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I find it interesting on HN how inevitably the commenters reach for "Google should disobey the law here" in stories like these. As if megacorps weren't terrify

by evmar 7y ago

I find it interesting on HN how inevitably the commenters reach for "Google should disobey the law here" in stories like these. As if megacorps weren't terrifying enough, now we expect them to extrajudiciously decide which laws they think are "just" enough to obey or not? And then simultaneously when it comes to privacy laws (GPDR etc.) we also clutch our pearls about how these companies aren't doing enough! Don't get me wrong: clearly unjust laws exist and there exist situations where resistance is the moral thing to do. I just find it terrifying how quickly people jump to saying it'd be appropriate for obscenely powerful companies like Google to make up their own legal system and pick and choose which laws apply to them. (Disclaimer: Google employee / American citizen, find both orgs frightening)

zzzcpan 7y ago
> As if megacorps weren't terrifying enough, now we expect them to extrajudiciously decide which laws they think are "just" enough to obey or not? They decide that for themselves already and are fined routinely for this.
fwdpropaganda 7y ago
It's very obvious why: HN hates Russia/Russians. Go on the Telegram thread right now and check out how many people say they don't trust Telegram because the founders are Russian. Regarding Facebook in the US, HNer say they should have consequences for doing something completely legal, selling advertising. Google in Russia, HNers say Google should disobey the law. People pretend to be principled, but really they just want to push their worldview on others.
soulofmischief 7y ago
It only looks like that when you view it one-dimensionally. In truth, there is a kind of Grand Unified Law, of which we are still working out the details, which we (whether we realize it or not) want companies to follow. It is law based on ethics and morality, and no legal infrastructure in any country today is entirely accommodating of this law. The fact is that we live in a world full of corrupt politics, and most of the time when companies have to "play ball" with requests such as censorship, it's a bad thing. We are working on the GUL but we do know that it includes freedom of speech. This is very separate from things like regulations and safety measures, which are obviously in place for a reason and which would also exist in this hypothetical GUL. You simply cannot break it down as "sometimes you want them to follow the law and sometimes you don't", because the law is imperfect and does not currently reflect the best case scenario. I would resist censorship in another country and I expect Google, et al. to do the same on the basis of putting ethics before money.
- evmar 7y ago
  I think what you're saying is that morality exists outside of the rule of law, which I agree with. But then you're saying that you think that companies like Google are morally equipped to be able to determine this law better than states would, which I think is where you lose me. Legal systems are also imperfect but at least there is oversight and (at least symbolic) input from citizens.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    A number of people today seem to be willing to grant that Google is a better arbiter of morality than the real selectorate, and this is not a mistake I think. Google clearly has an interest in circumventing U.S. cultural norms (for financial and ideological profit), and the best way to do it is to convince some number of Americans that they're suppressing the "bad people" and promoting the "good people". This time around, the useful dupes are mostly authoritarian progressives. Over time, the authoritarian progressives will make the association in the other direction: they will begin to believe that whoever Google suppresses must be a "bad person".
    - natechols 7y ago
      This is an article about Google being confronted by an authoritarian government that opposes US cultural norms... and you've somehow transformed it into exactly the opposite.
      - Supermancho 7y ago
        There is no opposite to US cultural norms. There is a wide spectrum of qualities and values of those qualities. However you want to characterize those "norms", a single act does not adequately engender or stifle a sense of Google's overall aims.
    - creato 7y ago
      > Google clearly has an interest in circumventing U.S. cultural norms (for financial and ideological profit) This is absolutely not clear at all.
rasengan 7y ago
If Google decides to both treasonously adhere to Russia’s demands and, simultaneously, hide or fail to index items per Russia’s demands, then Google will no longer be a search engine of the INTERNET — instead, it will be a search engine of the GOOGLENET.
- close04 7y ago
  > treasonously adhere to Russia’s demands Treasonous towards whom? Is it treasonous if Google complies with a EU law like GDPR?
MrLeap 7y ago
We live in a society where the power pyramid of merchants and nobles is twisting to inversion. There's still situations where the nobles reign. Nothing they have really matches the flexibility that merchants do when wielding their power. People are appealing to power when they ask that google disobey a country's sovereignty. It's probably a misappraisal of google's power in Russia. Google is neck and neck in search with Yandex. It's hard to wield a stranglehold you don't have. In America, google is having lots of success positioning itself as the prime broker for commerce. Amazon's trying to build a tower that subsumes commerce with depth vs. google's breadth. EC2 is attacking search's foundation from the other side. If you host the majority of content, you have territorial advantages and ways you can undermine google's usefulness. The amazon market is their flank attack. If everything you want is in one place, no need to search. Facebook tries to be the ultimate broker of human relationships, and maintain de-facto control over downstream commerce from that high hill. The government has a de jure monopoly on use of force, but how useful is that against controlling relationships, and therefore elections -- or commerce, and therefore the economy? The government looks outmatched to me. It makes sense the peasants, yeoman and burghers would address their geopolitical wishes to those with actionable global soft power.
jayd16 7y ago
Why do you say it's quick, as if the concept of Google, censorship, and illegal protests just came to be? This is just the latest example.
kodablah 7y ago
HN is not a single unified voice. Many have been speaking against all the instances of perceived government overreach you point out (GDPR etc). What is and isn't overreach/immoral is obviously not the same across peoples and groups and actions. This comes across as interesting to you only because the hypocrisy appears apparent by how you've grouped the actions and players.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  HN is not a single unified voice, absolutely. Some of us have been championing GDPR, etc. ;-)
PeterisP 7y ago
A big issue is the legality or illegality of these protests is itself being disputed. These protests are in large part about Russian citizens reasserting their constitutional rights both to participate in elections (as currently all the opposition candidates to Moscow municipal elections have been denied access to elections, and many of them have been arrested) and to their right of unarmed protest and demonstration (Articles 32 and 31 respectively of Russian constitution). In this regard, the claim of the protesters (disputed, of course, by Russian government) is that their actions are explicitly legal under Russian law, and instead the actions of the Russian government in forbidding this protest and arresting participants are illegal and violate the constitution. The argument is that these restrictions to assemble and protest don't have to be obeyed by anyone - citizens or Google - as they're unconstitutional and can't be valid law.
- moltar 7y ago
  Just like in US, in Russia, some protests require permits, especially if they interfere with day-to-day of other citizens. https://qz.com/890689/what-us-protestors-can-and-cannot-do-according-to-the-aclu/ https://qz.com/890689/what-us-protestors-can-and-cannot-do-a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly_in_Russia I’m not saying the law is good. But if it does exist, and people don’t obey it, they are indeed doing something illegal.
  - pas 7y ago
    They tried to get permits, but ... for some unfortunate chain of events they never got the paperwork right. So now it's illegal, hence the tanks! The rule of law is perfect, only these protesters cannot seem to fill out a simple form. Maybe they need some re-education.
    - Snawoot 7y ago
      I'm former Russian resident. First, there are still some cases when permission for protest event is not required. It's a picketing performed by single person, for example. In this case police will pack protester in a matter of few minutes and deliver him to a police station for fake reason like "personality identification". So, legitimacy is not the thing. Government doesn't appreciate protests, so it creates artificial barriers by means of law manipulation, and it'll always be winning in this field. All this paperwork required to approve meeting is like implicit reject, or a lever which allows to mitigate real impact of social event. Namely, it can be approved to conduct meeting on the edge of the city in time when it will be not relevant anymore. Protests are social counterweight, which allows people to push back. The very idea that counterweight be dependent from other's side permission is just ridiculous.

