The Jedi Return: Page and Brin Address Those Perceived to Be Really Smart
June 11, 2019
I read “Elusive Google Co-Founders Make Rare Appearance at Town Hall Meeting.” What these fine innovators do is not likely to become a talking point in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. I did note this passage in the write up:
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have long been the stars of the search giant’s weekly “TGIF” town hall meetings. But for the past six months, the pair had been no-shows, an absence that coincided with Google controversies over antitrust concerns, work in China and military contracts.
Interesting but what happened to the discrimination and sexual harassment dust ups? I assume that certain management flubs are more important than others. It is clear that the researcher working on this CNet article did not come across information about a certain liaison which triggered a divorce and an attempted suicide. And what about the Googler, the yacht, the alleged female of ill repute, and a drug overdose? Obviously fake, irrelevant, or long-forgotten items I assume.
I also noted this passage:
The disappearing act drew criticism from those who see Page’s and Brin’s absence as dodging accountability during the most tumultuous period in the company’s 20-year history.
What’s that reminder about correlation and causation? Probably the six month hiatus is a refine of the firm’s management techniques. Are there antecedents? What about restructuring to Alphabet to provide more insulation in the Googleplex from the heat of certain investigations? What about the “Gee, we’re not really working on a China centric search system”?
How about this statement from the article?
But as Google’s issues mount, the company’s co-founders have faded into the background.
There’s even a reference to the YouTube clown car.
Most recently, Google-owned YouTube drew blowback last week after the service refused to take down the channel of Steven Crowder, a conservative comedian who hurled homophobic slurs at Carlos Maza, a Vox journalist and video host who is gay.
And the discrimination and retribution approach to human resources warranted a comment:
One of the questions during the Q&A portion of the May 30 TGIF concerned alleged retaliation from management against employees, according to a partial transcript viewed by CNET. The question was about the departure of Claire Stapleton, a Google walkout organizer who said she was unfairly targeted because of her role in the protest. Stapleton announced her resignation in a blog post Friday. The questioner asked if “outside objectivity” could be added to HR investigations.
The write up is interesting, but there are aspects of the Google matter which warrant amplification, if not by the real new outfit CNet, then some other entity, perhaps former MBA adjunct professors embracing the gig economy of the MBA implosion?
What the write up makes clear but does not explain is the unwillingness of the Google to be forthright about what it has done, when it began to implement certain interesting monetization procedures, and how it decided upon certain management processes to deflect criticism and understanding of the firm’s Titanic algorithms.
The CNet write up is interesting, not for what it reveals, but for its omissions. Today that’s real news.
Stephen E Arnold, June 11, 2019
AT&T: A Job Creator. Wait, Job? Jobs?
June 6, 2019
Gee, why didn’t that work out as promised? We were told the administration’s tax cuts for big business would lead to more jobs, but here is the latest disappointment in that arena: BoingBoing reports, “AT&T Promised It Would Create 7,000 Jobs if Trump Went Through with Its $3B Tax-Cut, but They Cut 23,000 Jobs Instead.” The very brief but indignant write-up cites this Ars Technica piece, and summarizes:
“In 2017, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson campaigned for Trump’s massive tax-cuts by promising that they would create 7,000 jobs with the $3,000,000,000 they stood to gain, as well as investing in new infrastructure: instead, the company has reduced its headcount by 23,328 workers (6,000 in the first three months of 2019!) while reducing capital expenditures by $1.4B (AT&T reduced capex by another $900m in Q1/2019). AT&T substantially increased executive bonuses over the same period.”
Of course the phone outfit did. AT&T acknowledges these findings by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), but blames the discrepancy on the fact that “technology is changing rapidly.” Was that a surprise? Perhaps high-tech companies should refrain from making promises they are not sure they can keep.
Cynthia Murrell, June 5, 2019
Googley Things
June 5, 2019
I wanted to write about Google’s recent outage. But the explanations were not exciting. That’s too bad. Configuration problems are what bedevil careless or inexperienced technicians. The fact that Google went down speaks volumes about what happens when the whizzy cloud technology is disrupted by the climate change Google faces. Are there storms gestating in Washington, DC?
