Pichai was set to address the search giant’s 60,000 employees in 30 minutes in an all-hands meeting about a recent post by recently fired employee James Damore....What a mess!
Wired reported earlier that conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos “posted on his Facebook page the Twitter biographies of eight Google employees who criticized Damore’s post.”...
Sources inside Google said some employees had begun to experience “doxxing” — online harassment that can take various forms and is defined “searching for and publishing private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent.”
August 10, 2017
"Google CEO Sundar Pichai canceled an all-hands meeting about gender controversy due to employee worries of online harassment."
Recode reports.
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Not exactly a well-run company. Glad that Pichai and Danielle Brown, his VP for Diversity and Inclusion, have created a corporate culture where people feel free to express diverse beliefs and ask penetrating questions.
Time for the social justice war of all against all.
Sorry, make that VP for Diversity, Integrity, and Governance.
If Pinchai thinks his corporate governance is good, he may want to rethink what it means to have good governance.
BTW, I used DuckDuckGo to get Brown's exact title.
Wait... how would not having the meeting have any effect on whether or not employees were being 'doxxed' or otherwise harassed?
Got bad data on Brown using Google. (Go figure!)
It's good that the public can find out who got James Damore fired.
Likewise, when Nicholas and Erika Christakis were removed from their faculty positions at Yale University, it was good that the public was able to find out that the culprit was a student named Jerelyn Luther and to find out some basic information about her.
They have a leaker. They were afraid that the details of the meeting would be leaked by someone working at Google.
Well, Damore's internal memo was made public, he was exposed, and the media worked overtime to misrepresent his view point, making him an object of scorn and criticism. CNN's Brooke Baldwin said that his 'paper' basically said women shouldn't be allowed near a computer. What an ugly and unfair misrepresentation.
What they've done to him, they're afraid will happen to them.
So ironic, isn't it?
Sounds like Google has mishandled with from the beginning - the beginning being the mishandling of attempts to bring more 'diversity' to their ranks!
SJWs think that only they can use these tactics. They won't like the results.
Just a data point, I looked at Yiannopoulos's Facebook page and didn't see anything relevant to Google.
At the super smart blog Slate Star Codex:
It doesn’t have to be this way. Nobody has any real policy disagreements. Everyone can just agree that men and women are equal, that they both have the same rights, that nobody should face harassment or discrimination. We can relax the Permanent State Of Emergency around too few women in tech, and admit that women have the right to go into whatever field they want, and that if they want to go off and be 80% of veterinarians and 74% of forensic scientists, those careers seem good too. We can appreciate the contributions of existing women in tech, make sure the door is open for any new ones who want to join, and start treating each other as human beings again. Your co-worker could just be your co-worker, not a potential Nazi to be assaulted or a potential Stalinist who’s going to rat on you. Your project manager could just be your project manager, not the person tasked with monitoring you for signs of thoughtcrime. Your female co-worker could just be your female co-worker, not a Badass Grrl Coder Who Overcomes Adversity. Your male co-worker could just be your male co-worker, not a Tool Of The Patriarchy Who Denies His Complicity In Oppression. I promise there are industries like this. Medicine is like this! Loads of things are like this! Lots of tech companies are even still like this! This could be you.
Maybe they were worried about Russian hackers.
Google, which keeps tabs of just about everything you do online and sells that info to the highest bidder is worried about privacy.
Rich.
"They have a leaker. They were afraid that the details of the meeting would be leaked by someone working at Google."
60,000 may keep a secret if 59,999 are dead, apologies to Ben Franklin.
DanTheMan beat me to it.
Paco Wové said...
Just a data point, I looked at Yiannopoulos's Facebook page and didn't see anything relevant to Google.
I had to scroll pretty far down but there was a post yesterday that identified eight Google employees - most who proudly wore their identity (bipolar; autistic trans lesbian; gay communist; etc.). I don't know if they publicly criticized Damore but their crazy profiles are apparently easy to locate.
BTW, the Diversity VP was just hired as of July this year - as Althouse said - what a mess.
DanTheMan said...
Google, which keeps tabs of just about everything you do online and sells that info to the highest bidder is worried about privacy.
So rich.
This would have been prevented had Anthony Kennedy been able to read above grade level. Now we have the resurgence of a Klan type mentality, driven by the largest information companies in the world. Kennedy's inability to follow the clear text of the Constitution will usher in an new cultural environment not like that that was wrought because of Plessy. This will not end well.
all of there own making. Backlash bitch!
It was entirely within Google's power to fire an at will employee.
It would behoove the shareholders to fire all of the officers involved and hire some corporate officers who will take their fiduciary responsibilities to the shareholders responsibly.
I almost want to buy some stock so I can participate...
Sounds like Google has gotten too brig for its bitches.
An infinite mess.
Town Hall canceling shows they can't win: the response to Damore exposed them to ridicule but they must satisfy the SJW women bitterly clinging to their safety, they must prove they don't discriminate but the pursuit of "diversity" risks degrading company performance. And so on, loop after loop.
But they should fire the diversity VP, at the very least. And Sundar should issue another statement, addressing the real Damore issues, unmealymouthed -- if the lawyers will let him. But here's wishing the prog powers infinite grief.
We outlawed stereotyping and profiling and inductive reasoning in the process. Sad. In our heart of hearts we all know the general stereotypes of just about any group are rooted in truth. Doesn't mean any individual must fit the type, but the type is there for a reason.
It's only a matter of time before any sufficiently large group of SJWs forms up a circular firing squad.
I'll all but guarantee that the meeting was cancelled at the behest of Google's lawyers; they don't want Pichai to dig his legal hole any deeper.
Pichai says he wanted a frank, open conversation about diversity.
Google will never, ever have a frank and open conversation about anything ever again.
I do not believe in doxxing. However, I also do not believe in pretty much everything that SJWs do, which includes doxxing and things much worse for which they are so very proud and self-righteous. If you don't want none, I suggest you don't make none. It is unclear to me that they are capable of this self-control, given they tend to take such glee in being cruel and petty without any concern of retribution. Perhaps they will turn away from the pain.
Oh look! Super genius CEO notes that of the group of people who chose to email him directly, the vast majority agreed with the decision to fire Damore, and very few people emailed him directly to object, and he thinks it means something. How precious.
If I were a Google employee I think the abrupt cancellation of that meeting would make me feel unsafe.
Gotta love the CEO's complaint that internal documents were being leaked and that lead to unfair scrutiny...
Time to update the definition of "frank and open discussion."
We all know what that means, now.
Blogger Joe said...
"I'll all but guarantee that the meeting was cancelled at the behest of Google's lawyers; they don't want Pichai to dig his legal hole any deeper."
I wonder what took them so long. There are so many lawsuits floating around and the corporate officers just keep on talking in public. They have given the SJW's way too much power and they don't seem to realize the SJW's are only really interested in skins and scalps.
Google is right up there with Monsanto on the evil companies list. I look forward to the fall.
Blogger Big Mike said...
"BTW, I used DuckDuckGo to get Brown's exact title."
It has been an upgrade in every way. The better alternative will be the cascade event.
One is allowed, indeed required, to say that women are different from men in positive ways, so as to make them more desired as employees. Part of the catechism of diversity experts is that women bring different skill sets and proclivities that can add value. But to suggest that they might have different preferences or interests that explain the tendency to go into the "helping professions" like teaching, social work, etc. is heresy.
"Achilles said...
"It was entirely within Google's power to fire an at will employee."
Or maybe not. See:
"Fired Google Employee Wants to Sue—and He May Have a Case"
http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/google-memo-legal
This would never happen in an all male workplace.
"What a mess"? No. What an awesome start.
If speech is violence, then every time a Leftie calls for someone to be fired / censured, they are engaging in violence.
And it is perfectly appropriate for us to commit violence against violent people.
The reason why people decided post Westphalia to engage in tolerance was because they decided they were tired of being targets. The Lefties today seem to think that they will never be the targets, therefore it's ok to be intolerant. It follows that, as sheer cultural hygiene, we need to teach Lefties that their actions can and will have consequences.
