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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Wow, they are still using Dory. That is the question collecting software that Taliver Heath wrote. It was a pretty brilliant idea, people submit questions and other people vote the questions up (or down) and top ranked questions get selected automatically.

Its interesting to think about Brietbart putting this out there as some 'evil' thing, given what their all hands meeting would have looked like if the election had gone the other way. But from a tech perspective its always destabilizing to endorse a political ideology just like it is destabilizing to endorse a religious ideology in what is a collective for economic output.

That said, the previous tech position of 'hands off' (very limited engagement except for very specific technical issues like ITAR restrictions on strong crypto) did not do tech any favors when it came to legislation. I'm not sure what the answer is here other than "its complicated."

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> Its interesting to think about Brietbart putting this out there as some 'evil' thing,

Never worked at Google, but as they say it went about as I would have expected based on my outside perspective. Or at least I wasn't stunned by anything in particular...

Overall I think what people dislike is the disconnect between the PR message of "all opinions are welcome / we are open / neutral" vs the reality of them being fairly uniform in political affiliation. I think they might do better to just own it and stop pretending. Say something like "yeah we are biased and proud of it and we stand firm behind these values etc."

Just because there’s a semi-uniform political bend doesn’t mean they’re biased in product. The ACLU backed the KKK’s right to March, but clearly doesn’t stand with the KKK’s values.

That’s something the Breitbart audience can’t wrap their mind around, as they’d never do the same.

> That’s something the Breitbart audience can’t wrap their mind around, as they’d never do the same.

Which clearly reveals _your_ bias. Well done.

You can't compare Google to the ACLU.

The ACLU has a track record defending free speech and freedom of expression. As long as the speech and expression does not contravene any laws the ACLU will defend it – it's irrelevant to them what values the speech and expression they are defending promotes or espouses. And, when you think about it, it's very unlikely that the ACLU will be forced to defend speech and expression nobody has a problem with so they are going to be defending speech and expression that gets peoples backs up.

Google on the other hand has no consistent track record of being neutral when it comes to content on their platforms. There's no transparency and insight into their deliberation processes. So if the group-think at Google comes down on one side or the other and they don't have a hands-off approach then that's very worrying. Of course, if you subscribe to Google's version of reality then you're going to be very happy with that but if you don't then too bad for you. If tech companies want to alienate a good chunk of their user base then they better be prepared for the backlash up to and including regulation and migration away to services that do a better job at upholding the ideals of free speech and expression.

> As long as the speech and expression does not contravene any laws the ACLU will defend it – it's irrelevant to them what values the speech and expression they are defending promotes or espouses.

Not anymore:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621ACL...

There is an interesting overview of the ACLU as part of the labor movement On Sept 7th's On The Media, entitled One Hundred Years Of Free Speech. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/one-hundred-years-free-spe...

I’m not google. I don’t have to reject or hide my bias, and in fact this forum is exactly for positing ones bias. And reading the comments on Breitbart what I said should become self-evident.

Google has been very consistent in showing its bias for an open, connected, free world where quality information is accessible. It was formed by immigrants, and has been vocal in their importance. The Trump campaign was the exact opposite of all of these things... a closed world busting traditional order apart, kicking out those “rapist criminal” immigrants, equating any quality information that disagreed as “fake news” despite the election has an unprecedented amount of actually fake and totally fabricated news spreading like wildfire to sell online ads. AdWords got caught up in it, and that had very real world consequences.

That’s what the reaction was, and it feels appropriate to me. That was a very somber day, and to many of us who believed in a free and open world it felt like a day of mourning.

All that said, doesn’t mean Google hasn’t been and can’t be neutral to data. If they aren’t, then they lose business and open themselves up to lawsuits as a monopoly abusing their power. Nothing you’ve said points to the fact that they’ve actually silenced “non-left” news. And having worked there twice, the culture I observed is such that they’d never want to do such things. It’s antithetical to their world view to silence political viewpoints (as opposed to genuinely made up clickbait garbage for the soul purpose of ads).

> Google has been very consistent in showing its bias for an open, connected, free world where quality information is accessible

I guess that's why they've been working with China to create censored sub-internet?

> It was formed by immigrants,

It was formed by Page and Brin, only Brin can be classified as "immigrant" and even him not of his own volition - he was brought in the US by his parents when he was 6.

