Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Tech Company Hypocrisy

A couple weeks back, a group of Google employees walked out in protest of somethingsomething Google doesn't care about sexual harassment. Imagine that! Google, whose motto was "do no evil", is an evil giant? Yep. Most of the tech companies are. Check this out.

● Those same Google employees who whine about being harassed have fought a running battle to stop the company from selling its skills to the military. Yep. Those same bastards don't want to support the American military because they view it as evil. That would be the American military which protects people from tyrants and dictators the world over. Google isn't alone either -- several others are doing the same. Traitors.

● But wait, it's a principle, right? Ha. Did you know that Google is producing a censored web search engine for China? Yep, the same people who don't support the US military support the Chinese secret police.

● Apple won't help the cops break the passwords on Iphones even when the person being investigated just shot a bunch of people. Privacy, you see. Indeed, as the government has found ways to break the passwords (without Apple's help), Apple has worked to improve their encryption to stop the government.

● That's ok though, because they believe in privacy, right? Ha. Apple, Facebook, Google spy on you through their products. They have been caught repeatedly violating their own privacy promises. They collect massive amounts of data on you too. And they sell it to anyone... except our government apparently.

● Each of the big tech companies engages heavily in outsourcing because foreigners are cheaper than Americans. So making an obscene profit is more important to these good liberals than American families.

● Twitter's CEO has admitted that the company's conservative employees feel scared to speak their minds. Conservatives at other tech companies have said the same.

● Tech companies pimp diversity in their ads and claim to be champions of that. Yet, study after study shows that they don't even come close to practicing what they preach. Ultra-hypocrites.

● Companies like Twitter have begun banning thought they don't like. It is now a ban-able offense to use the birth name of a transsexual.

● Tech companies are the worst environmental offenders.

● And let's not forget the consumer issues. Apple is a good example of the rest. It makes it almost impossible not to deal with Apple. They've been caught programming batteries to slow down as products age. They make it virtually impossible to maintain or upgrade the product yourself. You can't replace the battery, as you can with Samsung. Microsoft has been caught repeatedly illegally restricting trade in browsers. Each of the companies has been caught with bait and switch, surprise charges, hidden fees, contracts you can't break. And here I thought McDonalds was the corporate America the bad guy?

This is all just the tip of the iceberg. By comparison, companies like Blackrock, Halliburton, and coal companies are angels. The tech companies are evil to consumers, unpatriotic/disloyal in the worst way, Orwellian in surveillance and behavior, and entirely unaccountable. And guess what? They're run by liberals who push hard-core progressive ideas by which they do not live.

Frankly, it's time for some regulation on these bastards.

11 comments:

AndrewPrice said...

Looks like the "white supremacist" won Mississippi. "White Supremacist" is the new liberal word for "white person running as a conservative."

AndrewPrice said...

BTW, The left is saying that GM's sh*tty act of closing that plant in Ohio is somehow Trump's fault. Let's not forget that GM has been anti-Trump from the get go and went out of their way to say that he can't claim any credit for any good news they had when the economy turned around.

So you can't blame him now.

tryanmax said...

Andrew, I'm not sure what to make of the story I'm seeing splashed all over the place about Google employees protesting the Chinese censored search engine. On one hand, I guess good on them, on the other, I don't see that any have quit their jobs. The protest letter, which can be seen HERE has about 380 signatories as of this post. That's a drop in Google's 85,000-strong bucket. It's kind of a non-story, so I'm not sure what the angle is.

Anthony said...

1) Google has mostly stayed out of military contracts. They defend the contract they have (and have decided to let run out) as a kind of non-lethal military contract which merely helped the human overseers of military drone targeting data identify stuff other than targets.

2. Google employees are also protesting the deal to make censored internet browsers (which even more alarmingly would tag users) for China so they are consistent.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/27/google-employees-go-public-with-protest-against-planned-china-search-engine/

3) The Apple case was the government seeking not to break a single password, but a master key for Apple's consumer tech (which would effective break everyone's passwords). Apple obviously has such a key but it wasn't willing to share it with the government, preferring to hand over info on a case by case basis. Given the USG's track record of leaks and suchlike, I think its reasonable to not trust them with the master key.

