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Is it really surprising that a multinational company would have a preferred candidate? Although, I'm sure they lobbied extensively for all major candidates. It

by tcbawo 8y ago

Is it really surprising that a multinational company would have a preferred candidate? Although, I'm sure they lobbied extensively for all major candidates. It is interesting that both major parties seem to want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to free speech, "common carrier", and antitrust issues.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Corporations seem like they have a comical level of hypocrisy, until you realize that corporations are in it for the money, and will almost always take the most profitable position for them in any given debate. For instance, you will see strong calls to regulate businesses they have to interact with, while actively fighting against regulation of themselves, even on the same issues.
- rsj_hn 8y ago
  Yes, corporations are in it for the money, and they are hypocrites, etc. I don't think most people have a problem with that (except maybe those who think corporations are moral agents), but what's been happening recently is very concerning: 1. Corporations, always wanting to appeal to younger voters because brand loyalty is sticky, naturally try to position themselves externally as hip/woke/whatever. That means espousing whatever cool urban cause is hot right now, like Nike supporting Kaepernick to whitewash their labor and environmental record while appealing to urban trendsetters, or cosmetic companies parading around 12 year old transgender models to show how leading edge they are. That's not a big deal by itself, as Nike gonna Nike and everyone wants to position themselves as a trend-setting lifestyle brand. 2. Tech companies, in particular, needing to appeal to a tight labor market for young programmers, feel a need to make more internal concessions to the politics that young programmers have, creating a woke monoculture in many places. No, they're not gonna budge on stuff like paying taxes, but they are happy to no-platform someone who is, say, pro-life, or uses the term "illegal immigrant" instead of "undocumented american", or someone who points out the real risks of giving mastectomies to pre-teens or even medical castration of young boys suffering from gender dysphoria. OK, a bit creepy, but the republic will survive (although some of the kids are going to have a hard time). 3. The same companies are now effective monopolies in large online spaces (Facebook, twitter), online marketplaces (Amazon), and online information dissemination (Google). Uh oh. Combine 1,2,3 and you have a real threat to Free Speech. If you say the wrong thing, you might get booted from huge public marketplaces. If you only had 1, 2, you could always find some competing brand and there wouldn't be a monoculture. If you only had 3, then you might expect, say Google, to skew information about H1-B visas or whatever narrow economic interests it cares about, which while bad for the public discourse, isn't an all encompassing, stifling thing. But the combination of all 3 poses really big problems for creating space for dissenting views and having those views heard. The closest analogy I can think of would the 1950s chill, in which a few large conglomerates were working hand in glove to suppress communist/leftist views. That was the era of Chomsky and Hermann's "Manufacturing Consent", where leftist positions were thrown into the memory hole and only lived in fringe spaces, like random anarchist bookstores and tiny meetups. They were completely shut out of the public dialogue and policy making process. Blacklists circulated of who you shouldn't hire, and there was consensus on what you shouldn't report. It was a bad time, and led to some very, very bad decisions, such as the Vietnam war, war on drugs, and rollback of some important new deal protections. I'm not looking forward to the new circulation of blacklists and the cheering that is happening to the new chill in public discourse. Now we see a similar monoculture forming that is trying to stifle what are basically traditional conservative cultural views -- views that were basically mandatory in the 50s are forbidden today -- while you still have the right wing views about economic organization in place -- and this is also going to lead to some very bad decisions. At least no one has won a total victory, and so you see leftist business openly weeping at government election results, not because they are sad about all the tax cuts, extension of IP protections, and further erosion of anti-trust, which they knew they would get, but because it offends the cultural left who they need to cater to as their employees and young urban customers. But if you look at a scatterplot of where people fall, the biggest group is the cultural conservative/economically liberal group. Although it's trendy to say you are an economic conservative and cultural liberal, fewer people inhabit that space. So we are in a situation in which the maximum number of people are being excluded from the public discourse. Even if you don't agree with this group, if there is still some shred of shared loyalty for your fellows, you don't want to see the majority of the nation excluded from our new monoculture. It's a great time for tax cuts, but not a good time for free speech and we are gonna make some colossally terrible decisions as a result of this exclusion, together with radicalizing a large section of the population.
