5 ms·

I don't understand why all this outrage is directed at Google but Microsoft gets a free pass. I'm in China at the moment and if I search Bing.com for "Tiananme

I don't understand why all this outrage is directed at Google but Microsoft gets a free pass. I'm in China at the moment and if I search Bing.com for "Tiananmen Square massacre" all I get are results about Xi Jinping celebrating martyrs and nothing about what happened. If you want to be outraged by Google's actions, OK, but it seems selective to me. Microsoft and Google can't be the only ones who do this, either.

samat 8y ago
This sounds like a whataboutism. Harder to be outraged about something which is a status quote for a long time. Difference between MS & Google is that here are talking about an active present change in the wrong direction.
pfortuny 8y ago
Microsoft never claimed to be an honest company.
PavlovsCat 8y ago
> Microsoft and Google can't be the only ones who do this, either. What do you propose? Posting a critical thing about Microsoft, to then talk about how that is unfair Microsoft can't be the only ones who do "this", whatever vague thing "this" may be? Which comment in this thread would you call "outrage", whom exactly would you accuse of giving Microsoft a free pass, or "being selective"? I'll assume your comment isn't "being outraged about people being outraged", that you are just making a point. I'd say nobody is or wants to be "outraged", that's just framing comments you're not directly replying to as that. The word has become quite overused for basically anything slightly critical. Let people describe their own internal emotional state as outraged, if they feel that way, but otherwise, it's really just "y u mad" where actual interaction with the argument should be. Many companies want to use the "masses", the influx of money and bug reports, not to mention statistics and personal data, ML training, the more the merrier, come one come all -- millions, billions of people are welcome to buy the product, click on the ads and all that. But if they have a negative feedback, no matter how valid, then it's suddenly unfair. Then they're all ignorant, entitled, outraged, hipocrites, the whole playbook, and need to be routed around. But you cannot have it both ways, if you have a channel to peddle product through, blowback can and will travel through that as well. You want to be in the marketplace, be in the marketplace. Just calling inconvenient criticism outrage, to be done with them, makes them accumulate interest, it doesn't actually turn it into "mere outrage over nothing because people want to be outraged", which could be ignored. But do that enough, and you'll face outrage you fully earned, on top of the still valid criticism. Another recurring pattern, and that's regardless of company as long as it's big enough, is that so much in the form of speaking for the average user or person, or how something makes business sense. A lot of personal attacks on critics, in an indirect fashion they can't even defend themselves against properly, often by people who will not stand behind their own opinion as their own opinion.
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
I see your frustration but whataboutism isn't very helpful. you can only target them one at a time as they do ethically questionable shit. I do feel the same outrage though when reading the article and realizing it doesn't also mention all other shitty ad/data driven companies or the trend among start-ups not to question ethics ... IMO the best we can do is not just to go after companies but really drop the individual responsible managers/engineers names (as this article does, and as stories on FB have done wrt Sheryl Sandberg).
ionised 8y ago
We're not talking about Microsoft here. We are talking about Google.
whydoineedthis 8y ago
The reason it's more upsetting when Google does it is 1)because they advertised they wouldn't. 2) it's hard to get around their products. I don't have to use anything Microsoft anymore, as I switched to the 'more ethical company's a long time ago. Now I need to go on the hunt again, and there is slim competition. I'm not mad at Microsoft because I already departed from them.

samat 8y ago

This sounds like a whataboutism. Harder to be outraged about something which is a status quote for a long time. Difference between MS & Google is that here are talking about an active present change in the wrong direction.

pfortuny 8y ago

Microsoft never claimed to be an honest company.

PavlovsCat 8y ago

> Microsoft and Google can't be the only ones who do this, either. What do you propose? Posting a critical thing about Microsoft, to then talk about how that is unfair Microsoft can't be the only ones who do "this", whatever vague thing "this" may be? Which comment in this thread would you call "outrage", whom exactly would you accuse of giving Microsoft a free pass, or "being selective"? I'll assume your comment isn't "being outraged about people being outraged", that you are just making a point. I'd say nobody is or wants to be "outraged", that's just framing comments you're not directly replying to as that. The word has become quite overused for basically anything slightly critical. Let people describe their own internal emotional state as outraged, if they feel that way, but otherwise, it's really just "y u mad" where actual interaction with the argument should be. Many companies want to use the "masses", the influx of money and bug reports, not to mention statistics and personal data, ML training, the more the merrier, come one come all -- millions, billions of people are welcome to buy the product, click on the ads and all that. But if they have a negative feedback, no matter how valid, then it's suddenly unfair. Then they're all ignorant, entitled, outraged, hipocrites, the whole playbook, and need to be routed around. But you cannot have it both ways, if you have a channel to peddle product through, blowback can and will travel through that as well. You want to be in the marketplace, be in the marketplace. Just calling inconvenient criticism outrage, to be done with them, makes them accumulate interest, it doesn't actually turn it into "mere outrage over nothing because people want to be outraged", which could be ignored. But do that enough, and you'll face outrage you fully earned, on top of the still valid criticism. Another recurring pattern, and that's regardless of company as long as it's big enough, is that so much in the form of speaking for the average user or person, or how something makes business sense. A lot of personal attacks on critics, in an indirect fashion they can't even defend themselves against properly, often by people who will not stand behind their own opinion as their own opinion.

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago

I see your frustration but whataboutism isn't very helpful. you can only target them one at a time as they do ethically questionable shit. I do feel the same outrage though when reading the article and realizing it doesn't also mention all other shitty ad/data driven companies or the trend among start-ups not to question ethics ... IMO the best we can do is not just to go after companies but really drop the individual responsible managers/engineers names (as this article does, and as stories on FB have done wrt Sheryl Sandberg).

ionised 8y ago

We're not talking about Microsoft here. We are talking about Google.

whydoineedthis 8y ago

The reason it's more upsetting when Google does it is 1)because they advertised they wouldn't. 2) it's hard to get around their products. I don't have to use anything Microsoft anymore, as I switched to the 'more ethical company's a long time ago. Now I need to go on the hunt again, and there is slim competition. I'm not mad at Microsoft because I already departed from them.