Pointing out the inherent privilege-preserving effects of discouraging challenge to the status quo is not adding an incendiary meaning. It's lifting a latent consequence to the level of manifest evidence.

This understandably makes some people uncomfortable. It challenges beliefs, it challenges self-worth, it challenges value systems, it challenges worldviews.

None of these invalidate the underlying concept that sheltering today's winners from any challenge, complaint, or criticism, is inherently repressive to those outside that class.

It is adding incendiary meaning. You are assuming the intent of someone else not wanting politics in the workplace. You assume it means that they are content with the status quo and would like to maintain that.

The reality is that many people keep politics out of the workplace because they dislike the amount that bringing politics to the workplace can affect the cohesion of their team/department.

You're creating a strawman argument.

You clearly value the change that can be brought by bringing politics into the workplace. That's totally cool, your value system is different than that of some other people. All they're asking is that you take their viewpoint without assigning your assumed reasons to it.

There is a distinction I'm being exceedingly careful to make between intent and effect.

The meaning may be absolutely as you describe. The effect, however, is to perpetuate gradients in power, privilege, and control.

There are multitudes of venues for political expression, why cannot the workplace be a refuge from that maelstrom?

That sounds like a political thesis, not a workplace. Who said anything about status quo? How does a lack of discussion mean agreement with a position you assumed but was never stated? Do you see how people don't like this?

You can challenge all you want, but being an annoyance in the office by forcing your views and interpretations on everyone is a major issue. I don't care about your politics and don't want to discuss mine. The company is paying you for productivity, not political change. Understanding boundaries is the first step to communicating with people.

If we work together, you should assume good faith. We are all on the same team at work. That's the point.

Wouldn't an assumption of good faith presume a capacity for frank discussion?

Oddly enough, I'm debating (on Mastodon) against the notion that a Single Global Authority defined as "suitably free", supported through taxes, would be a prefered / acceptable alternative to present private Internet service provisioning.

I agree with most of the sentiment, particularly public subsidy of comms capabilities. The concern is that it's not possibly to simply define a thing as "suitably free", you've got to work in a real world, in which definitions don't simply instantiate themselves, in which adversaries may take control of critical regulatory bodies (I pointed out that One Geopolitical Party with interests Significantly Opposed to Another has in recent history held the chair of the UN Human Rights Commission, where the UN was the proposed Internet provisioning entity).

Similarly: you can't simply declare by definition or fiat that we're all on the same team. For multiple parties' interests to be fairly represented and addressed, there must be some mechanism for representing and addressing those concerns.

Otherwise the proposal simply ignores existing realities and complexities and attempts to abstract them out of existence. They'll reappear in time in other places or forms.

Additionally, my understaning of "presume good faith" may be different from yours. It's not so much a belief I'll maintain, most especially in the absence of evidence. It's an operating and communications modality I will attempt to sustain (and hope others do), up to the point at which it is clearly no longer tenable. It's an extension of all feasible grace and credit, to the point that no possible justification for that extension remains.

Andreas Schou, a Googler, used to have an excellent guide to moderation pinned to his profile page there. A copy survives here:

https://www.voidstar.com/Takeout/ActivityLog/Comments.html

I've posted it, with paragraph breaks to Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/raw/W3vpntgM

No, we're not. I'm not on your side just because we work for the same company. I'm not even on the company's side.

I'm on my side, first and last and always. If cooperation helps me, so be it. But if cooperation harms me, then I will speak up. If I am not heard, I will leave.

That is my inherent and sovereign right as a human being.

Bringing these issues to the workplace you risk finding more than you want to know about your coworkers. Will you still be able to be professional and unbiased in your relationships at work if you find out what opinions your coworkers have about political issues you care about? Probably not, so who wins in that case? Nobody, you lose as your motivation drops, company loses as productivity drops.

It's the same argument as not wanting to find everything there is to know about your neighbor, a dose of ignorance is healthy to maintaining most relationships in life. You don't need nor is it healthy, to apply the same standard of knowledge to your coworkers as to your significant other.

Again, nobody in this entire page has said anything like that. How did you come up with this statement?

