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Google de-emphasizes 'Don't Be Evil' motto in its code of conduct
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- balthasar 8y agoMore of a marketing phrase than a code of conduct. Google realizes the sham is up so there is no use pretending anymore.
- twothamendment 8y agoI agree it was more of a marketing phrase. The code of conduct is more likely something like "Only do evil if it makes good money and don't get caught."
- pasbesoin 8y agoEarly on, a lot of Google engineers (peering in from the outside, through news and correspondence) seemed to take it to heart. And to be heartened by it. Individually, and in groups. That it's now called "marketing", speaks to fundamental changes at Google.
- rando444 8y agoIsn't the bigger question though, why not continue marketing?
- twothamendment 8y agoAt some point it begins to be obvious when marketing is full of it - I think they passed that point and had to accept what everyone already knew.
- rando444 8y agoThis is definitely something everyone has been waiting for. The only question I have is.. why? One generally hopes that everyone is out to do no evil, including those that do so unintentionally. So why remove something that's been so closely associated with the company for so long? Did some executive find it "tacky"? At any rate, this is truly a loss for the internet.
- drharby 8y agoA loss for the internet? Its a symbol. It has as much meaning as you ascribe to it. Its a publicly traded company, not a crusader for internet goodness
- rando444 8y agopublicly traded companies do not have to be evil. investors often enjoy investing in companies that they can relate to. one hopes that most people ascribe to do no evil. a+b+c is not a bad combination in the end, i agree it's a symbol.. but also scrapping that symbol reflects on the company that no longer wants to be associated with said symbol.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> So why remove something that's been so closely associated with the company for so long? They didn't, per the body of the article (contrary to the headline.)
- rando444 8y agoYes, and if you read the article you'll notice the significant difference. Anyone that was with google from the beginning knows the significance, and to try to play off "hey they used it in a sentence" as some sort of passivity, doesn't really grasp the depth of the change. (IMHO)
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Yes, and if you read the article you'll notice the significant difference. Yes, but neither the headline, nor the text of the article, nor any of the commentary here so far mentions the significant difference in the excerpts shown, which is only tangentially connected to removing gratuitous repetition of the phrase “don't be evil.” The signficant change is removing the value statement connected to the old motto in the first paragraph of the excerpt from the older Code of Conduct: “Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.” (Now, it's possible that those value statements were redundant with other parts of the CoC or that the revision moved them to someplace other than the place preceding the rest of the excerpt and that they retain equal prominence in the new CoC, in which case the selection of the excerpt boundaries would be another misleading aspect of the article. And you can even make the case that they were largely redundant with the last sentence of the second paragraph of then old—first of the new—excerpt, so that, while it's more significant than dropping a few repetitions of “don’t be evil”, it's not all that significant.)
- rinze 8y agoIt was this or manipulating all search results for "evil".
- jadedhacker 8y agoI'm guessing they're not happy about the whole drone assassination debate going on internally. It's so disadvantageous that their staff can call the leadership outright hypocrites based on their own professed values. This makes everything so much easier for everyone. Information on the drone program: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ Google's complicity in Project Maven: https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1254719/project-maven-to-deploy-computer-algorithms-to-war-zone-by-years-end/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1254719/project... Google's Internal Debate: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-14/inside-google-a-debate-rages-should-it-sell-artificial-intelligence-to-the-military https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-14/inside-go...
- rando444 8y agoThanks for this. I actually had not seen this. Very remnicient of IBM's involvement in the Holocaust.
- sa46 8y agoUnder what circumstances is it acceptable for a company to provide services or software to a military?
- jadedhacker 8y agoI think it's pretty obvious: when there's an obvious military threat that would have implications for civilians (e.g. invasion, blockade, etc), the software is tailored to that need, and the military is not currently engaged in multiple offensive bloody wars based on lies with a long history of doing so.
- sa46 8y agoWhat about non-obvious threats? Generally speaking, nations that fall behind technologically fare poorly against more advanced nations. What about software that is adapted by the military for new use cases instead of tailored use cases? Should Microsoft be responsible for damage caused operations planned in Word and PowerPoint? What about iPhone with sniper windage apps? How many layers removed before a company is considered ethical?
- sunstone 8y agoAnd replaces it with "Don't be naive".
