Post: #176

The plot thickens:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08...g-a08.html

Evidence of Google blacklisting of left and progressive sites continues to mount

Quote:A growing number of leading left-wing websites have confirmed that their search traffic from Google has plunged in recent months, adding to evidence that Google, under the cover of a fraudulent campaign against fake news, is implementing a program of systematic and widespread censorship.
Truthout, a not-for-profit news website that focuses on political, social, and ecological developments from a left progressive standpoint, had its readership plunge by 35 percent since April. The Real News , a nonprofit video news and documentary service, has had its search traffic fall by 37 percent. Another site, Common Dreams , last week told the WSWS that its search traffic had fallen by up to 50 percent.
As extreme as these sudden drops in search traffic are, they do not equal the nearly 70 percent drop in traffic from Google seen by the WSWS.
“Something has happened with Google across the board that affects left-wing media in a big way,” said Scott LaMorte, a web developer for both Truthout and The Real News.
“This is absolutely an aberration. It’s a three-year low for both Truthout and The Real News, and likely unprecedented in the life of these organizations. Neither have previously experienced three straight months of declines as they have since May.”
“It’s not like everybody on the left suddenly changed their SEO [Search engine optimization],” LaMorte said. “I don’t think it was a change in Google’s algorithm in how they value SEO practices.”
Eric Maas, a search engine optimization consultant working in the San Francisco Bay area, said his team has surveyed a wide range of alternative news sites affected by changes in Google’s algorithms since April. “While the update may be targeting specific site functions, there is evidence that this update is promoting only large mainstream news organizations. What I find problematic with this is that it appears that some sites have been targeted and others have not.”
“This is political censorship of the worst sort; it’s just an excuse to suppress political viewpoints,” said Robert Epstein, a former editor in chief of Psychology Today and noted expert on Google.
Epstein said that at this point, the question was whether the WSWS had been flagged specifically by human evaluators employed by the search giant, or whether those evaluators had influenced the Google Search engine to demote left-wing sites. “What you don’t know is whether this was the human evaluators who are demoting you, or whether it was the new algorithm they are training,” Epstein said.
Richard Stallman, the world-renowned technology pioneer and a leader of the free software movement, said he had read the WSWS’s coverage on Google’s censorship of left-wing sites. He warned about the immense control exercised by Google over the Internet, saying, “For people’s main way of finding articles about a topic to be run by a giant corporation creates an obvious potential for abuse.”
According to data from the search optimization tool SEMRush, search traffic to Mr. Stallman’s personal website, Stallman.org, fell by 24 percent, while traffic to gnu.org, operated by the Free Software Foundation, fell 19 percent.
The massive drop in search traffic to the WSWS and other left-wing sites followed the implementation of changes in Google’s search evaluation protocols. In a statement issued on April 25, Ben Gomes, the company’s vice president for engineering, stated that Google’s update of its search engine would block access to “offensive” sites, while working to surface more “authoritative content.”
In a set of guidelines issued to Google evaluators in March, the company instructed its search evaluators to flag pages returning “conspiracy theories” or “upsetting” content unless “the query clearly indicates the user is seeking an alternative viewpoint.”

It appears not so much that Google is targeting the right, insomuch it is targeting anything "non-corporate." The corporate world has their own set of politics designed around profit maximization. It borrows a bit from the left and the right. The idea of the free market being King (with them at the top) is holy gospel in the corporate world, but so is diversity and antiracism (almost meaningless words).

If someone promotes actual leftism of redistribution of wealth, and reducing corporate power, you get blacklisted.
If someone promotes biological realism, you get blacklisted.

It's a strange mix designed around catering to women for maximum profit, which means being both capitalist and "diverse" (i.e. inoffensive as possible in order to capture maximum market share).

It all makes sense if you think about it, and clearly the hard Left and hard Right have similar enemies, the problem is getting them to work together. The corporate world has successfully wedged out politics for the people and replaced it with politics for money, by separating the Left and Right around dumb issues like race and gender, while ignoring meaningful topics like rewarding personal accomplishment and wealth disparities.

