Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its 'Intolerant' Liberal Culture - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/technology/inside-facebook-employees-political-bias.html <comment><USER4> Worked across very liberal and very conservative places in tech. Neither is pleasant.

In my opinion, the American self-image and self-worth largely characterized by subscription to a political ideology is the problem.

What bothers me is not dress codes,free meals,open offices,etc... But the very idea that a company would display or promote politics in the work place.

Why are companies promoting "pride",donating to trump,telling workers to attend 'lgbt tolerance' meetings,etc... Wth!!!!

If you are my coworker,I respect you as a colleague and a human being. Your private life and beliefs are not mine to police or encourage in anyway. Left,right,etc... Who cares? You're at work!

Look at it this way,if your company is pro something,it can be anti- that same thing as soon as it becomes profitable to do so. Imagine not being able to work in tech because how you vote,pray or who you associate with becomes inconvenient to the industry.

This is my question for you: Are you willing to surrender your right to believe what you want,associate with whom you want and support the political causes that matter to you in exchange for your political views and ideology becoming the norm you can't deviate from?

What is the alternative? Do politics with your friends, family and community,associate with whom you want and believe what you want. When at work respect your colleagues,not because of their politics and beliefs but because 1) they're human 2) you would want to be respected if you were in their shoes 3) out of respect for your own self

This isn't about left vs right or kkk vs blm. It's about corporations vs individuals,who decides what views,beliefs and associations are acceptable. Should society be run by the people or by the ruling class and their corporate machine?

<comment><USER5> I don't mean any offense, but it has been my experience that people who can afford to "put politics aside", so to speak, are people from demographics who didn't have politics "happen" to them.

When you are gay or trans and a significant chunk of people find your mere existence revolting, when you are black and a significant chunk of people believe you are innately less intelligent and more prone to violence, when you are a woman and a significant chunk of people believe you have no business starting a career or working in tech or people don't believe you when you claim to have been sexually assaulted, it's hard to treat "politics" as an abstract debate where free-thinking intellectuals joust in the marketplace of ideas. In these contexts, you actually _live_ "politics" \- every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep. You can't opt out of it.

I am taking these examples because they resonate best with what are considered "political" subjects in the West, but in more gruesome contexts, such as the situation of Syria, "politics" is whether you are pro-Assad, pro-rebel, which rebel group you are part of, etc. You can see how silly (at best) or insulting (at worst) it can be to try and dismiss politics when they are actually a matter of life or death.

Whenever there is a struggle, whenever there is an imbalance of power perceived by some to be unfair, there is politics. If you do not perceive that imbalance, it means you are on the better end of it, and your lack of stand is simply apathy for the status quo. I don't seek to judge you for that, but hopefully you may understand that some people are unhappy with the status quo and wish that it change, and that's why they're getting political.

<comment><USER6> I understand your position. But too often people who have legitimate gripes with society (like you say) are quick to classify legitimate disagreement with an attack on their identity. Disagreement over a company's diversity policies (for example) is not inherently an attack on anyone's personhood, but it is frequently interpreted as one, and with great rancor.

One definition of power that is sometimes given: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." If the climate around things such as diversity policies effectively suppresses dissent, then the advocates of such policies have real power, whether or not they psychologically perceive it.

<comment><USER5> >One definition of power that is sometimes given: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."

I'm pointing this out because I see no one else did, but that quote is from Kevin Alfred Strom, a neo-Nazi convicted for possession of child pornography ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Alfred_Strom)) and he really meant to convey not-so-subtle antisemitic undertones with it. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but I thought you'd wanted to know so you won't have this pointed out in a more formal context by less charitable people.

<comment><USER7> What a total sequitur. The point of the quote isn't who said it, it's that it's true.

<comment><USER8> You can spend all day criticizing people and organizations in power in the US. The most powerful people, the most powerful companies, and everything else. How is it true except as a dog whistle for conspiracies? You can literally spend all day calling whichever president happens to be in power a cunt, along with every congressperson, judge, General, and CEO. The people who literally have the power of life and death over the citizenry are constantly criticized.

Maybe the origin of the quote is important to understand what it really means. It's a dog whistle to claim that insertgroup is really the power behind the throne. It was a way of saying that because it's considered bad form to be a Jew-hating Nazi, and most of society will despise you for that, it means that Jews really run things. Changing Jews to some other group doesn't change much. Claiming that gays or blacks or "lefties" or whichever group you think are really in charge because you're not supposed to denigrate them, isn't a good point, and using a Nazi pedophile's quote to make it is telling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good for them. The structural change needed in our industry is for labor (or, to use a term we're apparently more comfortable with, "talent") to reassert itself, and for tech giants to reconcile themselves to the fact that they're accountable not just to their shareholders but to their employees. I hope this gets nasty, and that these FB employees ultimately find recourse in the NLRA.

We forget that this industry is still young. It's probably not even in its adolescence. When I started working, there was no such thing as an Internet giant. There was Intel and Microsoft and 30 different PC clone vendors and a bunch of small software shops competing to get their boxes on the shelves at Microcenter. A lot of ideas we take as axioms --- for instance, the idea that developers can't organize to coerce changes in their working environment --- haven't earned that status, and deserve to be challenged.

<comment><USER10> The idea that a bunch of highly paid conservative software developers would unionize and get the NLRB involved is rich.

<comment><USER9> Why?

We're all generally well-paid (even with respect to the value we create). But this whole message board is practically dedicated to the ways in which our industry pisses us off, from confiscatory IP clauses to open offices to death march projects. Who's to say labor can't organize simply for a better shop to work in? That's not unprecedented.

<comment><USER10> I associate unions with homogenized labor, stratus of equivalent positions, but we're all too unique 10x butterflies for that. I mean, what part of your career arc would have been better served in a unionized environment?

<comment><USER9> Who says it has to be an according-to-Hoyle union? The NLRA covers all concerted organized action. Start a professional association. The doctors and lawyers have them. We don't get one? Why?

<comment><USER11> There's the ACM and IEEE already though?

<comment><USER9> The ACM is an academic association. The IEEE should be more important professionally than it is; one problem with the IEEE is that you have to have a related bachelors degree to join.

Developers should start a new organization that represents the interests of employees of the technology industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This has become a big problem. Look at WeWork. That company banned employees from expensing meals that happened to have non-fish meat. I can't think of something more personal than what people choose to eat.

They are imposing their beliefs about diet on employees. It's full blown coercion. Some companies are taking the activism a bit too far.

<comment><USER13> They're not really banning eating such meals - they simply don't want to cover their costs. I don't really see the issue personally. There are many things companies don't want to cover which they get to decide on.

<comment><USER14> Say I work for WeWork and travel for work. I have a limited palate and like almost nothing that could be considered vegetarian and even less that would be vegan. I am now required to pay out of pocket for all my meals, when normally I could choose to eat at home, which is not possible thanks to my job requiring me to travel. Depending on the area I'm travelling to this could be a large expense that under normal conditions the company would cover, but because of the politics of the founders it isn't.

The arguments I've heard usually talk about how companies often don't pay for alcohol (which I think is also ridiculous, if I'm travelling for work I will be stressed and could use a nice drink to relax after the day). The flaw is firstly that food is required to live, and also just because some company doesn't have to provide for $ITEM doesn't mean it's not a nice thing to do for your employees.

<comment><USER13> Okay, but that didn't convince me much personally. I think its absolutely in the company's liberty to cover the costs of the things they want to cover - <USER2> is the case with all benefits (other than gov mandated ones). They are just perks after all.

<comment><USER15> Disagree. I don't think of covering my expenses when traveling as a "perk". I consider it part of the minimum standard of fair dealing.

And, for those who don't see a problem with this, do you see a problem if some other company specifically won't reimburse for Mexican restaurants?

<comment><USER13> I see your point - I think a lot of things today boil down to: a substantial number of people, and in this case science too, has agreed that one action is "good" for the planet. However, not everyone agrees - some people feel that all actions should be seen equally.

What I'm trying to say is that many would agree We Work are trying to do something good for the planet here. Another group of people don't see it that way.

Me personally - I would say in this instance the company should have liberty to exercise their own preference (incl Mexican restaurants). If it is ridiculous to their employees, they will quit. I believe in this case they have a substantial number of employees who don't mind or understand their reasoning.

Either way, I don't find it a human rights violation or anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Regarding 'only 100+ people out of 25,000 employees' comments - I would bet that the total number of employees who disagree with mainstream PC liberal views so prominent in our industry is about half, at least one third. However - most are choosing to stay quiet.

