Mozilla CEO threatens to fire person responsible for anonymous hate speech

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/24/9202067/mozilla-ceo-chris-beard-reddit-hate-speech

by fabrice_d • 11 years ago

55 46 11 years ago

nsxwolf• 11 years ago

Going on a witch hunt to identify an employee who went through the trouble of speaking anonymously sounds like a bad idea.

asutherland2• 11 years ago

How would this be a witch hunt? The third definition from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/witch-hunt is "A public smear-campaign against an individual" which seems to better describe the actions of https://www.reddit.com/user/aoiyama. One could try to be pedantic about the second definition, "An attempt to find and publicly punish a group of people perceived as a threat, usually on ideological or political grounds.", but if you read the posts at the reddit link and the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/part..., even if you don't agree with the Mozilla ideology, the aoiyama one is clearly incompatible with the Mozilla one.

If the only course of action is to say "Oh no! They used a throwaway account, so there's nothing we can do about the toxic environment posts like this create for members of our community!" that doesn't bode well for having a non-toxic environment. And since I do need to disclaim that I am a MoCo employee (but 100% speaking for myself alone), I should also mention that you will find in that list of posts a link to https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/35u1yp/an_email... where the contents of a Mozilla Corporation internal-mailing list post were reposted. So even if one wanted to write this off as just a random internet troll, the situation is that there is either a MoCo employee intentionally harassing another MoCo employee and Mozillian or a MoCo employee passing information to someone doing the same thing.

I do want to be clear that I am not attributing these hypotheticals to your one-sentence reply. But I also want to be clear that we can't write off this type of toxic behaviour as acceptable because of the risk of being perceived as engaging in witch hunts/star chambers/other hyperbolic misapplications of known-bad-terms.

13thLetter6• 11 years ago

"If the only course of action is to say "Oh no! They used a throwaway account, so there's nothing we can do about the toxic environment posts like this create for members of our community!" that doesn't bode well for having a non-toxic environment."

How on Earth was that comment "creating a toxic environment"? It was added a week and a half after the original post went up. By that time nobody but the most obsessive are still reading the same Reddit post.

Calling it "toxic" and having the CEO himself declaim from the pulpit about how this random throwaway account on Reddit with all of six posts to its name over the span of three months must be destroyed seems like using a nuclear weapon to kill a fly.

deciplex3• 11 years ago

Regardless of whether the person who wrote that should be fired, calling that post "hate speech" demonstrates a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of what hate speech is. It is not merely exclusionary speech, and it is not merely speech that singles out particular groups - only protected groups. Holding particular political views - no matter how popular or right they might be, and no matter how persecuted you may feel for holding them - does not qualify you as belonging to a protected group.

If you want to fire this person, fire them for misrepresenting the Mozilla organization in a public forum. Stating that the tech industry will be better off without feminists - while a pretty stupid opinion to have - is not even remotely "hate speech", and while it might make Chris Beard feel a little more righteous to call it that, it does not reflect well on his capacity for rational thought.

MichaelGG• 11 years ago

I was expecting some vitriol, but the comments left on that user now are pretty tame (perhaps there were bad ones that have been deleted). Rude, calling someone an asshole and mocking their fashion, but not even close to hate speech. Unless everyone that's made fun of Trump in the last month is also guilty of hate speech.

spiffyman• 11 years ago

I think you're using the wrong standard here.

From Wikipedia:

Hate speech - outside the law, is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation.

"Marginalized political views" isn't in that list, but then again it doesn't purport to be a comprehensive list.

However, it seems like you're relying on a particularly legalistic view of what "hate speech" is. Is hateful speech toward a group truly not "hate speech" until a legislative act deems the group protected? On face, that doesn't seem right.

You're right about "hate speech" as a legal term, but I don't think the CEO of a non-profit speaking to his employees requires that level of scrutiny.

deciplex3• 11 years ago

You're right about "hate speech" as a legal term, but I don't think the CEO of a non-profit speaking to his employees requires that level of scrutiny.

When you're talking about firing someone over a thing, it's a good idea to be precise IMO. FWIW I'd be totally fine if he had said that he intends to fire that employee for claiming represent Mozilla the organization (or at least its employees) in a public forum. But calling it "hate speech" dilutes the term.

