> If women should not even have the vote, why should we worry about gender diversity in the engineering ranks?
These two paragraphs read as a microcosm of this whole episode. Think what you may about Peter Thiel, but the quote does not say or even suggest that "women should not even have the vote." It merely points out that as the voting public has been broadened, it has been broadened to include sectors that are not (historically) as amenable to limited-government policies. Therefore, the relative popularity of limited-government policy among the totality of voters has diminished, suggesting that democracy and capitalism are presently at odds. Reading the quote with a reasonable level of charity suggests Thiel would prefer to convince these voters of the appeal of limited-government policy, not revoke their right to vote. Simultaneously, he is also presumably arguing, as many others have, that simply increasing voter turnout does not necessarily lead to better governance.
Can the New York Times point to any quote from Thiel that justifies the implication they have made here: that Thiel believes women should not have the right to vote? Perhaps there is one; I really don't know much about Thiel. But this quote alone isn't it.
See addendum to the essay at bottom: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
Lazy editing by the NYT.
This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:
Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”
> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs.
This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo.
This level of journalism, both from the writer and from the editors, is disappointing.
> This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo.
People encouraging a 'charitable' reading of the memo have argued that the memo says that Google shouldn't aim for 50/50 diversity as a goal (or that increasing gender representation as an end in itself is likely to lead to sub-optimal outcomes), and that women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles. I'm really trying quite hard to think where the misrepresentation comes in, or indeed, if it's not about that, what the memo is actually about.
>questioned the company’s gender diversity policies
It did that.
> made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs.
It did this too. But I'd argue the NYT opinion piece is too vague here. "made statements about" does really mean anything. I suppose the "suitability for" is a bit wrong. More like "biological inclination towards" technical jobs?
That changes things slightly but I can't see it as a huge misrepresentation.
The underlying idea of the memo is that biology can partly explain women's career choices (true) and that Google should recognize this and factor it into their diversity targets more than they do. That second part is highly debatable. Without controlling for gender bias and many cultural/historical effects, I'm doubtful we can even really begin to detect how much biology influences the choices of any given individual in the real world. How can we blame biology for a woman's choice if the mere fact that she's a woman causes her to be reviewed more harshly by others for the same work? Taken less seriously? Etc etc. These are real effects, and until they are gone, it will be impossible to determine what role biology plays on average participation levels in tech.
(edited to clarify NYT opinion piece, as opposed to NYT article)
Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”
Where are you getting this from? He says nothing of the sort; simply that women and poor people have destroyed capitalist democracy, by attaining the right to vote.
There are a great many on HN who rush to Theil's defense, who seem unfamiliar with his very public, very outspoken politics. He's also said that "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."
His solution to the fact that democracies may disagree with him is to weaken and destroy democracy.
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
Seems like an open and shut case of bad journalism.
does he say this? or is this an inference.
I would think he'd be okay with not having ideal libertarianism and keeping democracy.
Women and minorities are tough for libertarians; it shouldn't be controversial to point that out. It's also not surprising why that's the case. It's hard to sell a world view predicated on the concern for protecting people from the government to demographics who have since the 1950s relied heavily on government for protection from other people.
* You're not saying evangelical Christians make your preferred form of government impossible.
* You'd be arguing in pursuit of a narrow policy goal, unlike Thiel.
* People choose to be evangelical Christians; they're in part defined by their opposition to abortion. Women don't choose to be born women.
* When you say "evangelicals make reproductive rights more challenging", you're not directly alluding to a franchise those people won within living memory.
No. But that's not a full parallel.
Consider the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, when American Christians were first recognized by their former rulers to have their own state.
If, in 1798 during the Franco-American war, a prominent British person had written: "since 1783, negotiating alongside American Protestants - a group notoriously difficult for England - has severely limited our ability to colonize and trade across the globe"
Then he too might find some critics at his doorstep. Probably some supporters as well, but England didn't have the strength for another war with America. However innocent, that comment wouldn't have been mainstream. Understandably so, in my opinion.
--------------
Alice: I think A, B, and C.
Bob: Did you say you think A, B, C, and D?
Alice: No, I said A, B, and C, but now that I think of it, I misspoke about the C part. I think A, B, and C(2). I don't know where you got D. I don't think that.
Bob: OK. C(2) makes more sense, and let's forget about D. Here's why you're wrong about B.
---------------
Here's what seems to happen a lot these days.
Alice: I think A, B, and C.
Bob: I hate your thoughts. We're done here. If I were your boss, you'd be fired.