This is the tip of the iceberg of Google's evil. There's the manipulation of search results involving PC-subjects or controversial figures. Youtube is in the process of getting rid of all conservatives. It's bad and getting worse. This is what happens when you have monopolies.
The first rule of the Fight Club is that you don't talk about the Fight Club.
Damore broke the first rule. It seems clear to me that Google has two things going on: (1) they hire really smart people to serve their business goals regardless of race and gender, and (2) they are running a parallel internal affirmative action program, complete with special seminars and coaching for members of underrepresented races and genders. (2) is part a PR effort to stave off SJW attacks; (1) is the heart of their strategy. Damore made the mistake of discussing (1) in public, thereby disrupting the purpose of (2). Why didn't he just shut up and let them run their two track program? Why didn't he let them run their business the way major universities manage their student intake? Those anti-discrimination laws don't mean a thing.
To quote the Chief Justice, the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race [and gender] is to stop discriminating on the basis of race [and gender].
Going back to the premise in hand, does having a diverse tech workforce bring anything to the table? Surely that's measurable? (This is rhetorical).
There is no 'creative use of variables' - indeed, the exact opposite is required. There are programming rules that are universal, with variants, but simply black and white rules. There's good program structure and bad. These things don't change because of sex, race, disability or ability.
Pinchai: "We had hoped to have a frank, open discussion today as we always do to bring us together and move forward."
James Damore was not available for comment. Too frank, too open. Let that be a lesson to the rest of the Googlers!
Now that they’ve publicly outed and shamed Damore for asking questions inside Google, they need to make sure the remaining people won’t be publicly outed and shamed for asking questions inside Google.
Only management can out and shame people who work at Google! They will do the outing and the shaming! Thank you.
GOOGLE could have begun the process WAY EARLIER with an open and frank discussion with Damore before firing him - they could even have asked for input into making their affirmative action programs more effective. With all the customer profiling they do for marketing - surely they know details about the candidates that even the candidates are not aware of!!
I wonder who/what prompted the CEO to take any action at all.
Google doesn't have any handless employees?
This is bullshit.
The missing handed are just as human, as capable of love and anger and genius and inspiration, as any two-handed son of a bitch ever walked.
Or didn't walk if their legs don't work right, for WHATEVER reason. Bigots!
Pants-
That Slate Star Codex quote is great. Thanks for posting it.
And the folks here have no issue with dosing, at least when their side is doing it.
That seems short sighted. I will remember this approval of these tactics.
Why does Brooke Baldwin- and others who misrepresent what he said about women- not see that *she* is hurting the young girls that listen to her much more than his memo ever could?
Damore in his Goolag shirt:
https://twitter.com/fired4truth
(My apologies if this link has already been posted)
Via his interview with Stefan Molyneux et al, so-called Alt-Tech will be getting a boost from Pichai's idiocy.
Google is worried about privacy!
I think that most authorities simply internalize the ruling ideology so deeply that they equate dissent with sin. So in particular, the better you can ground your case in empirical facts, the craftier and more conniving a deceiver you become in their eyes, and hence the more virtuous they are for punishing you. Someone who’s arrived at that point is completely insulated from argument: absent some crisis that makes them reevaluate their entire life, there’s no sense in even trying. The question of whether or not your arguments have merit won’t even get entered upon, nor will the authority ever be able to repeat back your arguments in a form you’d recognize—for even repeating the arguments correctly could invite accusations of secretly agreeing with them. Instead, the sole subject of interest will be you: who you think you are, what your motivations were to utter something so divisive and hateful. And you have as good a chance of convincing authorities of your benign motivations as you’d have of convincing the Inquisition that, sure, you’re a heretic, but the good kind of heretic, the kind who rejects the divinity of Jesus but believes in niceness and tolerance and helping people.
If Damore wants another job it's a mistake to badmouth Google.
Future bosses will think that's what he'll be saying about me.
Mark said...
And the folks here have no issue with dosing, at least when their side is doing it.
