a moment that things change completely, and the ICE starts
refusing to follow the orders of the Government - but now the Government is
leaning towards the far-left, and wants the ICE to open borders to all. The
ICE would no doubt have a lot of supporters, but disobeying the Government in
such case would ALSO be wrong because in a democracy, the Government
represents the people - by not following the orders of the Government, you're
basically advancing anarchy. In both cases, the correct attitude is to fight
for a Government change. It's not democratic for a Government organization to
take its own stance on a topic despite the Government's policies.

~~~
gruez
>One should not discriminate on the basis of race, political orientation,
gender, origin or religion. Refusing service is clearly a form of
discrimination

It looks like you're trying to imply that discriminating based on political
orientation is as bad as as discriminating based on race, gender, origin or
religion, but that's wrong. At least when it comes to the law, political
orientation isn't a protected class. Race, gender, origin or religion are.

~~~
deogeo
You're correct regarding the law, but I wouldn't be so quick to claim it's not
as bad. Suppose a business refused to serve union activists?
Environmentalists? Feminists? Suppose many large businesses did so?

~~~
dropofwill
An example of this in the wild from the Democratic party is
[https://dcccblacklist.com](https://dcccblacklist.com)

------
johncena33
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.

~~~
mchanson
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.

~~~
ancorevard
"By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political."

Just a reminder that government entities like ICE are executing the current
laws of the land.

~~~
drunkpotato
Demonstrably and rather obviously untrue. They're violating the law in many
instances, including but not limited to the cases of asylum seekers and
current green card holders; it's just they're following the evil, xenophobic
whims of the current political leadership, who are failing to hold themselves
or ICE accountable to the rule of law, so they are, for the moment, getting
away with their lawlessness. I hope we can change this with voting in new
leadership, but I fear it may be too late.

Aside and personal observation: it's interesting how the same people so
vigorously crying for "law and order" are rather particular about which laws
they care about enforcing, and which they're willing to overlook. Of course
I'm not the first to make this observation.

~~~
zdragnar
Given that the pictures of kids in cages came from before our current
president was in office, this is the first time I've heard anyone call
president Obama both evil and xenophobic.

~~~
tekromancr
Every leader the country has had is trash. That doesn't detract from the fact
that the current leadership has managed to lower and re-lower the bar.
Consistently widening the window of what outrageous behavior is acceptable. At
this point the office of the president is a no holds barred free-for-all and
whoever occupies it next will be doing so with a precedent no near zero
actionable oversight.

------
GhostVII
_“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.

~~~
the_pwner224
I agree that making decisions like this puts the company in a bad position and
is risky for them. But it's not like GitHub can suddenly pull the plug on ICE
and instantly delete all their code; no data will be lost. There are plenty of
alternatives to GitHub so ICE doesn't have to worry about their code being
taken down, beyond the small cost of migrating to another service. You can't
say the same about the traditional utilities which are normally granted a
monopoly.

------
phoe-krk
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.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
While I may not totally agree with you on the politics, I _do_ totally agree
that I have a large discount for words made by corporations _when it is the
popular thing to do and when there are few negative consequences of them doing
it_. Yes, words of support matter, and I see nothing wrong with wanting to
rename blacklist->blocklist and whitelist->allowlist, but I also can't help
but roll my eyes a little when I see a LinkedIn post about this terminology
change with 40 responses commending how great an action that was. It feels
like the ultimate in slacktivism to me.

For example, at an individual level, there is a lot of good research about how
housing segregation is one of the largest continuing drivers in systemic
racism in the US. So if you have a bunch of BLM posters in your yard, but at
the same time fight tooth-and-nail against any increased density in your
neighborhood that might actually lower housing costs where you live, well you
should just STFU, or at least realize the underpinnings of your blatant
hypocrisy.

~~~
phoe-krk
> there is a lot of good research about how housing segregation is one of the
> largest continuing drivers in systemic racism in the US

Could you link some of it? I'm alien to this particular issue.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Here is a good jumping off point:
[https://www.facebook.com/NPR/videos/701877010588148/](https://www.facebook.com/NPR/videos/701877010588148/)

------
ceilingcorner
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.

------
koheripbal
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.

~~~
dnissley
Don't celebrate too early. It took less than 5 years for this 'thing' to go
from college campuses to big companies... What will you do when a twitter mob
comes for your company because you're "oppressing your workers ability to
speak out about injustice and human rights" or "remaining silent, which is
violence"?

