Google.
Doesn't everybody hate Google?

I don't

Me neither

Re: privacy and all that, to me they are simply acting correctly as any dominant multinational

Is up to the laws to change, not Google

In a democracy that means people have to act

They won't.... Too many dumb people... , so here we are

And anyway, it's not breaking privacy if everyone is in the same boat..

Downvote away!

nope

@rant1ng it isn't as simple as people acting.

Taking your privacy comment first.

Morality is different from lawful. What is lawful (or absent from law) doesn't mean it is moral too. Morality changes over a period of time, laws catch up. But the case in point is with great reach multinationals also have to have greater morals. They should pave the future path. Earning money was one part, then they started getting into your personal information to earn money. Being upfront about it that hey we will track you and earn money should be the norm, instead of a small link of privacy policy that's hidden somewhere.

@gymmerDeveloper I totally agree with you

However the fact that they are doing what they are doing and getting away with it kind of just nails the point home.. As it exists therefore it be

To expect a giant to be fair is madness in our world

Now.. If there was a law that forced them to pay you a percentage... that.. Would be interesting

@rant1ng agree

No?

Not really

Another guy who couldn't make it to that awesome company... NVM kid

I actually like it because - compared to other big companies (...) - it produces good software and is actually pretty strong when it comes to progress and research

Nope

hate and love... it's an abusive relationship of sorts

Googe is evil. All corporations are. But what frightens me the most is that apparently this isn’t obvious to people.

You can’t treat a corporation like the sum of its employees any more than you can treat a slave driver as the sum of his slaves. That’s the problem. A corporation is a machine. A machine that exists to consume and to grow and nothing else. A machine whose fuel is the work and passion of human beings. It has no morals or purpose other than cancerous growth.

Corporations are evil by the very nature of their construction. They are entities built without moral limitations. Without human emotions like sympathy and empathy. Corporations are careless cancers who feed upon the life we create, taking it life away from us and channeling it to the ruling class.

We’re all slaves to the corporations. Google is not alone. Stuff like this only shows me there are a lot of people out there who haven’t realized it yet.

@devios1 amen

and I'm speaking as a capitalist

The sole goal can't always be money, as long as it is, everything you said is right on point. By definition it has to be evil. Has to be a way to use other metrics to measure other goals and have them bound to that. Like carbon tax, human happiness index maybe, worker happiness, customer satisfaction, etc.

There, we solved the world's problems. Time for lunch.

@rant1ng I used to believe in capitalism. But let me tell you it's going to take some doing to restore my faith in it now. We can start by overturning the law that allows corporations to be tried as people, while having none of the moral safeguards real people have, and sheltering the guilty and protecting them from prosecution. I for one have had enough of people committing atrocities behind the protection of a corporation. When corporations become so powerful that they actually influence and rewrite the very laws established to protect us from them, you know things are bad.

+ I love Google products... They get the job done, and are the best at that.
- Those with privacy peeves, also know how to hide, but at other times, google will get the job done best.
+ Their community is great as well, through competitions, dev days, meets etc, pretty fun for students.
- I don't care about the ongoing disputes regarding sexual misconduct within the company, I judge a company by their products and how easy it is to use, nothing else...

@devios1 im on the same page

But I just don't see how any of its changing... Would take a significant shift in world politics and the balances of power

World wars tend to do that...

@rant1ng Let's hope it doesn't come to that. It's scary to think what it might take.

Personally I'd rather a non-bloody revolution.

My privacy hates it
My addictive personality hates it
My anarchist side hates it

I kinda like Google. I mean, they spy on me and everything, but their product is good so I'm ok with it

@MaxOmsRubio Anarchy rules!

@irene Anarcho-syndicalism

@devios1 another point that most people don't get is this.

Governments are supposed to make laws that is good for the majority of the people. This includes laws for environmental and other social issues which go against the corporates.

Now that's the catch. The government and corporates are like an oligarchy. They are so mixed up with one another, through investments and relationships of people at the top, that the general public is the last thing that is considered important.

