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How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment

(www.nytimes.com)
203 points tysone | 1 comments | 20 Nov 24 11:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.232s | 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. noworriesnate ◴[21 Nov 24 14:26 UTC] No.42204601[source]▶
Yeah it's amazing how we bend over backwards to make sure things work smoothly for big corporations, but simply accept the inefficiencies intrinsic to mom and pop shops. It's very important to society that huge concentrations of power be monitored for abuse of said power, therefore the inefficiency of all communications being kept is intrinsic to big corporations.