The more interesting news, if it is indeed accurate in a boom time for the faux, appeared in “YouTube Says Homophobic Abuse Does Not Violate Harassment Rules.” The write up states:
In a compilation video Maza created of some of his mentions on Crowder’s show, the host attacks Maza as a “gay Mexican”, “lispy queer” and a “token Vox gay atheist sprite”.
DarkCyber assumes that Google has “data” to back up its decision. The company’s smart software and exceptional engineers do not make judgment calls without considering statistical analyses of clicks, word counts, and similar “hard” facts.
With these data, it seems to me that Google has put to rest any mewing and whimpering about the reason it was able to differentiate between abuse and debate.
This is the Google, not some liberal arts magnet. Logic is logic. Oh, about that outage and the quality of the Google technical talent? Well, that is just an outlier.
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2019
Google Management: Moving Forward One Promise at a Time
June 5, 2019
It looks like Google has made good on one of the promises it made after last year’s outcry from employees—“Google Updates Misconduct Reporting Amid Employee Discontent,” reports Phys.org. The company had already heeded calls to end mandatory arbitration and to modify benefit rules for some workers. Still, this is too little too late for some. Reporter Rachel Lerman writes:
“Google said Thursday it has updated the way it investigates misconduct claims—changes the company pledged to make after employees called for action last year. The company is simultaneously facing backlash from two employees who say they faced corporate retaliation after helping to organizing the November walkout protests.
We noted:
“Thursday’s changes are designed to make it simpler for employees to file complaints about sexual misconduct or other issues. Google also issued guidelines to tell employees what to expect during an investigation, and added a policy that allows workers to bring along a colleague for support during the reporting process. Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised to make these changes last fall after thousands of Google employees at company offices around the world briefly walked out to protest the company’s handling of sexual misconduct investigations and payouts to executives facing misconduct allegations.”
The charges of retaliation for spearheading last autumn’s walkout reached some employees via an email from those two organizers. One said she was commanded to stop her outside research into AI ethics, while the other says she was effectively demoted (until she brought in her own lawyer. Now she simply faces a “hostile” work environment, she says.) For its part, Google claims those actions had nothing to do with the protests. Naturally.
Cynthia Murrell, June 5, 2019
Reflecting about New Zealand
June 5, 2019
Following the recent attacks in two New Zealand mosques, during which a suspected terrorist successfully live-streamed horrific video of their onslaught for over a quarter-hour, many are asking why the AI tasked with keeping such content off social media failed us. As it turns out, context is key. CNN explains “Why AI Is Still Terrible at Spotting Violence Online.” Reporter Rachel Metz writes:
“A big reason is that whether it’s hateful written posts, pornography, or violent images or videos, artificial intelligence still isn’t great at spotting objectionable content online. That’s largely because, while humans are great at figuring out the context surrounding a status update or YouTube, context is a tricky thing for AI to grasp.”
Sites currently try to account for that shortfall with a combination of AI and human moderators, but they have trouble keeping up with the enormous influx of postings. For example, we’re told YouTube users alone upload more than 400 hours of video per minute. Without enough people to provide context, AI is simply at a loss. Metz notes:
“AI is not good at understanding things such as who’s writing or uploading an image, or what might be important in the surrounding social or cultural environment. … Comments may superficially sound very violent but actually be satire in protest of violence. Or they may sound benign but be identifiable as dangerous to someone with knowledge about recent news or the local culture in which they were created.
We also noted:
“… Even if violence appears to be shown in a video, it isn’t always so straightforward that a human — let alone a trained machine — can spot it or decide what best to do with it. A weapon might not be visible in a video or photo, or what appears to be violence could actually be a simulation.”
On top of that, factors that may not be apparent to human viewers, like lighting, background images, or even frames per seconds, complicate matters for AI. It appears it will be some time before we can rely on algorithms to shield social media from abhorrent content. Can platforms come up with some effective alternative in the meantime? The pressure is on.
