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Senior Google Scientist Resigns Over 'Forfeiture of Our Values' in China (theintercept.com)
A senior Google research scientist has quit the company in protest over its plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China. The Intercept: Jack Poulson worked for Google's research and machine intelligence department, where he was focused on improving the accuracy of the company's search systems. In early August, Poulson raised concerns with his managers at Google after The Intercept revealed that the internet giant was secretly developing a Chinese search app for Android devices. The search system, code-named Dragonfly, was designed to remove content that China's authoritarian government views as sensitive, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest. After entering into discussions with his bosses, Poulson decided in mid-August that he could no longer work for Google. He tendered his resignation and his last day at the company was August 31. He told The Intercept in an interview that he believes he is one of about five of the company's employees to resign over Dragonfly. He felt it was his "ethical responsibility to resign in protest of the forfeiture of our public human rights commitments," he said.
I have quit jobs that I felt has turned me into a bad person, and I would look in the mirror and realized I wasn't happy with what I had became.
Sure we all have jobs that we may not like or disagree with, but if you have a moral objection to it, you should quit your job. If you are Senior Data scientist, Google may have a harder time replacing your job. But I am sure they will find someone to fill the gap. But the thing is, we can't always change the world, but at least we can feel good about our current place in it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The tech world are not all that into free speech anymore, specially not those coming out of Silicon Valley. ;)
L'Idiot
It seems pretty ripe to claim Google is forfeiting values in China, when it's applying the very same values of control over the populace in the U.S. by removing many kinds of YouTube videos it does not like, either for content or ideology.
If you are removing content based on ideology, you have no reason to claim any moral high ground over China.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If I were to take a contrarian view of this, I would ask: "What is the difference between Google censoring search results based on the public security laws of China, versus Google censoring search results based on the copyright laws of the USA and EU?"
The difference is that in the USA it's legal to include as much of a copyrighted work as necessary for criticism or to otherwise make a point, but in China if you include information that the government doesn't want you to share, you get broken up for parts and your organs are sold to the highest bidder.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You don't really believe all that nonsense, do you?
It's like you copy-pasted a couple paragraphs from an official KGB "news release".
Or not (as a VERY small number of people have chosen to do) - everybody has their price, and he clearly wasn't offered enough.
Not everyone has their price. Although that has more to do with what other options a person has access to. I make good money in a career I enjoy, so even an extra $100k in salary wouldn't get me to do a job I hate or that I'm morally opposed to. But if I was making minimum wage, I would likely take a job I was morally opposed to for a $100k raise. Once you're high enough on Maslow's hierarchy of basic needs, it takes for less sacrifice to do what you consider to be the right thing.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke