Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 341 posts

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#321

Post by jollofricepeas »

nullc wrote: post #309
jollofricepeas wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, Google is evil now. Even the Devil himself believes he’s doing the right thing because “doing right” is completely subjective. Anything is possible when values are pliable. https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

"Do the right thing" was the motto of the perpetrator of every great evil in human history. Okay sure, perhaps some serial killers knew they were doing the wrong thing but you don't commit genocide unless you've convinced yourself that you're doing the right thing. To do evil on a grand scale you must have righteousness and conviction in abundance. "Don't be evil" at least admits the possibility of asking "Wait. are…

Exactly this.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#322

Post by shadowgovt »

wmeredith wrote: post #149
shadowgovt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He catches a lot of shit for his phrasing, but Schmidt had a habit of saying true things in a way that maximized the odds they'd be received poorly. (In context, they were talking about the long-retention and implicit-digital-footprint effects on online services, and he was noting that the trends were only going to become "more observation" and "more retention" over time... At some point, it becomes much cheaper to j…

Schmidt doesn't get shit for saying true things. He gets shit for being a rich hypocritical asshole. At the time he was spouting his holier-than-thou bullshit, he was colluding with other high-tech firms (Apple, et al.) to suppress workers' salaries, and he was actively hiding the evidence of doing so. It came out in court anyway and Google was part of a half-billion dollar settlement over the matter. Eric Schmidt is…

So you're saying he was doing something that he didn't want anyone to know, and maybe he shouldn't have been doing it in the first place? ;)

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#323

Post by BowBun »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #296
di456 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's not dismissive. Both are evil on a spectrum. One does not negate the plightgs of the other.

> it's not dismissive. Both are evil on a spectrum. One does not negate the plightgs [ sic ] of the other. There are generational labor camps in North Korea and a litany of horrible ongoing civil wars in Africa. They are evil. So is industry pushback against unleaded aviation fuel [1][2]. But comparing the evils of the civil war in Somalia to those of leaded avgas is, at best, pointless. [1] https://news.sccgov.org/n…

No one has compared them except you. Using a word doesn't automatically mean someone is equating everything under the umbrella. You would do better to focus on the definition of the word if you're so inclined on arguing - "cruel and oppressive government or rule.". I think this holds with the original point that Google can be seen as oppressive rule since they decide the rules, which don't necessarily align with what the people think is right.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#324

Post by bbor »

naasking wrote: post #268
bbor wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about the assertion that these blacklists are for ads? From the linked internal discussion on the shooting: "changes to ad serving and changes to search ranking are done completely independently, and by different teams". Isn't it a good idea not to serve ads on sites that are discussing a recent national trauma? Or at the very least not really related to politics?

> Isn't it a good idea not to serve ads on sites that are discussing a recent national trauma? Or at the very least not really related to politics? I say no, because that devalues truthful reporting on real and important events, in favour of safe pablum that will pass the censors. Real news is important, but who is paying for news if it's not funded by ads?

I mean bad as in “the people paying for the ad slots wouldn’t want it” not “it’s better for society”. Obviously the only morally good answer here is to abolish capitalist profit-seeking organizations altogether, but I’m Assuming I’m preaching to the choir. If you have a company that’s bound by law to seek as much profit as possible, can you really get mad at them for not wanting to show their dumb mobile game ads next to stories about a recent massacre?

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#325

Post by mcqueenjordan »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #295
mcqueenjordan wrote: post #210

I really despise auto-delete policies. Obviously, because of the inconvenience and all the context/history/search capability you lose, but also because it's addressing the problem the wrong way. Rather than be accountable for your actions, the company would rather create a system to circumvent the law and sweep the evidence under the rug. Creates a terrible incentive structure. It goes to show that the company is run…

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/ftc-prepares-possible-antit...

That’s all well and good. I still think the quote stands on its own as a great philosophy for how to approach scrutiny as a large business. Philosophy and execution are separate!

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#326

Post by telotortium »

raldi wrote: post #139
jefftk wrote: post #24

What's depressingly hilarious is that employees generally hated this behavior, because useful information would often disappear before you were done with it. For example, someone answers your question on Friday after you've left and when you check messages on Monday it's gone. Or you'd want to refer to something from a conversation a few days ago and it'd been deleted as well.

I was working there when this happened, and I definitely remember thinking, "Well, no point in writing a detailed email full of information that will be useful in the future, because in 30 days it'll be gone anyway." Even more frustrating was finding myself in a situation where I remembered an old email that would be enormously helpful, either because of the information in it, or because I could reuse the bulk of som…

I always added all emails to me or cc me to the Indef label, which stops the email autodeletion.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#327

Post by hedora »

IntelMiner wrote: post #307
hedora wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google’s the primary beneficiary of the DMCA, and also the US’s criminally lax privacy laws. Sounds like corporate welfare to me.

I'd say Disney is the primary beneficiary of the DMCA, and copyright law in general But that's more just a condemnation on how sickeningly large American media empires are now

The DMCA lets google crowdsource “upload disney’s catalog to youtube, slap ads on them, and profit while cementing our monopoly”. It also let’s them arbitrarily hobble open source web browsers and android forks with DRM.

Disney was much better off under the old regime, where they could have collected statutory damages from Google each time a movie was uploaded to YouTube.

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#328

Post by PenguinCoder »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #250
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #133

Funny how Google can ignore the privacy of internet users' conversations but when it comes to their employees' conversations, Google does not want to share those with the Government. According to the Government's memo supporting sanctions, Google is deleting conversations within 24h despite being under litigation holds. https://ia902501.us.archive.org/21/items/gov.uscourts.dcd.22... Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt app…

Remember, Google is evil now. Even the Devil himself believes he’s doing the right thing because “doing right” is completely subjective. Anything is possible when values are pliable. https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

> You see the devil don't mean to be evil, He just regrettably forgets to set expectations

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#329

Post by anthlax »

netheril96 wrote: post #228
raldi wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working there when this happened, and I definitely remember thinking, "Well, no point in writing a detailed email full of information that will be useful in the future, because in 30 days it'll be gone anyway." Even more frustrating was finding myself in a situation where I remembered an old email that would be enormously helpful, either because of the information in it, or because I could reuse the bulk of som…

Email are retained for more than a year. Only instant chats are retained for 24h or 30d.

Yep - I can’t help but wonder if this is a work of fiction since it is absolutely incorrect

Re: Justice Department says Google destroyed evidence related to antitrust lawsuit

#330

Post by bb88 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #206
bb88 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the CIA destroyed the torture video tapes to prevent embarrassment and further prosecutions of it's employees. So it kinda goes both ways.

You are demonstrating scary level of Moral Confusion. CIA operates in the National interest, at least hypothetically. Google can operate against national interest to make money, or 'whoever pays most' interest. The people of USA have granted CIA privileges of secrecy and legal protections explicitly to do ShadyShit. No-one ever gave Google permission to do ShadyShit. CIA employees go through background checks, US Gov…

No. Destruction of evidence of wrongdoing is illegal whether the government does it or Google. CIA is not exempt from US laws.

Otherwise they would be more like the Iranian Republican Guard -- where raping their own citizens apparently is okay.

Do you support that? I don't.

Post reply on HN