8 ms·

Trump, without evidence, accuses Google of 'illegal' action ahead of election

22 points by throwaway5752 7y ago

cloakandswagger 7y ago
Trump's tweet references Kevin Cernekee, a former Google engineer who claims that Google has an anti-conservative bias and took actions with a goal of influencing the 2016 election. Whether that's actually true and whether it would be illegal or not is debatable, but the "without evidence" qualifier that Reuters added seems strange.
- tdb7893 7y ago
  Did Cernekee say that Google tried to undermine Trump? I'm only familiar with him with regards to his talks on the internal work culture.
  - cloakandswagger 7y ago
    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/08/05/fired_google_engineer_kevin_cernekee_conservative_employees_mistreated_abused_and_harassed.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/08/05/fired_goo... > "They made every excuse in the book to avoid taking down something that made Donald Trump look bad. And I saw a number of other incidents just like that...They thought Trump should have lost in 2016...They really want Trump to lose in 2020. That's their agenda."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  That is not evidence, it is hearsay.
  - cloakandswagger 7y ago
    Hearsay would be if someone else said a Google engineer told them that Google was biased. If a firsthand accusation from an engineer is hearsay then whistle-blowing of any type wouldn't be a thing.
    - throwaway5752 7y ago
      Yes, what he said is hearsay because it's a bunch of work rumors from an unreliable source. I have no idea why I should trust Cernekee (let alone why any US President should trust him enough to make this type of public accusation), it seems like he has some "unfortunate baggage" (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cernekee-pushed-alt-right-views-former-colleague.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cerneke...)
- belltaco 7y ago
  There are very interesting new developments with Kevin Cernekee. Another conservative in his right-wing group at Google made the following accusations according to [1]: >Among the allegations, Wacker claims Cernekee did the following: >Requested to “put together a group donation in the name of ‘freespeech@Google’” to help fund Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank. >Called alt-right crowdfunding platform WeResearchr his “friends.” >Defended the Golden State Skinheads, which espouses neo-Nazi ideology on its web site, in a situation where a rally turned violent. He also claimed the term “skinhead” had some “unfortunate baggage.” >Started a thread criticizing how Google’s Chrome Web Store had removed the Coincidence Detector app, a Chrome plugin that wraps three sets of parentheses (known as “echoes”) around names on web pages that appear to be Jewish. According to Wacker, Cernekee wrote “I was just surprised that Google banned an app for adding silly punctuation” and “Google stands for free speech and we should have thoroughly discussed the implications of censoring the app, rather than succumbing to knee-jerk reactions just because an internet journalist wrote a misinformed article to stoke outrage.” Kevin has his defense included in the article, but doesn't seem to directly deny doing any of the above. I am assuming they're true. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cernekee-pushed-alt-right-views-former-colleague.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cerneke... The last item is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses
DiffEq 7y ago
Well...all is fair in love and war I guess, for years now people have been accusing him of colluding with the Russians...and without evidence.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  Is that related to this?
- drewrv 7y ago
  The president's campaign chairman (Paul Manafort), campaign manager (Rick Gates), lawyer (Michael Cohen), and national security advisor (Michael Flynn) would love to hear about this lack of evidence.
throwaway5752 7y ago
I feel that it is usually best to avoid this type of submission and that it's very regrettable that this is the current level of public discourse in the US. However, it's unfortunate but this is something we (collectively, the software industry) should not ignore and - however we feel about Google - should be aware that governments change but precedents for acceptable behavior are stickier. It's pretty disappointing for me that it's flagged. It's Reuters quoting the US President directly. The headline is taken from the article verbatim.
- insickness 7y ago
  It's the "without evidence" claim that got this flagged. On a daily basis, major news organizations anonymously source articles but don't put "without evidence" unless it conflicts with their political narrative. There is plenty of evidence that tech has a bias.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    That's the headline that Reuters gave it. What specific evidence do you have the Reuters has an institutional bias that makes it into the editorial process resulting in a headline? Without going into the particulars of your response, it is irrelevant in this case. What is at issue is that the president accused Google of a crime. Tech may have a bias, so then it should be possible to follow the law and charge Google with a crime and submit evidence for the case. Don't you understand how serious it is for the president to extrajudicially threaten people with prosecution? Side note: it is a useful tool of extremists to accuse specific members of the majority of "bias". The tech community is large and diverse, and is mostly representative of society on the whole.
    - insickness 7y ago
      > What specific evidence do you have the Reuters has an institutional bias that makes it into the editorial process resulting in a headline? Trump's tweet references the former Google engineer who claims that Google has an anti-conservative bias. > The tech community is ...mostly representative of society on the whole. That is absolutely not true on so many levels. People who work in tech tend to be young, wealthy, live in cities, lean liberal, etc. That's like saying farmers or policemen or doctors tend to be mostly representative of society as a whole. Not true.
LyndsySimon 7y ago
It wasn't linked from the article and it took me a moment to find it, so I've reposted the text of the tweets in question below. > @sundarpichai of Google was in the Oval Office working very hard to explain how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that Google was not involved with China’s military, that they didn’t help Crooked Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, and that they... > ....are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that has been said to the contrary. It all sounded good until I watched Kevin Cernekee, a Google engineer, say terrible things about what they did in 2016 and that they want to “Make sure that Trump losses... > ....in 2020.” Lou Dobbs stated that this is a fraud on the American public. @peterschweizer stated with certainty that they suppressed negative stories on Hillary Clinton, and boosted negative stories on Donald Ttump. All very illegal. We are watching Google very closely! Here's a link to the end of the chain: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1158706058724040704 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11587060587240407...
- LyndsySimon 7y ago
  Reading through this, I don't take it as "Trump accusing Google of illegal acts" - at least not the way that it seems to be have been perceived by Reuters. I read this as Trump saying that Pichai's statements seemed to contrast with what is being said by other parties, and that the acts described by those other parties are illegal. That doesn't strike me as a minor distinction. It seems to me that he's using his bully pulpit to publicize Cernekee at Google's expense. Whether or not that is appropriate is fair game IMO, but it's not at all what the article claimed.
  - cromwellian 7y ago
    Cernekee has asked people to contribute money to help Richard Spencer, a white nationalist, defended skinheads, and used 8-chan compatible lingo of referring to people with negative views of skinheads as "normies". Even the right-wing Daily Caller thinks this is a fishy source for Trump to be using to justify attacks on Google. In the era of domestic white nationalist terrorism, is it really good practice for the President of the United States to be basing public, global messaging attacking public companies based on really flimsy sources with tangential ties to extremist communities? This isn't the first time either, Trump often retweets questionable, un-vetted sources with crazy theories, like the whole "3 million illegals voted" conspiracy. How many more lies and incompetent sourcing incidents do we need before people stop giving him the benefit of the doubt and start demanding that the President act with some restraint, some level of due process, some level of balance? https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/google-engineer-posts-listservs-richard-spencer-golden-state-skinheads/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/google-engineer-posts-lis...

