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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

#191

Post by s73v3r_ »

ewheeler wrote: post #24
IBM wrote: post #6

Brian Acton or anyone else feeling guilty about their ad-tech wealth: use your winnings to lobby for a federal privacy bill that is as strong and comprehensive as GDPR (and other EU privacy regulations). The industry is moving to enact something that maintains the status quo [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/technology/tech-industry-...

I'd recommend reading more about the 'information fiduciary' approach[1] promoted by Prof Jonathan Zittrain (and others) which I find to be among the most realistic steps in a better direction, as it offers a 'grand bargain' in the spirit of DCMA's 'safe harbor' for companies that choose to commit to putting consumers and their rights above maximizing profit. [1] https://hbr.org/2018/09/how-to-exercise-the-power-you-…

I don't want a bargain. I want those companies to stop tracking, and actually respect privacy.

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

#192

Post by akira2501 »

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…

> Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing

Then don't act as if this is sufficient reasoning. Any one of these people or the entire department could quit, and you and I both know it would be re-staffed inside of a month.

> named for this scene from the children's movie.

Which should be a strong hint as to it's merit in the real-world. You shouldn't have to look very deeply into our society to see where the problems of this mentality lay; in fact, whole other works of fiction and non-fiction alike have been created just to highlight this precise fact.

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

#193

Post by pg_bot »

jniedrauer wrote: post #148
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…

We don't even have to go back very far to find examples of American companies exploiting people to the point of knowingly killing them.[0] > any solution that requires foregoing independent corporate decision making would be foolish Whether you think less regulation or more regulation is better, you can't in good faith advocate for no regulation. Corporations have demonstrated many times over the years that they are…

I made no such argument for no regulation. My argument is that we have a set of rules, and we should not interfere with decision making if rules have not been broken. If in response to some exploitation of the rules which you deem as unhealthy to society you may pass new rules to deal with that behavior. You can't just mess with someone because you don't like them.

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

#194

Post by ska »

bogomipz wrote: post #58
tensor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?

>"Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?" No but it would be nice if they at least upheld the same values of the country that they themselves are a product of. Or are values just things you can draw arbitrary borders around when it's convenient?

    it would be nice if they at least upheld the same values of the country that they themselves are a product of.
One could say the same of the government :)

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

#195

Post by dgoldstein0 »

jtwebman wrote: post #182
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.

Last time I checked China doesn't fall under US law. This is an international company. They can do what ever they want for a site in China. I don't agree with it but I do agree that the company can do it if they want.

This is probably true if it's a Google subsidiary doing it. But there are a lot of caveats here. Presumably US based Google employees are included in this Chinese search engine project, so there should be some legal way for the US government to involve itself if it wanted to.

Not saying they should, just that a law could be written, if I've doesn't already exist, that would make it problematic.

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

#196

Post by tziki »

akira2501 wrote: post #186
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…

> I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Yea, but I'm a big fan of regulated food, clean water and pollution standards. Upholding your obligations is a requirement to receiving the protection of the government as you conduct your business. It's a two-way street. > Especially when it looks like this whole thing is Google specific. The better question is whether Google is acting as a monopo…

>We'll get to them eventually.. but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first? Wouldn't that provide the greatest reduction in harm?

You do realize that Google doesn't do search business in China, right?

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

#197

Post by Bartweiss »

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.

> not believing in gravity

That metaphor holds if he doesn't believe that the US government has ever obliged a business to do anything; it's objectively true that the USG exists and asserts power over many businesses. But "believe in" there is pretty obviously a claim about desirability, and I think a lot of people don't believe gravity has intrinsic moral value.

Actually, I like this metaphor. Gravity isn't intrinsically moral, but from a human perspective there are certainly right and wrong values. Deimos, where you can accidentally jump into orbit, has too little. Jupiter, where hydrogen is crushed into a metal, has too much. So now we're back to quibbling over the desirable amount of an amoral force, and comparisons to physics haven't changed the situation.

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

#198

Post by mzs »

TACIXAT wrote: post #139
mzs wrote: post #15

last week >Google hushing employees on Chinese search engine https://www.axios.com/google-china-dragonfly-employees-searc...

>The search engine requires users to log in to use its search features and tracks user's locations. It shares user's history with a Chinese partner. All searches would be connected to a personal phone number and user movements, along with the IP address of the device they used, would be recorded. How is this at all different from the US version?

  $ curl -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (MSIE; Windows 10)' \
    'https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q=do+i+need+to+login' 2>/dev/null | \
  tr '' '\n\n' | grep results
  a class=gb1 href="https://www.youtube.com/results?gl=US&tab=w1"
  All results
  About 1,740,000,000 results
  $

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

#199

Post by ilaksh »

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.

This comment should not be flagged. It's just a very unpopular opinion in this forum. Study the difference between popularity and merit. Study the history of popular opinion and how new or different ideas are received versus their merit.

Flagging often amounts to a very harmful type of self-censorship that just constrains conversation to certain worldviews.

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

#200

Post by [deleted] »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #185
Spooky23 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalism is messy. The west, particularly the US made a policy decision years ago that engaging with China commercially would yield benefits to China, the US, and the world. Arguably that was correct, although the predictions that making money would create a democratic society proved to be inaccurate. If you wear men's undershirts, you're objectively abetting an authoritarian regime that allows companies in Banglade…

" Why should Google suffer" 1. I reject any notion that Google is somehow "suffering" if they don't go into China. 2. You're making it seem like Google is entitled to all the business it wants. That's not true in the least.

[deleted]
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