- jkaplowitz 8y agoSo the article ends by confirming that the "don't be evil" phrase is still in the code of conduct, admittedly just at the end after a rewording. Its title is entirely misleading, despite reflecting the original article. Can this submission's title be changed to something like: "Google Deemphasizes "Don't Be Evil" Motto in Its Code of Conduct"? That'd at least frame this change accurately for discussion. [Edit: I see the change was made. Thanks!]
- rando444 8y agoplaced randomly in a sentence at the very end vs. being the entire core of the message is a rather significant change IMHO.
- jkaplowitz 8y agoI agree. That's why I'm not calling for the submission to be killed, just changing the title to be more accurate. My suggested verb of "deemphasizes" is consistent with what you're saying.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> placed randomly in a sentence at the very end “Randomly”? The very end is where you put whatever you want to be the most important key summation and takeaway message of a document like this.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoReading is hard, so people often don't make it that far down.
- jfoutz 8y agoThe old bury the lede technique. That’s widely regarded as being not so good.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
- omarforgotpwd 8y ago“Don’t you think making AI that poses as a human is unethical? Isn’t our motto don’t be evil?” “You’re right Johnson. Take that don’t be evil line out”
- whataretensors 8y agoCan you elaborate why making AI pose as humans is unethical?
- omarforgotpwd 8y agoHumans have a right to know whether they are talking to a human or a machine. Even the benign example of restaurant hours -- maybe the guy was willing to tell the restaurants holiday hours to someone who is wondering, but DOES NOT want it posted to Google bringing in more customers and forcing him to stay longer on the holidays. I don't know, it's a contrived example but it's not the right approach to say "why should they have a problem?". The right approach is just to tell them and let them decide whether they have a problem with it or not. Anyway this is kind of a moot argument because Google has said that they will tell people the call is coming from Duplex, so Google itself has conceded that people have the right to know they are talking to a machine. It is somewhat unfortunate that people care about this from a software perspective though, because it probably is beneficial from a "learning" standpoint to have people just speaking as they would to a real human.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- whataretensors 8y agoIsn't that the turing test? I'm excited about the potential of passing it in my lifetime.
- omarforgotpwd 8y agoYeah, that would certainly be exciting but we're a long way off from that. The Google Duplex stuff we saw only covered a very narrow domain (taking reservations, etc). And that's not even released yet, and there's no telling when it really will be ready. Nobody even really knows how you would structure an artificial general intelligence at this point... last I heard.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoIt is better to keep it as a lie. Time for Google to grow up.
- throwbacktictac 8y agoI always thought the slogan was odd. In my mind evil is the absolute negative end of the spectrum of good vs evil. Why not something more positive sounding like "Do good"?
- warent 8y agoBe kind of evil
- icebraining 8y agoThey use "Do the right thing" in their corporate code of conduct: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-conduct.html
- dragonwriter 8y agoSource title is misleading clickbait [0]: as the text of the article makes clear, Google rewrote one section of its Code of Conduct in a way which, among other things, removed the phrase “don’t be evil”, but retained that phrase in another (more prominent [1]) place. [0] which is necessary to pretend there is anything even worth having as a story here at all. “Google updates Code of Conduct; reduces number of repetitions of phrase ‘don’t be evil’” is an obvious nothingburger. [1] the final line; in any long document, the very beginning and very end are the most prominent.
- rando444 8y agoRemoving the company's unofficial motto, and mixing it in with a random sentence at the very end is 'more prominent'. Hmm.. I'll believe Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, before I believe that. Also using "nothingburger", a prominent phrase used by Trump supporters to lampoon the Muller investigation is an interesting choice of words.. but fits very well. You have a strange agenda, friend.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Removing the company's unofficial motto, and mixing it in with a random sentence at the very end is 'more prominent'. It wasn't mixed in (the article itself notes it was retained unchanged) and the final sentence isn't a random placement but, along with the first, one of the two most significant places in a long document of this type—the beginning is where you put meant you want to shape the reading of the rest, the end is where you put the most important high-level key takeaway. > Also using "nothingburger", a prominent phrase used by Trump supporters to lampoon the Muller investigation I've actually never noticed in that context, apparently it's a big thing on Twitter in that context, but I'm quite selective of my consumption in that channel. But the terms been in use for 60+ years. > You have a strange agenda, friend. What agenda is that, then?
