Google Translate to/from Chinese is often terrible, especially with short phrases. Try 剿匪 which means busting gangs/bandits (剿 = bust, so this phrase is an action against bandits). However, Google translates it to “bandit”.
Just tried it on a video about WHO and Bruce Alyward. It's still up after 6 minutes. Either we're inundating their censor bot, it's been shadowbanned, or Google has stopped under the flak. I'll keep checking later.
Try looking at your comment in an Incognito window and sort by new. You'll still see your own comment if you're logged in, but you won't see it otherwise. I just tried this.
You must have excellent karma. Mine was deleted after ten seconds. I simply wrote: "Just testing if comments containing 共匪 will be deleted" to a Rick and Morty video.
It is either the case that the parent likes to add random facts into conversations such as "the word communist contains 9 letters" which has nothing to do with the conversation, or the parent clearly felt that the phrase being perjorative was tied to it being censored.
Let us assume the parent was being on topic and relevant. Therefore they seem to indicate the censoring was due to it being perjorative. As most other perjoratives are not typically censored (per my comment), that would imply that the "Communist Bandit" perjorative is somehow special.
Is it special because it's somehow especially worse than other perjoratives, or is it special because it offends a foreign state's political party?
I guess we're on a tangent now but maybe it's an interesting exercise.
>the parent clearly felt that the phrase being perjorative was tied to it being censored.
How do you come to this conclusion? In my view the comment is not implying anything at all, it is merely translating (not only using a direct translation but also conveying the implications of the phrase "communist bandit"). The word "pejorative" adds to the translation. There is nothing in the original comment that says anything about censorship at all.
A banded together band of bandits bandying about their propaganda. Communists are not US citizens, and even if they were, the US does not have laws to protect softies from "pejorative speech." Clearly, someone claimed it was "hate speech" -- which it is not -- and now it's banned globally on YouTube because US laws stipulate they must not entertain Hate Speech, but until a US judge says "Communist Bandito" is hate speech, zero relevance.
Sure, vote me down but it's true - extranational powers do not have citizens' rights in the US, and even if they did, pejorative language is not something citizens are insulated from as a right.
Google is siding with a fascist prison-state over Americans' right to free speech, it is deplorable.
And furthermore, the only real justification for a global ban for a US-based company could be "hate speech," which clearly enough communist operatives claimed it was, but just because somebody's feelings are hurt doesn't make something hate speech, it doesn't come down to cancellation politics.
In other words, Google is siding with the Party Room of Control because Google is not an American company. If they were, they would not let this stand.
One fascinating thing about being Very Online in the past 10-20 years is watching the messages of astroturfing campaigns slowly leak into public sentiment. I'm sure the same thing happens with other forms of media, primarily cable television. But as an example, with the whole 50 Cent Army, a few people have heard convincing arguments from them and turned into unwitting (or otherwise) propagators of the same rhetoric.
> But as an example, with the whole 50 Cent Army, a few people have heard convincing arguments from them and turned into unwitting (or otherwise) propagators of the same rhetoric.
The 50 Cent Army posts pro-Chinese propaganda on Chinese websites. Do we have any evidence that the 50 Cent Army posts on English websites? I can't imagine it being that difficult to produce given that we traced Russian propaganda. Forgive my snark, but it sounds like you are unwitting propagating rhetoric that designed to dismiss anything that defends China.
If you're interested in what the 50 cent army actually does, Harvard published a paper about it. It turns out that China rarely actually engages in argument, but rather tries to distract people, so they think about other things.
To be fair, Google is in a no-win situation. Post-2016 election, there has been enormous pressure put on Google (and Facebook and Twitter) to ramp up their censorship from the anti-Trump center/center-left/left. The mainstream media is on it too and relishes taking shots at social media every chance they get (the YouTube 'adpocalypse' was spurned by a hit piece by Washington Post against some minor doofus thing that PewdiePie did, and explicitly targetted advertisers of YouTube).
Even tech commentators are in on it. Kara Swisher, for example, has been railing at social media companies every chance she gets to get them to ramp up censorship against things she deems offensive.
So... basically everyone who isn't a Trump supporter, then? Is that really how you see the world? The president of the united states vs. literally everyone else? And you've chosen the political side instead of the social consensus?
>So... basically everyone who isn't a Trump supporter, then?
No. There are plenty of non-Trump supporters[1] who don't care for YouTube censorship. However, the calls for censorship and pressure on social media companies came as a result of the panic-induced from Trump's election and Russian election interference, which does correlate with anti-Trump voices, more specifically Democratic party establishment and their supporters.
Those aren't the only voices to call for censorship. There is also a parallel cultural war that pressures social media companies to censor hate-speech (as defined by supporters). This tends to generate a lot of noise from both sides, but I think it's probably minor in the grand scheme of things. That Democrats in Congress are cracking down on social media is by far a much bigger deal - because they can actually punish these companies through laws and regulation - and they have been threatening to do so.
[1] I supported Hillary in 2016 because, for all her faults and unlikability, she would have been a reasonable and competent leader. So no, I'm not a huge fan of Trump, but I also don't pearl-clutch every time he says something dumb on Twitter or in a press conference. In a similar vein, though I think he should be a one-term president, I don't think it's an existential threat if he gets elected again.
> Democrats in Congress are cracking down on social media is by far a much bigger deal
What legislation are you talking about? I mean... they only have one house of congress. I'm sure there's some rhetoric somewhere, but it's just rhetoric.
I mean, the POTUS himself routinely calls for censorship of the news media, but it's likewise "just rhetoric" because he can't unilaterally pass laws (though he can come closer than the house can). Does that not trigger your same logic? If not, why not?
>What legislation are you talking about? I mean... they only have one house of congress.
They can investigate and haul social media CEOs in front of the House - which they have done routinely, blaming them for things like Russian interference and Hillary losing the election. And any bull the Democrats throw out there against tech companies is magnified by mainstream outlets - who really do act like the arm of the establishment Democratic party when echoing Democratic talking points.
And elections are cyclical, today Democrats have the House, in 2021 they could have all three branches.
Maybe none of that would matter if it wasn't the case that these tech companies are ACTUALLY listening to these calls for censorship, even if Democrats have no power today.
>he POTUS himself routinely calls for censorship of the news media
POTUS is a doofus that mouths of all the time on twitter and press conferences and nobody (not social media companies, not the public) takes him seriously, with the exception of mainstream media outlets. It's been 3 years, and still, every tweet is the end of the world. He does have a lot of power to do a lot of things but he doesn't all those things, but the pearl-clutching that happens by the mainstream outlets anytime Trump tweets is now a joke on the media. And the media is stronger than ever under Trump, even after years of fawning over the Obama administration.
Good luck with that. Their services are essential to my life and I don't think they're doing this dramatic draconian version of censorship everyone thinks. Never seen this kind of hate from the HN crowd towards amazon or apple's manufacturers and warehouse workers working in deplorable conditions, which is far and away the worst thing a company could be doing. Not whatever this is.
they are all despicable to me. I boycott amazon and apple for those reasons. Google is so entrenched in everyone's life that is much harder to let go. And that's why I keep trying to get rid of it... nothing left holds me except the huge amount of google docs that I share with many others
This is the first time I am seriously considering leaving Gmail. Seems like a royal pain in the ass to switch though, since you don't "own" your email handle like you would a domain.
With a bit of planning you can have a near seamless switch. The biggest pain point would be places where you have to reregister/change your email address, and you can avoid even that if you're fine with Google still getting to read all email that comes to that address.
It is a huge pain in the ass to switch, but the sooner you start transitioning to an email solution you control the sooner you'll be out of the tenuous position of depending on a free service that can be revoked at any time.
It's not so bad if you have a domain tied to the gmail account. I use myname@mydomain.com but point my MX records to use gmail for it. So switching for me basically means re-pointing to another mail service.
The only reason I use them is their spam filters are excellent. Otherwise I wouldn't.
Switching would be laborious if you're using @gmail, probably a case of looking at each unique domain name you've received an email from, logging in and switching addresses. Could be relatively methodical about it by taking a backup and then working down your inbox and deleting the emails from those recipients until you have nothing left. Could be a day job.
There is an option in gmail to forward your emails to another address if you wanted to do it over time.
Did you read the article you linked? It's no longer prefacing the code of conduct, but it's still included in it. They moved it from the opening statement to the closing statement.
Despite four comments now incorrectly posting otherwise, it has never once been removed from the code of conduct.
"And remember… don’t be evil" the way its written at the end of the code really feels like a sarcastic wink, like "don't be evil" is a joke that they know they don't actually follow.
They've dropped it and added it back then dropped it and so on
I realized first hand they did evil in 2013 (stomping on and or blantantly stealing tech from those dreamers they inspired to dream/do/innovate) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929
No, they're pro-people-who-call-themselves-Communist-and-also-have-a-lot-of-geopolitical-power-and-market-share. China is most certainly a capitalist state through and through, and Google is a money-grubbing company whose sole motive is profit. It really isn't hard to talk about these things in frank terms without resorting to silly culture-war-style name-calling.
China has a stock market [1] and 389 billionaires [2], second only to the US. A decidedly un-communist state of affairs... In reality they are an authoritarian capitalist surveillance state.
Not even the most anti-china, anti-communist person in the world operating on half a brain cell would call china communist. How are you buying things from china with capital if they're communist?
Google left the mainland Chinese market long ago and all of its services are blocked there.
The most likely explanation is that some mainlander inside Google has been pushing for this with the "this is racist and hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" argument.
> ...we can just use Google to find information that directly contradicts your claim.
Not really. Google hasn't returned to the mainland market. Youtube is blocked.
That little bit of developer interaction or Project Dragonfly - whatever its state may be - does not contradict that.
If you believe this sort of censorship is ordered from the top in order to get back into the mainland market, that's fine. I still prefer my explanation.
Actually, this is more like: “In other news, you are in China now.”
I don’t care that much about how Chinese citizens let their 共肥 party censor them, but it’s not ok when I am being censored for speech that could be considered offensive to the communist party of China.
Nope. Well, sort of, but not really. It's more like. You are on Earth now. All the big govs work together at the highest levels. The whole nationalistic shtick is for us proles down here in the bleachers, working the boilers, eating scraps. You know, like entertainment? Something to get all excited about, like.
And all govs control info. Democracies just pretend they don't (they do it covertly, through narrative control, disinfo, etc). Social media now presents them with a problem. They have to censor platforms, which makes it overt.
This is against the historical trend of democracies modus operandi for information control. Brave new world out there!
Edit (this thread now has restrictions, can't reply you, below, so here):
I mean more "nationalistic shtick" as in the trope of "US vs China" or "US vs Russia" etc. They have to be able to start a profitable war, for something, right?
All the same...expanding the argument (as you have) to the "truths we hold to be self-evident", well, they are unfortunately not implemented in as iron-clad a way as us proles would think. It should be obvious. I love the US, living there, the people, the environment, everything about it...aaaannndd....structurally, you can't really say that the debt trap, opioid epidemic, Wall St bailout, social division deliberately inflamed by the media, covert info control and surveillance, democratic "theatrics" that stymie results, really equates with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" can you, chum?
I mean, I sort of agree with you a little bit, even, in a way. It is sad. And I do think it is an impressive argument. Yes. Very much! ツ
Edit (to your edit ツ): Yes, the Muslims in camps, that is a hard thing for Westerners to get their head around. It's funny, tho. I wonder about it, for a few reasons:
- Western tech supports the security in XJ
- China has protected Russian, and US interests along its Western (Central Asian) borders with regard to the countries there, the Tajik, Afghan and Pakistan areas. It could have caused plenty of troubles for US/Russia there, but on the face of it their security interests align. And honestly, who do you think is coming across the Afghan-Chinese border (or via Tajik) and doing some of the interrogations in the detention centers, working right alongside Chinese? You guessed it, the [C_A] ツ.
- I would have thought an American would be more supportive of counter-terrorism/deradicalization/counter-narrative. Being soft on sepratist terrorists almost seems like being an apologist for terrorism. Something I know no American would ever do...I'm sure. :P Especially considering how tough the English speaking world has been on terrorists in the Middle East. I can't imagine them standing up to support Islamic terrorism in XJ, or is that just because it's against CN and it's like "enemy of my enemy is my friend"? But truth is CN no your enemy. Really no!
- The XJ narrative is actually cooperative propaganda between US/China. 90%+ of "whistleblowers/defectors" are Chinese disinfo agents working this psyop. Preparing for the "great discrediting" that will come. The remaining ones are fakes/unaffiliated individuals trying to get attention. The real story is: There is strong CT presence in XJ, but the "camps" is fake news, as you say. People apply to go. Like college. And yes, some people wish they were not there, just like college! But they can leave. Only people who are "detained" are terrorists, exactly like in the US.
- This XJ propos is a complex info strategy but boils down to:
1) an overly critical narrative works to support China (just like the overly critical MSM actually supported President Trump into election because it fired up his base);
2) regular Chinese, seeing how crazy and fake is Western coverage of XJ, begin to distrust more and more Western media, helping the Party;
>And all govs control info. Democracies just pretend they don't (they do it covertly, through narrative control, disinfo, etc).
Wishful thinking. "Narrative control and disinfo" are categorically different than banning expressions, opinions, theories and thought. The scale and types of information control are not on comparable levels.
There are always contradictions inherent in governance. There are always both open and classified activities. There are always those peoples/departments/regimes that seek to stretch or overstep rules or norms.
But you can't group it all and say "Great Firewall is equal to think tank lobbying."
What citizens, businesses, platforms, politicians and basically every other entity is allowed to say in a free country vs. China is on different planets.
> [XJ secret master plan]
Citations needed. Testimonials of citizens and family members dealing with camps are more convincing than wide-ranging, decontextualized, strung-together internet rants about XJP's secret genius plan.
But yeah about the rest, you're probably right. I can't prove any of what I say to you, and one reason is I don't think you'd take, "just trust me, I'm right", as proof.
I hope you don't believe me. It is sort of an awful thing to believe in.
What can I say? I guess I'm a bit of a nutter. Maybe more than a bit. Definitely more than a bit. Conspiracy theorist whackjob if you will.
I like your ellipsis "XJ secret master plan". Nice quote style. Very funny. Perfect for nutty comments :)
Your reply sounds crazy, like a conspiracy. I don't want to believe it, but I have to admit this helps to explain something, you gave me a fresh and interesting view to think about the narrative.
Can one take out an ad with "共匪" in the text? Adwords against it? Is this censored on Orkut? Would Google consider censoring Gmail? Or Google Voice? Would they consider bleeping Google Meets?
Google will need to be very public about who signed off on this and under what framework.
