Some people feel like discussing this in anything other than emotional terms is inappropriate, some people feel like we need to discuss the legal theory and history behind what happened, and some people feel like we should focus on the material/economic affects of the ruling. Each group feels that the others are ignoring the important parts, so it turns into a mess. Especially once you add into that that a proper understanding of the issue requires understanding some basic constitutional law, civics, and female anatomy, so a bunch of people are just saying things that are incorrect.
Also wise for their communication/public facing employees, who are going to be wading through a lot of related bullshit and should have SOME respite from it.
And then, to make it even worse, they went on to tell the crowd that you HAVE to care about these issues if you care about Roe v Wade. And if you don't, then "get the hell out of our way". So either you agree 100% with the hivemind and their dated BLM script, or fuck you. To say nothing of the fact that the person shouting this stuff seemed to cherish just how many different labels she could attach to herself to appear more credible.
I consider myself a staunch independent and this was downright insulting. The operatives instigating all of this do not want people making rational points with their minds, they want a mental hegemony to act as a bedrock for their political war machine.
Given that and how political discussions seem to be playing out everywhere, I don't think anyone should be supporting these kinds of discussions at work. Should companies willingly allow space for crowdsourced political brainwashing?
it's critical to stand with others, but it's dumb to hold back good things for a minority group all groups can get what they want, and ostracizing and exiling others because they don't care enough about all the other things some cabal of the organizers of some particular movement/protest is the exact opposite of accepting others. and yes, there are issues where the tolerance of intolerance can become a serious problem, but to find those it's surprisingly not enough to apply mob justice on the spot. aaaaand yes, there are those things where even that's okay (let's say someone starts to unfurl a nazi flag)
(and excuse me for my own rudimentary dumbing down.)
Half of Black people in Georgia oppose abortion, but 90% vote Democrat. I wonder what it’s going to do to Democratic turnout in Georgia if donors in New York and California make the 2022 and 2024 elections all about abortion.
This faction's support for Democrats is rapidly disintegrating, based on the massive shift to Trump seen in the Texas border counties in 2020. Like, 30 points' worth of movement.
Free speech is a wonderful thing, but there can be too much of a good thing. Learning when to shut up can be valuable too, one doesn’t offend people like the parent post.
IMO, the biggest issue here is that no one has any patience for anything anymore (outside of what they’re getting paid to be thoughtful about), so nuance has gone out the window.
Everyone believes that the start of human life is a core issue. It’s the basis for the pro-life movement. It’s also a core component of the pro-choice movement (that it doesn’t start that early, thus not killing babies, etc).
There are other things some people believe are core which others don’t believe even exist:
* many people are happy with this ruling because they want to bring mens’ right to “paper abortion” to the front. The argument is if she can do whatever with her body and not be subject to something undesirable for nine months, than he should have the same right since his hardship can last 18 years. The supporting arguments include absolute control means absolute responsibility (if pregnancy was accidental and she decides to keep it, responsibility is hers) and others, along with the greater discussion of perceived bias in family court. Opposing arguments mostly center around the welfare of the child. * some people are of the opinion that “if you’re not a woman, shut up”. Others are using that phrase to support their opinion on trans recognition. Still others are using that phrase to highlight situations where women have gained influence in what many men might call “mens spaces”
The reality is pregnancy is a two-party result and so it’s impossible to expect one party to quietly step aside, more so when there is skin in the game. This involvement in fact helped win R v W in the first place!
If you favor originalism, the the 9th amendment guarantees unenumerated rights which were deep rooted at the founding. Abortion before “quickening” was legal in all 13 states at the signing and had been part of common law for hundreds of years, so the 9th applies. The 14th amendment should apply that to the states, and the argument some originalists make about resetting the clock seems dumb to me.
So here are two very reasonable paths to the right that don’t involve the question about when laws start or some vague notion to the right to privacy. I think you need to have both an activist reading of constitutional law and a disregard for security of ones person to sidestep both arguments.
That banning abortion leads to the deaths of thousands of young women.
Pretty sure we all agree that a girl's life starts before she can get pregnant.
