That's pretty terrible if true. Not sure how it's relevant here. I suppose the entire recorded interview with Zachary Vorhies could have been taken out of context, but it sure looks like that's not the case.
There was another post about a dump of google documents that PV posted today. It was removed within minutes. The rush to discredit makes me believe this all the more.
The article you link is from 2010, granted it is ridiculous and does show how ridiculous PV is.
Still, would it be not wise to judge a book by it's contents than it's cover?
This particular person, Zachary Vorhies, is telling the truth, and the documents are correct could shed some light on the internal workings at google and potentially how they misinformed the public.
He was making according to his own testimony, $250,000+ (including the stock options). What would cause someone to just leave that and turn against the company?
I take anything from PV with a grain of salt, however to instantly dismiss something without actually looking at the contents is not very wise.
What does it matter if he believes the moon is made of cheese or if he emulates Ilhan Omar on Twitter? He provided documents. Shoot the messenger all you want but the substance of what was exposed can’t be denied. He provided way more documents than can be humanly faked, and we all know Google’s internally accessible troves of documentation are easily verifiable.
At some point, whatever Project Veritas was no longer seems to be what they are now, which is a place to get inside information about Google. Let that sink in for a minute. Multiple insiders at Google, willing to lose their jobs, are telling us something.
Well, it tells you some people can go nuts, even Google engineers. If you look at his Twitter feed, he's into QAnon conspiracies, international anti-Semitic Jewish conspiracies, anti-vax conspiracies, apparently all tied together.
Funny how the leaked blacklist doc shown, if true, included USA Today Politics, rightwingwatch.org, and mediamatters.org. Veritas and Breitbart only took a yellow highlighter to the right wing sites, but didn't highlight a number of left wing sites also in their leaked materials. Now why would someone biased, have Media Matters and RightWingWatch, and USA Today Politics blocked?
His problem seems to be that he filters out facts that don't fit his mental model, and only sees things which confirm the conspiracy.
Well, the messenger's own data shows many left wing sites also in the blacklist. But of course, any data points that don't fit the 'conservatives are victims' model is excluded, only selected data need apply.
Everytime PV makes front page news its followed by obvious accusations of bias, editing, taking quotes pout of context, and recently was under felony charges. It's an attention seeking "Whistleblower" group with minimal intellectual value.
Like racist sites like the Daily Caller sometimes their reporting has facts in it. But also like the Daily Caller, it's a known terrible source until confirmed and expanded by a journalist with ethics.
Every major media group, from popular newspapers to television hosts, has on a regular basis committed the same sins you list - from bias to selective quotation to making statistically misleading “racist” pronouncements to facing litigation and settlements to occasionally mentioning facts in the fourth paragraph. Where are these mythical ethical gatekeepers you describe?
Ethics in journalism has fallen hard but was a huge chunk of my college roommates (polysci/journalism major) coursework. In the case of PV, they are 90% unethical disproven fraud and 10% at best real issues. Almost every major headline they produce is edited, photoshopped, staged, or aggravated whereas the opposite is true for major media outlets like the NYT, WaPo, and others. 105 might be partisan coverage or leaning but 90% is real information or at least not photoshopped evidence.
Before people start shooting the messenger (Project Veritas a.k.a PV), I highly recommend watching congressional testimony [1], [2] by Google lawyers & employees where, under oath, they've confirmed materials from P.V. leaks to be accurate.
Google's only defense in the testimonies was that seemingly partisan actions weren't company policy, but actions of a few individuals. That line of defense fails to hold muster when said actions repeat like clockwork.
It could have been much more impactful if done the other way around.
I would also like to point out it's hosted on youtube. Delicious.
Now that said, this is indeed troubling information. It seems unlikely to be the intentional action of a small cabal. More likely, standard groupthink behavior. "How corporations go bad."
It's the reason the US founders wanted the 3 branches of government. Google would do well to create an ombudsman position. They are very powerful and they need internal checks and balances that are perhaps antagonistic.
Not a single comment from anyone who has actually gone through the documents, like they don't reveal important AI security exploits caused by the "good intentions" of Google's morally superior engineers. Why is that?
Is HackerNews supposed to just assume Google is the paragon of moral supremacy? If so, can we get that written in the TOS so people know what to expect?
I've read a few of the documents (by no means all) and I'm just left wondering where the meat is?
There have been other leaks that suggest a rather unpleasant political mono-culture, and some creepiness with the "bring your whole self to work attitude" and I don't doubt that the Google execs would be glad to be rid of Trump, but I don't see a "smoking gun" of obvious conspiracy.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 56.5 ms ] threadif you want to see what kind of things they get up too.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acorn-foe-james-okeefe-sought-t...
It is relevant if you are trying to dismiss the message by painting the messenger as untrustworthy.
Still, would it be not wise to judge a book by it's contents than it's cover?
This particular person, Zachary Vorhies, is telling the truth, and the documents are correct could shed some light on the internal workings at google and potentially how they misinformed the public.
He was making according to his own testimony, $250,000+ (including the stock options). What would cause someone to just leave that and turn against the company?
I take anything from PV with a grain of salt, however to instantly dismiss something without actually looking at the contents is not very wise.
Vorhies' twitter is a trove of conspiracy theories (qanon, pizzagate, birtherism, trutherism) and intense antisemitism.
Well this one for a start is racism.
He didn't leave, he got fired because he was stupid and got caught.
Funny how the leaked blacklist doc shown, if true, included USA Today Politics, rightwingwatch.org, and mediamatters.org. Veritas and Breitbart only took a yellow highlighter to the right wing sites, but didn't highlight a number of left wing sites also in their leaked materials. Now why would someone biased, have Media Matters and RightWingWatch, and USA Today Politics blocked?
His problem seems to be that he filters out facts that don't fit his mental model, and only sees things which confirm the conspiracy.
Like racist sites like the Daily Caller sometimes their reporting has facts in it. But also like the Daily Caller, it's a known terrible source until confirmed and expanded by a journalist with ethics.
Google's only defense in the testimonies was that seemingly partisan actions weren't company policy, but actions of a few individuals. That line of defense fails to hold muster when said actions repeat like clockwork.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX6LlEcJ4nw
[2]: https://youtu.be/zIniYSkAWo0?t=5074
It could have been much more impactful if done the other way around.
I would also like to point out it's hosted on youtube. Delicious.
Now that said, this is indeed troubling information. It seems unlikely to be the intentional action of a small cabal. More likely, standard groupthink behavior. "How corporations go bad."
It's the reason the US founders wanted the 3 branches of government. Google would do well to create an ombudsman position. They are very powerful and they need internal checks and balances that are perhaps antagonistic.
Is HackerNews supposed to just assume Google is the paragon of moral supremacy? If so, can we get that written in the TOS so people know what to expect?
There have been other leaks that suggest a rather unpleasant political mono-culture, and some creepiness with the "bring your whole self to work attitude" and I don't doubt that the Google execs would be glad to be rid of Trump, but I don't see a "smoking gun" of obvious conspiracy.