A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit • Hacker News Board

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#431

Post by mullingitover » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:09 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #394

throwoutway wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, google employees would be breaking the law by hiring primarily because of religious preference and thus discriminating against competent candidates of other religious (or non) preference

Cults are not religions. The body of decisions is remarkably explicit about this, when you consider how difficult the question “what is a religion” actually is. Edit: I forgot to provide references. Here’s a summary[1] of a 1988 California Supreme Court ruling in which the court determined that cult conduct does not fall under religious protections, even if the cult’s members might genuinely believe the cult’s doctri…

The only real difference between a cult and a religion is real estate.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#432

Post by lnxg33k1 » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:11 AM UTC

jhardy54 wrote: post #428

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #420

I am not sure what to take about this post other than either I’m unable to understand the culture in which the fact happened or the guy is an idiot with capitalised letters and space, but I always joked with coworkers when I joined a company when I was introduced to the team to whom you were supposed to report illegal things you saw within the company, and we would think who is so naive to report the company to the c…

What a sentence. Could you rephrase? I’m confused at what you’re trying to say.

Don’t report crimes in a company to a company, report crimes in a company to police

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#433

Post by throwaway2048 » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:13 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #390

thomasahle wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The power of a Union is entirely in it's ability to negotiate with the company. I often hear this misunderstanding in the US. Of course it's a within the power of a union to hire lawyers who can help defend its members against the cooperation within the rules of the law. In fact, to highly paid employees like tech workers, this kind of legal support is much more valuable than wage negotiation. Having somebody you c…

That'd be essentially a group legal insurance plan - something many employers offer anyway - and you don't really need a union to join one (or offer one, if you wanted to).

I very much doubt companies are going to pay for your lawyers to sue them with.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#434

Post by dang » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

webel0 wrote: post #412

The New York Times article [1] largely adds support to the author’s claims. It also provided some interesting background on how this level of nepotism might have come about: > Ms. Jones, Mr. Lloyd’s [The author] lawyer, argued that Google’s relationship with ASG [contracting agency] allowed members of the Fellowship to join the company without being properly vetted. “This is one of the methods the Fellowship used in…

This comment was posted about https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910..., in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31769484, which we merged hither.

(Since the NYT article is the OP above, I add this to avoid confusion.)

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#435

Post by jonas21 » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #429

hinkley wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And MLMs aren't pyramid schemes. At some point you have organizations that are doing the exact bare minimum to dodge a more unsavory classification. The Rule of Law can't legislate being a good person. It can only legislate not being a monster.

I'm not interested in legislating the exact qualities of a "good person." I'm pointing out that, from a case law perspective, Google is entirely in clear to fire these people. The categorical question of "is X a cult" doesn't impinge on whether The Fellowship of Friends is a cult, which it is.

The case you cited says nothing of the sort. It only establishes that a religious organization can be sued for fraud if it uses coercive persuasion ("brainwashing") techniques [1].

It doesn't make a statement as to what is or isn't considered a religion.

It's worth noting that the Fellowship of Friends is recognized by both the IRS and California as a tax-exempt religious organization. And, at least from my perspective, it doesn't sound all that different from Scientology, which does enjoy First Amendment protections as a religion. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molko_v._Holy_Spirit_Ass%27n_f...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headley_v._Church_of_Scientolo...

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#436

Post by wly_cdgr » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:24 AM UTC

I said mulled wine, Jenkins, you fool, not cult wine. MULLED

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#437

Post by dang » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:25 AM UTC

kadayadi wrote: post #116

Quoted post unavailable.

We've banned this account for religious flamewar, which is not allowed here.

(No, that's not because we're on one side or the other of any particular flamewar. The entire category is hellish and off topic.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#438

Post by tjmc » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:27 AM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #274

So, if the author was fired for the reasons they believe, that's pretty bad behavior. But if he had not been fired, what was management supposed to have done about the cult members working for this department? Yes, the cult's leader sounds like a pretty awful person, but he wasn't working there. What were the cult members doing in their work in the department that was clearly wrong? It's suggested that there was favo…

Maybe the culture is different in tech. In my game - engineering within the construction industry, failure to disclose a conflict of interest in any kind of procurement over a few $100 is cause for instant dismissal and potentially criminal prosecution if there are kickbacks involved.

So the wine procurement is open and shut corruption in my view. If I was betting on the outcome here, I suspect "Dan" from the article was actually correct in his prediction. Google will just shut the whole unit down. They're already being sued over it and their reputation is being tarnished in the New York Times. It's a no brainer in terms of risk management.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#439

Post by dontbenebby » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC

I thought this was going to be dated years ago, last I ran into this shit it was the summer after Snowden.

Google folks can be hella elitist, but at least at IBM they wait til they leave the company to join cults :-)

>...she quit her job at IBM to become, in her words, a "full time pop star and cult leader." She's released several homemade, cybertwee-aesthetic music videos, which criticize consumerism and promote spiritual and feminist ideals.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezpben/i-was-brainwashed-by-...

And the Googlers I knew who were into woo woo usually got it out of their system before they hit the business world then rapidly ditched the affiliation when people... Googled their group.

(Lookin' at you Deep Lab -- never got an explanation why Jacob Appelbum[1] would be listed as a member of a "feminist collective"[2] years after multiple credible reports of reprehensible behavior.

>A number of other persons are affiliated with and/or worked to contribute to and support the Deep Lab... Jacob Appelbaum (independent security researcher)

(My gut take is he extorted folks who did... modeling or whatever for far too long given the supposedly libertarian leanings, left or right, of tech bros like myself)

And Oregon... of course these Googlers are in Oregon, a land famous for cults - most students of morbid reality know that one of the worst bioattacks in the USA was perpetrated by a cult trying to sicken enough people to seize control of the county at the ballet box in rural Oregon[3]

>In 1984, 751 people suffered food poisoning in The Dalles, Oregon, US due to the deliberate contamination of salad bars at ten local restaurants with Salmonella. A group of prominent followers of Rajneesh (later known as Osho) led by Ma Anand Sheela had hoped to incapacitate the voting population of the city so that their own candidates would win the 1984 Wasco County elections. The incident was the first and is the single largest bioterrorist attack in United States history

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum#Allegations_of...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20191026165234/https://studiofor...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_atta...

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#440

Post by JetAlone » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 2:37 AM UTC

labrador wrote: post #240

This doesn't sound far fetched to me at all because I still remember Marshall Applewhite and his techie cult pictured dead from suicide in bunk beds wearing uniforms and Nike shoes If fact, it seems long overdue for another and I'm surprised the pace of these hasn't picked up. That's good news for the day.

In the parts of the world that were prone to this, we're too atomized, lonely. We've also been more educated through documentaries to be wary of cult compounds. People are very cynical of spiritual belief and skeptical of the intentions of a hierarch. Forming an in-person cult is also harder now because people are more diverse and you have to account for many backgrounds. It's easier to scoop up on trends from a general population that is dominated by one demographic.

I'm of the persuasion to think that our society has allowed for the permeation of an invisible communion; the loneliness death-cult of the self. There are not mass suicide events, but individual devotional ritual endings to life. The drug overdoser, the lone gunman, the suicide. Instead of communal attendance, adherents live largely as anchorites and communicate their discontent to their peers by digital epistle. This prepares them for their time. The ultimate virtue in that system is control enough over one's life to choose how to end it, be it via "revenge" or self-destruction.