---------------
People would be a lot less angry and a lot smarter if they actually dialogued more.
"Abolishment of slavery led to economic ruin in the Confederate states." -Author Bob
And a not-so-well-meaning reader TLDR'ing it as:
"Author Bob claims that abolishing slavery was a bad thing." / "Author Bob is a supporter of slavery."
"since 1865, the huge decrease in black slaves—something notoriously tough for capitalists—has rendered the notion of a "productive economy" into an oxymoron".
Followed by the non-denial:
"It would be absurd to suggest black people will be re-enslaved".
Has he been a prominent figure and thinker? Sure. I think that most would agree, however, that his political views and eccentricities are extreme, have been long satirized, and are not generally representative of people in technology.
We have to leave room for "insensitive" tones if we are going to be truly inclusive. Having a uniform book of dog whistles and manners doesn't mesh with actual diversity.
That being said, if someone approaches Thiel about the offense and implications and he doubles down, he's on his own.
(1) Thiel opposes capitalism,
(2) Thiel opposes democracy,
(3) Thiel opposes women holding the franchise.
The piece in question seems to choose #3, which is the most natural reading, but I think #2 is plausible as well. Thiel clearly supports capitalism, so it's not #1.
That is, how did you get from a description of what is, to inferring what the author thinks ought to be?
Anyway, this school of thought espouses that capitalism and democracy are inherently incompatible. Democracy is seen as a slightly longer but sure road towards communism (as Karl Marx himself said [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Marxism]).
The logic here being that, if the criteria by which elected officials get into government is by promising the demos more and more government handouts, then the logical conclusion is that at some point, we'll have transitioned from democracy to communism.
The Austro-anarchists' solution is therefore to nip it in the bud and ensure that society doesn't employ democracy from the onset.
Thiel either opposes capitalist democracy, or regrets the franchisement of women. (Edit: Or both.) Reading those words otherwise is, IMO, not charitable but delusional.
---
Having said that, the impression I get is that Thiel opposes democracy, rather than specifically democracy for women. He probably regrets extending the franchise to women not because they are women but simply because he regrets extending the franchise at all.
This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:
Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”
The way you decide whether to trust someone or something is whether someone you already trust trust them. So the question is: who do you trust and how far does your chain of trust go?
For me, I need to trust my coworkers. And I do. And I trust that those coworkers will report misbehavior internally such that I can see it.
And from what I know, I trust them to look after my data. They have everything: search history, location history, email, photos of my daughter. I am not a product. I am a leaf on a human-indecipherable neural net that shows me a particular ad.
Companies don't care about people. Companies aren't people. People care about people. I do not think Google The Company "wants" anything in any way you can moralize good or bad. Google The People want to do right by users.
So, the question is, do you trust me? :)
> So, the question is, do you trust me? :)
No, I don't. If the history of capital concentration in the past 50 years has taught me anything, it's that capitalism is ruthless, and that money and power corrupts. The simple fact of the matter is that even if the entirety of Google's upper management was full of good people, the fact that Google is a publicly traded company means the company must act sociopathically and unemotionally to maximize return for shareholders or risk the board's wrath.
They may not act evil now, but when they have no other way to provide the exponential growth expected by shareholders, I guarantee they will exploit users in every way possible.
The reason I trusted Google with this is that they know their shit, technically speaking. And it wouldn't make economical sense to try to make money from e.g. blackmailing me using my darkest secrets.
Where I have my doubts though, is in their neutrality of Search. What I have read the past week does not fill me with confidence that Google will be a politically neutral search engine e.g. 5 years from now. This is the real risk.
Edit: A Google recruiter has been trying to recruit me for some position during all of this. The ball is currently in my court. I am not sure I want to return it.
(And now I am paranoid about that recruiter having access to my Google search history, or perhaps more likely, some algorithmic summary of it.)
The Google Perspective API https://www.perspectiveapi.com/ is already politically biased -- http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/10/googles-perspective...
So, yes I expect to see Google search to be biased within 5 years. Mostly in a left-leaning direction, although I doubt they will be left-leaning on the question of whether big corporations such as Google should pay their fair share of taxes.
If you are white or Asian male, I wouldn't bother. Google don't like your sort. Sad but true.
If we met and interacted regularly, I suppose I could learn to trust you. Let's assume we get along and you are a nice person, which is likely true. However what you are asking of us only scratches the surface.