Many will consider a girl chosing a dangerous, illegal procedure as a criminal and therefore less worthy of consideration. More so than an innocent child who had no choice in its conception. My guess is they won't seriously consider the argument until they themselves, or their adult daughters, are literally in the situation of needing an illegal abortion themselves. (And possibly only in an extreme circumstance like molestation or rape, as some are taught self shame and hatred every week at church.)
2. even if you accept that there would be "deaths of thousands of young women", I doubt those deaths would sway the opinion of someone who thinks each abortion is murder (ie. 629,898 "deaths" from abortion vs "thousands" of "deaths")
"Core" does not have a clear meaning here, so let's be more precise: everyone agrees it's an important issue, but not everyone agrees it's a decisive issue. Many pro-choice people believe that no person has a right to demand part of someone else's body for themselves, so even if a fetus is a person the mother still has the right to remove it. Comparisons to the illegality of forced organ donation are often made here.
Note that I'm not taking a position here. I'm just explaining a position many hold. To the extent that you ascribe a different reasoning/motivation to pro-choice folks, I think your "everyone believes" is not a valid axiom. Whether intentionally or not, it comes across more as an appeal to (questionable) popularity, and pretty much make Mezzie's point about how impossible it is to talk about this.
Yes, the core issue is here. Though no-one seriously argues that a foetus is not human, nor alive: the issue is "is it a person (yet)?". Is it something, or someone? Answering that question - not an easy one - makes one swing one way or another of the issue.
A thought experiment.
You get too drunk and pass out in a bar.
I take you home a f hook you up to a person with failing kidneys so that you filter their blood.
If you unhook yourself they will die.
Should you go to prison for unhooking yourself?
To be frank, this is Twitter in a nutshell to an outsider like me: a major personal time-waster that typically ends in anger and depression.
I guess it's not surprising that internal conversations for the platform that owns a significant share of the public discourse can't figure out how to discuss topics like this, but that sure makes me sad. Is it even possible to have effective conversations about these topics online at all? If Twitter can't figure out how to do it, then who can?
Yes. Just not at scale, and not in a way that prioritizes ad revenue via "engagement" at all cost.
Prioritizing longer form, in depth content, and discouraging "rapid reaction hot takes" helps a lot. The social media companies could optimize for this, and you see it on HN with the "Sorry, this particular thread is getting short, snippy, and too rapid, you can't reply to it for a while" mechanism.
But short, snippy, and angry is good for engagement. So it remains.
A foetus is "alive" since the conception. "Wrong" says the other side, it is alive when (something).
Contraception and sex ed are key. "Wrong" says the other side, you can just be abstinent and learn as you go because this is natural.
Ignoring would be simpler, because you could realize that what you are ignoring actually makes sense. We are in a case where each side has well defined views on the important things of the adversary.
For example, I'm pro-choice and my own side would be ready to flay me alive for agreeing with the legal theory behind the overturning + thinking the economy is likely to be more important politically than abortion. I'm on their side; my opinions matter because they determine which strategies I think would be best to pursue. (In this case, that we need to legislate what we want + that people can't organize to do so unless they have stable housing/food/basic needs so we'll have to help people with that if we want their time and brainpower for social change.)
On the pro-life side, there's a lot of bickering about whether or not the women should be punished (versus the abortion providers) and there is a decent contingent that actually wants their fellows to put their money where their mouths are and financially support pregnant women and their kids.
Talking with enemies is always fraught. This is a dumpster fire because we can't talk to our ALLIES except in thought-terminating cliches.
My point is that the adversaries do not ignore the important points of the other side. These are usually the important point for them as well, they are just exactly at the other side of the spectrum.
This is why there is no way for them to come to consensus as the differences of opinion are about these points.
It is not like someone, when hearing the arguments of the other side, would say "oh, I did not think about this because i thought it was important"
Except that's not the kind of country USA is supposed to be like some middle-eastern countries for example.
In the USA you are allowed to believe/practice whatever crazy religion you want.
But your rights stop at another person's autonomy.
