3 ms·

AWS and Google are companies. It's not their job to push for societal changes really. In fact, I hope they don't push for those. I'd prefer them to steer clear

AWS and Google are companies. It's not their job to push for societal changes really. In fact, I hope they don't push for those. I'd prefer them to steer clear of pushing for any higher objectives, that's best left to governments and lawmakers.

solotronics 8y ago
Maybe we should consider AWS differently than Google or FB? "to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices." - https://www.amazon.jobs/working/working-amazon https://www.amazon.jobs/working/working-amazon "Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” - https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ "Founded in 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them." - https://investor.fb.com/resources/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/resources/default.aspx Its interesting how these mission statements present vastly different goals. At what point is something a public utility? If everyone abandons their servers for cloud providers you are at the whim of the corporate political stance of where your machine is hosted..
smsm42 8y ago
> It's not their job to push for societal changes really. Somehow dozens of companies are discussing pushing for societal changes every day. Just recently a bunch of companies discussed severing ties with NRA (which didn't hurt a single living soul) and stopping selling firearms (which would not, indeed, lead to any societal change but at least the declared goal, even if unattainable, is to do exactly that). In another topic, there's a link on political manifesto by SO leadership. Social activism is everywhere in the business world. But when it's about something that may save somebody's life in Iran but cost some $$ to the company, it's suddenly "not their job". Nope, you can't do both. If companies avoided social activism altogether and were completely neutral and apolitical - I could accept that. They are not and haven't been for a long time. You can't just turn on one place and say "we do social activism everywhere but not where it can offend Iran". Or, you can, but that would be, as I said, cowardly and disgusting.
gspetr 8y ago
What do you think Google is doing on Youtube? It already has considerable skin in the game. Even something seemingly innocuous like Google search's front page doodles are chosen and curated.
- smsm42 8y ago
  Also there's recent story of Google removing shopping results containing "gun" which went hilariously wrong (yes, you couldn't search for Burgundy for a while :) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16474102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16474102

solotronics 8y ago

Maybe we should consider AWS differently than Google or FB? "to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices." - https://www.amazon.jobs/working/working-amazon https://www.amazon.jobs/working/working-amazon "Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” - https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ "Founded in 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them." - https://investor.fb.com/resources/default.aspx https://investor.fb.com/resources/default.aspx Its interesting how these mission statements present vastly different goals. At what point is something a public utility? If everyone abandons their servers for cloud providers you are at the whim of the corporate political stance of where your machine is hosted..

smsm42 8y ago

> It's not their job to push for societal changes really. Somehow dozens of companies are discussing pushing for societal changes every day. Just recently a bunch of companies discussed severing ties with NRA (which didn't hurt a single living soul) and stopping selling firearms (which would not, indeed, lead to any societal change but at least the declared goal, even if unattainable, is to do exactly that). In another topic, there's a link on political manifesto by SO leadership. Social activism is everywhere in the business world. But when it's about something that may save somebody's life in Iran but cost some $$ to the company, it's suddenly "not their job". Nope, you can't do both. If companies avoided social activism altogether and were completely neutral and apolitical - I could accept that. They are not and haven't been for a long time. You can't just turn on one place and say "we do social activism everywhere but not where it can offend Iran". Or, you can, but that would be, as I said, cowardly and disgusting.

gspetr 8y ago

What do you think Google is doing on Youtube? It already has considerable skin in the game. Even something seemingly innocuous like Google search's front page doodles are chosen and curated.

smsm42 8y ago
Also there's recent story of Google removing shopping results containing "gun" which went hilariously wrong (yes, you couldn't search for Burgundy for a while :) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16474102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16474102