Google fires more workers after CEO says workplace isn’t for politics
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Isn't this a pretty critical point that the Washington Post should have looked into a bit more?
Far easier to prove involvement when there is a written record, rather than evidence of you entering a building (you might have other reasons to be there).
(I have no idea what happened at Google. The article is behind a paywall for me.)
But as soon as Google's bottom line is involved they behave pretty predictable.
These are the same regime saying that the fact that gay people exist is propaganda and a threat to children. If Google actually gave a fuck they could start with that.
Any semblance of being progressive is horseshit if you're happy to do business with fascists overseas.
> The advertisements thus formally promote the Hungarian government’s anti-migrant measures. At the same time, they also stress the dangers of migration and the violence of migrants. These advertisements also appeared in countries when allies of the Orbán government, also campaigning with anti-migrant slogans, were competing in parliamentary or local elections. [...]
> Google distinguishes between two types of advertising: political and non-political. The former is subject to stricter transparency rules. [...] Google confirmed that the relevant Hungarian government ads do not violate the terms of use and, as they do not promote political parties or politicians, are not political ads.
[0] https://vsquare.org/orban-central-europe-online-ads-election...
https://adstransparency.google.com/advertiser/AR090162861685...
Same is true for 99% of the corps out there. They should focus on giving their employees a better living instead of political circus.
So you can't just assume your conclusion and be aghast that other people don't immediately agree with you.
What counts as a war crime depends (among other factors) on the knowledge and intentions of the military commanders ordering the attack, and I don’t see how any of these videos or testimony can answer that.
This fight is the same as trying to intervene in the drunk, abusive couple down the street’s fight of the day. As is 90% of anything in the Middle East.
No one is ‘clean’, but some are more palatable than others in some contexts. And if G or others won’t do business with the ‘officially more palatable’ option (in this case Israel, per the US gov’t), then it hurts their bottom line - which is also Google Employees bottom line.
And Google can’t ignore the US gov’t, due to both revenue and regulatory involvement, especially now.
If you’re looking for sainthood, non-profits are an option.
If you try to get involved, I guarantee you'll regret it either way. Ask any cop that's had to respond to a bunch of domestics.
Let me talk specifically about the "genocidal" aspect, because Apartheid is a separate topic.
If you're coming from a place of "of course Israel is committing genocide", I don't think it very likely that I'm going to convince you otherwise. That is the "default" narrative in many circles (just like the opposite narrative also exists in many circles). That said, I'll do my best to explain why I think that claims of genocide are very wrong.
> There are literally hundreds of videos and witness testimony evidencing war crimes perpetrated by Israel.
First, there are for sure war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers. Every war crime should be condemned, investigated and prosecuted. Though I don't think there are hundreds of war crimes documented, at least not serious war crimes (serious as in causing bodily harm or death to someone).
That said, war crimes, while horrible, are an unfortunate reality that happens in almost every war. War crimes and genocide are separate things.
Genocide requires Israel intentionally trying to kill Gazans, or at least part of Gaza. That's a big accusation, and it isn't backed up, at all, by the actual actions of Israel. Israel maybe kills "too many" civilians for the amount of militants it kills (though even that is debateable), but it is targeting militants. It isn't going in there and purposefully killing civilians, for the most part, though horrible mistakes do happen all the time.
If you compare the amount of dead in Gaza to almost any modern war, there are far less dead in Gaza. And considering that Israel could do what other countries have done, which is intentionally kill civilians - the fact that there aren't more dead isn't a question of ability, but of will. Israel doesn't want to kill innocent civilians.
Most of the videos you cite are either the kinds of terrible things that happen in every war, or genuine war crimes (which do happen), or, as is often the case, an incident which looks different without having context. This is a war in an urban environment, in which Hamas is doing everything in its power to cause more Palestinian casualties, not less.
> Humanitarianaid is being held back or bombed by IDF.
This is partially true, and I'm very angry at Israel for not allowing even more aid in. But aid isn't being bombed (except for mistakes, which do unfortunately happen). And it's not accurate to blanket say "aid is being held back" - Israel lets in hundreds of aid trucks every day.
I think Israel should do a lot more, don't get me wrong, but if your impression is that literally no aid is getting in, that's very very far from reality.
> There are even mass graves being uncovered which is reported by mainstream media.
This is a story that's only a few days old. I don't think it's fair to draw conclusions on it just yet. The media has a terrible track record of taking claims against Israel at face value, only a few days later backing up the Israeli version, which often vindicates Israel. E.g. the infamous "hospital bombing" in which Israel killed 500 people, which after the fact turned out to be not even an Israel bomb, and only a few dozen died there anyway.
This kinda talking points get muddy when said militants (more like suspected militants) were target specifically when they arrived home with their families.