  - adamrezich 8y ago
    This is a great analysis and I'm mainly replying in order to hopefully spur replies with actual constructive discussion instead of letting this turn into one of those [dead] comments you see that says something "controversial" yet gets zero replies before being buried; it's always a bummer when that happens.
  - tcbawo 8y ago
    Technology and information overload are driving everybody to think their viewpoint is the suppressed majority, feeding a victim mentality. We seem to be working towards more of a massively individual polyculture than monoculture. Also, we shouldn't always project everything into right and left, as there are other orthogonal dimensions for framing policy (eg. authoritarian and individualistic). That's a hidden cost of the creeping politicization of everything.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      There's an interesting thought experiment. Break America in half by general partisan divide - allow for free migration based on political ideology alone. How long would it take before these now wholly 'unified' halves then turn to bitter and polar divisiveness? What would be the new divisive topics? There's probably roughly a 0% chance of success, but Calexit would be a phenomenal social experiment and perhaps something people could learn an immense amount from. On the other hand, there's already an immense amount of information and history people could learn from today. But anything that's inconvenient to 'the' ideology is irrelevant, of course.
      - rsj_hn 8y ago
        I don't think it would take long at all, sadly.
    - rsj_hn 8y ago
      I totally agree that this is not a right/left issue per se. There are many competing strains: traditionalists are skeptical of radical social change, but may also be skeptical of turning everything over the free market libertarians just want to be left alone and don't want anyone telling them what to do leftists may be communitarians or anarchists or even neoliberals who want to abolish national borders And people may have different views on different scales -- e.g. I know a lot of Nimby's who oppose new people they don't like moving into their neighborhood and think they should have a right to keep them out, but at the same time support open borders for the nation as a whole. And to be honest, I think there is something to recommend each of these views. Nobody is entirely the enemy. What bothers me is attempts to blacklist arguments/speech or to suppress open debate between these competing views. That really bothers me. It's like you can't just disagree with someone, you have to snuff them out, try to get them fired, and expel the enemy entirely from your view. It's a recipe for disaster.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
JohnBooty 8y ago
Wanting to improve their news algorithm to favor more trustworthy sources is not a violation of free speech. "Free speech" guarantees you the right to say what you want, as long as it doesn't interfere with others' freedoms (i.e., making death threats or yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater) "Free speech" does not guarantee you a platform for your protected free speech. I have the right to claim blatantly false things; Google is absolutely not obligated to amplify my voice. I am allowed to claim that Obama shot JFK. That does not mean that Google, you, or anybody else is obligated to help me spread that opinion.
- gizmo686 8y ago
  The first amendment does not prevent Google (or any other company) from restricting speech. That is a very low bar. The distinction between government and private groups is not a clean as you might think. At a large enough scale, private groups can start to take on a role in society that resembles that of a government, should we not then expect them to be held to a standard that resembles that we expect of governments? The FCC cannot revoke your spectrum license for saying Obama shot JFK. Should ISPs be able to revoke your internet license for saying that? Google is a much harder case, because the core service they provide is filtering; and that filtering is an immensely valuable public service. But given the role that filtering plays in society, is is not an area that should be left unregulated.
  - rsj_hn 8y ago
    That's a bit of a strawman, since the OP didn't talk about the first amendment but about "free speech". Free Speech is a principle coming from the enlightenment of which the first amendment is one expression, but certainly not the only expression. The idea is that speech should be tolerated even if you disagree with it, and that societies that make room for controversial speech are better off, in the long run, than societies that do not. As a corollary, it espouses the view that individuals should be free to speak their mind and should be tolerated even if their speech is controversial. Because we cherish Free Speech, we created the first amendment. The first amendment is not the sum total of free speech, nor is free speech merely a governmental issue. For example, the California labor protections that protect employees from being fired for what they say in their private time is an example of the principle of free speech at work, and