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Google’s Secret China Project Sparks Fury Among Workers
- pwaai 8y agowell they can work for another company. Google is a corporation not a political organization. It's being left out in a very big market, and ton of money on the table. yeah working with a centralized communist party that keeps telling people dalai lama is a satan is annoying but if "zucks gon cuck" then either Benzos or Mandella will. have a nice weekend everybody.
- Razengan 8y agoSuppose they make that ton of money. Everybody gets a ton of money. What are you going to do with it? What is the endgame of this money accumulation?
- pmoriarty 8y agoI am proud of those Google employees who've taken a stand against the unethical practices of their employer. This world would be a much better place if more people did that rather than looking the other way and acting as mercenaries for the highest bidder.
- ironjunkie 8y agoI don't know if I would be proud. It is very easy to be morally outraged for something that everyone in the West already agrees with. At this point it is almost a way to display a morale high ground. I would rather see morale outrage on more subtle subject such as the digital addiction that Youtube etc creates, literally destroying lifes. [1] [1] https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-our-phones-tristan-harris-wants-to-rescue-them/ https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-...
- partiallypro 8y agoOppression destroys more lives than an addictive freedom.
- ironjunkie 8y agoOne clear government oppression versus a new "hidden" oppression. In the long term I'm not so sure that your statement will stand.
- partiallypro 8y agoHow is a choice a "hidden" oppression? I can see an argument for algorithms suppressing certain world views being a problem...but as just a stand alone choice, that is not real oppression. If you think it is, you've probably never lived in an oppressive country. China is essentially stack ranking citizens for access to certain rights and you're concerned about people's viewing habits. We've gone generations of people claiming the same things about radio, TV, music, etc. In the end those were replaced or the next generation wasn't as attached...actual oppression is sticky.
- dplgk 8y agoIs it a choice if that things goes to great lengths to take advantage of you by manipulating known triggers in your human behavior? Some people don't have the will to choose, that's addiction.
- mcny 8y agoI think the reaction is much better than the reaction we saw out of Facebook about a leaked internal memo earlier this year.
- dr1337 8y agoSo much for Silicon Valley corporations and their "culture" and founding myths. I guess people don't even remember that Google once you used to have an informal mantra of "Don't be evil."
- ironjunkie 8y agoThe way I see it, it is mainly Koolaid and a narrative told to the young influenceable techies so they feel invested with a mission, and perform better.
- xbmcuser 8y agoNot unexpected with all the restrictions on data collection being put in place in the West. Google needs the data for its ai. China is more open to data collection as long as it is shared with the government.
- steven2012 8y agoIs this because of the leadership of Sundar Pichai? It seems as though he might have good plans on making more revenue, but it flies in the face of the expectations of his employees. Does this bode poorly for him as CEO if his employees are openly rebelling against these high-profile projects such as this and the drone AI project?
- mlindner 8y agoSundar Pichai didn't grow up in a free country but also didn't know the harm of a totalitarian government. He neither values the concepts of freedom of speech nor knows personally the harms of the lack of it.
- therein 8y agoI don't know why you are being downvoted. It's not like your comment is attacking him personally. I actually think that you are offering a unique perspective here.
- derstander 8y agoI’m not trying to be obtuse. Some cursory searching suggests that Pichai grew up in India — which does have freedom of speech. They do have more restrictions than the US, though the US has some restrictions as well; I was familiar with the “you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater” metaphor but only recently learned that it came from a case where SCOTUS held that “Defendant's criticism of the draft was not protected by the First Amendment, because it created a clear and present danger to the enlistment and recruiting service of the U.S. armed forces during a state of war.” My gut reaction is to find suppression of that sort of speech objectionable because it’s political. I’m just wondering what countries you consider to be free and where you draw the line when you say one country has freedom of speech and another does not given that both have some restrictions. It seems as though you are saying that the US is free and India is not. Which side of the line do countries in Western Europe fall? Is the US alone in its freedom?
- beaner 8y agoWhy is it unethical to launch a censored search product in China? The alternative isn't to launch an uncensored search product. That's not possible. The alternative is simply to not be there. How do the Chinese benefit from that? It seems to me that the presence of any international company could only act as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship controls over time. If Google is more restrictive than other search engines, this does not do any harm, since the other options still provide the less restricted results, meaning the exact same amount of information that is currently available to people in China will continue to be available, and will not be affected by Google's entry. If Google is less restrictive, well then that's a win for the Chinese people. This means that the entry of any search engine into China, restricted or not, is at worst neutral and at best good for the Chinese.
