Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company • Hacker News Board

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#111

Post by cryoshon » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #76

andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah right, "following the laws", because discussions of morality can be reduced to whether it "follows the law" or not? No, that's absurd. Google is objectively abetting an authoritarian regime and providing it with extremely useful tools to maintain and strengthen totalitarian control over 1.4 billion people, and this is wrong.

Objectively, Google is extending its services to a billion people while maintaining the status quo of censorship. Stopping Google from expanding to China is basically another form of censorship, which is wrong.

taking initiative to participate in maintaining a malicious status quo is being malicious. google isn't being coerced here, they're volunteering to help with oppression.

put differently:

what do you call an accountant who sings up to perpetuate the status quo of a criminal enterprise by updating their books?

guilty.

but they were "just extending the services of accounting to a new organization while maintaining the status quo of criminality".

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#112

Post by dfee » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

gunnihinn wrote: post #28

bilbo0s wrote: post #7

I actually applaud Poulson for leaving Google in protest of Google's Chinese business practices. Having mentioned that, I think I have to part ways with him when he implies that the correct way to "fix" this is to have the government come in and make these sorts of business decisions for the company. I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Especially when it looks like this whole thing is…

> Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. OK. Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else?

Honest question: what if we removed the notion of “foreign” from your question?

And, what if we extended this across the board to all corporations, not just Google?

I feel uneasy when thinking about the society China is trying to build overtly, and the society that Washington is building covertly. It’s sad that 15 years after the Patriot Act, we’ve just accepted domestic surveillance as a requisite function of governance.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#113

Post by toss1 » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #42

gunnihinn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. OK. Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else?

A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?

Actually, YES, to the extent that the foreign policy is supporting & maintaining institutions & policies necessary for continued open democratic societies.

By virtue of the US' historically strong support for open democracies (albeit often flawed or failed), and historical accident, it essentially now falls to the US to attempt to maintain it around the world.

To the extent that we have failed to maintain and support democratic institutions and traditions around the world, they are lost.

To the extent that these free, open, democratic governments, institutions, and traditions are lost around the world, those remaining in free societies will find ourselves under threat of losing those societies.

So, yes, if a company wants to enjoy the fruits of being able to grow and prosper in the greatest open society and largest economy on the planet at this time, it is not too much to ask it to avoid supporting adversaries who would undermine our society and economy at the first opportunity (and are actively doing so right now).

[recommend reading Garry Kasparov's "Winter is Coming" & other titles -- Fmr World Chess Champion, Russian Presidential candidate, author -- he's been there, done that, and buried his friends doing so]

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#114

Post by toss1 » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

beaner wrote: post #74

awakeasleep wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at the question from a really nihilistic-libertarian perspective. IBM was following the law when it sold the nazis tools for tracking 'undesirable' people. Google's search engine will be used to track the Uyghur, and the Uyghurs are being sent to reeducation camps at this very moment. We're talking about an apples to apples comparison here. It's controversial _as hell_ to sell tools used to do genocide…

If that's true, it says to me that governments should put a blanket block on doing certain types of business with that specific country. Such a block should apply to all companies equally. It doesn't require them to be more involved in decisions from within the companies.

Absolutely, it should be written to block all companies equally.

But in must be written

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#115

Post by andrei_says_ » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #76

andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah right, "following the laws", because discussions of morality can be reduced to whether it "follows the law" or not? No, that's absurd. Google is objectively abetting an authoritarian regime and providing it with extremely useful tools to maintain and strengthen totalitarian control over 1.4 billion people, and this is wrong.

Objectively, Google is extending its services to a billion people while maintaining the status quo of censorship. Stopping Google from expanding to China is basically another form of censorship, which is wrong.

It amplifies censorship and creates and provides the tools for censorship, which tools will become available as a (hidden) switch everywhere else, including here.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#116

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

beaner wrote: post #74

awakeasleep wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at the question from a really nihilistic-libertarian perspective. IBM was following the law when it sold the nazis tools for tracking 'undesirable' people. Google's search engine will be used to track the Uyghur, and the Uyghurs are being sent to reeducation camps at this very moment. We're talking about an apples to apples comparison here. It's controversial _as hell_ to sell tools used to do genocide…

If that's true, it says to me that governments should put a blanket block on doing certain types of business with that specific country. Such a block should apply to all companies equally. It doesn't require them to be more involved in decisions from within the companies.

[deleted]

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#117

Post by akiselev » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

beaner wrote: post #74

awakeasleep wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at the question from a really nihilistic-libertarian perspective. IBM was following the law when it sold the nazis tools for tracking 'undesirable' people. Google's search engine will be used to track the Uyghur, and the Uyghurs are being sent to reeducation camps at this very moment. We're talking about an apples to apples comparison here. It's controversial _as hell_ to sell tools used to do genocide…

If that's true, it says to me that governments should put a blanket block on doing certain types of business with that specific country. Such a block should apply to all companies equally. It doesn't require them to be more involved in decisions from within the companies.

Why though? We draw lines about what is legally acceptable or not all the time, often with little more guidance than subjective morality filtered through elected representation.

There is a vast difference between Hugo Boss making Nazi uniforms and IBM selling them high tech machines designed to increase the efficiency of their extermination.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#118

Post by test001only » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #71

tensor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?

Ah right, "following the laws", because discussions of morality can be reduced to whether it "follows the law" or not? No, that's absurd. Google is objectively abetting an authoritarian regime and providing it with extremely useful tools to maintain and strengthen totalitarian control over 1.4 billion people, and this is wrong.

Because government making decision based on morality is slippery slope as morality is very subjective and varies with people, race and religion. Also is not Republican the party which advocates small government?

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#119

Post by toss1 » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #101

hobs wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really: "When companies become too large it quickly becomes a game of anti-competitive actions and distorted markets" Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out.

>Companies dont have our interests in mind any more than the government, but we can vote the government out. Companies are easier to not do business with. Governments only get voted out if enough people agreed to vote with you. Also, only one of these groups generally has the ability to use violence against you, and if the other group has that ability, it is only because the first allowed it to be delegated.

No, they are not easier to not do business with, and it is also harder to find out when we should attempt to not do business with them.

Try telling people who have only Comcast to not get off the Internet, or people with only one nearby grocery store to boycott it.

Both require strenuous oversight, and without a govt capable and willing to constrain that oversight, you wind up wint an economy like the 1890s robber barons, which needed to be broken up by Teddy Roosevelt

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#120

Post by kodablah » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #108

kodablah wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And hundreds of millions of reasons why government-led heavy-handed internet oversight is worse. I also included other options such as education. But I'll take any option, including the status quo, over what I consider the nuclear option that often has unintended consequences regardless of original intent.

Government-led heavy-handed oversight is so terrible that it also gave us rivers free of coal sludge, products that work as advertised, drugs that have to be tested before they are sold, airplanes that usually don't crash, and cars that are safer, more fuel efficient, and cleaner then they were before mandated seat belts, air bags, emission limits, and mileage gains. At this point, the nuclear option, like the GDPR,…

And the patriot act, and prohibition, and on and on. Not sure why pointing out unrelated positive or negative legislation affects the issue at hand. It's disingenuous to debate that way. Back to the issue at hand, I am specifically talking about heavy-handed oversight of the internet. The not-as-heavy-handed internet oversight we either already have or has been attempted is problematic and we should not double down on it. In the absence of a good solution to a problem that exists, we should not make a second problem. We might want it to work, but existing examples have shown us that what we want to work is not enough to make it so.