
Trump, without evidence, accuses Google of 'illegal' action ahead of election - throwaway5752
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-trump/trump-without-evidence-accuses-google-of-very-illegal-action-ahead-of-election-idUSKCN1UW1AM
======
throwaway5752
I feel that it is usually best to avoid this type of submission and that it's
very regrettable that this is the current level of public discourse in the US.
However, it's unfortunate but this is something we (collectively, the software
industry) should not ignore and - however we feel about Google - should be
aware that governments change but precedents for acceptable behavior are
stickier.

It's pretty disappointing for me that it's flagged. It's Reuters quoting the
US President directly. The headline is taken from the article verbatim.

~~~
insickness
It's the "without evidence" claim that got this flagged. On a daily basis,
major news organizations anonymously source articles but don't put "without
evidence" unless it conflicts with their political narrative. There is plenty
of evidence that tech has a bias.

~~~
throwaway5752
That's the headline that Reuters gave it. What specific evidence do you have
the Reuters has an institutional bias that makes it into the editorial process
resulting in a headline?

Without going into the particulars of your response, it is irrelevant in this
case. What is at issue is that the president accused Google of a crime. Tech
may have a bias, so then it should be possible to follow the law and charge
Google with a crime and submit evidence for the case. Don't you understand how
serious it is for the president to extrajudicially threaten people with
prosecution?

Side note: it is a useful tool of extremists to accuse specific members of the
majority of "bias". The tech community is large and diverse, and is mostly
representative of society on the whole.

~~~
insickness
> What specific evidence do you have the Reuters has an institutional bias
> that makes it into the editorial process resulting in a headline?

Trump's tweet references the former Google engineer who claims that Google has
an anti-conservative bias.

> The tech community is ...mostly representative of society on the whole.

That is absolutely not true on so many levels. People who work in tech tend to
be young, wealthy, live in cities, lean liberal, etc. That's like saying
farmers or policemen or doctors tend to be mostly representative of society as
a whole. Not true.

~~~
throwaway5752
The idea that a single (fired for cause) Google engineer is reliable evidence
for a claim of this magnitude is ridiculous.

Please find some hard data on tech demographics to support your data. Also,
realize that is beside the point. Even if everyone in tech is an enormous
liberal who tilts the scales against conservatives at every opportunity, then
producing hard evidence of this massive conspiracy shouldn't be as elusive as
it has been. Absent that data, it is grossly irresponsible for a sitting
president to threaten a company with prosecution for a matter in which they
are so grossly conflicted.

~~~
insickness
We could get into a long, drawn-out discussion about whether the evidence is
flimsy or not, but the fact of the matter is that it is evidence. End of
story. The title didn't say, "Flimsy evidence," it said "No evidence." It's
grossly incompetent of the media to misrepresent story after biased story as
"evidence" and then attach a "without evidence" to the president's words just
because they don't like the narrative.

> Please find some hard data on tech demographics to support your data.

You're the one that made the claim that tech demographics represent the
general population. You're the one who needs to prove the claim.

~~~
throwaway5752
I think the ship has sailed on this being drawn out. Since this post is
flagged and unlikely to get further attention, I will indulge a bit more
nested discussion than I would otherwise, though.

I think you mean, "accusation". Google is _accused_ of having bias. Evidence
would constitute something that shows that the accusation is true. Since we
are already parsing a headline, I'm going to have to be pedantic that
"evidence" has specific meaning. It has common meaning, too, but I think I can
lean on the president's own words: "All very illegal" puts this firmly in the
judicial context. If the accusation was made under oath, under the penalty of
perjury, then it could be considered evidence.