Post: #177

Part Two

Rebels of Google: ‘Constant Abuse, Sneers, Insults And Smears … Sometimes You Get Punched’

Quote:As part of our “Rebels of Google” series, Breitbart News is anonymously interviewing current and former Google employees who are speaking out against partisan bias and discrimination at the company. This is a full transcript of our interview with a former Google engineer (alias “Emmett”).

Allum Bokhari: You are one of a number of current and former Google employees speaking out in the wake of the Viewpoint Diversity Memo. Is there anything particular that makes you support the principles in that document?

Emmett: I’m happy you asked. I’m also happy you’re giving the document a more accurate name, as the mainstream media has almost universally been calling it the “Anti-Diversity Memo” which is both stupid and a lie. The fundamental starting point of the document is that there exist documented differences between men and women, which we see hash out in real life. That is truth, well-supported by thousands of scientific studies. The simple fact that this is as true as you can get in terms of science is what makes me support this fundamental starting point.

As a society, we must worry and take action, when it becomes crimethink to speak out simple truths. Truth equals virtue equals happiness. You cannot solve serious social problems by telling lies or punishing people who tell truth. Perhaps we’ve become numb because of the constant stream of lies that people tell us, perhaps not, but one thing is certain: almost no one talks about this. It’s probably time for the pendulum to begin swinging back.

AB: the backlash against the memo author has been severe, and proves his point about ideological hostility at Google. What is it like working in such an intolerant environment?

Emmett: It’s depressing, mind-numbing, and extremely stressful. It’s also harmful to your health. There were many days I couldn’t do any meaningful work whatsoever. I’d arrive at my desk and simply space out. Perhaps read Twitter or random Web sites. Perhaps fume over posts made internally by people who are very clearly proselytizing what amounts to religious dogma (of the social justice variety), and of course no one dares contradict it, because everybody knows it’s a quick trip to H.R. if you dare say anything against the antisocial order.

Or sometimes you get punched. I know at least one engineer did get punched in retaliation for something he posted — I am sure he will corroborate this to you directly.

Many Google engineers who could not cope with the constant hostility and the reminders that “you are not one of us” have left the company. It bears reminding that some left in poor health — drinking problems, insomnia, nervous breakdowns, depression. All of this is understandable. Constant abuse, sneers, insults and smears from people who detest that you disagreed with them, or pointed out evidence that refutes their dogma, combined with the low-level terror of being fired (and in many cases deported), combined with a learned helplessness because you know your abusers are supported by management, make for a very demoralizing experience.

You know you can technically deliver everything that is required from you, you know you get along super well with your teammates and your manager, you know you have many friends internally who support and care for you… and none of that is enough to offset how angry and despondent you feel. But you *must* at all costs keep it *to yourself*.

AB: have there been any stand-out moments of intolerance at the company that you recall?

Emmett: Too many to recall all. Here are a few:

I remember engineering manager Adam Fletcher bragging about how (a) he’ll never work with people like me (which he refers to as “hostile voices”), and (b) how people like me were being blacklisted *outside of Google* (I assume because he and others like him were using gossip to coordinate industry-wide blacklists). Note that Adam’s position is widely-shared instead of reprimanded by management. Paul Cowan (of #GoogleManifesto infamy) also got away with posting comments in support of that.

I remember Colm Buckley (of #GoogleManifesto infamy) dismissing a well-written post by a colleague of mine, with the single sentence “Isn’t it nice to be white.” I also remember him being condescending to an employee who posted an innocuous message of skepticism about social justice. I should note that the employee Colm condescended to was eventually forced out of the company. I remember the [email protected] shitshow. If I am piecing events together correctly, I believe this is where the illegal yet persistent belief about it being okay to create and share professional blocklists originated. The author of the [email protected] list left the company.

I remember Kim Burchett (high-ranking manager with a lot of reports) posting about how she’s “considering creating a list of people who make diversity difficult”. Two things you should know about her (okay, there’s tons, but two that stand out). First is commentary she posted on promotion committees, where she literally boos men and white people. Second is that, once upon a time, she had this epic Freudian slip, in which she accidentally wrote that terms like “diversity” and “unconscious bias” are actually stand-ins for “prejudice” and “white supremacist patriarchy”. Interesting, eh?

I remember Peter Goett entirely unironically posting a reply to a list with over 10,000 Googlers: “congratulations on your white penis.” To my understanding, had someone posted “black vagina”, that person would have been summarily fired. Also to my understanding, Goett appears to have received no punishment.

Of course, there’s Alon Altman (again of #GoogleManifesto infamy). This is the individual who publicly posted that, if the author of the Google Memo wasn’t summarily fired, then he would quit. Alon is one of the many people who gloated about the departure of one of the dissidents at Google. When people recriminated him about his gloating, Alon doubled down.

To my understanding, none of these activities were subject to H.R. action. But why would that be the case — bias in support of these discriminatory and hostile behaviors goes pretty much all the way up, management’s just clever enough not to add to the fire (often) but just to let the lower ranks make it happen. You have to remember these people are quite intelligent.

I want to stress to you that these G+ posts, while “in principle” avoidable, are — along with mailing lists — the standard way in which people communicate to each other values, principles, and sometimes work items too. So, in order to perform your duties, you *must* be exposed to at least *some* of it. Which means in practice you cannot avoid people writing odious things about you or your political ideas, and (given the climate) you are not at liberty to reply to these people, because you’d be disciplined or fired. My understanding of California labor laws leads me to believe that has legal significance.

Now, the key thing to understand here is that this could be solved very easily:

a) either let people discuss pro- and anti-SJW viewpoints, or b) require that people come here to do work, and either stop proselytizing political views, or keep them contained to a small political list.

But that’s *categorically not* what happens at Google. There is only one set of allowable opinions, and that is the set of pro-SJW beliefs.

The mechanics of this hegemony are fairly straightforward:

1. Every day, rank-and-file (nominally low-status, but informally very high-status) SJWs post SJW / Marxist propaganda that irritates non-SJW folks who just want to do their job.

2. Everyone who dares question any of these propaganda posts, no matter how politely, is chastised publicly by the SJWs, and then (I hope it’s clear) written up on some secret lists. Well, okay, not that secret — some people don’t bother even hiding it, as you can see by this tweet from Kelly Ellis, former Google employee:


3. H.R. punish some of the people who question SJW orthodoxy. How harsh the punishment is really does depend on the gravity of the blasphemy — for example, pointing out differences between genders would be a Final
Warning sort of event. Meanwhile, being autistic and committing the faux pas of questioning pronoun dogma at a global TGIF [editors note: Google internal meeting] is a fireable offense.

4. Management praise and reward what SJWs do, and sometimes vocally chastise non-SJW folks who dared speak up.

It’s almost always the same story. Whether you dislike a Democratic party candidate, or have reservations about how Google “looks twice” at the applications of certain candidates from privileged (“underrepresented”) minorities, or support free speech, you can bet the heuristic is infallible: if it’s something the SJWs don’t want to hear about, be very, very careful about opening your mouth to anyone.

The message is clear: if you do not align with SJWs, you do not belong here. Not only do you not belong here — our resident SJWs will gossip around to get you to never, ever work in a good job again. So shut up.

AB: another Googler has informed us that Google employees working in AdSales have expressed sympathy with the Sleeping Giants campaign, and have encouraged Adwords customers to pull ads from Breitbart and The Rebel Media. To your knowledge, is this true?

Emmett: A number of friends have privately confirmed this to me. I know there are efforts to demote anything non-PC, anti-Communist and anti-Islamic terror from search results. To what extent that has been successful, I don’t know. But I think what we must do is judge by results. How were things before? How are things now? If you remember the YouTube “heroes” program, as well as the wave of demonetizations and age restrictions that hit popular anti-PC YouTubers (all of whom ended up having to move to Patreon), I think that speaks for itself. Now we have the owner of the well-known JihadWatch site, complaining that his ranking in Google Search has dropped enormously. These are all facts that can be verified by any third-party, so it’s not a matter of “he said she said”.

I can tell you this: I have read internal mailing list e-mail from SJWs absolutely incensed that there’d be, say, a Sargon of Akkad video appearing as a video related to one of their favorite SJW vloggers. This is what happens when you have unbiased algorithms, which at the time, was true. I don’t have to tell you that, in that e-mail, the SJW was quite literally asking that the related videos function be perverted so that such a thing would stop happening.