Rule of thumb is, there is always a personal (or party funding) motive behind most decisions of the government.

This get worst when technology is involved. Because the scale at which things can be changed for better or worse is beyond scrutiny. This goes on through simple content/ads that are going to change your views in favour of something that you wouldn't be aware of. Further it'll also infect those around you and you'll hear the same views from across the spectrum. This is just one of the examples.

@gymmerDeveloper Absolutely. We're all being bought and sold and shoved around like cattle and we don't even notice it happening.

And it seems what little democracy we have left these days is quickly evaporating in front of us. Thankfully the midterm election in the US saw some shift at least towards progressive candidates this time around. Hopefully the trend continues because the shit happening there scares me.

Oh abso-fucking-lutely.

I hate that company to the fucking point.

I can elaborate if wanted.

Nope

Just be happy, zero lifes left.

@irene Perfectly? Of course not, but I believe in the idea at the heart of it: that power should be evenly distributed among all citizens. That the people should form the highest voice, and that those elected by the citizens are acting as representatives on behalf of all citizens, not just those that elected them.

@irene That is precisely why an educated populace is necessary for a healthy democracy. You can't say "people are dumb" therefore democracy can't work, because if people are dumb and that's what they choose, that IS democracy working, it's just working for dumb people.

The problem is that you can never codify into law the correct answer to all future questions. We are not perfect and we will make mistakes. The system needs to allow for that. It needs to be self-correcting. Democracy is the closest thing we have to that kind of a self-correcting system.

@irene Concerning merit, the problem of course is who's to judge what is worthy and what isn't? In theory that's what capitalism was supposed to achieve: let the free market decide.

And in certain cases, it does work. But it only works if it is protected and kept fair. Things like competition made sense in a world dominated by commodity.

But in a world ruled by information, things take on a very different behavior. Intellectual property laws are really laws of monopolies, the opposite of competition.

@irene I see that only as proof that we are all in this together. This attitude of every person for themselves is killing us.

People are so used to being divided, they've forgotten what it's like to all agree on something.

Democracy should be about agreeing, not fighting.

It should be about the freedom to make change possible, no matter what it is, if enough people can come together and agree upon it.

Democracy in practice as I started out saying is far from perfect, but I personally believe that the Internet will have profound changes on the effectiveness of democracy. Indeed I believe it's already happening, in some cases for the better and in some for the worse.

But the important thing is that we're changing. We're growing up as a world, really, and that takes time. But we need democracy to allow that to happen.

@irene Indeed that is the big question: can we actually do it without destroying ourselves in the process.

But that's why this shit matters. That's why voting matters.

@irene No disagreement about it being sabotaged. Those in power wish to keep their power, and are always trying to gain more power. Take net neutrality for example. With the repeal, corporations like Comcast now have a way to politically censor people, or sell political censorship as a service. No questions asked, as long as you can pay for it. Add to that corporations' existing ability to inundate us with constant propaganda in the form of ads, and they have two powerful tools to try and shape the vote to their wishes.

It's a constant battle. We let corporations get away with too much. Consumers too often get the raw end of the deal. Not just consumers but employees. Don't get me started on that.

But those are all examples of a decrease in democracy. We need to fight for things like net neutrality because they are tools for increasing democracy. The next step is considering access to the internet a basic human right.

@irene a revolution in my country has killed hundreds of thousands of people and 20 years later it is still there in power now killing children and the elderly with hunger. revolutions are a farce that only serve to satisfy the interests of a few through the deception of the ignorant.

@delc82 that is sad and true.

@delc82 my guess is even if the revolution would've succeeded. The new govt would've eventually moved in a similar direction. Some governments are lesser evil, but they are still evil.

@gymmerDeveloper there are the "normal" governments that steal but at the same time make or maintain what exists and there are others hungry for power and are capable of destroying a whole country as is the case of Venezuela. This is growing and in the future this will be the end of what we know.

nopppppe

@rEaL-jAsE the whole is greater than the sum of its parts..