Google Employees Protest Secret Work On Censored Search Engine For China (nytimes.com) 169
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.
Hypocrites. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're concerned about moral and ethical issues why the hell do they work for Google?
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Everyone has different boundaries and different limits. It just happens that these people have the same limits as Google, except for this new secret project.
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At least the other stuff has a less obvious "war crime" hanging over it like a sword of Damocles?
Re: Hypocrites. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Informative)
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. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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I can also confirm it [Ethics] was a worthless class
Underwater basket-weaving is more important and useful than an Ethics class.
You might not have seen everything yet (believe it or not for a 20 yo), but you should have picked up what's right and wrong from your parents years and years ago. Even a well-taught Ethics class would generate a "Sucks to be you" response.
Either you try to do the "golden rule/right thing" by other people even far far down the chain, or you don't. Sometimes they'll agree with you, sometimes they won't. Sometimes they'd disa
Re: Hypocrites. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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You might not have seen everything yet (believe it or not for a 20 yo)
Are you calling me a 20 year old? I wish!
Re: Hypocrites. (Score:4, Insightful)
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If everyone had different boundaries and limits, nobody would actually be for free speech. Because once you place any boundary or limit on speech it is by definition not free, it becomes restricted speech.
Well, there are plenty of people who believe that "free speech" should include things like commercial speech and use of money. This means in practice that the freedom of expression of the majority of people is ruled out because they can't be heard in between the screaming and the paid advertising.
I believe that there have to be restrictions on "free speech" of commercial entities in order to allow "freedom of expression" of individual people. We might find that we disagree and that it's not because you be
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From a Supreme Court ruling: The idea that some must be silenced "to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment."
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You can say what you want but nobody has to listen to you. Nobody is prevented from speaking because some people are better equipped to send their message better than others.
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Their Moral Compass only really works when they are asked to work on US Government projects.
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So if someone implies that women and men are different, they get fired. But authoritarians who mandate which children can live and pushes harmful gender roles, that's A-OK? Welcome to Google.
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Probably the one where you get aborted when you're the wrong gender.
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Re:Hypocrites. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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... [wikipedia.org]
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Everyone on this site cheered when Google went evil and fired that man for saying men and women are different. Working with China? What else do you expect from an evil corporation? This is actually pretty tame. Google isn't giving people cancer like Monsanto or robbing their bank accounts like Wells Fargo.
Is the Chinese censorship really any worse than the self-censorship non-lefty employees must practice to survive at the firm? Isn't this negativity on the part of employees just a sign of intolerance of Chinese culture?
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Everyone on this site cheered when Google went evil and fired that man for saying men and women are different.
Everyone? Hm. Methinks there is an absurd amount of hyperbole flying through the air today.
Have a nice day. :)
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Everyone on this site cheered when Google went evil and fired that man for saying men and women are different. Working with China? What else do you expect from an evil corporation? This is actually pretty tame. Google isn't giving people cancer like Monsanto or robbing their bank accounts like Wells Fargo.
Well, if it's just censorship and denial of information, that's one level of evil. However, if that censorship is coupled with surveillance that is shared with the government, then it possibly leads to legal penalties that are life changing. If I search for Falun Gong, it's one thing to not see any hits, but it's an entirely different thing to get a knock on my door or see my social credit rating drop.
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I don't know who told you that, but I've always been in favour of engagement with NK.
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Re: Hypocrites. (Score:2)
Google is already censored in America. It just needs to be censored in a little different way for China.
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If they're concerned about moral and ethical issues why the hell do they work for Google?
I guess they love the kind of FlavorAid they serve at Google's cafeterias.
For food (Score:2)
The answer is obvious that does not make THEIR position more hypocrite. They are just realist but still trying to do something. What have you done agaisnt censorship except calling other hypocrites about working at
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Or at least quit now. "Protesting" at a place you work at voluntarily is pretty hypocritical. If you really cared you would resign. It's not like it's hard for tech people to find another gig.
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If they're concerned about moral and ethical issues why the hell do they work for Google?
Because Google is a rather moral and ethical company. You obviously disagree but you might want to consider that Google employees have much better visibility into company actions than you do. I'll bet that if you listed all of the immoral and unethical things you think Google does or has done, many of them would simply be untrue (there's a lot of misinformation floating around), and the rest would be things that reasonable people can disagree on.
Actually, I think this question about censorship in China
Google ethical? (Score:2)
Because Google is a rather moral and ethical company.
Hahahahaha.... They are a company that makes money by pimping vast amounts of personal data about you and everyone you know to advertisers. Spare me the notion that they are some sort of ethical paragon of an organization.
You obviously disagree but you might want to consider that Google employees have much better visibility into company actions than you do.
So did the people who worked at Enron so I'm not seeing much validity in your argument. Good people often work for bad organizations.
