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We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

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Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#581

Post by learc83 »

ameister14 wrote: post #541
learc83 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the US has stronger free speech protections than any country I'm aware of, but we have more restrictions than the 2 you've mentioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

Yes, words under copyright and defamatory statements. Not a huge expansion, covered under 'pretty much' in my opinion. Fighting words is essentially a dead precedent, and all that remains is inciting imminent violence, which I mentioned.

>copyright and defamatory statements

These are much bigger restrictions that impact far more people than the others you mentioned.

>Fighting words is essentially a dead precedent, and all that remains is inciting imminent violence, which I mentioned.

There's also huge limitations on commercial speech; obscenity (which covers more than child pornography); reasonable time, manner, and place restrictions; perjury; blackmail; harassment; solicitations to commit crimes (not just inciting violence); student's speech while in school.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#582

Post by xster »

Puer wrote: post #38

I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me, but their decision to backtrack on their promise in China changed my mind. I do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google. I have many good friends that are both bright engineers and undeniably good people that work there. I just feel that as someone who's family is Taiwanese, I cannot in good consciousness support the company. I let t…

Much of this is PR dominance as well. Corporate media has already done 90% of the hard work for people to be able to easily market and feel good about opposing specific issues. You just need to fill in the colors in the coloring book. But these issues have been done and accepted for the longest time, such as Google's State Department staffed Jigsaw branch that creates tools, shown in Wikileaks, to assist overthrowing foreign governments in collaboration with the State Department, or tools that AI-censors comments, or tools that delegates control of the discoverability of grassroot contents to other corporate conglomerates.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#583

Post by abecedarius »

scarcely wrote: post #463
abecedarius wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, ideas developed without free criticism are like programs without tests. (Only worse, because most programs aren't core to anyone's social identity, which puts extra pressure on the kind of ideas we're talking about here.) I don't want to discount anyone's views, and it's not an all-or-nothing "they're brainwashed, ignore them", but to the extent the views were formed in a censored environment, I genuine…

Well, presumably the ideas we are talking about are political/social/moral views. To base your acceptance/rejection of them, even in part, on your knowledge of their genesis is already quite intellectually lazy. ("John made such and such claim about topic X. When I consider the claim's intrinsic merits I'm not complete sure what I should think, but given these biographical knowledge I have of John I accept/reject the…

If someone were to say to me, say, "Pot should be legal everywhere", and you tell me it's unacceptable when considering this claim to consider that the speaker is high, then I don't accept your bounds of acceptable reasoning. (Yes, knowing enough directly about pot would screen off this evidence. I think pot should be legal.)

For an X about how an individual wants to live their own life, that is up to them: it's not for me to "accept" or "reject" it -- though I might think they're making a mistake. I wouldn't privilege moral/political claims to the same degree.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#584

Post by hcnews »

alangibson wrote: post #97
nimbius wrote: post #33

Pretty bold. A lot of people are saying this wont work, but speaking from my own experience, you'd be surprised what companies are amicable to when it comes to business. Im an engine mechanic by trade, and our shops handle bids for cash strapped local governments that outsource their motor pool maintenance. We do things like fire trucks and police cars, but we were working on a new regional idea as a "service center"…

You deserve massive credit for striking a blow against this madness. A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong. I say that fully realizing that not everyone is in the financial position where they can risk a fight with their employer. You can't expect everyone to be Ghandi.

It's Gandhi and not Ghandi. (Couldn't resist correcting, sorry).

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#585

Post by nothrabannosir »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #374
taude wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this was 139 out of 88K employees [1]. Doesn't seem like that many? How do we interpret the other 87K+? [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-ti...

It's been a long time since my statistics and econometrics courses, but one conclusion that's definitely unwarranted would be to assume that the rest disagree with the signatories. People who speak up on an issue will always be a small fraction of the larger population of people who share the same opinion.

People downthread have remarked on the lack of Chinese signatories, commenting on how the Chinese government tracks their citizens abroad. With ramifications for their family and friends as actual, real possibilities, according to some commenters.

If that were true, then their silence can definitely not be construed as any kind of tacit agreement, or even disinterest.

How many Chinese citizens (or people otherwise susceptible to this purported pressure) work at Google?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543164

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#587

Post by briandear »

komali2 wrote: post #94
patrickaljord wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why single out China though? If Google had to stop doing business in any country that forces it to censor stuff, they would not be allowed anywhere, I think even the US forces them to filter out illegal gambling. Where does it stop?

It boils down to what the American culture, or I guess the employees at Google's culture, are willing to censor. China wants to censor its own human rights violations, I think there morally bad. Certain EU Nations want to prevent fat right nationalist radicalization via censorship. I think that's clumsy, but good. So hence "why single out China." It stops whenever the employees put up a fight. Isn't that the point of…

> Certain EU Nations want to prevent fat right nationalist radicalization via censorship

But why don’t they apply the same censorship to the far left? That’s where I have my problem with it, it isn’t to protect the people from the far right, it’s to control public discourse in a way that reinforces their leftist ideology. The Communist Party isn’t censored in Europe, but right-wing groups are. You can celebrate Stalin, but would be arrested for celebrating Hilter. How is that any different than Chinese censorship? Maybe degree, but definitely not intent.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#588

Post by markdown »

tomschlick wrote: post #443

> MRAP's are for combat, not police work While they were designed for combat, they are effectively the same thing that Brinks uses to transport money. They are meant to stop bad things from killing the people inside. They have 0 offensive weapons. They are entirely defensive vehicles that have been used to rescue downed officers, civilians in harms way (gunfire), and multiple times in natural disasters where other ve…

> While I get that they "look scary" to some people .

That's more than enough reason not to deploy them.

It changes "we're here to serve and protect" to "we will crush you if you step out of line".

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#589

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #35
patrickaljord wrote: post #9

If I was in China and had to choose between having a choice between censored baidu and censored google vs just censored baidu, I'd rather have both baidu and google. It's easy for us here in the western world as we have access to both and more uncensored sources to take the moral high ground and subject the Chinese to a "let them eat cake" attitude. Not sure if this will benefit people over there though to ban google…

I think the situation should be looked at more holistically. Here are some other factors to consider: - Does it soil our hands to build the "Mental handcuffs" of China, even if Baidu started it? - Does it stop at China? Or what about Turkey? Iran? Would we build a search in Saudi Arabia that didn't let women look up divorce if the government wanted it? - Does it come to America? What about searches that seem criminal…

>Does it come to America? What about searches that seem criminal?

My guess is that it is already here, just for things we deem acceptable. The problem with censorship is that everyone has something they think acceptable to censor, so the infrastructure to censor will be developed with mass approval.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#590

Post by nostrademons »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #533
nostrademons wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "values over profits" approach was always more of a recruitment tool than a PR tool. It did give a nice PR boost, but realistically Google's been the best choice of search engine since it came out in 1998. They don't need additional customer goodwill for people to keep using them, they just need to continue to give good results for esoteric queries. Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for…

"or have more growth potential" Right, but this is different from having higher expected value, or higher likely-case value. Most people don't value compensation offers based on 'growth potential' (aka 'best case'). (I'm assuming you mean growth in the sense of 'growth in value of equity', based on your reply to another commenter)

I was actually thinking of growth as in "professional growth" - getting promoted faster, having a chance to learn more skills, doing things you wouldn't be able to do. I was thinking of the equity growth in terms of "pay more".
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