by evmar 7y ago

zzzcpan 7y ago

> As if megacorps weren't terrifying enough, now we expect them to extrajudiciously decide which laws they think are "just" enough to obey or not? They decide that for themselves already and are fined routinely for this.

fwdpropaganda 7y ago

It's very obvious why: HN hates Russia/Russians. Go on the Telegram thread right now and check out how many people say they don't trust Telegram because the founders are Russian. Regarding Facebook in the US, HNer say they should have consequences for doing something completely legal, selling advertising. Google in Russia, HNers say Google should disobey the law. People pretend to be principled, but really they just want to push their worldview on others.

soulofmischief 7y ago

It only looks like that when you view it one-dimensionally. In truth, there is a kind of Grand Unified Law, of which we are still working out the details, which we (whether we realize it or not) want companies to follow. It is law based on ethics and morality, and no legal infrastructure in any country today is entirely accommodating of this law. The fact is that we live in a world full of corrupt politics, and most of the time when companies have to "play ball" with requests such as censorship, it's a bad thing. We are working on the GUL but we do know that it includes freedom of speech. This is very separate from things like regulations and safety measures, which are obviously in place for a reason and which would also exist in this hypothetical GUL. You simply cannot break it down as "sometimes you want them to follow the law and sometimes you don't", because the law is imperfect and does not currently reflect the best case scenario. I would resist censorship in another country and I expect Google, et al. to do the same on the basis of putting ethics before money.

