[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Seree Zohar

There is something I don’t understand and would be pleased to hear comment on.

Seree,

Problems in posing the question: this has literally nothing to do with Obama. It has far more to do with the Church of Latter Day Saints, and, believe it or not, the Black community. To be honest, the Catholics didn't help much either. And it has very little to do with OK Cupid. That was just media hype, a journalist's view.

Those who really want to blame something (and there are many) may wish to consider blaming Asperger's syndrome. Seriously. I don't know how many coders you've hung out with, but many of the ones I've known are somewhere on the scale. It's truly an advantage in that field: the single minded focus, the determination to get something to work, even if it needs to be kludged or hacked.

And many of them, no matter what they say, are surprisingly socially conservative. This makes sense: order in code, order in social relations - which are, after all, just code. 'This subroutine works, and should be included in your library. You can call it under these conditions.' They've got a lot in common with poets, and their debugging sessions are reminiscent of workshops.

But once a subroutine is deprecated, once that bit flips, it ain't flipping back. It's part of their radically conservative mindset. People scramble to exclude it from their libraries, lest other people see they ever used it. "Ruby on Rails" was cool one day, and the next day people were erasing it from their vitas. And let's not get started on "agile programming"...

So the bit flipped. When? Sometime between 2008 and 2012. And here's the other thing about coders: they love clarity. Something is either a one or a zero. And .5's don't exist in that world.

People outside that world, looking in, hear all sorts of stuff about meritocracy. "Nothing else matters, as long as your code compiles, and runs elegantly." But if that were true, they would have cut this guy some slack: he had a big hand in the development of javascript, which you're using right now to read this post. None of that mattered.

For many years, I ran a group of such coders. The biggest challenge: once the wolves smell blood, the pack turns on the wounded one, and the cubicles become the primal scene. That's why directors are constantly saying "Don't flip the bozo bit." Because once that happens, they'll tear the weakened one limb from limb. And if they smell blood on the Suit? Oh, my goodness! That's why CIO doesn't stand for Chief Information Officer. It stands for Career Is Over.

Everyone on the outside, especially the conservatives, is trying to make hay from all this. Everyone tries to get political advantage however they can. But on the inside, the coders don't notice any of that. From their perspective, the excitement is over, and they've gone back to their screens. They don't even notice the blood on the floor. After all, there's code to be written...

Best,

Bill

[Gail White]

All I would say is that if everyone who was opposed to gay marriage lost his job, the Vatican would be the new Detroit.

[Kevin Rainbow]

If we follow their logic, we should fire people who don't condone polygamous marriages and incestuous marriages as well.

Few people condone everything and anything as marriage. We all have boundaries. Why should one be punished for simply for supporting what kind of boundaries he sincerely believes is best for society?

[Roger Slater]

Bill, I find your comments about Asperger's pretty weird, to say the least, and not just because the Aspie I know best is an outspoken progressive liberal, but because what you've said is uncharacteristically (for you) incoherent and, I might add, borderline offensive, especially since your stereotypical views about Asperberger's, which seem to regard these people as a series of robots running the same operating system, have literally nothing to do with what Seree asked, which involved only the "correctness of such a move in light of ... the legality/reasonability of using social media this way."

[Simon Hunt]

Of all the things under discussion here, I think the most interesting one is Seree's original third point: the one about privacy. It's clear that Eich's free speech and freedom of religion have not been violated. And super-rich CEOs getting the ax (probably with a whopping severance paycheck) are not the most obvious targets for sympathy--perhaps especially when the ax comes as a result of having gotten themselves on what seems to be the wrong side of history...

And yet. And yet.

I think a lot of us surely have opinions, have made political donations, wear t-shirts, listen to records, etc., that may not be to the liking of our employers and associates. Perhaps in the privacy-reduced 21st century, such choices are riskier than they used to be...

The Eich case raises another set of questions for me: how long should our past opinions and activities haunt us? And can we change our minds? I don't know if Eich has said anything in recent times, but I know at least several people who supported proposition 8 when it was contested but have moved to the opposite opinion since that time. Public opinion has clearly shifted dramatically on this issue. Should those who swung late pay with those who haven't swung yet? What happens if the pendulum should swing back?

