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Comment by Aunche | Hacker News Reader

I'm no marketing expert, but I doubt that the best way Google can think of to sway public opinion is to call people privacy nuts. Google employs over 100,000 people and even more people work at similar companies like Facebook or buy targeted ads. Many of these people browse Hackernews and get offended if others accuse their livelihoods of being evil.

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Every company I've worked at has had an explicit policy of not commenting on that company's business on the internet.

I believe those policies exist. I don't believe they are followed by everyone, and all it takes is a vocal minority. I've seen plenty of comments on HN from people who say something like, "Hey, I'm an employee of X, this is my own opinion, but..."

Just because a company has a policy does not mean that employees adhere to that policy.

Or that they start every comment with 'I'm an employee of X'

They might just say, 'That seems silly!', 'You're a nut', 'Do you have a source other than yourself'. Or they might just downvote stories that have a negative effect on their income.

You've got 100k people working at google and many of them are going to be active on this type of forum. The same goes for the other big guys that have a ton of employees

Do votes on HN affect Googlers' incomes?

Never seen that in any of the contracts or employee handbooks I've ever signed. So I guess it varies.

There are regular comments by declared employees of quite a few companies including Google on HN. The commenting and vote/flag brigadeering around subjects that center on one of these companies is such that many subjects are either voted off the homepage entirely or the participants in the thread get downvoted/upvoted to better support the company position or narrative.

This is all quite in the open.

What is the 'quite in the open' evidence you have of this?

The profiles and declarations of 100's of users of HN.

How is that evidence of "vote/flag brigadeering around subjects that center on one of these companies [...]" by those people? This story sat on the front page for a day, has zillions of votes and comments and as far as I can tell, even people who work in the field can't actually figure out what it's about.

Whatever else it is, it's one of the more important guidelines of the site (at least judging from the time Dan and Scott spend on it) that you not make appeals like this in public comment threads. What evidence you hsve of this, you should send to hn@yc.

I regularly am discussing Google's business with Googlers on here. Some of them disclose in the post, some of them disclose on their HN profile. Many do not, and calling them on it is generally discouraged, but it's usually not super hard to figure out or prove.

There are definitely some acting as spokespeople (even if they claim otherwise), but there are also quite a few who are just, you know, incredibly biased fans of their employer, who like to defend them on topics unrelated to their job.

But when a tech company has 100,000 employees, it's not particularly surprising to see a good number of them on a tech forum. ;)

Of course. Most every employer wants you to do the job you're paid to do, aka stay in your lane.

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

I doubt the vast majority of employees would get offended that easily. I work for a tech company providing marketing tools (basically, I help send marketing emails (aka spam)), I like the pay, the overall environment and the technical challenges, but I'm under no illusion that I contribute to the betterment of our societies.

If you see these kind of behavior online, it's almost always people paid to explicitly monitor forums and "protect" a company image.

I can attest to that as when you point of things like Google gets caught stealing IP from a MIT student they invited for an interview (a popular thread here on HN) it gets downvoted voraciously.

Either its employees, hired guns and or something...

Or maybe that particular story didn't really stand on its merits. I never saw the thread, but from my perspective (which is increasingly skeptical of Google), any sort of "stealing IP from interview candidates" theory doesn't make much sense.

It did receive almost 2k upvotes on HN.

Further She has emails from Google ATAP(one of their supposed R&D departments) in which they note they invalidated her patent after getting caught...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929

I have noticed this pattern over several years. A few of the times it trips the flamebait detector and gets buried. Negative stories about other big tech companies don't seem to have the same issue with staying up.

I saw that happen to you when you pointed that out in the big Anthony Levandowski discussion a week ago--but I think a lot of that had to do with you posting essentially the same comment at three different places in the same thread. I don't think it started getting downvoted until then.

I have also had purely factual statement on companies downvoted in a way that defies any rational story.

You spammed an HN thread with these comments before, which amply explains why you were downvoted.

We've been over this topic a gazillion times on this site: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... Astroturfing exists, but imagined projections of astroturfing are far more common, and whatever the effects of the former may be, the latter has an extremely degrading effect on discussion. In fact it eats up everything if you let it. We don't want that here.

I've personally banned several accounts over the years for propagandizing for Google (for whatever reason—it's impossible to distinguish between a paid agent and an overzealous fan, nor does it particularly matter). But this has been rare, and we don't do it without evidence.

Are you saying I am not able to discuss this true story where it's relevant? In threads where people have discussions that hold Google in a negative light cause they choose to act that way and get caught? My real life story along with the MIT's student story in which there's clear evidence of Stealing IP further details more bad behavior by the big G!

Is Hacker News not a place where freedom of speech is welcome? Speech that is helpful to other not well connected innovators who when invited by the big G read this and tell the big G no I'm not going to take that meeting!

Overall I'm confused as to why you call my story and Jie Qi's story spam? Do you not think her story is true and or mine is? That is not helpful for other not well connected and or rich innovators?

The issue is that your comment broke the site guidelines by insinuating astroturfing without evidence. That's the main thing you're not allowed to do here, as I explained, and have explained ad nauseum before (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...).

Separately, there was an issue with your copy-pasting the same comment about this story repeatedly in a previous thread. That is what I called spamming (not the actual story). Doing that is no doubt what led to your being downvoted, rather than manipulation as you implied above.

In cases where the story is relevant, of course it's fine to discuss it. But I don't see that it's relevant here, and your history of bringing it up in ways that break the site guidelines suggest that the bar for relevance needs to be higher than how you've been drawing it.

But the main point is that you can't make up sinister stories about why you got downvoted ("I can attest...") and post them here. Long experience has shown that nearly all such comments are baseless, and as I just said, they eat everything if you let them. Therefore we mustn't let them.

Ok I understand and agree with the spamming recently.

Ive never knew or heard about an astroturf guideline before. Thanks for pointing it out ... i was trying to start a debate as I wasnt sure if my comment was downvoted voraciously because of multiple posts or something else?

As for telling my story and or Jie Qi's similar one in posts that detail other bad behavior from Google I wonder how that isn't relevant? Per the upvotes HN readers must feel it holds relevance? Though you don't think pointing out that Google steals/gets caught stealing IP is relevant to other posts detailing more/other examples of their bad behavior?

Correct, for the most part I don't think that, because it tends to make the threads more generic. For example, in this case the topic was about GDPR and identifiers in real-time bid advertising. It's fine if that leaps a single hop to, say, privacy issues. But if it leaps more than that, to every bad thing that Google has ever done, then the discussion will simply be "Google bad" vs. "Google good", which is far too generic to be interesting. It's a bit like what happens when you blend too many paints together. Everything becomes the same shade of brown. And this problem gets much worse when the things people bring up are predictable, i.e. have been repeated from the past. That guarantees a predictable discussion, which although it may be very agitated, has zero curiosity in it—and curiosity is the whole point of this site (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

I've written a bunch about this over the years if you or anyone wants more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Yes curiosity is indeed what this site is about and if you see below HN user "philwelch," was interested & curious about Ji Qie's story as he wasn't familiar with it. I pointed it out to him and satisfying his and other HN readers interest & curiosity it received 14 upvotes. Aren't the upvotes saying the information was useful, their interest and curiosity was satisfied?

Though are you saying I should never talk about Google getting caught stealing IP where it's relevant on Hacker News(have you censored other members b4 on certain topics)? It does not satisfy readers curiosity or is helpful to other dreamers/innovators, ones who dont have Joi Ito (MIT student's advisor) on their side, in whats the best way forward when Google R&D sends an invite?

Ive been a HN reader and commenter since 2007 and spoken freely since. I hope I am to continue to do so!

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