AB: YouTube is going to artificially promote progressive content, and manipulate search results using the “Jigsaw Redirect Method” to minimize the reach of potentially problematic videos, in addition to other new censorship techniques. For users of Google and its related services, is political censorship about to become the norm? How much of this is the result of internal pressure (from politicized employees) and how much of it is external (governments, advertisers)?

Emmett: The question is how would you know if you were influenced by the “Jigsaw Redirect Method”? The software could just astroturf your Related Videos section, and you would be none the wiser. Sure, if you know what to look for, perhaps you’d notice. But the vast majority of the viewership would never ever know. That’s the whole point of such a disinformation program, right? If you can tell it’s disinformation, you would never ever believe it.

I can’t speak to what level States have influenced Google with regards to this program. But given the Zeitgeist at Google, I can tell you most of the changes you see right now are at least in part motivated by ideas straight from social justice.

AB: is there pressure inside the company for Google to do more to fight against the Trump movement, and Republicans, as there has been at Facebook? Do you suspect Google will use its power to manipulate search results against right-leaning politicians in future?

Emmett: I don’t have to tell you that there was an internal meltdown at Google when the election was over. The hysteria has only ever reached a higher level once. That was throughout this weekend, thanks to the #GoogleManifesto scandal — which is nothing more than mass hysteria at a trivial truth no one wanted spoken. There does seem to be a pattern where, the more difficult a truth is to stomach, the higher the hysteria levels go internally at Google.

The answer always comes down to: will the people truly in charge of what gets done to the technology, succumb to corrupt ideas? There’s only so much any person can withstand, especially when corruption is almost universally presented as virtuous, moral and necessary.

Here’s my answer:

It’s been a long ride. Many people have stood firm against perverting their own work in the service of ideological pursuits. I respect these people for having had the fortitude to keep their creations pure and just. I know these people and I profoundly respect them. It must be very hard to be on the Search team and to have to turn down requests to tweak Google Search to favor corrupt ideologies.

But many people are leaving Google. And many of these ex-Googlers are people who were tired of having to cope with these corrupt ideologies and the people who proselytize them, support them, and punish people who
disagree with them.

That means Google is leaking people with integrity. Let’s ask ourselves: who remains in charge, after that slow but certain evaporative cooling of beliefs? You do the math.

Unless the culture changes, I am afraid the answer to your question is: only a matter of time.

AB: what is upper management’s position on this? Are they also outraged by the Viewpoint Diversity Memo? Or are they sympathetic?

Emmett: Upper management is cautious with what they say. I bet you they have the best P.R. people in the whole world guiding them through what to say as they execute what, to them, is a foregone conclusion. Guaranteed.

Tell you this, though: sympathetic they are not.

AB: what can ordinary Google users do to support the memo?

Google is quite good at listening to both their users and their customers, with one exception: when what the users want is at odds with ideological dogmas widely held at Google. In that case, users don’t count. No one does.

AB: what are your thoughts on the gender divide in tech jobs? Is the manifesto accurate in that regard?

Emmett: So here’s the deal on why the manifesto has been vilified so much:

The manifesto cites well-documented differences in attitude between men and women, which I happen to support, because it would be against my fundamental values of truth, honesty and self-knowledge to go “yes, but” at hundreds of studies proving the differences in attitude are real.

To be quite specific with what I have concluded is true in regards to this specific finding: I believe that some of the gender differences in attitude are cultural, and some are genetic. I also believe that culture influences genetics (very slowly but very certainly), and genetics influences culture (very strongly but very vaguely). The two processes are inextricably linked because we are meat machines, and until there are entirely artificial brains in Fluorinert vats, this will remain an irrefutable truth.

Does that mean that tech has more men than women because of genetics? Yes, to some extent.

Does that mean that tech has more men than women because of culture? Yes, to some extent.

Does what IS mean what OUGHT TO BE should be DIFFERENT from what IS? I don’t think anyone has squared the is-ought problem.

But I can tell you this: irrespective of what each of us believe *ought to be*, sticking our heads in the sand about what *is*, will never, ever, ever let us find a solution to the problems we perceive. About the stupidest thing you can do, is deny what’s true, no matter your station in life — whether you are as downtrodden as an alcoholic or as privileged as a Google employee. You cannot solve a problem you do not understand. But here’s what you can totally do — you can make it worse.

