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Comment by marcodave | Hacker News Reader

No, but if GitHub is mentioned in a very angry Twitter thread, and is being targeted by a woke and bored journalist which would write an angry and misdirected article putting the words "racism" and "GitHub" together, is most likely a good enough motivation to avoid a PR disaster

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The "woke mob" were chasing them because of the contract with ICE and the police facial recognition stuff that's very profitable and they'd like to continue doing.

The master branch thing was an attempt at misdirection and throwing the mob a bone.

It's a classic PR move. The entire objective was to generate distracting noise.

Policing language is popular among corporations for the same reason oil companies got "woke" about recycling in the 80s:

* It doesn't really change anything and doesn't affect profit margins.

* It affects everybody albeit very lightly and is extemely visible.

* It naturally leads people to shame each other, taking the heat off the corp.

* They can score some progressive points at minimum cost.

Same mechanism, different era.

At some point if things continue to get worse overall, these games wont work because the "woke mob" (not limited to that particular "group", individuals may share the same opinion on such activities, or at least where the most disgruntled overlaps with most capable) will start to realize what you describe and just figure its more effective to target GH infrastructure/employees/family/friends and officers directly, no need for angry tweets (and not strictly related to GH but other corporations that engage in similar services as well).

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