Actually, I think this question about censorship in China is one that reasonable people can disagree on. I appreciate and agree with the goals of the protesters, but I think they're making perfect the enemy of good. It's better to provide a censored search engine in China than to provide no search engine in China, from an ethical perspective.
Could not disagree more and I don't think your argument is a reasonable one at all. If censorship is bad you don't eliminate it by facilitating censorsh
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They are a company that makes money by pimping vast amounts of personal data about you and everyone you know to advertisers.
Google does not sell user data, nor even loan or rent it out (the implication one would take from "pimping"). Advertisers do not get any information about you or anyone you know from Google.
So did the people who worked at Enron so I'm not seeing much validity in your argument. Good people often work for bad organizations.
Enron was a case where a very small number of people -- just the financial types -- were the only ones who needed to know what was going on. What Google is accused of is very different. Vast numbers of Google engineers would have to be involved in most of what Google is often accused of.
Could not disagree more and I don't think your argument is a reasonable one at all. If censorship is bad you don't eliminate it by facilitating censorship. So by censoring they are reducing censorship? That circular reasoning right there.
Only if you don't think it throug
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This argument has been essentially disproven for years. Remember the whole "But if we engage China, they will become more open."?
Instead, they just became wealthier with more resources and skills for oppression.
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It's like the old saying.. the husband, wife, whatever, is always the last to know. These employees probably signed up when the logo "don't be evil" was still in full force. It probably slipped right by them that Google dropped that logo. Don't know what the new one is.. "Be Evil" ?
At Geac, we did the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
Integrity (Score:4, Insightful)
I work for a company that makes quality management software. When we dealt with smaller companies they would often ask if we could add a feature to fudge audit logs to fix "mistakes." The answer was always *NO* as there was a facility to update the data, but with a log item indicating it was changed. If it was a legitimate mistake, an auditor wouldn't ding them for fixing it. Of course there were always creative answers as to why they would need to edit a value without there being a log entry...
Re: At Geac, we did the opposite (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Kind of amusing considering Google has been censored in Germany for over a decade.
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Code yellow? (Score:5, Funny)
It is absolultely not, of course, a reference to Chinese people.
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Re: Code yellow? (Score:2)
Code Mauve...
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It's part of the ICS of Google.
Code Yellow: New or old problem that will have a huge negative business impact if not addressed properly. It gives the code-leader power to reassign any persons work to resolve the code yellow.
Code Red: There's an active problem that is having a huge impact, or will be active in hours or days if not addressed right now. The code leader gets extensive powers.
Neither are used often. Code Yellow isn't declared every quarter. Code Red isn't declared every year.
These aren't sim
Wait until they find out that other secret project (Score:5, Funny)
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... 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...
Gonna be interesting though. The tension between the supposed commitment to sunshine and puppies vs. their desire for all that Chinese cash.
Fuck. Again? (Score:1)
Who are all these Google employees who didn't have any problems when Google helped the Chinese authorities track down, imprison, torture and kill political enemies? They've done this for more than a decade and it's public knowledge.
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Individuals mean nothing. Only Groups matter. OR so it seems.
Confused: Google already does this (Score:4, Insightful)
I am confused. Google already has a censored search engine for China at http://www.google.cn/ [google.cn] that has been operating for over a decade. What new ethical question is being raised here? Why are these Google employees suddenly upset now but they weren't last week?
Re:Confused: Google already does this (Score:5, Informative)
No, they shut that down in 2010 [wikipedia.org] 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.
Change starts from within (Score:1)
I am heartened to hear of these employees changing the course of Google. Change is difficult sometimes, but the best change always starts from within.
To progress.
Sounds like the need an IRB (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like they need something like an Institutional Review Board [wikipedia.org], 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.
LOL how clueless must they be (Score:1, Insightful)
Google, Apple and Microsoft have all moved to China! The Chinese government offered them 0% Tax rate. Its a move by the Chinese to secure more control over the technology that facilitates modern life, and therefore control.
And you know what... the people at the top don't care. They want a more brutal regime over the populace. They want an aristocracy of the powerful elite over the general populace.
This is why Soros and other big players are backing the democrats so hard - they want to waterdown the 1st and
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:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
The only smart person here!
To the rest, rapture will eat you alive.
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The deep state, in league with democrats, and the main stream media are abusing the justice system to take political control of America and pervert its democracy.
By getting Trump elected....Maybe change your medication or something.
1000, eh? (Score:3)
I bet fewer than six will quit when Google proceeds.
Now, those six - they might be worth hiring.
Censored Search Engine for America (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Of course, Google made the mistake of using the same "Secret censor team" for the US as they wanted to for China.
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Re: Censored Search Engine for America (Score:2)
Lick those boots!
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If I was a Chinese censor, that is exactly the argument I would make against Falun Gong, or any number of dissidents.
