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

Hypocrites.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're concerned about moral and ethical issues why the hell do they work for Google?

Re: Hypocrites.

[alvinrod]

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.

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.

[sjritt00]

I guess that was a benefit of my business degree; no time wasted on ethics! Ditto for the legal and poli-science folks. Of course, things might have changed in the past 30 years.

Re:Hypocrites.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has politized their work space. Allowing and encouraging political activism in the office is the same as allowing religion in the work place. Of course you need to support a certain political point of view.

Re: Hypocrites.

[SuricouRaven]

People pick up what is right and wrong from their parents and society. Unfortunately most never get beyond the moral sophistication of a child: "That person has done a bad thing. I need to see him made to suffer now, and torment him until the scales are balanced." The crudest form of collective vengeance pretending to be justice, and the reason many prison systems are designed to make the inmates miserable and destroy any sense of hope and connection they may feel to wider society without any regard to rehabilitation.

Re: Hypocrites.

[Reverend Green]

It was more like China's Hundred Flowers Campaign. Encourage free open public discussion - then ruthlessly oppress people who said something that disagreed with the ruling ideology.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

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".

Code yellow?

[DontBeAMoran]

The document referred to the situation as a "code yellow," a process used in engineering to address critical problems that impact several teams.

It is absolultely not, of course, a reference to Chinese people.

Wait until they find out that other secret project

[ffkom]

... where Google secretly hires thousands of (conveniently also cheaper) Chinese programmers to substitute those indignant first-world employees who intend to obstruct the profit maximization process. It's not like any larger corporation would be willing to put morale before profits, you know...

Sounds like the need an IRB

[El Cubano]

It sounds like they need something like an Institutional Review Board, but geared more towards the ethics of the project objectives and the potential applications of the technology in question.

It is probably not a bad thing for any very influential company in the tech space to consider.

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.

Censored Search Engine for America

[hsthompson69]

They do realize that google regularly censors results in America, right?

Any urgent moral or ethical issues with say, blacklisting Alex Jones? Down ranking alt-right sites? Artificially manipulating auto-completes to prefer one political party?

I'm not sure if these people realize that the "secret" work isn't just in China.

What a joke

[hoofie]

This made me laugh myself silly : "The letter also called on Google to allow employees to participate in ethical reviews of the company's products".

Yeah right - That's a tough one; involve your employees in "Ethical Reviews" and risk an immense revenue stream from China.

I wonder which way the company will lean ?

Don't be evil.

[alternative_right]

Remember when people believed the Google motto?

Surely they would not turn into Microsoft, IBM, or any of the other tech giants who turned in evil in the past.

Whoops. Make a company big enough, get shareholders involved, and have lots of employees who are hoping to cash in and cash out, and suddenly you have another evil corporation.