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How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment

(www.nytimes.com)
154 points tysone | 4 comments | 20 Nov 24 11:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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getpost ◴[20 Nov 24 23:05 UTC] No.42199072[source]▶
If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded.

There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication. Defining that, while allowing the collection of evidence of criminal activity, won't be easy, but the current state of affairs is unworkable.

I don't wish to facilitate corporate crime, and it's obvious that some of Google's anti-competitive behavior is unlawful. But, I don't see any realistic alternative to what Google is doing in the current legal environment.

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lancesells ◴[20 Nov 24 23:23 UTC] No.42199195[source]▶
> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded.

> There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication.

Wow. This is the opposite of how I feel. Mega-corporations should have their communications logged at a much higher level than a normal business. The things that have come out in court show how they manipulated their customers (advertisers). Regardless of how you feel about advertising a portion of those companies are small mom and pop shops trying to get by. If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.

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1. Hasu ◴[20 Nov 24 23:40 UTC] No.42199338[source]▶
> Mega-corporations should have their communications logged at a much higher level than a normal business.

I agree entirely. And it's not like it's unprecedented: we treat banks like this already. They have to keep records of all internal communications for years.

And it doesn't stop banks from breaking the law, or their employees from doing so in (recorded and logged) internal communications.

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2. _DeadFred_ ◴[21 Nov 24 00:28 UTC] No.42199717[source]▶
Say we do this for car engineers. How do you communicate for continuous improvement when to acknowledge ANY issues will be used to sue the crap out of the company when accidents occur/issues come up? You are killing any sort of continuous improvement program if you do this. All that sort of communication will be switched to verbal are the requirement of Lloyds of London or whatever huge insurance company insures the business/products.
3. lxgr ◴[21 Nov 24 00:48 UTC] No.42199870[source]▶
> They have to keep records of all internal communications for years.

Except for those that happen in person, which is bizarrely arbitrary, especially in times of hybrid work. I do feel like there really should be a digital/remote equivalent to an in-person conversation – but (for specific industries only!), there isn't really.

One could even say that the status quo is a huge scope creep in terms of the original intent of the regulation, which was apparently focused more on "things one intentionally writes down", not "things that got written down because that's just the medium in which a conversation happened" or "things that were recorded because it's technically feasible" [1].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-28/the-de...

4. kelnos ◴[21 Nov 24 04:45 UTC] No.42201204[source]▶
You're right, it doesn't, but judging from how SEC enforcement actions work, banks often get nailed based on the contents of those required-to-be-recorded communications.

And the SEC will even fine financial institutions for having work-related conversations outside of the official recorded channels.