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You're falling down a deep semantic hole there :)
When you can define words as violence, then killing an alt-right paraplegic troll who can't feed himself much less raise a hand to defend himself, can be argued as "self-defense". The ubiquitous "punch a nazi" type of self defense, as it were.
Manipulating search results in China to favor one political point of view cannot be rationally distinguished from manipulatin
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Not in a conventional meaning of the word, no.
You mean like with DDLC? Or Confederate Flag? Or words like Glock, Ruger, rifle, sniper rifle? Oh those were all just "errors and mistakes" that repeatedly happen right? They just happen so many times, and so often.
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https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
So...it's not censoring when there are exactly zero shopping results for confederate flags?
Really?
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Or glock?
(ruger actually shows up with some holsters, but no guns)
Are you ready to change your point of view, now that you've been confronted with data that contradicts your initial opinion?
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Why do you not even bother to check that your claims aren't going to look ridiculous before posting them?
Are you going to admit you're wrong? Someone already did all the leg work for me, I'll await for your admission.
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How about just having a content neutral algorithm that does a text search without any manual tweaking of the results in order to get a pre-ordained result?
How about giving users the option to "opt-in" to a politically correct blacklist/whitelist, and allowing the default to give the raw results (sort of like "safe-search")?
There are lots
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How about just having a content neutral algorithm that does a text search without any manual tweaking of the results
Are you fucking kidding me?
This is how search engines worked before google and it was bloody terrible because porn sites just dumped the entire dictionary into every page so they appeared on every search. The only way to make it work was to manually enter huge lists of AND NOT filters, and even then it was pretty useless. And that was when the web was maybe 0.1% of its current size.
There are
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Okay, thank you for responding to two of the lines.
Can I assume you agree with the third one?
"How about giving users the option to "opt-in" to a politically correct blacklist/whitelist, and allowing the default to give the raw results (sort of like "safe-search")?"
I'm not sure if anything would count as censorship by your definition, other than "well, censorship is when some
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Can I assume you agree with the third one?
You can assume anything you like. Or, you can assume that I checked out after the utter crushing inanity of your first suggestion, something you quietly seem to have dropped.
So go on do tell, how do you think one could make a search engine which is utterly "unbiased" and yet not prone to the trivial gaming of the sort that was rampant in the late '90s.
I don't believe a sltuin exits of any sort that would satisfy you. So, I believe you are complaining that the world
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Well, I would make whatever algorithms being used transparent - obviously trivial stuff like keyword abuse recognition, and other metadata analysis that would indicate SEO abuse - however, I wouldn't allow for point of view discrimination. For those people worried that their view point was being discriminated against, they'd have
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Well, I would make whatever algorithms being used transparent - obviously trivial stuff like keyword abuse recognition,
Oh I see s you'd censor stuff you, personally find unacceptable. Now we get to the heard of the matter.
and other metadata analysis that would indicate SEO abuse
Right so you'd avoid SEO abuse by um analysing data and metadata. That's basically saying you'd avoid SEO abuse by doing something about it which is not even slightly a proposal as to how.
however, I wouldn't allow for point of view
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Are you saying that it is impossible to program algorithms against SEO abuse without engaging in political viewpoint discrimination?
You keep conflating things - I'm not sure if you're engaging here in an attempt to understand a point of view contrary to your own, or just get a quick endorphin rush from arguing with someone on the internet :)
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This seems to be the exact position of China's censors.
Here's their constitution:
http://en.people.cn/constituti... [people.cn]
"Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
What a joke (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Google is just too big. (Score:2)
Google became so big in so many ways that it has it's own social movements now. What's next? Parties? A parliament? A revolution?
Re: Google is just too big. (Score:2)
Demand democracy in the workplace. The tyranny of capital is no better than the tyranny of a king.
Came back to bite 'em (Score:1)
They are gonna learn that going all SJW with their work force ain't so great when management decisions turn out to be on the wrong side of things ... pitchforks and torches can be hard to control.
(And I say that as someone who detests Chinese communism and all it represents.)
Nobody is talking about Bing and Yahoo in China (Score:2)
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Because Chineese people only care about themselves, and think money is GOD, and make religeon illegal.
Family is #2.
If its not theres, they let it fall apart, thats why their smaller cities look like soviet union in 1973
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Re: What babies (Score:2)
They were just following orders...
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wi... [wiktionary.org]
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Do not confuse legality with morality, they are completely independent concepts. Nobody in their right mind would ask a company to define morality, only to follow it.
Companies absolutely have a requirement to include morality in their decision making process, otherwise we end up with IBM supplying the Nazis with punchcard machines again. "Only obeying the law of the land" is no defense - we're all human beings and no amount of hiding behind a bit of paper "but I did it as part of a company" shield will prot