I am posting this anonymously as well. While I don't work at FB, I work at a 'hot tech startup', and cannot risk being 'outed' as a conservative. I would categorize my views as 'slightly right of center', very moderate, but it seems like anything not agreeing with Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders' socialism is equal to being called a 'nazi' in our industry.

I feel very sad about this state of affairs, and I applaud Mr. Amerige for his bravery to do this. I applaud everyone who chose to publicly join him in this effort, putting their careers and livelihoods at danger, risking never being employed in Silicon Valley again.

</comment><comment><USER17> A couple of thoughts:

* As much as I enjoy forwarding and debating my own political ideas in settings where I think there's an opportunity, I've never considered work a primary venue for this, and the premise that political diversity should be a priority for a business is one that doesn't seem to have any kind of supporting argument. Companies exist to organize an economic activity. Other activity is incidental. Ideally your employment status is not affected by outside expressions. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you expect to accomplish internally. Especially if the gestalt is different.

* If Mr. Amerige is a fan of Rand, perhaps he should consider that those who own FB would, under Rand's philosophy, apparently be quite entitled to do whatever the hell they feel like with the company, obligate employees to take whatever position they like or leave.

* I've spent time arguing center-to-somewhat-conservative views on liberal websites like Metafilter. I've spent time forwarding nuanced religious or rationalist points in congregations of believing Mormons. I lean center left among family and friends who often lean pretty right. I know exactly what it's like to have to make a case in front of an audience that's not at all sympathetic to your point of view. Yep, sometimes it's super frustrating. I'm not seeing any discussion of particular consequences at Facebook, though, so it's impossible to tell if Amerige and any who agree with him are facing anything more difficult than the near inescapable social accountability for expressing a view where the stakes are a loss of some respect and gaining a bit of baseline hostility/distrust. And my experience is that even if it's an uphill battle, if you're patient and your position is genuinely well thought-out, it's often possible to make some measure of persuasion to people who you're giving both a reason to like you and a reason to think about what you're saying.

<comment><USER18> According to the article the problem is not that the owners are doing what they want like Rand espouses, but hypocrisy, namely that they claim to be tolerant and are in fact acting intolerantly: "We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology." (But I'm guessing Mr. Amerige wouldn't be much happier if were authentic and open about not tolerating dissenting views, so you have a good point there.)

I don't see the need to debate political ideas at work, either, but if work claims to offer an all-ideas-welcome forum, then it should actually be that. My observation is that liberals tend to talk loudly about "tolerance" but are pretty intolerant of ideas they don't like. Not that conservatives are necessarily less intolerant, they just don't go around claiming to be tolerant. Authentic intolerance, if you will.

<comment><USER17> "Authentic intolerance" made me laugh and there's some truth to it.

The tolerance paradox comes up a lot, but I don't think it's that hard to decode, really. Nobody has universal "tolerance" \-- everyone has things they consider intolerable if they have values at all. Characterizing someone as intolerant is essentially a somewhat pejorative way of saying that you've found a boundary value for them and you don't think it's drawn in the right place because it trespasses on some liberty you think you or someone else should have. How defensible that is depends partly on the strength of the case for the value and partly on whether any observing jurors share your temperament.

And I think tolerance happens on different axes. For some people, tolerance means allowing space for all kinds in society. For some it means maximal ability to live as you choose. For some it means a free expression of ideas.

Whatever you call people who value one or more of these things (conservative, liberal, progressive), if someone trammels in action or expression on any of those values, it's not terribly surprising they might face some hostility rather than conversational/social tolerance because _they 're challenging a value of tolerance_.

When conservatives accuse left-leaners of intolerance, what I usually observe is that a conservative has forwarded some sort of idea under which space for all kinds in society or certain bands of acceptable behavior are limited, and then they're surprised that they face hostility and dismayed that they can't even say whatever they like without social consequences.

It's tempting to put conservatives as champions as speech at this point based on the fact that left-leaners see some ideas as not just points of debate/exploration but as attacks on values (which they do)... but of course there's plenty of ideas conservatives don't like to the point they'll engage with similar or greater hostility (see: kneeling during the national anthem). I think _very_ few people are fully tolerant of any idea, and many of those who are probably have been in a fortunate position in life where ideas rarely have concrete consequences for them.

Your point about the values Facebook claims is well-taken, of course. This discussion arguably takes on a different aspect to the extent that Facebook tries to be quite liberal in its approach to speech and ideas. If that were to apply internally, if it were to take the shape of a policy where employees could openly discuss politics without fear of affecting their employment status, that'd be quite remarkable considering how incidental at best (and more likely friction-inducing) that is to the activity of most companies. Perhaps FB claims it as an ideal without a whole lot of care about how it actually plays out, perhaps it's just a PR move, or perhaps they genuinely consider it as important. But even if they do... there's simply no way to guard against diminished respect among co-workers if you're fond of Ayn Rand and they've assessed her and found her severely lacking, and little way to eliminate consequent individual hostility.

Is there any evidence that Mr. Amerige or others he holds solidarity with have faced anything else?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The manifesto states "There's only going to be one core rule in the group, and it's that if you attack a person's character, rather than their ideas, you will be banned."

People whose ideas are on the wrong side of ethical will often say this sort of thing- as though the two things, a person's character and their ideas, are somehow not connected. I'm not sure where they get the idea that the ideas they support indicate a lot about their character, and they will be judged accordingly.

<comment><USER20> Also in the memo he stats

>Your colleagues are afraid because they know that they — not their ideas — will be attacked. They know that all the talk of "openness to different perspectives" does not apply to causes of "social justice," immigration, "diversity", and "equality." On this issues, you can either keep quiet or sacrifice your reputation and career.

You shouldn't be called a racist because you think that the US should work to ensure no one crosses our southern border without permission.

<comment><USER19> >You shouldn't be called a racist because you think that the US should work to ensure no one crosses our southern border without permission.

I would ask anyone who believes that the US should work to to control entry at the southern border to question _why_ they believe this is an important thing to focus on. What is the root of that belief? Why should the US be exclusive? What benefit do you derive from keeping it exclusive, and why is the accident of your birth somehow firmer ground of entitlement to citizenship than any other abstract concept?

Perhaps they are not "a racist" but I strongly believe that the desire to control the border is deeply rooted in racism in America, and anyone having this discussion needs to be willing to consider the basis for their ideas.

<comment><USER21> Also interesting that they refer to the southern border. Is there something different about the northern border? Different type of people, perhaps???

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As I have mentioned in other threads, of the dozens or possibly hundreds of co-workers I've worked directly with during my time so far in Silicon Valley I have met exactly one who disclosed conservative views and support of the Republican party. Either one, there really is a massive lack of political diversity to the extent that less than 1% SV developers are conservativez or (more likely in my opinion) two, there is widespread fear of retaliation and discrimination for making even relatively mainstream conservative views known. And I wouldn't blame them for the latter. I routinely see thinly veiled threats against conservatives in company slack channels (e.g. threatening "Nazis" while subsequently calling border control proponents "Nazis" not long after).

<comment><USER23> I find this incredibly surprising. Do you give them a chance to?

So many of my colleagues (at a big tech co) have expressed various conservative views. Granted, I live in NYC, but this feels a bit like you're experiencing confirmation bias.

<comment><USER22> Yes, I've discussed politics with many of my coworkers. Few of them have any hesitation discussing liberal standpoints. I can only assume that conservatives are staying silent.

I can't claim to speak for conservatives, but I can totally understand why they would stay silent given the atmosphere. See the reply to my other comment, where a HN poster straight up says they would fire any employees that support Trump: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864280)

<comment><USER23> > Yes, I've discussed politics with many of my coworkers. Few of them have any > hesitation discussing liberal standpoints.

If the linked commenter were to say nobody would express their conservative views to them, that wouldn't surprise me.

However, it seems like you'd be a bit more sympathetic (than the linked commenter). I've found a number of colleagues from red states who supported/support Trump (often for reasons posted in Altman's article about crossing the aisle - single issue voters etc).

Lots of conservatives on Wall Street, too (many leave for big tech cos after a few years).

Finally, I see a bunch of tech-libertarians, which is sort of a hybrid of some conservative financial ideas and some progressive social ideas.

<comment><USER22> I don't disagree with your experience in NY, but it isn't a very good counterexample to my experiences in Silicon Valley. For what it's worth, I grew up in and routinely visit the Seattle area and I don't think it has the same atmosphere as the San Francisco and Silicon Valley area. I have met plenty of conservatives in Seattle (well, mostly in the outer metro areas of Bellevue, Kirkland, etc.).

