Slashdot Mirror
Google Workers Sign Letter Seeking End To China Search Project (bloomberg.com)
A group of Google employees have put their name to a public letter calling on the company to abandon its plans for a Chinese search product that censors results. From a report: Project Dragonfly, as the initiative is known, would enable state surveillance at a time when the Chinese government is expanding controls over the population, according to the letter signed by at least 10 workers, predominately software engineers and researchers. The document also called on management to commit to transparency, be accountable and provide clear communication.
Ever since plans for Dragonfly emerged in August, Google parent Alphabet has been riven by internal dissent at the prospect of a search engine bending to Beijing's censorship. It was that sort of government control that prompted co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to effectively pull out of China in 2010 when it decided to stop removing controversial links from web queries. "We refuse to build technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be," the Google workers wrote in the letter. "Dragonfly in China would establish a dangerous precedent, one that would make it harder for Google to deny other countries similar concessions."
Ever since plans for Dragonfly emerged in August, Google parent Alphabet has been riven by internal dissent at the prospect of a search engine bending to Beijing's censorship. It was that sort of government control that prompted co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to effectively pull out of China in 2010 when it decided to stop removing controversial links from web queries. "We refuse to build technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be," the Google workers wrote in the letter. "Dragonfly in China would establish a dangerous precedent, one that would make it harder for Google to deny other countries similar concessions."
Unless Google is going to attack Darth Vader next, nothing gets solved.
We refuse to build technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be," the Google workers wrote in the letter
I think you're too late already, if you work at Google.
At least 10 jobs will soon be open.
Good thing they are at will workers. If they lack the will to help google succeed, then google should have no will to pay them. Ignoring china just means Baidu or Ten-cent gets first dibs. Doesn't change anything excpet google's influence on china. It's better for china to have google, crippled or not, than only local providers. Can't push back or stretch boundaries if you are not in the game.
Of course it's reprehensible to have to curtail freedoms from the point of view of the google employees. So they are right to protest too. They can take their principles to someone else not interested in chinese market expansion. Google can hire some employees in china. Everybody is happy.
The interesting thing to keep an eye out for is whether they will have the balls to resign when they realize that Google only cares about social issues as long as it's good for the bottom line.
I wouldnt want to be part of this either if I worked at google, but they have no qualms about spying on us and manipulating search results.
I hope they go all in on this, spend a ton of money developing it, and then get their asses kicked out of China like they did the last time.
Not because you want to. But because if you don't, your competitor will do it, and you'll be one of the causalities.
It's the foundation of capitalism. The principle that the only judge is "the market", and the only law is profit maximization. Nobody knows why, but profit. No actual purpose, like advancement of humanity, or a good life, required. It's just implied that a lot of money means a good life. And ignored that wherever that money comes from, will, by that same logic, have a bad life.
Can't we just have social capitalism? Based on the simple logic, that working together is more successful than working against each other.
With no profits. Only money that was *earned*. Where you can never make millions, since there is no work worth so many work hours of other work.
And with other measured values than money. Like advancement of humanity (you still get to choose the direction, of course), or wealth of humanity (as opposed to only your own at the expense of others).
I heard the best business deal is a win-win one. Let's just do that.
Did you write up a report on 8.5X11 paper with simple charts and graphs separate from volume estimates?
Dang it you,
I also wanted to post this Comment Subject line ! :-p
hanging on to our hemispheres we silently chant; cease fire stand down,, in the moms we trust..
Google collaborating with China is extremely evil.
Which is why it must be destroyed.
Corporatism != Free Market
I'm somewhat appalled by all those cynic comments.
However this turns out, it is actually a Good Thing (TM) that the Google workers show some principle. You want change to the better? Yes? Then this is part of it. No? Then shrivel up and die.
(Captcha: "delete". How appropriate!)
Google (or any other company) should listen to employee demands like this, if they want to run their company by referendum from now on!!!
(Also all future plans must be told to employees first, and they must vote on them!)
usually a reasonably short story..
I'm sure a letter will have the execs quaking in their boots.
I wonder if for some of these people, this is the first time that whining has not worked for them. It must be quite a shock.
(And I say that as someone who thinks that building a censored search for Chinese communists is evil as all get out.)
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
Working of Error
Helping other governments oppress their citizens was something that we traditionally passed on. We could've made Stalin and Mao's purges much more efficient, and they would've paid us well for it, but for some reason we passed on that.
Don't be evil. That works until you find out that evil pays really well and now you've got shareholders. Ask IBM, Google. Or maybe just lease their punch card technology from them if your engineers keep balking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/china-is-creating-concentration-camps-in-xinjiang-heres-how-we-hold-it-accountable/2018/11/23/93dd8c34-e9d6-11e8-bbdb-72fdbf9d4fed_story.html
Pichai grew up in the environment where money is placed over all other values. It’s not surprising other American values do not appeal to him.
What is Winter Sunlight?
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
Energeian Planes
Exactly this.
You need to pretty much conclude that once Google does this for China, they are going to have to roll over and do it for every fucking government.
