Your comment is essentially "How can we care about A when someone's suffering from B in Kolechia?" which is a emotionally manipulative argument, actually.
You still can, and should pay attention to issues one step away from you.
That's not at all what I am saying.
What I am saying is that if you are surprised by the fact they are protesting against ICE/Big Oil and not way more trivial (in the grand scheme of things) and tech-centered things, then you are living in a bubble.
I am not saying it would be wrong that they protest AMP and not ICE, just that you can't be surprised it doesn't happen.
As for bubbles we are all living in them. For example, by being an American-based activist, you believe your US-centric disagreements around enforcement of immigration policies to be a global issue. Which looks funny for someone from outside, like me. I would say that long queues for cancer treatment in my country is more important for me. Your bubble is not holier then mine, or any other human out there.
I am not American (nor living or ever lived in the USA), I am not an activist. :)
I am just able to look at the situation from the point of view of people protesting (I think it's called empathy), and I can understand why, for them, protesting ICE/Big Oil, is more important than protesting amp.
That makes your bubble interesting, although not unique. Your comment looks like an absolutist statement about importance hierarchy, and you don't feel equally for malvosenior, so it's not necessary empathy, could be association. "From point of view" - that makes sense, but when that point is so global one ignores own backyard for years, there are questions avout sincerety like malvosenior raised.
That argument would be emotionally manipulative, but that isn't the major problem here.
Society's use of oil and gas is a totally political question of how much pain we experience in the near term vs the long term and who pays for any trade-offs that get made. It is not kosher for employees of a company to use their corporate position to push what are private political goals.
Particularly because Google's position in the world is to provide people with facts and evidence - if they are being pressured internally by political actors then that compromises their trustworthiness as a search provider. They aren't a traditional media organisation where a page full of propaganda and lies is par for the course and everyone knows it. People expect them to use a politically neutral algorithm.
Are there people who believe that we need "urgent and decisive action" on political topics who have influence over the search index? How are they using that influence? What would happen if the next generation of employees have a radically different political view? These aren't new questions; Google's rankings are always going to be an interesting subject - and there is every chance that someone is running a smear campaign with stories of these intercompany issues. However, they are the important questions when Google employees do something political.
> It is not kosher for employees of a company to use their corporate position to push what are private political goals.
What's the difference between employees of a company pushing for political change versus company executives using their position and influence to affect politics?
The answer is there is none. A company is founded by people, and people run the company, either as workers, shareholders, or both. In the end, this is a good sign for us regular people. We want change, and the only way to get it is to get political. Either that, or riots.
> What's the difference between employees of a company pushing for political change versus company executives using their position and influence to affect politics?
The executives shouldn't be doing that either. However, the core role of the executive is to decide how to deploy a companies resources. That is a pretty substantial difference.
> We want change ...
'We' is presumably a group of people living in a democratic first world country. We have systems for deciding what 'we' want, and it frequently spits out results that suggest 'we' do not want change.
> People expect them to use a politically neutral algorithm.
There is no such thing as a politically neutral algorithm. Algorithms exist to implement decisions that have been previously made, and these decisions are political in nature. Neutrality is the name given to people and institutions that support the status quo, and therefore they cannot be viewed as apolitical, even though, for lack of understanding, many believe to be operating outside of politics.
> Neutrality is the name given to people and institutions that support the status quo
Strongly disagree. If google censors information relating to Tiananmen Square, that supports the status quo without being neutral. If they don't filter that information out they undermine the status quo while remaining neutral. I could at least understand the position that no censorship can be construed as being politically opposed to censorship, but I don't really think that's the case in all cases; it is simpler to make a tool for finding knowledge in the general case than it is to make a tool that additionally filters that knowledge on ideological grounds.
China is not the status quo in the US. Thus, it is very easy for Google to pretend to be neutral regarding political facts occurring there. But even that is not entirely true. The Tiananmen Square events are very important for the narrative of western governments against China, so what appears there has also a political connotation.
It's an arbitrary example of information which is commonly censored to support the status quo, if you want an example targeted at America we could just as easily use pirated media.
> Society's use of oil and gas is a totally political question of how much pain we experience in the near term vs the long term and who pays for any trade-offs that get made. It is not kosher for employees of a company to use their corporate position to push what are private political goals.
lol, yes, when it comes to oil and gas, it's widely expected that companies not push for political goals. Oil and gas companies companies steer well clear of those politics. Yep.
Your comment is the least charitable possible interpretation of the above user's statement, and adds nothing except for biting sarcasm to the discussion.
I hope that every user here tries to leave hacker news a better, more thoughtful place than they found it.
> Your comment is the least charitable possible interpretation of the above user's statement
Please, do tell, then. Because "that's not a nice reaction" is not the same as an uncharitable interpretation.
It's ridiculous on its face to call for employees of a company to not engage in politics and define the use of oil and gas as political and therefore out of bounds, when the actions being taken here are engaging with the actions of oil and gas companies.
(leaving aside the idea that it's ok for me, internet commentator, to have strong opinions, but not the employees that make some product I use)
You interpreted "employees of a company to use their corporate position to push what are private political goals" as "companies not push[ing] for political goals" in order to sarcastically respond.
There is a difference between a company and it's individual employees, and rephrasing the statement such that "employees of a company" is replaced with "a company" in order to mock a user is rude and also not substantive.
> There is a difference between a company and it's individual employees, and rephrasing the statement such that "employees of a company" is replaced with "a company"
Unless there's a good argument that managers and executives are somehow different than other employees, companies pushing for political goals absolutely are employees of a company using their position to push private political goals.
I agree, but most people have a limited amount of energy they are willing to expend on political causes. It takes time & effort to rally people around a common cause - hopefully these issues will have their day, but absent organizing machinery you can really only get people to care about big-ticket items rather than slowly creeping ones.
No. Someone raised the question of which cause should be the priority. In such a context, it is absolutely 100% fair game to talk about why someone would be more motivated to care about one cause than another.
Or to borrow a far older phrase: "First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye."
That's an interesting saying, thanks for sharing. Just today morning I was listening to an audiobook that mentioned something similar _ "physician, heal thyself so you may heal thy patient...".
You still can, and should pay attention to issues one step away from you.