evmar 7y ago
I think what you're saying is that morality exists outside of the rule of law, which I agree with. But then you're saying that you think that companies like Google are morally equipped to be able to determine this law better than states would, which I think is where you lose me. Legal systems are also imperfect but at least there is oversight and (at least symbolic) input from citizens.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  A number of people today seem to be willing to grant that Google is a better arbiter of morality than the real selectorate, and this is not a mistake I think. Google clearly has an interest in circumventing U.S. cultural norms (for financial and ideological profit), and the best way to do it is to convince some number of Americans that they're suppressing the "bad people" and promoting the "good people". This time around, the useful dupes are mostly authoritarian progressives. Over time, the authoritarian progressives will make the association in the other direction: they will begin to believe that whoever Google suppresses must be a "bad person".
  - natechols 7y ago
    This is an article about Google being confronted by an authoritarian government that opposes US cultural norms... and you've somehow transformed it into exactly the opposite.
    - Supermancho 7y ago
      There is no opposite to US cultural norms. There is a wide spectrum of qualities and values of those qualities. However you want to characterize those "norms", a single act does not adequately engender or stifle a sense of Google's overall aims.
  - creato 7y ago
    > Google clearly has an interest in circumventing U.S. cultural norms (for financial and ideological profit) This is absolutely not clear at all.

rasengan 7y ago

If Google decides to both treasonously adhere to Russia’s demands and, simultaneously, hide or fail to index items per Russia’s demands, then Google will no longer be a search engine of the INTERNET — instead, it will be a search engine of the GOOGLENET.

close04 7y ago
> treasonously adhere to Russia’s demands Treasonous towards whom? Is it treasonous if Google complies with a EU law like GDPR?

MrLeap 7y ago

We live in a society where the power pyramid of merchants and nobles is twisting to inversion. There's still situations where the nobles reign. Nothing they have really matches the flexibility that merchants do when wielding their power. People are appealing to power when they ask that google disobey a country's sovereignty. It's probably a misappraisal of google's power in Russia. Google is neck and neck in search with Yandex. It's hard to wield a stranglehold you don't have. In America, google is having lots of success positioning itself as the prime broker for commerce. Amazon's trying to build a tower that subsumes commerce with depth vs. google's breadth. EC2 is attacking search's foundation from the other side. If you host the majority of content, you have territorial advantages and ways you can undermine google's usefulness. The amazon market is their flank attack. If everything you want is in one place, no need to search. Facebook tries to be the ultimate broker of human relationships, and maintain de-facto control over downstream commerce from that high hill. The government has a de jure monopoly on use of force, but how useful is that against controlling relationships, and therefore elections -- or commerce, and therefore the economy? The government looks outmatched to me. It makes sense the peasants, yeoman and burghers would address their geopolitical wishes to those with actionable global soft power.

jayd16 7y ago

Why do you say it's quick, as if the concept of Google, censorship, and illegal protests just came to be? This is just the latest example.

kodablah 7y ago

HN is not a single unified voice. Many have been speaking against all the instances of perceived government overreach you point out (GDPR etc). What is and isn't overreach/immoral is obviously not the same across peoples and groups and actions. This comes across as interesting to you only because the hypocrisy appears apparent by how you've grouped the actions and players.

dredmorbius 7y ago
HN is not a single unified voice, absolutely. Some of us have been championing GDPR, etc. ;-)

PeterisP 7y ago

A big issue is the legality or illegality of these protests is itself being disputed. These protests are in large part about Russian citizens reasserting their constitutional rights both to participate in elections (as currently all the opposition candidates to Moscow municipal elections have been denied access to elections, and many of them have been arrested) and to their right of unarmed protest and demonstration (Articles 32 and 31 respectively of Russian constitution). In this regard, the claim of the protesters (disputed, of course, by Russian government) is that their actions are explicitly legal under Russian law, and instead the actions of the Russian government in forbidding this protest and arresting participants are illegal and violate the constitution. The argument is that these restrictions to assemble and protest don't have to be obeyed by anyone - citizens or Google - as they're unconstitutional and can't be valid law.

moltar 7y ago
Just like in US, in Russia, some protests require permits, especially if they interfere with day-to-day of other citizens. https://qz.com/890689/what-us-protestors-can-and-cannot-do-according-to-the-aclu/ https://qz.com/890689/what-us-protestors-can-and-cannot-do-a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly_in_Russia I’m not saying the law is good. But if it does exist, and people don’t obey it, they are indeed doing something illegal.
- pas 7y ago
  They tried to get permits, but ... for some unfortunate chain of events they never got the paperwork right. So now it's illegal, hence the tanks! The rule of law is perfect, only these protesters cannot seem to fill out a simple form. Maybe they need some re-education.
  - Snawoot 7y ago
    I'm former Russian resident. First, there are still some cases when permission for protest event is not required. It's a picketing performed by single person, for example. In this case police will pack protester in a matter of few minutes and deliver him to a police station for fake reason like "personality identification". So, legitimacy is not the thing. Government doesn't appreciate protests, so it creates artificial barriers by means of law manipulation, and it'll always be winning in this field. All this paperwork required to approve meeting is like implicit reject, or a lever which allows to mitigate real impact of social event. Namely, it can be approved to conduct meeting on the edge of the city in time when it will be not relevant anymore. Protests are social counterweight, which allows people to push back. The very idea that counterweight be dependent from other's side permission is just ridiculous.