Google Employees Protest Secret Work on Censored Search Engine for China

The New York Times ^ | 16 Aug 2018 | Kate Conger and Daisuke Wakabayashi

[Theoria]

Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company’s decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China, have signed a letter demanding more transparency to understand the ethical consequences of their work.

In the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, employees wrote that the project and Google’s apparent willingness to abide by China’s censorship requirements “raise urgent moral and ethical issues.” They added, “Currently we do not have the information required to make ethically-informed decisions about our work, our projects, and our employment.”

The letter is circulating on Google’s internal communication systems and is signed by about 1,400 employees, according to three people familiar with the document, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The internal activism presents another obstacle for Google’s potential return to China eight years after the company publicly withdrew from the country in protest of censorship and government hacking. China has the world’s largest internet audience but has frustrated American tech giants with content restrictions or outright blockages of services including Facebook and Instagram.

[Catmom]

The people who run Google are soulless and immoral.

[gaijin]

The USA is a proving ground for the roll-out for Google, Facebook et al for the Chinese market.

WE are the guinea pigs.

The Chinese have conned them with bewitching promises of 20 Pieces of Silver.

And they’re going for the bait.

[gaijin]

Stole his business idea

Stole all the shares from his BEST friend

Secretly sold users’ data

Stated in a confidential email to a friend that people who trust him are "dumb-f*cks"

Married in the community proprety state of California, the very day AFTER he took Facebook public

Requested nude photos of users to “protect them against the risk of revenge porn”

Secretly tried to get hospitals to release vast stores of patient data “so I can help cure diseases”

Secretly requested banks give him his users' financial data, including transactions, so “you can check your balance on his site."

Admonished that people "build bridges instead of walls", all while building walls around his Palo Alto homes and around the huge Kauai Estate he bought and then threw the Hawaiians off of

[DiogenesLamp]

Ping. I told you they were working on this.

[WMarshal]

“First they came for the patriots, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a patriot.

Then they came for rural Americans, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a a rural American.

Then they came for the libertarians, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a libertarian.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Bkmrk.

[chief lee runamok]

““We urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table, and a commitment to clear and open processes: Google employees need to know what we’re building,” the letter said.”

google employees, you are building a platform dedicated to censorship.

For being supposedly intelligent people, google employees don’t seem to be too quick on the uptake.

[LeoTDB69]

The longer I stare at that gif the goofier he looks. Someone other than his grandma get this guy a real haircut.

[FLT-bird]

Yet they’re just fine with censoring people in the US.

[setha]

Yet Google employees are happy to devote work on systems that identify, track, and purge “problematic” individuals - as evidenced by the Damore firings.

I wonder why they have this logical disconnect.

[PGR88]

Do these same people consider if Google sensors Americans?

[CaptainK]

Everything you listed would not be a problem if everyone disconnected from Facebook. I'm not on Facebook and I'm a better person for it.

Unfriend yourself.

[BradyLS]

Betcha if you told ‘em it was a secret project for a censored search engine that tracked and foiled “racists” and “supremacists” in the United States, they’d clamor to be reassigned to it.

[Born to Conserve]

Google. Is. Evil. I saw it first hand from the inside. They would happily skin you alive to make one cent.

[ModelBreaker]

LOL. They don’t mind Google censoring it’s search engine about Donald Trump. But they put their foot down when Google does it for China.

[joshua c]

But censoring Conservatives is AOK.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Because they only want to build censored search engines for the USA.