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I initially thought that this was an announcement for a new pledge and thought, "they're going to forget about this the moment it's convenient." Then I read the

• lenerdenator 2y ago
  The market solves all problems. ... or at least that's what these people have to be telling themselves at all times.
  • johnnyanmac 2y ago
    It is partially the markets fault. If they were demonized for this, there's at least be a veneer of trying to look moral. Instead they can simply go full mask off. That's why you shouldn't tolerate the intolerant.
  • smallmancontrov 2y ago
    The market's objectives are wealth-weighted. This is a very important point to remember when assessing ideas like "Is it good to build swarms of murderbots to mow down rioting peasants angry over having expenses but no jobs?" Most people might answer "no," but if the people with money answer "yes," that becomes the market's objective. Then the incentives diffuse through the economy and you don't just get the murderbots, you also get the news stations explaining how the violent peasants brought this on themselves and the politicians making murderbots tax deductible and so on.
    • amarcheschi 2y ago
      Anduril already asked this question with a strong "fuck yes" Edit: answered, not asked
  • kelseyfrog 2y ago
    I have full faith that the market[1] will direct the trolley onto the morally optimal track. It's invisible hand will guide mine when I decide or decide against pulling the lever. Either way, I can be sure that the result is maximally beneficial to the participants, myself included. 1. https://drakelawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/lrdiscourse122014-guerra-pujol.pdf https://drakelawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/lrdisc...
    • mystified5016 2y ago
      The magic market fairy godmother has decided that TVs with built in ads and spyware are good for you. The market fairy thinks this is so good for you that there are no longer any alternatives to a smart TV besides "no tv" The market fairy has also decided that medication commercials on TV is good for you. That your car should report your location, speed, and driving habits to your insurer, car manufacturer, and their 983,764 partners at all times. Maximally beneficial indeed.
• quesera 2y ago
  "We won't use your dollars and efforts for bad and destructive activities, until we accumulate enough of your dollars and efforts that we no longer care about your opinions".
• random3 2y ago
  this, but broader. Goodness and morality is a subjective and more importantly relative measure, making it useless in many situations (as this one). while knowing this seems useless, it's actually the missing intrinsic compass and the cause for a lot of bad and stupid behavior (by the definition that something is stupid if chosen knowing it will cause negative consequences for the doer) Everything should primarily be measured based on its primary goal. For "for-profit" companies that's obvious in their name and definition. That there's nothing that should be assumed beyond what's stated is the premise of any contract whether commercial, public or personal (like friendship) is a basic tool for debate and decision making.
• abeppu 2y ago
  I guess a question becomes, how does dropping these self-imposed limitations work as a marketing exercise? Probably most of their customers or prospective customers won't care, but will a cheery multi-colored new product land a little differently? If Northrop Grumman made a smart home hub, you might be reluctant to put it in your living room.
  • lenerdenator 2y ago
    Marketing doesn't matter to oligarchs.
  • HPMOR 2y ago
    They are dropping these pledges to avoid securities lawsuits. “Everything is securities fraud” and presumably if they have a stated corporate pledge to do something, and knowingly violate it, any drop in the stock price could use this as grounds.
  • a_shovel 2y ago
    Being a defense contractor isn't a problem that a little corporate rearrangement can't fix. Put the consumer division under a new subsidiary with a friendly name and you're golden. Even among the small percentage who know the link, it's likely nobody will really care. For certain markets ("tacticool" gear, consumer firearms) being a defense contractor is even a bonus.
• Retric 2y ago
  > while megacorps aren't fundamentally "evil" (for some definitions of evil), I think megacorps being evil is universal. It tends to be corrupt cop evil vs serial killer evil, but being willing to do anything for money has historically been categorized as evil behavior. That doesn’t mean society would be better or worse off without them, but it would be interesting to see a world where companies pay vastly higher taxes as they grow.
  • zelon88 2y ago
    You're taking about pre-Clinton consumerism. That system is dead. It used to dictate that the company who could offer the best value deserved to take over most of the market. That's old thinking. Now we have servitization. Now the business who can most efficiently offer value deserves the entire market. Basically, iterate until you're the only one left standing and then never "sell" anything but licenses ever again.
    • Ekaros 2y ago
      The bait-and-switch model is absolutely amazing as well. Start by offering a service covered with ads. Then add paid tier to get rid of ads. Next add tier with payment and ads. And finally add ads back to every possible tier. Not to forget about keeping them in content all the time.