4) When outsourcing or most any other thing makes financial sense (often) companies engage in it, regardless of ideology. Show me this magical giant corporation that loves its country more than profits.

It has downsides, but I'd say the free market is the best system out there. While some want to make America more like the rest of the world in terms of government control of the economy (read: high) the rest of the world enjoys slower growth, higher costs, higher unemployment (the harder you make it to fire people the slower companies are to hire them) and fewer successful companies.

If heavy government controls is what Americans want that is what we will eventually get. *Shrugs* The American boom was nice while it lasted.

5) True, conservatives by all accounts have a hard time of it in tech companies.

6) Disproportionately few non-Asian minorities seek degrees in the hard sciences. That has an impact. One can only hire engineers who exist.

7) Its Twitter's network. Like all corporations they have an interest in catering to widest possible audience, but that doesn't mean they have to give absolute freedom to everyone.

They are free to institute rules of conduct, if the rules of conduct are stupid, then people go elsewhere and twitter goes the way of Myspace.

10. Regarding General Motors, I don't think its reasonable to blame Trump for the plants closing, but Trump did rush to claim credit for them staying open so...

The big problem of the plants being closed was they made cars in an era where relatively few people buy cars. If it doesn't make financial sense to do a thing, companies won't do that thing for very long unless the government fully eats the cost of the loss.

11) I absolutely agree with you about consumer issues but if consumers don't care about an issue (tech companies might be the most evil companies in the world, but many of their products are beloved) I have a hard time imagining government successfully enforcing it.

Anthony said...

I am unsurprised to hear that a love of lynching and the Confederacy wasn't considered disqualifying in Mississippi :) .

Rustbelt said...

Fmr. President Bush '41 has died. He was 94.

Andrew, you're 1,000x more qualified to discuss his legacy than I am. (And believe me, I'm very interested I reading it; I was just a kid during his administration.)

I'll just say he seemed like a nice guy as a person. But read my lips: he was a paper tiger of a president and doomed us to the first appearance of Clan Clinton.

ArgentGale said...

First, RIP George H.W. Bush. I'm in the same boat as Rustbelt on him, being a kid during his presidency, and I'm curious about your thoughts too. As for the main topic, none of that surprises me in the least and I've heard some muttering in some corners as to how Google in particular is ripe for some antitrust action, up to a potential breakup. I don't have many clear thoughts on the matter at the moment but it's definitely true that these tech companies have a lot of power through their products and they're plenty happy to abuse it. Getting the right balance of freedom to allow innovation while curtailing the worst abuses is going to be a tough path to follow but it's definitely time to start talking about it. Of course there is that problem about how consumers seem willing to let themselves be taken advantage of by things like Google and Facebook's privacy practices and other things, too... I'll have to think on this.

AndrewPrice said...

Hi folks. I'll share my thought on Bush later this weekend or Monday. I'm buried with kid issues right now. I will probably murder one this weekend.

AndrewPrice said...

As an aside, on Bush: truly decent human being, but out of his league in politics.

tryanmax said...

ArgentGale, you mentioned “Getting the right balance of freedom to allow innovation while curtailing the worst abuses…” My understanding of antitrust law, in terms of theory, justifies itself by the notion that too much control in too few hands tends to stifle innovation. I think a view of the relevant landscape generally bears this out. The costs for gigantic firms to shoulder fledgling competition out become very small while the motivation is high. Small and nimble is meaningless beneath a sufficiently large footprint. Even if there is no intent to quash upstart competitors, it is felt that the same ill-effect is produced. The interest falls in favor of a greater number of diverse associations over a greater number of similar associations.

ArgentGale said...

Tryanmax, right, I think I was getting a few concepts confused there. The perils of commenting while tired, huh? Either way, tech company abusiveness and measures that can be taken against them without doing damage to the free market is definitely a good topic and one I think the minds here could do justice,

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