To my mind "Hate speech" != "hateful speech" - no?

A_COMPUTER• 11 years ago

It's vague, it's expansive, its informal usage is frequently conflated with its legal usage. And all this is a feature of the term, not a bug.

monstruoso3• 11 years ago

I disagree. I don't think it is a stupid opinion to have. Feminists do not add anything of value to the tech industry, they never have, they never will.

michaelbuddy6• 11 years ago

here's something I agree with.

13thLetter6• 11 years ago

This is awfully petty behavior on the part of a CEO, digging up a comment buried ten layers down on a two week old Reddit post and then promising to destroy its anonymous poster. At best, it makes out Beard to be some kind of paranoid control freak. At worst, it makes it seem like that Brendan Eich thing wasn't a one-off.

dragonwriter7• 11 years ago

I doubt the CEO dug up the content; more likely the potentially libelous comment was brought to Mozilla management's attention by someone else, possibly the recently departed employee who was it's target.

michaelbuddy6• 11 years ago

Libelous? Ha! This is your ordinary hyperbolic run-of-the-mill free speech here. Sure it's insulting but it's not something that could be reasonably shown as libel or legally defamatory (as in false).

Here's what you call libelous written by Aoiyama:

"The rest of mozilla would disagree with you. Everyone hated her because she was an asshole Social Justice bully and frankly people are sick of her divisive stupidity."

"Frankly everyone was glad to see the back of Christie Koehler. She was batshit insane and permanently offended at everything. When she and the rest of her blue-haired nose-pierced asshole feminists are gone, the tech industry will breathe a sigh of relief."

brianmurphy• 11 years ago

Mozilla CEO Chris Beard is saying that hyper-sensitive permanently offended types are welcome within Mozilla. This creates a terrible working environment for those who want to have a job without the politics. I can't see Mozilla as an organization continuing to exist for very long with this kind of leadership. If I were a current employee at Mozilla, it would be time to shop my resume around to saner workplaces.

dragonwriter7• 11 years ago

Mozilla CEO Chris Beard is saying that hyper-sensitive permanently offended types are welcome within Mozilla.

No, he's saying that employees using public forums to call other employees (including former employees) "batshit insane" are not welcome within Mozilla.

That's kind of distant from whether the target of that attack is welcome (whether or not they are actually "permanently offended"); its not inconsistent that Mozilla would both come down hard on this type of hateful speech (even where it might be accurate) and not be welcoming to the people for whom the description, or even just the "permanently offended" part, was accurate.

If I were a current employee at Mozilla, it would be time to shop my resume around to saner workplaces.

Good luck finding a place that tolerates this kind of public attack by employees against other employees (even the kinds of places where the leadership might publicly make such attacks on a disliked outgoing employee are unlikely to tolerate underlings doing so independently -- the privilege of painting a giant PR and legal target on the company like that is generally reserved fairly narrowly, where its tolerated at all.)

If that's really something you need in a workplace, I'm not sure any place that would lose you for that reason would do anything but breathe a sigh of relief for the bullet they dodged down the line by your departure.

13thLetter6• 11 years ago

No, he's saying that employees using public forums to call other employees (including former employees) "batshit insane" are not welcome within Mozilla.

Let's do a thought experiment. If the post had been, "[NAME] was one of those batshit insane men's rights types. I'll be glad when all of his kind have left Mozilla and taken their misogyny elsewhere," would the CEO be reacting in the same fashion? Would The Verge write approvingly about it?

If not, then we're really not talking about some studiously neutral principle, and we should stop pretending that we are.

michaelbuddy6• 11 years ago

And yet the CEO is using a public meeting to air the dirty laundry of internal matters, making the whole thing worse. Really bad decision. Very un-leader like.

Public attack? Yeah 6 anonymous comments on a website, what an all-out "attack." Oh no, her credibility was tarnished. Oh wait, she did that to herself already by leaving a twitter rant-stream mult-day bridge burning criticizing the company but providing no helpful facts, just rants and complaints. hence the good-riddance

rewqfdsa• 11 years ago

Mozilla lost me today. It's no longer an organization I can support. Let this be a lesson to you. Don't indulge the perpetually offended. They will never be happy. Their presence is a cancer in your organization. Should they apply, reject their applications. Should they be hired, fire them. Should the cancer metastasize, leave.

dudul2• 11 years ago

Same here.

