this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
100 points (99.0% liked)

Hacker News

4996 readers
705 users here now

Posts from the RSS Feed of HackerNews.

The feed sometimes contains ads and posts that have been removed by the mod team at HN.

Source of the RSS Bot

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 20 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 1 points 20 hours ago
[–] some_guy 0 points 20 hours ago

Folks, let's not rush to conclusions… Maybe this person was blinded by money and couldn't see the evil because it was like staring into the sun. Maybe they were paid partly in stocks that only vested just now and they couldn't find their moral compass because of greed. It might be that they were able to land a new job that pays even more and only had the financial freedom to criticize Google because of it.

I'm just saying, we shouldn't assume that they didn't know Google was evil the whole time. They must be intelligent or they wouldn't have got the job.

/sarcasm (because some people are too stupid to be on the internet without an adult watching over them. i get that sarcasm is difficult to discern now that everything has become so outlandish, but you really shouldn't be using the internet if this went over your head.)

[–] KingKong33@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Wait, its 2026 and you think Google just lost their moral compass? Were you in a fucking coma for the last decade or so?

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 34 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The removal of “don’t be evil” wasn’t a hint?

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

and “Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan of often-referenced Googliness—it was a north star for teams making hard calls.

you could read the thing, he goes into that

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 days ago

Yes, and they stayed past that removal.

[–] phailhaus@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The claim that it was removed is false. From the Google code of conduct:

And remember... don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!

[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 12 points 2 days ago

They sprinkle it around randomly in various public documents but generally refuse to actually acknowledge it officially. It used to be prominently and clearly stated at the front of that same document. Now it lives on as a footnote at the end. Overall, they are very cagey about it, which is exactly what they would be if they were in fact evil. (which they are).

[–] kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Didn't they trespass employees who protested their sale of tech to assist in the genocide of Gazans?

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

So did the employees stand up, did Google become less evil on their watch? This seems even worse to me.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I wonder if there were Nazis that in 1944 said something like "ok, that's the last straw, I'm going to have to quit the Nazi party."

[–] YoureHotCupCake@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

I mean just compare today and it will probably give you a good idea. Many people in Maga didn't give a damn about concentration camps, loss of our rights, the destruction of our institutions, fellow Americans being abducted/killed by ICE, the corruption, and children being raped, but the moment gas prices started going up some of them were no longer on board with this.

[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Likely, but it probably looked a little different than the kind of "quitting" we would picture ourselves. For example, I like to imagine that's more or less what Hitler was thinking one particularly fateful day in 1945.

Most people can't really face their mistakes once they have gone that deep. They may not even be willing to admit that they were actually mistakes, they'll probably still blame others.

[–] cloudless@kbin.earth 9 points 2 days ago

As a lifetime sufferer of the Microsoft way of doing business, I had so much hope when Google started its ascent back in the early 2000’s. Alas…..

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

They didn't lose it, they threw it away. They know where it is, they just don't want it.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Google management used to have a moral compass!?!?

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I mean, yeah.

Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. … For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

But the quote itself admits that the consumers here are the advertisers, it is natural that the users have little say. The users are being milked/harvested/herded/served to the consumers

[–] reddit_sux@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

He recognises that is the way ahead. He is not saying that it is wrong. He knew the evil and decided to embrace it wholly.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 1 points 1 day ago

Android Security, the defenders of Billions of users—has the motto to “make things so secure that we ourselves can’t break them, whether the device costs $1000 or $100, or the user is a celebrity or a refugee“.

That's actually extremely good