Very interesting. I wonder what would happen if you put in some special noise from adversarial AI methods today. Would be a real arms race of detection vs evasion.
Section 230 of the CDA either needs to be re-interpreted by the judiciary or Congress needs to get its act in order and pass a new law that is more reflective of society in 2020 and beyond. It's not 1996 anymore...
I find it so ironic that the reason for censoring a slur against communism is because a capitalist company stands to lose revenue from angering the government of China.
From the actual Google Support question, this was posted on 11/10/19. Why are we only now just noticing? Was it previously confined to China and has now just rolled out globally?
Viral noticing is fed by widespread predispositions, which change over time like fashion.
There is a critical mass of people paying attention to censorship in general, and recently a critical mass of people attentive to the evils of the CCP.
You're misrepresenting that link. It's not a list of things that Google censors, but a list of things that Google wanted people to know are blocked by the Great Firewall (i.e. Google calling attention to censorship, not censoring themselves).
Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. For shame.
In our society it does. They're being incentivized (highly) to do said work.
I'm not saying I agree with the incentive structure but money is one of the core incentives in the US since it translates to other necessities and wants in life. Those working at dubious businesses are being highly incentivized to do so and at the same time, normalizing said behaviors.
Here's the kicker as well, as the clench on labor grows tighter with the middle class being squeezed more and more, people seem oblivious that even if you're getting paid relatively well (6 figures) and have options to jump ship, that may not always be the case when labor keeps caving (sometimes without option) into business incentive structures for compensation.
If there are plenty of people on the labor market capable of competing with you yet willing to do work you won't for money, you too will be displaced. Ultimately, the people dangling carrots in front of us win and we (those who rely on labor for income) lose.
It might be easy to say this, but I believe I would quit if I was asked to implement something like that. But perhaps I'd be different if I were paid $300k a year. (I sure hope not, though)
If you were being paid $300K/year, it costs your employer (as a rule of thumb) 1.5x, or about $450K/year. The only reason they could spend $450K/year on you is if they expected to make at least that much money with you, compared to what they would make without you. Even if you aren't directly working on this stuff, you are providing them with capital that is being spent on it.
Arguably they don't have to make that money off you directly.
They just need you to not be elsewhere making that money for someone else, or disrupting a market that they are entrenched in. IMHO much of the FAANG hiring / head count / acquisition process could be analyzed in this light.
It’s good that you would refuse to do the work. Sadly they can easily find someone who badly needs the money, doesn’t understand the problems the feature creates, or doesn’t care about doing the right thing. If all the workers organized it would make a bigger difference, but the company actively discourages worker organization.
No one will ever ask you to implement something "like that". It probably was an ordinary blacklist that probably started to "protect children" form porn and such, then it went on to "protect teenagers" from radicalization, and now it will protect adults from anti-communist/chinese comments. We've made the bed.
by "like that" do you mean "a community moderation system" or "a system for the CCP to backdoor explicit takedown rules into the system?"
Based on what we're seeing right now, this is likely caused not by the latter, but by the former. Consider: the ML-assisted thread moderation logic can be vulnerable to brigading. If several tens of thousands of Chinese people decided to start flagging comments with that phrase, YT would also start killing the phrase (because its sample is biased towards seeing "That phrase usually results in a flag, so the community clearly doesn't want it").
Laughing all the way to the bank... It justifies the behavior to people who think for themselves and not for some intangible global internet community. i'm not trolling.
Imagine thinking anything Google does comes close to resembling having blood on its hands. It really seems to me that the first world doesn't have enough real problems on its hands.
Other than the hn-liberitarian anything that resembles censorship in any form is bad circlejerk, I don't actually see what the fuss is about here.
Assume I believe that moderation is a reasonable action. Why is this unreasonable moderation, who is harmed?
Put another way, assume that I have some line on the sand drawn on when I would leave. Assume also that I believe that what I'm doing at Google has net-positive impact. Why should I move my line in the sand back to <whatever this is>?
Tom Lehrer was my math professor in College. He was delightfully amusing and I learned a lot (in particular, the birthday paradox, years before I understand why they matter in hash tables and other probability problems).
Money. Being part of a massive company with lots of compartmentalization. A majority left-leaning political affiliation which tends to be softer on China and against nationalism/borders.
Not a Google or YouTube employee, but, practically, what would change? In the most likely case, a bunch of Googlers who believe it's important to be apolitical at work would take over the product and implement much stronger censorship to get promo. In the unlikely event all of them (and every applicant drooling for a FAANG job) had a change of heart too, Tencent would gladly step into the vacuum.
A strike causes change when management can't hire enough workers to replace the strikers. My entire point is that they can. You can probably successfully strike against paying Andy Rubin hundreds of millions of dollars for creeping on employees - while there are a handful of folks who want that same life for themselves, there aren't that many. I'm claiming you can't strike over censoring some words on YouTube because there's no shortage of qualified-enough people who don't currently work for Google who would be glad to take your job.
(And you still haven't addressed my point about, suppose they strike successfully and Google decides it won't help the CCP at all and the CCP bans Google and has Tencent step in - what then? Did you save the world?)
>A strike causes change when management can't hire enough workers to replace the strikers. My entire point is that they can.
[citation needed]
I don't believe that if a majority of Google's software engineers went on strike that Google would be able to hire and train new employees without any of the striker's domain-specific or institutional knowledge without enormous expense.
I try to avoid buying Chinese products, but unfortunately I end up doing so more often than I'd like. But ultimately, my lifetime contribution to the Chinese regime of a few thousand dollars worth of consumer products pales in comparison to the lifetime contribution of millions of dollars of capital that each Google employee is raising for the company to spend on directly supporting the regime with censorship and surveillance tools.
And democracy's legitamacy is derived from monkeys voting in a system rigged against them, after listening to false promises of growth. While still supporting cheap, often exploitative labor.
I mean, from your description, I'd rather want a system that actually shows continued growth, rather than hollowed promises of growth.
Let's be honest here, democracy's real growth had been going to war with nations and extracting/exploiting resources from them. Hence why the past 50 years, there has been no real growth in democratic countries because they are not able to as easily extract from the rest of the world.
What exactly are you defining as "real growth" in order to come to the fantastic conclusion that there hasn't been any?
I'm also fairly certain that the US (and other countries) have been warring a lot in the Middle East in the past 50 years, and many people claim that this is directly related to oil, an "exploited resource".
Real growth as in 850 million out of poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China so much so that when people such as Bill Gates talk about the vanishing poverty, it mainly comes from China. Whereas here in the UK, one of the biggest growths has been food banks and charities.
Also, please don't call the US as the whole of the "west", I personally find that insulting to compare such a warlike nation with much of civilised Europe.
I am paying my taxes to my government as well, does not mean I agree with everything my government does. When it comes to purchasing certain categories of items (like electronics) you have no choice but to buy something made in China, most of the time.
Yes, by paying taxes you are supporting the government you are paying your taxes too. And yes, this leads to paying for things you disagree with if you do not agree with some of your country's policies.
Hopefully, however, you have a voice (vote) in that government. The same obviously does not apply to you with China, nor generally does it apply to Chinese people within China.
You also generally have less choice when it comes to paying taxes, and significantly more choice when it comes to not buying things from China. If there are no non-Chinese alternative for X item, you can always choose to not buy X. However, that probably means not buying quite a few things, as you point out. But that was GC's point – it is fairly hard as a techie to not support the CCP. But just because something is hard to avoid does not mean you aren't doing it or aren't responsible for doing it.
> It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.
That doesn't change that an engineer in the bay area can choose to work for Google or choose to find an alternative place of employment. People can choose more ethical choices without living in a pure ethical panacea.
Sure, but then we're back to "What mental gymnastics do techies do to justify buying hardware they know is made in sweatshop conditions in China?"
Take that template and apply it to Googlers. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism; everyone has compromised a rigid belief structure somewhere.
I don't think it has to be mental gymnastics, but you are right that it is a real challenge.
I think people (especially those in privileged positions like engs in the bay area) should feel empowered to think and decide their line as to what they want to support and contribute to the world.
Hey alter-me, it's a nice thought. But, realistically, many people are faced with living a subpar life in the bay area (rent small apartments for the rest of your life) or working for a big corp and living a better life (own a home - can afford many things). It's not like these people are going to find a company that is perfectly ethical on every side while also still paying $400k+/yr for senior software engineers.
A lot of engineers are wage slaves as much as anyone else. It's not like everyone wants to do this stuff.
EDIT: On a more personal note - I hope your name is actually "Bradly" and you're not "Bradley". And that you actually go by that in real life instead of "Brad". As I know there's some "Brad"s out there that like to buy up Bradly variations without actually going by it. It's killing me.
I agree with you, I just think some big corps are worse than others, so I choose one that is on the better end of big-evil-corp. Is the pay that much worse at Stripe, Square, GitHub, Netflix than advertising companies?
--
Yes, I am a Bradly. About half my coworkers/friends/family call me Bradly and about half call me Brad. I introduce my self as both interchangeably depending on the situation.
I don't know if those companies could take on every engineer leaving a supposedly morally lesser company - which employs many more people.
My point is - not everyone has a choice. You might get the pick of the litter but there are many people who are lucky if they even get one offer from a company paying $400k+/yr. And - for reference - I am one of the people who has never received an offer from one. All my offers have been under $200k/yr (that doesn't include that I have to pay over $2,000/month to buy options that will "maybe one day if we're all lucky" pan out for something).
The world of living in silicon valley under $200k/yr vs $400k+/yr is wildly different. One feels like you're no better off than a retail worker and the other feels like you're a working class professional.
Not necessarily, but if you can justify one thing for yourself then it should help you understand why other people behave similarly.
Whether buying hardware or working for google is worse is another debate, but you should be able to see why people can work at google and not necessarily feel guilty about it.
No, the lesson is take a hard look at yourself before casting stones at "others". We can sit here and say that people who work at Google are so amoral, so are those at Twitter, at Apple, at Uber, at Microsoft, at Amazon, etc.
The truth is most for-profit organization will not have a flawless ethical image that satisfied everyone, and that probably includes your employer. I'm not saying we should all look the other way, but let's keep things grounded in reality. Censorship is a delicate subject, especially as it concerns expressions involvong multiple cultures. This doesn't make Google immediately evil for electing to / not electing to act one way or another.
Maybe your accusation is that Google is choosing profit over ethics in this case? Then the "Chinese hardware" argument has to come into play. Are you, yourself choosing price and convenience when you know it means your dollars are ending up in those poorly run Chinese factories? What are you going to do about it? Should Googlers quit their jobs before or after you source all your hardware from ethically run, blame-free factories?
A real-world example would be companies that make parts for nuclear bombs, but also make parts for thermostats.
If there were no other thermostat companies, you might have an argument. But there are plenty of other thermostat companies, and plenty of other tech companies than Google.
I wish that people who use the "a few bad apples" quote as a defense (especially when it comes to the police) would realize the full quote is "a few bad apples spoil the barrel."
We don’t care. We get top of the line money for tapping on computers all day.. big mansions.. cars .. lifetime of financial security and free food & booze so lol who cares.
"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
"The world's" doesn't mean "The part of the world we like most." "Universally" doesn't mean "Nobody in China gets to use our system until the Chinese government adopts Western notions of information control."
Google would operate in North Korea if it could, because as a point of philosophy, it's believed that access to more informtion, even curtailed by the government, is better than access to only information controlled by the government.
Are you speaking as a Google employee or just from personal opinion?
Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else? Wouldn't more "mutually consistent" information be a better goal? Flat earth stuff is fun but you must limit yourself to a very small plausible universe in order to really buy into it.
> Are you speaking as a Google employee or just from personal opinion?
The distinction is irrelevant; were I speaking as a Google employee I would still be speaking from personal opinion, not on behalf of my employer.
> Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else?
It's not though; it's "all" the world's information (within constraints; Google also isn't vending a search index to make pedophilic imagery easy to find). But the flat-Earth hypothetical doesn't apply because that's only a subset.
In fact, it doesn't apply in a way that's demonstrative, I think, of the game Google plays with authoritarian states. Google banks on the notion nature cannot be fooled. Sure, individual phrases or sets of facts (like Tienman Square history) can be knocked out of returned datasets. But the missing data leaves holes; it becomes apparent where the cuts are in the data.
This is why North Korea cuts the whole internet; they know it can't be contained. China's ruling party is more subtle; they'll block unpopular signal it if a sense of "decency," as it were, but they know their people aren't stupid. In any sense of "stupid."
> The distinction is irrelevant; were I speaking as a Google employee I would still be speaking from personal opinion, not in behalf of my employer.
Seems like word splitting and I disagree. If you're working at Google, then your opinion is an answer to OP's question. If you're not, then your opinion doesn't count as a Google employee's justification for continuing to work at Google.
My opinion is my own and OP can take that as they will (because the opinion they'd get from a Google employee will be of the same weight relative to the "company's opinion" unless their thoughts have been cleared by legal).
How do you justify being a citizen of your country? (not sure what country that is, but most of them have done bad things in the past). It's possible to be a part of a large organization and not agree with its every action.
This is a very poor comparison since nobody chooses their original country of citizenship and it usually takes lots of money or familial connection to obtain citizenship elsewhere.
I have much less mobility as a US citizen to move to another country than I have as a software engineer. Almost any Google employee could have an offer somewhere else within 3 weeks of starting their search.
I don't have a degree; they won't take me. I have looked into it many times, but the difficulty of moving to another country (at least to ones which I find it easier to be proud of living in) is very high, especially compared to that of moving to another employer.
It's not as easy as you might expect, through normal channels. There's a points system to gain access and a whole lot of hoops to jump through if you aren't able to pay for the economic class.
Now, if you were to walk across the border at certain locations and claim refugee status you could probably remain so long as your application is being processed; regardless of the merits of your claim, that process time has become _rather long_.
It's suprisingly hard to move there if you're from the USA. I looked into moving there after I got out of the military, and had no chance because I don't have a degree. The fact that I have over a decade of work experience in cybersecurity and have been through intense courses acredited at the graduate level doesn't factor in. Their immigration process reminds me of the shitty HR at big corporations that aren't willing to budge from their checklist of "requirements".
Compared to most other western countries, sure, Canada is on the easier side.
However, even with that in mind, it is still a very difficult and complicated process, with tons of hard limitations that can put a complete stop to the whole thing due to something trivial, like not having a degree. And even with that barrier of hard requirements cleared, it is still a pretty draconian experience.
Having gone through a similar thing myself (not with Canada, but I ended up coincidentally reading a lot about Canadian immigration laws), I can assure you, it is way more difficult than getting any job, even if you are a successful Google engineer, and by a far margin.
