Google Employees Protest Secret Work On Censored Search Engine For China (nytimes.com)

According to The New York Times, "Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company's decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source)." In the letter, the employees wrote that the project and Google's apparent willingness to abide by China's censorship requirements "raise urgent moral and ethical issues." They added, "Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment." From the report: The letter is circulating on Google's internal communication systems and is signed by about 1,000 employees, according to two people familiar with the document, who were not authorized to speak publicly. The letter also called on Google to allow employees to participate in ethical reviews of the company's products, to appoint external representatives to ensure transparency and to publish an ethical assessment of controversial projects. The document referred to the situation as a "code yellow," a process used in engineering to address critical problems that impact several teams.

Comments

At Geac, we did the opposite

[davecb]

Various countries asked Geac to make library systems that would report who borrowed, for example, "Lady Chatterley's Lover". Our answer? "That would be illegal in Germany, so we can't do that".

Re: At Geac, we did the opposite

[davecb]

If you try to adhere to every country's laws, you won't be able to offer a product.

Geac wasn't trying to obey everyone's law, we wanted to obey the best law.

In fact, common adoption of other country's laws is how we created both "commercial law" and "international law". The Hanseatic League made what was snarkily called "german village law" into a norm from what is now St Petersburg in Russia, through the Baltic States, Germany, Scandinavia to a certain well-known city now called the City of London.

Re:Confused: Google already does this

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they shut that down in 2010 and redirected it to Google Hong Kong. China's firewall now blocks it.

This latest move is about Google kowtowing to Chinese pressure and standing up a censored google.cn again.

Re: Hypocrites.

[sexconker]

I think a lot of it probably has to do with Google's workforce tending to be younger and perhaps fresh out of college. I suspect that most computer science programs have an ethics course that their students are required to take, but I suspect that it's a pretty worthless class that isn't well taught and that students don't take seriously. The moral compass of the young is not yet fully developed. I'd say it's even spotty at best in a lot of adults.

People have a strong tendency to believe that what they're doing is right, and that their cause is just. Ask anyone from either side of a protest where Antifa and various alt-right groups show up about why they're their and they'll tell you that it's because they needed to do the right thing. You could argue that they're both misguided in their own ways so it's not such a simple dichotomy, but the point is that everyone there believes themselves to be there for the right reasons.

I think that it's rather rare for people to take a step back and actually think about whether what they're doing is moral. Most people tend to just trudge on ahead until they suddenly find themselves up to their necks in a mire.

It's been quite a while since I got my degree, but I can confirm an ethics class was a requirement and I can also confirm it was a worthless class.

Re:Hypocrites.

[phantomfive]

I don't think everyone was cheering. Most were saying, "Yeah, at work you should focus on work." There's a difference.