- rando444 8y agoI have no idea what your agenda is, but trying to say that removing all references of the companies former official motto and mixing it in at the very end of a sentence of their core of conduct somehow makes it "more prominent" is literal nonsense. One hopes you have an agenda.
- dpierce9 8y agoDoes anyone think that ‘don’t be evil’ is enough? Evil is basically the worst someone can be. You can be bad, wrong, repugnant, reprehensible, vicious, and malignant and still not be evil. Honestly, why is there so much credit given to a company for saying ‘don’t be as bad as you can possibly imagine’ which is a pretty reasonable translation of ‘don’t be evil’.
- alexryan 8y agoAgreed. I like the idea of cultivating "the resolve to resolve" conflicts by transforming them into positive sum games wherein the tribe commits to finding a way to meet everyone's needs and unifying behind of mission of contribution rather than allowing conflicts to devolve into zero sum games which suck the soul out of a once great company and pave the way for its corruption.
- vatueil 8y agoIsn't that why Alphabet adopted "do the right thing" instead? Though that simply led to a lot of headlines about Google dropping "don't be evil" (with articles explaining that they actually didn't, if you read that far).
- ChuckMcM 8y agoImagine if it had said "Don't be immoral." Think of the discussion there, whose morals? Googles? The employees? The country where the employee lives? In my mind, it is largely aspirational because it takes a back seat to 'make Google money.' Or perhaps making money is by definition not evil, so if you're making money by what you are doing it is transitively not evil. When I worked at Google, management explained it to be "Would you be embarrassed to be a Googler if what you were doing showed up on an article on the New York Times? If so then chances are its evil, don't do that." But then came Project Maven, a sort of real world test, and well that is still going on now isn't it?
- gowld 8y agoIs it obvious that fighting a war of defense is evil?
- whalesalad 8y agoSlow news day.
- horseLOGIC 8y agoThe headline is of course wrong, they didn't remove it fully, they removed it from one paragraph. More interestingly, they removed another sentence from that paragraph: "[...] providing our users unbiased access to information." In other words, Google wants to crack down on wrongthink without violating their own code of conduct.
- Jyaif 8y agoI damn sure want some of my search results to be biased, e.g. when searching for "string". That sentence was stupid right from the beginning.
- horseLOGIC 8y agoDo you, really? When do you ever search for just "string"? You're going to add some context, like "split string C++". Now maybe you'll say Google should know you're programming in C++ all the time, so having learned that, Google should be able to infer that when you type in "split string", the results should all be for C++. Except then somehow Javascript comes into your requirements and now you need to retrain your Google to give weight to that. I'd much rather be able to use the Google, not my Google, so that I get more predictable results. It's already annoying that I can't tell people to google something and be sure whatever I'm talking about is in the top ten results of their Google. > That sentence was stupid right from the beginning. Nothing about that sentence was stupid and it's frightening that you don't seem to understand the ideal of being "unbiased" (as in "unbiased reporting"). We're going to be heading in the direction where's there's "liberal" and "conservative" search engines, causing even more polarization of our collective world views.
- fermienrico 8y agoGizmodo is doing this for clicks - intentionally.
- userbinator 8y agoOr more mundanely, wants to "personalise" search results and de-emphasise more obscure (but very valuable to the right people) information. It used to be that Google would show you lots of very diverse, interesting, and sometimes quite surprising results which would mean learning new things became almost "accidentally" easy. Now it seems more interested in finding things people already (mostly) knew about. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840
- lalos 8y agoI always thought the "Don't Be Evil" phrase was more like a don't be comically evil. Don't wear black suit, boring logo and more imaginary related to an evil person. Instead be fun, use kindergarten colors, use the fun noogler hat and offices that look like playground. Evil seems like a cartoon-ish word for me and feels like this was more of a reminder to the whole company that they are doing some sketchy things with users' data so let's be sure to not be 'evil' about it. If you think about it from this perspective a lot of the Google-way of being makes sense.
- Waterluvian 8y agoI've always thought the same. Where "Evil" is the comical caricature of evil corp. Like what the 1984 Apple ad makes IBM/Xerox/Big Brother look like.
- 8bitsrule 8y ago"everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct." As measured against Goldman-Sachs.
- awat 8y agoHmm I’m on the fence on what this means exactly. Wording change seems to be fairly innocuous but the visuals here are not good.
