* edit: changed "competition" to "opposition"
In my experience, most people who complain that curbing political discussion in the workplace amounts to silencing them have views that are well in line with the status quo at the company.
In the context of work "silencing" could mean preventing workers from raising (valuable) concerns about the ethics of their work.
And again, the only people I've seen making this argument have ethics and hold values that are in line with the company's values. I've never seen a liberal at a conservative company call for more political discussion, or vice versa. It's always been conservatives in conservative companies or liberal in liberal companies making this argument. People who hold views contrary to the company mostly stay quiet, because making their views known results in ostracism and other negative consequences.
I think the primary motivation is that people whose views are in line with the company enjoy the situation of voicing their positions while being immune to challenge because people who disagree with them are pressured into silence. It produces a gratifying sense for the people in th majority, but comes at the expense of people in the minority. For that reason, there's good cause to not allow political discussion in the workplace.
It's better to just not let anyone use the company as a soapbox at all. If they have disagreements about the culture of the company, there are plenty of reporters looking for a scoop.
I’m not commenting on Google allowing or disallowing. I don’t really care and to be honest, if my workplace has a discussion board internally I’d probably not talk politics on it anyway. What I will say though is I think it’s interesting that google found it appropriate to allow it when google itself was disrupting the status quo, and it now disallows it when it more or less has become the status quo.
The attempt to guilt people into rolling around in the mud, or perhaps 'resistance' as you call it, is exactly the mentality that's ruining political conversation for everyone else.
I'm not trying to guilt anyone into anything. If anything, I'm putting forth the call to action to recognize that being apolitical hurts almost everyone, yourself included. You may be apolitical, but your boss probably isn't. Your landlord probably isn't. Your local politicians definitely aren't. The owner of your workplace almost certainly isn't, either. And all of those people have the capacity to make their lives better, by politicking in a way that will make your life worse.
I don't care what side people want to get on. I just want them to know that whether they've chosen one or not, they are on one.
Assuming it's the power of influence you're after... What do you truly hope to influence, the Board? Shareholders? Good luck.
If you believe diversity is not a worthy topic of discussion or debate at the workplace, well, therein lies the political divide. Silencing political discussion is then its own form of getting a leg up in that debate.
What if the opposite happened, and political discussion resulted in people arguing for less diversity?
The status quo might seem pretty appealing at that point.
By definition there are two camps of opposition to the current status quo - one to the left of it, and one to the right of it.
Would you accept both sides of it being allowed to speak freely in tech companies, or just the side you are on?
That is not true “by definition”. It would be true invariably (but still not by definition unless the conditions were also) if political variation were unidimensional, linear, and unbounded in actual (not merely potential) range.
My key point is that if you open up the floor to politics so people can try and change the status quo, you open up the possibilities that people will want to change the status quo in a way that makes it even further away from where you think it should be.
When people advocate political discussion at work because they are against the status quo, I don't think that's a scenario they consider.
Political aka controversial topics should be avoided, unless they are relevant to work.
For example, unless you work at a real estate agency, it would be a poor idea to discuss federal or state law for racial guarantees around the sale of houses.
(Not that you can't discuss them; certainty do. But your workplace will make a poor forum.)
Identity isn't political, until you have one that isn't an accepted norm. Sexual orientation isn't political, until people want to deny you insurance over yours. Race isn't political, until people refuse to sell you houses because of it. And so on.
"Keep politics out of $thing" is the purest expression of privilege. Doesn't make you a bad person or anything, but it's worth keeping in mind.
Shifting back to topic some: this idea that Google has had for years about platforms and now about it's internal one, that you can somehow keep the ugly elements of our society out and just have a nice, clean, advertiser and marketer-freindly area (ala YouTube) has permeated everything they've made. The problem is any place that people gather and collaborate will, eventually, get political. It can't not. As a species we have dragged politics into everything since long before we tricked silicon chips into thinking. I don't know why people keep thinking the Internet can be different, but it can't.