Besides that, all the talking about Israel not targeting civilians, being interested in protecting civilians, and not deliberately holding back help all of these are Israel talking points; so conceding authority is crazy, not because we are talking about any specific country, but because we are taking at face value statements of an interested party. If you also add that most important humanitarian organizations are ringing alarms, they are not allowing investigations from independent parties, and the domestic discourse is definitely not dovish.
You might be right, there might not be any ill intent from Israel, yet you cannot argue that the conclusion that a genocide is happening is baseless.
You're right. And absent further context, I'd consider that to be a war crime. However, there's very little evidence that that is happening - afaik it was one article, which quoted a couple of people in the intelligence units without a clear understanding of their exact position. For all we know, they are junior analysts who don't have the full context.
> Besides that, all the talking about Israel not targeting civilians, being interested in protecting civilians, and not deliberately holding back help all of these are Israel talking points; so conceding authority is crazy, not because we are talking about any specific country, but because we are taking at face value statements of an interested party.
This is kind of true. However, worth noting a few things:
1. Many of these points are backed up by the US. Not all - the US also criticizes some of Israel's actions (as do I). But this only gives it more credibility in the cases where it backs up Israel. Other countries do so as well, and as I pointed out elsewhere, IIRC multiple democracies denounced the ICJ case of genocide against Israel (with multiple autocracies backing it - I certainly know which conclusion I draw from this).
2. Israel is a democracy with a free press. Hence articles like the one about targeting militant's families. There are some very leftist organizations in Israel, and multiple leftist newspapers/journalists. Investigating in real time in a war zone is hard, but most information is eventually discovered and revealed, often by Israeli journalists themselves.
That's paradoxically why democracies sometimes "look worse" compared to autocracies, but also why I trust that many abuses/crimes do eventually get discovered.
3. Everything negative we know is also something we take at face value from an interested party - Hamas itself. This includes the total number of casualties, and some semblance of what is the split between civilians vs militants (though they don't actually provide the number of militants killed).
These numbers are far harder to verify, because Hamas can just make things up and no one really holds them accountable. Again, paradox of autocracies vs democracies.
(That's not to say I think everything is made up or anything - there are obviously tragedies as evidenced by many individual accounts of terrible deaths, including of many civilians!)
> You might be right, there might not be any ill intent from Israel, yet you cannot argue that the conclusion that a genocide is happening is baseless.
Even taking the Hamas death toll numbers totally at face value, and likewise taking Israel's estimates of militants killed also at face value, we can compare the rate of civilian deaths in Gaza vs. in other similar wars fought by the West. And the rates in Gaza are fairly in line with e.g. US war against ISIS in Urban combat. And the situation in Gaza is far harder, as attested by most military experts, because Hamas has had 20 years of rule to entrench themselves in the civilian population.
I think any honest look at the numbers shows that there isn't anything to actually justify calls of genocide, unless you also call the US actions in Iraq/Afghanistan, or the fight against ISIS, also genocide. If you do - ok, that's at least consistent, but I think that's actively misusing that word.
If we just look at the number of dead in most conflicts - they're orders of magnitude more than killed in Gaza. (Obvious tragic exmaple being the Syrian civil war, in which iirc 600k civilians were killed, but also again, Iraq/Afghanistan war in which 150k civilians were killed.)
(And let me caveat this - all human lives lost are tragedies. Even Hamas militants and IDF soldiers are tragic losses, mostly young people thrown into this situation by circumstance.
I only talk about this in terms of broad numbers because that's necessary for understanding this war compared to similar wars, which is the only valid yardstick for what is happening.)
Maybe it's the fact that I just saw the nth video of a WH spokesman dodging a direct question about an independent investigation with the phrase "we are requesting more information from the Israel government" that makes this point ring really hollow to me.
>Everything negative we know is also something we take at face value from an interested party - Hamas itself
Negatives come from several parties. Including as mentioned independent investigation from the most important human rights organizations, investigation that have in the past, corroborated Gaza Health Ministry past figures.
Which is the actual point, independent investigations are needed. I mean I would have hesitance to trust an independent investigation by the US or by "other democracies" (sic), but I would concede if that were a thing. But we get responses in the vein of "Israel is our ally so we choose to believe them".
>That's paradoxically why democracies sometimes "look worse" compared to autocracies >US actions in Iraq/Afghanistan
Yeah, I don't think those actions were a genocide, but there are some parallels between those conflicts and the current one, the propaganda and lies, the way that the opposing voices are completely ignored, and the veneer that "we are a democracy" so war crimes are either non existent or will be revealed. After all these years, what do we know about the mass murder weapons that caused the destruction of Iraq? Did the checks and balances worked or was the whistleblower arrested and tortured? Didn't we saw Bush have a lapsus just a few years ago about an authoritarian man deciding to invade a country for no reason and the audience just laughed it off?
