What if for example the People's Republic of China was hosting its code on Gitlab? This is a state that has "re-education camps" (interment camps) for a specific group of people and it reported to be engaging in organ harvesting.
I don't find it too hard to draw parallels between Nazi Germany and China at the moment.
I asked for an example and you're still arguing hypotheticals. And the PRC would not host its code on Gitlab, that's not even a realistic comparison.
So far the only pattern I see is people making up hypothetical situations and using them to claim Gitlab is complicit in enabling human rights violations. But last I checked free speech is a human right!
So every time somebody signs up for any service you need to provide your address, name, date of birth, 2 forms of id, maybe even your SSN so they can run a background check on you?
At any random point in the future they can just revoke your access to the service if they decide something you were previously doing is no longer acceptable.
Well the USG can always sanction China and make it illegal to do business with them. Feel free to lobby your congressman if it bothers you so much. Or just quit. Or get raised to a level where you can make a call whether to do business or not with someone.
There are a lot of ways to influence someone. Leaving general politics at the door is good idea. You are getting paid to work - so unless you have standing of being harmed directly by company action - just do your job or quit.
Sure, we can all agree that China is involved in human rights violations.
But if we are going to ban anything, we need a very clear list of what is banned, when and for how long.
We know that CloudFlare has banned all Nazi-esque/White Supremacist material. China is a communist state, and Communism (in all real world implementations) requires violent redistribution of wealth. Should GitLab or Cloudflare remove all Communist material?
Who is the arbiter for which political opinions are not allowed in tech? Or should we just neutral towards customers?
I don't find it too hard to draw parallels between Nazi Germany and China at the moment.