But also unjustly in the USA the corporation has way more rights than the individual, every time and that's perpetuated by every "side" of political power.
Here's Ginsberg explaining why it was on life support 10 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pVnvBCzTyI
In short: we do not have a right to privacy any more. That a majority of rights we took for granted rested on that implied right will come as a shock to a large number of people who supported vaccine passports and mandates and vice versa. You will be forced to show proof of covid vaccination at the court house while having your interracial marriage dissolved.
Welcome to America.
Even Thomas doesn’t disagree that there are implied rights. His view is that they originate from the “privileges and immunities” clause, not the “due process clause.” But nobody disagrees, for example, that marriage is a right protected by the Constitution (although they disagree on what counts as marriage).
That's enough for the court to hear a case on it again. Along with cases on gay marriage, anal sex and contraceptives.
A year ago I made the case that if we can force people to divulge their vaccination status then we can force people to divulge their sexual history. If a new disease showed up we could well ask if they had anal sex and lock them up in quarantine if they had.
With the current outbreak of monkeypox and the current court that isn't a thought experiment any more.
Liberals have spent the last decade hacking away at the right to privacy as hard as they could, the vaccine mandates being only the latest and greatest attack on personal freedoms from the party which supposedly stood for individual rights. This is not rocket science. Anyone could have seen this coming, but we were too busy owning the conservitards to notice that we were destroying the bedrock of the last 50 years of social progress.
Well here we are.
Business Insider posted an article in 2019 on Facebook data showing that its "best-performing content is almost entirely from right- and far-right-wing publications and personalities" [1]
It's not entirely unlikely that in the intervening years, left-leaning employees have been more likely to leave, and right-leaning employees more likely to join.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-right-wing-echo-cha...
I'd also expect that the majority of FB's right-leaning employees are of a SV libertarianish bent, and most of them are pro-choice or apathetic.
FB strikes me as a company with a very mercenary, self-interested workforce more than a partisan one.
I don't believe this is true in western societies anymore. Even in the US, people who describe themselves as "very religious" or belong to a church are the minority.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx
i’m not sure this is at all an accurate depiction of americans and religion. last i looked into it—which admittedly was like two years ago—an absolutely terrifying number of americans believed in angels and god. if i’m remembering correctly, it was a wild shocking number, like more than 70%.
i mean, if we’re limiting it to only self-described “very religious” maybe, but believing in god and angels is suspect enough in a persons rational judgement and that absolutely is not a minority of people.
Politics affect people's daily lives. Suggesting that people should just ignore the inherent emotional component of these decisions and the impact that they have on our lives is both incredibly unrealistic and quite a privileged position to occupy.
Silencing them is a recipe for a chain reaction / cascade of failures. It is not a winning strategy.
Talking to co-workers can be quite fulfilling and exciting when conversing about engineering, marketing, or other work related subjects you are passionate about. However, anytime politics, etc are brought up I (for one) leave the conversation feeling in a worse state of mind than when I first got into it. That is very unproductive.
For this reason, I believe that the workplace should be left to work related things (including conversations) and anything else should ideally be done out of work. Even if involving the same group of people.
If they want to stay out of politics, then do that. But its extremely difficult for modern businesses to not have a hand in politics. That's fine; and to some degree I respect the line companies like Coinbase walk, where they push agendas that are fairly directly related to their business. Meta goes far beyond that, into financing for (great and important!) issues like voter suppression & minority representation. If they're going to open the floodgates, they can't be uncomfortable when some murky water comes flooding in.
[1] https://about.facebook.com/facebook-political-engagement/
How would this apply in small businesses or businesses that don't engage in lobbying?
Yes because the line workers don't just discuss it they fight over it and make everyone angry / depressed and destroy productivity
They can’t have it both ways.
When the "activist" types push politics into workplaces they are not doing it so they can talk about what they feel. They are doing it so they can find the people who disagree and damage their careers. Maybe I am cynical here but I have seen careers be seriously damaged this way.
This leads to some people actively avoiding working with and for any kind of activist, or anyone related to activists. If you can see middle ground in any non extreme argument, one must be a bigot.