I am pretty sure that any person who went through an immigration process to another country can attest to that. And I am talking purely about the legal-paper-stuff aspect of immigration to another country, not things like getting adapted to your new country or anything like that.
> Compared to most other western countries, sure, Canada is on the easier side.
Our process isn't that easy; we have an immigration system that the GOP would _like to have_.
There are points awarded based on your education and training, variated against the demand for those skills in Canada. If you are being imported by an employer they must go to considerable lengths to prove that they attempted to find an existing Canadian to fill that role. And so on.
And it can be all avoided by paying approximately $800,000 to what is effectively an escrow: you get it back after a few years, less inflation.
That was the whole point of my comment. Out of all western countries, Canada is definitely one of the easiest. But even with that in mind, it is still extremely difficult.
As a US citizen you are entitled to so many things that most people out there could only dream of.
That's not the point though. Google is so large that it's just weird to talk about the morality of its employees in the context of the company's decisions.
This analogy holds water about as well as a sieve. You can't shop around citizenship in most other countries. You can't just willy-nilly decide to renounce citizenship in one and go become a citizen in another. I'm sure people will jump in here with counter examples but I'm also sure they'll be the exception and not the norm. You're also born into citizenship. Comparing citizenship to the job market just seems so silly.
Nice mental gymnastics. There's always a choice to not support the country by not participating in its economy and becoming a hermit. Ah, but that's inconvenient!
To begin with, citizenship is forced upon you. You don't have a choice about it. Yes, you can (in some cases) renounce it, though that's quite a momentous task - it involved pretty much cancelling your existing life, and takes many years. And as you say - most other countries may be worse - and the ones that aren't may not accept you either way.
Not working for Google, in particular, is extremely easy. Something that roughly 99.999% of the world's population succeeds at without even trying :-) And most people who are working for Google are also likely to be able to find another job quite easily.
The two are not comparable. At all. In any way or form.
This is, by the way, why I support much more open borders than we have now. There is a humanitarian case to be made, but I also have a strong desire to be able to pack up and leave when I disagree with my country's government.
I would have a stronger civic spirit if I were a willing member of my country rather than a prisoner.
Many Google employees are young people from mainland China. Lots of them have a very favorable view of the Chinese Communist Party. I know this because worked there, talked with fellow employees about this, and closely followed the internal discussion when Project Dragonfly leaked to the press. I doubt many Googlers from the mainland see anything terribly wrong with this censorship, just as many had no objection to Project Dragonfly.
Can you imagine China's reaction if thousands of Americans worked at Tencent in Beijing, and had access to users' chat logs and browsing histories? Besides raw intelligence-gathering, this data could be used to blackmail and coerce Chinese citizens. Wouldn't it be seen as a threat to China's national security?
I don't work there anymore, but this is a confused argument born of zealotry. Taking Google's money to work on open source is totally fine. More money spent on good things might even mean less spent on bad things.
For example, nothing good would come from the Go team quitting over unrelated political stuff.
FWIW, open source is not an absolute good. It is undercutting the ability of your peers to make a living. It is making software a commodity, such that capital rich hardware owners can make a killing. See AWS.
It may not be common, but it is possible to make money on open-source software. Redhat would be the largest example. Automattic's WordPress is another.
If software can be profitable whether it's open or closed-source, then isn't open-source inherently better?
They continue to operate fairly independently, and there business is still fully open source. IBM executives have also paid lip service to their model, suggesting they might move towards it. (Of course, lip service is lip service, and action is action. Two different things.)
Other than for commercial tool vendors like JetBrains, development tool improvements are rarely business critical in that way.
Go in particular is known for stability. In the short term, descoping or delaying Go releases is unlikely to matter to any business goal. Language and SDK improvements are for improving the ecosystem in the long term.
> Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company?
Not a Google Employee , but in 99% of the case it's money + experience/situation.
This is similar to what others tech company are doing ( Reddit , Adobe etc.. ) in terms of arbitrage when they decide to enter Chinese Market , Partner with Chinese VC or with ideas that challenge their values.
Regardless of where you'll go in tech you'll end up in Amoral corporations like Google/Amazon/Microsoft which are driven solely by Money and Growth , regardless of the consequences. ( Remember Gillette and Child Labour ? Nestlé ? )
Also , the last people who tried to Unionize at Google , which could have enable them to do something about it , got laid off instantly[0] , same pattern happened in all others tech companies...
I’m not a Google employee, but really all companies of large enough size care only about the bottom line. Large companies don’t have morals, they just try to make money at all costs, full stop. Google is a bit more hypocritical in that they pretend to be about more than this, but lots of companies are similarly hypocritical, especially tech companies. It’s really only small businesses that have any sort of humanity (sometimes).
Google pay better than most, and if you’re on the right team I assume you get to work on very interesting/challenging projects. They’re just as heartless/selfish as any other bigco, but I don’t know that they’re worse.
The fundamental problem is that there is collective action on both sides of the issue. There are plenty of people organizing for the removal of "hate speech", and there are plenty of people organizing for free speech. It's not exactly clear which side is economical since you're not going to make both sides happy.
Tech giants have picked the winners and I'm pretty convinced they've picked sides based on their personal convictions. They're removing hate speech because they think they're on the right side of history, not because they think it will make them the most money.
If all the ethical employees leave Google as you suggest, then who do you think will fill their place? Let's not assume they will suffer to find people willing to work for them. Will that make things better or worse?
If every HN submission were spammed with "communist bandits," do you think at some point the mods would just write a script to block such comments? It doesn't seem absurd to me to think that they might. It wouldn't bother me in the least if they did. That type of comment is even less edifying than "first" or "top" or "did anyone else come here from 9gag."
I work for Google. It does some things I don't like but this does not prima facie appear to be one of them.
Drew, ever since sourcehut got a little positive attention you seem to have adopted this mindset of "I started my own company and don't have to work for the man anymore, why doesn't everyone else just do the same?" You need to realize that this is an extremely narrow minded view to have. Not everyone can start their own business. What would you have done if sourcehut hadn't gained enough popularity to be successful? You would probably be working for [CORP ABC] who surely would be doing something you disliked, too. That would not make you a "bootlicker".
In fact, I'd like to ask this question of you: your website is undoubtedly being used by people to build software that you disagree with, perhaps even censorship. How do you justify still hosting your site instead of shutting it down? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them.
Is it because you need the money from your site? So do Google employees (probably).
Is it because you still enjoy the work of building your site? So do Google employees (probably)?
Is it because on the aggregate you think that your site still provides benefit to society, despite it possibly being used for things you disagree with? So do Google employees (probably).
There are plenty of reasons why people still work for Google, and you probably would relate to them too if you stopped being so combative towards anyone who works for [big corp].
I am not relating the reader to my experience with SourceHut - I haven't told anyone to quit and start their own company rather than work for Google - but remininding them that the market for their talents is strong and that we have the luxury of choosing who we work for. I have held and spoken of these convictions since long before SourceHut. Read my blog archives or my old HN comments since pre-SourceHut and you'll find much of the same.
Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.
> I haven't told anyone to quit and start their own company rather than work for Google
Your past comments and submissions to HN say otherwise. You have been very outspoken and proud about the fact that you haven't taken money from "the man" (my words, not yours), and that others should do the same [0][1]. Whether it be a VC or Google, your messaging is clear.
>Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.
You're dodging the question. Have you done an audit on every single project hosted on SourceHut to see if you disagree with them? Would such an action even be something you agree with? What if someone was hosting such a repository (I'll go create one right now), would you remove it? But that is censorship, is it not? Do you even have the technical capability to do such an audit? If not, that means people could easily use your site for nefarious things, so how do you justify keeping it running?
>Your past comments and submissions to HN say otherwise. You have been very outspoken and proud about the fact that you haven't taken money from "the man" (my words, not yours), and that others should do the same [0]
Your link omits context. A couple of comments up is this:
In the quoted link I am speaking from the perspective of a startup founder offering advice to potential startup founders. In today's discussion I am speaking from the perspective of a tech worker speaking to other tech workers. I have been in both roles, and I have different advice for different kinds of people with different kinds of goals. Do me the courtesey of not assuming that I expect every person in all circumstances to be exactly like me.
>You're dodging the question. Have you done an audit on every single project hosted on SourceHut to see if you disagree with them?
This is a disingenous line of questioning. Google employees are aware of their employer's misbehaviors. In order to even have seen my comments in the first place, they would have had to visit a discussion about those bad behaviors. Google employees cannot claim ignorance in the way you're assuming I am.
I am familiar with most public projects on sourcehut, of course. I do not conduct an audit on private projects, but if something was brought to my attention, I would conduct an investigation which may result in the termination of the account. For example, if some knucklehead on HN went to create a bunch of abusive repositories to prove their point in an internet argument, I would definitely terminate their account.
>Your link omits context. A couple of comments up is this:
So your context arguing against my assertion that you are telling people to quit and start their own company is a link to a comment telling people they should quit and start their own company?
How about this [0] comment? I'll quote it here for you:
>But, I may suggest an additional option: do something about it. Build a business that eschews VC culture, or become a VC who doesn't fit in among their blood-sucking peers.
>This is a disingenous line of questioning. Google employees are aware of their employer's misbehaviors.
You're still dodging the question, and your reasoning is "I've stuck my head in the sand and I'm going to pretend nobody is using my site for things I disagree with"?
I'll ask it again and maybe you won't dodge it this time: You just admitted that you do not conduct audits on private projects. Without a doubt, someone is now or will be in the future using your site to build software that you disagree with. Knowing this, how do you justify still hosting your site instead of shutting it down?
I told (past-tense) a person (singular) to consider founding a company in the context of their individual circumstances, while reassuring them that if they chose not to that I would support that decision; in a discussion entirely unrelated to the one we're having now.
You are arguing in bad faith and I have no interest in entertaining it any further.
>You are arguing in bad faith and I have no interest in entertaining it any further.
Ironic, because this entire comment chain was started by you with a loaded question that was asked in bad faith. I guess it's fine when you do it, but not others, eh? Is this the same mentality you're holding in regards to sourcehut? "It's fine that I'm building something that may be used nefariously, but when Google employees do that, they're bootlickers"?
The fact that you still dodged the question is duly noted, btw.
I'll remind you that this "line of questioning" wasn't intended to bash SourceHut or you in any way, but rather to try to get you to empathize with the fact that "quit your job and stop working on things you enjoy just because someone on the internet disagrees with your company" is hardly a winning stance to take.
You are obviously arguing in bad faith. You pose the rhetorical:
> Is this the same mentality you're holding in regards to sourcehut? "It's fine that I'm building something that may be used nefariously, but when Google employees do that, they're bootlickers"?
And yet it was previously asked:
> Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.
It is clear to me that Drew has declared an absence of knowledge of such malfeasence with his products.
TL;DR take a huge life risk; just don't forget to be both exceptional and successful!
99% of startups fail (a turn of phrase, not a real statistic AFAIK), and that is usually said in reference to those that do take VC money. Tell me: what happens when my bootstrapped startup fails?
Google employees are more than capable of getting jobs at thousands of other smaller companies with narrower customer bases and clearer ethical stances. Nobody "needs" Google SWE money. You can still easily clear 6 figures while taking a moral stance so this "think of the starving" argument doesn't work.
It has been harder and harder every year, and frankly I'm really disheartened and demoralized these days. Articles like this one don't really surprise me anymore. It's not my department, but I feel complicit none-the-less.
But when I look out at the tech industry landscape, it is clear that I can do more good from within, because I have more freedom and influence on the work, and I believe that the work is net positive for the technology ecosystem.
Businesses large and small seem to have their heads on backwards here in Silicon Valley. Their founders are all highly profit-motivated, and don't truly seek to make the world a better place. Those that wear a facade of idealism give me no reason to believe they are any better than Google. If I left Google, where would I go where I can work without shame? I even have a hard time imagining starting my own business without falling prey to the same broken mechanics that brought us to where we are today.
At least at Google, I can say with confidence that there is ongoing work by people I trust - who in turn are given a lot of autonomy by the company - to make the world a better place with technology.
- Am an employee of a large company whose practices would probably also not stand up to public scrutiny
First question is has this been verified beyond "someone said so"? Perhaps it has - but any search I do ultimately leads back to the same comment.
Second, google is hardly the only company to occasionally kowtow the the PRC. I don't think any large company wants to a face-off with them. Are there more ethical employers? Probably, but they're probably small and not everyone wants to work at a small company pace. Also, if the company got larger and push came to shove, I suspect they'd do what they needed to do to stay on China's good side. It's a better option than going under.
Really a lot of employers are ethically shaky.
- Is it better to work for the DoD? Some people say no.
- Is it better to work for a Big Bank? Some people say no.
- Is it better to work for Big Pharm? Some people say no.
- Is it better to work for a place that frankly abuses their warehouse workers? I think we've had that discussion.
I'm not sure where that leaves anyone who likes gainful employment, particularly outside the Silicon Valley startup culture.
That doesn't necessarily translate to 'throw up our hands' but it does meant a more nuanced approach to where we work, how we feel about our employer, and how we measure that against all the other places we do business with that also have their dark sides.
This is a pretty narrow view of the available jobs for software engineers. I have personally never worked for any of the industries/criteria you listed. I just pulled up the latest "who's hiring":
Of the first 12 posts, one is the FBI, one is questionable (using proxies to circumvent rate limits, anti-scraping tech, etc), and the other 10 seem anywhere from boring to laudable.
Most tech jobs do not require you to make broad ethical compromises to work there.
Will the people who previously defended YouTube/Google's other censorship come out of the woodwork again? It's not as if it is no longer a private website able to moderate its content however it desires.
Will they respond to this controversy with that then-popular xkcd strip[1] about how, "if you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an internet community, your free speech riots aren't being violated. It's just that the people listening think you're an asshole, and they're showing you the door."?
There was a previous unrelated discussion about this just a few hours ago which was climbing to the top of the front page when I saw it. And then just vanished: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264
It's not flagged, it just went from #13 on the front page to invisible. In a single refresh. How does that work? Looking at the votes and age, it should be in the top 5 of both Ask and the front page. What's the metric or decision that made it disappear?
@dang might be worth commenting on this? Moderation is fine, opaque removal of content with no explanation, not so much. I fully believe @dang has the best interests of the community in mind, so please give us a clear explanation of what's going on here.
HN is extremely corrupt in that way, but don't worry, my reply to you will be flagged and people will continue to ignore HN's extreme biases, and ideological agenda.
Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users?
I'll also admit that this link, to a support thread, is more compelling than the Ask HN, where half the comments were questioning whether the phenomenon was actually happening.