has nothing to do with the first amendment. The principle of free speech is why there are many processes, both private and public, in which the public is invited for individuals to air their views, whether they be question and answer sessions in companies, or local government hearings. It's also the principle behind movements to build public libraries that stock controversial books. Almost every institution, whether public or private, tries to give some room for dissenting speech in its operations and tries to create a space for people to air their views. Thus the attacks on these spaces, even if they are not attacks on the first amendment, are of concern to those of us who value free speech. This includes opposition to efforts at censorship, both public and private, whether these be the circulation of blacklists of communists during the cold war, or any other kind of punishment, both public and private, merely for speech. You may not agree with these values, but merely saying "well, the first amendment doesn't prohibit it, so it's not an attack on free speech" is a wild misunderstanding of what free speech is.
rsj_hn 8y ago
No, it's not surprising at all. Every company has a preferred candidate in pretty much every election, at least the CEO and top leadership certainly does. What is surprising is turning an all hands into a kind of mass grieving funeration for all of their 90K employees, replete with publicly weeping executives and the entire executive leadership being vocally outraged. Turning an all hands into a political event like this is both unprofessional and, frankly, creepy.
- skybrian 8y ago
  To add some context: remember that Google has employees who felt personally threatened by election results (immigrants and transgender employees). Nobody knew what Trump would do. The worst fears turned out to be overblown, but it was hard to make the case for not worrying at the time. Telling people they had nothing to worry about would have simply been offensive. There are few election results that employees would consider to be threatening like that. It was very much a special case.
  - ctlby 8y ago
    It was trivial to make the case, and that people didn’t see this represents a massive epistomological failure. Perhaps it would have been offensive, but adults should not be indulged when they engage in hysteria.
    - skybrian 8y ago
      Eh. Maybe you could have used platitudes like "America has survived worse" and "most people in government will follow the law, even if he doesn't." But those aren't particularly comforting.
      - rsj_hn 8y ago
        I was around when Bush won re-election. After he lied us into war. I couldn't believe it. I was absolutely stunned, depressed, and horrified that something like that could happen. Yet not once did I expect my employer to "comfort" me. I mean, my God, that's not the job of an employer. Friends comfort you. Your employer is not your friend.
tinkerteller 8y ago
It is surprising that those people put in charge to run business by stockholders are picking sides in front of employees who they have subordinate powers over them. This is big no no. Imagine being an employee who believes in conservatism and being forced in to group think, suppress your personal political speech and view. There is no difference in boss pitching himself as politically left vs boss pitching Christianity vs boss pitching male superiority over females. Business should never take sides in politics, race, gender or religion to make sure they are fair to all employees. Leaders needs to keep their view in these subject personal just as they keep their religious identity personal. Not doing this allows businesses to essentially hijack democracy by enforcing their political will on employees. Businesses should not be wielding their leverage of paychecks in to bending anybody’s political will and opinions.
- solipsism 8y ago
  Imagine being an employee who believes in conservatism and being forced in to group think Forced? No one is forced to work for any given company. Companies are not mindless profit making machines. Not even public ones. They're composed of people. They have values. Some are very homogeneous culturally, some very heterogeneous. Business should never take sides in politics You are welcome to your opinion on that point. I don't agree, nor do many other people. As an employee and as a shareholder, I like companies with strong moral character. And that can include political action.
rdtsc 8y ago
> Is it really surprising that a multinational company would have a preferred candidate? Not really. Google lobbies the government more than Verizon, Wall St. banks and defense contractors. We don't usually mind cause they lobby for the things we care about as well. However we could also see how perhaps Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO and at that time Executive Chairman, walking about at a Hillary Clinton's event with a staff badge might make things a bit too obvious: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxbUJoZWEAAzp04.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxbUJoZWEAAzp04.jpg But perhaps Google isn't partisan enough? I think it is the superficial "we are not biased and all opinions are welcome" type message clashing with their existing bias, that's bothering people. I think they should be bolder even and say, we are biased, we support these values.