Cynthia Murrell, June 5, 2019
Google: Cracks in the Facade of Smart
June 2, 2019
I find it amusing that a company with the smartest people in the world cannot fail gracefully. When the GOOG goes down hard. I discovered this chugging along from rural Kentucky to a rural location in South Carolina. Google did not deliver. Once I was able to fire up a connection which actually worked, I read “Google Outage Takes Down YouTube, Gmail, and Snapchat in Parts of US.” I learned:
Discord, Snapchat, and Vimeo users are also experiencing issues logging into the apps, and these all use Google Cloud on the backend. “We are experiencing high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, affecting multiple services in Google Cloud, GSuite and YouTube,” says a Google spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “Users may see slow performance or intermittent errors. We believe we have identified the root cause of the congestion and expect to return to normal service shortly.”
Now about those smart people. Are too many trying to abandon assignments which have zero future for the zippier work? Of course not. Google does not have Android fragmentation or other technical weaknesses. I would suggest that some work needs to be done on foundational services.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2019
Amazon Twitch: Streaming Copyright Protected Content? You Betcha!
May 30, 2019
I found the “insight” in “Twitch Is Temporarily Suspending New Creators from Streaming after Troll Attack” amusing. The least popular game on Twitch, an Amazon property, has been outed as a streamer of copyright protected content. Yeah, that’s news.
I would point out at 0733 am US Eastern on May 30, 2019, that Ciklonica, one of Twitch’s more interesting chat performers, is eating and streaming the Big Bang television program dubbed in Russian.
Here’s a snap taken at 0730 am US Eastern on May 20, 2019:
How is Amazon’s SageMaker artificial intelligence system doing when it comes to recognizing streaming content with titling? What about the human reviewers who are working valiantly to manage the game lovers?
Maybe Google’s decision to kill its game streaming service is the equivalent of a mixed martial art corner man throwing in the towel.
I describe some of the more interesting content in my Dark Web 2.0 lecture next week at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference. The scope of copyright protected content theft is remarkable. Amazon Twitch is just a chuckle because regular Amazon does what it can to prevent its customers from stealing the “regular” service’s content.
Maybe the Amazon smart software technology can’t police Twitch? Maybe Amazon is looking the other way so it can assert plausible deniability about SweetSaltyPeach chatting? Maybe Amazon simply lacks the management expertise to deal with Twitch’s “how to cheat your friends at cards” information.
Games. Let them begin at the “real” news outfits and in the Twitch-verse.
Stephen E Arnold, May 30, 2019
Silicon Valley Digital Protest: Another Challenge to Modern Management Methods?
May 24, 2019
One thing you never want to do, and I highly stress never, is anger a tech savvy individual. One famous example is Seth Rogen’s 2011 film, The Interview. The film was about an American talk show host tasked with assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. North Koran was not happy about The Interview. Although they denied involvement, North Korea hackers were the alleged culprits hacking the inventor of the Walkman.
Gizmodo tells another allegedly true story in the article, “Palantir’s Github Page Is The New Battleground In The Fight Against ICE.” Tech activists support hot button issues, such as immigration, global warming, and abortion. Palantir has garnered tech activists’ attention, because mom activities dubbed nefarious. Under the Freedom of Information Act, tech activists have learned that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used Palantir’s technology. Many people do not like ICE, among them are tech activists.
Palantir’s case management app was used by ICE on apprehended people at the Mexican-US border. Tech activists want Palantir employees to be aware of how there products are used. We noted this statement:
“Raising an issue on the collaborative software repositories of Github is an option open to any user, and is usually for the purpose of reporting a bug or requesting a feature. ‘The issue we are planning to raise is obvious a moral issue and an ethical issue with Palantir’s ties to ICE,’ TWC’s Noah Gordon told Gizmodo. ‘This is an appeal from tech workers to tech workers to take a principled stand against family separation and deportation.’
And we circled this passage as well:
‘We believe Palantir has certain policies when it comes to maintenance of their open-source repositories, so Palantir employees will have to manually review these issues,’ Gordon continued, ‘Our belief is if we put the honest facts of the situation directly in the face of Palantir workers they will follow up by making the right decision at work and organizing against ICE.’”
