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

We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 888 posts

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#281

Post by chrisco255 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #244
chrisco255 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1][2][3] Besides being a revised policy that no longer applies (and yes, policies take time to unwind)...there is no universal human right to emigrate to any country whatsoever. I know a lot of people think so... but also this pales in comparison to the abuses of existing Chinese nationals by China, taking Muslim property [1], placing citizens in internment camps and abusing them, placing them under "deeply invasive…

> he's not racist, by the way Literally his first appearance in the NYT was for being a racist asshole - https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/07/30/1973-meet-d...

And then he counter-sued the DOJ and then reached a settlement. The disagreement was over welfare applicants. That can be twisted a number of ways, but you can't misconstrue that to imply racism. Landlords (and banks by the way) have a legitimate, financial duty to lease to the most-qualified tenants. When you ignore financial qualifications...you get the 2008 real estate crash.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2186613-realty-compa... https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2186614-trump-promis...

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#282

Post by ameister14 »

lostgame wrote: post #222
PavlovsCat wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit older, but it's a citation: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/from... > You said: "There has never been a better society than in the United States in 1958." What do you mean by that? > FROMM: Well, I mean it, of course, in relative terms. The history of man so far is nothing to brag about, from the standpoint of our ideas--and what I mean is, that in comparison with most other soci…

[flagged]

I think you're getting downvotes because your statement brooked no argument, and people know if they comment they will be dragged into an off-topic back-and forth battle with a 9/11 truther that nobody could win.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#283

Post by dcow »

lostgame wrote: post #222
PavlovsCat wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit older, but it's a citation: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/from... > You said: "There has never been a better society than in the United States in 1958." What do you mean by that? > FROMM: Well, I mean it, of course, in relative terms. The history of man so far is nothing to brag about, from the standpoint of our ideas--and what I mean is, that in comparison with most other soci…

[flagged]

Despite what you want to believe, there is no virtue in having a first just to have a first. I’d rather have a kick-ass first female president than a “figurehead first”. You need to examine your virtues a little before getting uptight about missing a chance to signal.

Further, the US is not great because it’s progressive. It’s great because we are allowed to be progressive. It’s great because it is structured to systemically fight oppression. Does that mean we are absolutely free of all possible oppressions? No. But we have invented a society that limits the damage oppressive factions can do. In other countries the government, the monopoly on power, is allowed to oppress (and we’re trending that way in the US, which is unfortunate) for the “greater good”. Because the government can’t do that in the US, it means we e.g. can’t silence homosexuals or transgender people arguing for equality. It means you can call Trump a thing and not have the police at your door.

We are certainly not “the greatest country evar omgee” (I’m not into the imperialist stuff either). But the example we have set for the world has lead to the fastest expansion of human knowledge our species has ever seen. That’s pretty great.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#284

Post by bad_user »

lostgame wrote: post #232
kevmo wrote: post #166

I morally judge (not condemn) people who work at Google. If you can get a job at Google, you can get a job almost anywhere. There is tons of great work out there for you. People who work at Google are choosing to aid in the suppression of human freedom.

>> People who work at Google are choosing to aid in the suppression of human freedom. The fact that there's a large number of employees who signed this document provides great evidence to contradict this claim. It's kind of a blanket statement - I'm sure a bunch of the folks here on HN work at Google and are trying to do exactly the opposite. Heck, some of the people who signed off on this document could be HN'ers! Y…

I would also like to add that companies encouraging freedom of speech internally to a level that makes such protests possible are exceedingly rare.

In most companies employees have no freedom of speech unless unionized and not even then. And protesting against projects based on moral principles publicly is a sure way to get you fired.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#285

Post by JeromeLon »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #274
aibrahem wrote: post #136

As someone who lived most of his life in a dictatorship, I really struggle to understand the logic of these employees. I was actually surprised Google stepped out of China a couple of years ago and felt like the decision was taken by a bunch of people who don't understand what it's like to live in a non-democratic country. Do they think that everybody in China cares that their internet is censored or that they're bei…

It's not just the censorship. Let's say Google opens up in China and then a month later China comes to them and says "we need the names of everyone who searched for the term 'Uyghur concentration camp' and lives in such and such region." Google then has two choices: give over the names to the Chinese government or immediately pack up and leave China. It's practically a given that China will eventually demand this of…

Google could do it in a much more transparent way than others, for example by stating "Here is what we know about you, and this information may be given away to the government if you proceed with a search that they considered dangerous".

