I’m sure everyone is well aware of the thing happening at Github. Starting with Julie Ann Horvath’s departure and ending with the CEO’s resignation and this little stinker written by his wife. Now, I’m not going to re-hash the events or even comment on them¹. What I do want to talk about is a common response that I’m seeing, “you aren’t going to stop using Github!” or “just use a different service!” or some variation thereof.

Beyond being an eye-rolling and unproductive (and irritating) comment, this attitude ends up supporting institutionalized oppression by reducing it to individual, isolated acts. It is, as has been called, choice activism².

This type of activism takes its cue from capitalism, wherein a free market you have several competing options to choose from for any given service/product/etc. Choice activism is the foundation of boycotts (basically, boycotts are an organized form of choice activism). So, this post isn’t about saying that choice activism never works or is never a good option but boycotts do demonstrate that choice activism doesn’t work on an individual scale.

For choice activism to be successful several elements need to be in place:

1. Reaching the critical mass of participants. Essentially enough people to significantly impact the business or industry.
2. The existence of viable alternatives to the product/service.

In the case of Github, while we might be able to fulfill the first requirement, the second isn’t possible at the moment. There are no viable alternatives to Github³. But the ability to fulfill requirement one is also in question, given that so much of FOSS is white men.

So the “well, you aren’t going to stop using Github” and variations are disingenuous at best. At worst, they are lazy attempts to avoid taking any substantive actions or efforts to change the status quo. They are also incredibly dismissive to the notion that people and organizations ought to be held accountable for oppressive behaviour.