~~~
camdenlock
This is the real threat we should all be talking about. It’s so sad to me that
it’s barely discussed. These new religions and their witch hunts are great at
silencing discussions out of fear.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
The perceived overreach of political correctness is a vast area of discourse,
especially on the right.

~~~
koheripbal
...which means it's hardly mentioned in the MSM

------
duxup
Is GitHub a hug part of what ICE ... does?

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...

~~~
johncena33
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?

~~~
swebs
>but currently there is no easy way to immigrate to USA

The USA has the most immigrants than any other country in the world at almost
47 million residents. That's 4 times higher than the second place country. And
the vast majority of them came perfectly legally. For every one person that
immigrates to Canada, 6 immigrate to the USA. I don't really know what people
are asking for here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_immigrant_population)

~~~
insulanus
It's number 67 in the world, using immigrants per capita. Still, a pretty high
rate of foreign-born population.

~~~
swebs
Per capita doesn't matter at all in this context though. If you were looking
to immigrate to a country, you would have a better chance at getting in to the
country that accepts 1 million people per year rather than the one that
accepts 1,000 per year. The current population of each country is not a
factor.

------
Fellshard
Don't feed the political beast, because once fed, it's never enough.

~~~
sangnoir
That idea is hasn't been true for decades. You should see how many corps make
political donations - what you see is a consequence of 2 things: "Corporations
are people (my friend)" and "Citizens United (2010)/Money is free speech". Now
that it exists, the question now is who gets control of the corporate
megaphone

------
drunkpotato
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.

------
salmon30salmon
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.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council)

~~~
DudeInBasement
The taxpayer/citizens should influence ICE/government. Not GitHub. Government
should serve/fear the people, not corps.

And people wonder why there is a military industrial complex.

~~~
coolreader18
I don't think encouraging a security department to keep working with a
corporation would necessarily help stop the military/industrial complex.

------
Trias11
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.

------
devalgo
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?

~~~
kgin
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.

~~~
devalgo
>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.

This seems like what people on the right do with Trump. He'll say some
outlandish or indefensible thing on Twitter and pundits will walk it back and
lay out some complex argument to support it. It's not convincing in either
case. It's the same with abolish the police. The protesters seem to be very
clear that's what thy want and people will go to great lengths explaining oh
no what they really want is to divert funding to community groups and improve
training they don't actually want to abolish the police. Like what? Is anyone
stupid enough to believe this stuff?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
What protesters? I attended a march in NYC this weekend and the protesters
demands included shifting $1 billion of the NYPD budget to community,
education, and social welfare programs, and a $500 million investment fund for
black businesses. No one was screaming to get rid of all cops everywhere
forever.

Are you genuinely seeking to understand, or do you hols these protesters in
too much disdain to actually listen to them?

~~~
devalgo
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
abol...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-
defund-police.html)

Feel free to try and explain it away but to say no one is calling for this
would at this point be willful blindness. I have complete freedom to think
that many of the protests demands are dangerous, poorly thought out and
outright foolish.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I didn’t say no one is calling for anything. I said they weren’t at the march
I attended. I think you’re arguing against a strawman here. Most protesters
are not demanding we have zero police.

And yes, you have the freedom to think anything you want.

------
thelock85
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?

------
hvis
Okay, suppose this works. And even turns out to have an actual impact,
somehow.

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?

~~~
woutr_be
> Gas stations and steak restaurants (or whatever businesses are considered
> conservative/republican) refusing to serve democrat/liberal customers?

Having lived through a year long political crisis in Hong Kong, this is
actively happening right now. There's even a whole "yellow economic" (meaning,
protestors) where they support businesses who also support them. Some of these
businesses refuse to serve customers who don't speak Cantonese, or even
recently refused to serve customers who wear a government issued face mask.

Businesses who were considered "against" the protestors, got trashed or set on
fire.

Whatever their political stance is, I personally refuse to go to any business
who's actively refusing to serve customers based on their political stance.
You wouldn't feel right refusing customers based on their skin color or
religion, so why do it based on politics?

------
tharne
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.

~~~
perfmode
> If you take a paycheck from someone, you're implicitly agreeing to carry out
> their instructions and their vision for their business

what makes you so sure?

~~~
tharne
That's what employment is. Someone has a bunch of stuff they want done, and
someone else agrees to do it in exchange for money.

~~~
f1refly
Yes, that's what unemployment means. This has nothing to do with shared values
though. I could absolutely work for some company whose values I don't share if
they pay me enough.

------
xondono
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.