>I only talk about this in terms of broad numbers because that's necessary for understanding this war compared to similar wars, which is the only valid yardstick for what is happening.
And this is completely false. Genocide scholars have said time and time again that genocide is not about numbers. If you cannot get this basic fact, please avoid stating that a word is being misused.
74 children a day. Murdered. Mostly precision airstrikes.
But why is it that rainbow flags (pride, et al) are considered the pro-Palestinian side in the conflict.
I might be old but I distinctly remember a humanitarian outcry in the 00's because Palestinians were murdering not only Jews and Christians but also homosexuals[0].
I'm not sure of the Israeli stance to be perfectly honest, but it's surprising to me that the only time I had ever heard of LGBTQ+ rights with relation to the Palestinian people it has been with a strikingly deadly tone, yet it seems that in the US the political divide has fallen such that LGBTQ+ people are almost forced to ally with Palestine.
I'm genuinely curious how this happened.
caveat: I'm not interested in emotional responses, if you feel emotional reading this then please just ignore the comment completely, I am not inviting a flame war, this is genuine ignorance and curiousity.
[0]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-5-2003-1346_...
EDIT: Added a citation for my apparently outlandish statement.
There are vanishingly few people from Gaza living in the west, which makes them the minority.
You see similar support between the LGBT community and communities of disabilities.
Short answer: they are often one and the same people - leftist activists who have opinions on more than one subject.
I could interpret this three ways:
1) "Leftist Activists"; are a mixed group with some supporting pro-LGBTQ rights and others supporting Palestine.
2) "Leftist Activists"; are a homogenous group, including LGBTQ people, of which they support Palestine (and thus, support a regime that would wish them harm)
3) "Leftist Activists"; are a homogenous group, including LGBTQ people, who will always attempt to ally to the downtrodden, even in cases where the downtrodden would wish them to not exist.
Are any of these correct or is there another interpretation I missed?
I suppose my next question would be why we are somehow stoic on the Uyghur issue.
But I would guess that the reason is that the US sends support to Israel while actively cutting ties (or going to war economically) with China.
This seems to apply to many conflicts, e.g. Sudan. The US could intervene. Now you might say "US tried something similar and that was not exactly a good experience", but the US certainly can intervene. Or, in Lebanon the US, and all countries in the UN security council promised to intervene (and disarm Hezbollah), but just don't do it.
Should we intervene for the Uyghurs? Maybe! But this one seems way more obvious
I mean, sorry, but the black flags and open hostility towards Jews shows what at least a large percentage of the movement is really about. Especially in Europe.
The rest of the movement is the same as leftist movements, imho. It's also not about supporting Palestinians it's about fighting the power, ie. attempting to have political impact by "campaigning" for something SO immoral, unacceptable and unrealistic that there is bound to be a fight. It's about the fight, NOT about a solution. And by campaigning I don't mean campaigning in the sense of political campaigning, or even the vitriol spouting semi-threatening Trump is doing, but being so in the way, sabotaging people's lives, that normal people pretty much have to react with violence (because that's the point of blocking, for example, the Golden Gate bridge: to threaten people's livelihoods, and get a strong reaction that way).
It's not about saving tax dollars ... Yes, there's 1% fringe rightists in there. But seriously? It's not about that.
First, no its not about tax dollars, you're right. It's about the US actively participating. Its something we have the power to easily stop doing. If what's happening in Palestine is comparable to the Uyghurs you're conceding that there are human rights problems.
As for antisemitism is Europe, I can't say. You might be right there. But in the US, most of it as far as I can tell is being horrified at pictures and videos of what's happening and feeling responsible. A lot of people hate what happened in the global war on terror and this is very comparable. I won't say that there is Nobody in it for antisemitic reasons here but I think that's a terrible awful reason, I disavow any antisemitism, and i believe that the vast majority of US people in the movement aren't.
The fight vs solution thing, I'm a little baffled by. Yeah the point of blocking the golden gate bridge is to show that things aren't stable in the status quo, that's how protests work. But it sounds like you're saying that getting a reaction is the entire goal and that's uncharitable and untrue
The same goes for the Syrian massacres. US was very clearly providing support for one side of the conflict.
No protests.
Central Africa. Same.
No protests.
Nigeria. Same.
No protests.
Or how about a HUGE ongoing us involvement resulting in lots of dead? Ukraine.
No protests. (and, no, Minimal Thinking Girl protesting by herself doesn't count)
Lebanon. Yemen. Kashmir. Hungary. Finland ... the list goes on and on. What makes this case of support different? We all know what makes it different ...
The closest equivalent imo is South Africa, which the US government was similarly close with and people were Very Mad in almost the exact same way.