Yes. I believe some topics get removed by sufficient community flagging alone, no intervention by mods. If true, then this feature can be abused by users with agendas.
Yes, and within how short of a time span all those flags came in!
A post that's regularly being flagged by 0.0X% of logged-in users will have different behavior than one that gets fairly few flags for many hours and then suddenly gets 30 within a five minute period.
Is that more likely? Should it be that easy for a user to flag an article that's trending so far upward?
If it is that easy, maybe we should discuss the flagging system because it gives the ILLUSION that it was taken down because there's a conflict of interest.
> Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users?
It's a wild guess either way.
Increased transparency like mandatory reason for flagging, and anonymized stats on flagging per userid including not just aggregate numbers, but also flagged post titles (so ideological patterns could be observed per topic) would improve trustworthiness that HN is an impartial platform, and there are no technical limitations in doing this, although it would require a bit of one-time work. It would be interesting to know why we have some stats here, but not others.
But unless this greater transparency is provided some day, we will have to run on faith, just as other religious people have faith as the basis of trust in their God of choice. Everyone has faith in their axioms, it just doesn't seem that way, in no small part because the mind tends to not let you think in that manner, even if you try.
I agree 100%. I've said this before and been threatened with ban by admin/mod. Anytime you go against the agenda, they prevent you for posting comments sometimes in excess of an hour. Then if you reply again and they don't like it you have to wait another hour. Nothing is transparent. They just say, no political discussion, however it only seems to apply towards comments they don't like.
It looks like the previous post was flagged, so can't even comment on it.
This is a very common bad experience on HN. To me, it must be PG's own character that is being reflected here through a series of mirrors (his disciples). The fish rots from the head down.
Hacker news and dang in particular has a very good track record of even handed and well thought of moderation. They have definitely earned benefit of the doubt from me. Let's wait a little before bringing the torches.
I would think that having more transparency (eg: moderation/removal log) is much more appropriate than "he looks good to me".
I've already seen a few times where content demeaning YC companies mysteriously got disappeared... and then summarily blamed on automated removal. Who's right? No clue. But being able to see that log as it happens would be a significant good faith action.
This leads to am interesting security question: how to achieve real transparency?
I mean HN could publish a ranking algorithm and claim that that is what they use. But then we still wouldn't know
(1) if that is really what's running in the background,
(2) if that is really receiving user inputs that lead to the observed outcome.
I'm guessing for most people here the programming assignment "create a fake log including these real inputs so that this story is suddenly dropped according to the ranking algorithm" isn't that hard.
I think that in the end, you end up trusting something. (Eg. Is the log fake or real?)
IF that is so, you might as well design the system around a predetermined root of trust... here, the moderators.
I also think that "real transparency" is something one can approach. Just because complete transparency is nigh impossible doesn't mean the steps towards it is worthless. And there is always a lower layer one can point at that is opaque... right down to the silicon.
That's not a log, not even close. It's a link to dang's comment history, not a list of every comment/submission that has been deleted by the moderation team.
Go ahead and downvote me, doesn't make what I'm saying wrong.
The moderation is 100% transparent and you can see a log of every comment/submission that a moderator has removed. Furthermore, each subforum can control their own moderation team through a voting system. Moderators should serve their users, not rule over them as dictators.
YC wound down YC China, but still committed to funding Chinese companies[0], in a blog post carefully written to avoid explaining YC's motivations. And beyond that - how much Chinese money is invested in YC startups? How many YC companies have exited by bringing Chinese money to YC's coffers?
I have absolutely no idea, but I'd bet it's extremely little because I've never heard of anything. In any case, this strikes me as weak sauce. You can make up purity tests to accuse anybody of anything, and if you choose to read that blog post as signifying "support for the Chinese regime", that is entirely your fantasy.
In any case, this has zero effect on HN moderation. It had zero effect while YC China was being set up, zero effect while YC China was being wound down, and zero effect regardless of whatever "Chinese money" you're referring to, which you seem to know more about than I do. The only effect any of this has on HN moderation is people making up dark insinuations about it and posting them to HN. I expect that kind of thing from trolls but it's pretty weird to see you stoop to it.
I respect you as a moderator and I think that on the whole, you do a good job - but ultimately, the YC logo is up there on the top left of every HN page. You have earned the presumption of goodwill in almost all of your moderation actions, but when incentives favor YC, you need to (and will always need to) go out of your way to prove that you're addressing these issues without bias.
I saw your comment earlier about this particular case - the flamewar detector went off. This would be a good thing to bubble up somewhere for transparency. I've mentioned many times that a public moderation log for HN would be a very good idea, and it would avoid scenarios like this entirely.
Again, I have a lot of respect for you as a moderator, but that is dependent on being able to push back when HN moderation fails. I've gone to bat for you before; it's only fair that I get to criticise you, too. Maybe this was a bit of a low blow, and I apologise for that, but it highlights places where HN moderation can be improved all the same. I don't think that pushing to have all of these discussions in private is going to be acceptable.
Some users tend to flag stories about China and censorship because they generate a lot of nationalistic and hot headed comments and very little actual intelligent discussion. Just look at the comments attached to this submission.
The submission I linked is not flagged (at least as far as I can see from my account?). Either there's some non-intuitive stuff going on with the way submissions stay on the front page, or HN soft-nuked it. Either way I think we deserve an explanation and a clear understanding of the underlying rules.
Does HN always tell you when someone flags it? Or just a critical number of users or something like that?
I see the flagged indicator now and then, but I see it somewhat less frequently than I would THINK things get flagged, admittedly that's all conjecture.
If something is memory holed quickly enough after being flagged, perhaps combined with an automated algorithm that considers certain keywords, then the likelihood of people noticing flagged posts can be kept very low.
Of course this is all speculation, the truth of censorship on various platforms will likely never be known.
It takes some amount of people flagging it before it shows up as [flagged] but flagging submissions affect rankings before it reaches that point. On top of that "Ask HN" posts also have some modifier on them that makes them drop quicker, these two effects seem to be cumulative, explaining why it dropped so quickly
It so happens that we've entered a period where technology, morality, ideology, etc. are converging - to censor those who wish to talk about these connections would seem very antithetical to a culture of inspiring bright minds, innovation, and technological advancement for the good of mankind.
I for one have never shied away from a "hot headed" argument. Imho, I feel that as adults it is our responsibility to voice our opinions even in times when that opinion will contrast with another. In fact, sometimes it is crucial to do so as often times the most important arguments to be had are the most heated.
I believe the HN esk counter-point would be that HN is not the proper forum for those kinds of discussion. Imho, there is no "proper" forum for these kinds of discussions. They simply need to be had, more now than ever in my lifetime, on every street corner, and in every shop.
the best and surest way to have your account deleted from facebook is to post porn.
the best and surest way to delete an inconvenient discussion from hn is to spam it with a political flame war.
i don't have proof that this is the case here but i wouldn't be surprised that such threads are actively heated up and/or gaslighted by nation state sponsored censors.
If "I wouldn't be surprised that such threads are actively heated up and/or gaslighted by nation state sponsored censors" is possibly true, can it not also be possibly true that ideologues do the same thing (consciously or not), knowing that so-called flamewars can (and often does) lead to censorship?
Oh for sure...it's a symbiotic relationship, kind of like a non-coordinated conspiracy, something that is a lot easier to pull off than most people think. It's funny how many people seem to only be able to recognize the obvious herd-like behavior of people under certain topics of conversation, but if you change the topic then it is ~"literally impossible".
I also experienced this on numerous Chinese government-related posts in the past, where front page articles were not flagged, but quickly disappeared. Don't really have an explanation. Would be great if @dang can look into this.
I seriously doubt that there’s anything to “look into” from @dang’s perspective. A huge share of his moderation lately is focused on “nationalistic flamewar”, and from his perspective, it’s probably easier for any thread that might tend towards that to just quietly sink off the front page.
While not all comment-wars are flame-wars I know what you mean. I've been involved in a few. Trouble is, if the chinese trolls cause enough trouble that the mods are happy to let the thread vanish[1], the trolls have won. Scratch that, china has won, because there's a strong reek of high-level organisation behind it.
[1] Assuming that's what is occurring; I don't know.
Unfortunately it's nowhere near that easy. Some of the stories that overlap with nationalistic flamewar are well on topic for HN. This is one. The recent TSMC stories come to mind. Really there are many of them.
I remember seeing an exchange where a moderator seemed to be able to edit another person's comment well after the edit period with no indication an edit was made.
Kind of hope I misunderstood the exchange, but if that's the case that instantly undermines any possible claim to being "ultimate place on the Web to discover and discuss bleeding-edge content"
In general HN is not that place anyways. People here confuse meekness with civility. It's ok to tear someone apart with ad hominem attacks as long as you don't sound too passionate in doing so. "You're being dumb" not ok. "You're being silly", totally ok.
I know I got rate limited and I'm pretty sure it's the over that time I had the audacity to talk back to a moderator
-
Look at this comment even, if you go against the hivemind your content gets flagged/buried in about 5 seconds
I also don't appreciate it when comments are detached from their parents without a note from the moderators. I've had a few comments taken completely out of context because they were detached from their parent into their own top-level comment.
"Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users should vote and comment when they run across something they find interesting—not for promotion."
(I didn't downvote or flag your comment, just wanted to let you know about the guideline.)
Thanks for the reminder! I read that at some point.
The problem with this is exactly what I'm trying to address in the AskHN submission: the probability of a random person running across interesting content is much smaller, than that of a group of users with agenda, who monitor new submissions/comments on a constant basis, as they appear.
I.e. there's a non-zero probability that my controversial submission looks interesting to several random people, and maybe they even give me an upvote, but at the same time there's a 100% probability of being flagged and never making it out of "new". In my opinion, this misbalance completely breaks the moderation system.
Don't worry. There'll be an "innocent" explanation. There always is. Mods here "can do no wrong." And when they do...well, it just puff it disappears (as in they ignore it.)
A few years ago, I reverse-engineered the HN ranking algorithm [1]. Basic ranking is based on votes vs age, but there are numerous other factors. Penalties are applied based on words in the title or the domain. Posts with too many comments got penalized as controversial. A "voting ring detector" triggers other automatic penalties.
HN ranking has probably become more complex since I looked at it. Manual moderation also impacts ranking.
I suspect the formula is changing if only because the sheer volume of spammy type stuff skyrocketing to the top seems to have subsided.
There was a short run where a lot of nearly raw spam type posts were quickly rising to the top, and sticking a long time despite almost / all the comments being about how terrible the spam is.
Good analysis, but - obviously - outdated and besides, the biggest input and wildcard is 'what are the penalties' and without knowing those the analysis is not super useful even if it is accurate to a rough approximation.
Keeping the spammers out is already quite a bit of work so I'm perfectly OK with the secret sauce staying secret.
I've participated in several active, somewhat neutral threads here that have disappeared entirely from the site with no indication that they have. Unable to find by browsing backwards by new or backwards from front page.
The one in question was that new Michael Moore documentary. There was a lively discussion, but obviously didn't fit the established narrative here, and it was disappeared.
This is very worrisome. If we cannot as computing professionals raise the alarm about censorship and tech abuses on a primary forum for computing professionals, what options are left? Ethics is an important part of what we do for a living. We cannot back down from that now or ever.
I had a similar thing happen to my post [1] a month or so ago — one minute it was #1, then after a refresh, it vanished. No flag (that I know of), no explanation.
When things happen like this, explanations are helpful to the submitter and/or the commenters, whichever was causing the problems.
I suppose this opens things up for debate, but not sure a silent removal of content is great for the community either.
Perhaps there is an innocent explanation? Or are HN users not smart enough to decide for themselves and indeed tear apart controversial views on the burning topic of the day should the arguments presented warrant such treatment?
That one was flag-killed by users (I've turned that off now). Moderators didn't see it.
The combination of taking an extreme contrarian position and presenting it in a grandiose and inflammatory way is pretty reliably fatal. I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I don't like to see contrarian views get killed for being contrarian. On the other hand, if the initial conditions of a thread are that inflammatory, we're guaranteed to get a flamewar, which is bad for this site.
Might it be because threads like these often cause toxic, rude, unproductive, and generally tribal discourse in the comments?
Looking around the comment threads, I certainly don't see a lot of intellectual curiosity being stimulated or minds being expanded. I see a lot of dogmatic accusations, hyperbolic bemoaning-the-downfall-of-civilization, and general "how could you possibly believe that?!"-toned rudeness. Not our finest hour.
I do, and the kind of stuff that I see greyed out at the bottom is usually something I see floating around the middle of the page in other popular communities.
It was flagged by users and set off the flamewar detector. We review those, but not while asleep.
The site guidelines specifically ask you not to post like this, but to send such questions to hn@ycombinator.com instead. Would you please review them (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? The reason we ask that is that such comments routinely spark completely speculative subthreads that range from completely off topic (at the high end!) to outrage mobs. They're extremely repetitive and they basically act like a drug and not a nice one.
We're always happy to answer questions—it just takes time to deal with the firehose. Yes, you have to wait for an email reply, but you've had to wait for a reply to this comment too, and if you'd sent an email you wouldn't have damaged HN. This digression (I'll use a nice word) was the #1 subthread on the #1 story of HN when I saw it.
You can't compute a post's rank from its timestamp and score. The software is more complicated than that, plus user flags affect things, plus moderator action. The "why is this post at rank N when given the score X and the timestamp Y my mental algorithm tells me it should be at rank Z?" question is an HN classic, but people grossly overweight moderator action, or rather sinister-moderator-misdeeds in the answers they give themselves.
I mean, think about it you guys. Do you really think we're suppressing discussion of the suppression of the phrase "communist bandits" from YouTube? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a.
It seems like my comment was also vanished from the top of the thread? I don't see what guidelines I came even close to breaking. Help me out here? No one's going to see your reply, my comment is detached from the submission. But I do want to understand what's going on here.
For what its worth, I was also shocked to see your entire comment thread, with over 110 children I believe, deleted from the thread without mention. Before this, I thought HN handled deletion with graying out, [flagged] or [dead] etc.
I only found it again by checking @dang's profile.
I've also emailed HN support strongly objecting to this complete deletion.
I didn't delete it; I downweighted it. You're running into the pagination problem (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23184485), which is that you've confused the first page of comments with the entire thread. Click More at the bottom and you'll find it perfectly intact, just lower.