~~~
Noos
The way they use it in english is more like "everything has a priority." Or
"everything has a color."

------
thrownaway954
"Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name
ought never be drawn into public controversy."

maybe github could learn a thing or two from AA and not get involved in
outside issues.

------
m3kw9
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

------
biscotti
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.

------
nailer
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.

------
austincheney
Why do people on the west coast actively try to conflate their employers with
their personal politics? To everyone else in the world this is so utterly
bizarre. This, in addition to the high cost of living, is why I refuse to work
there.

------
umvi
Are open source software licences immoral? Think about it, by making tools
open source with MIT or GPL, you are basically allowing anyone (including
known immoral actors causing great harm in the world) to freely use them.

By the logic in this thread, it would be more ethical to use a more ambiguous
license that allows the creator of the tool to yank the rug out from under any
of its users at any time.

------
sequoia
My question is not so much about ICE, who I personally feel would be
reasonable to refuse to do business with in the current circumstance (caveat:
I'm not an expert here and could be wrong). My question is about next
"unethical" organization that GitHub has a contract with, and the next and the
next after that. Do employees have veto power on revenue-generating contracts,
generally? Or is ICE an exceptional case? Should new contracts undergo a vote
among employees? What if 51% of employees _oppose_ ending the contract with
ICE? Would the other side be satisfied then?

I don't see either approach being morally wrong (granting or denying to
employees contract veto power), they're both just different ways of governing
an organization. These seem like the underlying questions however, and it
seems to me that those calling to end the ICE contract should be prepared to
answer them.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
Slippery slope is a logical “fallacy”, just like _ad hominems_ or mistaking
correlation with causation, to name two examples that, for reasons escaping
me, are pointed out incessantly on HN while the former rarely is.

~~~
sequoia
I'm not clear where slippery slope ends and generalizing a question such as
"how does GH/MSFT determine who to do business with?" or putting a decision
into context begins. I don't see this as being at "the top of a slope" as much
as already being _on_ the slope. This was not an isolated request, from TFA:
"At Microsoft-owned GitHub, _the parent company’s concession only served to
reinvigorate internal opposition_ to a controversial contract with U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement." So this is not a one-off question, the
question of ICE is already part of a sequence of demands/concessions.

To use a metaphor, Alice: give me a dollar; Bob: OK here's a dollar; Alice:
Thanks but now I need five dollars; Bob: are you just going to ask me for $10
next? Where does this end? Alice: Aha! That's a _slippery slope_ fallacy.

Slippery slope says “if you do A then it will lead to B and eventually Z.” At
the moment, we’re not at “A” we’re already at “B,” so I think asking about the
rest of the sequence is reasonable.

If management is making concessions to satisfy the workforce's sense of
ethics, I think it's reasonable for management to say "OK, after this
concession will your sense of ethics be satisfied for the time being? Or is
this part of a larger package of demands, and if so what are they?"

To ask a party making concessions to not consider the context at all, the lead
up or the implied consequences ("if you did X you'd be a hypocrite to not also
do Y") is unreasonable.

------
someonehere
Honest question and not taking sides on either aisle.

The incarceration and family separation started with the last administration.
It’s well documented so don’t ask me to cite sources. Google is your friend.

Let’s say November comes and we have blue in the White House, do those calling
for their employer to stop working with ICE/Pentagon/FBI/etc, go quiet and
things go back to normal in the news for them?

I think that’s something that needs an answer because a lot of these companies
have been working with the government prior to 2016.

~~~
cweagans
It was wrong then and it's wrong now.

------
shaggyfrog
There are a few comments in here already decrying “politicization”.

Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot
choose to “avoid” them; even suggesting you can be politically neutral _is a
political stance_ that comes from a place of privilege, because only the
privileged can avoid experiencing negative political consequences inside their
bubble.

Collaboration with ICE is collaboration with ICE, whether it’s “just hosting
code” or actually contracted by them to develop their systems. It’s the same
deal with Amazon or Facebook or whoever. If you work for them you need to
admit to yourself that you are an enabler. Most people can’t admit that to
themselves, so they maintain an unhealthy cognitive dissonance to keep going.

And it hurts when that dissonance is shattered.

Comparing supporting ICE to a marriage is nonsense, and thinking you can
somehow help them be better by keeping them as a customer? A totally naive
concept that has been shown not to work in practice since the US 2016
election. (In fact, supporting the monster makes them stronger; if it made
them weaker, why would they keep using your product?)