<comment><USER23> Yes! It's possible that is the entire source of the discrepancy.

But I am still a bit surprised that you haven't at least run into some libertarians in CA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A lot of hassle could be spared if we all followed one simple rule while at work:

"In polite company, it's not proper to talk about sex, religion, or politics"

No matter what you have to say on those topics, you'll step on _someone 's_ toes. There's really no good reason to talk about it at work unless you're in a brothel, church, or a capital building.

<comment><USER25> Maybe it's a US thing? In France we regularly have somewhat heated (in the sense that we obiously disagree) talks about politics, religion and so on but it remains cordial becaus, you know, we're adults...

Isn't it simpler for everyone to behave like respectful adults even when you fundamentally disagree than making a blanket rule to only ever discuss non sensible subjects?

<comment><USER26> French politics is very stable. Your leaders tend to be all very similar, at least in recent years. Macron is not wildly different to Hollande etc.

Despite that, France routinely sees a lot of remarkably aggressive political activism - farmers dumping manure on roads, the incident with the fishermen pelting the boat with rocks a few days ago, huge quantities of striking and so on.

I don't think there's anything special about France that makes French people able to discuss politics in a more civilised way. If France were to see significant change in politics the discussions would stop being 'adult' very quickly. For example if you had a referendum and France voted to leave the EU, "Frexit" would rapidly turn into a much more heated topic than it is even in the UK, I bet. It's all about the stakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Has Facebook ever had anything close to cultural principles? At least Google had "don't be evil" for a while.

This is such a clear mirror for what Facebook is going through itself. As a company it never stood for anything except for growth and engagement at all costs. When leadership doesn't stand for anything, it invites others to try to guide culture.

If Zuckerberg had come out to say either the product or the company's culture stands for something, it would put this all to rest...but he won't, because growth and engagement at all costs.

<comment><USER28> I don't buy that zuvkerberg is a liberal. He's made it clear he doesn't respect anyone's privacy nor honor their trust. He seems highly manipulative wrapped in whatever phrasing works at the moment.

<comment><USER29> Respecting personal privacy and honoring individual's trust is hardly a liberal policy plank. For better or worse, the platform is predicated on the state generally knowing better than the individual on social policy.

<comment><USER28> Not at all. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism)

<comment><USER29> I'm aware of classical liberals, but minus some minor differences the contemporary term for them is "libertarian"; in my experience the only people who use the term 'classical liberal' are libertarians seeking to distance themselves from their own cohort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I had never heard of Alex Jones before. It doesn't particularly bother me if a couple companies kick him off their platform.

But it was really disturbing that it was a coordinated move by all the major social platforms at once. Wow. It's shocking that they would cooperate with eachother on those decisions.

Secondarily, it undermines the idea that they can leave all kinds of bad stuff on their network (libel, etc.) and pretend like they aren't the publisher. They really want to have it both ways.

<comment><USER31> Is there any proof of coordination?

<comment><USER32> There's not, because there wasn't any.

It's like an angry drunk complaining that all the bars he's banned from are coordinating to ban him. It's like, no, you were an angry drunk separately at all of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For fuck's sake. Don't people like _work_ at work anymore?

<comment><USER34> The reason Facebook is so politicised and stuff like this comes up is because it hosts user-generated content, and has explicitly chosen to decide what it deems allowable beyond actual law. That makes it nearly impossible to keep the politics out of it.

In contrast, something like a machine shop (random example) won't be politicised much if at all, because the work doesn't revolve around making political decisions.

<comment><USER35> Have you worked at a machine shop?

During machine down time I've heard some of the most radical Stalinist politics coming from people who you would think are only interested in football and beer while trying to fix the lathe for an order that's due in 3 hours. By the same token I've heard some of the most extreme fascist views too.

<comment><USER34> I have no doubt that political conversations do come up, but they don't really factor into the actual work that takes place --- probably because, as someone who lead me through one warned, "the machines don't care who you are or what you think. Get yourself in the wrong place and they'll eat you alive."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Seems like it's fairly true if they're already getting complaints from employees while not breaking any actual company policies.

<comment><USER37> And those employees complaining were told they're not breaking any company policies. Their group is still open and nothing has been done against them.

What a controversy.

<comment><USER38> It actually is a sign of something terribly wrong with the company's culture. If a notoriously liberal company determined that complaints about "racially offensive" posts in this group were false, then one can reasonably believe that the complaints were indeed false. That means that other employees were simply lodging false complaints to interfere with this group's right to exist.

Think about that for a second. Other employees were so outraged by a tiny handful of their colleagues banding together to express mildly conservative views that they lied to the company about the content in this group in an attempt to eradicate them from existence. That is the opposite of tolerance, and it is reveals a toxic underbelly at a disturbingly powerful company. Everyone, regardless of political affiliation, should be concerned by that.

<comment><USER39> Is anybody really surprised that FB's internal culture could be toxic?

Look at the product and the mission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Duh corporations are intolerant of discrimination because discrimination is ILLEGAL

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1957](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1957)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1991](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1991)

Guess what, corporations are also intolerant of drug use and other activities that many Americans perform but are none-the-less ILLEGAL.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think this issue is tricky, because some political ideology that the "right" expresses involve a statement of the identity of their coworkers. I find that in the valley, people express diverse set of political economic ideologies, but sensitive social issues are taboo. I think people probably shouldn't view it as lack of diversity of political opinions, it's more that statements and ideology expressed at work shouldn't unfairly be targeting a particular set of identities, and that goes both ways. Like if you're white, straight, male, and come from rural America you should never feel like you're being discriminated against from people's political ideologies that target your identity, for example statements like: "I believe that the government should deport white straight males to increase diversity." If you are and HR isn't taking any actions I believe that is grounds enough to blow the whistle for hateful speech coming from the left.

<comment><USER42> > some political ideology that the "right" expresses involve a statement of > the identity of their coworkers.

That stereotype is the problem. Lots of people on the right have nothing against women's rights, lgbt rights, black rights etc, but still gets treated as if were against those things just for expressing unrelated conservative talking points.

<comment><USER41> Well what are some of those talking points? Remember I said fiscally people are pretty expressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This thread is way out of control. Created by an anonymous account. And with a lot of comments written in bad faith.

Can someone remove this so we can move on and continue with rational discussions? Please? :)

</comment><comment><USER44> I worked for Facebook for almost 6 years and I wouldn't say it's culture is any more liberal than the rest of the SF bay area.

For this population, they see their own views as normal and the center. While from the outside conservatives think it's far left of center, the "dozens" of employees who don't feel this way are the outliers. There are "dozens" of employees who feel FB's culture isn't liberal enough. With an employee base of tens of thousands you are going to have disagreements in philosophy, but Facebook does nothing to hide the company culture in it's hiring practice. There is no bait and switch going on. Other voices are heard, but if you have a minority viewpoint you shouldn't expect the world to pivot around what you think is right.

</comment><comment><USER45> Let us say person C1 says: "If person A1 preaches/supports discrimination/intolerance based on his/her belief, person A1 cannot complain about discrimination or intolerance he/she faces. One cannot say I should not be discriminated on any criteria, but I can discriminate others with some criteria which the other doesn't agree.

A person B1 can have a moral compass that people should be treated as they treat others. In which case person B1 may be totally fine being discriminatory/intolerant toward A1 because of A1's intolerant/discriminatory behaviour. Person B1 will be total toleralant towards others and will be considered a tolerant person".

Now is person C1 preaching intolerance/discrimination? Perhaps not, as Person C1 is preaching "treat others as you want to be treated" and may lead to "intolerance toward intolerance only".

Maybe there are logical flaws in the above argument as most spiritual people will not preach intolerance towards even A1. However I assume the spiritual person will not hesitate to point out to A1 about "treat others as you want to be treated".

However if A2 is preaching equality and having a different view on say some other topic and faces discrimination, then people who discriminate should be ready to face "discrimination".

One thing that people are making mistake is if A2 and A1 are similar on many views and even if A2 disagrees with A1 on "equality", A2 gets clubbed with A1 and start being discriminated like A1.

<comment><USER46> nobody right wing at facebook supports discrimination/intolerance against other people. Nobody says there, on that page, KKK quotes or preaches nazism.

