Google employees can’t just walk away from ethical tradeoffs like Dragonfly

Re:Google employees can’t just walk away from ethical tradeo... by scotty79 on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @03:53PM (#19314133)

> every company prioritizes profit over ethics

That's just because companies are compelled to prioritize shareholder value and profit has much higher impact on that than ethics.

Employees pushing for anything won't work. You'd have to create a way for ethics to influence stock price and how much of companies profits shareholders are entitled to get.

But for that ethics would have to be codified... Law?

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Re:Google employees can’t just walk away from ethical tradeo... by standardUser on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @04:57PM (#19314635)

"Employees pushing for anything won't work."

With the great, big, giant exception of unions.

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Re:Google employees can’t just walk away from ethical tradeo... by anth_anm on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @05:02PM (#19314671)

> compelled to prioritize shareholder value and profit has much higher impact on that than ethics

No, this is just an excuse.

Investors could sue. They could also sue because they think the ethical violations cost google money. They could sue for any other stupid reason.

Companies have a lot of leeway in maximizing shareholder value. Amazon has pursued growth over short term profits for decades.

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