      • CrimsonCape 2y ago
        If you have ever seen the prank interview between Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan, "Do you wear wigs? Have you worn wigs? Will you wear wigs?" and Elijah breaks down laughing in total shock at how hilariously bad the interview is... ...I just picture a similar conversation with a CEO going: "Sir, shareholders want to see more improvement this quarter." CEO: "Do we run ads? Have we run ads? Will we run ads this time?" (The answer is inevitably yes to all of these)
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
• deadbabe 2y ago
  A megacorp is amoral. They have no concern over an individual anymore than a human has concern for an ant, because individuals simply don’t register to them. The ant may regard the human as pure evil for the destruction it rains upon its colony, but the ants are not even a thought in the human’s mind most of the time.
• mystified5016 2y ago
  > they are fundamentally unconcerned with goodness or morality No, no. Call a spade a spade. This behavior and attitude is evil. Corporations under modern American capitalism must be evil. That's how capitalism works. You succeed in capitalism not by building a better mousetrap, but by destroying anyone who builds a better moustrap than you. You litigate, acquire, bribe, and rewrite legislation to ensure yours is the best and only mousetrap available to purchase, with a token 'competitor' kept on life support so you can plausibly deny anticompetitive practices. If you're a good company trying to do good things, you simply can't compete. The market just does not value what is good, just, or beneficial. The market only wants number to go up, and to go up right now at any cost. Amazon will start pumping out direct clones of your product for pennies. What are you gonna do, sue Amazon?! best of luck.
  • roca 2y ago
    "The market" is just a lot of people making decisions about what to do with their money. If you want the market to behave differently, be the change you want to see, and teach others to do the same.
• kqr 2y ago
  Not evil, perhaps, but run by Moloch[1] -- which is possibly just as bad. Their incentives are set up to throw virtually all human values under the bus because even if they don't, they will be out-marginal-profited by someone that does. [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
• dylan604 2y ago
  What is Googs going to do, leave money on the table? And if Googs doesn't do it, someone else will, so it might as well be them that makes money for their shareholders. Technically, couldn't activist shareholders come together and claim by not going after this market the leadership should be replaced for those that would? After all, share prices is the only metric that matters
  • r00fus 2y ago
    So "if I don't steal it someone else will"? I'd rate that as evil.
    • 1024core 2y ago
      Maybe it's more like "If I don't do this job, someone else will"...
      • moralestapia 2y ago
        This is the big issue that came along when stable households (mom/dad taking care of you) were replaced by fentanyl and TikTok. Moral character is something that has to be taught, it doesn't just come out on its own. If your parents don't do it properly, you'll be just another cog in the soulless machine to which human life is of no value.
        • greenchair 2y ago
          bingo. taught and reinforced with consequences.
        • ErigmolCt 2y ago
          The real issue is that corporate incentives don't prioritize morality
          • moralestapia 2y ago
            Corporations are run by people, who are not amoral.
• nirav72 2y ago
  They’re not evil, they’re amoral and are designed to maximize profits for their investors. Evil is subjective.
  • moralestapia 2y ago
    >Evil is subjective. This is a meme that needs to die, for 99% of cases out there the line between good/bad is very clear cut. Dumb nihilists keep the world from moving forward with regards to human rights and lawful behavior.
  • pseudalopex 2y ago
    > They’re not evil, they’re amoral Most people consider neglect evil in my experience.
  • mainecoder 2y ago
    >Evil is subjective. Everything is subjective - moralist bro It's all priced in - Wall street bro learn to code - tech bro
  • kelipso 2y ago
    Paperclip maximizing robot making the excuse that it's just maximizing paperclips, that's what it was designed to do, there's even a statute saying that robots must do only what it was designed to do, so it's not evil just amoral. Weird thing is for corporations, it's humans running the whole thing.
  • rmrf100 2y ago
    This is evil.
  • josefx 2y ago
    > they’re amoral and are designed to maximize profits Isn't that a contradiction? Morality is fundamentally a sense of "right and wrong". If they reward anything that maximizes short term profit and punish anything that works against it then it appears to me that they have a simple, but clearly defined sense of morality centered around profit.
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• layer8 2y ago
  “Drop” has really become ambiguous in headlines.
• spacemanspiff01 2y ago
  I mark when they changed their motto as the turning point.
