
Google bans plug-in that picks out Jews - belltaco
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36459990
======
paganel
This is sort of troubling.

I think I inadvertently broke the same rules alluded to in the article, i.e. I
have a small personal project where I mapped the buildings from my Eastern
European city which used to be owned by Jewish people before they had been
nationalized by the newly-arrived communists in 1948. I use Google Maps for
displaying said buildings, and in order to "identify" a name as being Jewish I
compared the names of the owners from the nationalization law to the entries
from yadvashem.org (given enough matches for a certain name it meant that said
person was Jewish).

Now, I didn't do this because I hate Jews, on the contrary, I did it because I
am saddened by the loss of the Jewish cultural element from my city (they used
to comprise around 10-12% of the city population before WW2, most of them
emigrated to Israel by the late 1960s), and wanted to sort of make their
presence felt again.

I also wanted to, at some point, map on Google Maps the Jewish cemeteries from
my part of the country, which are almost all of them being forgotten and not
taken care of (seeing as a former Jewish presence of around ~700,000 in the
1930s now only numbers ~3,000). But this article makes me think twice. What if
someone thinks I would do that only for some Nazi-group to have a better
target?

~~~
draw_down
Um, don't you find the prospect of a Nazi group using it for that purpose
significantly more trouble than people thinking that's why you did it?

~~~
Nadya
No. Because if the group cared enough they could make their own add-on to do
just that. And it wouldn't need to go through Google to be installed for
"members".

"Is a member of a nazi-esque group" is not exclusive from "is tech literate
enough to write browser add-ons".

If you let others control your actions, even indirectly, you show them that
they have power and control over you. Many tools that are beneficial are also
"double-edged" and could be used for nefarious purposes. In most cases,
they're better off existing than not.

~~~
EGreg
I think that, in general, it comes down to opt-in vs opt-out. Facemash got the
pics without opt-in. Facebook learned from that.

------
MVf4l
The author should have provided a tool that identifies names of all different
races, then people wouldn't be calling the extension fascist. Because
advertising companies are doing the same thing.

~~~
Zikes
I would be seriously very surprised if Google didn't know (or very much want
to know) its users' nationalities.

------
randyrand
I grew up in a very non-jewish neighborhood, and then went on to college where
30% of people were jewish.

Learning Jewish names and characteristics was quite useful in being able to
better adapt myself socially, especially when it came to food, holidays, etc.
An extension like this would have no doubt been helpful.

It's weird to me that noting which names are likely jewish is taboo =/ I never
thought of it as anti-semetic or racist at the time.

~~~
munchbunny
This is where we walk a fine line around intentions and usage. The app that
was banned was using the information to direct hate speech towards people.
Your goal was probably just to navigate social interactions more fluently or
sensitively. One is racist, the other is fine. The difference is in how you're
using the information.

The line is harder to draw when you're talking about automated tools, where
something that automatically identifies Jews could be used in either way, and
now you have to decide whether a blanket ban is worth it to stamp out the bad
usages.

~~~
randyrand
It's trivially easy for bad actors to instead install a grease monkeyscript
that does the same thing. The effect it has on making anti-antisemitism harder
to carry out is very, very, literally negligible. This is about PR.

If anything we should be talking about the merits for and against this PR
move, Software Freedom, PR freedom, etc.

As a PR move, some people will like it, some wont. I personally don't like
this PR move because I relatively care more about software freedom, and I
think it's undesirable to censor apps based on the majority use case of it,
instead of what the app actually does.

~~~
munchbunny
I don't think it's really a PR move. Certainly it could be a PR move, but
whether or not GreaseMonkey exists, banning this plugin is perfectly justified
on moral grounds.

I don't disagree with you about software freedom, but this plugin sounds like
it was specifically intended to direct hate speech. Another commenter in the
tree included a link to a different posting about how the ((())) is used as a
marker to target people online. This app injects the ((()))'s.

If the plugin had used a less loaded indicator, I might see this situation
differently. However, since the plugin is using an indicator specifically
intended to mark people for abuse online, I have no doubt about its
intentions.

Edit: Link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11826647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11826647)

~~~
randyrand
Moral grounds and PR are one in the same. It's your companies morals that are
most important to PR. PR is all about communicating your companies morals.
Your morals _are_ your PR. Perhaps I'm taking a broader definition of PR than
you. I'm not just including money actively spent on PR, PR reps, etc. I'm
talking more fundamentally than that - the way your company conducts it's
business.

I understand your point. You care more about Google discouraging negative
racial speech (I don't like the phrase hate speech as its used too
subjectively) than you do software freedom. And from that perspective google
made the right PR move.

But, as someone that cares more about software freedom, freedom of speech,
etc, I think it's a bad PR move.

In the end, Google will do whatever it think is best in its opinion.

~~~
munchbunny
Your definition of "PR move" seems quite different from the common usage,
which comes with a strong connotation of "we are doing this primarily for
public image reasons," which is different from "we are doing this because we
think it's the right thing to do."

> I understand your point. You care more about Google discouraging negative
> racial speech (I don't like the phrase hate speech as its used too
> subjectively) than you do software freedom. And from that perspective google
> made the right PR move.

That's not quite my point.

In most situations where this is an issue, it's a judgement call on balancing
freedom with ethical/moral concerns. I believe in neither extreme because they
both represent systems that are broken in very obvious ways. Title IX and the
various Civil Rights Acts are pretty good examples where freedom of speech
(and some other freedoms) are explicitly limited for worthwhile reasons.

In this situation, even in its most charitable interpretation, it's probably a
tool for directing unambiguously negative racial speech that's tied to a
social agenda that is unhealthy for our society's cohesion.

My point is that in this case, the balance of considerations puts this app
clearly on the "unambiguously bad" part of this spectrum, and it's quite
possible to value software freedom or freedom of speech and still think that
Google made the right PR move.

------
michaelmrose
Anyone else find the idea of a central party with absolute control over what
addon you are allowed to run more of a concern than the bigots having their
own extension?

It seems likely that the bigots will just find other ways to share names of
people to harass.

~~~
math0ne
Pretty sure you can develop use and distribute addons outside of the chrome
store.

~~~
ultramancool
You can't, not easily at least. You used to be able to, but now Chrome addons
need to have a valid signature from Google unless you have your users extract
them, enable dev mode and install from the extracted directly and tolerate a
warning that they're in dev mode every time their browser starts.

------
xyience
This sort of thing shouldn't even be a browser-level extension anyway, but a
user script loaded with Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey.

------
panglott
More context at "The echo, explained"
[http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11860796/echo-explained-
parenthe...](http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11860796/echo-explained-parentheses-
twitter)

therightstuff.biz is just a nasty site.

------
anigbrowl
That this exists is very disturbing. Social technology firms need to consider
the potential exploitation of their technology by bad actors, an increasingly
credible prospect in today's febrile climate.

~~~
tomp
Exploited how? By adding () around people's names?!

If anything, we should worry that tech giants' weaknesses are being abused by
bad _state_ actors in ways that have _actual_ consequences, like targeting
dissidents, anti-regime journalists, ...

~~~
panglott
...as a means of coordinating harassment and intimidation campaigns.

~~~
ihsw
What coordination? There is no coordination.

~~~
empath75
The site that published the extension was coordinating an harassment campaign.

~~~
ihsw
People were finding it as a result of MSM advertising for it.

I think you're overestimating the strength of these groups -- they are roundly
mocked in social media.

~~~
empath75
Them being mocked doesn't help when you're getting death threats from them.