& Finally, I truly do not understand the viewpoint that we should give aid to Israel and not Ukraine. I can see the arguments for both or neither or for just Ukraine but this one's baffling. They are currently being invaded by a much bigger power. They are required to use the weapons they get purely defensively.
1) they're Jewish
2) they actually defend themselves
Armenia and Lebanon have the same problem in the UN, but it only lasts weeks, and then they fail to defend themselves, and the muslim voting block in the UN is happy when they're militarily defeated, and they just don't care about themselves: not about human rights violations by muslims against anyone else. Not even about disgusting human rights violations by muslims against muslims. Look how much effort people put into getting attention for Sudan, and it's just not getting anywhere, and it won't.
That's missing the point about money. Buying the murder weapon is not in the same category as all the inactions that may go into knowing a murder will happen and not ultimately stopping it.
And indeed, when the Nazi's were losing they tried quite hard to hide the evidence, however it was so total and immutable in many cases that it could not be hidden, mostly because the allied powers controlled their lands and had free access to their previously governed population..
Without such access proof rarely escapes and when it does the total brutality is considered impossible; this is exactly what happened during world war 2.
You can support LGBTQ rights AND support Palestinian children not being killed by Israel.
What? My view is totally different.
Most of the pro-Palestinian people intersect with the same anti-fascists under fire from newly pro-Israel people that previously criticized anti-fascists for punching Nazis.
When alt-right people defaced Jewish synagogues before this conflict I find the people arguing for it to be publicly acknowledged as a hate crime are the exact same people that are pro-Palestine now.
For punching people they called Nazis.
When we read historical cases of witch trials or executing "demons" or "possessed people", it's the same thing.
Back to 2017, Richard Spencer is an actually nazi. He is a white supremacist that routinely spouts hate speech against Jewish people. In the case of the ABC interview the oppressed were Jewish people, and the oppressor was Richard Spencer. The Anti-facist very much cared about the Jewish people when he punched Richard Spencer. If Richard Spencer weren’t an oppressor of Jewish People, he wouldn’t have gotten punched.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFh08JEKDYk
2: https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2017/jan/...
3: https://gizmodo.com/indiana-jones-punching-nazis-harrison-fo...
Source? This is the first I’m hearing of this.
I hope that's enough, there's a lot of documented evidence of pride flags and watermelons in the bio of pro-Palestinian people, almost to the point where many online forums treat it like a meme.
I think this is especially the case when their tax dollars are used for this bombing.
It is about helping those who are a persecuted minority even if one of the groups wants to kill everybody in the other group.
In a lot of ways, the struggles are similar to BLM - there is a great injustice being done by a powerful force funded by the US government. Or again with opposing the US's global war on terror. The people in those groups aren't forced to be on the palenstinians side, but it is logically consistent with the other two.
I, uh, am not sure how a person can hold those views simultaneously.
Success of Palestine will mean oppression of the groups the cause seeks to protect (LGBTQ+ specifically).
Isn't this "paradox of tolerance"-esque, or is there a belief that if the Palestinian people were not being bombarded by an oppressive force: that they would be equitable to LGBTQ causes.
Or: does it not factor into it at all?
For example, right now the USA is quite progressive in general with gay rights compared to many places, which is great, but I would not support the US government invading other countries, or going back to colonization etc.
I can see those two might be opposed if what you wanted was LBGTQ rights at any cost. But for me at least war, and especially one-sided war, is the bigger injustice and other issues are secondary to that.
That depends on what you mean by success of Palestine. Eg if all you're talking about is an end to the current war, that's not really true.
Next, remember that not only are there reasonable people on the right that hate/fear the import of hegemonizing cultures into their own societies, but also plenty of bullies on the right who will hate somebody for having the wrong shade of skin.
Put the two together, and you get the meme where this guy has to pick one button out of two, one of them is labelled "gay" and the other one is "Islam".
That's how we end up in the situation where "queers for Palestine" get attacked at a pro-Hamas rally.
Israel seems content to keep Palestine as a ghettoized territory, leaving local administrative matters to Palestinians. How will an Israeli victory, no matter how complete, lead to LGBT Palestinians gaining more rights?
I don't understand this. Are you saying that without Israel in charge, Palestine is and will stay a ghetto?
It also doesn't "control Gaza's borders" alone, fwiw.
> On the other hand of course Gazans do not enjoy Israel's constitutional protections, etc.
Not sure what this is "on the other hand" of exactly. Palestinian's want self-determination, Gaza was an incomplete, one-sided and limited form of that, but a form of that. When you're talking about them enjoying Israeli constitutional protections, you're talking about the opposite - Israel essentially conquering Gaza and annexing it officially, turning Gazans into Israeli citizens. Not an outcome that Israel wants and also not an outcome that Gazans want.