You are asking if we trust you, and the handful of co-workers you have interacted with. Even if we accept this premise, you have to see it as part of an enormously larger picture. Do I trust that you have carefully evaluated the personal integrity of all Google employees with access to user data? Do I trust that you regularly screen all new employees? Of course not, these are preposterous assumptions. But in order to do as you ask, these would have to be true. It's too big an ask.
To replace what Google used to provide, I moved to FastMail for email and mostly self-host the rest. Open Street Maps are excellent where I live, and Duck Duck Go is now "good enough". It's been a good learning opportunity for me and I'm very pleased with the results and with how much more proficient I have become with a variety of new tools. I will never switch back.
I don't hold any resentment towards Google or its employees but I do wonder how they feel about what they do. Do they see it as some noble cause, and not an effort to manipulate users with relevant ads? That's not a very charitable description of what happens at Google, but it does accurately describe how many of us see it.
What makes you so special? :-)
I completely believe you when you say that Google-the-People want to do right by users. Unfortunately, Google-the-Company doesn't feel the necessity to have a support infrastructure to address those cases when your neural network makes a wacky decision, among other things. To Google-the-company, I am most definitely a product.
The bad part is that Google-the-Company is the only Google entity I interact with. You are cflewis-the-HN-poster; you might be able and willing to help me if I run afoul of Google-the-Company, but I can hardly expect that. More to the point, that doesn't scale.
So, the answer is, does it matter?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/17/google-su...
But I look at actions to decide whether to trust them regarding the outcome of their future actions. And most of the time that one is a lot more important.
Well meaning people do terrible things all the time, we all know what the road to hell is paved with after all.
So no, I don't trust you, nor do I trust your coworkers. I do generally trust your intentions. While you are trying to be good people and that is a good thing, you are not good people. Because good people both mean to do good and actually perform good works.
First, no, I don't trust you. Sorry. You seem like a nice person, but that means fuck-all when it comes to trust.
Second, who cares about the employees? Google is not its employees. A corporation is a golem, animated by legal fiat and supposedly obedient to its owners. But the corporation's own internal power structure, as well as the larger structures above it like the state, the world, culture, etc. are what determine what it can and will do.
You say that you all have compassion for humanity. And I'm sure you do! But that didn't prevent Real Names.
You say that you all have respect for privacy. And I'm sure you do! But that didn't prevent personalized ads.
You say that you all have morals, ethics, and the general ability to distinguish right from wrong. And I'm sure you do! But that didn't prevent Youtube from being steamrolled by anybody willing to swear out a DMCA request, to say nothing of Youtube Red.
So, the question is, do you trust your employer? Not your bosses, not your peers, not HR and Legal, but Google itself, the golem?
There are a few significant psychological processes at work here, but the point is that groups of people behave in non-intuitive ways that don't necessarily reflect the sentiment or intention of the individual members.
We also see this in physical crowds; get enough people smashed into a small enough space and they lose individual agency and function as a fluid, with each individual carried by the wave and unable to control where they go. This results in stampedes and crowd crushes.
>But that didn't prevent personalized ads.
How is this a privacy violation?
>Youtube from being steamrolled by anybody willing to swear out a DMCA request
How is this Google's fault? (by this I mean its a legal issue. Google is, as far as I know, required to assume DMCA notices are made in good faith and respond to them, or itself be culpable for any violations). And I'm unaware of, for example, Google lobbying on behalf of the DMCA.
>Youtube Red.
What is unethical about Youtube Red?
Companies indeed aren't people, they are, as poetically put by Charlie Stross, invaders from Mars (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders...). Damore has said in one of his interviews that he loves google. I think it is a big mistake - loving someone (or something) who can't love you back.
You can also trust someone with something small and then increase the level of trust as they prove reliable. Note that this also works for reestablishing a healthy relationship after someone screws someone else over. The "trust by proxy" model doesn't allow a resolution to "I don't trust them and I already know them" problem. This is the problem that warring countries have. And it's the problem overly antagonistic political factions have.
Google the company wants to maximise its profits. Whether this is good or bad depends on how it goes about doing so. Because Google is a big powerful corporation with lots of information on lots of people, they have the potential to do bad things (while all the time telling themselves that what they are doing isn't really bad).
Are Google employees and executives bad people? Mostly not. Does power corrupt? Of course it does.
As societies we have learned the hard way the value of checks and balances, accountability, rule of law and consequences to minimize the scope of trust and the arbitrary application of power.
People don't trust Google, they just assume the very fact it exists means it operates within the framework of rule of law and there are consequences for straying so there is an implicit trust in the system like the bread you buy is made legally to certain standards.
