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Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by LiNeXT on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:18PM (#21704233)
ICE aren't "the Nazis" and immigration enforcement isn't the Holocaust.
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by jonny_eh on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:11PM (#21705025)
I'm saying there are lines. I used an example that everyone should be able to agree is a line that should not have been crossed.
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by Goladus on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @02:08PM (#21705778)
Everyone knows there are lines, and you just coincidentally made a Nazi analogy. Discussions about immigration (and the rhetoric of progressives in the US in general) is constantly plagued by inflammatory and inappropriate Nazi references. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but it's still a mistake.
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by jonny_eh on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @02:52PM (#21706210)
Can you suggest a better example of a tech company taking on business that in retrospect isn't morally defensible?
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by jariel on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @03:39PM (#21706651)
Dow Chemical / Agent Orange. But like all things, it's complicated. We didn't know quite the fallout. Human life was simply valued less back in the day - this was a time when many cars still didn't even have seat belts.
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by the_jeremy on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:23PM (#21704317)
They made a fake university[1] to lure in foreigners on student visas, then arrested everyone who enrolled for not attending a real university, including some who had already transferred out after realizing it was fake. It's not the Holocaust, but it's not ethical.

[1]:https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/11/27/i...

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by dexen on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:47PM (#21704678)
That fake university was Obama's program[1]. Are you now going to advocate deplatforming Barrack Obama?

The fake university was a magnet for people who didn't want to show up to the classes - the gist of the program was to find student visa users who did not care at all to study; they just wanted to get in the USA.

--

[1] started in january of 2016: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/27/univers...

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by the_jeremy on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @06:38PM (#21708363)
Why does it matter if it's Obama's program? I don't think it's ethical. From your article:

"Reddy said, though, that in some cases, students who transferred from the University of Farmington after realizing they didn't have classes on-site, were still arrested."

It sounds like they realized they wouldn't get to attend classes at that university and switched and still got deported.

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by klyrs on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @08:46PM (#21709244)
> That fake university was Obama's program[1]. Are you now going to advocate deplatforming Barrack Obama?

As a citizen who caucused for Obama, I'm deeply disappointed in his policies surrounding immigration, cowardice on marijuana, broken promises around transparency and whistleblowers, and the exploitation of protected lands for oil and gas the world can't afford to burn. He's not a damned saint and whataboutism is intellectual laziness.

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by nodesocket on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:56PM (#21704806)
Thanks for actually providing accurate facts and details instead of pure emotional outrage.
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by jaywalk on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:40PM (#21704570)
The university had "no teachers, classes, or educational services."

The people who enrolled there were 100% trying to game the system. Is that ethical?

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by randomidiot666 on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @12:35PM (#21704503)
Do you actually believe that the punishment for illegal immigration is death? Are you suggesting that being forced to return to Mexico is equivalent to being sent to a gas chamber? Sounds racist. What an insult to Mexico!
Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by SkyBelow on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:35PM (#21705355)
It is an argument ad absurdum, which isn't an invalid argument though it can be emotionally charged.

The idea that "It is okay for a business to do business with someone one disagrees with because it is just business." is equally applicable to the annoying person down the road, to a politically charged group like ICE, or to the embodiment of evil. Using the last is thus a quick way to challenge the notion and potentially refine it to "It is okay for a business to do business with someone one disagrees with because it is just business, as long as they don't cross a certain line."

Then the discussion becomes where that line is and if it is being crossed.

So a claim that there isn't a line at all can easily be dismissed by using an outrageous example because it is still a valid counter example.

Think of it like math. If I state x/x = 1, I'm wrong. Even though there is an infinite amount of examples where I'm right and only 1 example where I'm wrong, the statement is still wrong. Even though the is an uncountable infinite number of examples of where I'm write, I still have to consider every case, and thus the case of x=0 means I'm wrong (at least until I update the statement with with 'except when x=0').

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by Goladus on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @02:03PM (#21705733)
It is an argument ad absurdum, which isn't an invalid argument though it can be emotionally charged

It is not argument ad absurdum. It's true that sometimes, it helps to use an exaggerated example to illustrate a nuanced point. But in this case it isn't that people don't understand there are lines. The point is superfluous, and you get to bring up Nazis yet again in comparison to border control. It's rhetorical tactic, not an argument.

For reference, argument ad absurdum is actually the opposite. That's when you take a logical premise to its extreme to show how it's a foolish proposition. In this case, the extreme example was in support of the proposition.

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by SkyBelow on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @04:43PM (#21707442)
>It's rhetorical tactic, not an argument.

It can be both, and it is hard to determine what the intent is. Was it a propaganda tactic to link two unrelated groups for political goals or was it an extreme counter example?

>In this case, the extreme example was in support of the proposition.

Could you go into this further? As far as I can tell, the original idea was that it was okay to do business since it is just business, and the argument ad absurdum was to bring up Nazis.

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by kaibee on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:27PM (#21705260)
> Do you actually believe that the punishment for illegal immigration is death? Are you suggesting that being forced to return to Mexico is equivalent to being sent to a gas chamber? Sounds racist. What an insult to Mexico!

Except that this is a thing that has actually happened.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/us/jimmy-aldaoud-iraq-dep...

Re:Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract by randomidiot666 on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @02:46PM (#21706144)
This random death is not comparable to a guaranteed death sentence in a holocaust gas chamber. That was a lame disingenuous cherry picked example, out of millions of deportees. Obviously, people will eventually die somewhere, one way or another, no matter what. Given his history of criminal activity he could just as well have been randomly murdered in the US.