Fired Google engineer James Damore, author of the infamous internal Google anti-diversity memo, and currently basking in the warm, apparently mutual embrace of the Nazi alt-right, seems to now be making something of a career out of spewing anti-Google propaganda, especially via right-wing media venues.

Amidst the accumulating pile of garbage claims that’s he’s been making, one in particular caught my eye, his statement that Google is “almost like a cult.”

My original tongue-in-cheek response to that bizarre comment was to suggest that the only “cult” I’ve seen inside Google is the “cult of coffee” — it could be argued that Google runs on equal parts of electricity, brains, and a vast river of that miracle brew. That’s a cult that I enthusiastically endorse!

But this really isn’t funny, and one has to wonder how Damore’s twisted view of Google actually developed.

One clue is that he was hired into Google directly from Harvard, where his behavior had apparently already forced the administration to publicly apologize for his sexist antics. So he presumably had no real experience inside the cultures of other major firms, and so no personal data points for realistic comparisons.

As the “old guy” in the room, I have the advantage of having seen the inner workings of a variety of technology and other firms over a significant span of years, with AT&T Bell Labs and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in their heydays being perhaps the most relevant in this context.

I consulted to Google a few years ago for a considerable span, in an “embedded” mode that gave me access to the vast majority of internal resources that are available to full-time employees, and naturally I’ve interacted with significant numbers of Googlers (Google employees) at various levels, so I feel fairly confident about my understanding of Google’s culture.

Google is not a cult.

Google in fact has the healthiest overall internal corporate culture in my experience, an open internal culture that indeed encourages robust discussion to a degree that I’ve never seen at other large firms.

This is not only important for Google, it’s crucial to Google’s users as well.

During my time inside Google, I witnessed (and in fact participated in) discussions regarding various controversial internal issues, the ultimate results of which were very much positive for Google’s users. Were some of these discussions a bit heated at times? Sure, we’re dealing with human beings with human emotions, not robots.

But — and this is crucial — they were always respectful, not just in keeping with Google’s rules for employee conduct, but as should be the case for all corporate discussions, anywhere and everywhere.

And this is where Damore went seriously astray. His sexist “manifesto” was couched in the same sort of fake science, pseudo-statistical arguments and jargon long used by racists in their propagandistic efforts to belittle and berate blacks. We’ve seen it all before. It’s as ludicrous now as it was then.

Yet that’s not even the half of it. Much more than simply scientifically bogus, Damore’s screed was broadly and accurately interpreted inside Google as a barely veiled threat against women at Google, a toxic attempt to “push them back into their place” and poison their abilities to work with men on teams going forward. Whether or not this was actually Damore’s intent is impossible to judge with certainty, but the damage was done, and even the naivete of the young is not an excuse for this kind of attack. His utterly unrepentant stance toward the events leading to his firing at least strongly suggests that this was exactly his intention, however.

Damore is apparently not without his supporters inside Google — the leaking of internal Google discussions and the subsequent targeting of innocent Googlers by the Nazi alt-right is clear enough evidence of that. In any large organization today, you’re bound to have at least a few employees willing to try poison a culture toward the furtherance of their own hateful political motives.

But the vast, overwhelming majority of Googlers are immensely proud of Google, and they have every right to be. And I believe that they will assure that Google’s open internal culture will survive Damore and the attacks against Google that he has inspired.

That’s very good news for Googlers, and for Google users like you and me.

–Lauren–

Political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli’s 16th century treatise “The Prince” is frequently dismissed as merely being a discussion of how to obtain and retain power — through any means necessary. But in actuality it’s far more, and addresses a much more complex question in which Machiavelli was intensely interested: Why throughout recorded history does evil so often triumph over good?

Or in terms of a contemporary maxim: Why do the good guys so often finish last?

Machiavelli recorded what he believed to be the uncomfortable truth that explains this seeming paradox.

Good so often fails to win out because it typically wishes to reach its goals through logic, fair process, and “good means” — while evil will lie, cheat, slash and burn in any and all ways necessary to reach its objectives, giving evil an enormous asymmetric advantage.

Machiavelli therefore postulated that if good really wants to succeed with its stated good goals, it must sometimes be willing to not play fair with evil, and be willing to suppress some of its natural instincts to always employ “honorable means” — for the sake of winning the war against evil.

Actor Cyril Cusack, in his role as a British spymaster in 1965’s “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” expressed this “the ends justify the means” philosophy quite succinctly in a famous monologue, where he noted that “Our policies are peaceful, but our methods can’t afford to be less ruthless than those of the opposition.”

Of course in reality none of this necessitates a 1:1 correspondence between the behaviors of good and evil — but it does suggest that giving evil an “even break” is the surest way to be streamrolled by that evil.