But many may not have considered the scope of data collection, its application and privacy implications fully and will only wisen to them when they are consequences they can feel, at which point the loss of trust will be dramatic or are aware and try to work around them.
No way. And don't think for a second we buy that "We're so Googley and honest because we use fun colors in our logo" persona either.
Googler wrote a document which was widely derided internally and externally. Sundar took the conservative option and let him go, due to his toxic effect on work environment. Shouldn't that be the end of the story?
Maybe a googler can explain how and why this has exploded into the zeitgeist, because I fail to see it. It seems there were some number of bad actors inside google besides the original author, but a small number.
If Google has a mono-culture that's not open to debate about gender and diversity issues, it's neither my business nor my concern, and all the bloggers and Ezra Klein and NYT who are trying to frame a megacorp-sized story about this, are stretching.
EDIT: Instead of downvote, maybe an explanation on WHY this incident shows (as the posted article claims) Google's bad intentions for us?
If Google is a monoculture and yet allows or even encourages dissenting opinion and discussion, we have absolutely nothing to worry about. Alternatively, if Google is a monoculture and forces that monoculture on its visitors and users, then any out/other group is going to suffer and potentially not even realize it.
And it turns out that the subtle manipulation is incredibly effective:
> "We predicted that our manipulation would produce a very small effect, if any, but that’s not what we found. On average, we were able to shift the proportion of people favouring any given candidate by more than 20 per cent overall and more than 60 per cent in some demographic groups. Even more disturbing, 99.5 per cent of our participants showed no awareness that they were viewing biased search rankings – in other words, that they were being manipulated."
Ref: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-...
"...allows or even encourages dissenting opinion and discussion..."
...framing the discussion here as regarding dissenting opinions after some of what has been reported...
"...Google employees who opposed Mr. Damore found their internal company profile pictures posted on Breitbart, the Verge reported."
...begins to look a bit threadbare.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/10/16128518/google-town-hall...
I understand there's an issue of trust, however every Googler will tell you that impartiality of search results is an overriding priority.
1. Many people feel discriminated against due to these affirmative action policies. If there were policies set in stone saying white men got precedence over black women, would you say "who the hell cares?"
2. The opinions expressed by that Googler are held by many people employed in the company. The fact that the company would sooner fire him instead of discussing the points he raised and explain why he's wrong seems to confirm his claim that there is an echo chamber, which isn't exactly conducive to a meritocratic structure.
3. Google is an incredibly large multinational corporation. What happens there will set precedent for companies around the world. If AA weakens there, it's a sign that corporate policies may change globally.
I have to imagine Sundar was flooded with emails saying "fire him or I quit."
I also imagine there were less-incendiary ways for him to propose his viewpoints. He could have left out his obviously-controversial "facts" (which most people with common sense, I claim, would know were gonna piss people off), or he could have talked directly to HR or his manager or even to Sundar about the diversity policies. The way it played out, he chose probably the most explosive exposition and forum. So Sundar had a right to fire him just on those grounds: not for the opinions expressed, but for the effect of enraging the entire company, and likewise for not having the common sense NOT to piss off all your co-workers. In fact, he did say the firing was for creating a toxic work environment.
"Danielle Brown, only recently named the VP of diversity at Google, was included in the first set of eight screenshots. By Monday, she had already locked her Twitter account after receiving an onslaught of abuse.
"That same collection of eight screenshots made its way onto former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos’ Facebook on Wednesday.
"The targeting of those specific Googlers might have been the work of outsiders, but anxieties are running high inside the company because of the publication of screenshots from the internal Google+ on alt-right channels. On Tuesday, Gizmodo reported that a meme depicting whistleblowers being beaten was being shared on an internal meme generator.
"On Sunday, alt-right blogger Vox Day published screenshots from the internal Google+, showing employees criticizing the Damore memo. On Monday, Breitbart published an even larger set of internal screenshots. Names and profile pictures were not redacted. "What really gets me is that when Googlers leaked these screenshots, they knew this was the element of the internet they were leaking it to," a former Google employee tells The Verge. "They knew they were subjecting their colleagues to this type of abuse.""
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/10/16128518/google-town-hall...
On the one hand, given the "discussion", firing the guy who lit the match is starting to look more reasonable.
On the other, the little tiny Libertarian on my shoulder keeps saying, "a company should be free to hire or fire anyone they want."
["If there were policies set in stone saying white men got precedence over black women, would you say "who the hell cares?""
In a company made up of 80% black women? Probably.]