By the way I’m looking forward to the conversation that Dr. Jordan Peterson will have with the author of the Google Memo tomorrow. Make sure to tune in!

AB: what’s next for ideological dissenters at Google? Where do you go from here?

Emmett: Keep our heads down, keep ourselves from getting fired, keep our asses at work, deliver great results, until there’s critical mass.

That day is coming.

Post: #178

(08-08-2017 02:15 PM)Blaster Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 01:15 PM)Corollary Wrote:  @DamienCasanova

Google's net income the past few years:

2013: 12 billion
2014: 14 billion
2015: 16 billion
2016: 19 billlion
2017 (first two quarters): 9 billion

That doesn't seem very fragile to me. In fact, I think a company that has no survival pressure is much more to likely engage in what we've seen in this story because whatever they choose to do, they know they won't be hurt by it.

The point is the vast majority of Google's income comes from search + AdWords. Search is a fragile market, despite Google's 16-year dominance. Google emerged from a very crowded field in 2001 and virtually wiped out the competition simply by being the best.

Unlike many other services, the search has very little no hard lock-in. No network effects, no exclusive content, no barriers to exit. There's no emotional attachment to favourite chosen search engine. You can use whatever gives you the best results in the best format possible. Switching to a different search engine is a decision that can be made instantaneously by users. Google does have a massive datacenter infrastructure that gives it a huge competitive advantage, but plenty of other companies have the powerful support. Many of Google's ancillary products, such as Google Chrome, are primarily about driving search traffic, and of course, Google has massive mindshare and default browser settings. But ultimately, the main reason Google remains the most popular search engine is because it is the best product.

That's the reasoning behind why Google is more fragile than it appears. For 16 years the search+adwords teams have kept Google's search product the most popular. If Google no longer had the best engineers in the industry maintaining search+adwords, would Google be able to maintain this lead over the competition? That's the question Vox Day's blog asks. It's WAY too soon to be declaring that Google is finished, but it's interesting speculation.

I will add to this that Google is shrinking because "Searches" are becoming less relevant each year with technology advancements. Instead of somebody Google'n "Chinese Food in downtown Seattle," all they have to do is pop open Yelp, or go into Uber Eats and get food sent to their door.

Next, companies are seeing how much of a money sink it is just giving money over to Google to spam links nobody clicks on. Why waste all that time when you can go to Facebook and get specific targeted Ads to your clientele, or just go directly to the consumer with more targeted approaches via various apps, platforms (MailChimp), etc.

Google only had a scale and the monopoly of the search market, as their scale is now diminishing due to other means of reaching consumers their profits will start to dwindle ever slowly. Also, as others have mentioned, now that Google is bloated and fat Corp it isn't nimble and is now just stuck doing circle jerks and overpaying for other technology and firms to take on innovation and new leads, this is just Microsoft all over again when the Corp become so obese it can no longer move, scratch its back, or wipe its own ass. It becomes lethargic and slow and more nimble firms just come and start to eat away at the largess.

Post: #179

If I'm not mistaken, James D'amore's attorneys would be able to subpoena a lot of google's past activities in the discovery process as evidence of political targeting.

I think if something is considered relevant to a case you can subpoena just about whatever the hell you want, potentially damaging info on google.

Post: #180

Post: #181

(08-08-2017 03:25 PM)kosko Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 02:15 PM)Blaster Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 01:15 PM)Corollary Wrote:  @DamienCasanova

Google's net income the past few years:

2013: 12 billion
2014: 14 billion
2015: 16 billion
2016: 19 billlion
2017 (first two quarters): 9 billion

That doesn't seem very fragile to me. In fact, I think a company that has no survival pressure is much more to likely engage in what we've seen in this story because whatever they choose to do, they know they won't be hurt by it.

The point is the vast majority of Google's income comes from search + AdWords. Search is a fragile market, despite Google's 16-year dominance. Google emerged from a very crowded field in 2001 and virtually wiped out the competition simply by being the best.

