
Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down critical story - koolba
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/reporter-google-successfully-pressured-me-to-take-down-critical-story/
======
rdtsc
> Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google
> spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the
> meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been
> subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes.

So Google is releasing news to news outlets and asks for NDAs? Then they
threaten to sue for NDA violations. I read it as Google is using NDAs to
control and force only positive "news" articles. If article is painting them
in a positive light, let it slide, if it is not, threaten to sue. Did I
misunderstand it? Cause that sounds pretty sneaky.

> But an entity as powerful as Google doesn’t have to issue ultimatums. It can
> just nudge organizations and get them to act as it wants."

Very true. These systems of incentives and constraints is what Chomsky and
Herman's book Manufacturing Consent is about. Highly recommended reading.
Though in this case (if I read it correctly) it is not really that subtle but
more of a clearcut Politburo-style "news" control.

~~~
delroth
> Did I misunderstand it?

Yes. You seem to assume this was some kind of press release. It was not:
Google was previewing a new unreleased feature to one of their big clients,
and that feature preview was under NDA. It just happens that this big client
was Forbes, a news website. Forbes then failed to uphold the NDA internally
and ended up publishing an article about this, breaking the agreement. Google
PR noticed and reminded them of the NDA, and the editor in charge of the
article at Forbes agreed and took down the article.

So evil.

~~~
jfoutz
Google PR confirmed, to a reporter, on record. Not covered by nda.

Once you publicly disclose, the nda makes no sense.

~~~
DannyBee
"Google PR confirmed, to a reporter, on record. Not covered by nda. "

Sorry, but no.

Pretty much all nda's in the world would disagree with you.

Heck, let's just take the first search result for "nda sample" and look at it:
[http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/sample-
confidentialit...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/sample-
confidentiality-agreement-nda-33343.html)

Stare at clause 2, and you will see that situation would still be covered by
NDA.

In basically all NDA's, it's about who does it, not about how it's done.

(We're assuming #1's requirements were met, as most NDA's also say that.
AFAICT, the other people in the room believe #1 was met. Pretty much every
presentation by Google ever is stamped Google Confidential and Proprietary)

~~~
jfoutz
i'm not a lawyer and not interested in becoming a lawyer.

Ok, i see your point. I'll go ahead and stipulate that the reporter was a
super villain, and google was lilly white in their intentions.

Google was very lucky their lawyers were not the brain dead morons that went
on record with a reporter about confidential information. There are plenty of
articles speculating about how +1 would affect search rankings in 2011, which
gives quite a bit of room in 2(a).

Google was in a position of immense power, and their clown-car approach
_happened_ to work out for them. Seriously guys, the trick to fire is banging
the rocks together.

Do not go on record with a reporter about confidential information. it's PR
101. Just don't do it. Ever.

 _edit_

This is condescending and harsh. I'm going to leave it, rather than delete it,
because i think big G's PR department should have known better. But maybe take
the words with some salt.

------
loteck
Story says Forbes and Google had signed an NDA prior to meeting with Google,
unbeknownst to reporter. Reporter published confidential details and Forbes
unpublished reporter's story, which reporter is unhappy about.

Reporter appears to be deeply naive about the ramifications of Forbes
violating an NDA.

Reporter also thinks their axe to grind is against Google, when in fact it is
against Forbes if anyone, for being a "news" org that signs NDAs.

~~~
snarfy
You need to read the whole article. The information was released outside of
the meeting or the NDA.

> Google's e-mail doesn't mention a key part of Hill's story: that she
> confirmed the information with Google's press shop. If I'd been in Hill's
> shoes, I would have taken that as a signal that I was free to report the
> information.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _If I 'd been in Hill's shoes, I would have taken that as a signal that I
> was free to report the information_

And you would have been wrong. Unless the NDA was nontradirioanlly drafted,
this is still an agent of Google's telling an agent of Forbes confidential
information. (This is why it is important to consult with lawyers when such
contracts are involved.)

I agree, however, that much of the blame rests with Forbes' lack of internal
controls.

~~~
ubernostrum
I've worked for companies in the journalism space. Calling up legal to see if
we had an NDA with a company before reporting on them was not exactly a part
of the routine for the reporters. If this reporter had no reason to suspect
NDA -- and the way in which press inquiries were responded to certainly
wouldn't give that impression -- then it's not on the reporter.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _If this reporter had no reason to suspect NDA -- and the way in which press
> inquiries were responded to certainly wouldn 't give that impression -- then
> it's not on the reporter_

She still violated an agreement her employer signed. If Google decided to
pursue this, it would probably result in censure for Forbes. They, in turn,
would seek to exploit the reporter's employment contract. Given the number of
unknowns, it is difficult to speculate. She acted reasonably, given what she
knew, though her reaction with full information betrays naïveté. TL; DR Forbes
asking her to take down the article was perfectly reasonable. Her continuing
to discuss it now that she knows it contained confidential information is not.

