Basecamp: Corporate Responsibility’s New Normal?
Basecamp touched off a firestorm on social media and in the tech press recently when co-founder Jason Fried announced six “directional changes” to company policies, including “No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account…People can take the conversations with willing co-workers to Signal, Whatsapp, or even a personal Basecamp account, but it can’t happen where the work happens anymore.”
According to The Verge, it all began due to a list of names. “Around 2009, Basecamp customer service representatives began keeping a list of names that they found funny… Many of the names were of American or European origin. But others were Asian, or African, and eventually the list — titled “Best Names Ever” — began to make people uncomfortable. What once had felt like an innocent way to blow off steam, amid the ongoing cultural reckoning over speech and corporate responsibility, increasingly looked inappropriate, and often racist.”
When Fried interceded with his announcement, the Twitterverse exploded, as did the online press (“Basecamp sees mass employee exodus after CEO bans political discussions,”said Tech Crunch), although Fried did not ban political discussions: he merely banned them at work.