Not a Googler, but it is pretty clear that it has exploded because the subject matter intersects with prominent issues in the (increasingly literal rather than figurative) culture war in America.
That's why you see tweets from the likes of Kellyanne Conway.
Conservative Googlers have been leaking people's names and locations to known white supremacists to harass and threaten people they disagree with, and the snowball is still growing.
People hate it when the alt-right uses the tactics of the left.
Kellyanne Conway is a Trump partisan, not a conservative thought leader.
I think you're mixing up Trump-style populists with conservatives. Conservatives backed Rubio and Cruz and are still irked (at least) that Trump is president.
Which, somehow, is not condemned by a single one of the people crying about freedom of speech here. Goes to show that there's only one kind of freedom of speech they care about, and it's theirs.
I downvoted you, not for your opinons, but for this:
> "Oh my god, who the hell cares?!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFZrzg62Zj0
Too Redditesque for me. What next -- advice animal memes?
* https://www.facebook.com/myiannopoulos/photos/a.599546946849...
* https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/10/16128518/google-town-hall...
Sounds pretty toxic to me.
Most professors?
* https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
Besides, unless Damore has organized all this somehow, it's just a big guilt by (AFAIK unasked for) association argument.
1. "Argues for biologically determined sex differences...
Not really. Argues that we can't rule out biologically influenced differences.
2. "fails to understand the current state of research "
Well, there's a whole bunch of researchers who disagree with that.
3. "argues cognitive sex differences influence performance"
Nope. Argues there are differences in preferences that come out at the population level.
3a) "in software engineering, but presents no supporting evidence"
Sort of true. It doesn't present evidence for performance differences, because it doesn't make that claim. It presents evidence for differences in preference, which is that it does claim
4. "fails to acknowledge ways in which sex differences violate the narrative of female inferiority;"
I don't even know what that is supposed to mean.
5. "assumes effective meritocracy"
Nope. See above about preference vs. ability. In fact, does quite the opposite, by assuming preferences and not abilities are often a stronger influence.
6. "makes repugnant attacks on compassion and empathy"
COMPLETELY WRONG. It references a plea for compassion instead of empathy, because empathy leads to bad outcomes, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom:
"Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make." -- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29100194-against-empathy
Huh? Where?
8. "paradoxically insists that authoritarianism be treated as a valid moral dimension"
Huh? Where?
8a. "whilst firmly rejecting any diversity-motivated strategy that might remotely approach it"
Huh? He says that diversity programs at Google aren't working and he wants to replace them with ones that he thinks have a better chance of working.
9. "ultimately advocates rejecting all morality insofar as it might compromise the interests of a group."
Huh? He thinks the current programs are immoral and ineffective and makes a moral argument for replacing them.
So complete and utter BS.
And of course there are quite a few scientists who completely agree with him:
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU
And more. And unlike here, they don't cite pop-sci books as evidence.
The link you provided is no exception, as the writer is not a professor; while that's obviously an arbitrary distinction, I have to draw the line somewhere.
Also, it's incredibly you seem to equate the people supporting Damore with the person himself.
And the contrast with Drexel and Milken? Come on, those people went to jail for fraud!
This is fact-free dreck that's just adding to the noise.
Martin Shkreli (the pharma CEO who gained fame after jacking up the price of a drug by 5000% overnight) is referred to in the press as "pharma bro". What makes him a "bro"? He's awkward, unpolished, and more resembles the overcompensating nerd from high school than the binge-drinking football-playing jock who got invited to the parties.
Tech has never had a "brogrammer" culture. The term is just used to paint the picture of programmers as being misogynistic.
It feels like something thrown together by scraping a bunch of random content from blog posts on Silicon Valley.
Google executives and other management personnel from other tech giants have internal and external fiduciary responsibilities to uphold inside their own organizations. Google firing the engineer is, unfortunately, what many companies would choose to do when faced with the same public dilemma.
And while it sucks, one has to wonder if our outrage at the termination of an outspoken engineer is somehow spawned from an unrealistic expectation placed upon google as the 'good guy'? Or is it from an unrealistic optimism born in the late twentieth century and early twenty first that the internet, and its leading companies, would somehow chart themselves on morally superior course?
In my humble opinion, I am not totally sure google qualifies as a truly private enterprise, and as such they should have a greater interest in the stakeholder. And in that context, our outrage makes much more sense, and is more justified.
That whole manifesto was wrapped in scientism, using facts selectively to advance the author's viewpoint, with the conclusion being a non-sequitur.
