Google Employees Are Being Targeted by Alt-Right Racists
https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/10/google-employees-are-being-targeted-by-alt-right-racists
In a post earlier today -- Reactions to My Own "Google Manifesto"
( https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/10/reactions-to-my-own-google-manifesto ) --
I noted the level of moronic, racist, antisemitic, and other
alt-right bile that I've received in response to Here's My Own Damned
"Google Manifesto"
( https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/09/heres-my-own-damned-google-manifesto ),
which was posted a day earlier.
Now I'm hearing from Googlers -- Google employees, some of whom I've
known for years -- who feel physically threatened by the escalating
situation triggered by the sexist proclamations of now fired Googler
James Damore, who has allied himself with alt-right racists and
apparently is now comparing the well-paid, perk-rich jobs at Google
with Soviet-era forced labor (at least if we judge from his newly
featured "Goolag" t-shirt).
But it's not this twisted clown that is of primary concern. Alt-right
superstars are latching onto these circumstances in ways that threaten
actual physical violence -- which is of course in keeping with their
Nazi heritage.
Individual Googlers who argued against Damore's sexist manifesto --
their identities made public when internal Google discussions were
leaked -- are being targeted by alt-right superstars and others in the
alt-right ecosystem -- in postings that have enormous readerships.
Plans for potentially violent marches on Google offices have also been
announced.
Back when I was consulting to Google several years ago, I never would
have imagined that leaking of this sort or magnitude would ever take
place, particularly leaks that could foreseeably trigger physical
violence of the worst sort.
This is an intolerable state of affairs.
That we've reached this dangerous juncture is a direct consequence of
normalizing racist, antisemitic, sexist hate groups thanks to the
tacit support of Donald Trump and his white supremacist cronies.
And the tech industry overall bears responsibility as well. As a group
we were far too slow to recognize that the racist and otherwise lying
hate spew of "fake news" and false rhetoric -- pouring forth from the
"new" alt-right and traditional white supremacist groups -- cannot
safely be permitted to monetize or otherwise leverage our search and
social media platforms to spread their filth.
For many years I've been battling against the prevalent attitude in
tech that our job is just to build the systems and let the content
fall where it may -- "all content created equal" as it were.
All content is not equal. And by handing these groups our giant
megaphones of servers, switches, and bandwidth, we are complicit in
the monstrousness that has now been unleashed -- not just here in the
USA, but around the world.
We helped to release this evil genie from his bottle. As
extraordinarily difficult as the task will be, it's our responsibility
to stuff him back inside.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lau...@vortex.com): https://www.vortex.com/lauren
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Google Issues Mailing List: https://vortex.com/google-issues
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: https://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Google+: https://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
--- Impeach Trump ---
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