The reckoning we are seeing in tech is long overdue. As developers we are no
longer seeing our actions as “politically neutral” and are starting to
understand the power we yield collectively to make positive change to our
industry.

Nat Friedman is on the wrong side of history here. These empty words are no
longer sufficient. Hopefully he figures that out before his tenure at GitHub
comes to an end.

~~~
akerro
>Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives.

Yes, but also companies exist literally only to make money. Companies can't
exist without workers. Once a company finds itself in a position of conflict
of interest between political views of workers and point of existence of the
company - where contracts bring money... we're going to see interesting
things.

I wonder, who will break first?

The company will decide it's better to bend to political opinions of employees
and end the contract == pay a lot of $money$ for breaking the contract early
without delivery and set another precedent where employees decide how and with
whom company makes money = uncertain company. Who will make future contracts
with such company? Would you outsource your project delivery to a company
where employees decide whether your project/office/political stand is good or
bad?

Or maybe employees will decide they don't want to work for a company and risk
unemployment? Who will risk employing a person who rebels against board
members of a company and causes financial damages over broken contract?

I would like to see 100s of GitHub employees leaving GitHub and MS to prove
their point, rather than working on the contract, being paid 10x salary of
their immigrant desk cleaners and shouting how bad it is the contract exists.

~~~
chasing
> Yes, but also companies exist literally only to make money.

False.

~~~
deadalus
Shareholders don't want to make money? That's not their primary goal?

~~~
chasing
“Primary” != “only.”

“Shareholders” != “only people with a stake in a company existing.”

~~~
akerro
Yes, I worded it completely wrong and people are responding me by
concentrating on this word rather than message :(

------
unnouinceput
Quote: "What I’ve learned from her is that keeping technology from ICE
actively harms those vulnerable populations,” he wrote."

Let's assume Microsoft in general, and GitHub in particular will get their way
and severe ties with ICE. Guess what's going to happen next?

a- Suddenly ICE is going to become a nice entity and everything going to be
peachy

or

b- Chinese will supply the software instead, or worse, is going to be
internally made by government, meaning NSA will have another wet dream come
true

~~~
cmdshiftf4
Added to that:

If Github/Microsoft start picking and choosing which agencies to host, I would
say it's somewhat likely and understandable that they be blacklisted from
future government contracts and contract renewals.

It's also somewhat likely that in such a case, as we have seen with the Huawei
moves recently, the US government could halt sale/export of tooling to any
other government.

------
umvi
I'm glad they aren't vetting who can use their platform based on arbitrary
ideological whims, but I'm still salty about them caving to demands to change
the default branch name to something other than "master".

We really need to stop this sort of mob thought policing that has taken over
the internet and bullies corporations and individuals into conformance. This
is not new, but it seems particularly egregious right now. But how do you
stop/mitigate internet mobs without "streisanding" even bigger mobs?

> As Friedman spoke, dozens of employees expressed frustration and outrage in
> a company Slack channel with more than 1,200 people, according to
> screenshots reviewed by The Times.

We are letting small minorities (dozens out of thousands) amplify their
outrage and impose their demands on everyone else. Same thing happens on
Twitter, and I really don't like that. It's like that one xkcd[0] except
instead of "the people listening" being rational and reasonable, "the people
listening" are an angry minority on social media stirring up everyone around
them into a blood frenzy.

[0] [https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

------
ApolloFortyNine
I'm curious, if Github does decide to end their ICE contract, if this will
follow the 'slippery slope' into then combing other companies ICE works with.
Surely there's a bank ICE holds their money in, do they have a Github
contract? ICE had a contract with Chef (they don't any more), but if they
still did, would Github threaten to cutoff Chef's Github contract if they
didn't drop them?

And that's all assuming ICE really is the worse Company/Organization that
Github has a contract with. As soon as you open up this can of worms, how do
you define the line? And even once you do define the line, there will always
be edge cases. And once there's enough examples, companies are going to stop
going with Github just to avoid the possibility of having to move forcibly
later. After all, what Github provides not only has a large number of
competitors, both paid and open source, but is a frontend for an already free
source control tool (Git itself). Cancelling the ICE contract is an
inconvenience at best, ICE's day to day activities wouldn't be affected in the
slightest.

------
peruvian
GitHub has had its ICE controversy for a while now (if not years). Honestly,
the leadership should've expected this.

