Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The article really just talks about his own disapproval of the cult.
It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly.
It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly.
>It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly.
Quoting the article:
"The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse."
> "The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse."
Those seem like issues for prosecutors to pursue, not for Google, unless the abuses were happening in Google offices or were sponsored by them.
Quoting again from the article:
"The wine was our most consistent feature, and the invoices I’ve seen suggest we were buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth every year, just from Grant Marie."
I mean: if you're going to get worked up about cults, why the fuck are we all watching Top Gun? Shouldn't we be protesting or something? Scientology is a lot worse than this lot.
Besides, "$X group also does bad things" is a shitty cop out of an excuse to avoid doing something about another group.
There's probably not much Google can do about sexual assault/trafficking claims but they can do something about the hiring/firing practices along with crooked procurement practices.
I don't think there is anything wrong with suggesting people you know to get hired. If anything the author of this blog post caused his own problems when he blew this up into a big deal and made a lot of accusations based on decades old unproven allegations.
Buying the wine from this group seems to be the only possible issue. If he had simply suggested that maybe they shouldn't be wine from this group and left it at that, there wouldn't have been any problem.
I'm glad someone else gets my point. These were all someone else's problems to deal with, but this guy kept sticking his nose in even when he was repeatedly asked by his friend, a manager, to butt out.
That manager could very well have been complicit in corruption. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in wine purchases isn't exactly trivial.
That said, it sounds like the guy was just trying to keep the GDS division afloat, lest it be struck down from above after being seen as problematic. Perhaps noble depending on how you look at it, but certainly protecting his own paycheck either way.
Regardless, I don't see the justification in hating on someone for blowing the whistle here. In fact, one could argue it's very likely a necessary step in making it someone else's problem to deal with in the first place. Sunlight is a very effective disinfectant.
Yeah, no. He did not protect his paycheck. He did the opposite.
Admittedly my wording was a bit ambiguous, to clarify: I was referring to the manager's intent [by not taking action].
Granted your statement's probably true either way at this point.
Your answer lies in the distinction between cults and religion. In a nutshell, cults exert control over their members such that they compel them to behave contrary to their own interests.
So the modern, practical answer to that question is: No.
Your average Catholic is no threat and is very likely to be acting in their own interest, free of undue influence.
The Catholic Church, having had nearly two thousand years to brutally weave itself into society world-wide—has all but abandoned the behavior described above—with the exception of its clergy and people involved at the operational level of the church.
Indeed, they've outgrown the practice of using coercion at the level of the individual member, and now wield power as a small nation state with global reach.
>Should we forbid Catholics for the same reason?
If they're formerly or currently involved in any significant way at the operational level of the Church, then you may have an argument in the affirmative there. Albeit, a narrowly-scoped one.
However, what you describe certainly does create the conditions for that kind of behavior to occur organically. Lack of inclusion by nature will result in members being shunned. Personally I think religion in any form has zero business being exclusionary. The counter-argument there I suppose, would be that human group cohesion is—by and large—exclusionary in nature.
Perhaps morally there is little distinction, and organized religion has just had time to establish itself and exert power upon individuals in more subtle ways.
Circling back to the original topic: members of a small cult are far more likely to act—in unision—contrary to the interests of an organization that employs them.
So you're saying being a homosexual is not in one's self-interest. As if it's somehow inherently bad.
Did it ever occur to you that the supposed propensity to addiction and self-harming behavior may stem from the fact society's historically been less than accepting of homosexuality, owing in no small part to religion?
LGBTQ and Homosexuals are welcome to leave at any time. Those who join Catholicism, clearly understand the Catechesis (as they have to go through RCIA) and if they conclude that they don't fit, they can go to another denomination.
I went through RCIA and we had people who literally decided to leave the night before Easter Vigil and no one harassed or bothered them.
You are welcome to disagree with the Church but to compare Catholicism with a Cult is disingenuous.
Except for kids, and—historically—large swaths of various populations.
Have you heard of the Spanish Inquisition? Hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism or faced with ethnic cleansing, with mass executions claiming thousands of victims. Or the Portugese inquisition? Or when Galileo was imprisoned for life for heresy against the Catholic Church?
Not to mention what Catholicism did to the Americas...
Or for more recent examples, how about when the Catholic Church took two Jewish children whose parents had been killed at Auschwitz, converted them to Catholicism, and refused to return them to their surviving relatives, resulting in a nearly decade-long post-war manhunt where the Church hid the children in a variety of monasteries under false names while refusing court orders to return the children, telling them that their entire family was dead — when in fact their sisters and aunt had survived — under the direct advice of the Pope? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finaly_Affair
While I'm sure there's lots of be concerned about with respect to the cult, I'm not sure it's Google's business to ask about and evaluate religious affiliations when hiring (I'm fairly certain this would be illegal?). There are plenty of ways that you can get a shop of closely related people that are more innocuous than hiring discrimination; for example, suppose the cult members worked together as a freelance group that Google used, and they decided to offer them jobs in order to bootstrap GDC. This exact situation would happen if Google acquires a company from a place with a relatively homogenous ethnic or religious makeup -- it is unfair to immediately assume that this is a result of a discriminatory hiring practice. (It's also possible that there are questionable decisions, but I think it depends a lot on the specifics.)
Yes, the potential nepotism involved with nearly 50% of a 25 person group all belonging to the cult.
>Cronyism and nepotism is not uncommon, especially in my line of my work, but it was unusual on this scale
You may say the author has jumped too soon to that conclusion but they nonetheless made that allegation. My comment stands.
You should also be aware that accusing someone of not reading a comment or article is both rude and against site guidelines. A more productive way of going about this if you think someone misunderstood or indeed overlooked or skipped part of something is to simply quote the relevant portion. That at least gives them the benefit of the doubt. It also goes a long way towards preventing responses that go on the defensive before even considering the merits of an argument.
