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Leaked Video Shows Google Executives' Candid Reaction To Trump Victory (theguardian.com)
A number of Slashdot users have shared a leaked Google video from Breitbart, revealing the candid reactions of company executives to Donald Trump's unexpected victory in 2016. The Guardian summarizes: In an hour-long conversation, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, chief executive Sundar Pichai, and executives Kent Walker, Ruth Porat and Eileen Noughton offered their reflections on the election, sought to reassure employees about issues such as immigration status and benefits for same-sex partners, and answered questions on topics ranging from filter bubbles and political polarization to encryption and net neutrality. The executives' reactions ranged from the emotional to the philosophical to the purely pragmatic. Porat appeared near tears in discussing her open support for Hillary Clinton and her father, who was a refugee. Walker discussed global political trends toward nationalism, populism and xenophobia. Pichai noted that the company was already "thoughtfully engaging" with Trump's transition team. While Breitbart argues the video shows evidence of Google's inherent bias against Republicans, Google says the executives are simply sharing their "personal views" and that it has no political bias. It does beg the question, should politics be discussed in the workplace? Longtime Slashdot reader emil writes in response to the video: [...] Disregarding the completely inappropriate expression of partisan views in the workplace, the video claims that "history is our side." These executives appear to have forgotten the incredible tumult in the distant past of the U.S. The last election was not an electoral tie that was thrown into the house of representatives (as was the election of 1800). The last election did not open a civil war as happened in 1861 when Lincoln took office. The last election did not open war with Great Britain, and will likely not precipitate a new set of proposed constitutional amendments to curb presidential power as did either of James Madison's terms in office (War of 1812, Hartford Convention). There may be a time for tears, and a time for hugs, but that time cannot be in the workplace. Most Fortune 500 employees took the news of the latest president elect with quiet perseverance in their professional settings regardless of their leanings, and it is time for Google to encourage the same. "At a regularly scheduled all-hands meeting, some Google employees and executives expressed their own personal views in the aftermath of a long and divisive election season," Google said in a statement. "For over 20 years, everyone at Google has been able to freely express their opinions at these meetings. Nothing was said at that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias ever influences the way we build or operate our products. To the contrary, our products are built for everyone, and we design them with extraordinary care to be a trustworthy source of information for everyone, without regard to political viewpoint."
Political views are part of life. I don't need Emil to tell me what is appropriate to discuss and what is not. In fact, it is inappropriate for /. to push this stupid silencing agenda. As long as a discussion is respectful, it is appropriate everywhere.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Trump's campaign rhetoric really scared the crap out of many people. And not in a "OMG, Republicans nonsense!" way. In a "Are we going to start having to hide Muslim families in our basements?" way.
At this point, I think the main thing protecting everyone is the sheer incompetence and disorganization of his entire administration. Its clear now that he's far more interested Tweeting and continuing to hold those campaign rallies than in actually doing the job of President.
So what?
A large group of youngish, diverse, highly educated, intelligent technologists were dismayed at Trump's election.
I fail to see anything surprising.
I'd be equally unsurprised by the (likely) positive mood at a morning sales meeting at a southern Indiana John Deere dealership.
I watched pretty much the whole thing rather than reading excerpts. I thought it was an interesting window into the tech world and Google world specifically right after the election...
The video is meant to show bias, and it does - but it also shows at that point at least some expressed that there should be a willingness to listen to opposing views, a feel that now seems to be utterly gone from the left and also for Google internally where it is safe to identify you gender as Dragon, but not safe to identify as a conservative.
One thought that occurred to me as the Google employees and execs were having Q&A was - there was talk about inequality and low information voters. But both of those notions are way too simplistic.
One of the Google employees even brought to light the contradiction of the supposed "low information voter" by saying they consumed a lot of "fake news". Well that is MORE information, not low. And the reality is that a lot of what was considered fake news by some, was not really fake at all. In fact the reason Trump won was because we live in a high-information world now, where all of the people can understand the political class as a whole are scum rather than believing the truly Fake News that has been pushed on us for decades about all Washington politicians.
