Ivoirians

I'm not saying Google handles everything correctly. My comment was meant as an explanation as to why one person has a positive perspective of Google and a negative perspective of Facebook. Obviously if someone thinks Google is destroying the world, they're going to want to change my opinion/as many positive opinions of Google as possible, and I respect that even if I disagree.

To respond to your points quickly: I'd rather support a company with a moral stance I agreed with than one that was neutral. I think news media in general has a problem with sensationalism/optimizing-for-clicks/echo chambers, but I don't perceive that Google is particularly bad as an news aggregator. I think a lot of complaints about Google/Youtube overlook that most policy decisions about removals/demonetization are driven not by politics or agendas, but by advertisers, without which Google/Youtube would not exist. (And again, if you disagree and believe that targeted advertising is itself a net bad for the world, oh well.)

Personally, I think viewpoint polarization and the internet's enabling of echo chambers is the biggest problem facing the world. I know Google is often accused of making the problem worse, but I don't agree. Google News, for example, won't stop showing me Fox/Breitbart articles, even though they have to have enough data on me to know I'm super far-left.

Anyway, I did some searching (on Google, ha), but can't find any articles linking Google/Youtube usage to mental health problems, so I'd be interested if I'm wrong. The only one I remember seeing said Youtube had a positive effect on mental health. (https://www.psychalive.org/worst-mental-health-instagram-fac...)

Disclaimer: I work for Google and these views are only my opinion, etc.

From my perspective, Google's goals are aligned with improving the world by offering information services. Search, Gmail, Maps, Translate, basically all of the Other Bets, etc.--it's easy to imagine that the people behind them are more concerned with impact on the world than on generating profit or consolidating Google's power.

To me, Facebook has no such world-improving aspirations. The extent to which I'm aware of Facebook's attempt to improve the world was the initiative to bring free internet to India, which was perceived as a play to lock more people into Facebook. Plus, I keep seeing studies of how increased Facebook usage correlates negatively with peoples' moods, so Zuckerberg's evident goal of "get everyone on Earth on Facebook" feels gross.

Things obviously aren't just this black and white, and both companies collect user data in order to generate buckets of advertising wealth (which, if you find disagreeable, probably biases you against both companies), but from a personal perspective, I'm quite happy working for Google while I don't think you could pay me enough to work for Facebook.

Someone else pointed that this exists and, surprise, it's run by Google: https://news.google.com/newspapers

There are other newspaper archive services though.

I don't think anyone is trying to make the case that their side is morally superior. The issue at hand is how to prevent and punish what looks to be serious, efficacious interference, not how to perfectly avoid being biased or hypocritical. Like, pointing out "liberals would be arguing less vehemently about interference if it had produced an outcome they wanted" is pretty meaningless, don't you think? And "they did a bad thing, but we do it too, so guess we can't do/say anything about it" is nonsensical in a world where we aren't all competing for moralistic brownie points.

Not that humanity would be better off if we were less biased, of course. <30 percent of Republicans and >70 percent of Democrats believe Russia tried to influence our election. Disheartening.

I once had the USPIS hunting for a $10 monthly subscription box of snacks when it was signed for at an apartment building but my friend never received it. Got a call from a gruff-sounding agent promising to look into it and everything.

I don't think I ever got a follow up after that, though...

No one said law enforcement literally went to him and tried to convince him it was a bad idea. And if they did, he still made the decision himself, right? Unless we're subscribing to the theory that he was compelled to shut down.

I would personally refuse to work on a secure messaging service because the thought of making a product that will be used by awful people to do awful things would actually be offputting. If that's less of a concern to you than having secure communication, whatever, go nuts. Not everyone is a gung-ho privacy advocate though.

I would argue the exact opposite: that the internet may have enabled the freedom of minorities to express their views without fear of repercussion or immediate ostracism, but that because of the nature of selection bias and the rise of echo chambers/safe spaces/whatever, the internet has made genuine discourse much, much harder. In the US, right now, the degree of polarization is so high that many people get all their news from sources with the same slant, only associate online with people who agree with them, hell, unfriend any high school Facebook friends who post things they find politically unpalatable. In what way is that "having to hear arguments you don't like or agree with"?

Anonymity does remove social ostracism, but I disagree that social coherence is a bad thing.

In this case, we're quite literally discussing how anonymity promotes negative--if honest--behavior. If we made murder legal and free of societal repercussion, you'd probably have a lot more people expressing their inner (and honest) murderous urges. I feel that we shouldn't spin the fact that people are base and uncivil unless corralled by authority as "hey, we're letting humans be honest."