------
99_00
When people say they back Black Lives Matter, what does it mean? Is it real
support for actual demands or symbolic and emotional support?

According to wikipedia these are BLM's policy demands:

Policy demands In 2016, Black Lives Matter and a coalition of 60 organizations
affiliated with BLM called for decarceration in the United States, reparations
for slavery in the United States, an end to mass surveillance, investment in
public education, not incarceration, and community control of the police:
empowering residents in communities of color to hire and fire police officers
and issue subpoenas, decide disciplinary consequences and exercise control
over city funding of police.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter#Policy_dema...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter#Policy_demands)

------
manigandham
Nobody commenting here seems to have any experience with ICE or their
procedures or the criminal justice system, or the staggering difference
between legal and illegal immigration.

Most of this seems to be driven by headlines on social media rather than any
true understanding of the issues.

------
cblackthornekc
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

People always think unions are for benefits, pay, and safety. Tech needs a
union that can fight for ethical coding. Workers need a way to band together
and say no, we cannot in good faith work on a project.

------
TedShiller
I'm part Native American, and while I support BLM, Native Americans are facing
the exact same tragic societal problems and discrimination as black people. If
GitHub supports BLM they should also support Native American Lives Matter.

~~~
TedShiller
I wish people didn't downvote this. I've spent time in the South Dakota
Reservations, and if you've seen those, you would know what I'm talking about.

~~~
BALZJH
Usually downvoting here means that a comment is too close to the truth or that
it deviates from the officially sanctioned topic, here BLM.

So some regard any deviance as an affront or "whataboutism".

Personal anecdotes are also often downvoted, since neither the salon
socialists nor the monetarists want to hear them. It is crucial that one stays
in one's own bubble.

------
737min
What does ICE (a big flawed but necessary federal border guarding agency) have
to do with BLM (loose movement to ensure equal treatment of US citizens of
color by local police departments and preventing horrible abuses)?

~~~
al_chemist
Left-side agenda.

------
zaroth
I see this as a parallel to deplatforming, but instead of working to silence a
particular speaker by shutting off access to popular distribution channels,
here we have calls to shut off a company/government's access to basic software
development tools.

I think this is a particularly distinctive case, for example, by comparison to
the recent news that Amazon is blocking law enforcement access to Rekognition
(facial recognition). Facial recognition and AI in general is fraught with
massive ethical concerns to the point where leading developers/researchers in
the field are actively abandoning it (e.g. YOLO). There's no such concern
about development of source control, certainly no more so than would apply to
any business productivity software, or virtually any networking,
infrastructure, or database projects. Interestingly, this may signal a
developing rift between Open Source licensing ethos which strictly forbids
limitation on use, running head-on with political agendas which would seek to
limit access to software based on the user. Licensing isn't really a concern
in Github's case, but will be a consideration that developers have to make
when choosing a license in the future, namely... do I release my software as
Open Source and give up my right to stop Bad People from using it for their
own benefit?

For a company like GitHub (owned by Microsoft lest we forget) to cut off
access to a branch of the Federal government would be extremely foolish, but I
believe also not only counter-productive, but also ethically questionable and
politically dangerous. I don't believe Github (or most any workplace) should
be a political battleground for debates over border policy, and I believe that
a vocal minority attempting to weaponizing neutral parties like Github leads
to bad business outcomes (lost income, hostile workplaces) as well as bad
political outcomes (breeding resentment and polarization).

As far as the particular issue of cutting off ICE from its source control
software, I think a less political assessment would find that it's in the best
interest of immigrants and refugees for ICE to have top-notch software custom
built for the populations that they oversee. I'm not particularly familiar
with the many tasks that ICE officers perform on a daily basis, but I know
that things like trying to process hundreds of thousands of refugees applying
for asylum, or trying to place ~50,000 unaccompanied minors in homes
throughout the country is a truly massive logistical challenge, and we don't
want a single child slipping through the cracks. Cutting off ICE access to
software development tools IMO is actively harming these populations.

------
bkmayweather
With that kind of workforce I'd be reluctant to host private repositories
there.

Who knows what a radicalized workforce will do in the search for compromising
material.

Curious how Friedman will get out if that one. What goes around, comes around.

------
samdixon
How does the HN sorting algorithm work when this goes from top page to the
bottom of the second page despite having by far the most points and is also a
relatively fresh post?

------
alexandercrohde
Seems rather cut-throat. If this type of thing becomes the norm, then the
market will just end up with a conservative or apolitical github. Progress?

------
randomsearch
Say you have a SaaS that companies can use, for the sake of argument let’s say
it’s Dropbox.

One day a military company uses your product. Should you ban them?

Are all military companies evil? Or are weapons sometimes necessary?

Let’s say you ban them. Where do you draw the line? FBI? Police? Private
investigators? Political parties with messages you think are hateful? With
messages you just disagree strongly with?

Struggling with this.

------
Yhippa
I'm surprised we haven't seen more Balkanization of services. When IBM and
others announced they're not selling facial recognition technology to
governments, I have to imagine there are companies who are absolutely willing
to. Maybe this is happening already and I am not informed.

Also this for social media like Facebook and Twitter.

------
stove
What is the relationship between GitHub and ICE? Is it ICE hosting their repos
on GitHub or is it something more substantial?

------
lurknn
If working with ICE is so reprehensible, why are none of these employees
taking advantage of their in-demand skillset and moving on to companies that
better respect their values?

I'm sympathetic with those who point out that corporations typically have more
leverage than individual employees, and that changing jobs is not so easy for
those who are less privileged. That category, though, of "less privileged"
with regards to employment flexibility simply does not apply to the average
Github employee, at all, as sircmpwn frequently points out.

Furthermore, regardless of which side of this debate you stand on, it is
definitely disheartening to see people so vehemently against this relationship
yet do NOT back up their feelings with actions. I cannot help but scoff when I
see people on Github with "stop ICE" profile pictures. It's nothing but a
profound selfishness: wanting to be on the self-perceived "right side of
history" but not so much so that you set your origin to Gitlab or SourceHut
instead...

