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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

#151

Post by calimac »

Google took the tact early to align with government.

1. The hired Eric Schmidt out the shoot of infancy 2. Their early funding was tied to C1@ sand hill road v.c. 3. They aligned with NOAA out of moffett field to store their corp jets. 4. They budgeted for significant lobby in D.C. 5. Schmidt et, al,. spent much time and effort embedding himself in the apparatchik of the Obama Administration and other radical groups like D.S.A.

Google/Alphabet is in fact an enemy of the people that use it and society as a whole.

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

#152

Post by shady-lady »

pg_bot wrote: post #27

This "broad pattern of unaccountable decision making", also called permissionless innovation, is the reason why America has a culture of innovation. For those unaware, the United States runs on what I call "Air Bud rules", named for this scene from the children's movie.[0] To summarize, as long as there isn't a rule forbidding you from doing something, you can do it. While I applaud his personal stance on refusing to…

> the United States runs on what I call "Air Bud rules"

also known as common law. and most ex-UK colonies have it(USA/Canada/India/Australia/New Zealand/UK & more)

What have the "big" SV companies in common?

Exploiting customer data more than ever before with weak US lawmakers unwilling to challenge them or press for stronger user protections. Including adapting or enforcing rules more suitable for the internet age.

FB/Instagram/LinkedIn and other social media companies rely on inducing addictive behaviour in their users so as to sell more ads. That's it. All bullshit about connections and making the world a better place.. It's hollow. Gamification of users so as to sell more ads.

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

#153

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

redbeard0x0a wrote: post #124
PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Analytic…

It does become more difficult than just not shopping at a local business, but it remains easier than deciding I don't want to be under my current government.

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

#154

Post by billfruit »

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…

US and Canada sell weapons and military equipment to Saudi Arabia. Sufficient moral outrage is hardly bandied about in the case of such deals.

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

#155

Post by merpnderp »

test001only wrote: post #118
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.

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?

We force corporations to do things all the time. Like the US is at a serious disadvantage in countries which use bribery to make corporate decisions, allow slave labor, or murder to coerce uncooperative locals. Conservatives are fine with this level of coercion, aka the rule of law.

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

#156

Post by kodablah »

shady-lady wrote: post #141
kodablah wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

What are your views on net neutrality?

A bit unrelated as it's more of a physical issue than a digital one, but I'll answer anyways. In general my position on digital public policy is to promote competition and transparency and I'm usually against restrictions and punitive-only measures. Wrt net neutrality, I'd support transparency requirements to increase awareness. With that step in place, if the monopolization of the physical space for wires is not overcome by a now-more-informed citizenry, other steps can be taken. Granted, I find forced monopolization vs monopolization by citizen choice to be very different. I always want citizen choice on digital services, even if that means consciously choosing one others might not like. I could write about this forever, I'll stop here.

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

#157

Post by xg15 »

oconnor663 wrote: post #121
colanderman wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is…

Hmm, what's worse, a single populist regulation, punishable by a moderate fine or total information control? Very hard to draw a line indeed...

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

#158

Post by rifung »

blub wrote: post #129
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.

I think the comment you're replying to meant more that they should be obliging businesses to do things but not specific businesses.

E.g. make laws that apply to all companies as opposed to picking on one company or another.

So I think you're actually agreeing since gravity applies to all things vs arbitrarily deciding which things to pull down.

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

#159

Post by blub »

stcredzero wrote: post #134
blub wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Saying "I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things." seems to me akin to not believing in gravity. Believing in gravity doesn't mean that you then need to gain as much weight as possible. In fact, taking into account science like that, you might want to lose a certain amount of weight for your health. "The government obliging businesses to do things," is necessary, like carbohydrates are neces…

The USG is doing too little of something. Namely of protecting citizens from predatory businesses.

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

#160

Post by freeone3000 »

Aunche wrote: post #40

Yet another white American who thinks that thinks that their personal moral grievances are more important than a billion Chinese people gaining access to Google. This is even worse than men telling women that abortion is evil because at least men can claim to speak for the fetus. I've yet to hear a convincing argument that Dragonfly make the lives of Chinese dissidents any worse, let alone regular residents.

If Google is as censored as Baidu, what does China gain from access to Google?
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