- throwaway2048 8y ago>It seems to me that the presence of any international company could only act as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship controls over time. this was the justification to the more lenient treatment of china with international trade deals, it has gone nowhere, all that has happened it is has economically empowered china to become a lot more troublesome on the world stage, while they have not liberalized in virtually any way. The presence of Google legitimizes and empowers the state level control of information that the CCP does at a massive scale, it does exactly the opposite of "acting as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship" Should be noted that China is a country, that right now as we speak, is putting an entire ethnic group in concentration camps, 1 million+ people and more coming in an attempt to "reeducate them" and stamp out their culture. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-education-camps.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-educatio... https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-nothing-to-say-about-chinas-internment-camps-for-muslims/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-no... This is not a system that Google should be legitimizing through collaboration.
- beaner 8y agoI think this ignores the rest of my comment. Not sure I agree that trade deals and search engines work the same way. You could also say that the United States is an imperialist devil that kills innocents in the middle east with drones, and that Google should exit the US in protest and move to Europe. But that doesn't seem like a great argument.
- everyone 8y agoGoogle employees having issues with Google being unethical... Really???? The ones objecting to this must have godlike powers of selective perception.
- artificial 8y agoIt's actually a feature called personalized perception to give more relevancy. I believe it can be disabled in the settings. /s
- DenisM 8y agoGoogle got an edge in hiring when they deployed their “don’t be evil” mantra, but the long-term result is a workforce that’s leaning heavily left and in many ways dictates what the company can or must do. And I doubt they can ever undo this - hiring is performed by the people already on the inside.
- knowaveragejoe 8y agoI'm sorry but, the problem here is that their employees are mostly left-leaning?
- jobigoud 8y agoHe didn't say it was a problem.
- jimjimjim 8y agoso... you're saying google is missing out on employees that are attracted to evil? that is what you are saying isn't it?
- sunstone 8y agoSo first it's the US military projects and now it's bending the knee to the eye of Sauron. Is Larry losing his touch here?
- pjmlp 8y agoNo, it is money speaking, "do no evil" was marketing for the coffee shop developers that hate Microsoft and needed an hero.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoNope, the same MO. They've already ruined a lot of competition, filled the pages with their ads instead of searches, monetized virtually everything and to keep growth he is ready to do the next thing needed...
- opnitro 8y agoThis is one of the real reasons that tech workers need something like a union. If we want to take responsibility for our work, and hold the corporations we work for the those values, then we'll need the power of collective bargaining.
- solidsnack9000 8y agoThis is not the role of unions at all, actually -- they aren't a tool to allow a skilled professionals to undertake political action and make decisions for everyone else. That's what political parties are for.
- opnitro 8y agoUnions aren't for exercising the political will of workers? What is it that the labor movement has achieved then? What did the strikes achieve? If not forcing those in control of the company to take seriously the demands of workers, then what else is a union for?
- ApolloFortyNine 8y agoSafe working conditions and better wages?
- opnitro 8y agoAnd are those not political goals? Many of the victories of the unions was getting those things enshrined in law. Our labor laws were not simply voted in, people had to struggle for them.
- solidsnack9000 8y agoUnions aren't for exercising the political will of workers? They aren't a one-stop shop for the political will of workers. It's like how we have different restaurants for different kinds of food and different times of day. China-censorship loving, military loving, and leftist Googlers all have some interests in common as working people; but the union would not function very well as a vehicle for those interests while simultaneously pushing the foreign policy goals of one or another of those groups.
- millstone 8y agoWhat do we (we being the west) want to actually happen in China? Presumably we want a dramatic liberalization across political, economic, and civil liberties. So how might western multinationals help effect this? One theory is that western multi-nats such as Google or Apple withdraw from China, isolating it and forcing the CCP to liberalize (or a revolution). But Apple and Google are small players in China so this would require a much larger coordinated effort. A second theory is that western multi-nats can partially participate in the PRC economy, attempting to balance state demands against ethical responsibilities. Their products, while still censored, nevertheless increase the availability of the Internet, strong privacy tools, etc relative to Chinese domestic offerings. The result is a more informed Chinese citizenry which can in turn pressure the CCP to liberalize. I suppose the risk of #2 is that it provides cover and legitimacy to the CCP, so it might increase their power. Nevertheless it seems to me that #2 has a better chance of working.
- throwaway2048 8y ago#2 has been in action for decades, and they haven't moved an inch. The only result has been a much stronger CCP and china.
- zn44 8y agoAs easy as it is to say that it’s not google place to judge China government, what concerns me most is the precedent that this will create. I am pretty sure there will be a line of governments wanting to do the same and google will end up with censorship as a service product.
- torgian 8y agoWell, Microsoft Bing has been in China for a long time and nobody says anything about that.... It’s inevitable. Consumers will continue to use google because they aren’t aware of the alternatives, so it’ll be a minority that uses other browsers in a silent protest. I’m sure a Wesrern version of the great firewall will be built soon
- JudasGoat 8y agoDoes anyone else think that Google should release major policy changes to the people that work there before the Press?