The Phony Patriots of Silicon Valley

Thiel is making broad, jingoist claims about Google being treasonous without evidence and while google.com isn't even accessible inside the country [1]. This is after Sheryl Sandberg (also on the FB board) hired an agency to spread George Soros conspiracies about critics [2], so this pattern of stirring-the-pot behavior from Facebook isn't quite so uncommon.

The author here is right to call Thiel's motive and behavior into question.

[1] https://www.axios.com/peter-thiel-says-fbi-cia-should-probe-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/21/facebook-...

This is a straw man; the actual argument is that he has been trying to cozy up with the Chinese government to gain a competitive advantage. The full quote:

> Mr. Zuckerberg, who speaks Mandarin, is an odd choice to lead the charge against China. He has spent much of the last decade trying desperately to curry favor with the Chinese government in hopes of getting Facebook’s apps — which are banned there — permission to operate in one of the world’s most lucrative markets. Mr. Zuckerberg even reportedly offered to let Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, name his second child. (Mr. Xi declined.)

Apparently that isn't good enough. But what's to keep someone like me from looking at the fact that Google's original structure wasn't good enough, so that essentially there is a diff where they take out "don't be evil" from their corporate charter, and deciding: okay, we need something more formal, so that a company can't just diff "don't be evil" out of its documents.

What's to stop someone from starting a company and giving it a constitution not to be evil, defining evil, giving it 9 justices as a balance of power, and so on?

Corporate documents have a ton of weight.

For reference, here is the exact moment Google diff'd "don't be evil" out of one of its own documents:

https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

I'll now quote this write-up extensively.

>"Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct"

>“Don’t be evil” has been part of the company’s corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, “do the right thing.” However, Google retained its original “don’t be evil” language until the past several weeks. The phrase has been deeply incorporated into Google’s company culture—so much so that a version of the phrase has served as the wifi password on the shuttles that Google uses to ferry its employees to its Mountain View headquarters, sources told Gizmodo.

>Here’s the relevant section of the old code of conduct, as archived by the Wayback Machine on April 21, 2018:

>> “Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.

>> The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice. It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. We set the bar that high for practical as well as aspirational reasons: Our commitment to the highest standards helps us hire great people, build great products, and attract loyal users. Trust and mutual respect among employees and users are the foundation of our success, and they are something we need to earn every day.

>> So please do read the Code, and follow both its spirit and letter, always bearing in mind that each of us has a personal responsibility to incorporate, and to encourage other Googlers to incorporate, the principles of the Code into our work. And if you have a question or ever think that one of your fellow Googlers or the company as a whole may be falling short of our commitment, don’t be silent. We want – and need – to hear from you.

>And here’s the updated version, first archived by the Wayback Machine on May 4, 2018:

>> The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put Google’s values into practice. It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. We set the bar that high for practical as well as aspirational reasons: Our commitment to the highest standards helps us hire great people, build great products, and attract loyal users. Respect for our users, for the opportunity, and for each other are foundational to our success, and are something we need to support every day.

>> So please do read the Code and Google’s values, and follow both in spirit and letter, always bearing in mind that each of us has a personal responsibility to incorporate, and to encourage other Googlers to incorporate, the principles of the Code and values into our work. And if you have a question or ever think that one of your fellow Googlers or the company as a whole may be falling short of our commitment, don’t be silent. We want – and need – to hear from you.

>Despite this significant change, Google’s code of conduct says it has not been updated since April 5, 2018.

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TO me the words removed from the first version are very powerful:

>“Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.

That reminds me of the Google I knew in 2000. The diff removes that language. It is literally saying "don't be evil is over."

It is like a diff that goes from "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" to "We recognize that many people feel, wrongly or rightly, as though they have rights, such as 'liberty' or to do as they please. It is important to recognize that some people will feel that governments only have 'just powers' when they are serving the will of the people." You know, almost passive aggressive disdain.

But if I put language like the first version into my corporate charter, what's to keep the next CEO from just removing it, and saying, "nah, thanks for the goodwill you built up for me, we're going remove that now. I'll be out in 5 years anyway. Time to make a lot of money."

For example the removed language explicitly says "providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can". But if a government wants to censor information? Or it is possible to make more money by removing this?

Then you can just remove this language and call it a day. So structurally, what ways do I have of keeping this from happening to a company that I found?

I feel like an independent ethical judiciary would be a good step. Companies are insanely powerful, they can do whatever they are set up to do structurally. What's the correct structure here?