When news came out that those routes were being chosen to make the app more "inclusive", I found it amusing how someone in Palo Alto presenting a PowerPoint with a couple of ESG slides could lead to someone else being shot with an AK-47.
If the above sounds unreal: https://www.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/mtfwfq/carro_do...
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/man-fr...
source? The above link only seems to support the claim there's armed people on streetview, not that google is directing people to crime ridden areas for "ESG" purposes.
The link in the OP is an example of what people may encounter if they follow said routes https://www.euronews.com/2016/12/10/italian-tourist-killed-a...
Problems with the veracity of those statements aside, at best the it confirms that google cares about being "inclusive", but the same source also specifically says that current routes are "objective", which disproves op's claim that "routes were being chosen to make the app more "inclusive""
https://www.reddit.com/r/texas/comments/18ieg6d/17yearold_te...
There was a viral thread a month or two ago from an ex-Google Maps employee talking about how that'd never be considered, because tl;dr, doing that would be a great example of steering at scale leading to unintended consequences.
Not sure if they misunderstood that thread, or they're just wholesale riffing.
I do!
> but,
buckles up
> sadly, I would not be surprised if it were.
On my end, I'm sad people make up silly things that'd never happen, to claim that it could happen, so they can express their sadness.
There's better options!
ex. here: I'm sad because it's near 4 PM [EDIT: f***, after 4 PM!], and I got a bunch of failing integration tests to fix after rushing a feature, over a long holiday weekend, for an investor who has been AWOL for a week. When I take a step back, my harsh review of myself is I'm unconsciously getting my mind off it, because it makes me feel better because it's easy to be correct when people aren't trying to be. But really, I'm just burning time I could be using to wrap up work.
So, in other words, it's totally made up.
It's got the vibes of: "Now, we can't verify that that's true, but it certainly sounds right." - Tucker Carlson[1]
1: https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/tucker-massive-conflict-w...
You work for Google, though. Why should your word be trusted over the others'?
Why would we limit ourselves to the set of not-Googlers? That is prima facie irrational and incorrect. Best case is there's a googler out here saying it, all you'd have to do is check in a week if they still had a job.
Self-peasantization isn't a virtue
I'm not sure what you're referring to with Google Maps deciding to direct people through low-income areas.
There was a recent thread, maybe a month ago, about how they don't do that, only do the most straightforward route, because redirecting traffic would cause as much bad as good. Unintended consequences and all that.
For what it's worth, a few more straightforward things:
- Google HQ is in Mountain View, not Palo Alto
- Google uses Google Slides, not PowerPoint
- ESG stands for "environmental, social, and governance" and refers to investors allocating money based on longer-term criteria beyond next quarter's results.
Gas?! ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance.
That's a slightly misleading way of characterizing ESG. "allocating money based on longer-term criteria beyond next quarter's results" is just "investing", or "long-term investing". ESG refers specifically to considering or changing company's environmental (eg. pollution) and social impact (eg. workforce diversity), as well as improving its governance practices. Sure, its proponents think doing the aforementioned things will improve the company's financial performance as well, but your characterization deliberately obfuscates what ESG actually involves.
B: "ESG refers specifically to considering or changing company's environmental (eg. pollution) and social impact (eg. workforce diversity), as well as improving its governance practices"
B: "[thus showing] A is deliberately obfuscating"
!?!?, two sets of !? for two different levels, one is there being precious little air between what I said and what you said. I frankly don't see any at all, is the idea that saying it comes from finance / investing is misleading??
The other is for the personal attack via mindreading.
I called it "slightly misleading" because 1/3rd of what you wrote was devoted to explaining what it actually is, but the rest is (seemingly) trying to defend it by discussing the most banal/non-central aspect of it. The reason why investors care about ESG isn't because "allocating money based on longer-term criteria beyond next quarter's results", neither is that why ESG detractors hate on it. What you're doing is similar to describing redlining as "banks deciding where to lend money, and refers to them trying to trying to manage risk". Sure, everything in that statement is technically true, and redlining ostensibly was about managing risk, but describing in that is misleading because it mischaracterizes what the controversy surrounding it is.
So I wasn't wrong, I just left out the controversy? Please, do share the controversy! Please, let it be more than the Palo Alto PowerPoint ESG presentation that required Brazil Google Maps to route people into gang controlled territory to be killed by AK47s.
Any more thoughts on the "deliberately misleading" part? Or are you leaving it there?
I'm not sure how you got the impression that I thought the google maps ESG claim was true. If you check my other comments you'd see that I expressed skepticism about it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40909047
>Any more thoughts on the "deliberately misleading" part? Or are you leaving it there?
"deliberately misleading" was never something I wrote. I did write "deliberately obfuscating", which I stand by for the reasons mentioned in my previous comment.
I'm not sure how you got the impression that I thought you thought the google maps ESG claim was true. If you check my other comments, you'd see I never said that.
Any ideas on what the controversy is that I deliberately obfuscated?
I'm bored and tired of inviting you to explain your mind-reading. I'll skip to why sharing your mind-reading is not only rude, but irrational:
Is it possible people use "ESG" as a boogie-man when complaining?
Put another way: am I deliberately obfuscating, or are you steel-manning nonsense?
Put another way, longer:
Imagine someone complains: "This restaurant's new menu is clearly pandering to ESG trends!"
Person A (steel-manning): "They must be referring to the complex interplay between sustainable sourcing, labor practices, and pandering to DEI values in the restaurant industry."
Person B (simple interpretation): "They probably just added a few vegan options and are upset about it."
In this case, Person A's attempt to find depth in a shallow complaint leads them far astray from the actual, much simpler issue at hand.