This sounds like your position is that anyone who advocates for anything (esp. when it's directly impacting them, but unrelated to work) only has one singular goal of weeding out disagreement and getting rid of it, which I think is ridiculous.
Humans are social creatures and we largely shape our perspectives by iterating with new data and communication. People can be (and IMO largely are) advocates for things that are important to them, have opinions on things, and don't have a singular focus of destroying anyone with different viewpoints.
On the other side, all humans have their limits to cooperation. As you have social interactions with anyone your viewpoint of them change, and realistically if I find out something about a co-worker through discussion like they believe that the 2020 election was stolen because Trump told them so it does inevitably make me scrutinize this person harder. What if you found out that a co-worker thought black people were genetically inferior or that women don't deserve to vote? At that point it's hard to work with someone with such a fundamentally different view of the world.
Is it "cancel culture" to say "we don't want nazis to work here"?
People work much better when they're happy and can be themselves with like-minded individuals. Companies like Google realized this in the 90s and ensured that they proactively have what they need to be happy (feeding employees, paying for healthcare premiums, etc) to great success. You see this continue with things like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31871581 IMO.
It's really easy to say that you as a business care about gay rights in order to have gay employees come work for you, but if you then contribute political donations to a politician who sees gay people as an abomination you can't seriously be surprise when people go "hey what the fuck".
While I fully agree with what you’re saying, I’m wondering if Facebook actually agrees with you and that this is simply an application of existing policy or if this is a one-off experiment for them. The article seems a bit unclear.
Alright, it's clear that you're against this, but what's the argument for allowing this? In other words, why should the company tolerate using its channels as a soapbox to advance your political agendas, especially if it's a drain on productivity? I want to shitpost on company time/equipment/networks as much as the other guy, but let's not pretend it's some sort of right, or that being denied the ability to do that is some sort of moral tragedy.
Now a company asks its employees to forgo that power and liberty. Why did we take the power of policy from the aristocrats in the first place? We can of course go back to shut up, work the field peasant model and let them enjoy discussing policy for us while we produce goods.
What comes first? Your employer or your rights?
There is no such monster as "politically neutral." That is synonymous with "supporting the status quo," which is a political stance. It's the trolley problem - not deciding is still opting into a bad option.
During the time that the employer is purchasing from you, your duty is to your employer, fulfilling their legal requests.
If you don't fulfill this duty, they will no longer have a desire to buy your time.
It's really not any more complicated than that.
*but less often because it's harder for employees to coordinate
Life used to be, if anything, more political.
Earlier in the 20th century, there were a lot more (local) newspapers and they all had very pointed points of view. Radio stations tended to be independent and if they had news broadcasts, it would be hyper-local and often political. Hell, thriving union membership gave us the greatest prosperity this country has seen and unions are very political.
In the first half of the 20th century we even had such a healthy, political society that more than two parties were often deemed viable.
In the 19th century the arguments for papers still hold. And voter turnout was much higher[1], albeit more male and more white.
[1] https://historyincharts.com/the-history-of-voter-turnout-in-...
That is a fine rule if work expects nothing of you when you clock out at 5 pm.
People have rights. And they have needs and desires. And companies that are driven primarily to make profit will ignore those things.
Hard to focus on work, talk about the preso when, for example, people are storming our Capitol.
Banning political speech is a great step toward convincing employees to unionize, so I applaud Meta for this, though.
Then tell them to stop lobbying. Period.
I think that companies can fight the recent decision without allowing employees to get in arguments with one another and be at each others throats over such a polarizing issue.
Not allowing people to proselytize at work would likely make it more stable. It's sort of like in ancient Persia where they didn't allow missionaries: because they cause unnecessary friction
Abortion is not the labor movement, but the principle holds.
The workplace is not a social club. You can still socialize with willing coworkers after work where everyone is free to leave with no repurcursions.
We’re taking about the thing that each of us spends 1/3 of our weekdays doing. The majority of our waking hours. It’s one of the largest aspects of all our lives, and is fundamentally derived from the outcomes of very recent political battles over the roles of individual laborers.