And so we come to the horrific recent events in Charlottesville, and the sea changes now shaking the Internet and broader American society to their very cores.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that none of us working on the early ARPANET (that evolved into the Internet), ever dreamed in our worst nightmares that decades later we’d need to leverage this technology to fight bigots, sexists, racists, antisemites, and other public purveyors of the worst kinds of uncivilized hate who are being gleefully encouraged by a vile, lying, sociopathic President of the United States.

For the sake of brevity I’m referring to all of these groups — neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, the KKK, the alt-right — all of them, as “Trump’s Nazis” — or simply Nazis for short. For they and Donald Trump are in a mutual embrace in the worst traditions of 1930s Germany, and represent an existential threat to the most intrinsic and important aspects of our wonderful country.

The sight of Trump’s Nazis marching openly in the streets of Charlottesville, torches proudly held high, screaming antisemitic, racist — even explicitly Hitler-era slogans at the tops of their lungs — was a plain enough signal that something had fundamentally changed in the USA, and that the rules we’ve been using up to now for dealing with such hate would need to be rapidly recalibrated.

The tragic death of Heather Heyer — murdered by one Trump’s Nazis — added an immediate urgency to reactions, even before Trump’s disgraceful attempts to draw a false equivalency between Nazis and those persons protesting Nazis — including his nauseating, repeated assertions that there were “many fine people” among the torch-bearing, Nazi-slogan screaming Charlottesville demonstrators. We’ve now heard that Heather’s brave mother is refusing to speak or meet with Trump, and that she’s receiving death threats as a result.

Since the beginnings of the Internet, we have all to a certain extent tended to treat it in some respects like a wonderful technological toy, where the real world implications of its impacts could generally be viewed rather lackadaisically much of the time.

Internet firms published Terms of Services — in many cases prohibiting hate speech — but these tended to be lightly and unevenly enforced. Trump’s Nazis quickly learned how to game associated Internet ad systems to generate income from all manners of racist, antisemitic, and other forms of video and written propagandistic hateful rhetoric.

In the wake of Trump’s election, some major Internet firms finally began to see the serious risks that their “hands off” attitude toward hate speech had exacerbated, and began taking early steps toward effectively dealing with these issues (please see: “No Donald Trump — We Will Not ‘Come Together’ with the Alt-Right Racists” — https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/13/no-donald-trump-we-will-not-come-together-with-the-alt-right-racists — and — “YouTube’s Excellent New Moves Against Hate Speech — But There’s More Work for Google to Do” – https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/06/18/youtubes-excellent-new-moves-against-hate-speech).

Then came Charlottesville, and what already had been heavy surf turned into a tidal wave of concern.

In the last week, we’ve seen Internet-related firms and others finally reacting with the kind of strong, ethical actions that many of us have long been urging in the context of dealing with hate groups on the Net.

Various of Trump’s Nazis and hate sites have finally been banned, and even the ACLU yesterday announced that it would no longer support the “speech rights” of groups that bring firearms to demonstrations — a change of staggering significance for the venerable organization.

There are naturally still some holdouts, “purists” who insist that Trump’s Nazis should be given a fair hearing, fair process, the benefit of the doubt.

DreamHost, an Internet service with whom I’ve been a satisfied customer for six years, announced that they would continue to host Nazi sites. In response, I immediately cancelled my account and told them in no uncertain terms why I was doing so.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), proclaimed that this week’s moves against Nazis were “dangerous” — and expressed concerns that such actions might snowball into the suppression of other sorts of groups in the future.

Somewhat similarly, there have been concerns in some quarters that the public identifications of publicly marching, hateful slogan-yelling Nazis are unfair in that they might “upset” some of their lives if they were exposed to friends, families, and employers — or that the risks of incorrect identifications are too high.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for the publicly marching Trump’s Nazis whose lives might be upended by being identified. That’s worlds away and completely different from, for example, the unjustifiable exposing of innocent Google employees being targeted after leaks of internal discussions. I do agree that misidentifications of public Nazis should be minimized and quickly corrected. And I agree with EFF that risks exist regarding future reactions and possible future bannings.

But these concerns pale in comparison to the immensely more critical risks that immediately face us, which are impossible to overstate in terms of importance.

Literal Nazis are marching and yelling hate slogans openly in our streets, and murdering our citizens. The President of the United States is for all practical purposes — at best — an explicit Nazi sympathizer.

The old rules simply can no longer apply. In recent weeks, and especially in the last week, a war for the ethical core of America has broken out along multiple fronts, and it is no longer acceptable for any corporations, other organizations, or individuals themselves to proclaim a “neutral” stance in the face of the evil that now openly claims our streets and accurately proclaims the support of our smugly smiling President.