We don't delete things outright on HN unless the author asks us to. The most we ever do is 'kill' a post, meaning it's still visible to anyone with 'showdead' set to 'yes' in their profile, and even that's rare. Beyond that, we'd never kill an entire subthread with dozens of replies. We might downweight it or we might auto-collapse it. That's all. By the way, if I had actually deleted that thread, you'd not have been able to find it via my profile. I'm not sure whether to be more hurt by your assuming I'm such an evil censor or such a bad programmer. (<-- that is an attempt at a joke)
Thank you for clarifying - you can disregard my email! I don't think I've ever seen/clicked the More on comments and was unaware of that feature. I appreciate you taking the time to explain!
You're welcome! I understand the shock of it seeming like something has completely disappeared, which is one reason I want to get rid of that pagination, as soon as our software can handle that load.
That's a bit disingenuous isn't it? You're saying that the actual beef (vanishing Ask thread about google censorship) is okay to mention, and the reason my comment was silently nuked is because I happened to address the HN team? That's a bit strange.
I really do believe you have the best interests of the community in mind, but this chain of events is making it difficult. Using 'off topic' as an arbitrarily broad mechanism to remove high SnR content doesn't have the best optics, especially when a lot of the child discussion was pointing out seemingly inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of HN guidelines.
Again, help me out here. You're acting in good faith. Maybe a more clear and specific set of guidelines would help?
You're not going to tell me with a straight face that the highest upvoted comment on that submission and the origin of some healthy debate was 'off topic' when the top 3 comments of most front page submissions are far less related to TFA, are you?
I'm saying that what you posted was completely off topic, you shouldn't have posted it, and you should have emailed us instead (as indeed other users did). It's not that your comment was so bad in itself; it's the upvotes and replies that it attracted. They turned it into the worst subthread I've seen at the top of a high-ranked HN story in a long time.
If you think a subthread about "inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of HN guidelines", or rather people's feverish imaginations about that, doesn't qualify for being downweighted as off-topic, I'm not sure what to add. A subthread like that sitting at #1 on the #1 story of HN is a three-alarm fire from a moderation point of view. Smart readers don't come to HN to read that.
We routinely downweight this sort of thing because if we didn't, most threads would consist of nothing but. Do you think that HN discussions stay on topic (to the extent they do) by themselves? That would be a self-driving-cars-level achievement.
HN users will happily comment all day about HN, moderation, and their imaginings about these things. There's no stronger force on the site, but unfortunately it's an addictive process that burns all the oxygen from actual discussion and ends up asphyxiating it. A forum becoming self-referential like that is the road to death. If a smart new user showed up here, wanting to read about interesting topics, and ran into endless reams of insider bickering, they'd close the tab and never come back.
We 100% see where you're coming from. Would it be crazy to request that HN create a publicly available list of "marked off topic / down-weighted / removed / flagged as duplicate" actions? I feel like HN could squash 90% of these concerns with that simple feature.
The troubling issue here seems to be HN asking users to "keep it quiet" by sending an email rather than commenting publicly about valid concerns. But I get your point that those concerns are technically "off-topic" from the underlying thread itself.
Hey, dang. I've sent a letter to hn@ycombinator.com 5 hours ago, questioning why my AskHN submission "Self-censorship on HN" has been flagged and blocked for further replies. Have you seen it by any chance? I'm really concerned about the issue.
> Do you really think we're suppressing discussion of the suppression of the phrase "communist bandits" from YouTube? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a.
I have not seen it yet. If you saw the inbox you'd understand why. I'll get to it as soon as I can.
Edit: One not-so-obvious reason why subthreads like this are so disastrous for HN is that they suck up all the moderation resources. I haven't had a chance to even look at the rest of the HN front page yet, let alone the emails.
Thanks for the reply. If subthreads like this happen at all (let alone, as you put it, are so disastrous), then it might be a good idea to revisit the moderation mechanisms, don't you think so? Ideally, with a public discussion.
What I'd personally be happy to see being discussed:
- abandoning downvoting of comments completely
- introducing a compensation mechanism for flagging of comments (debatable)
- displaying all flagged submissions in a separate page with a link in the header (like "new", "ask", etc.)
No, because subthreads like this are eternal and no effort to prevent them can succeed. They can only be somewhat contained sometimes. If moderation mechanisms need to be changed, it needs to be for more substantial reasons.
Each generation of internet users thinks they're the first to come up with these things, and in a way they are, it's just that every previous generation was also the first to come up with them. It's an eternal cycle of internet forum life. The points you raise have been raised on HN for over a decade (HN Search is your friend!) and if they weren't those points they'd be others.
That probably sounds too dismissive. I don't mean that we're uninterested in hearing from users, getting suggestions, and answering questions. We do that all the time, and it's welcome. But making meta-posts to HN is not the best way to do it, especially in any inflammatory context, where they are almost guaranteed to blow up like the gas station in Zoolander—and then consume all our limited resources for the day, which ought to be going into making the site better.
I completely understand that it's an eternal issue. That does not automatically mean that it does not merit a yet another discussion. Downvote hell is real. Targeted censorship by (possibly coordinated) flagging is real (I presume so). I would love to read HN users' opinion on Bill Gates driving the world into a nightmarish dystopia, but can't do so, because some of the users think, that it's conspiracy bullshit (even if backed up by facts to some degree)? Might very well be so, but the fact, that we can't have such a discussion at all, has far-reaching implications, given the status of HN in the eye of the Internet crowd. It would be different, if all politics related subjects were outlawed here, but that is not the case. Rather, only some subjects are selectively and very opaquely (for the majority of users, who don't even get to see, that such a subject has been brought into their attention) dismissed as flamebait/propaganda/conspiracy/whatever. Why is that necessary?
Could not agree more, HN is taking the "we know best, so we ask that you blindly listen to us" highbrow approach. I lost 20% of my karma because I took a non-popular stance within a single thread lol. My stance was backed up by references/facts/data, but none of that mattered.
In a comment above, I mentioned the possible solution (to the issue discussed in above thread) that HN create a publicly available list of "marked off topic / down-weighted / removed / flagged as duplicate" actions. I feel like HN could squash 90% of these concerns with that simple feature.
The question is whether it would squash 90% of those concerns or blow them up 900x. I don't know the answer to that, but I fear the latter. Everything we do as moderators is defensible—it's our core principle not to do things that we can't defend to the community, with confidence that the majority would support it. But that doesn't mean that everything we do explains itself, and therefore that a moderation log would be a good thing. On the contrary: it's all prone to misinterpretation, accusations of sinister manipulation, secret communist or nazi sympathies—I mean, you name it, we get accused of it. The bottom of that barrel is large, and at any moment there are hundreds if not thousands of readers raring to go there. Posting explanations as I've been doing in this thread is by far the highest-energy-expending thing that we have to do. We don't have the capacity to do significantly more—that's a recipe for burnout.
Moreover, the litigious sort of users who would post most of the meta complaints are also the least likely to ever be satisfied by the explanations. Why would it be a good idea to give them more material to work with and a single place to go get it? If, on the other hand, the goal is to keep the majority of the community satisfied—well, the majority of the community is already satisfied: the clear majority, and clearly so. If that weren't the case, believe me, we'd know it, and we'd already have adjusted. That's how we keep the community satisfied in the first place.
This doesn't mean we don't want to be transparent. But we take an ad hoc approach to that by answering questions as they come up. There's no specific question you can't get an answer to.
I understand being a moderator isn't easy. Definitely agree this conversation is mentally draining...I'm doing it because I care about what the underlying topic represents.
> Why would it be a good idea to give them more material to work with and a single place to go get it?
It's one thing to not make it easier to acquire, it's another thing entirely when it isn't possible to acquire.
> There's no specific question you can't get an answer to.
Until HN decides they don't want to answer it. Or until they play the "lost in my inbox" game, like used in this thread multiple times.
It is possible to acquire in any specific case simply by asking.
> Until HN decides they don't want to answer it.
Sure, there's always a risk that the people operating the site will ruin it.
> Or until they play the "lost in my inbox" game, like used in this thread multiple times.
A swipe like that deserves no response, but in case anybody actually thinks we might do that: I have 44 emails waiting for replies right now (edit: 45, while writing this. edit: 47). I spend hours every day answering HN emails, but haven't had a chance to do much today because I've been busy providing explanations to the commenters in this thread, as well as trying to do the normal workflow of HN moderation, which itself has been set behind by several hours. If I'm lucky, I'll spend my evening working through those emails. It's a point of conscience to try to give everyone who writes to us a meaningful reply, it's not a game, and I don't lie to the community—that would be not only wrong but stupid.
On the question of political topics on HN, I've written about this at length in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... If you take a look at those and still have a question I haven't addressed there, I'd be interested to know what it is. Just be sure you've familiarized yourself with past explanations, because if the idea is something like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've already explained many times why that won't work.
I honestly visited the links and read some of your comments. I still fail to see why downvoting and flagging are necessary. Am I overlloking something?
Downvoting and flagging are vital for preventing HN from becoming overrun with much lower-quality threads. There is a lot of that on the internet, including here, and we need countervailing mechanisms to address it. Upvotes alone can't cut it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
Basically, they are the immune system of the forum, and we need those white blood cells. There's a downside, of course—HN certainly gets bad downvotes and flags. But there are mechanisms to address those, like corrective upvotes (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and vouching (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and as a last resort you can always email hn@ycombinator.com. Meanwhile the downside of having no immune system would be much worse.
It is an endless tussle of how people want to be moderated. I definitely see the value of flagging given many if not all forums, commenting blocks and social media sites have that. It seems highly suspect to cast doubt on the value of it. Adding a low friction way to say "why" would give a way to add priority.
Second, downvotes are community driven and very useful where the participants use it to bring up quality content. Of course it can be used unfairly as well.
Definitely agree it's not sustainable to moderate these issues individually. But maybe it's a red flag that HN needs to change their approach to this issue? It feels like a "guilty until proven innocent" setup.
Seems like a child comment has been detached from this thread and moved into a separate top-level thread, that is currently at the top (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223772), while its' former parent (comment that I'm currently responding to) has been moved to the bottom (2nd page). QED.
If we're downweighting an off-topic subthread A, but it has a subthread B which is actually on-topic, we sometimes detach B so that it doesn't get pulled down by its parent. This is a good example. In this case A and B were almost completely unrelated.
The netizens of China have come up with very clever code talk to get around censors. For instance, Hu Jintao's surname can be broken up into the Chinese radicals for "Old Moon." So instead of Hu, they refer to him as Old Moon, etc. I wonder if non-Chinese Google users will be doing the same thing soon.
Communist bandit (Chinese: 共匪; pinyin: gòngfěi) is an anti-communist insult directed to the Chinese Communist Party. The term originated from the Nationalist Government in 1927.
This is direct censorship on behalf of the Chinese Government.
It's an insult but also a historical fact. KMT was listed a observer party in COMINTERN and Chiang Kai Shek himself was nominated as president of COMINTERN China branch. So in a sense KMT was the real Communist deal and CCP was a copycat version.
COMINTERN even ordered CCP to join force with KMT to form "united front", Mao himself was forced to join KMT. And it turned out to be a bloodshed purge by the KMT. Afterwards The CCP failed to hold its insurgent territories, CCP vows to kickout the Soviet consultants and cut links with COMINTERN and became independent, thus began the famous "Long March". THe term "bandit" was invented at that time.
Wasn't it was an enemy-of-my-enemy alliance that occurred in the context of the Japanese invasion, and both sides were planning on picking up their civil war where they left off, after the Japanese had been removed?
No, the First United Front was formed in 1924, the purge of Communists by the Nationalists started with the Shanghai massacre 1927 and the Long March began in 1934, before the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.
Because the Chinese market is huge. Because freedom of speech in the Western world is an individual liberty which platforms such as YouTube do not need to guarantee, whereas censorship in China is an absolute requirement they must abide by. The payoffs are asymmetric. If we had legislation in the EU or in the US that demanded that YouTube not tamper with users’ comments, then they’d have to choose between one side and the other. As it is, they’re not legislated as a utility, so they have editorial oversight.
As another user posted, there’s a long list of terms dating back to 2012, so this isn’t recent. Even the post referred to dates from the end of 2019, so it isn’t exactly novel.
Google might well accept being excluded from China, but I’m assuming that the prospect of being allowed to re-enter that market is periodically dangled in front of them by the ruling party in China, and that consequentially Google has an ongoing motive to somewhat abide by the PRC’s rules.
Also, Google may be excluded from China, but Google also has a lot to lose if relations with China deteriorate, for example, if China somehow interferes with the primacy of Android there and therefore causes a massive dent in platform numbers.
Point is, the longer Google can postpone any such occupancies, the longer they can delay a drop in their stock market price (because surely such an event would have a negative effect on their stock, both for rational reasons [such as less telemetry data] and irrational [day traders] reasons).
And yes, of course this is pure conjecture. I’m not Larry Page in disguise spilling the beans of Alphabet’s Boardroom musings.
The most charitable explanation would be, that this phrase is considered derogatory and offensive towards some, akin to say the N-word, and they have banned it on those grounds. Seems unlikely though.
I'm not sure how reliable the following site is, but it looks like this has been banned at least since 2012, along with a long list of words that I find shockingly restrictive.
1,276 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 396 ms ] threadThis is gonna backfire so hard, Streisand effect is coming.
I tried 共匪 and 共.匪, both got deleted.
I just tested it via two methods:
1) VPN'ed into work with Firefox in Private Mode (I posted from Brave)
2) Had a friend test it. He's on Chrome from a different city.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeFzeNAHEhU
EDIT: Please don't downvote me for contributing relevant facts to the discussion. I do not support censorship.
Let us assume the parent was being on topic and relevant. Therefore they seem to indicate the censoring was due to it being perjorative. As most other perjoratives are not typically censored (per my comment), that would imply that the "Communist Bandit" perjorative is somehow special.
Is it special because it's somehow especially worse than other perjoratives, or is it special because it offends a foreign state's political party?
>the parent clearly felt that the phrase being perjorative was tied to it being censored.
How do you come to this conclusion? In my view the comment is not implying anything at all, it is merely translating (not only using a direct translation but also conveying the implications of the phrase "communist bandit"). The word "pejorative" adds to the translation. There is nothing in the original comment that says anything about censorship at all.
Google is siding with a fascist prison-state over Americans' right to free speech, it is deplorable.
And furthermore, the only real justification for a global ban for a US-based company could be "hate speech," which clearly enough communist operatives claimed it was, but just because somebody's feelings are hurt doesn't make something hate speech, it doesn't come down to cancellation politics.
In other words, Google is siding with the Party Room of Control because Google is not an American company. If they were, they would not let this stand.
It’s like calling a member of the National Socialist party a Nazi.
Calling someone that’s not a communist or a nazi either would be a pejorative.