by tcbawo 8y ago

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Corporations seem like they have a comical level of hypocrisy, until you realize that corporations are in it for the money, and will almost always take the most profitable position for them in any given debate. For instance, you will see strong calls to regulate businesses they have to interact with, while actively fighting against regulation of themselves, even on the same issues.

rsj_hn 8y ago
Yes, corporations are in it for the money, and they are hypocrites, etc. I don't think most people have a problem with that (except maybe those who think corporations are moral agents), but what's been happening recently is very concerning: 1. Corporations, always wanting to appeal to younger voters because brand loyalty is sticky, naturally try to position themselves externally as hip/woke/whatever. That means espousing whatever cool urban cause is hot right now, like Nike supporting Kaepernick to whitewash their labor and environmental record while appealing to urban trendsetters, or cosmetic companies parading around 12 year old transgender models to show how leading edge they are. That's not a big deal by itself, as Nike gonna Nike and everyone wants to position themselves as a trend-setting lifestyle brand. 2. Tech companies, in particular, needing to appeal to a tight labor market for young programmers, feel a need to make more internal concessions to the politics that young programmers have, creating a woke monoculture in many places. No, they're not gonna budge on stuff like paying taxes, but they are happy to no-platform someone who is, say, pro-life, or uses the term "illegal immigrant" instead of "undocumented american", or someone who points out the real risks of giving mastectomies to pre-teens or even medical castration of young boys suffering from gender dysphoria. OK, a bit creepy, but the republic will survive (although some of the kids are going to have a hard time). 3. The same companies are now effective monopolies in large online spaces (Facebook, twitter), online marketplaces (Amazon), and online information dissemination (Google). Uh oh. Combine 1,2,3 and you have a real threat to Free Speech. If you say the wrong thing, you might get booted from huge public marketplaces. If you only had 1, 2, you could always find some competing brand and there wouldn't be a monoculture. If you only had 3, then you might expect, say Google, to skew information about H1-B visas or whatever narrow economic interests it cares about, which while bad for the public discourse, isn't an all encompassing, stifling thing. But the combination of all 3 poses really big problems for creating space for dissenting views and having those views heard. The closest analogy I can think of would the 1950s chill, in which a few large conglomerates were working hand in glove to suppress communist/leftist views. That was the era of Chomsky and Hermann's "Manufacturing Consent", where leftist positions were thrown into the memory hole and only lived in fringe spaces, like random anarchist bookstores and tiny meetups. They were completely shut out of the public dialogue and policy making process. Blacklists circulated of who you shouldn't hire, and there was consensus on what you shouldn't report. It was a bad time, and led to some very, very bad decisions, such as the Vietnam war, war on drugs, and rollback of some important new deal protections. I'm not looking forward to the new circulation of blacklists and the cheering that is happening to the new chill in public discourse. Now we see a similar monoculture forming that is trying to stifle what are basically traditional conservative cultural views -- views that were basically mandatory in the 50s are forbidden today -- while you still have the right wing views about economic organization in place -- and this is also going to lead to some very bad decisions. At least no one has won a total victory, and so you see leftist business openly weeping at government election results, not because they are sad about all the tax cuts, extension of IP protections, and further erosion of anti-trust, which they knew they would get, but because it offends the cultural left who they need to cater to as their employees and young urban customers. But if you look at a scatterplot of where people fall, the biggest group is the cultural conservative/economically liberal group. Although it's trendy to say you are an economic conservative and cultural liberal, fewer people inhabit that space. So we are in a situation in which the maximum number of people are being excluded from the public discourse. Even if you don't agree with this group, if there is still some shred of shared loyalty for your fellows, you don't want to see the majority of the nation excluded from our new monoculture. It's a great time for tax cuts, but not a good time for free speech and we are gonna make some colossally terrible decisions as a result of this exclusion, together with radicalizing a large section of the population.
- adamrezich 8y ago
  This is a great analysis and I'm mainly replying in order to hopefully spur replies with actual constructive discussion instead of letting this turn into one of those [dead] comments you see that says something "controversial" yet gets zero replies before being buried; it's always a bummer when that happens.
- tcbawo 8y ago
  Technology and information overload are driving everybody to think their viewpoint is the suppressed majority, feeding a victim mentality. We seem to be working towards more of a massively individual polyculture than monoculture. Also, we shouldn't always project everything into right and left, as there are other orthogonal dimensions for framing policy (eg. authoritarian and individualistic). That's a hidden cost of the creeping politicization of everything.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    There's an interesting thought experiment. Break America in half by general partisan divide - allow for free migration based on political ideology alone. How long would it take before these now wholly 'unified' halves then turn to bitter and polar divisiveness? What would be the new divisive topics? There's probably roughly a 0% chance of success, but Calexit would be a phenomenal social experiment and perhaps something people could learn an immense amount from. On the other hand, there's already an immense amount of information and history people could learn from today. But anything that's inconvenient to 'the' ideology is irrelevant, of course.
    - rsj_hn 8y ago
      I don't think it would take long at all, sadly.
  - rsj_hn 8y ago
    I totally agree that this is not a right/left issue per se. There are many competing strains: traditionalists are skeptical of radical social change, but may also be skeptical of turning everything over the free market libertarians just want to be left alone and don't want anyone telling them what to do leftists may be communitarians or anarchists or even neoliberals who want to abolish national borders And people may have different views on different scales -- e.g. I know a lot of Nimby's who oppose new people they don't like moving into their neighborhood and think they should have a right to keep them out, but at the same time support open borders for the nation as a whole. And to be honest, I think there is something to recommend each of these views. Nobody is entirely the enemy. What bothers me is attempts to blacklist arguments/speech or to suppress open debate between these competing views. That really bothers me. It's like you can't just disagree with someone, you have to snuff them out, try to get them fired, and expel the enemy entirely from your view. It's a recipe for disaster.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