And no, the vast majority of people don't consider those characteristics to be political at all and really don't care. Come in, do work, go home, and don't hurt anyone. It's not a complicated political argument.

> Again, nobody in this entire page has said anything like that. How did you come up with this statement?

Something about lying with dogs and fleas. I'm happy to listen if you elaborate on what exactly you mean by political. Though I'll caution by stating that in general, I find that most "political" issues can be phrased as consequences of ethical concerns (if there weren't underlying ethical disagreements, there wouldn't be political issues).

Let's take as an example the act of a company contracting with CBP. This is "political", in the sense that it is, to many, clearly an act of protest against the current administration. On the other hand, if one has ethical objections to separating children from their parents, or any number of other things, there can be a moral (and if one is an ACM member, an organizational) imperative to escalate when you have ethical concerns.

In essence, if I believe the family separation policy hurts people, and my company may enable that policy, do I have a moral imperative to escalate my concerns about the hurt we're causing? Or is doing so "political" and therefore inappropriate to mention at work?

There's nothing wrong with you privately expressing your concern about a project to superiors, and leaving the company if you don't agree.

When you protest against it publicly in the workplace and shout down others for as little as not vehemently agreeing with you, then we have a problem.

This is the difference between escalating concerns vs political activism, regardless of the actual issue at stake.

> shout down others for as little as not vehemently agreeing with you

Isn't this what you're doing now: shouting down others for as little as not vehemently agreeing with you about the place of political discussion in the workplace?

Edit: To rephrase since you missed what I was getting at: you are advocating for institutional support in silencing people who express views with which you disagree in the workplace. That is, views which are "too political" should be forbidden and, if expressed, presumably shouted down or otherwise silenced.

If for example, I expressed my disagreement with you that I believe political views are reasonable to express in the workplace, what action would you take?

No, I'm discussing. This isn't a workplace, it's a public internet forum. Nobody is prevented from participating here by my posts. You're free to discuss whatever you want as well.

Replying to your edit => A workplace is different than the state. You do not have complete freedom within a corporation, and expression is very different from beliefs. Nobody cares about your beliefs, but your expression will be limited to increase harmony and productivity within a commercial space where you're paid to do work.

The premise that commercial spaces should primarily be organized for productivity is a political statement.

No, it's what businesses are paying employees for. There's nothing political about it, in the context of actual government politics (and not the abstracted everything-is-political viewpoint).

You didn't actually address my question, and I made no mention of the state. I'm going to quote you again: you claimed that

> When you protest against it publicly in the workplace and shout down others for as little as not vehemently agreeing with you, then we have a problem.

I'm asking if you think that's generally true. For example, if you actually believe this, you would presumably make no attempt to silence me if I protested something in the workplace, as doing so would be taking exactly the action you object to.

Presumably you would internally object to my protesting something, and we both agree that that's alright. But were you to express that concern outwardly, say by asking me to stop, it would be shouting down others for as little as not vehemently agreeing with you about workplace conduct. And therefore we would have a problem, or more correctly, you would have a problem with yourself.

In other words, we encounter a bit of a paradox. How you resolve this paradox is of paramount importance: the value system you use to resolve this paradox becomes the values you use in the workplace.

I'm using this to illustrate a point: there isn't a "null" position. Nebulously banning "political" views doesn't work unless you're clear about what makes something political. And people will disagree with you on those things. Its much less painful to ban things based on content (say: cursing or insults) than "how political it is", because the second is just an excuse to let your values implicitly bias the local Overton window without acknowledging that.

> the second is just an excuse to let your values implicitly bias the local Overton window without acknowledging that

I can't speak for the original commenter, but I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that. Banning politics is a difficult and inevitably biased rule. But the alternative seems to be that politics invades every minute of everyone's life, and that's completely intolerable unless you're fortunate enough to precisely align with your local mainstream.

And that's fine. It's a choice. One I personally disagree with, but at least it's a deliberate choice. But if you make such a deliberate choice you need to be frank about it: you're making a tradeoff between, let's say, tranquility and openness, and favoring tranquility at a cost to people whose views are less mainstream. Or (under an alternate definition of political), you're making the choice to accept without argument the whims of the current government, in other words making company values dictated by the environment instead of by the company itself. This is, again, not inherently wrong, but you should own this and understand that it isn't a morally superior or better position, it's just an arbitrary stance that might make sense for you, but it comes at a cost to others.

