3 ms·

Wow, the comments blaming Google for this are ridiculous. I'm no Google apologist. But it was 20 edits from 2 people. We have no clue what their motivation w

Wow, the comments blaming Google for this are ridiculous. I'm no Google apologist. But it was 20 edits from 2 people. We have no clue what their motivation was, but probably they were just being assholes. If an asshole Google employee started trolling on HN, posting 20 obnoxious comments, and pg tracked the IP addresses back to the same IP address as this incident, do you think he should raise a stink and say that Google is trying to take down HN because it's a competitor of Google+? Come on, that's ridiculous. Is this really the effort of Google? They have tens of thousands of employees, and hundreds of thousands of computers all over the world. Google attempted to poison an open source map using 2 employees and 20 edits? Come on. If they redirected 0.01% of their traffic to that website, they could probably keep them down indefinitely. The one scary thing, however, is that if you do do something obnoxious, like get into a flame war with someone, or if you add some false information to wikipedia for whatever reason, and the owner of the website complains online about it, you could get fired, even if your comments were completely "anonymous". That to me is scarier than any of this other stuff.

teyc 15y ago
Not everyone is blaming Google. However, many are rightly taking the position that Google has to be held responsible for actions of its contractors, which is a different thing. Google has taken the first steps, which is to sack those people. Next it has to undertake review of all the sites that these people accessed and make good any damage they caused.
- steve8918 15y ago
  So, if you visit HN from your place of employment, your employer should be held responsible for every single obnoxious act you make? Or if you go to Amazon.com and post a negative review on a book, the author should sue your employer? That's ridiculous. You're basically arguing that all employers should strictly limit the websites that any employee visits, since the employer should be held accountable for their employees actions. If the contractors did something against the terms of their employment and got fired, that's one thing. But to hold the employer responsible and say they should "make good" on the actions of their employees is wrong.
  - teyc 15y ago
    I was equally surprised and dismayed when I learnt of this initially, but it is already established as a point of law. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability So in the case of the luxury cruise ship sinking, or Exxon Valdez, the ship owner is responsible the cost of cleanup.
    - res0nat0r 15y ago
      "Employers are vicariously liable, under the respondeat superior doctrine, for negligent acts or omissions by their employees in the course of employment (sometimes referred to as 'scope of employment')" So the contract company, the actual employer of these people should be responsible from the sounds of it, not Google.
      - teyc 15y ago
        On the surface of it yes. However, there are cases where people who work as contractors are viewed as employees by the law. Here's the reason why: these people work on Google's premises; Google probably dictates what time they have to show up for work; and generally tells them how to perform that work. I don't have the names of the legal cases where the precedents were set off the top of my head, but under those circumstances, the court has ruled that vicarious liability continues to apply.
        res0nat0r 15y ago
        I worked onsite for a large pharmaceutical company in their corporate HQ for 6 years, but never was considered any employee of that company. I couldn't access many services and perks of that company even though I was in their datacenter and on site every day for years. This was the point of hiring me via my consulting company was to move the liability, cost and responsibility to a 3rd party, which also seems to be the case here. This can be a good or bad thing depending on the situation. The original company can show it is cheaper to use a contracting company, but also as seen in the Gulf oil spill, there can be a lot of finger pointing between companies on who is responsible for damage where when it comes time to deal with real problems.
- Natsu 15y ago
  There are some who are saying "yes, seriously" to the idea that Google overlords sanctioned this. I really don't buy that. It would be just as absurd to claim that they were double agents planted by competitors. Now then, saying that Google owes some of these folks more than just an apology is perfectly reasonable in my view. I think they owe Mocality money for whatever business & reputation damage they suffered. OSM is said to have suffered about 20 troll edits from two people, if the article's update is to be believed. I'm not really sure how best to make that right, but maybe Google can go through the logs and help fix everything.

teyc 15y ago

Not everyone is blaming Google. However, many are rightly taking the position that Google has to be held responsible for actions of its contractors, which is a different thing. Google has taken the first steps, which is to sack those people. Next it has to undertake review of all the sites that these people accessed and make good any damage they caused.

steve8918 15y ago
So, if you visit HN from your place of employment, your employer should be held responsible for every single obnoxious act you make? Or if you go to Amazon.com and post a negative review on a book, the author should sue your employer? That's ridiculous. You're basically arguing that all employers should strictly limit the websites that any employee visits, since the employer should be held accountable for their employees actions. If the contractors did something against the terms of their employment and got fired, that's one thing. But to hold the employer responsible and say they should "make good" on the actions of their employees is wrong.
- teyc 15y ago
  I was equally surprised and dismayed when I learnt of this initially, but it is already established as a point of law. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability So in the case of the luxury cruise ship sinking, or Exxon Valdez, the ship owner is responsible the cost of cleanup.
  - res0nat0r 15y ago
    "Employers are vicariously liable, under the respondeat superior doctrine, for negligent acts or omissions by their employees in the course of employment (sometimes referred to as 'scope of employment')" So the contract company, the actual employer of these people should be responsible from the sounds of it, not Google.
    - teyc 15y ago
      On the surface of it yes. However, there are cases where people who work as contractors are viewed as employees by the law. Here's the reason why: these people work on Google's premises; Google probably dictates what time they have to show up for work; and generally tells them how to perform that work. I don't have the names of the legal cases where the precedents were set off the top of my head, but under those circumstances, the court has ruled that vicarious liability continues to apply.
      - res0nat0r 15y ago
        I worked onsite for a large pharmaceutical company in their corporate HQ for 6 years, but never was considered any employee of that company. I couldn't access many services and perks of that company even though I was in their datacenter and on site every day for years. This was the point of hiring me via my consulting company was to move the liability, cost and responsibility to a 3rd party, which also seems to be the case here. This can be a good or bad thing depending on the situation. The original company can show it is cheaper to use a contracting company, but also as seen in the Gulf oil spill, there can be a lot of finger pointing between companies on who is responsible for damage where when it comes time to deal with real problems.
Natsu 15y ago
There are some who are saying "yes, seriously" to the idea that Google overlords sanctioned this. I really don't buy that. It would be just as absurd to claim that they were double agents planted by competitors. Now then, saying that Google owes some of these folks more than just an apology is perfectly reasonable in my view. I think they owe Mocality money for whatever business & reputation damage they suffered. OSM is said to have suffered about 20 troll edits from two people, if the article's update is to be believed. I'm not really sure how best to make that right, but maybe Google can go through the logs and help fix everything.