• 42772827 2y ago
  > they are fundamentally unconcerned with goodness or morality, and any appearance that they are is purely a marketing exercise This is flatly untrue. Corporations are made up of humans who make decisions. They are indeed concerned with goodness and/or morality. Saying otherwise lets them off the hook for the explicit decisions they make every day about how to operate their company. It's one reason why there are shareholder meetings, proxy votes, activist investors, Certified B-Corporations, etc.
• portaouflop 2y ago
  Megacorps are a form of slow AI in itself — totally alien to human minds and essentially uncontrollable
• ninetyninenine 2y ago
  A megacorp is made up of people. So it's people who are fundamentally evil. The main thing here I think is anonymity through numbers and complexity. You and thousands of others just want to see the numbers go up. And that desire is what ultimately influences decisions like this. If google stock dropped because of this then google wouldn't do it. But it is the actions of humans in aggregate that keeps it up. Megacorporations are scapegoats when in actuality they are just a set of democratic rules. The corporation is just a window into the true nature of humanity.
  • anon373839 2y ago
    You're half right. Corporations are just made of people. But, they're more than the sum of their parts. The numbers and complexity do more than provide anonymity: they provide a mechanism where individuals can work in concert to accomplish bad things in the aggregate, without (necessarily) requiring any particular individual to violate their conscience. It just happens through the power of incentives and specialization. If you're in upper management, the complexity also makes it easier to turn a blind eye to what is happening down below.
  • Barrin92 2y ago
    >A megacorp is made up of people. So it's people who are fundamentally evil. That is to make a mistake of composition. An entity can have properties that none of its parts have. A cube made out of bricks is round, but none of the bricks are round. You might be evil, your cells aren't evil. It's often the case that institutions are out of alignment with its members. It can even be the case that all participants of an organization are evil, but the system still functions well. (usually one of the arguments for markets, which is one such system). When creating an organization that is effectively the most basic task, how to structure it such that even when its individual members are up to no good, the functioning of the organization is improved.
    • ninetyninenine 2y ago
      But people are aware companies are evil. Why don't they sell the stock? Why do people still buy the stock? Obviously because they don't give a shit.
• xeonmc 2y ago
  Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower.
• ErigmolCt 2y ago
  Ethical pledges from corporations, especially ones as large as Google, are PR tools first and foremost. They last only as long as they align with strategic and financial interests
• newswasboring 2y ago
  > they are fundamentally unconcerned with goodness or morality, I would argue that is fundamentally evil. Because evil pays the best. Its like drunk driving, on an empty road it can only harm you, but we live in a society full of other people.
• AndyNemmity 2y ago
  They are fundamentally totalitarian. Orders come from the top, and are taken from below. Seems fundamentally evil.
  • DecoySalamander 2y ago
    By this definition, mom telling you to clean your room is also a form of totalitarianism, and yet you somehow find the strength to manage.
• coliveira 2y ago
  Well, the US gov blew away its opportunity to break down Google and other mega-corps and restore any sense of decency. Google just entered the Trump bandwagon, which means the monopoly lawsuit will go nowhere, and in exchange Google will do Trump's bidding.
• Valakas_ 2y ago
  Being unconcerned with goodness and morality is literally the definition of evil. Megacorps are sociopathic and evil by design. The only thing that matters is shareholder value, not ethics or morals. Morals and ethics only seem to have value, if they result in increased value for tye shareholder, which again is the only thing that these sociopathic entities are concerned with.
• dkkergoog 2y ago
  [dead]
• ajdude 2y ago
  > while megacorps aren't fundamentally "evil" (for some definitions of evil) A couple years ago, my state banned single use plastic bags. The very moment they did, all of my local Walmarts switched to heavier plastic bags that technically weren't single use. They still gave them away for free just as they did with the first ones. (These we're good quality bags and I was frustrated that Walmart didn't just give them away by default). Eventually my state banned those too, and like clockwork, Walmart was giving away paper bag bags -- decent quality ones, too. Though I still really liked the thicker plastic ones since I could use them for other things. This made me realize that no corporation would do anything slightly better for the environment unless forced. I think this is the case for anything a corporation would do, including evil things. I think they just follow the money, no ethics, and it's up to the government to provide those ethics.
• dleink 2y ago
  Google is a special case because they specifically removed the "Don't Be Evil" clause, therefore, I can only assume they are in fact fundamentally "evil"
• Aeolun 2y ago
  I heard megacorps described a while ago as “a sentient pile of money”, which seems pretty much correct. Money has no morals.
• chefandy 2y ago
  Every corporate pronouncement of virtue must be appended with “until we get paid enough, or the right people ask.”