> but it's miles better than the scenario where politics is allowed to invade every minute of everyone's life.

I just want to note that, as someone who works at Google, its very easy to turn politics "off", so to speak. There are mailing lists and group chats I just don't access. I'm privileged enough to be able to do that because there are very few political issues that directly affect me. That isn't true for some of my coworkers. Those who are, to take one example, immigrants are directly affected by "politics" on the daily. And so avoiding discussion or interaction with politcal issues isn't possible for them. The same is true for coworkers who are Muslim, or who have undocumented family members. The political realities are inescapable for them. Asking them not to discuss those issues at work is like asking me not to discuss, say, a parent being hospitalized. They're real issues that affect and weigh on people. Forcing people to keep those things bottled up, especially when the company may be taking action that negatively impacts those people, isn't nice.

But I think your framing is backwards here.

* Banning politics from the workplace is a huge benefit to people whose views are less mainstream. In the presence of politics, people with non-mainstream views have to either lie about what they think or live under a constant cloud of controversy.

* Banning politics from the workplace is the only way to keep your values independent of the political environment. If politics are allowed, you constantly have to monitor the political landscape to make sure following your company values won't make your employees rebel.

* Your analogy does hold, and it would be unreasonable to have a rule where I'll be punished for chatting in the breakroom about how my cousin might be deported. But it would also be unreasonable for me to interrupt meetings with demands that the company must cancel its medical plan, because my dad has the same insurance and I don't think they're treating him right.

More broadly, I don't think anyone actually wants or would benefit from politics in general in the workplace. The only people I've seen argue for it are confident that their politics will be popular, and that all political views they find offensive will continue to be forbidden.

(fyi I really appreciate this thread of discussion, it's quite interesting)

To your first point, this is only true if you're forced to participate. We have workplace social events, I sometimes choose not to participate. We have political arguments, I often disagree with the majority in those conversations. I simply don't engage when I'm not up for a debate. It's yet to be an issue. I'd agree that forcing people to express their political views is unreasonable, but that also isn't a position I've seen expressed except as a Boogeyman.

To your second point, if your values are independent of the current political climate, you need to be able to discuss how your actions align with your values. If you're working in political spaces, this necessitates discussion of political issues. To be concrete, if your values are "don't be evil", you need to be willing to have the discussion on whether or not working with the Chinese government on a censored search tool is evil. This is a really complex question (and I use this example because I've heard great arguments in both directions), but if you censor political discussion, the organization can't be held accountable, because no one is allowed to ask.

To your third point, I'm in agreement with your specific example, but asking a question about improving the healthcare policy at an all hands on HR issues would be warranted. Similarly, asking about access to gender neutral restrooms would be warranted even if it's political to some people.

To your last bit, I'm not saying that you can't ban certain things for certain reasons. As an example, banning discrimination is okay, even though some discrimination might be political.

In essence, I'm of the opinion that if you hold a belief strongly enough to ban dissent, you should be forthright about the belief. If your want to ban Republicans, or ban people who openly identify as trans (both of which are legal in various US jurisdictions), at least have the decency so say so and not hide behind banning "political discussion" or "political activism".

(Agreed! I'm glad we're having it.)

I don't think forced political expression is entirely a boogeyman. There was an article a couple months back[1] where a guy was publicly offended that (admittedly among other complaints) his coworkers weren't talking enough about police brutality. Anecdotally I have a lot of stories; for Hispanic Heritage Month, for example, we had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posters all around the office.

It's definitely important to discuss how your actions align with your values. Sometimes that will mean discussing values issues that are also political issues, and sometimes that will mean making a very slippery distinction. But this isn't the extent of the political activism at Google. When employees insisted that Kay Coles James must not be allowed on the AI advisory council[2], they didn't argue that having her would make Google do some particular evil thing. They argued that she's a mean person who holds the wrong political views, so Google must shun her.