Being ring wing doesn't mean you're intolerant:

\- no general free healthcare, only private for people that work

\- lower taxes for everyone

\- no gender or racial quotas in hiring or entry at university (against positive discrimination)

\- no free trade agreements with other countries

\- no aid to poorer countries

\- close the boders to immigrants

\- no refugees

How is any of this discriminating or intolerant? I see it as a different opinion. And I am a liberal, immigrant myself and don't agree with those political statements

<comment><USER45> I agree with you. All the examples you gave should be seen as different opinion and a person should be able to have that and work peacefully.

However if someone says that certain people are more capable because of their gender will you call it discriminatory? (I would think it is).

<comment><USER46> of course, because you then look at the gender before hiring someone and that's discrimination.

however, it is not discrimination if someone is against favouring a certain gender in hiring to achieve a gender balanced workforce. that's just his opinion and should be able to say it without repercussions.

<comment><USER45> Yes completely agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I must be naive, because I cannot think of any political topic I would be discussing at work. How is this intolerance of right-wing ideology being expressed? What views specifically are being not-tolerated?

Without these specifics, it's hard to understand the problem.

<comment><USER48> Diversity practices in hiring, for example. In the case of Facebook, things like moderation/curation of the various news feeds and arguments around "suppression" of certain topics.

<comment><USER47> >Diversity practices in hiring, for example

I'm a hiring manager, but I don't work in HR. I follow HR guidelines and ask relevant policy questions. Nothing more. I don't express an opinion about our hiring practices around diversity.

>moderation/curation of news feeds

The article doesn't say that all these individuals raising the issue work on one feature. That would be a relevant detail. My reading of this piece suggests that a swathe of individuals don't like company culture — the bits that bind employees above the work itself - and that's the part I can't grasp. I work at a Fortune 50 company and I have no idea the political or religious affiliations of my coworkers. I could guess, but don't want to.

I just don't see how a company culture can have an impactful political bias to people who mind their own business. The article doesn't specify any specific instance, so I can't form an opinion on the validity of their claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Thank you for speaking up Brian Amerige. We need more people like you.

</comment><comment><USER50> Scare quotes are around wrong word.

<comment><USER51> Those aren't scare-quotes. Those are normal quotes. The title is quoting "Some Facbook Employees."

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The comments in this thread are shocking, Inquisition level stuff. I can't believe I spend time here.

Remember when HN was tech stuff? Now it's:

      manfredo 16 minutes ago

      The following views were listed on the memo:

      * Support of President Trump (e.g. This and Palmer Lucky's campaign contributions)

      * "All lives matter"

      * Criticism of Islam's human rights record.

      * Calling the company's art politically radical .

      Which, if any, of these views don't deserve respect?

      reply

      brainkim 9 minutes ago |

      The first three are deeply problematic and rooted in deep-seated white supremacist beliefs and were it up to me
      I would fire anyone who held those views.
      Sorry, that's just how I have to feel these given everything that's been going on these days.

Who are these people? Is this just satire? Am I just getting old, and no one cares about freedom to disagree, debate, etc? Do people not have historical context about suppressing dissenting opinions, even if you hate them?

Am I crazy, and the world has just moved on to be horrible?

<comment><USER53> Enable "showdead" in your profile and you will see that anything that moves beyond the left is promptly flagged and, sometimes, the account gets banned for "starting flames".

<comment><USER52> But absolute freedom of speech IS A LEFT WING OPINION! Is no one here old enough to remember the fight over pornography or offensive language in art/music/movies? That was the right trying to shut down speech they disagreed with via corporate power! These people are _not_ liberals, they're something else that's new and _terrifying_

<comment><USER54> "But absolute freedom of speech IS A LEFT WING OPINION"

That only holds if you're willing to perform enough mental gymnastics to somehow transmogrify the gulags, mass graves, firing squads and famines that the USSR, Mao Zedong, Cuba, Pol Pot, etc. employed to deal with dissenters into features of right wing governance.

Or just pretend these things don't count...

<comment><USER55> One could argue they were "punching a nazi" of their time. The establishment of a dictatorship of the working class was a mission for which no human sacrifice was too great.

Obviously we're nowhere near that in modern US, BUT the hints of "violence in exchange for a dissenting opinion" and "what I don't agree with is Nazism" are unpleasant to say the least.

<comment><USER56> >the hints of "violence in exchange for a dissenting opinion"

I couldn't agree more. I've seen both actual violence and extreme glorification of violence against people of the opposite political affiliation more and more over the past couple years. Many people seem to dismiss the calls to violence as "trolls", which is actually probably true, but I have to wonder if there is much of a difference between a troll who calls for violence and loves to see people get attacked at rallies, and a person who would actually be happy about these things if they became worse than they are now. I feel like there used to be a solid distinction, but I'm not sure any longer that there's really a hard line between all "trolls" and people who would actually enact these things, given the power (and given no significant threat to themselves, of course).

<comment><USER55> In addition to the violence aspect, there's also total power asymmetry in bigoteering. Calling someone a Nazi, a white supremacist, a racist, a bigot, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a transphobe, a cultural appropriator, whatever other trendy moral shortcoming du jour, with no need for supporting evidence whatsoever, has no downside to the accuser. Accuse away. You're doing a service to society.

The entirety of the burden is always on the accused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Always a good time to bring up the excellent [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

<comment><USER57> Wow, that was a great read!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Republican Party has moved further and further right for the last 30+ years. When one side of an argument goes extreme it almost forces the other side to react severely. A similar stressor works on young adults. They've spent almost the entirety of their lives up until the point they move out or go to college at their parents' discretion(s).

<comment><USER58> I don't think this is true at all, I think it's the middle that's moved. I was quite left leaning when I was a teenager, but some of my views would be called 'alt-right' or extreme today. My values haven't really changed that much, but they're much more aligned with the right today. (Downvoted within seconds, very nice).

<comment><USER59> Name me a couple of these views which haven't changed, and qualified you as left-leaning as a teenager but alt-right today.

<comment><USER60> Not @AmericanChopper, but I can easily do that:

1\. Believing in the near-absolute protection of free speech, even that which I find repugnant.

2\. Acknowledging that sex differences are less than 100% culturally determined.

<comment><USER61> Believing in near-absolute protection of free speech is a lot easier when you're not the direct target of that "free speech." Not trying to assume your specific social location, but I know a lot of centrists who feel as you do, and they are white men. They might be repulsed by Nazi's who advocate ethnic cleansing, but I have to actually worry about what those people might do if they take power. I have a vested interest in making sure they cannot radicalize more people, and as such I am firmly for censoring them.

<comment><USER60> > Believing in near-absolute protection of free speech is a lot easier when > you're not the direct target of that "free speech."

Which is why I have a hell of a lot of respect for David Goldberger, the Jewish lawyer for the ACLU who defended the free speech of Neo-Nazis in 1977: [https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html](https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-0941-3.html)

The problem with your line of reasoning is that it forces you into what most on the left consider a very difficult fork.

PREMISE: Imposing both government sanctions and private sector no-platforming is a justifiable response to murderous ideologies.

(This is a decent, good-faith attempt to interpret the basic principle that seems to motivate people who say the things you say. In isolation, before you read the rest of my argument, I'm willing to bet that you would accept this premise as written. If you didn't, let me know.)

1\. Communism is a murderous ideology. (See: all historical records of the 20th century.) Therefore, McCarthy did nothing wrong, and the members of the Hollywood Blacklist were merely the Alex Jones of their time.

2\. Communism is not actually a murderous ideology. Therefore, Stalin did nothing wrong.

The fork is basically that, once you accept the premise that allows you to censor and no-platform Nazis, you either have to be a McCarthyist or a Stalinist, or at least an apologist for one of them.

<comment><USER61> While I do agree with your stated premise, I disagree with the notion that agreeing with the premise forces me to choose between McCarthy and Stalin. My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted nonmurdous views as well. It's my impression that people advocating socialist policies (or any policy not strictly capitalist) were also targeted. I feel I can object to this, while also objecting to horrors wrought by Stalin. I'm not advocating the censorship of conservative views in general, just the murderous views expressed by a small faction.

As a personal side note, I've been enjoying this discussion with you. If you are interested in keeping it up, I'll reply sometime in the morning EST.

<comment><USER60> > My counter point is this: McCarthy started a witch hunt that targeted > nonmurdous views as well.

Well, maybe. It turns out that the much-condemned "Hollywood blacklist" (which was not government action, just the act of private businesses!) only listed card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA, which was directly bankrolled from Moscow. Which makes those screenwriters far, far, far worse than, say, Alex Jones or James Damore, to name two recent victims of the current left-wing "witch hunt".

