Gary, I appreciate and respect your decision. I guess the problem arises, where do we draw the line? WRT corporate ethics the "incident" with China occurred long before MM came on board, so I'm not going to hold her responsible... in fact, I believe that most of the Yahoo execs at that time are no longer with the company. There are so many companies that engage in "anti-person" practices, that who can we turn to in confidence? Google strikes a deal with the Chinese gov't to allow censorship, Google mines personal data, G+ shatters privacy, M$ & Apple have a long list of what many of us would consider to be sins of ethics and morality, many tech companies are partially owned by - or have major investors from - countries where it's OK to oppress and murder people (especially women) in the name of their culture... Sony deliberately infected millions of CDs with malware... the US gov't...
Ugh, I'm getting myself depressed just thinking about it all!
There was a U.S. Senate hearing on this matter. The heads of Yahoo were subpoena to appear. The closing statement by a Senator was (to paraphrase) ... while you, [Yahoo heads], may be wealthy and giants in the industry ... you are morally Pygmies.
Chris, while I cannot argue with responsibilities, I think it boils down to the major shareholders, the board who are ultimately responsible for the actions of the CEO. I cannot believe that the Board was unaware of Yahoo's action in China. I just wanted to throw that on the table, but it holds little merit.
Again, while what you have said is true about Mayer, my point is that there are many many alternatives to what we are doing. As such, why reward a company with a rotten-to-the-core track record. While there may be new management at Yahoo ... I believe many of those imprisoned by Yahoo's direct actions, are still in prison ... (ponder that thought). Even if they were all freed, that does lessen the wrongs by Yahoo ... hence my reluctance to forget, forgive or reward.
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing", Edmund Burke.
Gary
PS- Chris, I watched the Senate hearings, I saw the mother of a Chinese dissident seat directly behind the Chairman of Board. I hear all the shiny suited Yahoo heads with all their attorneys responding to the Senators ... it was all so ethically wrong ... and I acted and I still act. If all the other situations you brought up affected me similarly as the Yahoo incident ... hopefully I would react as I have with Yahoo. I don't know where you draw the line ... that is an individual assessment. We all must independently draw that line in the sand. The last day of the Senate Hearings I drew my line. But this is my code, my decision, we each must make our own choices. I know Jews who won't purchase a Mercedes Benz and others who do ... on this forum if you desire to use Flickr, that is your choice. I will not for the reasons I've stated. My code is my code and I think no lesser of a person who uses Flickr.
G