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice._

------
dannyw
Is no one taking about the actual content of the critical story? Allegedly,
Google was penalising sites that did not feature the +1 button?

~~~
pgodzin
Well the point of the story is building off the narrative that Google is using
its power to suppress negative stories/think tank reports about Google.

The article doesn't really give context on what information the story that got
pulled had, and just that headline of "penalising" sites that didn't add the
feature is hard to judge properly without knowing exactly what was said. I can
certainly imagine Google trying to sell how big Google+ was going to be, and
how adding the +1 button would drive users to Forbes for engagement and
conversations. In such a theoretical argument, missing out on this engagement
would set Forbes lower on the search results, effectively penalizing them. To
me, this would be very different than an explicit punishing of sites that did
not adopt the feature, which is obviously an abuse of power.

------
briandear
“It would be a shame if anything bad were to happen to your website traffic.
By the way, if you say anything about this conversation we’ll sue you.”

— Godfather Google when promoting their +1

WHY the hell is this not a bigger deal? This is extortion.

------
michaelmrose
Using search rankings as a cudgel to force others to promote their social
network and to silence discussion of this is sufficient for me to want them
broken up.

Its easy to see that this could be misused to much worse effect. Personally I
intend to migrate my domain, my email away from google.

------
r721
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15145176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15145176)

------
federicoponzi
It's funny how this, at the moment, is behind the news “Google: it is time to
return to not being evil” by 4 positions.

------
koonsolo
Wow, after reading the comments here, it strikes me how Google can do no evil
in a lot of people's minds.

~~~
Pica_soO
HN would cheer Hitler on as a come-from-nothing entrepreneur as long as
Penemünde would launch new rockets and gadgets, and there was a good PR-Team
selling it.

The best way to avoid evil is not to look on manufactured news, but on actual
power, and strife towards distributed powercenters, struggling with one
another. Always, without ifs and buts.

------
adwhit
The comments on this article make me absolutely certain that Google has a
large PR team patrolling HN.

HN may be fairly right-wing but there is an implausible amount of apologetics
for one of the world's largest and most powerful companies engaging in plainly
coercive behaviour.

~~~
dang
This violates the HN guideline which asks you to refrain from insinuations
about astroturfing or shillage:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

On the internet, people are far too quick do this because they can't imagine
that views which seem (to them) so wrong and dumb could possibly be coming
from others in good faith. But the truth is that the opinion diversity of the
community wildly exceeds intuitive estimates. The null hypothesis, therefore,
when it feels like astroturfing simply must be going on, is that you're
underestimating the good faith of others. It's super tempting to reach for the
stick (PR! astroturf! shill! how much are they paying you!) but we know from
experience that this degrades discussion quickly, and therefore the temptation
needs resisting—hence that guideline. Real astroturfing exists, of course, but
it's a quite different species than this common astroturfy warbler. If you're
worried about it, we can investigate, but you need to email us rather than
post comments about it.

In this case Occam is even more active than usual because there's a
particularly obvious explanation for what you're seeing: the tendency of the
community to respond with objections to whatever gets posted. If the article
were slanted the opposite way, so would the comments be, not because different
'astroturfers' would show up but because the people most motivated to comment
are the ones who see something to pick holes in. Then others show up to pick
holes in the way the first round of holes was picked—invariably leading with
"I can't believe this community is so X", not realizing that they're motivated
by just the same thing as their predecessors. This dynamic is a problem in its
own right but for different reasons.

Btw your assessment of HN as 'right wing' has the same cognitive
bias—underestimating the diversity of the community—embedded in it. It's clear
(painfully clear, at least to me!) that the opposite wing sees HN just the
opposite way and has just as ready a supply of examples to point to. An
anarcho-anti-capitalist story has spent the last several hours on the front
page, etc.

~~~
pdkl95
> they can't imagine that views which seem (to them) so wrong and dumb could
> possibly be coming from others in good faith.

When asked about the motivations and perspective of a smuggler, Quark
explained[1], "No one involved in an extra-legal activity thinks of himself as
nefarious."

Bad faith would apply to a "PR team" involved in some sort of premeditated,
intentional fraud. That isn't necessary, and I don't believe I've seen that
type of accusation. I'm sure _both_ the posts from various known Google-
employees _and_ a hypothetical "PR team" are acting in good faith. Is there
even any significant difference in what a random "true believing" engineer and
a PR agent would say?

Google probably hasn't ordered a team of PR specialist to post on HN, but
self-motivated employees defending their business may be functionally similar.

[1] DS9 s06e25 "The Sound of Her Voice"

~~~
dang
To me it seems like you're changing the meaning of these terms. HN has lots of
users who work for lots of different companies and of course they're free to
(and do) share their genuine opinions just like anyone else does. That isn't
astroturfing nor shilling nor PR. Is the effect the same? I doubt it, but
that's just a point of theoretical interest.

Do people make accusations of actual fraud (astroturfing, shillage)? You bet,
all the time. That's why we added a site guideline saying not to.