[conny]

Simon you make a good point about privacy. trouble is, as with
Assange or Snowden, what seems like freedom of information simply
leads on to more secrecy, and less freedom of information. I heard the
Russian Police recently went back to using paper because they don't trust
any software. don't know if that's true or not but it makes a lot of sense.
no email=no leaks.

not saying that e.mail or social media is on its way out by any means,
but maybe the case proves there is a big incentive to keep ones own
life secret, which seems quite unhealthy to me.

[Roger Slater]

If Eich's opinions have in fact changed since he made his donation, I imagine he could have solved the whole problem by standing up publicly and saying so. People are very open to the idea of "evolving" on the question of gay marriage, and politicians who have done so and thus enabled states to pass laws legalizing gay marriage have been praised and embraced by the LBGT community, almost more than they would have been had they supported gay marriage all along. So if Eich had stood up and said he regretted that earlier donation and now favored gay marriage, I doubt he would have been forced out.

As far as privacy is concerned, I don't know how the information was leaked, but when you pay money to take a public stand it seems to me that your claim to privacy is minimal at best. This is a big issue when it comes to political donations in general, with the biggest donors being very eager to make donations that no one can trace to them. It seems that money may equal speech, but people with money often don't want anyone to know who it is that is speaking.

[Simon Hunt]

I agree with you, Roger, about the specifics of Eich's case. Actually, I very much wish I had read the New Yorker link posted upthread by Chris O'Carroll BEFORE making my last post rather than AFTER. There's a lot in it to reflect upon, including that Eich has clearly NOT indicated any change in his views, that Eich's donation to support proposition 8 was widely known before he was appointed CEO, and the writer's claim that--given the politics of silicon valley in 2014--the surprising thing is not that Eich has resigned but that he was appointed in the first place. The writer also compares Eich to a hypothetical CEO in, say, 1973 (if I remember correctly), who had financially supported anti-miscegenation laws and now had to face the cost of being on the wrong side of history.

I guess my only point is that, in 2014, the various realms of our existence are so much more accessible to one another than they used to be that the effects upon our privacy (in the experiential if not the legal sense) should give us pause--perhaps especially if we sometimes hold unpopular views. And who doesn't? Not all unpopular views are like those of Mr. Eich.

[Seree Zohar]

Reading, reading...

Apparently, OKCupid blocked its users who access its site via Mozilla:
"OKCupid blocked Mozilla users from visiting their website."
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/04/...eo-boot-110840

And there is this:
“There is a very specific narrative today on certain issues and if you step an inch out of bounds, you’re going to get fouled or worse,” he says. “He stepped on one of the three great land mines: gay rights, race and the environment. You don’t have to have made flagrantly terrible statements to get into trouble now.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanada...or-persecuted/

And this:
"Eich was not saved by a blog post he wrote making these commitments to Mozilla employees:"
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...values/360156/

So, again: OKCupid used its members, without their consent, to manipulate a situation to do with Eich's personal views of 6 years ago into a major public situation. Dirt's flying every which way now, yet something seems nonethless inherently skew with this mode of action/reaction. I guess the original questions can be put on hold altogether for now, since it looks like this is going to snowball. The issue, though, seems to have opened up to include OKCupid users - or does the signup to the site also sign over the right to have the site manipulate one's "personal" page too, without that being considered a similar invasion of privacy... Back to Confused Square One for me.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Seree, It seems you've moved the goalposts a bit.

Originally, the main issue you raised was one of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and privacy. I think, though you may not agree, that those concerns have been pretty thoroughly addressed, and that it's been well established that Eich did not suffer violations of his rights in any of those three areas.

Now you're shifting the terms of the argument, bringing front and center an issue that was only peripheral in your initial post. You're stressing the claim that OkCupid "used" its members in a reprehensible way when it didn't let them access the website via Mozilla, even though they could still access it by other routes.

It doesn't seem to me that members were being mistreated in any significant way. (And those who felt otherwise were free to express their disapproval by ditching OkCupid in favor of other dating and social networking sites.) A restaurant or supermarket is not "using" its customers when it elects not to do business with a particular supplier. A department store is not "using" its customers when it declines to accept one credit card or another.

Did large numbers of OkCupid members mount outraged "give us back our Mozilla" protests? Or are Eich supporters ginning up a phantom controversy?