The main reason the various bans on political parties in Europe haven't devolved into witch hunts is because the bans are in name only. The former communist states in Europe tended to ban the communist party, which immediately went back into business under another name, and no one cared. And, sadly, the crypto-fascist parties like BNP and FN and AfD are probably even more powerful than they would be if you just let them be honest about being fascists. At that point you're just tabooing words and symbols. If you followed the same policy in the US, you wouldn't actually end up censoring any KKK or neo-Nazis, because they would just rebrand as "pan-European nationalists" or something and pursue the same platform.

It's most reasonable to set that bar, if it must be set, at direct and unambiguous incitement of violence, which would not include things like flying swastika flags. Communist Party USA was never banned, unlike Nazi, fascist, and communist parties across Europe, and I agree with that policy. The marginal risk of Stalinism that is incurred by not outlawing CPUSA is much smaller than the marginal risk of totalitarianism inherent in ever allowing or normalizing the censorship of any political ideology. And honestly, neo-Nazis are an even bigger joke.

Any ideology that's unpopular enough to ban isn't popular enough to represent a real threat. The people banning it, though—they're the ones to keep an eye on. Antifa literally march down the street wearing black shirts and beating up people they perceive as enemies, and they don't see the irony in that. Sure, they should go to jail as soon as they lay hands on anyone, just like anyone else should, but I'm not going to begrudge their right to wear ridiculous black outfits and wave black-and-red flags around, and they're a lot more likely to end up sending folks to death camps than those neo-Nazi clowns.

<comment><USER61> > Which makes those screenwriters far, far, far worse than, say, Alex Jones or > James Damore, to name two recent victims of the current left-wing "witch > hunt".

I'm honestly surprised to see Jones and Damore mentioned in the same sentence. Jones deliberately spreads misinformation and personally response for directing a lot of hatred and harassment towards innocent people. Damore just published some unpopular (and in my opinion, harmful) views. I lean far left, and even I think that situation was mishandled.

> It turns out that the much-condemned "Hollywood blacklist" (which was not > government action, just the act of private businesses!) only listed card- > carrying members of the Communist Party USA

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist): Scholar Thomas Doherty describes how the HUAC hearings swept onto the blacklist those who had never even been particularly active politically, let alone suspected of being Communists: "On March 21, 1951, the name of the actor Lionel Stander was uttered by the actor Larry Parks during testimony before HUAC. "Do you know Lionel Stander?" committee counsel Frank S. Tavenner inquired. Parks replied he knew the man, but had no knowledge of his political affiliations. No more was said about Stander either by Parks or the committee – no accusation, no insinuation. Yet Stander's phone stopped ringing. Prior to Parks's testimony, Stander had worked on ten television shows in the previous 100 days. Afterwards, nothing."

> And, sadly, the crypto-fascist parties like BNP and FN and AfD are probably > even more powerful than they would be if you just let them be honest about > being fascists.

This is speculation. I'm aware that these groups will continue rebranding and resurfacing, but I don't think a passive approach is effective here. I think a perfect example of this is the Unite the Right rally 1 year ago, vs the reunion this past year. After the events a year ago, many white supremacists were doxxed, shamed, and fired. This year, no one came out to the reunion. If the rally a year ago was a success, do you think that would be the case? I think its reasonable to expect that more people would come out for the event, embolden by previous successes. I know that all the people involved in the rally last year are still white supremacists. My concern is them indoctrinating more members and growing in power. And I think passively letting them have a platform enables them to reach more people, embolden more people, and generally grow in strength.

> The marginal risk of Stalinism that is incurred by not outlawing CPUSA is > much smaller than the marginal risk of totalitarianism inherent in ever > allowing or normalizing the censorship of any political ideology. And > honestly, neo-Nazis are an even bigger joke.

Sure, they may be a joke now. But they are less of a joke now than the were 10 years ago. They have a larger microphone, and while I can't speak for enrollment numbers, the members they have are more active and more visible. They have someone in office that they view as "their guy". By letting them have their platform, we risk letting them grow more. And that is not a marginal risk to me. For me, the marginal risk is that we will ban a non- murderous ideology. I see that both less likely, and safer for me personally, than the alternative.

<comment><USER60> > Scholar Thomas Doherty describes how the HUAC hearings swept onto the > blacklist those who had never even been particularly active politically, let > alone suspected of being Communists...

I was referring more to the original Hollywood Ten. Although, I'm curious to hear how the witch hunt you describe would not, in fact, happen with a similarly concerted attempt targeted at far-right views.

> I think a perfect example of this is the Unite the Right rally 1 year ago, > vs the reunion this past year. After the events a year ago, many white > supremacists were doxxed, shamed, and fired. This year, no one came out to > the reunion. If the rally a year ago was a success, do you think that would > be the case?

If anything, that's an argument that we _don 't_ have to ban Nazis, because all of that happened without any kind of laws in the first place.

Although, I think this also demonstrates what complete rank amateurs the Charlottesville crowd really was. If they had followed the most basic precautions taken by the antifa/black bloc crowd and just _covered their faces_ , it would have been a lot harder to dox them.

The only reason these people are more visible is because the media is putting a spotlight on them to drive the narrative that they're a growing and increasingly dangerous group. It's very reminiscent of the opening stages of the McCarthyist witch hunts.

<comment><USER61> > Although, I'm curious to hear how the witch hunt you describe would not, in > fact, happen with a similarly concerted attempt targeted at far-right views.

This is a concern of mine, which is why I took time to differentiate Jones and Damore. I see one as having a legitimate cause for deplatforming, and the other as reactionary.

> If anything, that's an argument that we don't have to ban Nazis, because all > of that happened without any kind of laws in the first place.

I'm curious, do you see a difference between social deplatforming, and a technological deplatforming? Those Nazi's are no longer able/willing to express their ideas in physical space because of pressures exerted by private citizens and institutions. As a society, we've limited these peoples' free speech, and I view that as A Good Thing because it has resulted in lower attendance at subsequent rallies. In the same vein, big tech companies may also be limiting the access to free speech of these people, but I'm okay with that given the views of the people they are limiting.

<comment><USER60> > This is a concern of mine, which is why I took time to differentiate Jones > and Damore. I see one as having a legitimate cause for deplatforming, and > the other as reactionary.

Well, isn't that the thing? If you already accept as a given that censorship is legally and morally justified and you turn it into a mere policy decision of who is worthy of censorship, there is a real and present danger of that mere policy decision turning into outright and explicit oppression.

It's like a lot of the classic civil liberties scenarios, like how the "ticking time bomb scenario" can justify torture. So let's talk about that case, by way of analogy. If there's a ticking time bomb, and you can verify within minutes where the bomb is, you can just club someone with a wrench or something until he tells you, and if it turns out the bomb isn't where he told you, you keep torturing him until he tells the truth. In that single, specific, narrow circumstance, you might be able to justify torture. But once you've made a policy of "torture is sometimes justified", how the hell are you going to make sure they only use it in the extreme edge cases where it's called for? More likely, from a rule-utilitarian standpoint, you just end up causing a lot more pain and suffering by letting a bunch of people get tortured unnecessarily.

So, even if there are individual cases where you can have a net reduction in expected totalitarianism and state murder by censoring totalitarian, murderous ideologies, allowing such censorship risks those exact ideologies sneaking in through the back door.

In the free speech case, it's even more dire, because the standard propaganda narrative of murderous, totalitarian ideologies seems to be, "$BOOGEYMAN is murderous and dangerous and we need to restrict civil liberties in order to protect you from them". Nazis never campaigned for universal liberties; they just campaigned for installing themselves as the oppressors and their perceived oppressors as the victims, while pooh-poohing anyone who did advocate for universal liberties.

> I'm curious, do you see a difference between social deplatforming, and a > technological deplatforming?

I'm actually idealistic enough that I don't think _anyone_ , even literal Nazis, should be fired for their political views as long as they don't bring those views into the workplace.

I think the pattern of tabooing certain forms of extremism causes more problems than it solves. If you don't actually let racist people say overtly racist things, they're going to say racist-adjacent things that are moderate enough to be held in good faith, like "unrestricted immigration is culturally disruptive" or "the Muslim world doesn't seem to share our cultural values when it comes to respecting women", and then you can't tell the racist trolls apart from people who genuinely hold those moderate views, and now we're at the point of absurdity and indirection where the racist trolls themselves post slogans like, "it's OK to be white", which makes it really, really awkward for those of us who aren't racist trolls, but don't have any rhetorical space left to argue against the scores of far-leftists who regularly state that, actually, it isn't OK to be white.