I think it would be better than the current situation, where Chinese people are left with a poor quality search engine, which won't find a good answer to the question, report them to the government, and do it in a very secretive way.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#286

Post by bun_at_work »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #118
patrickaljord wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is already censoring specific searches all over the world, in the EU for example, the right to be forgotten and many "hate speech" laws already force google to censor many sites that are filtered out.

Censorship in the EU is generally intended to protect individuals; censorship in China is meant to protect the ones doing the censoring. The EU has democratically elected governments; China is an authoritarian dictatorship. Those are differences in kind, not just degree.

You do see what you're saying right? Essentially, you're saying the government is responsible for the laws regarding censorship, not the businesses that operate there.

If censorship existed in the USA, Google would have still started under it, and simply operated with that constraint. This is no different than operating in China.

Google can't influence one way or another what censorship laws exist in China, currently. If they had a significant market share there, then they might be able to negotiate terms, since they would have some leverage.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#287

Post by chrisco255 »

lostgame wrote: post #234
chrisco255 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1][2][3] Besides being a revised policy that no longer applies (and yes, policies take time to unwind)...there is no universal human right to emigrate to any country whatsoever. I know a lot of people think so... but also this pales in comparison to the abuses of existing Chinese nationals by China, taking Muslim property [1], placing citizens in internment camps and abusing them, placing them under "deeply invasive…

I'm sorry, but if 'liberty' includes the ability to reserve the right to deny science to continue destroying the entire planet, I'm not sure I can support it. Sounds like liberty for humans, and not for the planet, which we have to live on. What's the point in free speech if we destroy the place we live in? Who will be left to speak?

Yeah, and if the climate scientists are as wrong as nutritionists were about fats [1][2]...then what? We destroy the world economy for the wrong reason? In ANY complex system, there are trade offs for every choice. And would you starve a billion people to save the planet? Would you quadruple oil prices to cut emissions...hurting the poorest in the process? The point of free speech is that we DEBATE things like this so we can TRY to arrive at the best answer, knowing damn well we still might have to TRY AGAIN if and when we fail.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#Origi... [2] http://www.jbc.org/content/86/2/587.full.pdf+html

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#288

Post by prolikewh0a »

I also feel like they've changed search so much for profit purposes that it's impossible to find certain things without receiving pages of irrelevance. I've been using Google since the early 2000's and it's so easy to tell Search has dropped in quality. Certain words & phrases I know would produce legitimate useful search results in 2008 will now just pull pages of unrelated ads.

It's still the best, but the profit motive is harming the amazing work that Google once did.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#289

Post by chrisco255 »

rexpop wrote: post #258
chrisco255 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1][2][3] Besides being a revised policy that no longer applies (and yes, policies take time to unwind)...there is no universal human right to emigrate to any country whatsoever. I know a lot of people think so... but also this pales in comparison to the abuses of existing Chinese nationals by China, taking Muslim property [1], placing citizens in internment camps and abusing them, placing them under "deeply invasive…

> there is no universal human right to emigrate to any country You've really mischaracterized the situation. Check out "No Wall They Can Build" for a closer look, and maybe "An Indigenous People's History of the US" for an explanation of the sentiment that "we didn't cross the border; the border crossed us." It's not ambiguous, to those of us holding the facts, that the US' encroachment onto Latin American life is a…

No, it's actually racist to give latin americans preference over the millions of asians, europeans, and africans that also want to move here.

Re: We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly

#290

Post by balibebas »

grecy wrote: post #216
lostgame wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, clearly, the larger issue here is the false idea that the USA is a proponent of free speech or human rights. I would certainly never in a million years hope anyone would seriously claim the US to be the greatest country in the world.

> I would certainly never in a million years hope anyone would seriously claim the US to be the greatest country in the world. I am quite certain a significant proportion of Americans genuinely believe it is.

Argumentum ad populum. Are you really going to generalize as well?
Post reply on HN