And in the context of LGBT rights, that's an outcome that is almost guaranteed to lead to a huge erosion of LGBT rights in Israel, as it'd be adding millions of voters who currently live in a place and culture in which homosexuals are ilterally thrown off rooftops.
You seem to be confusing Hamas with ISIS; yes, ISIS did that in Iraq and Syria; not aware that’s happened in Gaza, although there have been false claims to that effect - https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/video-people-thrown-roof-...
Not denying that bad stuff happens to gay people in Gaza (such as extrajudicial honour killings) but not aware that it happens like that
(Btw, I wasn't "confusing" Hamas with ISIS, I was intentionally misled by that video. I usually try to fact check anything I post but obviously some things get through, so again, thanks for correcting me. I hate disinformation.)
> Not denying that bad stuff happens to gay people in Gaza (such as extrajudicial honour killings) but not aware that it happens like that
Yes, despite me getting this detail wrong, bad things really do happen to gay people in Gaza, as can be found in multiple places. Still, not quite that bad.
* Gaza is a semi-autonomous area
* local government in Gaza is much less LGBT-friendly than Israel's government.
* Israel has no intention of changing Gaza's semi-autonomous status.
But again my question is: given the above, how would an Israeli victory, no matter how complete, improve things for LGBT Palestinians?
> But again my question is: given the above, how would an Israeli victory, no matter how complete, improve things for LGBT Palestinians?
Ah, I was confused why you asked this until I saw this is where the thread started (not by me).
No, you're right, an Israeli victory probably won't help improve things for LGBT Palestinians at all, unless Israel takes over Gaza entirely and starts running it according to more liberal laws. A very unlikely prospect.
"just because you are weak, doesn't mean you're a victim"
sometimes a tiger initiates a fight against a deer, and wins. sometimes it initiates a fight against another tiger, and loses.
the initiating tiger does not get to claim high moral ground in either case.
Just because there are anti-lgbt elements in Palestinian society and politics LGBT people wont be pro-genocide and side with Israel.
The proposition defies description no sane person who is not a psychoapath will say "Oh, are they anti-LGBT and they may kill LGBT people? I guess its okay for Israel to murder their children then..."
> I'm not interested in emotional responses
The murder of children cant be reacted to with any other response than an emotional one.
I'd like to strip that sentence of the LGBT context, and point out that the general line of thinking (that there are legitimate reasons for wanting to kill a group of people's children) is actually popular enough to drive major policy. For example, given the historical record, Israeli society has been conditioned to be okay with murdered children and applying disproportionate and devastating force [0]. That state of mind is achieved through diverting the blame for one's atrocities entirely on the other party, and decrying their insanity and evilness for "making you do that" [2], as if one is not responsible for one's own actions, but is entirely reacting to another's action with no capability to alter course. Think this is far fetched and out of the line? There are 14000 children accounted for as dead as the result of current offensive that strongly suggest otherwise, and the killing is not even over yet.
Murdering children does not require an active war against a territory either [1]. It is simply how things are done in their society.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/23/israel...
[2] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2014-07-28/ty-article/we...
Yes, Im aware that this 'Kill their mothers/children' thing was brought to top-level public policy by their recent foreign affairs minister who for the first time publicly and openly used that rhetoric and it helped her career a lot. After this, their prominent politicians seem to have stopped hesitating from openly calling for it and this is the result.
FWIW in the German speaking countries it's the opposite (for obvious historical reasons).
Generally, I think it's ok to demonstrate against atrocities even if the victims are not your "friends". What I do find disturbing is when progressives try to justify the Hamas terror as an act of "resistance" (one famous example being Judith Butler). That is truely fucked up.
Look for people talking about Europeans, Settler's (i.e) every Jew in Mandatory Palestine is a settler. People that ignore that the war that gained them the land was a final solution attempt and the only embarrassment (nabka) is the failure to succeed at taht
[0]https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/7/16111052/google-james-damo...
Unlike abstract "opposing colonialism", which I assume lots of people would get behind, I assume others, like me, find the specific case against Israel to be completely different in many relevant ways.
But businesses thought they can score some easy brownie points by supporting "good" politics (in any case the kind they thought makes them look better). Well someone turns around and does the other kind of politics - something the firm thinks makes it look bad, and suddenly it doesn't like flags and activism.
To me this is the key hypocrisy.
I'll even explicitly say this: They were on the search experience team.
Multiple of them were also managers. (Both Engineer Managers and Hiring Managers)
Either way, let's hear more reports from other Googlers, please.
Why not? It certainly seems relevant to me.