At the very least, we must de-emphasize and derank these hate groups on our search and social media platforms, and ethical firms must refuse to host them in any manner. I do not call for government censorship in this context. But these companies have every right to rigorously enforce their own Term of Service against hate.

Some observers have expressed concerns that driving these hate groups and individuals “underground” will make it more difficult to “monitor” their despicable activities. Don’t worry, they’ll still be kept under watch, and being kicked back out of the mainstream — which our technology permitted them to infiltrate — will significantly limit their abilities to monetize their hate and attract new converts.

Beyond the horrific tragedy of Charlottesville, it is another tragedy that we find ourselves in the position of having to endorse the fundamental tenets of Machiavelli’s observations regarding the struggles between good and evil.

It would be joyous indeed if we could realistically fight the specter of Trump’s Nazis with kindness, fairness, with logical discussions, and with unlimited, unrestricted free speech. Yet in a battle against armed Nazis in the streets and a president who supports them with his rhetoric, that cheerfully optimistic paradigm has been rendered both impotent and impossible.

Together, we will beat back Trump’s hatemongers, and we will keep our great country great — even in the face of such shameless evil.

But there is no standing by the sidelines this time. All legal means — even ones that we would ordinarily consider to be painful or distasteful — must be employed toward winning this war — and it is a war — for the soul of our country and for the sake of our children and future generations of Americans.

–Lauren–

–Lauren–

Thanks Google!

–Lauren–

In the wake of the deadly alt-right demonstrations in Charlottesville, replete with explicit racist, antisemitic, Nazi-era imagery and chants, it’s been widely noted that Donald Trump has refused to specifically condemn the alt-right, Neo-Nazi, white supremacist, white nationalist movement that triggered the violence, nor to explicitly note the apparently dedicated alt-right beliefs of the driver who murdered one and injured many by plowing his car into a crowd of persons protesting against these groups.

That Trump has been reluctant so far to condemn these hate groups and their members, who insist that they’re doing what Trump wants them to do, and who are such a major portion of his voting base, is not at all surprising.  Perhaps in coming days he’ll feel the political need to say something more direct — but we know he’ll only do so under extreme duress.

Part of his original insipid, blame everybody on “many sides” attempts at creating false equivalence between these genuine and wannabe Nazis — vis-a-vis the protesters against them — was the all too familiar call for us to “come together as one.” But what does that really mean?

We can apply Spock-like logic to this one.

Fundamentally, we have two sides in this conflict. One side is blatantly and proudly racist, sexist, and antisemitic, spouting the same hate that their forebearers have been spewing since before the Civil War.

The other side is opposed to these hateful paradigms. 

Despite what Trump seems to imply and fervently wish, there is no moral equivalency between these two diametrically opposed attitudes. Especially in the wake of WWII — largely fought against exactly these kinds of hateful ideologies under discussion here — we’ve worked very hard to keep the Neo-Nazis and their ilk compartmented and isolated, away from the mainstream of civilized society. And until fairly recently, we were pretty successful at this.

The rise of the Internet, social media, and the income streams flowing from Net-based advertising changed this dynamic, and the election of Donald Trump was seen by these groups as a green light to go mainstream again.

They have grossly miscalculated. Major Internet firms are now pushing back on their lying, hateful propaganda in a variety of ways — see: “Google Has the Alt-Right Running Scared” (https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/12/google-has-the-alt-right-running-scared).

And the “coming together” pleas are being widely recognized as the illogical and banal babblings that they are.

Because — let’s face it — exactly who is going to come together? And how?

Are the alt-right racists and antisemites going to give up generations of Confederacy-inspired dogma? Are the rest of us supposed to accept their hateful view of the world? Or are we urged to somehow “compromise” — perhaps we move 50% toward accepting their hate, while they move 50% away from their hateful ideologies?

Ridiculous.

They’re not going to join us. And we’re most certainly not going to join them — no compromise is possible with such evil.

The only practical and ethical path forward is to push that evil back into its corner where it used to be, by condemning attempts at false equivalence and cutting off their ability to leverage our technological platforms to finance and spread their wickedness.

To the extent that their speech is not inciting violence (though all too often it does exactly that) they have a First Amendment right to spout their filth free of government interference — but the rest of us are not required to countenance their malevolence in our social media or search ecosystems.

When vampires suggest to you that “we come together” it’s pretty clear where you’re going to end up if you accept their recommendation.

It’s the same with the alt-right, their cohorts, and anyone who supports or tolerates them.