People definitely should be honest about what they want to ban and why. But again, in my experience, most people opposed to politics in the workplace honestly do have content-neutral motivations. I'm a very strong Andrew Yang supporter, bumper sticker and pile of campaign swag and all, and I never bring it up in the workplace because I'm not there to do partisan politics.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kd3w/google-employee-me...

[2]https://medium.com/@against.transphobia/googlers-against-tra...

> I don't think forced political expression is entirely a boogeyman.

Sure, someone complained that people weren't knowledgable and up for debating an issue that was important to him. But notably, no one was forced to express anything, he was simply disappointed that they weren't willing to discuss the issue. Actually it wasn't even that, he was disappointed that, instead of expressing concern over the death of a black man, his coworkers were more concerned over how people were protesting[0]. No really, what he complained about was his coworker expressing this opinion:

> “These protestors aren’t going to solve anything, ” she said. ”Like, what are those people even trying to do? Seriously. What are they trying to do? Make people mad about getting stuck in traffic? Piss people off because they can’t get to Grand Central? It’s annoying . I just can’t stand it.”

I can see why that would be disappointing, but even still that disappointment is a far cry from forced political expression.

> When employees insisted that Kay Coles James must not be allowed on the AI advisory council[2], they didn't argue that having her would make Google do some particular evil thing. They argued that she's a mean person who holds the wrong political views, so Google must shun her.

But they did! There were other objections too, but one of the objections was specifically that James's values are directly contradictory to those that Google expresses, both in terms of diversity issues and in terms of AI.

> Not only are James’ views counter to Google’s stated values, but they are directly counter to the project of ensuring that the development and application of AI prioritizes justice over profit.

From the original petition. The thinking, which I broadly agree with, goes something like this: KCJ isn't an expert on AI. She's essentially a layperson, so her value on the ethics board would be as an ethics person, not as an AI person. Two of Google's AI ethics principles are "2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias." and "3. Be built and tested for safety.". KCJ appears to be comfortable using AI for military applications, arguably a violation of 3, and certainly doesn't care for avoiding bias towards trans people, a violation of 2. She didn't make any sense on the committee, and I'd argue that the followup made it clear that it was more meant to pander than to actually address issues.

> I'm a very strong Andrew Yang supporter, bumper sticker and pile of campaign swag and all, and I never bring it up in the workplace because I'm not there to do partisan politics.

Sure, and I don't generally bring up politics at work either. But that doesn't mean that I should deny other people, who are more directly affected by things, the ability to do so.

[0]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjvy3/heres-the-memo-abo...

Maybe I'm misreading the argument. It sounds like the petition claims merely hearing her out is wrong; that because she disagrees on some hot-button political issues, nothing she says can possibly be valuable, and listening to her thoughts on AI ethics would constitute pandering to her side on those political issues. If so, that's a core example of the kind of toxic political wrangling that I'm opposed to in the workplace.

Personally, I think there's a difference between hearing someone out and elevating someone to be on an ethics council. And the only reason she was included was that she's a notable Republican, and Google was concerned that conservatives would complain if there wasn't a notable conservative in the group. In other words, she was included only for (partisan) political reasons. Calling that out isn't introducing politics, it's recognizing them.

1) Surely you can see the difference between topics? Politics are not relevant to work. Office policies are. You can discuss and protest the latter if you want, but not the former. I'm sure you don't discuss porn habits and drug usage with your coworkers, do you? But of course it's fine to discuss working from home or new laptops. There is no paradox here.

2) I would prefer any feedback and protests be in private when are relevant to the company. You don't make a fuss and nobody else does either, so we can all work in peace and quiet. Most companies implement these rules for the sake of everyone.

3) "unless you're clear about what makes something political." This is exceedingly clear for the vast majority of people, except the activists who are making the fuss.

> Office policies are

Perfect, so questions of what companies we contract with, how we do hiring and diversity, and what bathrooms people are allowed to use are all office policies and reasonable work discussion topics. Can you give examples of the kinds of things you object to then?

Fwiw, I've known people who discuss their porn and drug habits at work. Hell I've known people who do drugs with their co-workers.

> I would prefer any feedback and protests be in private when are relevant to the company

Of course, it's only as a side effect that this undercuts the effectiveness of any activism.

