I’m just gonna say it: if you claim to “love the Internet” but you’re working at Google, Microsoft or Meta you’re bullshitting yourself.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Oct-2023 23:34:52 JST Thomas 🔭✨
- Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 01:19:46 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@dan What good exactly?
Ever since Chrome was forked from Safari it's been a never ending quest of Google to usurp a monopoly, eradicate competition, invade privacy and hawk useless technologies as "open" (like AMP).
Are you actually taking a stance? Are you saying "No." to unethical demands from leadership?
You're mincing nice-sounding words but the reality is that Google has ceaselessly worked on ruining the Internet; and no one ever stopped them from doing so.
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Dan Palmer (dan@social.danpalmer.me)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 01:19:48 JST Dan Palmer
@thomasfuchs I empathise with your position and have held it in the past, but I’m currently working on privacy and safety stuff at Google and feel that my colleagues and I have a lot of scope to do good things for the internet.
I don’t think there’s a right answer here, I’m not saying you’re wrong but I do think that “fighting” for good from the inside and outside can both be good approaches and meaningful improvements are likely to come from a combination of both external and internal pressure
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Thomas 🔭✨ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 01:35:53 JST Thomas 🔭✨
@dan And what I'm saying is instead of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, the teams could e.g. go collectively on strike to prevent further massive harm to the Internet.
But we both know that's not going to happen, because the details of the End of the Internet is all going to be decided in many orderly meetings with well-meaning participants, with much civility and decorum and calm rational, nuanced arguments.
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Dan Palmer (dan@social.danpalmer.me)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Oct-2023 01:35:54 JST Dan Palmer
@thomasfuchs I’ve never been asked to do something I’ve not felt was right for the internet, my team works on things that I find unambiguously good.
I haven’t needed to take a stand on the basis of my direct line of work here. I have done this at a previous role, refused to implement several features.
As for other company priorities I would say there is often thriving internal discussion that I take part in where I feel it is right.