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Comment by cflewis | Hacker News Reader

I'm a Googler.

The way you decide whether to trust someone or something is whether someone you already trust trust them. So the question is: who do you trust and how far does your chain of trust go?

For me, I need to trust my coworkers. And I do. And I trust that those coworkers will report misbehavior internally such that I can see it.

And from what I know, I trust them to look after my data. They have everything: search history, location history, email, photos of my daughter. I am not a product. I am a leaf on a human-indecipherable neural net that shows me a particular ad.

Companies don't care about people. Companies aren't people. People care about people. I do not think Google The Company "wants" anything in any way you can moralize good or bad. Google The People want to do right by users.

So, the question is, do you trust me? :)

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> Companies don't care about people.

> So, the question is, do you trust me? :)

No, I don't. If the history of capital concentration in the past 50 years has taught me anything, it's that capitalism is ruthless, and that money and power corrupts. The simple fact of the matter is that even if the entirety of Google's upper management was full of good people, the fact that Google is a publicly traded company means the company must act sociopathically and unemotionally to maximize return for shareholders or risk the board's wrath.

They may not act evil now, but when they have no other way to provide the exponential growth expected by shareholders, I guarantee they will exploit users in every way possible.

You'd think software people, of all people, would understand that systems have their own emergent behaviour that doesn't simply reflect the behaviour of the nodes.

It would be neat if anyone could show this in a simplified example/simulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

Yes, and it is important to understand that people who stand up to the system and don't want to play ball are usually quietly crushed and destroyed by it. If you hear anything about them at all, you are likely to hear that they are terrible/incompetent/whatever. The system's preferred interpretation. Heroism is rarely recognized and even more rarely rewarded.

I'm not saying I fight Google. They have monopolies in several tech industries, and I use several of their products daily. However, I don't trust them, and I'm well aware that they will do what they can to extract as much wealth out of me as possible.

Up until now Google has been the one company that I have trusted with all my secrets. "They" pretty much know everything about me.

The reason I trusted Google with this is that they know their shit, technically speaking. And it wouldn't make economical sense to try to make money from e.g. blackmailing me using my darkest secrets.

Where I have my doubts though, is in their neutrality of Search. What I have read the past week does not fill me with confidence that Google will be a politically neutral search engine e.g. 5 years from now. This is the real risk.

Edit: A Google recruiter has been trying to recruit me for some position during all of this. The ball is currently in my court. I am not sure I want to return it.

(And now I am paranoid about that recruiter having access to my Google search history, or perhaps more likely, some algorithmic summary of it.)

To be honest, Google would go on without you, and outside of Google you would have no affect on its culture. If you want to ensure Google stays or becomes a good company, pretty much the only ways you can go about that are voting for politicians to control it and work inside of it.

> What I have read the past week does not fill me with confidence that Google will be a politically neutral search engine e.g. 5 years from now.

The Google Perspective API https://www.perspectiveapi.com/ is already politically biased -- http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/10/googles-perspective...

So, yes I expect to see Google search to be biased within 5 years. Mostly in a left-leaning direction, although I doubt they will be left-leaning on the question of whether big corporations such as Google should pay their fair share of taxes.

> I am not sure I want to return it.

If you are white or Asian male, I wouldn't bother. Google don't like your sort. Sad but true.

That is absolutely untrue.

It is not obvious to me that some sections of the community will not face discrimination, both in terms of recruitment and also in promotion once they have joined.

Demand 400k :P

Not a Googler, and I deleted a couple Google accounts I had several years ago due to concerns about privacy.

If we met and interacted regularly, I suppose I could learn to trust you. Let's assume we get along and you are a nice person, which is likely true. However what you are asking of us only scratches the surface.

You are asking if we trust you, and the handful of co-workers you have interacted with. Even if we accept this premise, you have to see it as part of an enormously larger picture. Do I trust that you have carefully evaluated the personal integrity of all Google employees with access to user data? Do I trust that you regularly screen all new employees? Of course not, these are preposterous assumptions. But in order to do as you ask, these would have to be true. It's too big an ask.

To replace what Google used to provide, I moved to FastMail for email and mostly self-host the rest. Open Street Maps are excellent where I live, and Duck Duck Go is now "good enough". It's been a good learning opportunity for me and I'm very pleased with the results and with how much more proficient I have become with a variety of new tools. I will never switch back.

I don't hold any resentment towards Google or its employees but I do wonder how they feel about what they do. Do they see it as some noble cause, and not an effort to manipulate users with relevant ads? That's not a very charitable description of what happens at Google, but it does accurately describe how many of us see it.

"I am not a product."

What makes you so special? :-)

I completely believe you when you say that Google-the-People want to do right by users. Unfortunately, Google-the-Company doesn't feel the necessity to have a support infrastructure to address those cases when your neural network makes a wacky decision, among other things. To Google-the-company, I am most definitely a product.

The bad part is that Google-the-Company is the only Google entity I interact with. You are cflewis-the-HN-poster; you might be able and willing to help me if I run afoul of Google-the-Company, but I can hardly expect that. More to the point, that doesn't scale.

So, the answer is, does it matter?

It doesn't work like that. Did you trust your coworkers when they decided to suspend other people's accounts for merely buying phones that someone resold [1] or when they decided to put war propaganda on Google's front page [2], that, you know, actually kills people. I don't think you can answer that. The thing is nobody cares whether you trust them to do the right thing or not, they won't do it either way. Because there are always money to earn, people to please and people to be afraid of. And it matters much more than "doing the right thing", as nobody works for a corporation unless they have to. A corporation is a natural place for evil to flourish.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/google-su...