“Commie bandit” might not be a pejorative either depending on who it’s applied to.
At times there have been communist guerrilla groups that have used banditry to fund their political struggle.
There are people that believe that an enforced one party state is a form of banditry (although a one party state is not requirement of communism).
The 50 Cent Army posts pro-Chinese propaganda on Chinese websites. Do we have any evidence that the 50 Cent Army posts on English websites? I can't imagine it being that difficult to produce given that we traced Russian propaganda. Forgive my snark, but it sounds like you are unwitting propagating rhetoric that designed to dismiss anything that defends China.
If you're interested in what the 50 cent army actually does, Harvard published a paper about it. It turns out that China rarely actually engages in argument, but rather tries to distract people, so they think about other things.
https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf
Even tech commentators are in on it. Kara Swisher, for example, has been railing at social media companies every chance she gets to get them to ramp up censorship against things she deems offensive.
> the anti-Trump center/center-left/left
So... basically everyone who isn't a Trump supporter, then? Is that really how you see the world? The president of the united states vs. literally everyone else? And you've chosen the political side instead of the social consensus?
No. There are plenty of non-Trump supporters[1] who don't care for YouTube censorship. However, the calls for censorship and pressure on social media companies came as a result of the panic-induced from Trump's election and Russian election interference, which does correlate with anti-Trump voices, more specifically Democratic party establishment and their supporters.
Those aren't the only voices to call for censorship. There is also a parallel cultural war that pressures social media companies to censor hate-speech (as defined by supporters). This tends to generate a lot of noise from both sides, but I think it's probably minor in the grand scheme of things. That Democrats in Congress are cracking down on social media is by far a much bigger deal - because they can actually punish these companies through laws and regulation - and they have been threatening to do so.
[1] I supported Hillary in 2016 because, for all her faults and unlikability, she would have been a reasonable and competent leader. So no, I'm not a huge fan of Trump, but I also don't pearl-clutch every time he says something dumb on Twitter or in a press conference. In a similar vein, though I think he should be a one-term president, I don't think it's an existential threat if he gets elected again.
What legislation are you talking about? I mean... they only have one house of congress. I'm sure there's some rhetoric somewhere, but it's just rhetoric.
I mean, the POTUS himself routinely calls for censorship of the news media, but it's likewise "just rhetoric" because he can't unilaterally pass laws (though he can come closer than the house can). Does that not trigger your same logic? If not, why not?
They can investigate and haul social media CEOs in front of the House - which they have done routinely, blaming them for things like Russian interference and Hillary losing the election. And any bull the Democrats throw out there against tech companies is magnified by mainstream outlets - who really do act like the arm of the establishment Democratic party when echoing Democratic talking points.
And elections are cyclical, today Democrats have the House, in 2021 they could have all three branches.
Maybe none of that would matter if it wasn't the case that these tech companies are ACTUALLY listening to these calls for censorship, even if Democrats have no power today.
>he POTUS himself routinely calls for censorship of the news media
POTUS is a doofus that mouths of all the time on twitter and press conferences and nobody (not social media companies, not the public) takes him seriously, with the exception of mainstream media outlets. It's been 3 years, and still, every tweet is the end of the world. He does have a lot of power to do a lot of things but he doesn't all those things, but the pearl-clutching that happens by the mainstream outlets anytime Trump tweets is now a joke on the media. And the media is stronger than ever under Trump, even after years of fawning over the Obama administration.
They don't prevent you from criticising anything. They are only trying to remove insults.
The only reason I use them is their spam filters are excellent. Otherwise I wouldn't.
Switching would be laborious if you're using @gmail, probably a case of looking at each unique domain name you've received an email from, logging in and switching addresses. Could be relatively methodical about it by taking a backup and then working down your inbox and deleting the emails from those recipients until you have nothing left. Could be a day job.
There is an option in gmail to forward your emails to another address if you wanted to do it over time.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-be-evil/2540...
Despite four comments now incorrectly posting otherwise, it has never once been removed from the code of conduct.
https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
I realized first hand they did evil in 2013 (stomping on and or blantantly stealing tech from those dreamers they inspired to dream/do/innovate) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929
China is not communist.
[1] http://english.sse.com.cn/ [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/04/08/the...
The most likely explanation is that some mainlander inside Google has been pushing for this with the "this is racist and hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China#2016%E2%80%93pres...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)
Not really. Google hasn't returned to the mainland market. Youtube is blocked.
That little bit of developer interaction or Project Dragonfly - whatever its state may be - does not contradict that.
If you believe this sort of censorship is ordered from the top in order to get back into the mainland market, that's fine. I still prefer my explanation.
You'll also get videos deleted if you include in them info against WHO advice.
I don’t care that much about how Chinese citizens let their 共肥 party censor them, but it’s not ok when I am being censored for speech that could be considered offensive to the communist party of China.
And all govs control info. Democracies just pretend they don't (they do it covertly, through narrative control, disinfo, etc). Social media now presents them with a problem. They have to censor platforms, which makes it overt.
This is against the historical trend of democracies modus operandi for information control. Brave new world out there!
Edit (this thread now has restrictions, can't reply you, below, so here):
I mean more "nationalistic shtick" as in the trope of "US vs China" or "US vs Russia" etc. They have to be able to start a profitable war, for something, right?
All the same...expanding the argument (as you have) to the "truths we hold to be self-evident", well, they are unfortunately not implemented in as iron-clad a way as us proles would think. It should be obvious. I love the US, living there, the people, the environment, everything about it...aaaannndd....structurally, you can't really say that the debt trap, opioid epidemic, Wall St bailout, social division deliberately inflamed by the media, covert info control and surveillance, democratic "theatrics" that stymie results, really equates with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" can you, chum?
I mean, I sort of agree with you a little bit, even, in a way. It is sad. And I do think it is an impressive argument. Yes. Very much! ツ
Edit (to your edit ツ): Yes, the Muslims in camps, that is a hard thing for Westerners to get their head around. It's funny, tho. I wonder about it, for a few reasons:
- Western tech supports the security in XJ
- China has protected Russian, and US interests along its Western (Central Asian) borders with regard to the countries there, the Tajik, Afghan and Pakistan areas. It could have caused plenty of troubles for US/Russia there, but on the face of it their security interests align. And honestly, who do you think is coming across the Afghan-Chinese border (or via Tajik) and doing some of the interrogations in the detention centers, working right alongside Chinese? You guessed it, the [C_A] ツ.
- I would have thought an American would be more supportive of counter-terrorism/deradicalization/counter-narrative. Being soft on sepratist terrorists almost seems like being an apologist for terrorism. Something I know no American would ever do...I'm sure. :P Especially considering how tough the English speaking world has been on terrorists in the Middle East. I can't imagine them standing up to support Islamic terrorism in XJ, or is that just because it's against CN and it's like "enemy of my enemy is my friend"? But truth is CN no your enemy. Really no!
- The XJ narrative is actually cooperative propaganda between US/China. 90%+ of "whistleblowers/defectors" are Chinese disinfo agents working this psyop. Preparing for the "great discrediting" that will come. The remaining ones are fakes/unaffiliated individuals trying to get attention. The real story is: There is strong CT presence in XJ, but the "camps" is fake news, as you say. People apply to go. Like college. And yes, some people wish they were not there, just like college! But they can leave. Only people who are "detained" are terrorists, exactly like in the US.
- This XJ propos is a complex info strategy but boils down to:
1) an overly critical narrative works to support China (just like the overly critical MSM actually supported President Trump into election because it fired up his base);
2) regular Chinese, seeing how crazy and fake is Western coverage of XJ, begin to distrust more and more Western media, helping the Party;
3) eve...
Edit: all governments control info. I can only think of one government that has a million Uygher Muslims in concentration camps.
Wishful thinking. "Narrative control and disinfo" are categorically different than banning expressions, opinions, theories and thought. The scale and types of information control are not on comparable levels.
There are always contradictions inherent in governance. There are always both open and classified activities. There are always those peoples/departments/regimes that seek to stretch or overstep rules or norms.
But you can't group it all and say "Great Firewall is equal to think tank lobbying."
What citizens, businesses, platforms, politicians and basically every other entity is allowed to say in a free country vs. China is on different planets.
> [XJ secret master plan]
Citations needed. Testimonials of citizens and family members dealing with camps are more convincing than wide-ranging, decontextualized, strung-together internet rants about XJP's secret genius plan.
But yeah about the rest, you're probably right. I can't prove any of what I say to you, and one reason is I don't think you'd take, "just trust me, I'm right", as proof.
I hope you don't believe me. It is sort of an awful thing to believe in.
What can I say? I guess I'm a bit of a nutter. Maybe more than a bit. Definitely more than a bit. Conspiracy theorist whackjob if you will.
I like your ellipsis "XJ secret master plan". Nice quote style. Very funny. Perfect for nutty comments :)
But no one can prove the official narratives either. We just need to think for ourselves. I'm glad I've given you something fresh.
I don't want to believe any of them. I wish the would was very different. But it seems it's not right now...
Can one take out an ad with "共匪" in the text? Adwords against it? Is this censored on Orkut? Would Google consider censoring Gmail? Or Google Voice? Would they consider bleeping Google Meets?
Google will need to be very public about who signed off on this and under what framework.
There is a critical mass of people paying attention to censorship in general, and recently a critical mass of people attentive to the evils of the CCP.
Also, seems to have been at least since 2012
https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...
https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...
You're misrepresenting that link. It's not a list of things that Google censors, but a list of things that Google wanted people to know are blocked by the Great Firewall (i.e. Google calling attention to censorship, not censoring themselves).
It's a reason. It's not a good reason.
I'm not saying I agree with the incentive structure but money is one of the core incentives in the US since it translates to other necessities and wants in life. Those working at dubious businesses are being highly incentivized to do so and at the same time, normalizing said behaviors.
Here's the kicker as well, as the clench on labor grows tighter with the middle class being squeezed more and more, people seem oblivious that even if you're getting paid relatively well (6 figures) and have options to jump ship, that may not always be the case when labor keeps caving (sometimes without option) into business incentive structures for compensation.
If there are plenty of people on the labor market capable of competing with you yet willing to do work you won't for money, you too will be displaced. Ultimately, the people dangling carrots in front of us win and we (those who rely on labor for income) lose.
They just need you to not be elsewhere making that money for someone else, or disrupting a market that they are entrenched in. IMHO much of the FAANG hiring / head count / acquisition process could be analyzed in this light.
Based on what we're seeing right now, this is likely caused not by the latter, but by the former. Consider: the ML-assisted thread moderation logic can be vulnerable to brigading. If several tens of thousands of Chinese people decided to start flagging comments with that phrase, YT would also start killing the phrase (because its sample is biased towards seeing "That phrase usually results in a flag, so the community clearly doesn't want it").
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
It ranks up there with the problem of dealing with seductive disinformation.
For everyone pointing out that nothing happened in Moab there’s someone else with a Remember Moab bumpersticker[1].
[1] Neal Stephenson reference.
Assume I believe that moderation is a reasonable action. Why is this unreasonable moderation, who is harmed?
Put another way, assume that I have some line on the sand drawn on when I would leave. Assume also that I believe that what I'm doing at Google has net-positive impact. Why should I move my line in the sand back to <whatever this is>?
Rather say that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?"
"That's not my department!" says Werner von Braun
As the other comenter noted, Tom Lehrer is indeed a national treasure, and his satire is top shelf.
From the light-hearted "The Elements": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM (watch for the surprise at the end)
To the gallows comedy of "We Will All Go Together When We Go": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs
NB: I appreciate the irony linking to YouTube content in a 'WTF Google/YouTube' thread.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/google-walkout...
Do it again.
(And you still haven't addressed my point about, suppose they strike successfully and Google decides it won't help the CCP at all and the CCP bans Google and has Tencent step in - what then? Did you save the world?)
[citation needed]
I don't believe that if a majority of Google's software engineers went on strike that Google would be able to hire and train new employees without any of the striker's domain-specific or institutional knowledge without enormous expense.
It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.
So wait, now buying something that was made in China means condoning the CCP? That's a pretty big jump in logic.
Buying made in China products supports this economic growth, and also the cheap, often exploitative, labor that went into producing them.
Besides, you should probably support the local manufacturing industry wherever you’re living.
I mean, from your description, I'd rather want a system that actually shows continued growth, rather than hollowed promises of growth.
Let's be honest here, democracy's real growth had been going to war with nations and extracting/exploiting resources from them. Hence why the past 50 years, there has been no real growth in democratic countries because they are not able to as easily extract from the rest of the world.
I'm also fairly certain that the US (and other countries) have been warring a lot in the Middle East in the past 50 years, and many people claim that this is directly related to oil, an "exploited resource".
Has that not been happening either?
Also, please don't call the US as the whole of the "west", I personally find that insulting to compare such a warlike nation with much of civilised Europe.
Hopefully, however, you have a voice (vote) in that government. The same obviously does not apply to you with China, nor generally does it apply to Chinese people within China.
You also generally have less choice when it comes to paying taxes, and significantly more choice when it comes to not buying things from China. If there are no non-Chinese alternative for X item, you can always choose to not buy X. However, that probably means not buying quite a few things, as you point out. But that was GC's point – it is fairly hard as a techie to not support the CCP. But just because something is hard to avoid does not mean you aren't doing it or aren't responsible for doing it.
That doesn't change that an engineer in the bay area can choose to work for Google or choose to find an alternative place of employment. People can choose more ethical choices without living in a pure ethical panacea.
Take that template and apply it to Googlers. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism; everyone has compromised a rigid belief structure somewhere.
I think people (especially those in privileged positions like engs in the bay area) should feel empowered to think and decide their line as to what they want to support and contribute to the world.
A lot of engineers are wage slaves as much as anyone else. It's not like everyone wants to do this stuff.
EDIT: On a more personal note - I hope your name is actually "Bradly" and you're not "Bradley". And that you actually go by that in real life instead of "Brad". As I know there's some "Brad"s out there that like to buy up Bradly variations without actually going by it. It's killing me.
--
Yes, I am a Bradly. About half my coworkers/friends/family call me Bradly and about half call me Brad. I introduce my self as both interchangeably depending on the situation.
My point is - not everyone has a choice. You might get the pick of the litter but there are many people who are lucky if they even get one offer from a company paying $400k+/yr. And - for reference - I am one of the people who has never received an offer from one. All my offers have been under $200k/yr (that doesn't include that I have to pay over $2,000/month to buy options that will "maybe one day if we're all lucky" pan out for something).
The world of living in silicon valley under $200k/yr vs $400k+/yr is wildly different. One feels like you're no better off than a retail worker and the other feels like you're a working class professional.