Does tech activism does work. Its impact may be increased when an initial public offering is the subject of speculation. Worth monitoring this particular example of employee action and Palantir management’s response.
Whitney Grace, May 24, 2019
Google: Whom Does One Believe?
May 24, 2019
Apparently, what is good for China is situational for Google. The Intercept declares, “Google’s Censored Search Would Help China ‘Be More Open,’ Said Ex-CEO Eric Schmidt.” Writer Ryan Gallagher points to a recent BBC News interview with Eric Schmidt in which the former Google CEO, and current board member, seemed to defend his company’s choice to build a censored search platform just for China. To be fair, Schmidt’s opinion is a bit more nuanced than the above headline suggests: the theory seems to be that, by cozying up to China, Google might influence that country to embrace internet freedom. Seems reasonable? Gallagher writes:
“During Schmidt’s tenure as CEO, in 2006, Google launched a search engine in China but pulled out of the country in 2010, due to concerns about Chinese government interference. At that time, [co-founder Sergey] Brin said the decision to stop operating search in the country was mainly about ‘opposing censorship and speaking out for the freedom of political dissent.’ Schmidt revealed in his BBC interview that he had argued against Brin — believing that the company should remain in China, despite the censorship requirements. He said he felt that it was better ‘to stay in China and help change China to be more open.’
We also noted this passage:
“Brin has previously said that he felt the same way for a period of time — that Google could help China embrace greater internet freedom. But he watched as the company, over a number of years, faced increasing censorship requests from the Chinese government. ‘Things started going downhill, especially after the Olympics [in Beijing in 2008],’ Brin said in a 2010 interview. ‘And there’s been a lot more blocking going on since then. … [S]o the situation really took a turn for the worse.’”
At least Google’s workers understand that cooperating with China’s censorship efforts will do nothing to dampen China’s enthusiasm for censorship. Once word of the search platform tailor-made for China, code named Dragonfly, got out, workers protested. Many of them were unhappy to learn they had unwittingly supported censorship through their work, and called for more transparency and employee input. In that BBC interview, Schmidt says Google is “no longer pursuing Dragonfly,” but could not rule out a return to the project in the future.
Meanwhile, censorship has only gotten worse in China since Brin’s 2010 concerns; according to the Human Rights Watch, a 2016 cybersecurity law has brought internet control to “new heights.”
Now Google has complied with the US government’s directive about Huawei. Compliance and an apparent leadership position. Google’s diplomacy may be tested, and the firm’s leadership will have opportunities to craft other statements.
But whom does one believe when it comes to reading tea leaves about Google and its intentions?
Cynthia Murrell, May 24, 2019
Microsoft and Misconduct
May 20, 2019
Microsoft acknowledges it has a problem with workplace misconduct, and is dedicating resources to get to the bottom of it. Quartz reports, “Microsoft Is Tripling the Size of its Team Investigating Workplace Misconduct.” Since March 2019, the company has been coping with reports of harassment and discrimination that were first expressed on their internal message board. Within a week of those reports, some preliminary changes were implemented, including increased manager training and a promise of more data transparency. Writer Dave Gershgorn tells us:
“Microsoft’s head of HR, Kathleen Hogan, told employees she had met with 100 men and women who have come forward about misconduct inside the company, a number Microsoft confirmed to Quartz. Hogan will focus on reforming five areas of internal culture: behavior, manager expectations, investigations, accountability, and data transparency. Each of those areas was also mentioned in a letter Nadella sent to Microsoft employees last month. Microsoft chief legal officer Brad Smith also told employees that the company is expanding its Corporate, External, & Legal Affairs (CELA) team, which investigates these matters, from 7 people to 23. The senior leadership team (SLT) now meets every week about this topic, employees were told, though a Microsoft representative notes that company culture has long been a staple of the weekly SLT meetings.”
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella allegedly said: “I want people to point out my flaws.”
Admitting there is a problem and making an effort to fix it is often the wisest course. We shall see where Microsoft takes it from here.
Cynthia Murrell, May 20, 2019
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