> Nothing you’ve said points to the fact that they’ve actually silenced “non-left” news.

If by "silenced" you mean completely prevented access, then yes, Google does not have this power. Fortunately, almost nobody does. Biasing the picture, though, is another matter. US politics as it is now is often balancing on results of pretty close elections, and couple of thousands of votes thrown either way can do a lot. Google has access to data about billions, including vast majority of people in the US. People at Google are not shy about proclaiming at which side there are, and some also not shy about declaring they utter lack of respect and tolerance to the other side. Maybe there's a line they still would not cross and that line is way before it could influence any work decisions - but how exactly we can know that and believe that?

> And having worked there twice, the culture I observed is such that they’d never want to do such things

Are you sure that your acknowledged bias did not make you miss the willingness to suppress views that both you and your peers vehemently disagree with and hold despicable?

> It’s antithetical to their world view to silence political viewpoints

It's not what it looks like on the outside, at least. Just throw in "it's ok to be intolerant to those bad outgroup people" and you're in the clear. I don't see any hard commitment to free speech from Google. Maybe the people you've encountered that have this commitment are not actually those who dictate the policies?

> doesn’t mean they’re biased in product.

What is their product? Sure, if product is Android OS, or some wearable devices, yes, they are not biased anyone can buy and use them.

But are they also involved in filtering news, manipulating search results, tracking phone locations, hosting emails, selling ads, censoring or not censoring youtube videos etc.

Then "products" is not the only way a company like Google is effecting change in the world. They match employee donations to charitable organizations, they lobby the government (more than Verizon, military contractors and Wall St. banks), work with the government on drone AI software. Now they are thinking of moving back into China's market with all the privacy implications there, etc.

I think they are far from a "but they are just making a product and selling it, so leave them alone" type of company.

And of course, we might say here that Google's values match with ours so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. And even though their executives cry on camera after their political candidate loses, when they turn around and go to lobby the government or to police youtube videos, they'll regain their cool and be unbiased. I'd like to believe that, but sure we can see why others might not.

> Just because there’s a semi-uniform political bend doesn’t mean they’re biased in product

Surely. But that seems to be a basic assumptions in these quarters - if you hold certain views, they can't but influence who you are and how you do all things, including work. Isn't that the premise Damore and others were fired under? Isn't that the premise people get disinvited from tech conferences under - even if their politics has nothing to do with technology, their presence and others knowing about it can't but influence the interactions with them and the products they create, consciously or unconsciously.

But it can not work only in some cases - if we recognize that these things are unseparable, then it becomes impossible to claim Google being biased hard to the left has no influence on their decisions, including product decisions.

Example: if somebody who is working on search rankings writes an ML model to define what "reputable source" looks like, and by nature of their views they read only left-leaning publications, then the model will be trained in majority on such publications as "reputable", and would likely treat non-left-leaning ones as less reputable. Even without explicit intention of bias, the bias would be there. Moreover, since most of the people in Google would hold the same views, nobody would notice that bias as the output of the model would look exactly like they expect it to look.

> But from a tech perspective its always destabilizing to endorse a political ideology just like it is destabilizing to endorse a religious ideology in what is a collective for economic output.

Is it destabilizing at all? The British Empire, one of the world's most economically successful projects, had its own religious ideology. The US has a "Protestant work ethic." When have we historically seen the adoption of religion as destabilizing?

It might be wrong, sure, but I don't think we have evidence to conclude that it's unprofitable.

Didn't catholics in britain have a hard time og it for some period? Didn't that contribute to internal instability? Or am i misrecalling history lessons?

Much earlier period in history before there was a United Kindom.

Yes, a much earlier period that ended in the distant past of 1998. Sectarian violence is now limited to pubs and football matches rather than high explosive.

That wasn't/isn't just about religion though, it's about foreign rule, colonialism and national identity as well.

And about to kick off again thanks to Brexit, because it was never really solved, just pushed aside for long enough for people (particularly people in Westminster) to start to forget.

There absolutely was internal instability, but if the claim is "Your company should not adopt a political worldview, you will at most be as economically successful as Britain between 1534 and 1998," that's... not much of a cautionary story at all.

This is true but whether it was profitable is a separate question. On which see Weber 1905 and the recent economics literature!

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