All I've been saying (which I thought was obvious) was: when considering whether the actions of these people (who sent the "Do you support Hamas?" emails) -- as individuals -- constitute a form of intimidation (and it seems obvious that they do; and from what you said, apparently sanctioned by their higher-ups, no less) --
One has to keep their personal attributes out of the discussion. That's just how the legal and ethical standards for these things work.
Again, thanks for the disclosure. It definitely sounds quite creepy. Especially considering the apparent lack of action taken by the higher-ups.
If they facilitated its planning they aren’t being fired for their beliefs, but for their actions.
Where in it does it absolve those fired who weren’t physically on premises of otherwise being involved?
There is absolutely nothing they could have done other than speak about it. Which is all they're being accused of anyway.
Children are being murdered in live video in front of the eyes of the entire world. This is not an exaggeration. Those who propagate it are posting videos on the Israeli internet and these are being propagated to the 80% of the world that you call the global south. Them not reaching your eyes because the complicit media in the West keeps them out of sight does not mean that the rest of the world is not able to access them.
All the companies who collaborate with Israel in their activities are being vilified in the rest of the world at this moment. And rightfully so. If IBM selling machinery to the Nazi government during Ww2 so that they could run their concentration camps was a bad thing to do, this is the same. The standing of all these corporations is being affected just like how the standing of the US went to hell with their complicity and the Biden admn. is trying to put out the fire with its hollow pr declarations.
That is the rational, business-angle approach to this. From the human angle, anyone who condones a corporation that helps a vicious extremist government to murder children would be classified as a sociopath. Not 'rational'.
Everyone who abets and aids this and everyone who defends them is complicit with what is happening in Gaza.
...
I know that a lot of you, the tech and business colleagues who are regulars of this forum, will take these statements as 'emotional', 'non-rational', and 'unrealistic' and you will think that the resulting diplomatic and business fallout wont be that bad.
That is not how it seems from the global south. Israel appears as an unrepentant genocidal rogue state and from the US to Europe who aid and abet them are seen as hypocritical fcks. If even Joseph Borrell, the Eu parliamentarian who likes to openly classify Europe as 'a garden' and the rest of the world as 'jungle', started saying that the West is appearing as a hypocrite with its Gaza policy and losing its diplomatic standing and clout in the eyes of the rest of the world, there is no debating what's happening.
Long story short, you are all appearing as hypocritical fcks, including Google who went all the way to lay off those who protested its complicity in what 80% of the world considers a genocide. This wont go away.
(amazing - someone from the global south is telling these people what the people who live there think and what the public opinion is turning towards, and they are downvoting the messenger as a response as if it will make their problem go away)
{Credit: T Arnold}
No. Joining a union means you agree to collective action. Niche political positions wouldn't really qualify, and if pushed, would actual tear the union apart because just any many people are against as are for.
74 children a day. Murdered. Mostly precision airstrikes.
Google helps the same people committing this.
Politics essentially botched their Gemini AI release. The politics are beyond harming the company.
The "best" they can do is mirror status quo and avoid confrontation.
This is sometimes wrongly referred to as "neutrality".
LGBTQ+ being welcomed in tech in the earlier days is partially what's responsible for the LGBTQ+ being somewhat welcomed in society in general today.
Status quo for companies back then would've been to never support anything LGBT related until 2015. That's something that a lot of people right now would say would be absurd.
IBM has been rightfully criticized in its role in the Genocide of Nazi Germany. "Never again" means understanding what circumstances in society led to the decisions being made back then. "Never again" can't be actuated if speaking against authority is discouraged.
This is how fundamentalists think, whether religious or political. Everything is somehow tied to their ideology and they want to push it everywhere.
I wonder if they know how insufferable they are.
That's not what I said. I said everything we do is fundamentally political.
All of our actions are happening in the context of the politics we operate in. Do you have an example where this isn’t the case?
"Tech workers are demanding that they have right to know how their labour is going to be used. With little clarity about the project, they fear the technology might be used for harm."
Is there actual specifics about Project Nimbus that "are helping it commit atrocities in Palestine", or is it just that Google is selling general cloud computing to Israel as a customer?
That's a huge distinction, especially given what we now know about Project Lavender. And in itself is ample grounds to not to meekly ask, but to demand from Google that it provide clarification as whether the tools or services it is providing will be used in such projects, and if doing so is in accord with its own stated policies.
A question to which it thus far seems hellbent on not providing anything resembling a straight answer to.
Sounds perfectly straightforward actually.
The point the protesters are making is not that there is hard proof in hand about any specific projects at this point - but that there is ample ground, their view, to demand positive clarification from these companies that these tools aren't being used to cause harm in the occupied territories.
Given the magnitude of the crimes we are seeing on the ground, after all. And that thousands upon thousands of lives -- of persons who are unambiguously noncombatants -- have already been extinguished on far lower standards of proof. In the most gruesome circumstances imaginable.