<comment><USER61> > It's like a lot of the classic civil liberties scenarios, like how the > "ticking time bomb scenario" can justify torture...

That's all good, but we still have a bomb to find. If we say censorship is off the table of acceptable methods to combat Nazis, what are our tools? I'm going to stress again that I haven't seen any convincing argument that a passive approach will work here. The arguments all _sound_ great ("Just ignore them and let them fizzle out!") but I'd like some historical precedents to look at before I can believe that's true. Additionally, the passive approaches don't mention that these groups are active and recruiting. They have plans and playbooks for radicalizing more members. I feel it is legitimate to worry that they will continue to galvanize and grow in power unless we stop them. But I am open to hearing alternative solutions to censorship, as long as they are more thought out and convincing.

> If you don't actually let racist people say overtly racist things...

I've got almost the same question here. In your ideal world, how do we respond when someone says something racist? Do we ignore it? Do we try to teach them why they're wrong? Do we denounce them and call it a day? These are serious questions.

<comment><USER60> > In your ideal world, how do we respond when someone says something racist? > Do we ignore it? Do we try to teach them why they're wrong? Do we denounce > them and call it a day? These are serious questions.

Well, there are two options:

If a lot of people seem to give credence to their ideas, then we absolutely have to debate those ideas in the public sphere, as overtly as possible, and because we happen to be right, we will prevail in an open debate.

If, as seems to be the case today, almost nobody gives credence to their ideas, then we just let them make fools of themselves, kind of like how no one minds David Icke's claims about how the British royal family are secretly reptilians from outer space.

> Additionally, the passive approaches don't mention that these groups are > active and recruiting. They have plans and playbooks for radicalizing more > members. I feel it is legitimate to worry that they will continue to > galvanize and grow in power unless we stop them. But I am open to hearing > alternative solutions to censorship, as long as they are more thought out > and convincing.

I would actually question the notion that these groups are growing in size and influence. While it's hard to have a perfectly controlled experiment, here's an interesting data point. One of the most politically successful overt white supremacists, David Duke, has run for political office on numerous occasions, including two campaigns for a US Senate seat in Louisiana. Duke went from polling at 11.5% (141,489 votes) for a Louisiana US Senate election in 1996 to 3% (58,581 votes) for a Louisiana US Senate election in 2016.

<comment><USER61> > If, as seems to be the case today, almost nobody gives credence to their > ideas, then we just let them make fools of themselves, kind of like how no > one minds David Icke's claims about how the British royal family are > secretly reptilians from outer space.

Is that really the same though? The key differences as I see them: 1) History. Racism has been taught for many years (for a long time "scientifically proven"). I'm guessing Icke's views are rather new. The leads to 2) Cultural relevancy. There are plenty of racist people out there, each generation teaching the next. I'm not sure how many people believe that about the royal family, but I'm guessing not as many. This matters because 3) Racists are harmful. Unless Icke is about to break into the palace to prove his theory, he seems pretty harmless. We can leave him alone to make a fool of himself. Discrimination and hate crimes are not things I want to leave alone, I'd like them to end.

> I would actually question the notion that these groups are growing in size > and influence.

While size may be debatable, I think influence is less so. The data I've seen says hate crimes are up in numbers. The president refuses to call these groups terrorists. Social media is filled with their propaganda and troll mobs. This doesn't feel like a group that is losing power or influence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The same sentiment needs to happen with Amazon before Bezos fully transforms into a Bond villain. He already looks the part.

</comment><comment><USER63> Turns out, Facebook employees are people, span the whole gambit of opinions, and have a couple of flame-war baiters?

</comment><comment><USER64> Kind of moot considering how hard Zuckerberg stanned for Peter Thiel. How much was that Palmer Luckey payout?

I'd argue that if you're working for Facebook you're kind of superficially liberal to begin with. Zuckerberg is only liberal until he has to worry about his bank account.

<comment><USER65> (what does 'stanned' mean? I can't figure out if it's a typo.)

<comment><USER66> Usually means an obsessed superfan but have evolved to mean someone with unwavering support of a person or entity. Came from the Eminem song "Stan" about a crazy fan.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_(song)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_\(song\))

>The name of the eponymous character has given rise to a slang term online which refers to overzealous, maniacal, overly obsessed fans of a celebrity or personality; the term has been included in the Oxford English Dictionary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Can someone help me with this paywall?

<comment><USER68> If you've browsed a lot of NYTimes articles without a paid account, then you'll get paywalled. Using a fresh incognito window usually takes care of the problem. If that doesn't work, I've found that visiting their articles from a Google News link will remove the paywall for the first article you visit.

TBH if you visit them enough to get the paywall, then you probably ought to just pony up the reasonable monthly subscription fee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> > Why are companies promoting "pride"...telling workers to attend 'lgbt > tolerance' meetings,etc... Wth!!!!

You ask this question, then answer it in your very next line. People don't respect everyone. They are intolerant.

<comment><USER4> Why is disrespecting or demeaning a coworker for any reason allowed? If I disrespect you because your haircut is unfashionable,would that be ok? If the meeting was about supporting neo-nazis ,would that not be saying the conmpany tolerates neo-nazis and does not welcome those who hate neo-nazism? Yet, you should respect your neo-nazi coworker,even if you were not told so.

<comment><USER70> It seems there are many valid reasons to disrespect a coworker, and being a neo-nazi is one of them.

You cannot hide a violent philosophy behind a shield of "it is my beliefs". None of us shall ever accept it. If it becomes the law that I must accept neo nazis, I still will not.

<comment><USER4> No,they are your coworker. Period. They're not your friend. They are not promoting neo-nazi beliefs at work or direspecting other coworkers,what business of yours is their neo-nazi activity? Peace has a price.

<comment><USER71> It's my business because, should they have it their way, I wouldn't be alive.

Asking people to be tolerant of ideologies that pose an existential threat is contradictory at best.

<comment><USER72> People have cooperated with existential threats for economic gain for a very long time. Trade today, kill each other tomorrow. It's not contradictory at all.

<comment><USER73> And what kinds of societies and organizations so these dire situations blossom in? Crime organizations, autocratic regimes and slavery countries.

Sorry I don't want to work for or live in that kind of setting. I wouldn't want anyone to be forced to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> And it has been my experience that people who have politics "happen" to them from "the moment [they] wake up to the moment [they] sleep" in large part simply _perceive_ that to be their existence.

I have read countless articles and posts at this point claiming that "America doesn't care about black bodies" and that black people in America should "fear for their lives every day," all in regards to the perceived danger of police shootings. In that example, despite this perception by not only those populations themselves, but a large majority of the population at large, the facts are that 1000 people (0.000003% of the population) are killed by police annually. 24% of those killed are black. No person has a statistically relevant chance of being killed by police, and yet it is not uncommon to hear it stated that this is simply this segment of the population's "lived reality." It isn't, and that's the problem.

I actually think that this is a central theme to many of these discussions, where one population is claiming that there is a substantial disadvantage to having a certain characteristic, whereas the counter states that there is either no such disadvantage, or its magnitude is misrepresented.

In any event, I think that there is often merit to both cases, and I think what you're seeing with the Facebook group here is simply a response to the growing perception that the conversation has become increasingly one-sided in the large SV corporations. Stating, as James Damore did, that the lack of female representation in tech is not appropriately attributable to workplace bias was a fireable offense. That's not okay.

<comment><USER75> Except one doesn't have to fear being killed by the police to be wary of them. The fact is that POC are arrested disproportionately to their population size. Being incarcerated is enough to cut your chances of a job offer or a call back by %50[1]. There are many underlying reasons as to _why_ POC people are arrested more, including remnants of systemic oppression, but that is another argument for another time.

It's easy to hand-wave other's hardships away when one doesn't experience them first-hand, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

[1] [https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact- sheet/](https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/)

<comment><USER76> Let's say someone doesn't want to hand-wave other's hardships away. Out of multiple possible venues, such as

(a) political action (voting, city council meetings, writing to a congressman)

(b) civil action (rallies, protests, community organizing, civil disobedience)

(c) work action (send an email, post on internal slack channel)

(d) public relations (letter to an editor, an op/ed in local paper, getting a local news station to cover the issue)

is (c) the most effective for achieving the desired results?

<comment><USER75> I'm not sure I follow, none of those actions are mutually exclusive, so any and all combinations are available, even if one type of action is more effective than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> This thread is a dumpster fire. @dang, maybe it's time to pull the plug?

