this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Why was appointing Eich as CEO so controversial? It's because he donated $1,000 in support of California's Proposition 8 in 2008, which was a proposed amendment to California's state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

I want to try a thought experiment. Imagine that you observe this comment in reaction to the above:

I just don’t get why the author is so pissed about their political contributions. Guess what, people who are involved in big business are usually right-wing and support right-wing organizations. Shocking. Who could have known. I don’t even want to imagine how the author comes to the conclusion that this is some big conspiracy but I think we all know what political spectrum that guy belongs to.

What I just wrote is a mirror-image version of the top rated comment on that article from a few days ago about the Mozilla foundation funding left-wing organizations. Do you agree with one of those statements and not the other? If so, why?

It is one-sided to say that someone involved in Brave should only be "allowed" to do so if he doesn't support anything conservative. Just as would be one-sided and wrong to say that Mozilla shouldn't be "allowed" to support left-wing organizations. Flipping it around, and looking at the reaction when it's the other way around, is an easy way to analyze your own internal reactions on it.

(Generally, I'm in agreement with the idea that you shouldn't use Brave because of all these other shady things; just this one part jumped out at me as one thing that's not like the others.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The two sides are not morally equal. Prop 8 was an awful, bigoted stain on California's history and he was unrepentant. I am glad he no longer is at Firefox. And Brave is a sketchy company that makes clear it was a good decision to give him the boot. I can support companies with moral stances I agree with and not support companies that do bad things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The fact that you would consider your counterfactual a mirror image is itself problematic.

In the case of the Foundation, it supports exactly what it purports to support. They’re like the EFF and other civil rights organizations. If you consider the EFF left wing, I think that says a bit more about where you stand.

The original article was outrage-bate blog spam, with random Capitalized Words and the prolific use of “scare quotes.” It doesn’t even say anything. No charges of misinformation. No citation of law. Just “They have a Billion Dollars!!” kinds of sentences.

On the other hand, the CEO of a company - particularly a small company - lends his personality to the company. It often makes sense to co-identify them, given that the CEO has an incredible amount of influence.

So if you are saying that libertarian software project : libertarian institutions :: conservative ideas : homophobic legislation, I guess you’re just really endorsing the position of judging the company by the politicians and politics it supports. If you see prop 8 as being as fundamental to the conservative position as internet freedom is to an organization specifically dedicated to preserving internet freedom, all I can say is that I hope more people start to see it that way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Supporting politicians you like and supporting basic human rights being taken away on the basis of completely arbitrary factors outside one's control are two very different things.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're not going to want to hear this, but this logic (i.e. "But MY side is the RIGHT one, so it's different") is exactly why the right wing thinks Trump shouldn't go to prison and it's okay when they cheat in elections.

I do agree with you that the left wing is the right side of history. That doesn't mean someone who's on the other side suddenly shouldn't be an executive of anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's not even about sides. There is no left wing party in the USA - the Democrats are a right wing party. The problem with the GOP is not that they are right wing, it's that they are extremists. A lot of their "policies" are not policies, they are crimes against humanity. 'People who are demographic X shouldn't have the basic human right of Y" is not an opinion, a policy or justifiable in any way.

And boycotting people as Eich is first and foremost an act of self-preservation.

  1. Eich is, evidently, a hateful cunt who invests into destroying the human rights of random people. By exposing your e-mail, bank accounts, your communications and your identity to him (by using his browser), you are inviting him to violate your rights as well.
  2. By using Brave's shit, you giwe Eich money. Thot same money he later uses to fund the atrocities he and his peers commit. Thus, by using Brave's shit, you are not only complacent in these crimes, but actively participating.
  3. Less relevant, but still, by using a Chromium-based browser, you help inflate Google's oppressive market share in the browser space, letting them push shit like Mv3 or WEI. If Brave actually cared about making a private and secure browser and fighting Google's monopoly, they'd base off Gecko or, better yet, build their own engine.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right wing is the one that actively and openly hurts people, so yeah I do see a difference tbh

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're not going to want to hear this, but this logic (i.e. "But MY side is the RIGHT one, so it's different") is exactly why the right wing thinks Trump shouldn't go to prison and it's okay when they cheat in elections.

I do agree with you that the left wing is the right side of history. That doesn't mean someone who's on the other side suddenly shouldn't be an executive of anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Just because you reply so twice doesn't make you correct.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it's one-sided. Prop 8 was stupid and CA rightfully rejected that shit later.

It's good to be one-sided against stupid shit that is a crime against humanity. Gay marriage is now legal federally. Same as interracial marriage. Nazis got beat the fuck up in WW2. Slavery is over. Deal with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Very good observation. The issue being, the way I see it, he supported a generally accepted hateful conservative rhetoric. Most left wing organizations do not promote hateful rhetorics.