Why was this purged from HN's front page?
We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
811–820 of 888 posts
Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#812I find the Google/Chinese search engine troubling, but I do think people are playing this up to be a lot more than it should be. I think one fact is that Google is in an area and recruits people that are hyper liberal individuals. For example: not wanting to work with the U.S. military on projects, having AI use gender neutral writing, random PC things, little diversity in political thought etc. I don't think Google…
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Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#813What's wrong with that? US government already have that kind of under-the-table deal for years now and Chinese people wanted a similar project. Truth is, even a 10 years old kid knows how much an evil company like Google respect their users and how shamelessly they collectively spy everyone but if I was picked by Google I won't shouting out self-evident facts about the true nature of the company, instead I would be grateful that I got picked by thousands of other companies afterwards just for working at Google.
Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#814Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pretty bold It's interesting you would label this as such. In what is ostensibly the best country in the world, and a massive proponent of free speech and human rights, you think it's bold to write a letter on the internet to your extraordinarily famous employer? If it's considered bold in the USA involving Google, I shudder to think about anyone else doing this anywhere else. In the year 2018 I would hope it's ver…
>> a massive proponent of free speech and human rights Yeah, 'human rights', right, so that's why they're so[1] focused[2] on separating families[3], and I guess 'free speech' is what allows the POTUS to be a racist[4], fear-mongering, corrupt[5] liar[6]? Or is 'free speech' the thing that allows denial[7] of climate change[8] even while California burns to the ground? And I guess with 'human rights' that goes along…
Please do not take HN threads deeper into political flamewar hell. Yes the parent comment contained a provocation, but that doesn't make this ok.
When pointing in this direction, take a big U-turn or don't post.
Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#815What am I missing? The cost of switching to an alternative search engine like Bing or Duck is next to zero. (Actually, I dropped Google for Duck just 2 months ago.) Brand is the most valuable asset Google has. Is the Chinese search market - and other evil projects - really worth the damage to Google's public image?
>other evil projects Like a search-engine in NSAland? China isn't any more Evil than The US. Grow up.
> Grow up.
If you continue to break the site guidelines like this we're going to have to ban you.
Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#816> 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…
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543229.
Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#817Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a big difference between operating a business in China in general, and operating a business that necessarily involves implementing their surveillance infrastructure.
And Bing doesn't, while Dragonfly does?
I honestly have no idea. Last I heard, Bing is blocked in China, which I assume means that there are things that come in its search result that Chinese government doesn't like.
But Dragonfly [ostensibly] went well beyond just censoring results, in that it implemented specific tools like linking search requests with phone numbers identifying people who made those requests. That's straight-up aiding and abetting oppressing people - political opposition, for example, or even unorganized dissenters. I can't believe we are even seriously talking about whether this is okay or not.
Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#818Quick summary (if you don't know the name "Dragonfly", like I didn't): > We are Google employees and we join Amnesty International in calling on Google to cancel project Dragonfly, Google’s effort to create a censored search engine for the Chinese market that enables state surveillance. > Our opposition to Dragonfly is not about China: we object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wher…
> we object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be. And where's the actual research showing that Google in China would do such a thing? By all calculations, it would bring more knowledge and access to Chinese citizen that they already have. This make it sound like Google is the reason why the citizen don't have access to information.
By building and delivering such a system they'd be condoning the actions of the Chinese government.
Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#819This is good for the ecosystem, as google's loss is a lot of other companies gain.
If Google's employees don't want to help the Chinese people and their government, no problem. There are literally thousands of corporations that will be helping instead of Goog.
Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly
#820Earlier quoted context omitted.
Declining to work with paid murderers is not a partisan position. Opposing sexism is not a partisan position. Attempting to reframe these sorts of things as “lefty silliness” and paint them with the same brush as being sad and disappointed that a rapist won the election is simply subterfuge.
> Declining to work with paid murderers is not a partisan position. Calling military paid murderers is definitely a partisan thing. What else do you propose? Someone has to do the dirty work to keep the citizens safe. > Opposing sexism is not a partisan position. Are you talking about harassment cases. Have you been to Google or talked about it to a Googler? It generally is swift and works without any proof. What the…
> Calling military paid murderers is definitely a partisan thing. What else do you propose? Someone has to do the dirty work to keep the citizens safe.
How exactly did US operations in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua etc. keep you 'safe'?