<comment><USER78> Or, he can let discussion continue. People posting things that you disagree with is not a "dumpster fire".

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> This is why it's fruitless to argue with Marxists--they subjugate truth to layers of shifting context.

Non-Marxist: Is <objectively true statement> true? Marxist: No. <objectively true statement> was/is/will be used against my political tribe, therefore it is false. Non-Marxist: Well, can it just be "technically" true in this narrow case if we ignore the greater context? Marxist: I don't understand what you're talking about. Non-Marxist: Can anything be both true and politically inconvenient? Marxist: What a stupid question. Of course not!

It's a wonder how so many of these people get into tech. How can you study science if your ideology invalidates Newtonian mechanics because it was invented to help England bombard natives?

<comment><USER80> If there's one thing you could have done to make this ideological hell worse, it's drag Marx into it.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864571](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17864571) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER79> buddy, this thread is Marx all the way up and down.

but point taken. I'll keep overt politics off this site from now on.

<comment><USER80> > this thread is Marx all the way up and down

That's tarring with way too thick a brush. If we're going to have non-dumb conversations here, there needs to be room for some detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> [Deleted]

<comment><USER82> They have complained and have even asked for reparations.

<comment><USER83> They have also been _granted_ reparations of about $160 million.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Liberties_Act_of_1988](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Liberties_Act_of_1988)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Not all views deserve respect. Depending on what specific views they are talking about a lot of the ones circulating should not be tolerated.

<comment><USER85> The problem is who decides what views should or should not be tolerated? Some would say if you eat meat you should not be tolerated. Others might think pro- choice ideas should not be tolerated.

That aside, we really need to figure out as a society how to fix a few notions. 1) You have some sort of right to not be offended. 2) You must get outraged at anything you disagree with.

There once was a time when two people with different ideas could be in the same room as each other. But long are those days. Now we live in a time where simply having your name printed next to somebody's name who made a joke you were offended by calls for public outrage and immediate removal of the offending persons name from said list.

Things are in a very bad way...

<comment><USER86> There was never a time when different ideas were tolerated. The things we tolerate have changed. Maybe the time you speak of was the time when all of your ideas were tolerated.

In the past people tolerated the idea that it was OK to own slaves, now we dont. In the past people did not tolerate the idea that it is OK to be gay, now we do.

<comment><USER87> I grew up with the understanding that just because someone thought differently to me didn't mean they were wrong, and that it's OK for people to agree to disagree on some things while still remaining friends. This view has definitely gone out of vogue in the past 10 years.

<comment><USER88> Nothing has changed with regard to reasonable people reasonably disagreeing over reasonable differences. The Overton Window has changed for sure, but that's what it does. I struggle to think of any perspective that has moved out of the Overton Window over the past 10 years that I regret losing. If anything the Overton Window has moved backwards in recent years to better accommodate the Alex Joneses of the world, but I don't see how that's a good thing.

<comment><USER89> >The Overton Window has changed for sure, but that's what it does. I struggle to think of any perspective that has moved out of the Overton Window over the past 10 years that I regret losing.

Honestly, I want the Overton Window to be consistent with what people actually _do_ in _real life_. I've begun to grow uncomfortable with a political environment in which we all need to hash-tag #AbolishICE, when we all know that the actual abolition of the American border is outside the Overton Window for the solid reasons that _nobody has come up with a plan to do it_ , including the people _leading_ the hash-tag campaigns.

If we are to have an Overton Window, I want it to be the same one for rhetoric, actions, and policies. I don't want this world we're getting where we all mouth extremist rhetoric and then pass mild reformist touch-ups to the status quo.

<comment><USER90> * Abolishing ICE doesn't require abolishing the border entirely, just abolishing a police force that gets as much funding as the FBI even though it is dedicated to one small subset of violations.

* It is OK to have ideals that you work towards while knowing that you won't necessarily reach them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> There are dozens of us! DOZENS!

<comment><USER80> Ok, we changed 'dozens' to 'some' above.

<comment><USER85> I was fine with the title, as it reflects how the article frames it, but whatever.

<comment><USER80> The issue is that it was provoking people into posting dumb comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Wow, DOZENS. At least we now know who they are.

</comment><comment><USER93> I guess sooner or later someone will link to these, so may as well be me :-)

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

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

<comment><USER94> If you're a social media platform that possesses such a vast, overwhelming monopoly as what Facebook has, then you are capable of _censorship_. Your status as a monopoly means the normal market rules no longer apply to you. That you comply with the first amendment should properly be a pass-through legal requirement as a condition of your status as a monopolist.

If they resist cooperating with that designation, despite their monopoly, then we must regulate them.

Split off Instagram and WhatsApp from the core Facebook platform as an anti- trust action. At a minimum legally mandate that all monopolist platforms must equally enforce all of their terms of service for all users and must do so in a publicly verifiable manner. If they fail at that task, drown them in fines until they go bankrupt or stop selectively punishing some groups while allowing others to do the exact same things without punishment. Ideally, regulate Facebook and all such monopolist platforms that deal with speech as a form of public square.

I dislike Roy Moore and his politics. That doesn't mean I think it's ok for all the car companies to conspire together as a group monopoly and deny Moore the ability to purchase a new vehicle to punish him. Or that it's ok for the couple of telecom monopolies to get together and deny him access to the phone networks.

Denying voices access to the public square - Facebook's social monopoly - <USER3> equally reprehensible. The most important speech we protect, is the speech of the ugly minority, which is what both the far left and far right often represent.

I don't like seeing Antifa clad in black body armor, marching around with Soviet flags urging the adoption of Communism and the overthrow of the US Government. I similarly don't like to see it on Facebook. I fundamentally disagree with them. We should protect their right to that speech and their right to have access to Facebook's monopoly platform.

<comment><USER95> Facebook doesn't have a monopoly over expression, so it still quite possible to express one's opinion in a myriad of ways.

Like this here.

Freedom of expression doesn't equal a right to distribution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> I find it ironic that conservative employees are arguing about increasing diversity (specifically political diversity). Usually conservatives support culture fit as a concept to bolster opposition to hiring more underrepresented minorities and women. They usually claim that diversity is antithetical to efficiency and having shared cultural values (usually the dominant culture's values) is the key to successful teams. Sadly for the conservatives they are in the out-group at Facebook. Perhaps this struggle will help cultivate some empathy to others who are in out-groups. Alas, I am not holding my breath.

<comment><USER22> I think the criticism is more about the selectiveness of diversity. Companies in SV are very keen on establish practices to bring about the hiring of more women, African Americans, and Latinos often with the justification that a broader set of viewpoints is crucial I'm creating a good working environment. But no one bats an eye when most employees can't name a single Republican or conservative on their team or department. It's easy to conclude that this whole diversity initiative isn't actually about bringing in people with different viewpoints.

For what it's worth, my current employer has easily the most diverse tech workforce in terms of gender and race but it's also easily the most monocultural company one I've worked at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Facebook is about to have a James Damore moment.

</comment><comment><USER5> It should be noted that many views espoused by what Americans call 'liberals' or 'left-leaning' people are in fact the mainstream in the EU (such as issues about abortion, gun control, death penalty, healthcare, and so on) and commonly accepted by almost all parties except what we'd call 'far-right' ones. So I'm wondering: when those articles pop up calling the tech world/the Valley/company X a 'liberal monoculture' or whatever, are they implying that it is also the case for the entirety of a continent? Or is it simply that, as in Europe, a minority of people with fringe and socially unacceptable views is wishing rather loudly that their views weren't so fringe and socially unacceptable?

<comment><USER60> > It should be noted that many views espoused by what Americans call > 'liberals' or 'left-leaning' people are in fact the mainstream in the EU > (such as issues about abortion, gun control, death penalty, healthcare, and > so on) and commonly accepted by almost all parties except what we'd call > 'far-right' ones.

That's a massive oversimplification:

* Ireland only recently legalized abortion, which has been legal in the United States since 1972. The legal status of abortion in the United States is in some ways far more liberal than in many European countries, and in other ways less.

* American courts have routinely protected levels of civil liberties that are beyond those recognized anywhere in the EU.

* Unlike some EU countries, the United States neither has a state-established religion, nor regulates or prohibits the public exercise of religion.

* The United States has stricter corporate regulations and higher corporate taxes than many EU countries. The right-wing Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" ranks the United States 18th, below Switzerland, Ireland, Estonia, the UK, Iceland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the Netherlands. _According to actual American conservatives_ , countries following the famed "Nordic Model" are in fact, _even more capitalist than the United States_!