- m3kw9 8y agoYep no longer applies, 5 years late
- Karupan 8y agoGood thing it’s gone, they won’t have to pretend anymore.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoConsider how much time and effort they can save not pretending. They can censor political opinions all day long.
- palisade 8y agoClearly they're trying to guide internal ethics. "Don't be evil." suggests that it is forbidden to be evil in all circumstances. How to read the new guideline: "Do the right thing, even if sometimes it requires evil." Some big event inside must have triggered this change in stance. Like a letter requesting they capitulate on some requirement to protect or give up user data, reveal whereabouts, key escrow, or something like that. I guess what is confusing is how subjective "the right thing" can be. If an employee were to cite this new slogan and try to address a problem with it, is the right thing to capitulate or to defend. Who is to say really. It almost seems like it is reworded to be more vague so higher ups can just wave their hands and say these aren't the droids you're looking for. But, are they waving their hands at employees protesting the mistreatment of customer data and privacy? Or, are they waving their hands at the powers that be who want unfettered access? I guess time will tell.
- muthdra 8y ago> Some big event inside must have triggered this change in stance I don't know what triggered the change in stance but this may have triggered the removal. Citing 'Don't Be Evil' Motto, 3,000+ Google Employees Demand Company End Work on Pentagon Drone Project [0] [0]https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/04/citing-dont-be-evil-motto-3000-google-employees-demand-company-end-work-pentagon https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/04/citing-dont-be-...
- cma 8y agoOpen instant messaging interconnectivity with third parties was canned. Play Services won't install on unapproved devices anymore. Sideloading apps doesn't work the same way on Daydream as it does for the main Android system (can't launch non-Google Play store apps inside Daydream). BS software patents on applying arithmetic coding to video compression. Many webpages that only work on their webbrowser. Long-con bait and switch as they morph into Microsoft of the 90s?
- garmaine 8y agoThey aren’t already?
- chii 8y agoYou Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain -- Harvey Dent , in The Dark Knight
- StavrosK 8y agoDoesn't that pretty much mean "you either turn into a villain or stay a hero until you eventually die"?
- Fogest 8y agoNo, it means you either die commiting a heroic act, or you're not killed as a hero and end up becoming a villain. Basically saying you'll either die doing a heroic act, or if you die a more natural way of old age or something you may be seeing yourself as a villain.
- goldenkey 8y agoThe quote has mostly to do with risk taking and comfortability that age makes us inclined to adjust. Basically, our habits and creature comforts have a way of making us too complacent and out of touch. Even the best of us can turn into miserable old pricks if we don't take risks and go outside our comfort zones. Even heroes. Heroes die young. So do villains. But an old hero is mighty suspect. Old age isn't due to skill always - sometimes it is due to lack of risk taking - which is a heroes job..
- naikrovek 8y agoI thought they did this years ago. I distinctly remember a big kerfuffle over it.
- jaredsohn 8y agoRead the article, it gives the history on this. (Basically the motto was replaced by "Do the right thing" when Alphabet was formed in 2016 and this article points out that the language was recently removed from the code of code, although in reality it was just deemphasized.)
- Jerry2 8y agoAlso, from yesterday: Google’s Selfish Ledger is an unsettling vision of Silicon Valley social engineering >The video was made in late 2016 by Nick Foster, the head of design at X (formerly Google X) and a co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory. The video, shared internally within Google, imagines a future of total data collection, where Google helps nudge users into alignment with their goals, custom-prints personalized devices to collect more data, and even guides the behavior of entire populations to solve global problems like poverty and disease. >When reached for comment on the video, an X spokesperson provided the following statement to The Verge: >“We understand if this is disturbing -- it is designed to be. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish...
- gowld 8y ago> This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It’s not related to any current or future products." > Google prompts users to select a life goal and then guides them toward it in every interaction they have with their phone.
- Jerry2 8y agoThanks, Google PR.
- imranq 8y agoI liked the old google of the 2000s, focused on search and being scrappy and quirky. Now it’s super corporate without any real identity as far as I can see.
- boxcardavin 8y agoAs with laws, rules are made up by people and followed by some.
- jopsen 8y ago> As with laws, rules are made up by people and followed by some. That still seems way better than the alternative.
- kevinclancy 8y agoMy guess is that they realized it fits into the "corporations are evil" narrative that has become popular with many angry people on twitter recently, and then decided they didn't want to feed into it.
