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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under
by gnarbarian 8y ago
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good
of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live
under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may
at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end for they do so with the approval
of their own conscience." -CS Lewis
Politics/religion and business don't mix, you will alienate half your potential audience and piss off your employees. When was the last time your car insurance company imposed a political opinion on you?
With the power that Google has as a conduit for information, having any sort of political bias in presenting information is frighteningly Orwellian. Their recent egregious transgressions has caused me to avoid their products wherever possible. The most ironic thing IMO is their willingness to neuter one of the most amazing free speech platforms that has ever been created, YouTube. I've switched off their search engine and now primarily use duckduckgo and bing. I'm also using the brave browser. I am distancing myself from that company as fast as alternatives present themselves.
- ojbyrne 8y ago“Half” is a joke. If you look at the entire market (i.e the entire world) that Google is addressing, the segment of American Republicans who support gun rights and are concerned about equal time for the extreme right wing is vanishingly small.
- gnarbarian 8y agoAbout half of Americans are right of center. What I'm saying is EVERY political stance google takes alienates a segment of their customers and employees. This includes stances which alienate left leaning people too. Does anyone remember that the YouTube shooter was a PETA activist who was enraged over the demonetization and de-circulation of her videos?
- r00fus 8y agoright != extreme right. That the overton window has shifted doesn't mean what's on display is just "right wing" - it's extreme. So what is "center" anyways? The single-axis political scale is a very flawed way of looking at
- scarmig 8y ago> When was the last time your car insurance company imposed a political opinion on you? https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=F09 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=F09 The idea that any apolitical company exists is fanciful. Simply giving employees the right to political opinions is hardly a reason to boycott the company; it's a reason to support it. That said, Google's tolerance-but-only-for-tolerable-opinions is itself problematic.
- gnarbarian 8y agoOK, but google's approach is more akin to your car insurance company denying your business because they disagree with your political opinion bumper sticker and then refusing to tell you why. Their position in the video market is such that they don't need to compete for content providers and that is a problem.
- smsm42 8y agoLobbying is different. Democracy is for finding how to define common policy, lobbying can be (though not always is) a legitimate part of this. This is different, for example, from refusing to do business with people holding certain political opinion or actively trying to silence them. > Google's tolerance-but-only-for-tolerable-opinions It's not even that. It's "tolerance only for opinion which nobody out of the list of groups that are allowed to object finds objectionable". The groups of course are defined by Google HR politics. So if you are animal rights activist and group in power dislikes you - you're not tolerated and even people in Google that want to hear you can't. If this is "tolerance" then what is intolerance, I wonder?
- gnarbarian 8y agothe second half of the quote might even be more relevant: >"This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”"
- konschubert 8y agoI don't see any justification for the claim made in that quote. It sounds cool but that doesn't make it true.
- belorn 8y ago> When was the last time your car insurance company imposed a political opinion on you Is it still common in the US that car insurance company look at gender and race when determining a individuals premium? That gender or race matters when determining a individual person risk for accidents seems very political.
- dublin 8y agoYou've never heard of Progressive Insurance? The name is not an accident - it's a very deliberate expression of their pretty much communist values...
- gnarbarian 8y agoKinda like progressive web apps?
- reitanqild 8y agoHehe, made me laugh. (FTR: I make good money making web apps. I'm also an honest person who, if asked or given a chance to tell, will tell people that they'll often reach their goals faster and save money by building and old fashioned solution with minimal Javascript.)
- gnarbarian 8y agoI generally agree with you but I genuinely believe PWAs are an improvement over balkanized native mobile development.
- reitanqild 8y agoWe can agree on that too : )