JohnBooty 8y ago

Wanting to improve their news algorithm to favor more trustworthy sources is not a violation of free speech. "Free speech" guarantees you the right to say what you want, as long as it doesn't interfere with others' freedoms (i.e., making death threats or yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater) "Free speech" does not guarantee you a platform for your protected free speech. I have the right to claim blatantly false things; Google is absolutely not obligated to amplify my voice. I am allowed to claim that Obama shot JFK. That does not mean that Google, you, or anybody else is obligated to help me spread that opinion.

gizmo686 8y ago
The first amendment does not prevent Google (or any other company) from restricting speech. That is a very low bar. The distinction between government and private groups is not a clean as you might think. At a large enough scale, private groups can start to take on a role in society that resembles that of a government, should we not then expect them to be held to a standard that resembles that we expect of governments? The FCC cannot revoke your spectrum license for saying Obama shot JFK. Should ISPs be able to revoke your internet license for saying that? Google is a much harder case, because the core service they provide is filtering; and that filtering is an immensely valuable public service. But given the role that filtering plays in society, is is not an area that should be left unregulated.
- rsj_hn 8y ago
  That's a bit of a strawman, since the OP didn't talk about the first amendment but about "free speech". Free Speech is a principle coming from the enlightenment of which the first amendment is one expression, but certainly not the only expression. The idea is that speech should be tolerated even if you disagree with it, and that societies that make room for controversial speech are better off, in the long run, than societies that do not. As a corollary, it espouses the view that individuals should be free to speak their mind and should be tolerated even if their speech is controversial. Because we cherish Free Speech, we created the first amendment. The first amendment is not the sum total of free speech, nor is free speech merely a governmental issue. For example, the California labor protections that protect employees from being fired for what they say in their private time is an example of the principle of free speech at work, and has nothing to do with the first amendment. The principle of free speech is why there are many processes, both private and public, in which the public is invited for individuals to air their views, whether they be question and answer sessions in companies, or local government hearings. It's also the principle behind movements to build public libraries that stock controversial books. Almost every institution, whether public or private, tries to give some room for dissenting speech in its operations and tries to create a space for people to air their views. Thus the attacks on these spaces, even if they are not attacks on the first amendment, are of concern to those of us who value free speech. This includes opposition to efforts at censorship, both public and private, whether these be the circulation of blacklists of communists during the cold war, or any other kind of punishment, both public and private, merely for speech. You may not agree with these values, but merely saying "well, the first amendment doesn't prohibit it, so it's not an attack on free speech" is a wild misunderstanding of what free speech is.