This is quite clear if you follow the chain of my response to this thread, in the context of the question I was initially addressing.
But when you're a corporate behemoth, with a "keep turning crank to keep making $billions" business model...then not so much.
It was exhausting because I just wanted to show up and do my work and stay professional. I didn't even judge him for having those opinions. For all I cared he could do what he likes in private but it was infuriating that he did not realize that he was actively bothering by wanting to discuss controversial opinions at the workplace. I also remembered this guy as not really a very interested or efficient worker. He came to work to talk basically.
Years later, the guy now has 1K+ linked in connections, every bs certification imaginable and calls himself an "AI and futurism consultant". He may have learned that if he just talked about some other bs than before, he could make a lot of money.
If either of those is wrong, I’d say they both are.
It also feels uniquely selfish. "I love the money but I still want to protest!" If you feel so strongly then quit but that would require sacrifice.
Idk, these guys looked unplanned and childish, which lightens the credibility of their claims. They went zero to occupying an executive’s office—there wasn’t even a petition stage. That’s not the kind of escalation anyone wants precedent for, because if you provide it you’d better be ready to make space for a perpetual environmental and MAGA lobby in every leader’s workspace.
And while the PR impact of this hasn’t been negligible, it’s also been light. Outside HN it hasn’t really registered.
I divested all my GOOG stock when the Gemini debacle happened. I figured they were too entrenched in political ideology to compete with AI and would just slowly decay. For me, this is a positive PR impact as it shows GOOG is getting back to competing instead of collecting rents on technology they created decades ago.
I think it's silly that people will protest like this with the expectation that they won't immediately get fired but that's the play if you want to make noise.
I bet they are equally ineffective.
Maybe the company coffee machine starts using new beans and I don't like the taste. No one else is complaining, so should I keep my mouth shut?
If I say "hey I don't like this coffee" and everyone else goes "it's fine" then I have to get different coffee. If however everyone else says "it sucks" then maybe it'll get changed back.
If you cant come to terms with what your employer is doing, it's in the right of the either party to terminate the contract.
Morality is a subjective argument and non-sequiter here anyway.
Though morality can be subjective, culturally we have coalesced on many shared moral values (a subset of which have been codified into law, for example, it is both immoral and illegal to kill someone in most peace time circumstances). And since "morality" encompasses a broad set of expected behaviors that manifests in practically every facet of our lives, it's unfortunately relevant at pretty much all times. Morality is quite necessary for high functioning societies.
Since companies like Google dilute responsibility and behave collectively as sociopaths in the pursuit of money, I'm quite glad we have people willing to self-sacrifice to keep them from behaving a-socially (or, arguably, evilly). Yes, it's probably safer and "logical" for most people to avoid sticking their necks out for what the believe in.
I assume these people would have refused to work for an arms manufacturer or an oil company, but maybe they could try to change one of those from the inside.
I'm serious, have the balls to tell them you won't work for them because you consider them immoral. Take a stand. Something else will come along.
Having said all that I think if you don't quit then having an in-office protest without resigning is pathetic; it lacks the honesty of giving up your paycheck and reeks of entitlement.
Doesn't it seem like there's quite a gulf between compliant silence and quitting?
I don't know much about these protests so I can't say whether I agree with them or not, but the general idea that there's a black and white choice here doesn't make sense.
Also, doesn't it seem likely that many of these people understood that they could be terminated or face other discipline for their participation in these protests? That is, many may have understood they were putting their jobs on the line, right? That's no small sacrifice.
When Russia invaded Ukraine we saw a massive redrawl of companies, funny how this isn't happening with Israel at the same speed when the crimes are far worse.
Politics is always a sh!tshow to be avoided personally and definitely at your place of work.
A few years ago Google bended to a small few looks like no more will they!
Now I want to bring up Time's 2019 Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg. Remember her? The teenager who spoke out for climate action, something she was widely lauded for. You don't hear much about her now even though she's still active (eg [1]). Why is that? Because she started criticizing capitalism [2].
Why do I bring her up? Because she was praised while doing performative speech over climate change and sidelined when her criticism was at odds with the bottom line.
That's exactly what's happening at Google and most other companies. They're happy to put up rainbow flags and celebrate Pride because it's performative. It doesn't affect the bottom line. It's good PR in that way.
But these protestors were demanding action that would put Google at odds with the US government policy and that cannot be tolerated. We've seen this before. Google famously pulled out of China over censorship many years ago [3] but the bottom line meant they tried (and failed) to go back in years later [4].
For the record, what I've described above (with both Greta Thunberg and Google) is simply materialist analysis.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68749936
[2]: https://fortune.com/2023/02/13/gen-z-activist-greta-thunberg...