On the subject of inequality, it strikes me that people always refer to this in the financial sense. But most people do not care if someone makes more than them - otherwise why would we idolize music and movie stars? The inequality that is dangerous, is more the inequality of power not money - that is, the power over your own life. So many times we see people at high levels of government or business or really anything, get away with stuff where we know we would be in jail or worse. At the same time rules from those same people control more and more of what we are allowed to do personally. THAT is the kind of thing that leads to true resentment, a dangerous force.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Citizens United ruling gave corporations the right to express political views. If you don't like it, you'll have to overturn that ruling with new legislation (and potentially an amendment).
I feel like the current administration only likes it when the laws work for them, and want to ignore laws that are inconvenient for them. It's the sort of crap that dictators of a banana republic try to pull.
(not AC because clearly non-partisan. i.e. hopefully I pissed off everyone)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yeah republicans whine about anti-conservative bias, but aren't you trying to dictate what private individuals can say in a private business's private meetings??
Kind of like how Donald Trump chanted "lock her up" while he committed high treason, colluding with Russia's attack on America. And how he's now working to protect Russia from consequence while laying down our country's defenses against continued Russian attacks on America....
Google seems to waste a non trivial amount of resources kvetching about politics and SJW dogma. Maybe that's a good thing. Otherwise they'd be even more evil with their privacy slurping products.
In any event, I've finally done away with google search. duckduckgo is my primary with bing as a backup. Now I just have to move away from my gmail accounts - easier said than done.
While Breitbart argues the video shows evidence of Google's inherent bias against Republicans, ...
Breitbart arguing about inherent bias.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Google is a private business. There are certain things they can't do (racial discrimination, age or gender discrimination) but overall, they can do whatever they want and they can be as biased as they want. Just as Fox News is extremely biased and constantly bashes Democrats.
And that's the way it should be. Private businesses have the right to be biased assholes, regardless of whether that bias is liberal or conservative. And that's why James Damore deserved to be fired. Not because he expressed a conservative opinion, but because he isn't smart enough to understand that the First Amendment applies to government, not private business.
If Google is claiming that this video merely expresses the employee's "personal view", why are they using company assets to make a company video, during company time, during a company review seminar?
Why do they need to make a company video to "reflect" on the political outcome?
I'm sorry google, you're full of shit. This isn't a personal view, this is a company view.
You are right, nobody is silencing Republicans. They first have to slap them with a "Neo-Nazi", "Alt-Right" or "Sexist" label, and then they censor them.
There are far more middle class people (who ultimately pay most taxes) than 'poors'. Which is why Bernie and the like don't get elected. Thank dog.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Feel free to express a liberal view to the Trump White House.
See what you get.
He never went public
No but he kept showing it to more and more and more groups until he got the reaction he wanted. I recall watching an interview he gave on youtube (it was long and had a sympathetic interviewer, no I don't recall the URL this was probably over a year ago) with Damore describing the process.
One thing that stood out to me was he took his work to the "skeptics group". It received a rather chilly reception there for reasons I think were correct. Basically they didn't like his reasoning, but they didn't give him a very detaild point-by-point rebttal or "debate" him. He took that as bias and kept on showing it around until it got a reaction. Which it did eventually as we all know.
Much of that criticism accused him of writing things not contained in his memo anywhere.
His memo was bad. I read it. The thing is if your work is clearly based on invalid prespposisions or picks a line of reasoning which reaches certain conclusions. You don't get a free pass on that simply because you didn't explicitly state those. In my person opinion (which acording to the groupthink here is wrong so I'll get silenced i.e. downmodded for it) the memo was not only excessively simplistic but relied on heavily cherry picked data.
It also didn't bring anything new which hasn't been hashed out very a thousand times before by substantially better writers with a better grasp of the literature. He waded into a known contentious topic both loudly (he KEPT on pushing his memo because he wanted a positive response) and very ill prepared. That's like taking a whack at a wasp nest with a baseball bat with no protective gear and standing around to watch the results.
So he got stung all over. Which was, to put it mildly, a bit predictable.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So NOW you're concerned about companies using their political influence? Where were you when conservative companies like Koch Industries were literally threatening to fire employees if they didn't vote Republican (which is somehow legal now due to the Citizens United). Google's reaction is fairly mild by comparison. It's entirely appropriate for a company to be concerned about how a new administration will affect their business and discuss it with their employees.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
anti-truth perspective
At risk of defending Trump I think the entire US media and absolutely the social media companies have an anti-truth perspective.
Trust me, the truth may not be shared via Trump's twitter account but it sure as fuck isn't coming from his loudest opponents either.