
Google Accused of Creating Spy Tool to Squelch Worker Dissent - jbegley
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/google-accused-of-creating-spy-tool-to-squelch-worker-dissent
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jmull3n
>A representative for Alphabet Inc.’s Google said, “These claims about the
operation and purpose of this extension are categorically false. This is a
pop-up reminder that asks people to be mindful before auto-adding a meeting to
the calendars of large numbers of employees.”

This sounds a lot more plausible than Google creating a chrome extension to
access data they already own. This article is nonsense.

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gjsman-1000
Bloomberg has been making lots of dumb tech articles lately...

This one, "the big hack" fiasco, and another one like 2 weeks ago I can't
remember the title of...

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brown9-2
I find it hard to believe that Google would build a custom Chrome extension
for this - they already own Google Calendar and all of the data in employee’s
calendars.

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purple_ducks
So why bother with an extension then?

As you point out, they own Calendar, they could just add it there.

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brown9-2
As the spokesperson says in the article, they might genuinely want to nag
people who create excessive meeting invites. Perhaps someone thought there was
no need to bake this into the Calendar application.

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thaumasiotes
I feel like the lesson here is really, "if you're organizing a big group to
hurt some other party, do it where they're not watching". Want to hold a
meeting to talk about how you and 300 other people are unhappy with working
conditions at Google? Why are you organizing it in Google Calendar in the
first place? _Why are you doing it on your work computer?_

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gt2
Some workplaces are really open and support their employees. I know cynics
will say that can't be trusted, but as someone who has worked for FAANG
companies, I did see a lot of employees venting anything and everything
without fear of management.

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hnaccy
>Some workplaces are really open and support their employees.

Which is why they colluded to suppress wages.

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lostmsu
The allegation here is pretty weak. They just report large meetings, which can
have many purposes.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/ZbJnx](http://archive.is/ZbJnx)

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Spooky23
You can’t have a union organization relying on employer resources.

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kerng
As a general mitigation for Google spying attempts, I'd encourage Google
employees to switch to Firefox.

Also, why is this flagged?

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iabacu
Just use means of communicating outside of the Corp network already.

Personal email list, slack, discord, blind, etc.

