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Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

nytimes.com

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

#121

Post by oconnor663 »

colanderman wrote: post #104
oconnor663 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, my biases are much more in favor of the US govt than of China's, for all the obvious reasons. But we have to be able to see that this is opening a huge can of worms. For example, I think it's pretty troubling that the French government banned a bunch of Muslim religious garments. Does that mean I should advocate that various US companies need to stop doing business with France? Clearly there's _some_ level of a…

If those companies were making special tools to identify and remove said garments, then yes.

That sounds like a hard line to draw. A tool that makes it easier to look at lots of footage, which happens to get used for garment enforcement, is that a "garment related tool"? How do we factor in the French government's intention to build its own garment related tools on top of a camera's general purpose interfaces? What if the camera company itself is in France, but it's _suppliers_ are in the US?

My goal here isn't just to be annoying and nitpicky. It's to try to make it clear that there are a million different questions interacting here.

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

#122

Post by hcurtiss »

awakeasleep wrote: post #61
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?

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…

But what if they’re driven to concentration camps in automobiles manufactured by US companies? Should we regulate Ford?

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

#123

Post by Aunche »

cryoshon wrote: post #111
Aunche wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

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

The difference is that the accountant is necessary for the criminal enterprise. Google isn't necessary for a censorship state, since China more than capable of handling that on their own. A closer analogy is that Google is the line cook of the restaurant the mafia hangs out in.

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

#124

Post by redbeard0x0a »

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.

> Companies are easier to not do business with.

Some companies, however at a certain point, it becomes extremely difficult to not doing business with specific companies.

For example: describe how you would stop doing business with Equifax.

Also, how would you stop doing business with Google. You cannot simply stop using the search engine or Gmail. You would have to block (or stop using) websites using Google Analytics, stop using sites/services that use Google's Cloud, etc.

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

#125

Post by blub »

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.

I could understand making that that argument in a thread about Starbucks, but saying that about Google is suspiciously naive.

There are companies with which it's not only difficult not to do business with, but impossible.

Even a person that is not using the internet at all will still have some of their information sucked into the gaping maws of Facebook and Google through their social circle.

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

#126

Post by LitFan »

awakeasleep wrote: post #61
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?

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…

What about arms dealers that sell weapons to these people?

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

#127

Post by chocolatebunny »

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.

What do you think Google or any other company should do when it is handed national security letters in the USA?

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

#128

Post by bogomipz »

794CD01 wrote: post #85
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.

Not everyone thinks authoritarianism is morally wrong. They already abet plenty of other things that some people find morally wrong, like enforcing IP law, censoring all kinds of information, cooperating with police investigations, etc, some of which you can already spin as authoritarian.

>"Not everyone thinks authoritarianism is morally wrong"

The people who don't find authoritarianism morally wrong are generally elites who enjoy privilege on account of their being ranking members of that authoritarian regime.

Can you provide any examples of a 21st century authoritarian regimes where this hasn't been true? Mugabe? Bouteflika? Quaddafi? Assad? I don't think so.

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

#129

Post by blub »

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…

Saying "I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things." seems to me akin to not believing in gravity.

The government - including the US government - is obliging all companies operating on its territory to do certain things. That's one of the roles of government.

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

#130

Post by stcredzero »

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?

Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?

Do you want your search engine company to be an extension of Chinese policy?

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