22 points by throwaway5752 7y ago

Trump's tweet references Kevin Cernekee, a former Google engineer who claims that Google has an anti-conservative bias and took actions with a goal of influencing the 2016 election. Whether that's actually true and whether it would be illegal or not is debatable, but the "without evidence" qualifier that Reuters added seems strange.

tdb7893 7y ago
Did Cernekee say that Google tried to undermine Trump? I'm only familiar with him with regards to his talks on the internal work culture.
- cloakandswagger 7y ago
  https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/08/05/fired_google_engineer_kevin_cernekee_conservative_employees_mistreated_abused_and_harassed.html https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/08/05/fired_goo... > "They made every excuse in the book to avoid taking down something that made Donald Trump look bad. And I saw a number of other incidents just like that...They thought Trump should have lost in 2016...They really want Trump to lose in 2020. That's their agenda."
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
throwaway5752 7y ago
That is not evidence, it is hearsay.
- cloakandswagger 7y ago
  Hearsay would be if someone else said a Google engineer told them that Google was biased. If a firsthand accusation from an engineer is hearsay then whistle-blowing of any type wouldn't be a thing.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    Yes, what he said is hearsay because it's a bunch of work rumors from an unreliable source. I have no idea why I should trust Cernekee (let alone why any US President should trust him enough to make this type of public accusation), it seems like he has some "unfortunate baggage" (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cernekee-pushed-alt-right-views-former-colleague.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cerneke...)
belltaco 7y ago
There are very interesting new developments with Kevin Cernekee. Another conservative in his right-wing group at Google made the following accusations according to [1]: >Among the allegations, Wacker claims Cernekee did the following: >Requested to “put together a group donation in the name of ‘freespeech@Google’” to help fund Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank. >Called alt-right crowdfunding platform WeResearchr his “friends.” >Defended the Golden State Skinheads, which espouses neo-Nazi ideology on its web site, in a situation where a rally turned violent. He also claimed the term “skinhead” had some “unfortunate baggage.” >Started a thread criticizing how Google’s Chrome Web Store had removed the Coincidence Detector app, a Chrome plugin that wraps three sets of parentheses (known as “echoes”) around names on web pages that appear to be Jewish. According to Wacker, Cernekee wrote “I was just surprised that Google banned an app for adding silly punctuation” and “Google stands for free speech and we should have thoroughly discussed the implications of censoring the app, rather than succumbing to knee-jerk reactions just because an internet journalist wrote a misinformed article to stoke outrage.” Kevin has his defense included in the article, but doesn't seem to directly deny doing any of the above. I am assuming they're true. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cernekee-pushed-alt-right-views-former-colleague.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cerneke... The last item is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses

DiffEq 7y ago

Well...all is fair in love and war I guess, for years now people have been accusing him of colluding with the Russians...and without evidence.

happytoexplain 7y ago
Is that related to this?
drewrv 7y ago
The president's campaign chairman (Paul Manafort), campaign manager (Rick Gates), lawyer (Michael Cohen), and national security advisor (Michael Flynn) would love to hear about this lack of evidence.

throwaway5752 7y ago

I feel that it is usually best to avoid this type of submission and that it's very regrettable that this is the current level of public discourse in the US. However, it's unfortunate but this is something we (collectively, the software industry) should not ignore and - however we feel about Google - should be aware that governments change but precedents for acceptable behavior are stickier. It's pretty disappointing for me that it's flagged. It's Reuters quoting the US President directly. The headline is taken from the article verbatim.

insickness 7y ago
It's the "without evidence" claim that got this flagged. On a daily basis, major news organizations anonymously source articles but don't put "without evidence" unless it conflicts with their political narrative. There is plenty of evidence that tech has a bias.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  That's the headline that Reuters gave it. What specific evidence do you have the Reuters has an institutional bias that makes it into the editorial process resulting in a headline? Without going into the particulars of your response, it is irrelevant in this case. What is at issue is that the president accused Google of a crime. Tech may have a bias, so then it should be possible to follow the law and charge Google with a crime and submit evidence for the case. Don't you understand how serious it is for the president to extrajudicially threaten people with prosecution? Side note: it is a useful tool of extremists to accuse specific members of the majority of "bias". The tech community is large and diverse, and is mostly representative of society on the whole.
  - insickness 7y ago
    > What specific evidence do you have the Reuters has an institutional bias that makes it into the editorial process resulting in a headline? Trump's tweet references the former Google engineer who claims that Google has an anti-conservative bias. > The tech community is ...mostly representative of society on the whole. That is absolutely not true on so many levels. People who work in tech tend to be young, wealthy, live in cities, lean liberal, etc. That's like saying farmers or policemen or doctors tend to be mostly representative of society as a whole. Not true.

LyndsySimon 7y ago

It wasn't linked from the article and it took me a moment to find it, so I've reposted the text of the tweets in question below. > @sundarpichai of Google was in the Oval Office working very hard to explain how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that Google was not involved with China’s military, that they didn’t help Crooked Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, and that they... > ....are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that has been said to the contrary. It all sounded good until I watched Kevin Cernekee, a Google engineer, say terrible things about what they did in 2016 and that they want to “Make sure that Trump losses... > ....in 2020.” Lou Dobbs stated that this is a fraud on the American public. @peterschweizer stated with certainty that they suppressed negative stories on Hillary Clinton, and boosted negative stories on Donald Ttump. All very illegal. We are watching Google very closely! Here's a link to the end of the chain: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1158706058724040704 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11587060587240407...

LyndsySimon 7y ago
Reading through this, I don't take it as "Trump accusing Google of illegal acts" - at least not the way that it seems to be have been perceived by Reuters. I read this as Trump saying that Pichai's statements seemed to contrast with what is being said by other parties, and that the acts described by those other parties are illegal. That doesn't strike me as a minor distinction. It seems to me that he's using his bully pulpit to publicize Cernekee at Google's expense. Whether or not that is appropriate is fair game IMO, but it's not at all what the article claimed.
- cromwellian 7y ago
  Cernekee has asked people to contribute money to help Richard Spencer, a white nationalist, defended skinheads, and used 8-chan compatible lingo of referring to people with negative views of skinheads as "normies". Even the right-wing Daily Caller thinks this is a fishy source for Trump to be using to justify attacks on Google. In the era of domestic white nationalist terrorism, is it really good practice for the President of the United States to be basing public, global messaging attacking public companies based on really flimsy sources with tangential ties to extremist communities? This isn't the first time either, Trump often retweets questionable, un-vetted sources with crazy theories, like the whole "3 million illegals voted" conspiracy. How many more lies and incompetent sourcing incidents do we need before people stop giving him the benefit of the doubt and start demanding that the President act with some restraint, some level of due process, some level of balance? https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/google-engineer-posts-listservs-richard-spencer-golden-state-skinheads/ https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/google-engineer-posts-lis...