So the lesson is: Being ethical in one way is hard, so don't bother being ethical in any aspect of your life?
Whether buying hardware or working for google is worse is another debate, but you should be able to see why people can work at google and not necessarily feel guilty about it.
The truth is most for-profit organization will not have a flawless ethical image that satisfied everyone, and that probably includes your employer. I'm not saying we should all look the other way, but let's keep things grounded in reality. Censorship is a delicate subject, especially as it concerns expressions involvong multiple cultures. This doesn't make Google immediately evil for electing to / not electing to act one way or another.
Maybe your accusation is that Google is choosing profit over ethics in this case? Then the "Chinese hardware" argument has to come into play. Are you, yourself choosing price and convenience when you know it means your dollars are ending up in those poorly run Chinese factories? What are you going to do about it? Should Googlers quit their jobs before or after you source all your hardware from ethically run, blame-free factories?
If there were no other thermostat companies, you might have an argument. But there are plenty of other thermostat companies, and plenty of other tech companies than Google.
"Not my department / group / office"
"Just a few bad apples"
I mean yes, those are valid points - and I'd imagine most junior workers being there just for the future (career) opportunities.
No junior engineer at google is going to have any say in strategic and political decisions like censorship.
"The world's" doesn't mean "The part of the world we like most." "Universally" doesn't mean "Nobody in China gets to use our system until the Chinese government adopts Western notions of information control."
Google would operate in North Korea if it could, because as a point of philosophy, it's believed that access to more informtion, even curtailed by the government, is better than access to only information controlled by the government.
Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else? Wouldn't more "mutually consistent" information be a better goal? Flat earth stuff is fun but you must limit yourself to a very small plausible universe in order to really buy into it.
The distinction is irrelevant; were I speaking as a Google employee I would still be speaking from personal opinion, not on behalf of my employer.
> Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else?
It's not though; it's "all" the world's information (within constraints; Google also isn't vending a search index to make pedophilic imagery easy to find). But the flat-Earth hypothetical doesn't apply because that's only a subset.
In fact, it doesn't apply in a way that's demonstrative, I think, of the game Google plays with authoritarian states. Google banks on the notion nature cannot be fooled. Sure, individual phrases or sets of facts (like Tienman Square history) can be knocked out of returned datasets. But the missing data leaves holes; it becomes apparent where the cuts are in the data.
This is why North Korea cuts the whole internet; they know it can't be contained. China's ruling party is more subtle; they'll block unpopular signal it if a sense of "decency," as it were, but they know their people aren't stupid. In any sense of "stupid."
Seems like word splitting and I disagree. If you're working at Google, then your opinion is an answer to OP's question. If you're not, then your opinion doesn't count as a Google employee's justification for continuing to work at Google.
https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
It's not as easy as you might expect, through normal channels. There's a points system to gain access and a whole lot of hoops to jump through if you aren't able to pay for the economic class.
Now, if you were to walk across the border at certain locations and claim refugee status you could probably remain so long as your application is being processed; regardless of the merits of your claim, that process time has become _rather long_.
However, even with that in mind, it is still a very difficult and complicated process, with tons of hard limitations that can put a complete stop to the whole thing due to something trivial, like not having a degree. And even with that barrier of hard requirements cleared, it is still a pretty draconian experience.
Having gone through a similar thing myself (not with Canada, but I ended up coincidentally reading a lot about Canadian immigration laws), I can assure you, it is way more difficult than getting any job, even if you are a successful Google engineer, and by a far margin.
I am pretty sure that any person who went through an immigration process to another country can attest to that. And I am talking purely about the legal-paper-stuff aspect of immigration to another country, not things like getting adapted to your new country or anything like that.
Our process isn't that easy; we have an immigration system that the GOP would _like to have_.
There are points awarded based on your education and training, variated against the demand for those skills in Canada. If you are being imported by an employer they must go to considerable lengths to prove that they attempted to find an existing Canadian to fill that role. And so on.
And it can be all avoided by paying approximately $800,000 to what is effectively an escrow: you get it back after a few years, less inflation.
That was the whole point of my comment. Out of all western countries, Canada is definitely one of the easiest. But even with that in mind, it is still extremely difficult.
That's not the point though. Google is so large that it's just weird to talk about the morality of its employees in the context of the company's decisions.
Not working for Google, in particular, is extremely easy. Something that roughly 99.999% of the world's population succeeds at without even trying :-) And most people who are working for Google are also likely to be able to find another job quite easily.
The two are not comparable. At all. In any way or form.
I would have a stronger civic spirit if I were a willing member of my country rather than a prisoner.
Can you imagine China's reaction if thousands of Americans worked at Tencent in Beijing, and had access to users' chat logs and browsing histories? Besides raw intelligence-gathering, this data could be used to blackmail and coerce Chinese citizens. Wouldn't it be seen as a threat to China's national security?
For example, nothing good would come from the Go team quitting over unrelated political stuff.
Commoditize your complement. https://www.gwern.net/Complement
If software can be profitable whether it's open or closed-source, then isn't open-source inherently better?
Are you sure about that? It might actually harm google enough that they respond by giving into some demands.
Go in particular is known for stability. In the short term, descoping or delaying Go releases is unlikely to matter to any business goal. Language and SDK improvements are for improving the ecosystem in the long term.
Not a Google Employee , but in 99% of the case it's money + experience/situation.
This is similar to what others tech company are doing ( Reddit , Adobe etc.. ) in terms of arbitrage when they decide to enter Chinese Market , Partner with Chinese VC or with ideas that challenge their values.
Regardless of where you'll go in tech you'll end up in Amoral corporations like Google/Amazon/Microsoft which are driven solely by Money and Growth , regardless of the consequences. ( Remember Gillette and Child Labour ? Nestlé ? )
Also , the last people who tried to Unionize at Google , which could have enable them to do something about it , got laid off instantly[0] , same pattern happened in all others tech companies...
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-fo...
Google pay better than most, and if you’re on the right team I assume you get to work on very interesting/challenging projects. They’re just as heartless/selfish as any other bigco, but I don’t know that they’re worse.
Tech giants have picked the winners and I'm pretty convinced they've picked sides based on their personal convictions. They're removing hate speech because they think they're on the right side of history, not because they think it will make them the most money.
I work for Google. It does some things I don't like but this does not prima facie appear to be one of them.
In fact, I'd like to ask this question of you: your website is undoubtedly being used by people to build software that you disagree with, perhaps even censorship. How do you justify still hosting your site instead of shutting it down? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them.
Is it because you need the money from your site? So do Google employees (probably).
Is it because you still enjoy the work of building your site? So do Google employees (probably)?
Is it because on the aggregate you think that your site still provides benefit to society, despite it possibly being used for things you disagree with? So do Google employees (probably).
There are plenty of reasons why people still work for Google, and you probably would relate to them too if you stopped being so combative towards anyone who works for [big corp].
Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.
Your past comments and submissions to HN say otherwise. You have been very outspoken and proud about the fact that you haven't taken money from "the man" (my words, not yours), and that others should do the same [0][1]. Whether it be a VC or Google, your messaging is clear.
>Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.
You're dodging the question. Have you done an audit on every single project hosted on SourceHut to see if you disagree with them? Would such an action even be something you agree with? What if someone was hosting such a repository (I'll go create one right now), would you remove it? But that is censorship, is it not? Do you even have the technical capability to do such an audit? If not, that means people could easily use your site for nefarious things, so how do you justify keeping it running?
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080655
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073740
Your link omits context. A couple of comments up is this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080485
In the quoted link I am speaking from the perspective of a startup founder offering advice to potential startup founders. In today's discussion I am speaking from the perspective of a tech worker speaking to other tech workers. I have been in both roles, and I have different advice for different kinds of people with different kinds of goals. Do me the courtesey of not assuming that I expect every person in all circumstances to be exactly like me.
>You're dodging the question. Have you done an audit on every single project hosted on SourceHut to see if you disagree with them?
This is a disingenous line of questioning. Google employees are aware of their employer's misbehaviors. In order to even have seen my comments in the first place, they would have had to visit a discussion about those bad behaviors. Google employees cannot claim ignorance in the way you're assuming I am.
I am familiar with most public projects on sourcehut, of course. I do not conduct an audit on private projects, but if something was brought to my attention, I would conduct an investigation which may result in the termination of the account. For example, if some knucklehead on HN went to create a bunch of abusive repositories to prove their point in an internet argument, I would definitely terminate their account.
So your context arguing against my assertion that you are telling people to quit and start their own company is a link to a comment telling people they should quit and start their own company?
How about this [0] comment? I'll quote it here for you:
>But, I may suggest an additional option: do something about it. Build a business that eschews VC culture, or become a VC who doesn't fit in among their blood-sucking peers.
>This is a disingenous line of questioning. Google employees are aware of their employer's misbehaviors.
You're still dodging the question, and your reasoning is "I've stuck my head in the sand and I'm going to pretend nobody is using my site for things I disagree with"?
I'll ask it again and maybe you won't dodge it this time: You just admitted that you do not conduct audits on private projects. Without a doubt, someone is now or will be in the future using your site to build software that you disagree with. Knowing this, how do you justify still hosting your site instead of shutting it down?
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073740
You are arguing in bad faith and I have no interest in entertaining it any further.
Ironic, because this entire comment chain was started by you with a loaded question that was asked in bad faith. I guess it's fine when you do it, but not others, eh? Is this the same mentality you're holding in regards to sourcehut? "It's fine that I'm building something that may be used nefariously, but when Google employees do that, they're bootlickers"?
The fact that you still dodged the question is duly noted, btw.
I'll remind you that this "line of questioning" wasn't intended to bash SourceHut or you in any way, but rather to try to get you to empathize with the fact that "quit your job and stop working on things you enjoy just because someone on the internet disagrees with your company" is hardly a winning stance to take.
> Is this the same mentality you're holding in regards to sourcehut? "It's fine that I'm building something that may be used nefariously, but when Google employees do that, they're bootlickers"?
And yet it was previously asked:
> Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.
It is clear to me that Drew has declared an absence of knowledge of such malfeasence with his products.
99% of startups fail (a turn of phrase, not a real statistic AFAIK), and that is usually said in reference to those that do take VC money. Tell me: what happens when my bootstrapped startup fails?
But when I look out at the tech industry landscape, it is clear that I can do more good from within, because I have more freedom and influence on the work, and I believe that the work is net positive for the technology ecosystem.
Businesses large and small seem to have their heads on backwards here in Silicon Valley. Their founders are all highly profit-motivated, and don't truly seek to make the world a better place. Those that wear a facade of idealism give me no reason to believe they are any better than Google. If I left Google, where would I go where I can work without shame? I even have a hard time imagining starting my own business without falling prey to the same broken mechanics that brought us to where we are today.
At least at Google, I can say with confidence that there is ongoing work by people I trust - who in turn are given a lot of autonomy by the company - to make the world a better place with technology.
- Am an employee of a large company whose practices would probably also not stand up to public scrutiny
First question is has this been verified beyond "someone said so"? Perhaps it has - but any search I do ultimately leads back to the same comment.
Second, google is hardly the only company to occasionally kowtow the the PRC. I don't think any large company wants to a face-off with them. Are there more ethical employers? Probably, but they're probably small and not everyone wants to work at a small company pace. Also, if the company got larger and push came to shove, I suspect they'd do what they needed to do to stay on China's good side. It's a better option than going under.
Really a lot of employers are ethically shaky.
- Is it better to work for the DoD? Some people say no.
- Is it better to work for a Big Bank? Some people say no.
- Is it better to work for Big Pharm? Some people say no.
- Is it better to work for a place that frankly abuses their warehouse workers? I think we've had that discussion.
I'm not sure where that leaves anyone who likes gainful employment, particularly outside the Silicon Valley startup culture.
That doesn't necessarily translate to 'throw up our hands' but it does meant a more nuanced approach to where we work, how we feel about our employer, and how we measure that against all the other places we do business with that also have their dark sides.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042618
Of the first 12 posts, one is the FBI, one is questionable (using proxies to circumvent rate limits, anti-scraping tech, etc), and the other 10 seem anywhere from boring to laudable.
Most tech jobs do not require you to make broad ethical compromises to work there.
The best answer to your question I received from a Google employee, is that the pay is good and the work is interesting.
Will they respond to this controversy with that then-popular xkcd strip[1] about how, "if you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an internet community, your free speech riots aren't being violated. It's just that the people listening think you're an asshole, and they're showing you the door."?
[1] https://xkcd.com/1357/
It's not flagged, it just went from #13 on the front page to invisible. In a single refresh. How does that work? Looking at the votes and age, it should be in the top 5 of both Ask and the front page. What's the metric or decision that made it disappear?
@dang might be worth commenting on this? Moderation is fine, opaque removal of content with no explanation, not so much. I fully believe @dang has the best interests of the community in mind, so please give us a clear explanation of what's going on here.
Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users?
I'll also admit that this link, to a support thread, is more compelling than the Ask HN, where half the comments were questioning whether the phenomenon was actually happening.
A post that's regularly being flagged by 0.0X% of logged-in users will have different behavior than one that gets fairly few flags for many hours and then suddenly gets 30 within a five minute period.
If it is that easy, maybe we should discuss the flagging system because it gives the ILLUSION that it was taken down because there's a conflict of interest.
I for one wouldn't mind knowing if a large fraction of those overly enthusiastic users happened to be coordinated in some way.
Well, by now they are probably Liangkuaidangs or something :D
edit: looking at the downvotes, I may have triggered a few of them
It's a wild guess either way.
Increased transparency like mandatory reason for flagging, and anonymized stats on flagging per userid including not just aggregate numbers, but also flagged post titles (so ideological patterns could be observed per topic) would improve trustworthiness that HN is an impartial platform, and there are no technical limitations in doing this, although it would require a bit of one-time work. It would be interesting to know why we have some stats here, but not others.
But unless this greater transparency is provided some day, we will have to run on faith, just as other religious people have faith as the basis of trust in their God of choice. Everyone has faith in their axioms, it just doesn't seem that way, in no small part because the mind tends to not let you think in that manner, even if you try.
It looks like the previous post was flagged, so can't even comment on it.
I've already seen a few times where content demeaning YC companies mysteriously got disappeared... and then summarily blamed on automated removal. Who's right? No clue. But being able to see that log as it happens would be a significant good faith action.
I mean HN could publish a ranking algorithm and claim that that is what they use. But then we still wouldn't know
(1) if that is really what's running in the background,
(2) if that is really receiving user inputs that lead to the observed outcome.