rsj_hn 8y ago

No, it's not surprising at all. Every company has a preferred candidate in pretty much every election, at least the CEO and top leadership certainly does. What is surprising is turning an all hands into a kind of mass grieving funeration for all of their 90K employees, replete with publicly weeping executives and the entire executive leadership being vocally outraged. Turning an all hands into a political event like this is both unprofessional and, frankly, creepy.

skybrian 8y ago
To add some context: remember that Google has employees who felt personally threatened by election results (immigrants and transgender employees). Nobody knew what Trump would do. The worst fears turned out to be overblown, but it was hard to make the case for not worrying at the time. Telling people they had nothing to worry about would have simply been offensive. There are few election results that employees would consider to be threatening like that. It was very much a special case.
- ctlby 8y ago
  It was trivial to make the case, and that people didn’t see this represents a massive epistomological failure. Perhaps it would have been offensive, but adults should not be indulged when they engage in hysteria.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    Eh. Maybe you could have used platitudes like "America has survived worse" and "most people in government will follow the law, even if he doesn't." But those aren't particularly comforting.
    - rsj_hn 8y ago
      I was around when Bush won re-election. After he lied us into war. I couldn't believe it. I was absolutely stunned, depressed, and horrified that something like that could happen. Yet not once did I expect my employer to "comfort" me. I mean, my God, that's not the job of an employer. Friends comfort you. Your employer is not your friend.

tinkerteller 8y ago

It is surprising that those people put in charge to run business by stockholders are picking sides in front of employees who they have subordinate powers over them. This is big no no. Imagine being an employee who believes in conservatism and being forced in to group think, suppress your personal political speech and view. There is no difference in boss pitching himself as politically left vs boss pitching Christianity vs boss pitching male superiority over females. Business should never take sides in politics, race, gender or religion to make sure they are fair to all employees. Leaders needs to keep their view in these subject personal just as they keep their religious identity personal. Not doing this allows businesses to essentially hijack democracy by enforcing their political will on employees. Businesses should not be wielding their leverage of paychecks in to bending anybody’s political will and opinions.

solipsism 8y ago
Imagine being an employee who believes in conservatism and being forced in to group think Forced? No one is forced to work for any given company. Companies are not mindless profit making machines. Not even public ones. They're composed of people. They have values. Some are very homogeneous culturally, some very heterogeneous. Business should never take sides in politics You are welcome to your opinion on that point. I don't agree, nor do many other people. As an employee and as a shareholder, I like companies with strong moral character. And that can include political action.

rdtsc 8y ago

> Is it really surprising that a multinational company would have a preferred candidate? Not really. Google lobbies the government more than Verizon, Wall St. banks and defense contractors. We don't usually mind cause they lobby for the things we care about as well. However we could also see how perhaps Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO and at that time Executive Chairman, walking about at a Hillary Clinton's event with a staff badge might make things a bit too obvious: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxbUJoZWEAAzp04.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxbUJoZWEAAzp04.jpg But perhaps Google isn't partisan enough? I think it is the superficial "we are not biased and all opinions are welcome" type message clashing with their existing bias, that's bothering people. I think they should be bolder even and say, we are biased, we support these values.