zlacker

>>Xordev+(OP)
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.

>>shaggy+il
Not a direct reply to your comment, but more of an adjacent one.

> Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to “avoid” them;

But I do choose to avoid them in my personal life. A private company can do whatever the hell they want, whether I approve or not, it's their right. I also believe it is my right to not care about politics and continue moving forward with my own life. For me, politics just end up making me upset. I can't think of a single situation that becomes political that ends up making me happy in the long run. As an individual, _most_ politics doesn't affect me and spending my time on it just ends up making my life less enjoyable.

That said, there are some political issues we all care about more so, and we may pay attention to that more. But in a way, I do choose to avoid them (as an individual).

Again, I don't mean this as an attack on your comment, just my adjacent thoughts.

Edit: I do understand how fortunate I am to be in the situation I'm in. I didn't mean (but I see that it came off this way) that everyone should do this, and I didn't mean (again, I understand that I didn't explain myself above) that I'm applying those ideas to this situation (my mind immediately went to the previous flood of COVID stories).

>>jjice+hq
You can ignore politics, but politics will not ignore you. What you're doing is burying your head in the sand, not avoiding.

>>ckocag+8r
A problem with this line of reasoning is that there is a potentially infinite number of issues, all of which could affect you or someone vulnerable. However, people have issues that are more immediate to them and which they have a more direct responsibility over. For example, If I don't personally champion solutions to police brutality, someone else might, but if I don't do my job and earn a living, there isn't really anyone else who really can or should be expected to pick up the slack.What's more, peple need the mental space to think about the issues that they are going to take a stand on which means that it takes time and energy to address different issues and they need to prioritize. This is one reason why it's reasonable to restrict political discourcse to certain spheres, because doing so is necessary if we are to take into account basic human limitations.