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Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by comrade1234 on Monday November 09, 2026 @11:01AM (#50427374)
You can't sign away your rights like that in a contract. The contract is invalid.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by embedding-shape on Monday November 09, 2026 @11:18AM (#50427626)
What "contract"? They're referencing a meme on page 11 of the document, which looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/bSYTJb1

Are people seriously believing the Ethereum Foundation is looking for its members to commit suicide in case they don't publish full source-code? :P Either I'm massively misreading what the outrage is about, or I think this is the point I stop understanding how the world works. Are people taking that image seriously???

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by striking on Monday November 09, 2026 @11:36AM (#50427938)
> The final published version presented the suicide pledge in an illustration instead of including it in the main body of the mandate, as it had been in the draft version.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by cyanydeez on Monday November 09, 2026 @11:47AM (#50428072)
ok, so I'm really curious what you think people are suppose to do in the world of "skepticism".

I mean, you've no doubt spent the last 10 years hearing about 4chan and donald trumps connection.

Just because something _could_ be considered some kind of satire, assuming we should all default to that interpretation basically dissolved the social system everywhere.

"its just a joke bro" is not a useful critical thinking skill.

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by normie3000 on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:05PM (#50429137)
> I mean, you've no doubt spent the last 10 years hearing about 4chan and donald trumps connection.

No, what is the connection?

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by embedding-shape on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @06:59AM (#50439081)
[delayed]
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by VCFundedGenYer on Monday November 09, 2026 @11:52AM (#50428147)
Read it again. It was in the contract. What skepticism do you have? What aren't you getting?
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by tsimionescu on Monday November 09, 2026 @12:55PM (#50428980)
I don't understand the concept of "a meme on page 11 of [a contract]". If it's in a contract, it's part of the contract. Decorations or jokes in a legal document are... Not a thing. Or at least must not be a thing.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by wat10000 on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:02PM (#50429091)
The image is in a binding contract. Why would I not take it seriously? Do I think they mean it? No. Would I sign it? No.

This is like the typical nonsense when you're negotiating with a company where their actual practice has diverged from their standard contracts. You point something out, and the response comes back "that's just boilerplate, we don't enforce that." OK, that's cool. If you don't enforce it then you can take it out of the contract. At no point is my response ever to say "OK, I trust you, I'll sign as-is." Even if I do trust them.

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by sigmar on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:08PM (#50431199)
>Nearly 80 of the foundation’s 250 or so employees voted to nix the suicide pledge after the draft was released, according to the lawsuit, but leadership at the Ethereum Foundation ignored their objections and included the pledge word-for-word in the final version of the mandate.

Contacts are still contracts even if you put pictures in it. You definitely don't understand how the world works if you don't get that.

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by sspiff on Monday November 09, 2026 @11:19AM (#50427650)
I would probably sign if all of the following are true:

- The money is significantly better than my other options

- I believe the company not to be serious about the suicide clause

- I believe the suicide clause to be non-binding in any jurisdiction that applies to myself or the foundation

- I didn't believe the company / foundation would take my refusal to kill myself at a later time as a license to have me killed

The last one is a bit out there, but in the world of crypto, you can never be too sure.

Also, regardless of whether I would sign, I think it's in pretty poor taste and a bright amber flag (but not quite a red flag) if an employer thinks this is a funny or acceptable thing to put into a contract.

It's also in very poor taste and reeks of coercion to send out a manifesto or mandate like this on a Friday and expect people to sign or agree by Monday or lose their jobs. They likely wouldn't be able to have it reviewed by a lawyer over the weekend if they chose to do so.

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by CodingJeebus on Monday November 09, 2026 @11:26AM (#50427760)
> Also, regardless of whether I would sign, I think it's in pretty poor taste and a bright amber flag (but not quite a red flag) if an employer thinks this is a funny or acceptable thing to put into a contract.

How is this in any way NOT a red flag? In what universe is this a neutral signal about the health of an organization that manages a significant amount of capital?

> It's also in very poor taste and reeks of coercion to send out a manifesto or mandate like this on a Friday and expect people to sign or agree by Monday or lose their jobs. They likely wouldn't be able to have it reviewed by a lawyer over the weekend if they chose to do so.

In sum total, "this sounds very very bad but not necessarily a red flag". Absurd.

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by kirth_gersen on Monday November 09, 2026 @11:38AM (#50427959)
Yeah. Agreed. This is ALL red flags, all the way down. Might as well be cutesy anime red flags drawn onto an actual physical red flag. Suicide isn't funny and shame enforced ritual suicide for "failing" is even less hilarious, if that's possible. Reeks of sociopathy...
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by nradov on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:18PM (#50429340)
Of course it's a red flag? People only ever work for cryptocurrency companies in the first place because they're scammers themselves and think they can get rich while leaving suckers holding the bag. The whole thing is a red flag from the beginning so I don't know why anyone would expect otherwise.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by nailer on Monday November 09, 2026 @02:55PM (#50430976)
That a wildly unhinged take, they could just work in payments or finance lol but yes it’s a red flag and with that much at stake an insane individual would “enforce” the contract.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by skeeter2020 on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:45PM (#50429730)
Unfortunately I have worked with smart, nice people who would take this contract literally, are overly invested in their jobs and would be likely to take me out - even preemptive to any order from the company - if I violated my "contract".
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by Blahah on Monday November 09, 2026 @04:12PM (#50432229)
Playing fast and loose with the words "smart" and "nice" there.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by genxy on Monday November 09, 2026 @04:18PM (#50432316)
Getting taken out by an autistic hitman with a namshub installed by a cryptocurrency company IS on my 2027 bingo card.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by NoahZuniga on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:45PM (#50429735)
I dont understand why you have all these requirements. A suicide pledge in a contract is unenforceable (both socially and legally), so signing it or not doesn't really matter.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by toast0 on Monday November 09, 2026 @02:32PM (#50430571)
> A suicide pledge in a contract is unenforceable (both socially and legally), so signing it or not doesn't really matter.

If it doesn't matter, it shouldn't be in the contract. I don't tend to have a lot of drafting power in employment contracts, but pushing back on meaningless contract provisions is a lot easier than pushing back on substantive ones.

It's at least worth getting them on the record, in writing, as 'we absolutely insist on this (bullshit) contract provision being in here, it is required for your continued employment'.

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by wat10000 on Monday November 09, 2026 @04:07PM (#50432150)
I would be extremely wary of tying a big part of my life to a company that insists on me signing an unenforceable contract.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by theptip on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:25PM (#50431484)
The one group of people that you should take literally in contracts are the Ethereum / smart contract folks. Code is law is the founding principle of Etherium!
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by dfxm12 on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:33PM (#50431631)
If code is law, does that imply law is not law?
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by antonvs on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @01:07AM (#50436673)
No, because it wasn’t claimed that only code is law.

You wouldn’t say “Dogs are mammals. Therefore mammals are not mammals.”

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by dfxm12 on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:16PM (#50431337)
It's worth clarifying, because you absolutely can sign away rights in a contract. You can even sign away constitutionally protected rights, like free speech. This regularly happens vis-a-vis NDA's.
Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by kibwen on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:49PM (#50431910)
> You can even sign away constitutionally protected rights, like free speech.

The text of the first amendment only asserts that "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech", so signing away your ability to speak isn't in conflict with the Constitution.

Re:Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge by red-iron-pine on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @11:39AM (#50442755)
to put a finer point on it, the government can't pass laws or take actions to abridge free speech.

you sure as shit can of your own volition and/or with a private company