Is it possible to be an unabashed openly conservative / Republican in a company like Facebook or Twitter or Google?
One gets the impression that it's a club for one kind of animal only.
One gets the impression that it's a club for one kind of animal only.
In fairness I was a pretty equal-opportunity partisan politics attack dog, maybe it just canceled out.
For a counter-point, Apple seems to have been willing to set their ads business back by years to whack someone over a critically-acclaimed book that had been published for years before the auto da fe was held: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-h..., so maybe there's some dice involved.
I did, however, notice that you said that you were an equal opportunity partisan politics attack dog and maybe it cancelled out. I guess I could just reframe my question to you and ask whether you ever saw someone who was equally vocal but partisan on the red team. If you saw only vocal people from the blue team, I'd call that a bit telling.
If you saw partisan folks from the red team who were similarly vocal then that fully answers my question.
I worked for big tech in SFBA and NYC: the median of rank-and-file people like me were at a place on the political/social/cultural spectrum that would be called "extreme" in my region of origin (Southern California). And there clearly isn't a bright line between "contributor" and "leadership". And there clearly isn't a bright line between "find this person distasteful" and "pass them over for opportunity". I can absolutely picture that right-leaning folks would have felt outnumbered and/or disinclined to speak freely, I absolutely cannot picture leadership sanctioning career damage over it.
I supported/managed a high-impact group in a critical niche of about 35 people at my maximum seniority. If anyone had gotten held back for a promotion or something because of supporting a liberal or conservative candidate politically I would have come down like the wrath of God on that, and I believe my superiors would have backed that all the way.
I appreciate that's a lot of "believe" and "think" and "imagine", but it's just impossible for me to prove a negative, so I've tried to answer with some nuance and at some length to convey a useful intuition.
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/14/17857622/twitter-liberal-emplo...
If I've had any gripe with Twitter's high-profile/political content moderation policiy over the last decade it's that special privileges afforded to important officials should be attached to their official Twitter accounts. `@POTUS` or `@WhiteHouse` or whatever having "special" standards is at least an arguable point. Extending any special treatment to the private accounts (that, not coincidentally, those folks get to keep, or at least hope to keep, after leaving office) is pretty dubious.
The ideas that spring to mind fly smack in the face of conservative ideology
- Private companies are allowed to hire who they wish. In our capitalist world the free market would provide for "conservative alternatives" and it does ("truth social" versus twitter for instance)
- Mandating some kind of 'quota' for conservative employees to be hired seems to fly in the face of the premise of businesses being freed from regulation and intervention by the government
- Free speech protects against the government intruding on it, conservative speech included. Extending this to private companies would be a disastrous overreach of unchecked legal power
- Algorithmically "forcing" conservative views would be seen as censorship of otherwise organic views. Conservatives claim (rightly or wrongly) the opposite happens, so logically they would be upset if the opposite were to happen
It seems like the only truly reasonable path is to expect "conservatives" to build their own platforms. Cater to their own audiences. If they are as large a group as they say they are, then the people who execute on this would become the barons of conservative thought and economics
To even imply MSNBC is "left leaning" is absolutely hilarious however. Though I suppose people so easily forget their Nazi comparison of Bernie Sanders
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2020-03-03/ty-article/msnbc-...
This viewpoint is really difficult to argue with. You can say that such transgressions are perhaps outweighed by any advantages of his presidency that you perceived, but that will not convince many on the left. Indeed, just look at the Cuomos and Franken to see that harassers are simply no longer tolerated on the left - these days such men are simply disqualified without pardon.
I think this fundamental incompatibility of basic values is an important reason why it is difficult to be a Trump supporter at many companies and universities nowadays.
(I conflated being "conservative / Republican" with being a Trump supporter. Feel free to ignore my comment if that is not what you intended.)
One might have been a supporter of someone like Trump or Cuomo for all kinds of reasons, but for many it's simply over once a certain line is crossed.
As I said, it is a difficult point to argue against because their transgressions concern what many consider really basic values.
As you surely understood from my previous comments, in the eyes of many both Trump and Cuomo are simply disqualified men. This is so fundamental that one must stop supporting them and find the next best option within your party, taking any compromises on policy or electoral disadvantages for granted.
For Cuomo this was done swiftly; for Trump there would have been plenty of time since the 2016 election, but it just hasn't happened.
For many this is unforgivable, and I am afraid it is nearly impossible to change such a viewpoint.
Western civil society doesn't have many strictly saintly people even among our most popular role models. In the United States where I live, we're constantly jammed up between trying to admire legitimate, world-changing accomplishments by our founders/framers and the fact that many/most of them were unapologetic slave owners. I imagine it's similar in a lot of the world.
Even in software anyone who cares has to try to navigate a set of opinions about key figures that range from "Luke Skywalker" to "pedophilia apologist" on the same person while trying to remain somewhat balanced about the whole thing.
Im my travels I've never met a person who isn't a monster judged by their worst act, and who isn't a saint judged by their best.
That's all very platitudinous and PC, so to grind out something actionable: I think every person should be vigorous in determining their own allegiances to and admiration for and condemnation of public figures, and very conservative in judging others for differing opinions. So basically Postel's Law: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others".
I'm bad at this myself, but I'm working on it.