Google participating in any form in any type of government censorship or surveillance pretty much establishes them as a company who will do anything for a buck, and who have long since given up on any fiction of their founding principal of 'do no evil'.
Google has no credibility for anything in terms of keeping out government intrusion if the proceed with this. They're just straight up greedy and indifferent to any harm they might cause. And you have to assume they'll lie in public about what they're doing because governments will forbid them to discuss it.
Every piss-pot dictator (including Trump) will have their fingers in that pie, and Google will be an active participant in the evil of various governments around the world.
If Google is going to choose to become part of the surveillance state to chase profits, then they pretty much lose all credibility as anything but a company who will roll over for any government as long as there is money to be had.
Which makes Google truly evil -- Like IBM working with the Nazis to catalog Jews kind of evil.
We refuse to build technologies that aid the powerful...
Seriously? You took a job work for an overgrown ad agency and have the total lack of self-awareness to publicly state that?
Might as well put a "Kick Me! I'm a clueless fucking moron!" sign on yourself.
JFC, EARTH CALLING!!!!
"Signed by at least 10 workers" out of the 80,000+ employed by Google in the US.
How is this news that a miniscule group of employees are upset with the direction of their employer?
I am guessing a lot of these people signing it, are fresh out of college with no experience at any other work place environment. No matter where I work, I have came across people who quit their job because their employer is doing something that seems unethical.
This could be as simple as not bending over backwards to apply a rush fix to an easy to avoid bug, that causes a little disturbance. Sitting in sales meetings where the sales guys seems to oversell the product.
But the thing is it isn't a perfect world, and the business needs to make money, if they don't you can't keep your job.
Now I have left a company for ethical reasons, but that was basically because I was being placed in a middle of two executives power play, where if I were go to either side I could be liable for some ethics violations (as both sides were in the wrong).
As for Google, I call this a tough ethical call and it isn't so black and white. China is going to censor no matter what. If Google can give citizens a better product to at least help them get the non-censored information better then Google is helping to reduce the strain on these people trying to get information, however it is also validating the governments wish to censor the information, and knowing it could just buy its power from American Companies to do the work.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
from the global surveilance and profiling company that Google is. Americans and double standards go hand in hand.
google executives sign termination papers for 'at least 10' workers, including software engineers and researchers.
On the one hand, at least some Google workers aren't as evil as Google itself has become. On the other hand, those Google workers better get their resumes in order, they'll need them in the near future. On the gripping hand*, at least we can see that Google is not evil through-and-through, there is some resistance to it.
* Been reading The Mote In God's Eye and The Gripping Hand by Niven and Pournelle again, that's where that reference comes from. Check them out if you like science fiction, they're good reads.
All the happy happy little SJW's.
Google *workers* decided to vote against *oppressing* the *vulnerable*.
Sounds like communism to me.
Maybe if you had worked harder in highschool you'ld gave a job with ethical dimensions too. Now CHANGE MY OIL you minimum wage pleb.
IBM punchcards were essential to the Nazi's categorization of Europe's people for extermination. If not for IBM's continued efforts to profit from the Nazis well into 1943 the Holocaust COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.
But yeah Americans dont do those tjings. Sure sure, you ignorant/delusional motherfucker.
"Soon-to-be Former Google Workers Sign Letter Seeking End To China Search Project"
DOZENS!
At least one of the signers, Colm Buckley, is fully in favor of implementing censorship right here in the good olâ(TM) USA. Not kidding, search him up.
if you really objected you would protest by finding a job at another company. quit faining that you give a shit take your paychecks go home and shut up.
You get to decide how such words and things are defined for you.
I get to decide it for me.
Etc.
Uncompromising fairness is my core principle.
I mean, to me, using Glenn Beck terms like "progressives", already disqualifies you from any reasonable (e.g. non-ideologic, rational, and reality-based) discussion, and I'll see you as a nutjob.
But I sure as hell will fight for your right to think and be like that!
I'd also fight for other people's right, to be free from that though.
No compromises. Win-win.
And regarding to "dead being acceptable": Well, if you ask... Frankly, I'd prefer humanity to not exist at all. It's a planetary pathogen. A literal major extinction event in Earth's history.
But no deaths are required at all! There should just not be more than one or two children per family, for a bit of time. And not China-style either. But reasonable and fair. I think "punishment" is just another word for crimes, if done by the one with the biggest stick. Punishing people for mere unintended accidents, is unacceptable.
But now I suspect you're watching Alex Jones too. Not a plus either.
NO. Not every bit of money you take was "earned". That is a invalid redefinition of the word "earned".
"Earned", by definition means, the *other* person agrees that it is fair! And that implies they know what they're actually getting, and the context of it. E.g. that you didn't work for the thing you sold, but stole it, or made slaved do it for you, or you simply worked only a tenth of the time for it, that that person had to work for that price, etc.
Otherwise it is not fair. And hence that person would not agree. And hence it would not be *earned*. But profit. QED
If you don't get that, please get a therapy for your psychopathy. And if that is normal in your society, your whole society need a therapy, and you’re statistically probably US-American (and not too old).
And don't assume what I'm thinking. You're barely doing something that resembles thinking, yourself.