~~~
Latty
It seems weird to expect them to jump directly to the nuclear option of
quitting. Making a demand like this is a first step, and it may turn out not
to be necessary to quit if the employer caves.

~~~
lurknn
Fair enough! Though, you do realize that the whole ICE thing has been baking
for nearly a year now? The central question I think is: at what point does the
employee realize that discussion is more for his/her sake than for the sake of
actual change?

------
remotists
Private companies should not be expected to play moral authorities in
political issues. They are there to make a profit doing anything that is
legal, giving into employee demands on political issues is a road they
shouldn't take , it will set a bad precedent.

------
shay_ker
Just food for thought:

If Github backed out, wouldn't someone else fill their spot by using Gitlab?
And if so, isn't that transition cost paid for by tax payers?

I'm mostly wondering what's the material impact of Github backing out, outside
of optics.

~~~
umvi
Yeah, but then GitLab will be pressured to back out, and then BitBucket will
be too, then ICE will use Gitea, but then the pressure will come back to
GitHub to boot Gitea off their platform unless they write ICE out of the
license, etc. it's a never ending mess that will harm the software development
community.

~~~
shay_ker
Gitlab is open source, right? Doesn't have to be done by Gitlab the company,
could be a consultant.

------
jpxw
Wait till they find out their tax dollars fund ICE.

~~~
cultofmetatron
well its not like you get to decide where your tax dollars go.

------
cannedslime
Thanks for reminding me that I was still paying the pro subscription even
though private repos are free now.

------
buboard
Good, more workers should demand exodus from police and army related projects.
Anything less is hypocricy

------
jrochkind1
Is there some way around the paywall I am running into, or are we all
discussing this without having read the article, or are most of you LA Times
subscribers?

------
d33lio
I fully support steps being taken to reign in police and ICE, however it's
still painfully ironic that CHAZ currently has been prioritizing enforcing
borders, has roaming groups (peaceful and otherwise) ousting dissidents or
those deemed as dissidents and verifying "citizenship".

This kind of behavior in any form is troubling.

~~~
Analemma_
I went to the CHAZ to throw a frisbee with friends yesterday, and literally
nothing you just said is true. Be aware that the Seattle Police Department is
running an active disinformation campaign about the CHAZ, which is eagerly
lapped up by people predisposed to believe the lies.

~~~
nailer
And, you know, videos of actual events in CHAZ.

