Each of the major FAAMG companies has a political/dominance issue of some kind, one that comes to mind more immediately than all the political issues associated with those companies. Taking a swag at it:

* Facebook: privacy - exploitation (personal data exploitation)

* Amazon: automation

* Apple: privacy - enforced (withholding from gov't)

* Microsoft: [I'm not even sure, they're flying low.. perhaps monopolization, or government backdoors?]

* Google: politicization/curation

I would suggest that Google's the clearest "ideation" company here, where censorship/curation is the most core part of their business model (Facebook is social media, Google is a borg-like machine collection all of the Internet and then putting algorithms around access to it), and most prone to politicization crossing the internal/external cultural barrier. [edit:spelling]

Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive.

Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

That’s not whining imo, that’s standing up to exactly the breed of ‘True Evil’ you define here.

We have seen this before in tech: Nazi Germany was probably IBM’s second largest customer at the time. There is a moral imperative to not let something like that happen again.

We should all be disturbed that the executive team at Google felt that Project Dragonfly was appropriate.

If not, why single out Google when Apple / Walmart / ... are allowed to benefit from Chinese market?

This is a straw man argument. The critique made of Google is not that has come to embody "true evil". But that it has (by degrees) slouched towards moral ambivalence, and acquiescence of (yes) evil.

Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

I think you are perfectly aware that Google is engaged in a lot more than simply the business of serving banner ads.

While I completely disagree with a commentor who calls “not interested in politics” an euphemism, as if they were disgusting and uneducated, your set of scary factoids likely falls right into this category.

I agree with you completely!

The vocal minority you refer to doesn't influence my day to day or month to month. You get people posting manifestos, and people whining about XYZ, but you only butt heads with them if you actively seek them out and want to get offended.

The idea that there are some kind of political commissars reprimanding me for "whitelisting" features for certain customers, or giving out demerits for using gendered pronouns in promo packets, is a paranoid fantasy.

Obviously some people think there's more to life than cashing a large paycheck and writing code. "Not interested in politics" is an euphemism for clueless and easy to manipulate by those that are.

That it is due to a vocal minority doesn't mean it is due to this vocal minority. Not all vocal minorities are equal, and nor should all vocal minorities be treated alike.

Freedom of speech is a great thing. That doesn't mean everyone exercising their freedom to speak results in a positive.

I did not say that the same vocal minority is responsible for all progress. Neither did I say that all vocal minorities are alike. All of this should be blindingly obvious to any adult, unless they're trying to twist words, be pedantic or generally argue in bad faith.

This is obvious and should go without saying. The parent comment gave an example of a positive consequence of an instance of this so-called "vocal minority", since the grandparent comment left no room for any positive angle on this.

I'm seriously confused how this translates into treating all "vocal-minorities" equally or that they all result in a positive.

I do not see this. Grandparent said "a vocal minority", which I interpret as a specific vocal minority. Like when someone says "there is a vocal person in my team who is obnoxious" - it does not imply that all vocal people in all teams are obnoxious.

My point was the example given by the person I responded to is kind of irrelevant. Yes, vocal minorities have done great things for many, many people. The GP to my comment was not talking about those, and listing positive vocal minorities that exist or have existed is irrelevant.

However, I see where you are coming from and thank you for clarifying.

I countered by saying that vocal minorities were able to achieve great things in the past, so implicitly their arguments should be evaluated on their merit.

Or a polite way of saying "I fundamentally disagree with you but don't feel like getting into a debate at work, please leave me alone."

That there exists a vocal minority does not mean they are right. There exists vocal minorities calling for the dissolution of most of your most fundamental rights.

I do this for all manner of things, including political discussions at work. That other people don't hold this as a default position is astounding to me.

Notably absent on their list of demands was the dissolution of most of anyone's fundamental rights.

Conversely, there are also those who are "too political" and want to bring their politics into every aspect of their lives and the lives of those around them. People like this can be as toxic as those they are speaking out against.

...or perhaps they're not interested in talking about politics with you.

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

In other words, you could end up having absolutely no conflicts about scenarios like these: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

Or maybe even end up patting yourself in the back at the end of the quarter for outperforming KPI (e.g. ISP marketshare increase) and get a nice bonus while you are at it.

The problem with your reasoning is that your actions at FAAMNG does not happen in a vacuum.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It sounds as though you believe you're simply describing facts, but that is bewilderingly far from true. To most readers here, saying things like "women tend to behave more childlike and are less willing to take on responsibility" is an extreme provocation. It's also a strangely limited and limiting statement, since we all know many people who would sooner make such a statement about men than about women.

You mentioned empathizing; my guess is that with a bit more empathizing, you wouldn't want to say such things any more. There's too much opportunity to hurt other people and start highly reactive, zero-communication arguments with them—especially on the internet, where the lack of any mitigating information (like tone of voice, gesture, or pre-existing relationship) guarantees that people will project into your words the worst and most monstrous interpretation they can bear, whether you meant them that way or not.

Would you mind taking a look at the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? I think you'll find that several of them apply to threads like this, especially this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Since I just asked you not to do this and explained why at length, it seems clear that you don't want to use this site as intended. I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

This is not as self-evident as you imply.

Women can be compared with children now?