Not every response to a political post that is apathy incarnate is an "ideological flamewar".
Some things have to be named as what they are, this is not hyperbole. This is happening right now. And I'm sorry anything but your typical "but what about refusing services to the gays" makes you uncomfortable.
Substantive conversation about the specifics of the OP is different; that's possible, and if people can do it, it's on topic here. But it takes discipline not to devolve into flame-throwing.
When a thread gets to the level of name-calling about concentration camps, there's no substantive discussion left to be had. Internet forums as a medium are quick to become vessels for venting rather than information sharing. That's what we want to avoid here. If your wish is to fight battles and smite enemies, please do so elsewhere. I'm sure there are many good reasons to smite them; we are certainly not saying that these issues are unimportant.
It's simply the same way that it's not libelous to call someone who committed murder a "murderer"--because they earned the title when they committed the murder.
Words like concentration camp seem to me in a different category. They aren't necessarily name-calling, but they do have dual semantics: a factual aspect and a pejorative one. If all a comment does is repeat those words and add additional pejoratives, that's not a substantive comment by HN standards.
Repeating pejoratives very much feels like "saying what something is" or "naming things as they are". But it feels like exactly the opposite of that to others, who then feel justified in escalating. That is the dynamic of flamewar, not conversation. We can't have both, and HN threads are supposed to be conversations.
Our intention is to give every sincere question a sincere answer, so I'm sorry to have left the wrong impression in this case. It's just not always possible given resource constraints. I'm sure we can revisit this in the future.
If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the ACLU and other lobbyists fighting the good fight. Write your congressman. Call your congressman. VOTE! Campaign for the correct congressman. Code for your congressman. Push for policy that makes ICE employees (and all government employees) more accountable for human rights abuses. All of these actions will be more effective than campaigning for ICE, who will just migrate to a different cloud code review tool if the contract is cancelled (gitlab, bitbucket, or whomever else).
This is a non action move in my opinion. I see it as slacktivism, if Github pulls the contract, people will pat themselves on the back, and count it as a win. You could argue the exposure might have some effect, but given that ICE human rights abuses have been very well documented by the leading publications, I'm unsure if additional exposure will bring change. I do strongly believe that funding lobbyists is the a great short term thing we can do. From an exposure viewpoint, I think the best thing we can do is raise exposure and support in the blue areas of the country. However, these protests are not doing that.
For one, many disparate cultures have separately developed values that are very similar. In a lot of these cultures values intersect more than diverge.
Second, I do not believe discriminating on an entity based on the perceived harm it is causing others is the equivalent to discriminating on an individual or group based on intrinsic characteristics the individuals were born with.
Further, I believe it's potentially desirable to attempt to derive a set of values and morals based on reasoning; attempting to maximize for the constructive and empowering and minimize the destructive and oppressive.
That's the entire problem isn't it? Perceived by who? Do people actually know the truth or is it just what they assume? How is this kind of policy not immediately susceptible to all sorts of abuse?