Comment by philipkglass

12 hours ago

According to Discord's careers page, they're currently hiring people in the US, UK, Singapore, Portugal, and the Netherlands:

https://discord.com/careers

They have a registered office in Schiphol:

https://discord.com/company-information

Discord could keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other companies it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.

3 comments

philipkglass

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dogleash  10 hours ago

>It would rather pursue more business opportunities.

You're agreeing with parent poster that they don't care to fight on principle (in the unlikely chance they hold any principle in the first place). You're just using avoidant terminology that skips the criticism inherent in parent's framing.

  • philipkglass  9 hours ago

    I'm commenting on how non-US laws may affect businesses, descriptively speaking, without prescriptively stating what I think that the law ought to be.

    I am a US citizen and I approve of US-style free speech protection. If anything, I think that the US still has too much restriction on speech (e.g. DMCA limits on "anti-circumvention" software.)

    However, I also approve of democratic government. If people in other countries vote to treat speech differently than the US, I wouldn't want to live under those laws, but I also wouldn't say that they are incorrect. I think that democratic principles mean implementing the will of the majority, even if I think that the majority is foolish. There are some things that I would fight against (not just lament) even if approved by the will of the majority; I can't fully reconcile my conflicting impulses, but I acknowledge them. All of this would have been a long and distracting aside to my original point, which was that most American businesses of note operate under multiple countries' jurisdictions.

simoncion  11 hours ago

> They have a registered office in Schiphol:

Ah, I stand corrected. Discord has a branch office in the Netherlands. Thanks for the correction.

> Discord could keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other big names it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.

As I said:

  And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be *far* less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.

Trampling on fundamental rights in order to chase marginally more money is neither admirable nor prosocial behavior.