Basecamp as a company has always been about building in public. If you don't want things to happen in public you shouldn't have joined Basecamp.

Disagree. There’s a difference between being transparent, and publicly implying that your workforce is problematic. Especially when there’s some issue that you’ve failed to deal with. That’s both inappropriate and unwise. This should’ve been an internal announcement, not an external one.

Maybe in a year after things have calmed down they could do a “we banned politics at the office and it was great” post, but the timing was guaranteed to create a fiasco for them.

As a metaphor, what they did is closer to disparaging someone’s work performance in an all hands. It might be “transparent”, but it’s also unprofessional.

They pride themselves on being transparent..

Please read what I said and respond, rather than reiterating someone else’s point.