I had a strange situation today. A client I did some work for over five years ago asked me for his help. In addition to updating the board I updated for him in 2015, he wanted to move another board he has to a different domain and fix some issues he was having with it.
I started to work up and estimate then I went in and starting looking at his board. Its intent was to be a place where right-wing people could discuss stuff, presumably without having to worry about being un-hosted, which looks to be the fate of Parler, which Amazon Web Services looks like it will be delisting. Anyhow, liberals definitely weren’t going to be allowed.
I told him I couldn’t do that work. Of course just last week right wing extremists occupied the U.S. Capitol leading to the death of five people. He says his site won’t be used for anything like that, in fact quite the opposite. That’s good, but I still won’t be doing the work.
So that raises the issue I’ve thought about blogging about before but haven’t touched. What sort of work won’t I do? I draw the line generally if my work will facilitate conduct that is illegal or if I think I may be helping, even inadvertently, cause violence.
I’ve worked on all sorts of sites that others probably wouldn’t. Just last week I also worked on a site for those into Satanism. I don’t name clients I do work for, so I won’t name this client. I looked at their website too before I started work. Frankly, it looked a lot tamer than the websites of many so-called “Christians” out there. It was a kind of strange experience. I think they are based in Europe, but they are so paranoid I did all my work in TeamViewer, essentially remotely while I was being watched by someone on the other end and chatting with them. Really, their site was not that controversial. I’m sure all the paranoia is justified, but at least here in the United States we have freedom of religion, so Satanism is not illegal and is protected by the First Amendment.
So I can’t say definitively what work I will or won’t do. I’ve done occasional work on sites with pornographic content where the content was not against U.S. law and didn’t offend me personally. A year or so back, I worked on a site that spread truthful information about abortion in a country where it is illegal. You can rest assured if the content would expose me to legal jeopardy, I won’t do it. And I certainly wouldn’t work on sites that cross my personal moral thresholds. For example, I would not work on a site that traffics in children, exploits children, contains child pornography or contains obviously illegal content. And I decided today I won’t work on a site where passionate people, some of who might potentially have a screw loose, might collaborate on the platform to instigate more violence like what happened at the U.S. Capitol last week. I’d do the same for Antifa if they asked. But they won’t be asking because Antifa is not really an organized group.
phpBB allows people to find communities of like-minded people. Mostly I don’t pay much attention to what clients boards are about, and the vast majority of these boards don’t raise any red flags for me. Often their content is strange or unusual, and might offend some sensitive souls. In general, I think providing safe spaces online for people with similar interests is good and people should be free to associate with whoever they want. But of course I reserve the right to just say no, I won’t do that.
So there you have it, in case you are curious.