I'm guessing for most people here the programming assignment "create a fake log including these real inputs so that this story is suddenly dropped according to the ranking algorithm" isn't that hard.
I think that in the end, you end up trusting something. (Eg. Is the log fake or real?) IF that is so, you might as well design the system around a predetermined root of trust... here, the moderators.
The appeals process is to write to hn@ycombinator.com (Contact link in the footer.)
Go ahead and downvote me, doesn't make what I'm saying wrong.
If you don't like the moderation, apply to be a moderator.. or start your own forum.
The moderation is 100% transparent and you can see a log of every comment/submission that a moderator has removed. Furthermore, each subforum can control their own moderation team through a voting system. Moderators should serve their users, not rule over them as dictators.
[0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/an-update-on-yc-china/
In any case, this has zero effect on HN moderation. It had zero effect while YC China was being set up, zero effect while YC China was being wound down, and zero effect regardless of whatever "Chinese money" you're referring to, which you seem to know more about than I do. The only effect any of this has on HN moderation is people making up dark insinuations about it and posting them to HN. I expect that kind of thing from trolls but it's pretty weird to see you stoop to it.
I saw your comment earlier about this particular case - the flamewar detector went off. This would be a good thing to bubble up somewhere for transparency. I've mentioned many times that a public moderation log for HN would be a very good idea, and it would avoid scenarios like this entirely.
Again, I have a lot of respect for you as a moderator, but that is dependent on being able to push back when HN moderation fails. I've gone to bat for you before; it's only fair that I get to criticise you, too. Maybe this was a bit of a low blow, and I apologise for that, but it highlights places where HN moderation can be improved all the same. I don't think that pushing to have all of these discussions in private is going to be acceptable.
I see the flagged indicator now and then, but I see it somewhat less frequently than I would THINK things get flagged, admittedly that's all conjecture.
Of course this is all speculation, the truth of censorship on various platforms will likely never be known.
I'm not sure this is a behind the scenes Snidely Whiplash situation or ... just mass flagging by users with a specific POV.
I believe the HN esk counter-point would be that HN is not the proper forum for those kinds of discussion. Imho, there is no "proper" forum for these kinds of discussions. They simply need to be had, more now than ever in my lifetime, on every street corner, and in every shop.
Turns out, even the literal street-corner soapbox guys can be effectively shut out of their venue.
the best and surest way to delete an inconvenient discussion from hn is to spam it with a political flame war.
i don't have proof that this is the case here but i wouldn't be surprised that such threads are actively heated up and/or gaslighted by nation state sponsored censors.
If "I wouldn't be surprised that such threads are actively heated up and/or gaslighted by nation state sponsored censors" is possibly true, can it not also be possibly true that ideologues do the same thing (consciously or not), knowing that so-called flamewars can (and often does) lead to censorship?
[1] Assuming that's what is occurring; I don't know.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23220998
Please upvote another attempt:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223939
Kind of hope I misunderstood the exchange, but if that's the case that instantly undermines any possible claim to being "ultimate place on the Web to discover and discuss bleeding-edge content"
In general HN is not that place anyways. People here confuse meekness with civility. It's ok to tear someone apart with ad hominem attacks as long as you don't sound too passionate in doing so. "You're being dumb" not ok. "You're being silly", totally ok.
I know I got rate limited and I'm pretty sure it's the over that time I had the audacity to talk back to a moderator
-
Look at this comment even, if you go against the hivemind your content gets flagged/buried in about 5 seconds
FYI, you may get downvoted or flagged for asking for upvotes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users should vote and comment when they run across something they find interesting—not for promotion."
(I didn't downvote or flag your comment, just wanted to let you know about the guideline.)
The problem with this is exactly what I'm trying to address in the AskHN submission: the probability of a random person running across interesting content is much smaller, than that of a group of users with agenda, who monitor new submissions/comments on a constant basis, as they appear.
I.e. there's a non-zero probability that my controversial submission looks interesting to several random people, and maybe they even give me an upvote, but at the same time there's a 100% probability of being flagged and never making it out of "new". In my opinion, this misbalance completely breaks the moderation system.
HN ranking has probably become more complex since I looked at it. Manual moderation also impacts ranking.
[1] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
I suspect the formula is changing if only because the sheer volume of spammy type stuff skyrocketing to the top seems to have subsided.
There was a short run where a lot of nearly raw spam type posts were quickly rising to the top, and sticking a long time despite almost / all the comments being about how terrible the spam is.
Ironically the article about google censorship ended up discussing whether there is hn censorship or whether it just magic ranking.
With open source everybody could check whether there was censorship outside of any smart ranking algorithm.
Not sure pagerank, moderation and similar systems have that built in.
Keeping the spammers out is already quite a bit of work so I'm perfectly OK with the secret sauce staying secret.
The one in question was that new Michael Moore documentary. There was a lively discussion, but obviously didn't fit the established narrative here, and it was disappeared.
When things happen like this, explanations are helpful to the submitter and/or the commenters, whichever was causing the problems.
I suppose this opens things up for debate, but not sure a silent removal of content is great for the community either.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633570
I don’t know this for sure and this is just a guess. It would be great to know the details, waiting to learn more seems best.
The primary behaviors that need controlling are adherence to authoritarian dictates, and voting.
The combination of taking an extreme contrarian position and presenting it in a grandiose and inflammatory way is pretty reliably fatal. I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I don't like to see contrarian views get killed for being contrarian. On the other hand, if the initial conditions of a thread are that inflammatory, we're guaranteed to get a flamewar, which is bad for this site.
Looking around the comment threads, I certainly don't see a lot of intellectual curiosity being stimulated or minds being expanded. I see a lot of dogmatic accusations, hyperbolic bemoaning-the-downfall-of-civilization, and general "how could you possibly believe that?!"-toned rudeness. Not our finest hour.
Perhaps such conversations can be had productively, but I've yet to see it.
I really do. I might start visiting it; we lack civilized places on the Internet.
The site guidelines specifically ask you not to post like this, but to send such questions to hn@ycombinator.com instead. Would you please review them (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? The reason we ask that is that such comments routinely spark completely speculative subthreads that range from completely off topic (at the high end!) to outrage mobs. They're extremely repetitive and they basically act like a drug and not a nice one.
We're always happy to answer questions—it just takes time to deal with the firehose. Yes, you have to wait for an email reply, but you've had to wait for a reply to this comment too, and if you'd sent an email you wouldn't have damaged HN. This digression (I'll use a nice word) was the #1 subthread on the #1 story of HN when I saw it.
You can't compute a post's rank from its timestamp and score. The software is more complicated than that, plus user flags affect things, plus moderator action. The "why is this post at rank N when given the score X and the timestamp Y my mental algorithm tells me it should be at rank Z?" question is an HN classic, but people grossly overweight moderator action, or rather sinister-moderator-misdeeds in the answers they give themselves.
I mean, think about it you guys. Do you really think we're suppressing discussion of the suppression of the phrase "communist bandits" from YouTube? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a.
I only found it again by checking @dang's profile.
I've also emailed HN support strongly objecting to this complete deletion.
We don't delete things outright on HN unless the author asks us to. The most we ever do is 'kill' a post, meaning it's still visible to anyone with 'showdead' set to 'yes' in their profile, and even that's rare. Beyond that, we'd never kill an entire subthread with dozens of replies. We might downweight it or we might auto-collapse it. That's all. By the way, if I had actually deleted that thread, you'd not have been able to find it via my profile. I'm not sure whether to be more hurt by your assuming I'm such an evil censor or such a bad programmer. (<-- that is an attempt at a joke)
It's routine HN moderation to downweight off-topic subthreads, especially when they're at the top of the page, and especially when they're indignant+offtopic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Guideline: "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I really do believe you have the best interests of the community in mind, but this chain of events is making it difficult. Using 'off topic' as an arbitrarily broad mechanism to remove high SnR content doesn't have the best optics, especially when a lot of the child discussion was pointing out seemingly inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of HN guidelines.
Again, help me out here. You're acting in good faith. Maybe a more clear and specific set of guidelines would help?
You're not going to tell me with a straight face that the highest upvoted comment on that submission and the origin of some healthy debate was 'off topic' when the top 3 comments of most front page submissions are far less related to TFA, are you?
If you think a subthread about "inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of HN guidelines", or rather people's feverish imaginations about that, doesn't qualify for being downweighted as off-topic, I'm not sure what to add. A subthread like that sitting at #1 on the #1 story of HN is a three-alarm fire from a moderation point of view. Smart readers don't come to HN to read that.
We routinely downweight this sort of thing because if we didn't, most threads would consist of nothing but. Do you think that HN discussions stay on topic (to the extent they do) by themselves? That would be a self-driving-cars-level achievement.
HN users will happily comment all day about HN, moderation, and their imaginings about these things. There's no stronger force on the site, but unfortunately it's an addictive process that burns all the oxygen from actual discussion and ends up asphyxiating it. A forum becoming self-referential like that is the road to death. If a smart new user showed up here, wanting to read about interesting topics, and ran into endless reams of insider bickering, they'd close the tab and never come back.
The troubling issue here seems to be HN asking users to "keep it quiet" by sending an email rather than commenting publicly about valid concerns. But I get your point that those concerns are technically "off-topic" from the underlying thread itself.
> Do you really think we're suppressing discussion of the suppression of the phrase "communist bandits" from YouTube? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a.
Also, can the suppression of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264 (which missosoup is asking about) be connected with my "HN censorship" related comment in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221622 ?
Edit: One not-so-obvious reason why subthreads like this are so disastrous for HN is that they suck up all the moderation resources. I haven't had a chance to even look at the rest of the HN front page yet, let alone the emails.
What I'd personally be happy to see being discussed:
- abandoning downvoting of comments completely
- introducing a compensation mechanism for flagging of comments (debatable)
- displaying all flagged submissions in a separate page with a link in the header (like "new", "ask", etc.)
Each generation of internet users thinks they're the first to come up with these things, and in a way they are, it's just that every previous generation was also the first to come up with them. It's an eternal cycle of internet forum life. The points you raise have been raised on HN for over a decade (HN Search is your friend!) and if they weren't those points they'd be others.
That probably sounds too dismissive. I don't mean that we're uninterested in hearing from users, getting suggestions, and answering questions. We do that all the time, and it's welcome. But making meta-posts to HN is not the best way to do it, especially in any inflammatory context, where they are almost guaranteed to blow up like the gas station in Zoolander—and then consume all our limited resources for the day, which ought to be going into making the site better.
In a comment above, I mentioned the possible solution (to the issue discussed in above thread) that HN create a publicly available list of "marked off topic / down-weighted / removed / flagged as duplicate" actions. I feel like HN could squash 90% of these concerns with that simple feature.
totally agree overall (implementation details are debatable)
Moreover, the litigious sort of users who would post most of the meta complaints are also the least likely to ever be satisfied by the explanations. Why would it be a good idea to give them more material to work with and a single place to go get it? If, on the other hand, the goal is to keep the majority of the community satisfied—well, the majority of the community is already satisfied: the clear majority, and clearly so. If that weren't the case, believe me, we'd know it, and we'd already have adjusted. That's how we keep the community satisfied in the first place.
This doesn't mean we don't want to be transparent. But we take an ad hoc approach to that by answering questions as they come up. There's no specific question you can't get an answer to.
> Why would it be a good idea to give them more material to work with and a single place to go get it?
It's one thing to not make it easier to acquire, it's another thing entirely when it isn't possible to acquire.
> There's no specific question you can't get an answer to.
Until HN decides they don't want to answer it. Or until they play the "lost in my inbox" game, like used in this thread multiple times.
> Until HN decides they don't want to answer it.
Sure, there's always a risk that the people operating the site will ruin it.
> Or until they play the "lost in my inbox" game, like used in this thread multiple times.
A swipe like that deserves no response, but in case anybody actually thinks we might do that: I have 44 emails waiting for replies right now (edit: 45, while writing this. edit: 47). I spend hours every day answering HN emails, but haven't had a chance to do much today because I've been busy providing explanations to the commenters in this thread, as well as trying to do the normal workflow of HN moderation, which itself has been set behind by several hours. If I'm lucky, I'll spend my evening working through those emails. It's a point of conscience to try to give everyone who writes to us a meaningful reply, it's not a game, and I don't lie to the community—that would be not only wrong but stupid.
On the question of political topics on HN, I've written about this at length in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... If you take a look at those and still have a question I haven't addressed there, I'd be interested to know what it is. Just be sure you've familiarized yourself with past explanations, because if the idea is something like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've already explained many times why that won't work.
Basically, they are the immune system of the forum, and we need those white blood cells. There's a downside, of course—HN certainly gets bad downvotes and flags. But there are mechanisms to address those, like corrective upvotes (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and vouching (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and as a last resort you can always email hn@ycombinator.com. Meanwhile the downside of having no immune system would be much worse.
It is an endless tussle of how people want to be moderated. I definitely see the value of flagging given many if not all forums, commenting blocks and social media sites have that. It seems highly suspect to cast doubt on the value of it. Adding a low friction way to say "why" would give a way to add priority.
Second, downvotes are community driven and very useful where the participants use it to bring up quality content. Of course it can be used unfairly as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_bandit
Communist bandit (Chinese: 共匪; pinyin: gòngfěi) is an anti-communist insult directed to the Chinese Communist Party. The term originated from the Nationalist Government in 1927.
This is direct censorship on behalf of the Chinese Government.
COMINTERN even ordered CCP to join force with KMT to form "united front", Mao himself was forced to join KMT. And it turned out to be a bloodshed purge by the KMT. Afterwards The CCP failed to hold its insurgent territories, CCP vows to kickout the Soviet consultants and cut links with COMINTERN and became independent, thus began the famous "Long March". THe term "bandit" was invented at that time.
Google largely has largely taken being excluded from China in stride, the other user is wondering why they would do this now.
Google might well accept being excluded from China, but I’m assuming that the prospect of being allowed to re-enter that market is periodically dangled in front of them by the ruling party in China, and that consequentially Google has an ongoing motive to somewhat abide by the PRC’s rules.
Also, Google may be excluded from China, but Google also has a lot to lose if relations with China deteriorate, for example, if China somehow interferes with the primacy of Android there and therefore causes a massive dent in platform numbers.
As far as China disconnecting from Android or forking it... that seems inevitable. Deleting some comment's wont change that.
Point is, the longer Google can postpone any such occupancies, the longer they can delay a drop in their stock market price (because surely such an event would have a negative effect on their stock, both for rational reasons [such as less telemetry data] and irrational [day traders] reasons).
And yes, of course this is pure conjecture. I’m not Larry Page in disguise spilling the beans of Alphabet’s Boardroom musings.
https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...