5 ms·

I agree with Drakonka that it's dystopian when being moderately assertive talking about labor rights is viewed as a reason to fire someone. Especially when thes

by abj 7y ago

I agree with Drakonka that it's dystopian when being moderately assertive talking about labor rights is viewed as a reason to fire someone. Especially when these kinds of notifications have a history of being used to tamely spread information before ("Happy Birthday Sundar!" popping up when any employee visited google.com). Reminds me more of the rules for posting on a bulletin board. Edit: "Happy Birthday Sundar!" didn't actually happen, my bad.

manfredo 7y ago
The issue isn't about discussing labor rights it's about abusing security tools for political purposes. A bulletin board is not a good analogy. A bulletin board is non-invasive. This tool creates pop-ups on people's browsers. Normally, these notifications are security or privacy warnings so displaying personal messages here gives it a false sense of authority. Furthermore, it looks like she used an e-push to do this: > "She misused a security and privacy tool to create a pop-up that was neither about security nor privacy," Hansen wrote. "She did that without authorization from her team or the Security and Privacy Policy Notifier team, and without a business justification. And she used an emergency rapid push to do it." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/engineer-says-google-fired-her-for-browser-pop-up-about-worker-rights/?comments=1 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/engineer-says-go...
- abj 7y ago
  I agree with you that the issue doesn't have to be labor rights. I agree that the emergency rapid push seems like a slight misuse. I'm questioning the double standard of being able to use the tool to display company wide messages ("Happy Birthday Sundar!"). Why was the "Happy Birthday Sundar!" poster not held equally accountable? Seems like any topic management doesn't like is political speech. Edit: The "Happy Birthday Sundar!" message didn't happen.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Was "Happy birthday Sundar!" made without consulting leadership and using emergency push to deploy it?
    - abj 7y ago
      My mistake - the Happy Birthday Sundar thing didn't happen. I was looking for a source and realized I read a different comment in this thread wrong. I'll end my original post to reflect this.

by abj 7y ago

manfredo 7y ago

The issue isn't about discussing labor rights it's about abusing security tools for political purposes. A bulletin board is not a good analogy. A bulletin board is non-invasive. This tool creates pop-ups on people's browsers. Normally, these notifications are security or privacy warnings so displaying personal messages here gives it a false sense of authority. Furthermore, it looks like she used an e-push to do this: > "She misused a security and privacy tool to create a pop-up that was neither about security nor privacy," Hansen wrote. "She did that without authorization from her team or the Security and Privacy Policy Notifier team, and without a business justification. And she used an emergency rapid push to do it." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/engineer-says-google-fired-her-for-browser-pop-up-about-worker-rights/?comments=1 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/engineer-says-go...

abj 7y ago
I agree with you that the issue doesn't have to be labor rights. I agree that the emergency rapid push seems like a slight misuse. I'm questioning the double standard of being able to use the tool to display company wide messages ("Happy Birthday Sundar!"). Why was the "Happy Birthday Sundar!" poster not held equally accountable? Seems like any topic management doesn't like is political speech. Edit: The "Happy Birthday Sundar!" message didn't happen.
- manfredo 7y ago
  Was "Happy birthday Sundar!" made without consulting leadership and using emergency push to deploy it?
  - abj 7y ago
    My mistake - the Happy Birthday Sundar thing didn't happen. I was looking for a source and realized I read a different comment in this thread wrong. I'll end my original post to reflect this.