To clarify one thing in your comment: innocent clustering isn’t likely occurring “by chance” here — that would be a dubious claim; I’m saying it often happens for innocent, legal reasons. There’s no context or facts for this specific case.
Regarding the “didn’t read my comment” bit, your comment did ignore the last half of my comment that describes plausible innocent clustering and talks about the need for specific facts. You can’t allege something based on “potential” because every perfectly normal situation could be construed as the potential result of a crime. If I was at a bar last night, and home today — can you allege that I drove home drunk? You would need more specific facts to make any kind of meaningful allegation (e.g. did I drive to the bar? Did I drink? Did I return home on my own with my car? Those would be the minimal facts required for even a suspicion). Perhaps I could have addressed this with less snark (and I apologize for this), but we’re also not talking about missing some fact buried in an article, we’re talking about 2/5 sentences in a comment.
> At a certain point, he said he had thought about both quitting and complaining up the ladder, but ultimately decided against either. He thought complaining could lead not only to the loss of his job, but the destruction of our whole department. The loss of all our jobs. GDS, in his mind, wasn’t on steady ground. A revelation like this would be its end.
> He instructed me to keep quiet. He told me not to tell anyone and to tell anyone I had already informed to do the same. He reminded me again that if I complained about this, I could lose my job. Strangely, he threw in that “Peter is a powerful guy.” It was unsettling to say the least.
Dan was selfishly worried about his job. Great evil happens when people stay silent.
Neither are co-workers assigning hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor contracts to themselves or their organization. If you think the author was too far removed from sex trafficking allegations to make an issue of it then this one is still very much appropriate to raise a red flag over.
After reviewing the NYT article, there's much that independently vet's the claims put forward by Kevin Lloyd, the author of this Medium piece. Most notable in support of Kevin Lloyd's portrayal is the fact the director of GDS has already been successfully sued by someone else for similar treatment.
Each comment of yours seeking to dismiss the issue stretches the bounds of reason even further, each one more tenuous than the last. This time you are even going so far as to turn the situation around and claim that-- counter to any evidence-- he is himself the villain with others the victim of his harassment. What began as somewhat reasonable questions about the issue by you has, as myself & others have addressed your points, grown into the ridiculous.
Did he observe sex trafficking? He did not. He read about 25 year old allegations.
What he actually observed was ... wine. That Google managers already knew about.
Failure of immediate managers to act on employees giving themselves hundred of thousands of dollars in contracts seems a good issue to speak out about, especially when the author might have been fired in retaliation for bringing the issue up in the first place. Your attempt to minimize it as just "... wine" is a thin veil to cover such a casual dismissal of the issue.
What exactly do you object to here? What threshold of wrongdoing do you hold up as necessary to cross before speaking out is appropriate? You're willing to shove aside illegal firing and unethical self-dealing, so what is enough to stop you from being annoyed that a person goes public on something like this? It feels very strange to need to defend the author's actions as reasonable, so I'm at a loss to understand your point of view here. Are you upset the author is making an issue of it in the first place, or simply that it's getting this much attention? Or is the issue that it probably wouldn't be considered newsworthy if Google or other high profile company wasn't involved? I have to think think there's something more substantial behind your opinion to be so dismissive of the issue, so what is it?
> Seriously? Sex trafficking & abuse especially of underage people isn't a "live and let live" thing.
Definitely not. However, they were allegations made over 25 years ago, that led nowhere. So, to revive them as if they are a thing that actually is happening now is dishonest.
> Neither are co-workers assigning hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor contracts to themselves or their organization.
Again, not a thing that happened. The winery in question is Grant Marie, which is not owned by the cult. It is, however, run by an ex-member - the one that used to run the cult's winery.
And, as to the nepotism, the hiring is done by the same outside firm as that which hired Lloyd himself, so, again, not under the control of the cult.
> I'm at a loss to understand your point of view here.
I despise fear-mongering and FUD on principle. Much evil has been done by self-righteous, frightened people who have convinced each other that monsters hide amongst the shadows. Hopefully, your rational skepticism has been triggered. But, if you're like most people, probably not.
Secondly, according to the article, "everyone" at Google knew, and he was a contractor. Once he raised his concerns, he did his duty. At that point, it's Google's business, and it's up to them to do something about it. Or not, if they'd rather. Maybe management liked their work and so looked past the "embezzlement", but would have to do something if this guy kept making a stink. Or some other scenario.
Getting fired potentially in retaliation seems reasonable justification for speaking out beyond quietly reporting an incident to your employer.
Especially when the group involved is alleged to be intimidating people into silence. Seems like a great reason to instead shout about the issue quite loudly. Not least of which because small corruption may go side by side with larger corruption.
This thread is an excellent illustration of what's likely an unintended consequence of that guideline, and of all the places to raise it, this is probably the least constructive and least in conformance with any possible intention of the guideline.
If someone doesn't RTFA but contributes really interesting thoughts on, say, AI, or the efficiency of a programming language, such scolding chills valuable discussion. That's understandable. Even responding as a scold to low effort comments is not very readable and the exercise in scolding, however correct, isn't conducive to good discussion. So it's understandable there too.
But here, you're using it in response to a constructive comment expressing a legitimate point over something that's crucial to undestanding and engaging with the article. I can't fathom what purpose you think that rule has if you think this is the right place to invoke it.
Not at all. It's unnecessarily rude. The point could as well have been made without it.
"How can you say that? They were embezzling!"
No. What's been alleged (steering alcohol purchase contracts to their own winery) is unethical and potentially illegal, but embezzlement is a very different type of theft.