Unlike many other services, the search has very little no hard lock-in. No network effects, no exclusive content, no barriers to exit. There's no emotional attachment to favourite chosen search engine. You can use whatever gives you the best results in the best format possible. Switching to a different search engine is a decision that can be made instantaneously by users. Google does have a massive datacenter infrastructure that gives it a huge competitive advantage, but plenty of other companies have the powerful support. Many of Google's ancillary products, such as Google Chrome, are primarily about driving search traffic, and of course, Google has massive mindshare and default browser settings. But ultimately, the main reason Google remains the most popular search engine is because it is the best product.

That's the reasoning behind why Google is more fragile than it appears. For 16 years the search+adwords teams have kept Google's search product the most popular. If Google no longer had the best engineers in the industry maintaining search+adwords, would Google be able to maintain this lead over the competition? That's the question Vox Day's blog asks. It's WAY too soon to be declaring that Google is finished, but it's interesting speculation.

I will add to this that Google is shrinking because "Searches" are becoming less relevant each year with technology advancements. Instead of somebody Google'n "Chinese Food in downtown Seattle," all they have to do is pop open Yelp, or go into Uber Eats and get food sent to their door.

Next, companies are seeing how much of a money sink it is just giving money over to Google to spam links nobody clicks on. Why waste all that time when you can go to Facebook and get specific targeted Ads to your clientele, or just go directly to the consumer with more targeted approaches via various apps, platforms (MailChimp), etc.

Google only had a scale and the monopoly of the search market, as their scale is now diminishing due to other means of reaching consumers their profits will start to dwindle ever slowly. Also, as others have mentioned, now that Google is bloated and fat Corp it isn't nimble and is now just stuck doing circle jerks and overpaying for other technology and firms to take on innovation and new leads, this is just Microsoft all over again when the Corp become so obese it can no longer move, scratch its back, or wipe its own ass. It becomes lethargic and slow and more nimble firms just come and start to eat away at the largess.

In other words Google is a SIF now

Post: #182

Official guide about which pronouns to use when you work at Google

https://developers.google.com/style/pronouns

Quote:Gender-neutral pronouns

Don't use gender-specific pronouns unless the person you're referring to is actually that gender.

In particular, don't use "he," "him," "his," "she," or "her" as gender-neutral pronouns, and don't use "he/she" or "(s)he" or other such punctuational approaches. Instead, use the singular "they."

Singular "they" has been in use for a long time; for example, Jane Austen used it, and in 2015 the Washington Post adopted it as part of their official style.

But if you really can't stand using singular "they," then rewrite to avoid singular gendered pronouns. Using plurals can often help. For more suggestions, see The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, section 5.225, "Nine techniques for achieving gender neutrality."

I guess if you mix the pronouns while talking to a pansexual LGBQTW at a google meeting, then ... you're fired.

Post: #183

(08-08-2017 04:15 PM)balybary Wrote:  I guess if you mix the pronouns while talking to a pansexual LGBQTW at a google meeting, then ... you're fired.

Excuse me, but the proper nomenclature is LGBTQQIP2SAA.

Try to be more inclusive.

At your next job.

Post: #184

A cis male in the pillory for gender blasphemy - 2017

Post: #185

Another passage from the Unabomber Manifesto:

Quote:13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

Post: #186

The one thing not a whole lot of people are talking about with this Google memo meltdown is that free speech is increasingly becoming a commodity that only a few can afford.

If you can't say something without fear of the mob and being fired, if you all these tech monopolies blacklist you, if they ban you from finding work or selling, etc., you simply can't afford to speak or even to think what you wish.

And the only ones that can are those that have "fuck you money."

Post: #187

(08-08-2017 03:32 PM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  If I'm not mistaken, James D'amore's attorneys would be able to subpoena a lot of google's past activities in the discovery process as evidence of political targeting.

I think if something is considered relevant to a case you can subpoena just about whatever the hell you want, potentially damaging info on google.

Another benefit to this potential court case, is that it would keep Google in the news in a negative light.

Rather than being forgotten by next week due to the voracious 24/7 news cycle, continued salacious material about Google being released won't benefit that at all.
Especially if /pol, 4Chan are nipping at their heels at the same time.

Post: #188

(08-08-2017 06:53 PM)Libertas Wrote:  The one thing not a whole lot of people are talking about with this Google memo meltdown is that free speech is increasingly becoming a commodity that only a few can afford.