Can we still not like people and say it? Is it still ok to say that we don't get along with someone, that we're happy to not work with them anymore without having it cataloged as "hate speech"? Just because I don't validate your beliefs, or your ankle tattoo or your pink hair cut or where you spend your vacation doesn't mean that I hate you! I just disagree with you, get the F over it.

And the whole "He commented as a Mozilla employee so that's not ok" is BS. Are they gonna start a witch hunt for all the commenters on HN and Glassdor who speak about what it really is to work there?

dragonwriter7• 11 years ago

You can say you don't like working with someone, but if you publicly, forcefully, vitriolically express your hatred for working with not just one person, but a class of people in your workplace typified by one person, and your employer doesn't share your distaste for having those people in the workplace, you shouldn't be surprised if your employer resolves the incompatibility you've exposed to them by assuring you don't have to work with them any more.

gcp5• 11 years ago

Can we still not like people and say it? Is it still ok to say that we don't get along with someone, that we're happy to not work with them anymore without having it cataloged as "hate speech"?

Sure!

But calling them "batshit insane", "asshole" "the industry will be relieved with this class of people gone" in public goes a bit further than that, though.

monstruoso3• 11 years ago

The perpetually offended are becoming a powerful bunch.

michaelbuddy6• 11 years ago

they can never be truly powerful because they eat each other after a short while. That's how toxic they are. I've seen it happen. These types are not survivors.

When the smoke clears, the rest of us shake our heads and move on to the real work because we don't let our knee jerk emotions rule over every aspect of our lives.

dragonwriter7• 11 years ago

Let this be a lesson to you. Don't indulge the perpetually offended. [...] Should they be hired, fire them.

How is that not what Mozilla is doing?

Or do you mean, only those people who are "perpetually offended" by things you agree with, rather those "perpetually offended" by the things that you too are "perpetually offended" by?

dragonwriter7• 11 years ago

I don't understand what the perpetually offended anti-"social justice" types are complaining about here.

Anon poster publicly and forcefully says he hates working with, or even in the same industry as, a large class of people typified by a particular recently-departed Mozilla employee. Mozilla CEO proposes to directly resolve the problem if the person who raised it can be identified. Seems like a win-win for all involved.

orangebread• 11 years ago

This seems like damage control more than an actual threat. CEO getting ahead of the story before any bad press can make it something.

michaelbuddy6• 11 years ago

There's no story here. The only story is how bad The Verge and Mozilla CEO are stooping to even try to perpetuate or drum up something. Employee gets fired, goes on twitter rant. Former coworker calls her a psycho, her twitter rant fits the diagnosis.

Any press picking this up aren't worth anyone's time, especially the CEO of an organization. sheesh.

michaelbuddy6• 11 years ago

Based on the tweet streams shared by the former employee she labeled her 'exit interview', I'm more going to side with the anonymous employee. The former employee basically went on a complete rant ripping across Mozilla on twitter, but when it came to specific details, we end up with "never got a firefox t-shirt that fit me" and "nobody listened to my ideas" Talk about embarrassing yourself while burning a bridge. That kind of bridge burning is indicative of the kind of coworker she would be to some people.

Where does this weakness come from? Is it mental illness or just a parenting thing? And she also seems to conflate the ideas of software accessibility with "safespaces." If that's the kind of ideas that she was peddling to her colleagues, I'm pretty sure they aren't going to buy into that.

I don't know if it's a feminism thing or a LGBT thing but suddenly there are these new words that were invented, showed up in sketchy sociology classes and these people reform their individual reality by them and expect the rest of the world to suddenly be part of it. But they never asked whether these things were actually truthful or useful. Suddenly people are supposed to refer to themselves as 'CIS-gendered' and worry about 'safe spaces' where you won't 'trigger' anyone from too loud of applause.

The CEO should never have brought up this issue in a public meeting. It's an internal matter. And his misunderstanding of hate speech is disappointing, I have no respect for Mozilla as a company at this point. CEO needs to be removed, not the person who spoke their mind anonymously on reddit.

Mozilla CEO threatens to fire person responsible for anonymous hate speech

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