I believe that we owe it to ourselves and, as a basic matter of respect, to our coworkers, to have important discussions. If you don’t want that for yourself, then you can stick to sports and weather. That’s fine too!
Even after working at a place for years, it is very disheartening when people discuss bs that affects me personally yet if I even say anything it would be things that will offend them deeply.
Off work I could speak my mind and refuse to paricipate in offwork activities but during work that declined chat request might offend you or you might see it as not supporting you or your cause.
If I decline a request to chat about abortion for example, will you see it as a sign of my not supporting you? In that case it might affect how well you work with me? Then what? The person that has the upperhand in the power dynamic speaks and the other people agree?
If I had a private office and didn't have to block out background conversation with noise-cancelling headphones and loud music that would be fine, yeah.
Happy I can mainly work from home nowadays.
People like you must have always been in positions of power and priviledge. I have been at the other end enduring all sorts of horrific remarks and being forced to keep quiet to save my career. Now I look back at those jobs and the first thing I always remeber is how horrible it felt people saying ignorant and hurtful things day in and day out and being forced to listen to that or disagree and not get my contract renewed, and affect other political power dynamics that can literally ruin my life.
So please sir/madam, don't shit where you eat. Not everyone appreciates the smell while they eat.
We can tweet angrily all day long, but those in power are going to continue doing what they do because they know we're just going to tweet about it and that just doesn't matter.
I don’t agree with my coworkers on everything. But when they talk about politics I listen, and try my best to engage in a cogent discussion.
Maintaining a culture of political discussion at work is critical to both healthy corporate cultures and healthy civic processes, which might provide a hint as to why Meta is opposed to it (outrage is their business model.)
If you want to listen to employees talk pro-life / pro-choice, join the groups for that and do so. Keeping Roe v. Wade discussion out of the equivalent of Slack #general or All-Hands email list seems more than reasonable.
Oh, those in power are actively manipulating you to be upset about things that do not interfere with their profits. Somehow, nobody is protesting against unviability of single-income households, lack of retirement savings, part-time employment/independent contractor bullshit used to skirt regulations, etc. It's always Worker Alice against Worker Bob and never Workers against the Corporation.
It’s obviously not that simple, though: there are lots of opinions that are a priori incompatible with a functioning workplace, such as beliefs that fundamentally dehumanize one’s colleagues. In those instances, I’d argue that the hostile work environment begins the moment those beliefs are aired.
(And, to the best of my knowledge, no court has ever concluded that the particular derived beliefs of an individual are protected as an extension of their religious rights. Religious rights include things like being given reasonable accommodations for worship and lifestyle requirements; it doesn’t require your coworkers to placidly accept whatever positions you’ve extended from the larger religious doctrine.)
Not that I will do this, but when I see people talk about things like this, they usually do not feel the same if I suggest what I might do. I think the abortion laws in my state need a little loosening (though not a lot) but there are other people who want them even tighter. Are you just as okay with them agitating at work? Or will you want them to be censored by HR or fired or passed over for promotion/bonus?
Instead, you should put your best self forward and treat your political positions as a humanizing element. It’s been my experience that extremely healthy workplace discussions can occur when people start from a place of human respect, not agreement (indeed, it seems like agreeing parties eventually find something to disagree over, no matter how trivial.)
The concerning part is more that some workplaces have people or cultures that push politics very hard. Where you either agree with prevailing sentiment or are penalized in your career. In O&G you can not easily be a Democrat (or you had better be a Manchin Democrat). In tech you can not easily be a Republican (or you had better be a Romney Republican). I have seen people's careers fucked up by somebody who hated their politics. In other words it sounds like you are approaching this in good faith. But not everybody does. Or sometimes people do but they get mad and stop thinking so much. And that is hard to manage, and can make workplaces bad and hostile.
And of course there is always the problem that it is harder to maintain civility at scale like Facebook.
I think having serious conversations with my coworkers is a very good thing for all parties involved, especially when I don’t want them to eventually become friends. Opinions and beliefs are plainer that way.
