Google Protest FAFO

[turbobloke]

redback911 said:

People are allowed to voice their concerns, employers are allowed to fire them. I'm not arguing otherwise.

Likewise.

It's also reasonable not to share the so-called basis as to why the protesters did what they did on their employer's premises. However many were involved, their individual and collective opionion is no more worthy than the opposite opinion. More right-on doesn't equal more right.

[donkmeister]

Unsurprisingly sacked idiots said:

This is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2bn contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own worker

Correction: they value it more than people who think that each clause of their employment contract is prefaced with "if it pleases your majesty".

If you are at a senior enough level to have any sway over which contracts are or are not pursued, then you get a say. If you are the owner or a key stakeholder, then you get a say. If you are simply working for a salary, you do not get a say. Your freedom is to walk away. Find someone who also hates the Jews and ask them for a job.

[BikeBikeBIke]

donkmeister said:

Your freedom is to walk away.

Which is what they did.

They just chose to do it in a way that generated some publicity.

They might have picked the wrong side in this fight but the action they took was pretty logical.

Edited by BikeBikeBIke on Friday 19th April 15:45

[otolith]

donkmeister said:

If you are at a senior enough level to have any sway over which contracts are or are not pursued, then you get a say. If you are the owner or a key stakeholder, then you get a say. If you are simply working for a salary, you do not get a say. Your freedom is to walk away.

You get the freedom to state your objections on the way out of the door. If you genuinely believe - rightly or wrongly - that your employer is complicit with genocide, you'd be at concentration camp admin staff level culpability if you didn't. Worse, really, given the difference in consequences for speaking out.

[turbobloke]

otolith said:

donkmeister said:

If you are at a senior enough level to have any sway over which contracts are or are not pursued, then you get a say. If you are the owner or a key stakeholder, then you get a say. If you are simply working for a salary, you do not get a say. Your freedom is to walk away.

You get the freedom to state your objections on the way out of the door. If you genuinely believe - rightly or wrongly - that your employer is complicit with genocide, you'd be at concentration camp admin staff level culpability if you didn't. Worse, really, given the difference in consequences for speaking out.

It's not potayto potarto though.

How is it not an employer complicit in eradicating terrorists who hide behind women, children and the sick, (ab)using them as human shields.

[otolith]

turbobloke said:

t's not potayto potarto though.

How is it not an employer complicit in eradicating terrorists who hide behind women, children and the sick, (ab)using them as human shields.

That’s your belief. It’s not theirs. Rightly or wrongly, they believe Google is doing something awful. Whether they are right or wrong is irrelevant to their moral position.

[bitchstewie]

Remember this is the US.

Depending where it is employment can be "at will" where I believe it's almost as simple as "don't come in tomorrow" with far less of those pesky employment rights we have here.

[rodericb]

redback911 said:

irc said:

redback911 said:

Mission accomplished. The fact we are even discussing the topic shows they have achieved partial success in highlighting the issues to the wider population.t.

You mean there is a conflict going on in Gaza? I never realized until this protest made me start watching the news

Project Nimbus, utilised by the Israeli military, is designed for the tracking and categorisation of Palestinian individuals. Leveraging advanced AI capabilities, it generates extensive datasets and employs facial detection, object tracking, and sentiment analysis to discern emotional behavior and contextual information.

While the specific intended uses of Nimbus remain ambiguous, this platform represents a continuation of previous programs such as "Habsora", "Red Wolf", "Blue Wolf", and "Smart Shooter" among others. Israel's ongoing development of surveillance technology aims to automate the monitoring of Palestinians, potentially enabling the prioritisation and targeting of individuals for various purposes, including assassination.

A significant number of employees from Amazon and Google have voiced their opposition by signing a petition urging a boycott of the technology's development for the Israeli military, these concerns pre-date the current Gaza conflict. Now at least 28 of the Google employees who participated in a subsequent protest have been terminated from their positions. No doubt more will follow.

People are allowed to voice their concerns, employers are allowed to fire them. I'm not arguing otherwise.

Those people protesting about the technology being applied to Palestinians in Palestine don't seem to be too worried about it being applied to anyone anywhere else in the world.

[donkmeister]

BikeBikeBIke said:

donkmeister said:

Your freedom is to walk away.

Which is what they did.

They just chose to do it in a way that generated some publicity.

They might have picked the wrong side in this fight but the action they took was pretty logical.

Edited by BikeBikeBIke on Friday 19th April 15:45

Except...

Unsurprisingly sacked idiots said:

This is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2bn contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own worker

They weren't trying to walk away, they were trying to direct their employer's business to suit their own blinkered view of the Israel/Gaza situation.

Imagine if every civil servant did this every time their employer, the government, did something they didn't like...

[donkmeister]

otolith said:

You get the freedom to state your objections on the way out of the door. If you genuinely believe - rightly or wrongly - that your employer is complicit with genocide, you'd be at concentration camp admin staff level culpability if you didn't. Worse, really, given the difference in consequences for speaking out.

Does that mean anyone who donated to the aid effort in Gaza should be viewed as complicit with Hamas? No, you draw a sensible line, supplying tools to a customer is very different from being a part of what that customer does with those tools.

[otolith]

donkmeister said:

otolith said:

You get the freedom to state your objections on the way out of the door. If you genuinely believe - rightly or wrongly - that your employer is complicit with genocide, you'd be at concentration camp admin staff level culpability if you didn't. Worse, really, given the difference in consequences for speaking out.

Does that mean anyone who donated to the aid effort in Gaza should be viewed as complicit with Hamas? No, you draw a sensible line, supplying tools to a customer is very different from being a part of what that customer does with those tools.

If they believed that their money was going to be used to conduct terrorism, yes. I think you are missing the point here - I said nothing about whether their beliefs are justified, only that they hold them. As for supplying tools being different from being a part of what is done with them - you'd have been happy to be involved with suppling the Iraqi regime with dual use chemical precursors believing that they were using them to make nerve agents, or Iran with machine tools believing that they were for part of their nuclear weapons programme?