Mozilla under fire: Inside the 9-day reign of fallen CEO Brendan Eich

Re:Mozilla under fire: Inside the 9-day reign of fallen CEO ... by natural219 on Sunday June 15, 2014 @05:03AM (#7894824)

Nope. I'm referring to something different in kind. I think it's fully okay for rational individuals, separate from emotion, to come to the conclusion that working with a specific person or business doesn't align with their long term interests in how they feel a society should be run.

I believe, however, what was on display during the Eich incident was nothing of the sort. It was a direct example of mob mentality[1], which is a very distinct mode of thought that operates more off of emotion, peer judgment, and myopia than rational thought around what we should consider unjust and punishable if the case were brought to, say, a formal trial.

The concept is kind of a fundamental underpinning in modern judicial systems. I personally think that "mob" mentality is on the rise given our current configuration of clickshare happy, shallow media outlets, but this is a harder thesis to defend and beyond the scope of this comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality

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Re:Mozilla under fire: Inside the 9-day reign of fallen CEO ... by josephlord on Sunday June 15, 2014 @05:40AM (#7894878)

I think that perspective is needlessly individualistic. You can take a view that something isn't in someone else's best interests. The bigger issue with Mozilla is that people feel it represents them, and it does in its lobbying for the the open web. If it is led and represented by someone who you feel[0] is opposed to your very being it is hard to imagine it representing you and easy to see how you could oppose the appointment.

[0] Some may see opposition to gay marriage as opposition to homosexuality. In some cases this is probably the case in others it may not be.

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