Let me tell you this: if technology is a growing field and is
difficult/increasingly requires specialized education it is going to have
young and educated people on the whole. Furthermore, it has more immigrants
and is more urban. If you correct for those factors (and a few others) you are
going to find that tech is more conservative than you would otherwise expect.
And tech demographics in SV is different than in Austin is different than in
Minneapolis. On the whole the differences are much smaller than most people
would believe.

ps - while I disagree with you, I don't appreciate that you are being
downvoted. I upvoted all your replies to try to counter that, and I would
appreciate if people would resist the urge to reflexively downvote opinions
they disagree with (which discourages discussions like this, which in my
opinion, has been perfectly cordial)

------
DiffEq
Well...all is fair in love and war I guess, for years now people have been
accusing him of colluding with the Russians...and without evidence.

~~~
drewrv
The president's campaign chairman (Paul Manafort), campaign manager (Rick
Gates), lawyer (Michael Cohen), and national security advisor (Michael Flynn)
would love to hear about this lack of evidence.

------
LyndsySimon
It wasn't linked from the article and it took me a moment to find it, so I've
reposted the text of the tweets in question below.

> @sundarpichai of Google was in the Oval Office working very hard to explain
> how much he liked me, what a great job the Administration is doing, that
> Google was not involved with China’s military, that they didn’t help Crooked
> Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, and that they...

> ....are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that
> has been said to the contrary. It all sounded good until I watched Kevin
> Cernekee, a Google engineer, say terrible things about what they did in 2016
> and that they want to “Make sure that Trump losses...

> ....in 2020.” Lou Dobbs stated that this is a fraud on the American public.
> @peterschweizer stated with certainty that they suppressed negative stories
> on Hillary Clinton, and boosted negative stories on Donald Ttump. All very
> illegal. We are watching Google very closely!

Here's a link to the end of the chain:
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/11587060587240407...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1158706058724040704)

~~~
LyndsySimon
Reading through this, I don't take it as "Trump accusing Google of illegal
acts" \- at least not the way that it seems to be have been perceived by
Reuters.

I read this as Trump saying that Pichai's statements seemed to contrast with
what is being said by other parties, and that the acts described by those
other parties are illegal.

That doesn't strike me as a minor distinction. It seems to me that he's using
his bully pulpit to publicize Cernekee at Google's expense. Whether or not
that is appropriate is fair game IMO, but it's not at all what the article
claimed.

~~~
cromwellian
Cernekee has asked people to contribute money to help Richard Spencer, a white
nationalist, defended skinheads, and used 8-chan compatible lingo of referring
to people with negative views of skinheads as "normies".

Even the right-wing Daily Caller thinks this is a fishy source for Trump to be
using to justify attacks on Google. In the era of domestic white nationalist
terrorism, is it really good practice for the President of the United States
to be basing public, global messaging attacking public companies based on
really flimsy sources with tangential ties to extremist communities? This
isn't the first time either, Trump often retweets questionable, un-vetted
sources with crazy theories, like the whole "3 million illegals voted"
conspiracy.

How many more lies and incompetent sourcing incidents do we need before people
stop giving him the benefit of the doubt and start demanding that the
President act with some restraint, some level of due process, some level of
balance?

[https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/google-engineer-posts-
lis...](https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/05/google-engineer-posts-listservs-
richard-spencer-golden-state-skinheads/)

~~~
cromwellian
Disappointed that members of the HN community would rather down vote than
discuss.

I wonder how they would feel a nutty Democratic President takes office, and an
ex-Chick-Fil-A, or Fox employee, who lost their job, went on to trigger that
President to go on non-stop media rants against them, put them on an enemies
list, and tried to use the power of the executive branch to settle paranoid
political vendettas.

Or, we could just imagine how people felt when the IRS was accused of
targeting "non-profit" conservative groups.

------
cloakandswagger
Trump's tweet references Kevin Cernekee, a former Google engineer who claims
that Google has an anti-conservative bias and took actions with a goal of
influencing the 2016 election.

Whether that's actually true and whether it would be illegal or not is
debatable, but the "without evidence" qualifier that Reuters added seems
strange.

~~~
throwaway5752
That is not evidence, it is hearsay.

~~~
cloakandswagger
Hearsay would be if someone else said a Google engineer told them that Google
was biased. If a firsthand accusation from an engineer is hearsay then
whistle-blowing of any type wouldn't be a thing.

~~~
throwaway5752
Yes, what he said is hearsay because it's a bunch of work rumors from an
unreliable source. I have no idea why I should trust Cernekee (let alone why
any US President should trust him enough to make this type of public
accusation), it seems like he has some "unfortunate baggage"
([https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-
cerneke...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/06/google-whistleblower-cernekee-
pushed-alt-right-views-former-colleague.html))