That seems short sighted. I will remember this approval of these tactics.
We'll remember you expressed no criticism of doxxing until your allies were at risk.
The tag has his name misspelled. It's Sundar and not Sindar.
I have Misplaced My Pants -- great quote. the postings at Slate Star Codex (which have been mentioned here and at Instapundit) have been the best things I have read about the Google mess. Highly recommend.
rhhardin said...If Damore wants another job it's a mistake to badmouth Google.
Future bosses will think that's what he'll be saying about me.
This is good advice. I think its a good thing for him to come out and explain his memo, especially since the reality of Damore seems to contradict what the "news" media and his other critics are saying about him and his 'paper'. But he could easily go too far. I hope he is getting good advice from people around him.
I am wondering what fraction of Google employees understand quite clearly that they agree with Demore. There are only two choices, right? SJW or willing to deal with reality. I doubt there are many people in between: i.e., who honestly believe that Demore was just wrong.
I'm guessing at least a quarter of Google employees agree with Demore, maybe even much more. These are very bright people and it isn't always easy to fool yourself. What would happen if they found a quiet way to get in touch with each other without risk, and then a way to present a united front?
This isn't really Google against the world. It might be Google against itself.
Ah: http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/10/survey-most-google-employees-disagreed-with-decision-to-fire-memo-writer/
Disagreed how much? What will they do?
This is how you get more Trump. Even in Silicon Valley.
Mark said...
And the folks here have no issue with dosing, at least when their side is doing it.
That seems short sighted. I will remember this approval of these tactics.
8/11/17, 7:06 AM
Do you also approve of cowering a ditch while the "enemy" takes shots at you? I prefer to shoot back. Sometimes just hearing the bullets wiz past your head can clarify thought. Other times, a few of your comrades have to fall.
Either way, they shot first. I will NOT be a lamb to the slaughter. I will go down fighting and I will fight back. If the only way to stop this is to show them what it feels like, so be it. They wrote the rules, not me. I just have to learn them or forever be at a disadvantage.
I'm inclined to think that this whole brouhaha actually winds up being a positive development, maybe even a *very* positive development. The actual original memo is available to be read by anyone. Any person who reads that memo will quickly discover two things:
1. It is perfectly reasonable. The guy is simply stating that we can't be sure what the reason is for the gender imbalance in certain fields, and that we can't rule out a biological origin. A statement that is so obviously true, I have to think anyone who disagrees with it is either delusional or being purposely dishonest.
2. LOTS of major media outlets drastically misrepresented the memo's content...which leads reasonable people to wonder what other things they have misrepresented. Just a little reminder not to accept at face value any characterization of *anything* by a journalist, and to examine the source material whenever possible.
The vast majority of busy, well-intentioned people out there really don't have the time or inclination to closely follow "current events". This may help them to see how unhinged and Inquistion-like many of today's American progressives have become, and demonstrate a really egregious, undeniable, and clearly intentional case of media bias to boot. Two birds with one stone.
Google just fired an employee for telling the truth about Male-Female abilities. It also applauds Google managers who boast about "ruining the careers" of those who don't toe the SJW party line.
Now, I'm supposed to care that a few of these rich, powerful, Google Commissars are doxxed? LoL!
We've seen this a million times. Some leftist calls for/causes someone to get fired or de-platformed or doxxed, and then cries victim when they get doxxed or criticized.
"If Damore wants another job it's a mistake to badmouth Google."
I doubt this applies. He's been publicly fired.
Civil War.
Mark wrote -
"And the folks here have no issue with dosing (sic), at least when their side is doing it.
That seems short sighted. I will remember this approval of these tactics."
This is a truly curious comment. Other than Static Ping's explicit nonapproval of doxing, and two other commenters responsibly trying to determine the facts concerning Milo's facebook page, the thread was silent on the subject.
It appears the writer so wants their observation to be true that they'll make it anyway in spite of the lack of evidence, and in this case even in the face of an instance of counter evidence.
And now I see that Mark's comment has put doxing on the table. If he was just baiting us to produce this response, well then well played?
It is not (necessarily) war.
It is (possibly) the beginning of the rectification of names. Jonah Goldberg wrote about this.
What is called diversity is not diversity. What is called racism is not racism. We are told that women are men and men are women, and that women are the exact same as men when they are not.
We are told that people of an Asian ancestry and culture are really White, and that some White people are really Hispanic, except when they are suddenly White again.
We are told that oppressive thugs are actually not oppressive, nor thugs. We are told that criminals are not criminals, and laws are not laws. We are told that violent events are peaceful, or at least mostly so.
We are told that people who do not actually hate or fear homosexuals are homophobes.
We are threatened when we refuse to accept this nonsense, and then told that the threats are not actually threats.
Worse than the threats: We need to discuss such things as racism and diversity and the roles of men and women in society, yet how can we do so when the names do not refer to the reality of the things we want to discuss?
Google will learn a lesson: even Google cannot get the pee out of the pool.
CWJ, people have been up in arms about doxxing when it happened to conservatives.
The fact that just about zero are objecting (or even mentioning it) is clearly tacit if not outright approval of the practice.
On a daily basis this same reasoning is used to blame the left here, I am only using the same standards as are a daily practice here.
Once I mentioned it, there has been clear approval of doxxing. Enjoy the bed you are making.
Mark said...
Enjoy the bed you are making.
The left made the bed with Mark's approval, yet he thinks he's in position to criticize the right even though his own positions are more egregious.
Left Wing Privilege.
Now is the time to be a conservative.
Until the names have been rectified, it is best to be a conservative.
Because when there is confusion in names, then it is difficult (if not impossible) to discuss how one should behave. And if one can not discuss how one should behave, then how can one know how one should behave? And thus, how can one know how to change ones behavior?
Thus, one can say "I behave in this way because it is the way in which humans have behaved before, and it is successful, if not perfect. Since in these times, it is impossible to analyze the best way to behave, it is best to cling to old ways, as they worked, even though we cannot analyze them and therefore not understand them."
I don't know nuthing about the dissing that is going on Thus the no mention of it
Mark said...
And the folks here have no issue with dosing, at least when their side is doing it.
That seems short sighted. I will remember this approval of these tactics.
Respectfully, Mark, "this tactic" has been in use, as a weapon of the SJWs, for some time now. The Right is JUST getting around to fighting back with it! It's a lot less effective when used by the Right (because the Media and nice centrist outlets don't "signal boost" on behalf of the Right but will, happily, for the Left) and your complaint is that we're not rushing to condemn our side when we bother to fight back.
The Left's FIRST MOVE is to try and get you fired. Their FIRST MOVE is to gin up a shame mob, contact your employer, publish your info as widely as possible, and point the outrage tsunami in the direction of anything you love (your family, your friends, your associations, etc). This isn't new! HasJustineLandedYet, DongleGate, Brandon Eich...examples abound. It's not enough to disagree with someone, it's not enough to debate the ideas or make fun of the position--the Left explicitly wants to make it personally painful for individuals to hold and express "harmful" opinions and their preferred method of punishing wrongthink is doxing, shaming, and getting you fired.
The Left says that anyone who holds (what they consider) repugnant views ought to be made to answer for those and that using shame mob tactics is a valid form of protest.
Personally I liked it better when individuals were allowed to have all kinds of different opinions, and hold different political views, without having to worry about the implications of that on their personal and professional life. I preferred to have a space separating the personal and the political, and to not have to worry that holding the wrong opinion would get me fired, ostracized, and threatened.
People like me who thought that, though, lost. The Left had no such hesitation, says that the personal is political in all things, and claims moral justification in personally attacking anyone who they find "threatening." In an odd coincidence they define anyone who holds a contrary opinion to be a "threat..." so we're all fair game.
The Right has finally decided to fight back. The people attacking the Google memo author did so by saying that he expressed a harmful opinion and therefore deserves to be personally attacked. Fine. The people complaining about being doxed by the right--really of having their Twitter profiles highlighted and being held up as examples of the SJW brigade--expressed what the Right feels are harmful opinions. Why shouldn't they be subject to the same kind of personal attacks and threats?
