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Comment by Karsteski | Hacker News Reader

I'm getting quite tired of all this grandstanding by tech companies that routinely perform highly immoral business practices.

Google does not give a fuck about black people. They only care about their public image, which is degrading day by day. The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up. No amount of proselytizing about how much a company focuses on racial diversity and hiring different backgrounds is going to have any impact on that.

But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change :)

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Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN? You've unfortunately done it repeatedly. We ban such accounts, not just because it isn't what the site is for, but because it destroys what it is for. It leads to flamewars, which destroy curious conversation and bring out the worst from the internet.

Your comments based on personal experience and curiosity are of course welcome.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't even know what to say to that. What is ideological about what I said?

My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people. Honestly, it feels like you simply did not like what I stated and decided to instate your vague guidelines as reason to remove my comment.

I enjoy HN and the discussions that are had here, but I don't believe that curious conversation has to consist of emotionally muted statements.

I do think you were wrong to remove my comment given what the guidelines state.

You're asking me what is ideological about "tech companies that routinely perform highly immoral business practices", "Google does not give a fuck about black people", and "But I'm sure now that people are capitalizing "Black" that things will change"? The entire comment seems to consist of high-indignation, low-information name-calling on the ideological themes of corporatism and race.

No one's saying you have to be emotionally muted! (I probably have to be, but it doesn't mean anyone else does.) There's no problem with vibrant emotion—the problem is with the sort of repetition that makes up with intensity for what it lacks in new information. It seems to be a kind of mechanism—the mind turns to indignation in the absence of anything more substantial: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

When you say "My comment was entirely based on my experience with how companies treat people."—it's precisely that which your comment lacked. I believe you that it was based on your experience, but it didn't actually share any of that experience; it just angrily repeated some stale tropes. Such a comment is activating rather than interesting, which is why it evokes worse discussion from others. If you had actually shared your relevant experience the comment would probably have been more interesting than activating, and that is what evokes better discussion from others.

(I didn't remove your comment, but I did auto-collapse this low-quality flamewar subthread. That is one trick we use to try to jiggle the system out of its failure modes.)

Cool, I'll be more detailed next time. Sorry for the trouble. You could really do more yourself not to hide/remove comments with equally inflammatory responses.

It's quite irritating to have something done like that by someone who is essentially the shot-caller on a site like this on an issue which boils down to opinion. The highbrow condescension isn't necessary either... Anyways, perhaps it's moderation like this that's necessary to keep the forum quality. I do wish it were approached in a different manner however. Even just asking for more clarification or elaboration would have been a better move in this situation.

Anyways, thanks for moderating I guess. I understand that it's a thankless job.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply! I'm open to learning how to be less irritating or condescending—it would make life easier, and I'm sure it's possible.

Calling the shots doesn't just boil down to opinion–there are principles here. They don't determine everything precisely—different people would make different calls. But the principles aren't infinitely flexible, either, and we have a lot of practice in applying them.

> Google does not give a fuck about black people.

They care about them so long as the posturing that they engage with can make them money.

In my opinion, they get away with this because the word equality, when they say that they "care" about "equality," no longer has any attachment to class consciousness.

Amazon does this right in front of our faces. Nike and Apple do it but you have to peek behind the curtain a bit. Google, as well, but now you really have to dig, hence this article.

> The idea that Google can fix "racial diversity in tech" is absurd at best. These are deeply rooted systemic issues that need to be addressed from the ground up.

I don't disagree with the substance of your comment, but it's worth pointing out that Alphabet is a company with a $1,416,000,000,000 market cap.

If any non-governmental entity could be said to have the resources to address "systemic issues" at the root, it would be these giant multinationals.

If Google wanted to, it could fund CS education in primary and secondary schools in black neighbourhoods, it could launch a finance wing to offer mortgages to families disadvantaged by a history of red-lining, it could endow scholarships at HBCUs, it could invest directly in infrastructure projects in majority-black cities...

Obviously there's no obligation for them to do these things, but if they cared to really make a dent in America's racial issues (instead of just making white folks feel more positively about Google) they are not lacking the capital to take a stab at it. They certainly don't mind pissing away millions on internet balloons.

Do you really want a giant multinationals addressing issues normally handled by the state? Do you really want google to be so involved in education and housing? Is that's whats wrong with our politics, not enough corporate influence?

I just want google to provide me reasonable search results, respect my privacy and follow all applicable laws.

Yes, if they said they were going to.

> whats wrong with our politics

Lobbyists, the need for fundraising by officials putting them in the pockets and interests of corporations and entities... do we really want to go there? Corporations and entities have incredible influence in politics; to not acknowledge this would be disingenuous. Politics is driven by money, idealism be damned, and Alphabet has a lot of this. Why shouldn't one expect them (well, their subsidiary, Google) to back up what they said?

To be fair, I also understand where you're coming from. I'm from a privileged socioeconomic class, from a tech industry perspective. So it's easy for me to say "I don't want to get into the politics because it doesn't affect me; all I want is reasonable search results and for them to leave me alone". We have (or were able to earn because we had the resources) the baseline privileges and advantages in life that enable us to have this attitude. But some groups still don't, and it's my belief (and hopefully, society's someday) that we should effectively (not just rhetorically or trivially) give them the pathways to level the playing field.

Not necessarily. Reading this article I actually find it quite obnoxious that Google would come in and tell HBCU computer science departments to redesign their curricula to focus less on "theoretical" concerns and more on like, Python scripting that G needs from its junior engineers.

But it's also worth noting what a dishonest dodge it is for these huge companies posturing like "oh we care so deeply about this issue, but it's a pipeline problem we can't fix!" - as though they can't build whatever pipeline they want to get the candidates they want to get.

> But it's also worth noting what a dishonest dodge it is for these huge companies posturing like "oh we care so deeply about this issue,

They have to say this. The executives of these large internet companies get dragged in front of congress regularly and some politicians built their entire careers on passing punitive targeted legislation against said companies.

> as though they can't build whatever pipeline they want to get the candidates they want to get.

That's what they're doing when they're trying to influence the curriculum of computer science departments.

As an aside, I remember flipping through AP (high school level) computer science tests and got a kick out of how the state education board tested students. Here's an example

Consider the following code segment.

List<String> animals = new ArrayList<String>();

animals.add("dog");

animals.add("cat");

animals.add("snake");

animals.set(2, "lizard");

animals.set(3, "fish");

animals.remove(3);

System.out.println(animals);

What is printed as a result of executing the code segment?

(a) [dog, fish, cat]

(b) [dog, fish, lizard]

(d) [fish, dog, cat]

(e) The code throws an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException exception.

https://www.apcsaexam.org/uploads/1/0/7/7/107712547/ap_sampl...

The private market is exactly who should be funding higher education. Federal government funding has resulted in significant inflation of costs and poor quality of administration and instructors. Education that does not meet the market should fail and be replaced.

I think the number one detractor to black neighborhoods from engaging in CS is more of a cultural thing. The same reason why women in tech is still pretty low is also the same reason black people in tech is low. The culture tied to their race/sex in the immediate area tends to sway their futures. If dealing drugs or just dropping out is the norm among your friends, it's gonna be very hard for one to just pick up CS at a high school or early college level for men. Even if it's free.

Or that it’s a hard major. This isn’t particularly unique to black people. Most students avoid the hard majors in college (even white people, there’s a reason why every bootcamper majored in like the Trombone or Classics in college, because, well, shockingly, they also avoided the hard majors.)

The reason Asian kids don’t avoid it is because of how seriously their parents take their education. You guys want to fix the pipeline problem, talk to Asian fucking parents and learn something.

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