I have mixed feelings. It was basically a mob-driven decision. Mob made decisions can have good or bad outcomes, but the action being pressured for by mobs is usually irrational.
I think there's something to be said for listening to your customers and community. But how much of the pushback was from the community? Certainly the developer who yanked their code. And from what I've read the internal developers too.
But I think having to fear crowds of probably less than completely informed people generally lacking nuance is not something to be lauded.
There was no mob. Chef is a company that a lot of people in the tech community had a lot of respect for. So after the gems were pulled, revealing their sloppy handling of their own codebase, followed by their CEO and CTO coming out with embarrassing statements that failed to justify their position, and blamed their poor practices on someone who hasn't been an employee in years, and had no real power over them, they got some well-deserved pushback from peers, customers, employees, and community members. If it felt like a mob, that's because these people with a tremendous amount of power really did hurt a lot of people with their stances. I'm glad they've changed their minds.
For those that see halting illegal border crossings as a positive (which are likely a minority on HN but HN is not representative of the nation), this change hampers the ability to enforce the law.
Even for those that do think halting border crossings is bad, the consequences of making ICE change to a different IT solution is likely that ICE's bureaucracy is hampered and people detained at the border take longer to process and thus result in more hardship.
So yeah, I say "I'm not sure" because I don't know the personal motives of the individual outspoken people. It really depends on what they thought it was going to accomplish, and why they wanted those things to happen.
It is impossible to control the actions of other people. What they will or will not do should play little role in your own moral determinations. At the end of the day, anything done in business is only done for money. If you do something which you believe to be immoral, being able to say "but I got paid" will not help. If others step in and do it instead, they bear the moral consequence rather than you.
Whether one would consider the action requested to be rational really depends on the objective of the "mob".
If the objective is to gain some immediate press exposure for immigrants rights issues, it seems totally rational, and it appears to have achieved the goal.
If the objective is to improve conditions for immigrants in ICE/CBP custody in the near term, it's not clear it will help, and it could definitely have unintended negative consequences. For example, ERO agents under increased pressure due to IT systems going down may be less likely to offer DA on humanitarian grounds, if it's just easier and less paperwork to deport en masse. Maybe there's a strong rational argument to be made in favor, but average citizens don't have complete information or authority to investigate, so it really seems to boil down to more of a "gut instinct" decision.
If the objective is improvement in conditions for immigrants in the longer term, it might be rational if it's part of a persistent, steady application of pressure to reform ICE/CBP/ORR through a combination of protests, opening cases to trigger judicial oversight, and lobbying to achieve change through legislative processes. But it's unclear if this kind of boycott is particularly effective use of time/resources towards that goal.
nothing else works, people work with the tools they have at their disposition, and if companies don't have any morals when it comes to us (results driven approach no matter the consequences), why should we have any morals when dealing with companies? We're just playing at their own game, and getting good results, and there is nothing wrong with that, so keep on going as long as there are results.
> These abstract objections to specific actions are, frankly, a cop out.
My objections aren't to these specific actions. I'm trying to discuss the phenomena of very vocal outrage at a distance motivating company change. I specifically didn't mention my stance on the results because I don't want to be one of those people who supports the means only when it leads to results I like (e.g both Democrats and Republicans when it comes a President of their party overreaching their power to do something their party supports).
For the record, I am very pro-immigration and don't like the current Administration. That's part of why I have mixed feelings about the general approach.
The other reason I have mixed feelings is because corporations do need to be accountable, and currently the outrage mob seems to be the most effective, if very narrow tool for helping accomplish. But while I don't think it's the proper tool for that, I'm not really sure what else to try to replace it with.
> Your statement also completely disregards morality and ethics.
That's a fair point, my description was lacking. I think mobs also tend to act amorally and without regard for ethics. May they have reactions rooted in moral and ethical causes? Absolutely. I don't think often gets applied to their reactions though. I think in these situations, most people check their civility at the "keyboard" (door, getting online, etc).
The reaction here was relatively mild. There have been bigger, badder ones though, and while this doesn't really compare effect-wise, it is on the same spectrum, in my mind.
Do I want things to change? Absolutely. Do I want things to change just because a large number of people were informed of something through a random news article and poor handling of it? I'm not so sure.
Your point is extremely valid. Misinformation spread online and repeat in echo chambers seems to be the political climate for the USA.
Personally, I consider myself to be a Republican, but it seems fear and hatred has tainted my party. A great example would be to look at all the Republican presidential candidates for 2016 and watch how many opposed the current administration.
However, once they saw the voters following they were forced to do the same rather than demonstrate what a backbone is for.
Stonewall Riots. Boston Tea Party. Battle of Blair Mountain. Young Patriots and their “Rainbow Coalition”. If you have not heard of all of these then ask yourself this simple question:
These are examples of civil disobedience, in which the persecuted fought back against injustice. Next difference is that the outcomes were favorable for the victims, not so much for some innocent Massachusetts colonists.
I think there's something to be said for listening to your customers and community. But how much of the pushback was from the community? Certainly the developer who yanked their code. And from what I've read the internal developers too.
But I think having to fear crowds of probably less than completely informed people generally lacking nuance is not something to be lauded.