You don't get to punch the other guy in the face and then complain when he, at length, punches back, Mark. Either naming-and-shaming is a morally just and valid tactic or it's not. If it's ok to use against the opponents of the Left then it's ok for the opponents to use it against the Left. I'll object to the Right using it just as soon as the Left objects to the Left using it.
Are the bios Milo wrote about open to the public and openly connected to the people who were critics? If so that isn't doxxing
Mark, I would take your 9:48 comment more seriouly if you had used your 9:48 phrasing originally. Better still would have been adding something like "Isn't anybody going to condemn doxing in this case?" But you didn't. You made a positive statement without and contrary to evidence which I believe was deliberately provocative. If so, as I said above, well played.
FWIW, the doxing mentioned in Althouse's post is pretty sketchy at this point. Maybee's question above needs to be answered, and the internal reports are second hand.
MayBee said...Are the bios Milo wrote about open to the public and openly connected to the people who were critics? If so that isn't doxxing
I think there are two things going on here, both of which are getting lumped under a charge of doxing:
1.) Milo Y. seems to have highlighted 8 Twitter bios of Google employees (who may have spoken/posted criticism of the Google memo guy) and held them up for derision--those people are now getting lots of attacks/negative posts so people are calling Milo putting their public profiles up for scrutiny "doxing."
2.) Google scheduled an all-hands meeting and solicited questions for that meeting. Employees submitted questions through a submission/aggregator program, and someone leaked the contents of some of those questions (along with the names of the people asking them) and some of the Google employees who had their questions leaked are reporting being targeted and harassed now. I don't think Milo Y. had anything to do with that leak or spreading it, but that's also part of the doxing being discussed.
Caveat--as usual I could be wrong about what's actually going on.
NoBorg said...1. It is perfectly reasonable.
That's a funny way to spell "ludicrous and amateurish." Are you using Chrome's spellchecker??
I agree, though, that this could be a positive development overall if normies can compare the Media's summary of the memo to the actual memo and wake up to the fact that the Media's hard Left bias makes everything the report likely to be badly wrong in a predictable way...
Todd said...
Mark said...
And the folks here have no issue with dosing, at least when their side is doing it.
That seems short sighted. I will remember this approval of these tactics.
8/11/17, 7:06 AM
Do you also approve of cowering a ditch while the "enemy" takes shots at you? I prefer to shoot back. Sometimes just hearing the bullets wiz past your head can clarify thought. Other times, a few of your comrades have to fall.
Either way, they shot first. I will NOT be a lamb to the slaughter. I will go down fighting and I will fight back. If the only way to stop this is to show them what it feels like, so be it. They wrote the rules, not me. I just have to learn them or forever be at a disadvantage.
8/11/17, 8:34 AM
Todd, you are confused. Mark is "the enemy." The exact and only thing he wants and would approve, is, precisely, you "cowering a ditch while the "enemy" takes shots at you."
Unless of course, you could come out with your hands up, have your thumbs tied behind your back, and line up along a handy trench, then he will do the rest.
Mark maybe has heard of "Scott Eckern". He was a humble, simple theater worker in San Francisco, whom Mark's allies doxxed and drove him out of California--literally-- at the hands of a howling mob. What was Scott Eckerd's crime? Why, he donated a thousand bucks to the Prop 8 campaign.
Marks' friends and political allies got to conation lists illegally and promptly started targeting the people on it. Brendan Eich was the most famous, but people like Scott Eckern were also harmed; losing their jobs and having to flee the state, to the howls of victory of the violent left mobs.
Mark , of course, has zero problems with that. Or the vandalism and destruction of business and houses of worship by his leftist friends.
Mark has no problem with the Wisconsin "John Doe" persecutions of conservatives either, I'm sure.
But he has lots and lots of concern about Google managers maybe being inconvenienced a bit because they outed themselves as fascists who want to destroy the freedom of speech.
--Vance
So Google is worried about some people's privacy.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha .....
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