[3]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704266504575141...
[4]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/07/19/confirm...
1. One of Google's largest engineering office is in Israel, so it has thousands of employees directly affected by the war. Obviously seeing fellow employees protest against their own country at work is at least a huge distraction. A Google employee entire family was kidnapped to Gaza, by the way.
2. Project Nimbus is a way to get cloud regions in Israel in exchange for government budgets. Although the IDF will get its share, it's naturally going to be extremely limited. There isn't going to be some killer AI running on GCP simply because you don't run classified data/software on public clouds. The fact Israel does not even have a government cloud region means the defensive nature of the workloads are going to be extremely limited, and even if it had, intelligence would not be there.
3. The fact that you are sure Israel is a reincarnation of nazi germany, apartheid south africa and scare word, scare word, genocide, doesn't make it is so or also does not mean it is a popular opinion outside your twitter echo chamber. This might also not be a common opinion in your work place, even though people around you rather keep quiet.
We hear this disclaimer a lot -- but isn't the whole point of Project Nimbus is that it's effectively a private cloud environment? Per a recent press release:
As part of the "Project Nimbus", the cloud computing services will be provided from local cloud computing sites while the information will be processed and stored within the borders of the State of Israel under the provisions of Israeli law, strict information security guidelines, and under the guidance of the relevant authorities in the government.
Also, it doesn't have to be a genocide-as-a-service app like Project Lavender to be worrisome. It can also be some far more boring facial recognition tools making everyday life in the OTP incrementally more miserable, for example.
Google engineers reading this over your miso-roasted salmon & quinoa bowls are more than welcome to chime in with the relevant details.
I would think that the news articles have far more impact than booting the Israeli government off GCP. Getting kicked off GCP certainly hasn't done anything to stop Russia's genocidal war.
If we're going to do ad hoc sanctions, at least learn the lessons about what are good and bad sanctions. Doing partial sanctions has shown to be worthless.
Everyone is their customer. It is beyond hubris to think you get a say on that as one of 150,000 employees.
So in that regard, I think it's very admirable for them to put their convictions over money. From the outside, I agree with their opinion. But then again, money screams and people talk.
I feel like a lot of people in tech tend to be very much "not interested" when it comes to politics, even though tech and particularly these big companies are so involved in what goes around in the world. But I get it, when you're being paid 250k+ a year you get to live a really comfortable life; upsetting the status quo is difficult.
But yeah, I wish these people received more support from their peers than they do. Rather than people thinking we shouldn't "bring politics into the workspace" when the decisions being made in our workspaces are making deals with a government that is currently committing genocide.
My point is, wars do not determine who is right, only who is left.
The words themselves of the people in government in Israel very much point to it.
I just invite you to do some research on the topic.
Supporting one side or the other in such a highly contentious war is politics and anyone who tells you different simply thinks their politics is the right one.
First of all the military conflict in Gaza is asymmetric warfare, unlike Ukraine - Israel does not need any more money or weapons than it already has to destroy buildings. They already have everything they need, they already had it five years ago. No US military funding or weapons required.
Second, this is like 9/11 for Israel in terms of # of deaths of citizens (oct 7). They are not acting in a calculated manner but a vengeful manner. The UN could condemn them and nothing would happen. They have and will pursue this unless they are prevented forcefully, not merely criticized or tsk tsk'd.
The only thing that might do something to stop them from doing what they have done / are doing is economic sanctions or military intervention. But both those measures could be applied equally to Darfur or any other ongoing conflict, many of which are far more deadly than the war in Gaza currently. So it really isn't that different from those other conflicts, except optically (we love to hate on rich "white" people harming poor brown people, but when brown people kill brown people in Africa we don't really care, or Asian people kill Asian people, etc).
Fundamentally the reason that I hold Israel to a higher standard is because of the Holocaust, and all the pogroms that occurred before, all of which were incredibly morally wrong.
And here we are 80 years later, and they are acting in ways that are very very similar to the ways that their oppressors acted. Like, Gaza is equivalent to a ghetto, the West Bank is basically occupied territory, and there are many Palestinians who have their rights violated in ways that simply would not happen to Israeli citizens.
It's profoundly disappointing and depressing, that if even the Jewish people haven't learned from all of the terrible historical things that have happened to them, then what hope for the rest of the species?
Thats why I, at least care more about what's happening in Gaza right now.
You could even claim it was for legitimate military purposes.
But after all the information that has gone around we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this software is specifically used to maximize family-deaths.
I think lots of companies love money, but the only way to defend this is if you also love death.
Except I left out the part where they also ask chatGPT who should they kill and it gives them recommendations based on browsing history and what group chats they're in.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/the-gospel-how...
Morality is a social construct. The selfish gene is a biological construct.