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Comment by derevaunseraun | Hacker News Reader

It just says that it'll just warn you with a purple underline. I don't think this is that bad tbh; it helps people write documents that are SFW and eliminates the anxiety of publishing something faux pas

for the people who use google docs for more illicit things, just ignore the underline??? It's not like google is saying "you can't use these words", more of an implicit nudge that you can choose to address or ignore

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I think a lot of people disagree with it on a practical level.

Someone posted about how the word "Eskimo" should not usually be used, as it literally means "meat eater" and can be offensive. That's great information! I wouldn't mind an underline that told me that.

When words like "landlord" start getting underlined, the idea starts losing its appeal. Landlord is not an offensive word, and to try and remove it comes off as overly controlling for no reason.

I feel like programmers also have a more emotional connection to words like master, whitelist, blacklist, etc., because they are terms that are not offensive at all in context. When people try to change them, it always feels like someone is coming in and saying "I don't know what's going on, and I don't care. >:( You must conform to my worldview!!". Any offense is completely ungrounded, so tools that automatically try to fix "offensive language" have plenty of opportunities to quickly stop being useful.

I don't see the problem with it either. I write reports as part of my job and conciseness as an example, is something many new graduates struggle with.

Word has all of these areas currently within Microsoft Word and they also have an entire section around checking the inclusiveness of wording, but I don't see a tweet about that...

Then why don't they give the option to enable this in a "work mode" and not turn it on for everyone by default?

Actually, it is only going to be enabled for "work mode". It is not being turned on for everyone by default. Certainly not if you are talking about the consumer version of Google Docs, and not even all paid versions of Google Workspace. So not only does your employer have to pay for the feature, they may have to pay extra if they are currently purchasing one of the cheaper tiers of service.

Specifically, it is only going to be enabled for these editions of Google Workspace: Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus

It is *not* going to be enabled for: Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Education Fundamentals, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Education Standard, Frontline, Nonprofits, G Suite Basic and Business customers

Even for those business accounts where this feature is enabled, the Workspace Admin for that domain can turn these stylistic suggestions on or off. (And you can turn off the inclusive language suggestions, while leaving other suggestions, such as for "concise language" on or off. There is a certain amount of granularity as to which classes of stylistic suggestions are enabled or not.) And users can also turn it on or off for themselves, regardless of what your Workspace Admin has decided about the defaults.

So sorry for bursting your righteous outrage bubble, but the intent is to enable this for those companies that might want to nudge their employees towards using more professional style of language. And if you don't like that, you can always leave and go work for some other employer....

I thought this was a great explanation up until I got to the unnecessary quip apologizing for "bursting my righteous outrage bubble". I haven't exhibited any outrage in my simple question so I don't know why you felt it necessary to add that.

They way you phrased your "simple question": "Then why don't they give the option to enable this in a "work mode" and not turn it on for everyone by default?" assumed that Google had turned it on for everyone, and it read as if you thought that was unreasonable and outrageous.

It might be nice if people assumed good faith, as opposed to assuming that anything that $BIG_COMPANY might do is unreasonable and evil. Certainly many people on these threads immediately leapt to the assumption that it was enabled for everyone and was trying to coerce people into some kind of DEI hell that conservatives hate.

I think you read a little too far into my original question since there isn't any indicator of how I feel about this one way or another. Though, to your second point, $BIG_COMPANY doesn't always have the general public's best interests at heart, especially not Google, so it's not hard to see why people are skeptical or worried about this sort of a change.

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