When equity work isn’t worth it
by Matt May
Happy Monday. Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. It’s a good time to re-read King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
First, thanks for signing up to this list. It’s relatively hard to find. If I had put this on Substack, I’d have enjoyed some additional traffic from its algorithm. I might even have made some money from it. But when it came time to choose a platform, Substack was never in the running.
The reason for that, of course, is Nazis. Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie’s recent comments, in which he said the company wouldn’t deplatform, or even demonetize, literal Nazis, came well after my decision. But it wasn’t hard to predict from the get-go. Substack spent millions on advances meant to attract primarily conservative voices—and by extension, right-wing audiences—to their platform. This was a known issue at the time.
That’s why the recent wave of authors quitting Substack, including people with substantial paid subscriber rolls like Casey Newton and Molly White, doesn’t seem all that praiseworthy. The folks who built on Substack saw a platform to monetize their writing—something that a lot of people, including myself, would love. But in doing so, they looked right past their complicity in contributing to an ecosystem that ended up being toxic at the core. And now they’re going to lose a lot of recurring revenue in moving to other platforms. Accountability is a hell of a thing.
Philosopher Karl Popper addresses the paradox of tolerance this way:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
A few years back, I read a Twitter thread by Michael B. Tager about this that stuck with me. Tager describes a scene with a bartender who sees someone wearing Nazi insignia sit down, and throws him out immediately. The bar that shows any tolerance for Nazis, the bartender explains, is the one that becomes the Nazi bar.
It’s hard running a small company on others’ platforms, and being reasonably ethical about it. For example, I’m building a website, and have had to vet both hosting providers and web frameworks for a number of concerns ranging from their commitment to accessibility to their expressed (or implied) political stances. I know that limits my options, which also potentially limits how many people will discover my work, and I am fundamentally good with that. Not only do I not want to visit the Nazi bar, I also don’t want to find out I’m helping them keep their lease.
Living your values at work
Naturally, the ethics of being a customer pale in comparison to those of an employee. A couple weeks back, I mentioned there were some organizations I would never consider working for. Oh, there are so many to choose from. Let’s pick one at random: Tesla. Or SpaceX, or Neuralink, or… well, anything Elon Musk is involved with. There’s nothing that’ll make you regret rolling out of bed in the morning than the knowledge that you work for a horrible human being.
Elon made headlines last week the way he does most weeks: by tweeting whatever other bigots like reading. This time he latched onto an offhand remark by Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham who, while searching furtively for a talking point on the Boeing 737 MAX 9’s quality control issues that would own the libs, suggested maybe diversity, equity and inclusion programs might be the culprit. That led to a Elon spending a few hours of executive time away from his companies to come up with quips such as “DEI makes you DIE.”
“Gosh, I wonder if he’s hiring,” said nobody. It’s not worth working for poisonous people. At this point, I don’t think any self-respecting specialist would look at any role there and think, “ah, yes, this is an organization that’s ready for a transformation.” It’s a given that some new DEI role at Tesla would be nothing more than a heat sink for the systemic discrimination they are known for. There comes a point where a company is beyond help, and equity work requires a business partner that’s willing to show up.
It’s too easy to use Elon to pick on Twitter, but while it was once at least less of a cesspool, it is still reasonable to argue that even before the takeover, Twitter itself was a great source of harm to many of its own users. While it did employ many people who dedicated themselves to eliminate harassment, protect users against scams, disinformation and propaganda, or make the product itself more accessible—originally as a volunteer project, mind you—they all fought an uphill battle against the bean counters and the ad sellers even when Twitter was the darling of social media.
DEI employees, especially at large conglomerates, need to ask themselves two questions. The first is: “Will I be able to make positive systemic change in this organization?” For Elon’s edgelord multiverse of companies, that’s a hard no. You could take a job fielding all of the complaints and shouting until you’re blue in the face, but all that will get you is a paycheck and high blood pressure. Beating your head against a brick wall does not count as equity work.
The second is more important: “If this organization is successful, what are the outcomes I am enabling?” I feel like this part is overlooked, especially in the AI space. Plenty of companies pay a lot, and treat their employees reasonably well. But I don’t think an equity-centric role can truly be successful if it enables a company to eliminate entire categories of employment. Or to advance surveillance capitalism. Or to fabricate ways to deny medical care to people who need it. Or to facilitate deportations, or policing reproductive health. Or to wage war.
Your red lines may be different from mine. But in all too many cases, the product is the poison. It’s not sufficient to solicit and fill an equity-based position in any company that offers one. Lots of companies do not deserve your labor, much less the right to trade on your reputation. I, for one, won’t spend my career making the Nazi bar more accessible.
This is a season of change, and change is hard. A lot of companies are finally showing their true colors by letting go of the staff they once hired for DEI and other ethical roles. If you’re looking around, either out of necessity or a desire for added security, I ask you to consider the long-term outcomes the companies hiring for these roles are looking to achieve.