If I had to work with someone every day who insists on talking about something that'll be filling up the next month of news cycle, I'd rather find somewhere else to work
edit: I personally support choice, but I don't support people who try to maneuver every conversation in a political us vs them direction. People who do this irl are insufferable and unprofessional
edit: and not only this, but people who will harass, sabotage, and smear coworkers over things like this. If someone thinks this kind of behavior is OK, it makes me much less likely to be sympathetic to whatever they're trying to accomplish. This kind of behavior should be banned for the same reason that prayer in school should be banned, and for the exact same reasons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_sto...
I think it's reasonable. It has nothing to do with not getting people distracted, but all to do with having one less problem to deal with.
Those who want to be vocal about this right now are largely opposed to the court's decision. So this does not appear to be a neutral decision.
In a different world, managers could still have discussions with employees about hitting their work targets without needing to tell them what to talk about with other employees.
You don't need to participate in these discussions or read them. I'd say it's fine to relegate such discussion to certain channels within the company. But banning it altogether is taking a position.
Not to mention the fact that Facebook influences politics every day. Blocking employees from having a discussion about that, which is very work-related, is authoritarian.
Zuck is still running the Thiel playbook here.
Whereas if they listen to that same opinion by overhearing two co-workers talk, then it's not their problem anymore.
This isn't Meta taking a stance on the actual abortion issue, it's just them being pragmatic.
Has anyone here organized a political discussion at work involving more than 20 people?
Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the Facebook/Meta executive team are partly responsible for the reversal. No surprise that they don’t want their staff thinking a bit too much about this.
Do you have any actually citable evidence that shows that either of them were involved in the push for Kavanaugh's nomination and/or confirmation?
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
You could argue that his personal political beliefs have nothing to do with the company, but he serves as an advocate for conservative voices within FB. For better or worse, his political beliefs are a large part of Facebook and the other executives enable that. The executive team directly represents the company in a way that your average worker does not and for workers to not discuss things executives do that directly impact them is wrong.
OP said:
>Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg ... are partly responsible for the reversal [of Roe v Wade].
I would wager that it's fair to say that Kaplan would've pushed for Kavanaugh whether he was employed by FB or someone else. Unless someone can show me where he did this with the instruction and/or support of Zuckerberg/Sandberg, I am reluctant to hold them "partly responsible" for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, despite my pre-existing misgivings towards both of them. Kaplan, on the other hand? Sure.
>One of the highest held positions in FB pushed for and advocated for political positions that directly impact workers.
Yup! On this we agree. But again, that's Kaplan we're talking about, not Zuckerberg/Sandberg.
>You could argue that his personal political beliefs have nothing to do with the company, but he serves as an advocate for conservative voices within FB. For better or worse, his political beliefs are a large part of Facebook and the other executives enable that. The executive team directly represents the company in a way that your average worker does not and for workers to not discuss things executives do that directly impact them is wrong.
Just because I am reluctant to toss blame around with abandon doesn't mean that I don't share this viewpoint.
I don't actually think it matters--if you have100,000 Facebookers, you keep them from squabbling over politics in groups larger than 20 because it's good for productivity and retention. You don't fret about which employee side is winning.
The topic has all the right factors:
- Nobody actually wants to change their minds.
- Each side thinks the other side is worse than a serial killer.
- No feasible way to make a judgement who is right or wrong.
- No way to get people to accept that judgement.
For those who prefer to focus on product development (i.e. “work”) , this restriction is a welcome reprieve from the near-constant virtue signaling and propaganda that distracts from getting work done.
Context matters here. media are positioning this as censorship, when in fact it’s one issue among dozens throughout the year where the activists have been “throttled”. If anyone is being censored, it would be the employees who would rather just work during the day and keep politics outside of the office.
If someone is not meeting their work targets due to distractions, deal with that as it's always been handled. You can trust people to manage their own distractions with slight adjustments from authority. Facebook's policy here is micro management to the extreme.
FYI: Meta doesn't use email much, 99% of internal comms is done within the walls of Workplace. I'm curious if it has a CLI or an API.
When activism enters the workspace, professionalism leaves.
[0] https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/285...