More aggravating however and the reason for why you shouldn't be outraged is that, regardless of any truths mentioned, it's inevitable for such an essay to not cause outrage within the targeted groups. This is because we are only human.
Now think of the company. Google and Apple are the most powerful and rich companies in the world. And one of their employees writes an essay under the pretense that "it's bad for business" and that:
(1) outrages many of their other employees
(2) hurts their public image, no matter what they do next
Of course they fired him. It's unreasonable to expect otherwise. Repeat after me: a company is not a democracy, a company isn't a meritocracy either, a company is property and that property ain't yours, unless it's your company.
Also, you know what's really, really funny?
The right wanting companies to be able to fire anybody for any reason, except for this particular reason. That smells like a double standard.
The conservative columnists I've read on this think that Google was legally entitled to fire Damore, but they failed their eithical obligations to follow the golden rule, promote a culture of honest discussion, and actually promote diversity of thought in their organization.
There may be some alt-right columnists saying other things, but they don't really follow logical principles as much as fight as partisans in the culture war. So you're right that they're hypocritical. To them it's beside the point since the left is already being unfair, etc. But if you can figure out a way to get them to care, let me know.
There could be an interesting argument invoking the prisoners' dilemma and game theory saying conservatives should use liberal laws while they exist. Maybe they're getting at this with the "but SJWs" stuff.
> The right wanting companies to be able to fire anybody for any reason, except for this particular reason. That smells like a double standard.
Despite what big media companies would like you to believe, and despite what our first-past-the-post voting system does to our selection of parties, most people in "the right" don't think like the stereotypical right-winger just like most people on "the left" don't think like a hyper-liberal.
In a way, getting down to the uglier sides of the people involved in the organizations with unchecked control over our society is a way to bring the point home that no, we cannot place this much trust in these people.
But whether people are buying that angle or not, listen to the professor when he connects it to the larger problem of technopolies. Really this is just a new variation of the overblown corporate power that has been around forever. These companies like Google, Uber, and Amazon are so powerful they are basically supplanting aspects government in many countries. It's sort of like the giant corporations the cyberpunk authors envisioned, but worse because they don't have competition.
It does seem to basically be working to most people's benefit -- as long as you don't have a business that tried to compete with these companies.
This is just the core problem with both cooperative and competitive approaches to society -- without adequate structural prevention they tend towards over-centralization. If we can realize that this over-trusting relationship is unacceptable, that will motivate structural changes to improve it.
I believe the next big revolution will be mass deployment of truly decentralized, open, easily evolved, and public, platforms that have some similar features to the closed for-profit monopoly technology giant services. This includes things like search indexing and advertisement Google, retail indexing and logistics (Amazon), transportation (Uber), etc. And probably even banking, which is not quite as centralized but has things like PayPal etc.
Because high-tech economies of scale are great, but centralization of control by private companies over the public at large with fixed platforms that don't evolve are not.
Well, I was already on board with that thesis. I'm not on board with (I assume) the proposed solution, which would be relying on new regulatory powers to resolve the issue. It doesn't help with other corporate oligopolies, so I'll need some convincing that this time it's different.
(I know the answer, but that kind of blanket statements are ridiculous)
> The effects of the darker side of tech culture reach well beyond the Valley. It starts with an unwillingness to control fake news and pervasive sexism that no doubt contributes to the gender pay gap.
I'm inferring that instead of "lip service", the technology sector should "control" news and ideology.
> The future implications of a couple of companies’ having such deep influence on our attention and our behavior are only beginning to be felt.
This concerns me, not because Google isn't on "my side". It concerns me because I don't think it's healthy for anyone to have this sort of invisible influence.
> By giving networks like Google and Facebook control of the present, we cede our freedom to choose our future.
Right. But the answer isn't to pick a better authority to win fights for "our side". The answer is to give individuals freedom (in practice, not just in theory) to stay away from bullies and fools. Even if you set up perfect rules and systems, eventually someone you think is foolish and/or dangerous will be in charge: Thiel, Pichai, Jobs, Gates, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Sanders, Cruz, Maduro, Castro, Kim, Gaddafi, and the list goes on. You may not mind some of them, but everyone would be at least dismayed by some of them.
The author ends up on the path to this conclusion, that freedom of choice is essential, but doesn't really lay it out clearly. There's is some praise of EU's data privacy laws (conveniently leaving out "right to be forgotten" rules), but it seems to me that the goal for the author is more government control over technology, not necessarily true freedom for the individual. How many of the above leaders would you trust with your data?