Tech giant brings software to a gun fight
Source: Washington Post
SAN FRANCISCO — On its website, Salesforce.com touts retailer Camping World as a leading customer of its business software, highlighting its use of products to help sales staff move product. A Camping World executive is even quoted calling Salesforce’s software “magic.” But behind the scenes in recent weeks, the Silicon Valley tech giant has delivered a different message to gun-selling retailers such as Camping World: Stop selling military-style rifles, or stop using our software.
The pressure Salesforce is exerting on those retailers — barring them from using its technology to market products, manage customer service operations and fulfill orders — puts them in a difficult position. Camping World, for example, spends more than $1 million a year on Salesforce’s e-commerce software, according to one analyst estimate. Switching to another provider now could cost the company double that to migrate data, reconfigure systems and retrain employees.
The change in Salesforce’s acceptable-use policy shows how a technology giant that is mostly unknown to the public is trying to influence what retailers in America sell and alter the dynamics of a charged social issue. While Salesforce is hardly a household name, it is a dominant provider of software and services that help businesses manage their customers. With roughly 40,000 employees and a market value of nearly $120 billion, it has become a behemoth in San Francisco. Its branded skyscraper also towers over the city as the tallest building and a major landmark.
But its decision to force its position on guns on retailers did not sit well with some industry advocates. These types of rules are “corporate-policy virtue signaling” and discriminate against gun owners, whose rights are protected by the Second Amendment, said Mark Oliva, public affairs director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade group. “It is a very chilling effect when a company as large as Salesforce puts out a policy like this,” Oliva said. “A policy like this is not surprising from a company based in that part of the country.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/30/tech-giant-brings-software-gun-fight/?utm_term=.ec9522ab1b55
Private business.
= new reply since forum marked as read
is that many of those who "complain" about "government interference" and point to a "private business owner's 'right' to discriminate" (generally the Libertarian viewpoint, where private business has all the rights of the Constitution or as RMoney so succinctly stated - "Corporations are people" ), suddenly whine when it goes against something that they want to do. 
I.e., the Libertarian/Conservative/Right do this against Liberals/Progressives/Left far more often than the other way around, enough so that their continual attacks and business-oriented threats against causes embraced by the Left (LGBTQ rights, climate change, healthcare reform, women's rights and right to control her own body, immigration reform, voting rights for the disenfranchised, etc) continually make the news and have been normalized. You might recall some of the corporate threats regarding the ACA and RW football team owners threatening players for "kneeling".
But in this case, it's a man bites dog scenario where it shows an interesting contrast.
The NRA is losing Ackerman-McQueen and now Camping World is losing Salesforce. The government can't trample on your right to own an assault rifle, but private business can!