------
whydoyoucare
Never virtue signal if you are a CEO, unless all consequences are thought
through. ;-)

~~~
cmdshiftf4
Friedman made his bed years ago in this regard. I don't blame him though
because the same people causing shit for him now will also pull the "silence
is violence" or "remaining silent is being complicit" angle should he now tow
the line.

And if he disagrees with them, well, look how quickly they ran to the LA Times
with their private internal comms slack screenshots.

------
methyl
For anyone else wondering, ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

------
dsr_
Corporations are people. If they don't act ethically, we can't expect people
to act ethically.

Ending a contract with an agency that runs concentration camps is good.
Better, though, is to not accept any contracts with any government that runs
concentration camps.

Small steps are good. Big steps are better.

PS: great fear from all paying customers that run concentration camps that an
internet mob could separate them from their code at any time -- sounds like a
good policy to me. Not as good as "Don't be evil", but reasonably close.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Your choice of language by saying "concentration camps" is unproductively
hyperbolic and reminiscent of Nazis killing Jews in WW2. People found to have
been here illegally are being kept in detention centers until deportation or
trial. Nobody is getting gassed or burned in ovens.

~~~
abtinf
Merriam-Webster definition of concentration camp: “a place where large numbers
of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the
members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under
armed guard —used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in
World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners”

Japanese internment camps from WW2 easily meet that definition.

I think immigration detention centers easily meet that definition too: they
hold large numbers of individuals whose only crime is being “the other”.

~~~
google234123
I'm pretty sure that's it's criminal in every country on earth to violate the
immigration laws of that country

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
No. And it almost isn't in the US:

"Being illegally present in the U.S. has always been a civil, not criminal,
violation of the INA[Immigration and Naturalization Act]"

"Criminal violations of the INA, on the other hand, include felonies and
misdemeanors and are prosecuted in federal district courts. These types of
violations include the bringing in and harboring of certain undocumented
aliens, aliens (INA §275), ..."

As can already be deduced from the above, illegal entry is a _misdemeanor_.
Only the bringing in, harbouring, and certain specific aggravation conditions
raise it to a felony.

(From
[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33351.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33351.pdf))

~~~
manigandham
It is absolutely a criminal violation. Also there are 2 different acts: the
crossing of the border (which even a US citizen can be charged for crossing
illegally) and being in the country without permission.

Also misdemeanors are still considered serious crimes. I don't get where this
hand-waving "because it's just a misdemeanor" comes from.

------
dominotw
i wish someone of these workers quit. Tons of IT jobs even in covid.

If you are not quitting then you are also profiting form ICE contract.

~~~
sangnoir
> If you are not quitting then you are also profiting form ICE contract.

This is reductive, right up there with "Why don't you move to Canada?" Do you
agree with every single action done by all entities you belong to: family,
employer, HOA, neighborhood, city council, state/province, and country? If you
disagree with the actions of a family member - is your solution to cut them
off immediately without talking to them? We spend one third of our working
lives with our employers - sometimes we like them well enough to entitle us to
"interventions".

Additionally, in their quest to reduce churn/lower salaries, the employers are
the ones who seek employee loyalty by convincing us that we are "like family",
or show that they are humane (or at least not amoral). They can't have their
cake and eat it - if you're an amoral company - _own it_ like Oracle does and
take the hit on the type of employees you get.

~~~
dominotw
> If you disagree with the actions of a family member - is your solution to
> cut them off immediately without talking to them?

I don't think your employer is like "a family member", this analogy is too
absurd to counter.

> family, employer, HoA, neighborhood, city council, state/province, and
> country?

one of these is not like the other. you get to participate in decision making
process via voting in HOA, country ect. Employment is purely transactional
like getting coffee from a coffeeshop, you have no say in what kind of beans
to pick.

~~~
sangnoir
It's not absurd at all for many people as their very _identity_ is quite
entangled with their employer and the work they do as they spend the majority
of their waking hours doing something work related.

Since employment-as-family was not relatable for you, how about: if you
disagree with your HOA/neighborhood watch/city council, is your first instinct
to sell your house and move away? Wouldn't canvassing support for your PoV be
more reasonable, as an initial action?

~~~
dominotw
employment is not consensus like HOA, yes you can get your voice heard in HOA
by participating, its by design.

Correct analogy in this case would be HOA where all the decisions are made by
chairman of HOA. In that case yes, packup and move.

you don't choose your family members by interviewing with them.

> Since employment-as-family was not relatable for you,

In my family we(adults) are all equals and make decisions that are agreeable
to everyone.

In you family you have "head" who makes all the important decisions without
checking with family members first?