Are you familiar with the concept of "yes of course you can protest, but not like that" for all values of that? If the only acceptable forms of protest are ones that can be ignored with no consequences, you've just de facto silenced those who have concerns with the status quo. That's a very political decision, totalitarian ist to be specific.

> This is exceedingly clear for the vast majority of people, except the activists who are making the fuss.

If it's so clear, you should have no trouble making it explicit without relying on the word politics. Since you still seem to miss it, my entire premise here is that "politics" is a form of doublespeak and people who use it are generally unwilling to actually go on record with the views they want to censor, instead using it as a sort of "things that make me uncomfortable in the moment" catch-all, but without giving the same courtesy of banning "things that make me uncomfortable" to other people. So far your unwillingness to pin down exactly what you mean by political hasn't done much to dispell that thought.

This is again conflating politics with office policies. A workplace is not the state. You don't have carte blanche to act how you want, especially when it will clearly create chaos at the company's expense. And it's not specific views but entire topics.

Since you want it explicit:

1) Contracts are not office policy. Objecting because of politics is political.

2) Hiring is about getting the best people for the job. Discussing that is fine. Using quotas for race and gender instead of character and competence is identity politics, and thus political.

3) Bathrooms are by sex. Anyone with different needs can negotiate themselves or use single-person bathrooms if available. Discussing it is political.

None of that is relevant to the business doing work. It's political BS, and you're free to start your own company and discuss all you want there to see how that goes.

> 1) Contracts are not office policy. Objecting because of politics is political.

You're the one claiming the objection is political. I claim the objections are ethical. Again, if you are the arbiter of what is or is not political (which it seems you are trying to be), all this ends up is "objections to things I dislike are political and forbidden".

> Hiring is about getting the best people for the job. Discussing that is fine. Using quotas for race and gender instead of character and competence is identity politics, and thus political.

Great! Racial or gender based hiring quotas are illegal in the US. I don't support them. So which companies do you think are actively and brazenly breaking the law by using illegal hiring quotas? Or are you perhaps just saying that hiring policies you personally disagree with are "political"?

> Bathrooms are by sex.

This may be office policy where you work, but it is not always office policy. Are you saying that it can't be discussed? Because you just said that discussing office policies are relevant to work.

> You can discuss and protest the latter if you want, but not the former.

Now you seem to be walking back that statement. Which is is? Again, it seems that "political" things are just things you disagree with, this is an intellectually dishonest position and one that I'm asking that you reconsider.

You asked and I told you exactly what is political or not, and none of those things are about me disagreeing. Again you're confusing views with topics. If you disagree with every definition because you think everything is political then there's no rational discussion to be had. This is what the activists do. Make everything political without boundaries.

By the way, Google is undergoing lawsuits about race and gender discrimination with explicit documentation, as are many other companies and universities in the US.

I asked you if office policies were political. You said no (or that they could be discussed anyway). I asked about some specific office policies, you claimed they were all political and couldn't be discussed. They're clearly office policies, because different offices have different policies on them.

Your continued inability to provide a consistent definition of politics and banned discussion only reinforces my initial claim: you're using politics as a catch-all to justify banning discussion you have personal ideological objections to, even when those topics are related to day to day working conditions. I'm not picking a definition of political, I'm saying you've been inconsistent with yours.

Google, at any given time, is sued for discrimination against men and women and against conservatives and liberals. What's important is the merit, which most don't have. On the other hand, banning people from discussing it requesting changes to employee bathroom policy probably falls under broad protections of PCA, and would be illegal.

Fine, I'll bite.

Is idea that expecting you not to berate your coworkers about your pet political issue is erasure?

If so, then yes. I'm not willing to work with anyone who doesn't assume that I'm interacting with them on a good-faith basis by default.

If your only tool for examining the motivations of outsider-groups is bigotry and bias, then all you will find is bigotry and bias.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

> Is idea that expecting you not to berate your coworkers about your pet political issue is erasure?

No, the idea is that being trans in the workplace can lead to discrimination, and I've seen people use the excuse that identifying as trans is political to tell trans people they can't use preferred pronouns or use a preferred restroom or like wear what they want to work.

That's bigotry and bias under the guise of apolitical-ness, no matter what you're looking for.