And the tech community is doing its utmost to oppose President Trump’s recent executive order banning immigrants from seven middle-eastern countries. Apart from making donations and offering support to employees directly affected by the ban, the tech community is also expressing its solidarity in a lot of little ways. Twitter has also pitched in and made a gesture through its periscope application.
Periscope, which is a live-video startup acquired by Twitter, now has a new loading screen. The loading screen now has a small bit of text at its bottom that says “Proudly made in America by immigrants”.
The company also released a statement, giving the underlying reasons behind this small but important gesture:
The recent executive order to halt immigration from seven countries in the Middle East and Africa has forced us to consider a disturbing alternate reality in which the Periscope team is irreparably changed.
Periscope is built, maintained, and operated by people from many faiths and countries. Without immigrants and refugees, Periscope would not exist. For this reason, we are updating the Periscope loading screen to make a simple true statement: ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants.’
We feel this is an important statement to make about who we are and the real impact of these policies. We also fundamentally believe in maintaining an impartial product that gives a voice to every person in our community. Periscope has been and will always be a safe environment for people of any political and religious viewpoint. Now more than ever, Periscope is a critical tool for unfiltered, global dialogue.
Twitter is not alone in standing shoulder to shoulder with the immigrants. While Viber recently announced free calls to the seven banned countries from the United States, Starbucks said that it will hire 10,000 refugees over the course of the next few years. Similarly, Airbnb said that it will provide free temporary housing to the folks who are directly affected by the ban.
Even without going into the dynamics of the ban and why or why isn’t it wrong, it is great to see the tech community showing itself capable of taking up a cause and fighting for it, together.