Bombshell on Bribe Claims Threatens States’ Google Probe | Hacker News Reader

Bombshell on Bribe Claims Threatens States’ Google Probe

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60 pointspseudolus12 comments

I was hoping something like this would start to come to light. The prosecution of "big tech" has been pretty shady (at least since 2017).

Here's hoping they uncover the rest.

> The prosecution of "big tech" has been pretty shady (at least since 2017)

Counterpoint: take out the first three words and it's still accurate -> "big tech" has been pretty shady (at least since 2017). The whole situation is a bit of a shit show on all sides and I'm interested in seeing how it plays out as arguments are made in federal and state courtrooms.

I would agree that in this hyper partisan hellhole that is 2020 it is hard to feel like many involved in this investigation might at best be said to have ulterior motives and at worst should be under investigation themselves with this particular incident being a good example of the later.

Having said that, the fundamental underpinnings of the case against big tech in general most certainly do deserve their day in court and the idea that this would all somehow disappear as a result of this most certainly wouldn’t look anything like actual justice.

https://archive.is/PqvDf

This seems kind of a weird way to do it, unless they fear a cover-up. However, in the current climate it's hard to tell when people are doing something in good faith and when they are doing something where they have vague allegations and are doing it for political reasons to sabotage someone.

I hope that they do a thorough investigation and disclose the evidence so it's obvious whether this is a bad faith investigation, or a corrupt AG.

I guess I'll say the quiet part loud. It is unusual for an investigation to have such an obvious partisan split, so much so that it is impossible not to conclude that the "anti-trust" case is a thin pretext for something else. It reeks of a type of partisan hackery we've seen every time a tech company is forced to testify before Congress. Baseless insinuation that tech companies are staffed by agenda driven liberals who tamper with search results and purge straight white male employees. This narrative is getting stale. Remember when Breitbart "leaked" that employee discussion from within Google the day after the election. Does anyone remember the grifter of the week who was "fired for being right leaning"? They find a new one for every hearing.

A major part of the Republican movement is a culture war on us (the median hn reader) and they are scratching around for ways to use the justice system as a cudgel with which to beat us. The obvious subtext is "how dare those uppity elitist California liberals have any sway or economic success. We must drag then down by any means."

Of course a case built on partisan hackery would implode on itself. Sound bites don't translate to sound arguments in court.

I agree with most of what you outlined there.

The only thing I wanted to highlight was the antitrust arguments against tech and the culture war arguments are most certainly different things even though many of the partisans like to talk about each as though it was a single coherent argument.

When I think about all of the people who stand to benefit by making these issues one and the same I am not exactly left with a group of people I would want to find myself defending.

> Baseless insinuation that tech companies are staffed by agenda driven liberals who tamper with search results and purge straight white male employees

Is this baseless? Was the Breitbart discussion not legitimate? or the google materials [1], or the github slides [2]?

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/ok-google-youve-been-served-151...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story...

edit: 2 mins in and already downvoted. Is this still a hacker discussion site, or just minimal linked-in..

There's probably a non-insignificant number of people working for Alphabet that browse this site, so don't be surprised.

There's definite social media and search bias against more right-leaning content. After the 2016 election Google decided it needed to become "the good censor" against "fake news" and "false facts" - when they're really alternate viewpoints that the loud minority screams is harmful to society.

In this case I'm highlighting the "alternate viewpoints" that appear tolerated within these institutions;

from the google link (here is a better link: https://outline.com/wSwEF7 ):

  “If you want to increase diversity at Google, fire all the bigoted white men”

  “by being a white male you are in a privileged class that is actively harmful to others.”

and github:

  “this is not work for white folks to lead”

  “some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women”

If these are fake news that should be dismissed or ignored, I'd like to see evidence of that given the power of such corps to be able to push these views. My suspicions is they aren't fake, so much as "not a big deal", in someone's opinion, that I probably don't agree with.

I mean, if diversity (of race) is important for creating unbiased software e.g facial recognition, then a lack of diversity outside "liberal" perspectives should also lead to chilling outcomes (such as the above).

Its a win-by-default stance. Democrats embrace science, Republicans are anti-science; science is the truth, ergo dems good, repubs bad. QED.

Ironically, I've had far more left-leaning friends who believe in crackpot stuff like aroma healing/acupuncture/chakra/spiritual/crystals nonsense. The most my rural side of the family can be accused of is having a more-than-healthy attraction to guns and hunting.. :)

> culture war on us (the median hn reader)

Out of curiosity, what _is_ the median hn user? I haven't seen any census on that.

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