If you can't say something without fear of the mob and being fired, if you all these tech monopolies blacklist you, if they ban you from finding work or selling, etc., you simply can't afford to speak or even to think what you wish.

And the only ones that can are those that have "fuck you money."

Yes.

So, essentially few have true freedom.

There is this foggy idea that freedoms' inherently granted and gifted but we see more and more as you mentioned that freedom is a commodity that few can afford.

Post: #189

(08-08-2017 06:53 PM)Libertas Wrote:  The one thing not a whole lot of people are talking about with this Google memo meltdown is that free speech is increasingly becoming a commodity that only a few can afford.

If you can't say something without fear of the mob and being fired, if you all these tech monopolies blacklist you, if they ban you from finding work or selling, etc., you simply can't afford to speak or even to think what you wish.

And the only ones that can are those that have "fuck you money."

And I see the role of policing speech privatized to the corporations. Our first amendment is still largely respected, so the government isn't shutting down speech. But our corporate overlords have become our Stalins.

Post: #190

Serious or satire?
Laughable either way :



@polNewsForever 11m

Quote:A "woman in tech" describes how *awful* it is to have to work with men at her job, and how they make socializing at work so hard.
Pathetic.

Post: #191

@StefanMolyneux 5m

Quote:Just had a great conversation with James Damore about his controversial Google memo, company culture and the insane media reaction. #OutSoon

Post: #192

(08-08-2017 04:36 PM)balybary Wrote:  A cis male in the pillory for gender blasphemy - 2017

Oh, the irony of that image choice!

That's a picture of Daniel Defoe in the pillory, in 1703. That is, the Daniel Defoe who wrote Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

What caused him to be there? Per History Today:

Quote:At the end of 1702 Daniel Defoe was in his early forties, a London dissenter born and bred, a married man with eight children, the owner of a brickworks in Tilbury and a government spin doctor, paid to write in praise of the administration’s policies – an activity that aroused the same contempt then as it does now. He also wrote tracts advocating greater toleration for dissenters and at this juncture he made a serious mistake. He wrote an anonymous pamphlet called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters .

Written as if by a foaming High Anglican zealot of the most bigoted stamp, and drawing extensively on high church sermons, the pamphlet argued that the best way of dealing with the dissenters was to banish them abroad and send their preachers to the hangman. The Church of England, it said, is like Christ crucified between two thieves, Papists on one side and Nonconformist sectarians on the other. Very well, let us crucify the thieves. To go on tolerating them is like allowing a plague to continue without medical treatment. Defoe’s intention was to mock the High Anglican position by carrying it to extremes, but several eminent high churchmen, unwarily or perhaps with a sense of humour, gave it their endorsement.

The authorities were certainly not amused, nor were the dissenters. The identity of the person who took the text to the printer was quickly discovered, and from that the identity of the author, and a substantial reward was offered for his arrest. Defoe went into hiding and published A Brief Explanation of a Late Pamphlet to say that he had been misunderstood. In February the House of Commons had The Shortest Way burned by the common hangman. Betrayed for the reward, Defoe was caught in May in Spitalfields and confined in Newgate jail where he had comparatively comfortable lodgings at his own expense. He was released on bail in June and his trial for seditious libel began early the following month and was quickly over. Pleading guilty, as technically he was, and appealing for mercy on the ground that he had not meant to be taken seriously, he was sentenced to stand three times in the pillory, pay a stiff fine and remain in prison until he could provide sureties for his good behaviour for seven years.

Defoe was much the same as Damore: an agent of the machine who thought that the machine had more sense (or sense of humour) that it actually does.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #193

(08-08-2017 07:47 PM)Dusty Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 06:53 PM)Libertas Wrote:  The one thing not a whole lot of people are talking about with this Google memo meltdown is that free speech is increasingly becoming a commodity that only a few can afford.

If you can't say something without fear of the mob and being fired, if you all these tech monopolies blacklist you, if they ban you from finding work or selling, etc., you simply can't afford to speak or even to think what you wish.

And the only ones that can are those that have "fuck you money."

And I see the role of policing speech privatized to the corporations. Our first amendment is still largely respected, so the government isn't shutting down speech. But our corporate overlords have become our Stalins.

