Because they have work to do. That's why they're there.
If I'm working on a team that is rolling out a new Google drive feature, I really don't need to hear you talk about why drinking straws are a phallic symbol and used by the patriarchy to keep woman down.
We have work to do.
This is just a perfect example of how polarised politics is today. Society just needs to calm down and evaluate itself instead of bickering over nonsense.
Time and a place.
Politics has no nuance or filter anymore. It's all the time on full blast, forever. I hate it.
Work isn't one of them, unless, it's directly related to the work being done.
Yes, the workplace _should_ be serene and work _should_ proceed in harmony.
But there are other things that aren't proceeding the way people think _should_ be happening, which they deem to be far more important.
Which is why you're seeing more people willing to disrupt the workplace, which they consider a minor obligation relative to the bigger picture.
People wouldn't take their fight to these environments if democracy was working, because they'd have faith in the due processes of government. But once they start thinking things aren't working, they'll go to their next seats of power. In this case it's the workplace where they can influence their coworkers and the policy of a big tech corporation.
These people are not a majority so democracy isn't fully broken yet, but the cracks are showing.
>Plus it hurts the value of the equity portion of your compensation, so it a way, it's theft too.
I doubt it. The culture has probably done more positive than negative for company value. And even if it hasn't, short-term shareholder value definitely isn't the best measure of long-term success. Calling it "theft" is a big stretch.
If you think any discussion of politics is that infantile, I don't think there's anything I can do or say to convince you otherwise, but for everyone else, just recognize that this example is ridiculous. And real, actual, conversations about political topics aren't anywhere near as asenine. They're about important things, that often are relevant to work: privacy, discrimination (inentional and non-, by both people and machines), and literal actual government policy that affects google and googlers: immigration, taxes, etc.
I'm not sure how you could avoid those topics and still be an effective employee, or in some cases still be an employee at all.
To give a fairly tame example. Lets say someone googles "Can crystal healing cure cancer". Do you put a box saying no? Do you put put a box saying "according to authority it does not". If you defer to authority to do you defer to different one in different countries? What if they disagree? Maybe we need a list of FUBAR countries?
What? Says who?
Yes and no. Ranking by definition means not being neutral, it's just that society has decided that it's acceptable to rank spam lower than other content. Neutrality looks a lot like bias from the perspective of spammers.
When you're dealing with more complex signals at scale there are so many second and third order effects that are hard or impossible to predict.
For example, the conservative bias everyone's talking about doesn't seem to me to be literal bias against the right, but bias in favour of mainstream news sources which are overwhelmingly left-wing.
I'm sure there are many issues in Search like the one I just described, and being able to have these conversations is what makes it possible for Googlers to spot these issues, decide if it's even an issue and fix it. If you ban a certain type of conversation, you'll change how people think about a potential issue.
They do not collect anything even remotely close to "all the worlds information".
> who says their goal is to impose their opinion on it
Their goal is to make money. Whether they impose their opinion on the index is a business decision.
> Isn't neutrality in indexing the assumption?
Why would it be? What if the people that run google have a fundamental disagreement with certain political ideas and have a desire not to index those things?
In fact, many people do not want to try and have others convince them of their political leanings.
Trying to convince other people of MY political leaning goes against one of the central political leaning that I have: Everyone should have freedom to believe in whatever they want to believe in. I also find it annoying when other people try to shove their believe down my throat.
While it is possible for a contract specifying 8 hours of work without a single thought other than work (and any legally mandated breaks) in exchange for the given salary and benefits, I've never seen any organization that actually operated using such contracts.