<comment><USER98> I'll add a few of my favourites:

* Women only achieved the federal vote in Switzerland in 1971, and the for local votes the last hold-out was forced to acquiesce by the Supreme Court only in 1991.

* There is no country in Europe with abortion laws as permissive as those in the United States (or Canada, but that's it's own strange case). Portugal didn't legalize abortion until 2007, and it is only available on-demand up until the 10th week. Abortion is _still_ illegal in Ireland (in the process of reform after last May's referendum). In Germany abortion-on-demand is only legal in the first 12 weeks, and requires mandatory counselling with a 3-day waiting period.

* While no EU states practice the death penalty because it is a condition of membership, majorities in France, the Baltics, Czech Republic, and several Eastern European countries still [support it]([https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/55sze2/support_for...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/55sze2/support_for_the_death_penalty_in_europe_1548_x/)), and in the UK support was up around 70% less than a decade ago. Current support for the death penalty in the US has registered as between 49 and 55% in the last few years. Not totally out of line in terms of public opinion, though there are more states that have the death penalty in the US obviously.

* I was stunned to be in a German class in Berlin with students from several EU countries, most of them in their early 20s, and also be the only one present who had no problem with homosexual adoption, which was most stridently opposed by representatives of catholic countries. I was the only North American.

<comment><USER60> In practice, many US states have arbitrary barriers to abortion that make it harder to actually get one in parts of the US than in parts of the EU, so I didn't want to make too strong of a statement. But certainly, I don't know of any European countries with a national or federal law regarding abortion that is as permissive as the federal statutory and case law of the United States.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Anyone want to take bets on this resulting in another James Damore style firing, but at FB instead of Google this time?</comment>


The bugfix that could make the Internet 5% faster - <AUTHOR> http://eduardo.cereto.net/the-bugfix-that-could-make-the-internet-faster

<comment><USER2> I don't think this argument stands up to technical examination. His claim is based on this:

1\. The average size of HTTP request headers is 700 bytes. 2\. Of that around 25% is Google Analytics 3\. About 50% of web sites use GA

Thus you could save 12% of HTTP request header size across the Internet.

Then he posits that this would make the net 5% faster. How?

If the average size is really 700 bytes then they will fit inside a single TCP packet and so changing it from 700 to 525 will make no difference at all. The entire request will be in a packet. The real cost is multiple packets requiring ACKs and that occurs with the larger header sizes that SPDY specifically targets with HTTP header compression. I've seen many egregious cookies, but the GA ones are tiny.

If you really want to speedup the web you need something like SPDY plus SDCH to do data-aware compression of repeated chunks of HTML.

<comment><USER3> Packet sizes make very little difference on an unsaturated line, which is often the case on the client side. It's very often _not_ the case on the server side, or on mobile networks. There, it's not at all uncommon to see line saturation at peak usage, and under those circumstances pure bandwidth optimizations can be helpful.

<comment><USER4> The server's uplink is certain to be full-duplex and outbound heavy, so inbound bandwidth is effectively unconstrained. You still could run into line congestion somewhere in the middle, in which case bandwidth optimizations would help, but router congestion is much more common.

Except in mobile networks, as you note.

<comment><USER5> I'd guess that the mean request size is misleading though - it is presumably the average of a mix of lightweight CDN requests and gargantuan app requests loaded up with the egregious cookies jgrahamc mentions. It's not hard to imagine a healthy number of requests hovering right at the brink of breaking into two packets with a 1500 byte MTU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or block ga entirely in your browser for 100% speed recovery against tracking.

But seriously, GA will still work if you add DEFER and make it load only after page load. Then there is zero impact on the page.

<comment><USER7> But then GA might not record that someone loaded the page and clicked a link to navigate away, before the page was done loading.

<comment><USER8> So what? Why should you count this case?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The speed of the request is probably not linear with the size either.

At 700-800 bytes for an average HTTP request you are below the single packet size. Given the overhead of processing the packet the extra bytes are pretty cheap: a 1 byte packet is not going to be 1000% faster than a 1K packet.

Now, if the cookie pushed the average request size over the packet boundary then the cost would be huge.

<comment><USER10> Exactly, and even if it was 5%, which by no means it is, what % of time is the request vs response. Sounds like this a solution to a non-problem.

<comment><USER11> We must also consider the relative cost of google implementing fully cross- browser compatible localStorage code into ga.js, with fallbacks on cookies. They're likely going to want to put the burden on the client than on their own personal bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant Please, I beg you, do not call the web "the internet". The web is but a subset of the internet. Yes, it is taking over the rest of the internet (web-mail and such). Yes, client-side HTTP is often the only part of the internet you can have from many networks. But no, that is not a good thing.

But because of sloppy wording, non-technical people get the idea that if they can query web servers, then "they have the internet". Most restrictions go unnoticed.

I know it may sound pedantic. It may even remind you of Stallman's _GNU_ /Linux. But really, it can't hurt to say "web" instead of "internet": unlike "GNU/Linux", it is _shorter_ than the incorrect word.

</comment><comment><USER4> _The moment you notice GA is present in about 50% of top websites you notice that useless GA cookies going around the internet represent 12% of all HTTP requests._

This is incorrect. "GA is present in about 50% of top websites" does not mean "50% of HTTP requests are on the domain with the cookies." Many websites load external images, etc. See ytimg.com, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course the websites that use cookieless domains for resources reduce this issue by an order of magnitude, but it still exists in at least the html document request. Besides if you think that 50% of the traffic of the top million sites probably represent 70%-80% of the total internet traffic the real gain may be even larger.

<comment><USER4> 1) How can half the traffic on a subset ever represent more than half of the traffic on the superset? The 12% number assumes that these top million sites have effectively all global traffic; in practice it will only ever be less than that. 2) These top million sites are exactly the sort that are likely to serve static content from a different hostname.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "We're talking about the average speed of the whole internet"

5% fewer bytes in the request headers would seem to be well within the noise in terms of user experience when you consider latency and application runtime.

This is probably a good argument for using a secondary hostname for assets (like facebook, with fbcdn.net), though, if you want to shave the last few bytes off of requests you don't need to track.

<comment><USER12> I never understood that, why would moving assets to another domain name speed things up? Wouldn't it involve another DNS lookup, thus adding to download time?

edit: I remember reading about this on Yahoo's speed guide, actually: [http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#cookie_fre...](http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#cookie_free)

Still don't quite get it though. Cookie data is always passed in HTTP requests for some reason?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, there's an initial hit, but only one DNS lookup per session-or-so if you've got your TTLs right. You're likely to hit hundreds (if not thousands) of assets in a typical Facebook session, though.

Edit: Actually, in Facebook's case, Akamai has a 20 second TTL. But it's not difficult to perform ~1k asset requests in that amount of time... just scroll through a large friend list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article presupposes a vast quantity of the internet's data is tracked basic HTTP requests.

Huge quantities of the traffic on the internet are video data being slung about (which has no where near the penetration of GA the poster is assuming). Cisco's estimate is video will be >50% of all traffic in 2012

Source: [http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/...](http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Forgive me if I am missing something, but wouldn't moving the cookies to localstorage still require an additional call to be made to send the data to the server in the end - not to mention the additional javascript required to handle the localstorage management and ajax calls?

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is just to get rid of the extra overhead on the HTTP request, because that overhead will be multiplied by the requests you do. Any extra code on ga.js is cached and doesn't incur in too much overhead.

<comment><USER14> But you would still have an additional HTTP request that would be sending the same information + headers for another call - in the end it would be the same performance wise as if you were DEFERing the request, but you wouldn't be saving any overhead on data passing around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's not a bug at all, it's a feature.

How is Google supposed to track repeat visitors without any kind of state except IP? And IP is an awful variable for state because of NAT.

The heading is misleading and overly sensational.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is not to get rid of the data that is stored in the cookie. But instead to move it into the localStorage. Still acessible through JS and doesn't ge into the HTTP request.

<comment><USER16> But the data still needs to go the Google Analytics server to actually do the tracking...in an HTTP request.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but you wouldn't have to send the cookie to Google's servers every page load. This is a great use of the localStorage or sessionStorage in HTML5. Another obvious benefit we will see when using sessionStorage in specific is that you can store your session ID in that storage space and not have to worry about logging in from a new tab causing a session to overflow from one tab to the other.

Cookies are shared between browser sessions, but sessionStorage is not. localStorage is the same way except it persists over browser sessions and between tabs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>