Which is why it's long been time for the government to step in and break up these monopolies like Google and Facebook, particularly given their policing of what are supposed to be our fundamental rights.

If Theodore Roosevelt were alive today, he would be appalled not only at this, but that these companies have become fiefdoms competing with the government in some instances and the barons escaping social responsibility.

Post: #194

(08-08-2017 08:24 PM)Libertas Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 07:47 PM)Dusty Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 06:53 PM)Libertas Wrote:  The one thing not a whole lot of people are talking about with this Google memo meltdown is that free speech is increasingly becoming a commodity that only a few can afford.

If you can't say something without fear of the mob and being fired, if you all these tech monopolies blacklist you, if they ban you from finding work or selling, etc., you simply can't afford to speak or even to think what you wish.

And the only ones that can are those that have "fuck you money."

And I see the role of policing speech privatized to the corporations. Our first amendment is still largely respected, so the government isn't shutting down speech. But our corporate overlords have become our Stalins.

Which is why it's long been time for the government to step in and break up these monopolies like Google and Facebook, particularly given their policing of what are supposed to be our fundamental rights.

If Theodore Roosevelt were alive today, he would be appalled not only at this, but that these companies have become fiefdoms competing with the government in some instances and the barons escaping social responsibility.

This thread is relevant:

Post: #195

(08-06-2017 10:59 AM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

(08-06-2017 10:26 AM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  But if it's a 'glamorous' job at a tech company, all of a sudden they demand we ignore the mental differences. I don't think 'tech' jobs became in vogue until at least the late 90s anyways. Only dry nerds really got into programming in the early days, but media made it seem cool now the women demand places and their totalitarian masters are happy to use it to attack men further.

Media has been pushing this women in tech narrative hard for the past 20 years at least. I can name countless shitty movies and tv shows where it's always some model who is a "hacker" or tech genius. I seem to recall this nonsense cropping up a lot sometime around the old dot com boom and hollywood has gone full retard with it in the past 5 years.

The number of times i've encountered a woman who is really knowledgeable about tech (or any other technical field) in real life: Zero.

A skilled woman in tech is about as fictional as superheroes who can fly and shoot lasers from their eyes. I'm sure there's maybe .000001% women who are actually into coding but most likely they have ham hock legs with cottage cheese thighs and big giant floppy veiny breasts along with a female 'stache.

The first time I saw Angelina Jolie in a movie was in a movie called Hackers 1995:



I think it was the first time I saw a girl in the media being the tech genius, or at least obsessed with tech, before that you only had stuff like Weird Science 1985 where two teen boys created their perfect woman.



Then the media after creating the "tech genius girl" they created the badass girl that fight 5-6 military trained men over 200 pound on high heels without messing her hair.

Now you have stuff like Atomic Blonde:



A take down by Steven Crowder.

(08-06-2017 04:37 PM)Bacchus Wrote:  Google has to buy into whatever progressive dogma catches on. It gives them cover for their business. If they were a wrong-thinking company with a powerful surveillance apparatus (their business model is surveillance), professional grievance mongers could scare companies into buying fewer ads.

But hey, don't mind the overwhelming hoovering of private data about individuals because Google totally supports rights for trannies and other victim classes.

Yes, is a way to make the public the other way, buying into progressive ideology is the best and easiest PR move, just like those Tshirt about feminism being wore by politicians in UK, but the women working in the factories were working and living in sweatshops getting pay like 2 dollars a day.

Post: #196

After reading this thread I truely believe google will implode within the next decade.

For a company that has an official motto of "don't be evil" they sure do a good job of ruining people's lives, selling personal info, and creating social unrest.

Post: #197

Ha!
The harpies are coming home to roost :

http://truepundit.com/instant-karma-doze...imination/

Post: #198

(08-08-2017 08:50 PM)Latinopan Wrote:  I think it was the first time I saw a girl in the media being the tech genius, or at least obsessed with tech, before that you only had stuff like Weird Science 1985 where two teen boys created their perfect woman.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #199

(08-08-2017 03:11 PM)budoslavic Wrote:  

Google is the same as every office job in America - you're forced to interact with a 20-something bitch on the inside of a cubicle farm. You couldn't pay me enough...

Post: #200