I don't want to think of myself as a child family member at my employer who
gets no say in anything major. I can't relate to that at all.

~~~
sangnoir
I think we are speaking across each other because we have fundamental
differences in how we view the employment relationship. I do not expect
consensus with employment, but I will not work at any organization that makes
it blatantly clear that my voice will _not_ be heard. Oracle makes that
abundantly clear - you don't hear many stories about activism from folk at
Oracle at that reason.

------
egberts1
Mmmm, alternative: GitLab.com?

[https://about.gitlab.com/company/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/)

------
LordHumungous
If you are concerned about the business that your corporate employer engages
in, there is a simple solution: quit your job and become an activist.

------
qbaqbaqba
Put your money where your mouth is.

------
elwell
We should boycott Hacker News for letting people link to so many git repos
that are hosted on GitHub which also hosts ICE repos.

------
catsdanxe
We should demand congressional investigations into the operations of ICE, CIA,
NSA, FBI, etc.

------
ThA0x2
Just wait till the election is over and Trump is out. All this virtue
signaling will stop because their preferred party is in power, and by
definition everything that party does is virtuous.

Even if Biden continues the exact same enforcement with ICE, no one will care.

------
afiori
> I think if the bar is "don't kill minorities"

Take this as my personal possibly wrong opinion, but this kind hyperbolic
phrasing is only going to hurt your cause.

The same as people defending "punch a nazi" slogans.

They will give your tribe influence, but also steadily decrease your chance at
long term victory.

Honestly I cannot understand how many people (I don't care about sides) can
believe in progress via violence, promoting violence, or extreme polarization.

I cannot change your minds, but sure I hope it were easier to have a moderate
to moderate conversation.

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're never
interesting and they never end well. Even in the context of the current
thread, this subthread stands out as off topic.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20ideolog&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529671).

~~~
afiori
Understandable, I should have at the very least left out the specific
reference.

------
MintelIE
Going woke isn’t a great move for a company. And how many workers? Just the
vocal “activists?”

In the near future companies will be wary of hiring people with a history of
shrill woke activism. Better a quiet Nazi than a vocal Communist.

------
partiallypro
ICE has done unethical things, but...they are also essential in many of their
roles, and every country has a similar agency. Why not use the platform and
power you have to push for changes instead of just severing ties? It doesn't
really accomplish anything.

------
wyck
Company leadership who don't understand the danger of politics are poisoning
their own well. If you open the door to what is fundamentally not part of your
core values and culture (in this case a programming/engineering platform),
then expect the worse.

------
sergiotapia
Is the US the only country on _earth_ where the media is so hellbent on
propaganda for opening the borders?

I can't think of another nation that does this. Not brazil, not bolivia,
certainly not argentina, not spain, hell no japan lol, russia of course not.

What makes the US so special in this unique problem with the media?

~~~
umvi
Good question, tons of other countries are extremely racist towards immigrants
(Japan, Italy, etc) yet only the USA gets lambasted.

I think a lot of people just focus on the USA because it's an easy target.

~~~
sergiotapia
>USA because it's an easy target.

What makes the US especially an easy target?

------
rubyn00bie
I keep forgetting to cancel my paid Github account because of the ICE
contracts. Thanks for the reminder you're totally okay empowering fascism,
Github.

(P.S. Much love for everyone inside Github who has thrown a shit storm or even
quit over this shit)

------
throwawaysea
Corporations should remain politically neutral, and only act in profit
maximizing ways. That does not make accepting a contract with ICE political,
and it is disingenuous to make such a claim. Accepting the contract maximizes
profit.

Every country has borders and reasons to limit immigration in various ways
(for example, to certain skillsets). There is no blanket allowance to walk
into any country outside of a port. This is plainly illegal. When laws are
broken, someone needs to enforce the law, apply consequences, and do so as
efficiently as possible. ICE is that agency for the US. I feel like those who
think ICE somehow shouldn't exist are simply not being level headed and
ignoring the reality of the fact that we are a nation that exists first and
foremost to serve its _current_ citizens, just like all other nations.

Lastly, by taking political stances, these companies are discriminating
against the silent cohorts in their employee base that do not align with those
views. It is an especially big problem in tech companies, most of whom are
headquartered in the SF Bay Area or Seattle, two progressive/far-left areas
that have skewed politics. Other workers who don't have an issue with the
company serving ICE don't have a voice. They have no psychological safety. It
is irrational for companies to respond to employee pressure or social media
outrage - they should take randomized anonymous polls of their employee base
if they truly want a good signal on employee sentiment.

