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[Graknorke]

Would anybody seriously have an issue if people wanted to boycott Mozilla for hiring Charles Manson as their CEO?

If the murderer had served their sentence to completion and was a competent CEO I can't see why there'd be a problem.

[Glowcat]

I guess I did need to clarify that they might not be convicted despite overwhelming evidence, though I was sure somebody else would've then jumped in with "You can't hold them responsible when they were found innocent! Innocent before proven guilty! Blah blah blah".

But again this is arguing against the reasons for the boycott, not the ability to boycott based on CEO actions themselves.

[Graknorke]

But again this is arguing against the reasons for the boycott, not the ability to boycott based on CEO actions themselves.

boycotting companies because of political activism of its employees, no matter how important those employees are, is a bad thing.

The topic was never about what people can do, it's about what people should do.
Come on that's been posted so many times.

[Glowcat]

...and I'm arguing about what people SHOULD DO in relation to GG's original issue with the boycott (i.e. the specifics of the argument, not the details surrounding). You do realize there are at least two different layers there, right?

[Loud Whispers]

The topic was never about what people can do, it's about what people should do.
Come on that's been posted so many times.

I was under the impression that this thread was about what people do, not what they can or should do.

[Graknorke]

...and I'm arguing about what people SHOULD DO in relation to GG's original issue with the boycott (i.e. the specifics of the argument, not the details surrounding). You do realize there are at least two different layers there, right?

No sorry I can't read any meaning from that post.

The topic was never about what people can do, it's about what people should do.
Come on that's been posted so many times.

I was under the impression that this thread was about what people do, not what they can or should do.

If that was all it was then we would have made some observations on the article and no discussion would have happened. It wouldn't have even been worth making a thread about. There would just have been a single post going "look at this thing that happened" and everyone else would go "wow that sure is a thing that happened".

[Loud Whispers]

If that was all it was then we would have made some observations on the article and no discussion would have happened. It wouldn't have even been worth making a thread about. There would just have been a single post going "look at this thing that happened" and everyone else would go "wow that sure is a thing that happened".

Not really. We'd have people discussing what happened, why it happened and the ethics behind what just happened. Kinda like what we've had. Even in the observation alone there was discussion, we talked about the likelihood that this was being used as a smokescreen to remove a figure otherwise too entrenched to normally remove from the company and the circumstances around the board members leaving e.t.c.

[Leafsnail]

Whatever, same difference. Go with whichever you prefer. The point is "CEO once did a thing we think is wrong, so we need to make sure that this organization suffers for employing them", the details are relatively unimportant.

I don't think you actually want to take this position, because it seems completely indefensible.  Let's imagine a company appointed a CEO who has frequently said that he believes black people are sub-human, and who has donated to causes that promote that viewpoint.  Do you think it would be unacceptable to apply pressure to the company into remove them?

In addition I'd point out it's not about making the company suffer, it's about getting them to make a change.  Mozilla lost basically nothing out of this boycott because they realized their mistake and corrected it.

[Bauglir]

In a scenario where the CEO in question has had a history of associating with a given political movement to the point where the average person hearing about it associates the two, yeah, there's an argument to be made that appointing the person implies an endorsement of the position, particularly if the corporation is at all relevant to the position in question. Like, if Jenny McCarthy got appointed to an executive position in a pharmaceutical business, it'd be pretty reasonable to ask what the hell they were thinking. But that's not what happened here. This is claiming that appointing a person to be CEO implies an endorsement of everything the person has ever supported to any degree*. For the first time in recent memory, I'm the one who needs to tell people to stop making irrelevant analogies.

*EDIT: Unless they issue an immediate retraction whenever it's brought up. I admit that probably would've been a better move than a resignation, since that's been pointed out, but I still don't see how the ethical burden ought to be on Mozilla to do anything at all here.

[Leafsnail]

That wasn't an analogy, I was demonstrating why GlyphGryph's explicitly stated position is unsupportable.

"Ever supported to any degree" is a definite strawman incidentally.  Directly providing material aid to a political cause (and also not expressing any kind of regret afterwards) is a pretty high level of support.

[Zangi]

Mozilla getting boycott again.
Cause ya know,someone has to be going the wrong way on this one way street.  And its obviously not (insert your side here).

[BlindKitty]

Mozilla getting boycott again.
Cause ya know,someone has to be going the wrong way on this one way street.  And its obviously not (insert your side here).

Well, it ain't conservatives who took it this route first, y'know? I'm all for live and let live, but only if the other side lets me live too.
In other words: you want to go (economic) war route, to see who has more power? Fine with me. I wouldn't start that, myself, but I don't care to take part. Since Opera went evil Google-based, I don't have any preference in browsers anyway. Heck, maybe I will just revert to using IE?

[nenjin]

http://time.com/53649/chick-fil-a-millennials-dan-cathy/?hpt=hp_t2

I post this as an example of what's really going on. It's not that companies "shouldn't engage in political dialog." It's that they shouldn't do it in public. Because it's bad for business. They still want to spend their money affecting politics, they simply don't want anyone to know about it so it doesn't affect their bottomline.

That's the real rub. Just like anonymous political donors, people want to be engaged in politics at pretty much all levels of society. There's just a distinct group who have much more to lose by their beliefs being known. Personally, I think they shouldn't have the right to hide what they believe. It should be as much a data point for consumers to weigh as how ethically they produce their product, or how good it is versus the price they charge. Why is politics suddenly magically not-relevant when it comes to business, even though they're one of the primary sources of campaign donations?

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Being a CEO very rarely means you have free reign to be an ideologue. CEO is a management position, not advocacy. Personal beliefs can and do tinge a person's business decision making, and a person in such a public-facing position as a CEO needs to temper their opinions. That's the reality of it.


You do not have a right to be a CEO of a corporation. This is basic corporate rights [determining who is an isn't able to be their CEO] and action/reaction to PR tied in with societal events [ousting him due to a few reasons other than simply anti-gay donations]. Noone in the public forced him to resign, he resigned to save face for the board who shoehorned him into the position and realized they made a pretty big mistake after half the experienced board packed and left in protest.

This has less to do with his meager donation and the fact that a public-facing position does not need to be overshadowed by a person's beliefs and past, which it was. Eich was playing this appointment and role for his own image and actually trying to play anti-gay at the same time:

Eich also stressed that Firefox worked globally, including in countries like Indonesia with “different opinions”, and LGBT marriage was “not considered universal human rights yet, and maybe they will be, but that’s in the future, right now we’re in a world where we have to be global to have effect”.

That's why you typically pick qualified uncontroversial candidates from the beginning [but, in this case, Eich is a friend of the director of the board and was allowed to be CEO with no ability to do the job], to avoid scenarios like this. And especially ridiculous quotes like the above. He was not suited for the position in the first place and his resignation in the face of a moderate controversy [which would've been better solved by him, I dunno, explaining himself instead of playing the victim and acting like teh gayz forced him from his position] just solidifies his inability to be in that position.

[Zangi]

Being a CEO very rarely means you have free reign to be an ideologue. CEO is a management position, not advocacy. Personal beliefs can and do tinge a person's business decision making, and a person in such a public-facing position as a CEO needs to temper their opinions. That's the reality of it.

There is no indication that he would wield it in any shape or form though.  Of course, there could be activist shareholders I suppose... far less you can do about that.