[2] http://archive.is/Q6uq8

It's not a matter of trusting you, but the processes that Google is required to adhere to. We live in an age of NSLs, gag orders and an endless war on terror. The reality is Google is probably a national security asset that feeds directly into intelligence pipelines. Someone has the keys to the kingdom, and that person has to follow the law. We saw it at Yahoo, and I'd probably trust most engineers there.

That's basically how I decide whether to trust someone's intentions.

But I look at actions to decide whether to trust them regarding the outcome of their future actions. And most of the time that one is a lot more important.

Well meaning people do terrible things all the time, we all know what the road to hell is paved with after all.

So no, I don't trust you, nor do I trust your coworkers. I do generally trust your intentions. While you are trying to be good people and that is a good thing, you are not good people. Because good people both mean to do good and actually perform good works.

Xoogler here.

First, no, I don't trust you. Sorry. You seem like a nice person, but that means fuck-all when it comes to trust.

Second, who cares about the employees? Google is not its employees. A corporation is a golem, animated by legal fiat and supposedly obedient to its owners. But the corporation's own internal power structure, as well as the larger structures above it like the state, the world, culture, etc. are what determine what it can and will do.

You say that you all have compassion for humanity. And I'm sure you do! But that didn't prevent Real Names.

You say that you all have respect for privacy. And I'm sure you do! But that didn't prevent personalized ads.

You say that you all have morals, ethics, and the general ability to distinguish right from wrong. And I'm sure you do! But that didn't prevent Youtube from being steamrolled by anybody willing to swear out a DMCA request, to say nothing of Youtube Red.

So, the question is, do you trust your employer? Not your bosses, not your peers, not HR and Legal, but Google itself, the golem?

(also a googler)

>But that didn't prevent personalized ads.

How is this a privacy violation?

>Youtube from being steamrolled by anybody willing to swear out a DMCA request

How is this Google's fault? (by this I mean its a legal issue. Google is, as far as I know, required to assume DMCA notices are made in good faith and respond to them, or itself be culpable for any violations). And I'm unaware of, for example, Google lobbying on behalf of the DMCA.

>Youtube Red.

What is unethical about Youtube Red?

This is an important point IMO. Consider the Bystander Effect. Most people will act decisively, even heroically, when they're confronted one-to-one with an individual in dire need. If, however, you put these people in a large group all witnessing the same pressing need, they will all stand by doing nothing.

There are a few significant psychological processes at work here, but the point is that groups of people behave in non-intuitive ways that don't necessarily reflect the sentiment or intention of the individual members.

We also see this in physical crowds; get enough people smashed into a small enough space and they lose individual agency and function as a fluid, with each individual carried by the wave and unable to control where they go. This results in stampedes and crowd crushes.

While I trust you-the-private-person, I am wary of trusting you in the capacity of a google employee. And how could I trust that you and other thousands of google employees, when told to do something that is a little bit not in the interest of users, will disobey and risk ostracism and ruining of career prospects. The incentives are just not aligned that way, and google has lately shown how swiftly and brutally it deals with dissent.

Companies indeed aren't people, they are, as poetically put by Charlie Stross, invaders from Mars (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders...). Damore has said in one of his interviews that he loves google. I think it is a big mistake - loving someone (or something) who can't love you back.

> The way you decide whether to trust someone or something is whether someone you already trust trust them.

You can also trust someone with something small and then increase the level of trust as they prove reliable. Note that this also works for reestablishing a healthy relationship after someone screws someone else over. The "trust by proxy" model doesn't allow a resolution to "I don't trust them and I already know them" problem. This is the problem that warring countries have. And it's the problem overly antagonistic political factions have.

> I do not think Google The Company "wants" anything in any way you can moralize good or bad.

Google the company wants to maximise its profits. Whether this is good or bad depends on how it goes about doing so. Because Google is a big powerful corporation with lots of information on lots of people, they have the potential to do bad things (while all the time telling themselves that what they are doing isn't really bad).

Are Google employees and executives bad people? Mostly not. Does power corrupt? Of course it does.

Depending on goodwill or trust which are fleeting, ephemeral and eventually self serving has always led to poor outcomes for humanity, so much so that anyone who asks for 'trust' cannot usually be trusted.

As societies we have learned the hard way the value of checks and balances, accountability, rule of law and consequences to minimize the scope of trust and the arbitrary application of power.

People don't trust Google, they just assume the very fact it exists means it operates within the framework of rule of law and there are consequences for straying so there is an implicit trust in the system like the bread you buy is made legally to certain standards.

But many may not have considered the scope of data collection, its application and privacy implications fully and will only wisen to them when they are consequences they can feel, at which point the loss of trust will be dramatic or are aware and try to work around them.

Can someone with ~250k combined compensation empathize enough with an impoverished person in say South East Asia enough to always do right by them? You can mean well but still not be the best person to represent and in many ways control the lifestyles of people greatly separated from yourself.

Successful companies follow the way of the money. Everything else is charade.

If your only standard for trust was previous trust then you would never trust anyone and your chain of trust would never grow, but you know that right? More realistically you establish trust through a process over time and you repeat that process to some degree ad infinitum.

I don't think he was implying that it was his only standard for trust, but as you establish trust in certain people over time you also grow to trust their judgement and part of that is giving a benefit of the doubt level of trust to people who have earned their trust (without having to invest in the direct development as much).

So, the question is, do you trust me? :)

No way. And don't think for a second we buy that "We're so Googley and honest because we use fun colors in our logo" persona either.

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