- throwaway2048 8y agoyes, surely removing this will make people think better of them.
- archgoon 8y ago> "corporations are evil" narrative that has become popular with many angry people on twitter recently I'm fairly certain that narrative, and it's popularity, precedes Twitter by at least a few years. Here's an Atlantic article that details a bit of the history: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/evil-corporation-trope/479295/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/evil-co...
- Fjolsvith 8y agoRoll the evil laughter...
- hexane360 8y agoIronic that you uploaded this with an AMP URL
- godzillabrennus 8y agoI think this motto became fairly diluted as far back as when Google went to China.
- malloryerik 8y agoI had understood that the motto was heavily involved in the decision to leave China.
- technotarek 8y agoServed by (evil) AMP!
- tsumnia 8y agoTo play devil's advocate for a second - I don't mind this (that much). The phrase "Don't Be Evil" seems like a kitschy nod to Google's earlier days when they were just a couple of programmers in a garage. However, that was decades ago and Google has grown into a more matured entity. This statement comes from a time before Google had to meet with Government agencies on a (probably) daily basis or start policing YouTube for terrorist beheading videos and pornography. They are actively trying to do good - but they're no different than IT - you only complain about when things go wrong, never when they go right. Google does plenty of good, they don't need a snide comment about how everyone else doesn't to do that. To remove this artifact of the past isn't to say "it's time to start being evil!". It's a child putting away their toys as they move to more mature times. EDIT: As someone mentions, the line is still there. Leaving my post up as it still stands if they took it out tomorrow.
- cptskippy 8y ago> To remove this artifact of the past ... It's a child putting away their toys as they move to more mature times. That's just depressing.
- tsumnia 8y agoBy all means, I am still very much a child at heart... but I also know I shouldn't go around telling everyone to "Suck It", like my WWF-watching childhood.
- waterphone 8y agoI think we can all agree that a positive ideological statement and goal to strive towards is a little bit different than an immature insult.
- gowld 8y agoDividing the world into Good and Evil is childish.
- 8y ago
- balthasar 8y agoMore of a marketing phrase than a code of conduct. Google realizes the sham is up so there is no use pretending anymore.
- foxfired 8y agoThat's the problem with don't be evil. You can only remove it when you become evil.
- cptskippy 8y agoSo... Takes one to know one?
- Taniwha 8y agoApparently they've decided there's increased shareholder value in being evil
- hapnin 8y agoIt's almost as if Brin and Page predicted how bad it was going to get when they first described Google: “The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.” “We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” “Advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.” “Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who “deserves” to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed.” [0] [0] http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
- muzani 8y agoI felt that when they started the "Don't be evil" motto, it was sort of a declaration of war on big boy Microsoft, which was seen as the evil alternative. They're now about the same size, do similar things that people once criticized Microsoft for, and Microsoft is seen in a much better light now. The motto no longer applies.
- reitanqild 8y agoRepeating history, including using dominant position to push their own browser.
- yuhong 8y agoI wrote an entire essay about one problem: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/04/google-doubleclick-mozilla-essay-final.html http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/04/google-doubleclick-mozi...
- greggarious 8y agoThis is why I use DuckDuckGo
- kkotak 8y agoAbsence of one doesn't prove presence of the other. But I digress.
- mudil 8y agoTotal monopoly on search on the internet. Duopoly with FB on the internet advertising (85% belong to them, 15% belong to the rest of publishers, big and small). Rampant violation of privacy of billions of individuals. Destruction of journalism and small internet-based publishers who cannot compete against a monopoly that follows people everywhere. Evil corporation all around.
- stgnet 8y agoSome video evidence: https://youtu.be/I7wwhsDJECw https://youtu.be/I7wwhsDJECw
- imleft 8y agoGoogle mgt was asked to mandate equality and diversity. They said no! https://i.redd.it/htqi8nuk6xx01.jpg https://i.redd.it/htqi8nuk6xx01.jpg
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- imleft 8y agoGoogle scary video: http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/google-selfish-ledger-video-3475446 http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/google-selfish-ledger-vid...
- AzzieElbab 8y agoI bet they did it because evils were getting offended
- rusk 8y agoWas beginning to sound a bit disingenuous anyway ...
- deadelvis 8y agohttps://imgur.com/a/6sNdIZt https://imgur.com/a/6sNdIZt