Our job now isn’t to come together with such evil — it’s to drive a stake through the heart of their newfound mainstream acceptability, and to fully take back our great country from their spreading malignancy.

–Lauren–

There’s an old saying that it’s often difficult to “see the forest for the trees” — meaning that the details can obscure our ability to understand the overall aspects of a situation. But this past week, we’ve had an unusual opportunity to get an “overhead” view of the racist, sexist, antisemitic alt-right in operation, and the patterns that have emerged are of significant interest.

In particular, fired Googler James Damore’s rapid embrace of the alt-right, and their reciprocal embrace of him as their “useful idiot” of the moment, are extremely telling, especially the latter’s public targeting of individual Google employees (please see: “Google Employees Are Being Targeted by Alt-Right Racists” – https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/10/google-employees-are-being-targeted-by-alt-right-racists). 

If you mainly frequent “mainstream” media, I don’t blame you if you’re not aware of this twisted new romance and its direct ties to the pro-Trump media machine, all well documented in this excellent article.

After all, exploring the sordid swamps of alt-right websites is not everyone’s cup of tea.

But if you take the time to do so (I recommend not doing this after a meal, by the way) it quickly becomes obvious why wannabe Nazis (and the genuine Nazis, for that matter) have so quickly elevated Damore to alt-right hero status, already weaving his interviews — that he gleefully provided to alt-right superstars — into their propaganda writings and videos, with a full-bore attack against Google.

It’s all about the money.

For most of their existence, the major search and social media firms have generally treated the vast majority of content as being pretty much equivalent in terms of their appropriateness, a laissez–faire approach as it were, with the exception of clearly illegal materials.

But especially in the wake of Trump’s election, it has become clear that the essentially egalitarian nature of related ad network systems in particular have provided a massive funding stream to the worst of the alt-right hate sites and their affiliated fake news and propaganda operations, which — under the influence of their Russian masters — played a major role in electing the vile, lying sociopath now (occasionally, when he’s not playing golf) in the Oval Office.

Recently, the major firms like Google, Facebook, and others have taken steps that many of us have long recommended, and have begun more rigorously enforcing their existing Terms of Service (TOS) to reign in hate speech content that has been suckling on their ad money teats for far too long. These firms are free to determine what is or is not suitable for their platforms. The First Amendment — frequently touted by the hate groups — only applies to government actions related to speech.

Fact-checking systems are being deployed by Google and Facebook. Google has taken steps to eliminate monetization of various hate-related materials, especially in the case of YouTube videos. Google’s YouTube is also taking actions to prevent many hate and associated videos from appearing in “suggested video” listings, further limiting the reach of this vile content.

While it could be argued (and in fact I have argued) that much of this material should be removed from these platforms entirely under TOS rules, the paradigms of preventing the monetization of hate speech, and limiting its ability to surface for unsuspecting users who never asked to see it, appear to be useful approaches.

And if you visit the alt-right swamp sites, you’ll quickly see the panic ensuing over the realization that their income flows from the mainstream ad systems and ad networks are at serious risk.

Which brings us back to James Damore, who seems (likely unknowingly) to be playing a 2017 version of the unenviable role “Fool King for a Day” from the classic 1973 film “The Wicker Man.”

The alt-right doesn’t actually care about Damore of course. They see him as an easily disposable figurehead. He’s someone that they can use to amplify their ranting displeasure with Google’s finally taking reasonable actions to reign in the monetization of alt-right hate, lies, and other bile. He’s someone to carry high on a paper mache throne as they march on Google offices in a desperate attempt to regain their previous ability to leverage these platforms for their hate, lies, and other evils.

Some in the alt-right have already accurately concluded that their efforts in these regards will very likely fail, so they’re calling for their hate-brethren to create their own search and social media ecosystems — all hate all the time, as it were. Some such systems are already operational. To assist with their site branding, I’ll note that a serviceable Swastika is available as Unicode character U+534D (you might want to flip it over to match Third Reich standards, but that’s up to you).

I approve of such “all the rotten apples in a few barrels” approaches. 

I do not call for government censorship of their evil rants. If they wish to use their own systems for their vile propaganda, and solicit funds from like-minded creatures of the night, I have no objection, so long as the flow of click income from unsuspecting, ethical folks visiting mainstream sites has been eliminated.

Once you get above the treetops, the shape of the forest can be fairly straightforward to discern, and so it is with the war between the alt-right and Google.

Keep up the good work Google. We’re proud of you.

–Lauren–

In a post earlier today — Reactions to My Own “Google Manifesto” (https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/10/reactions-to-my-own-google-manifesto) — I noted the level of moronic, racist, antisemitic, and other alt-right bile that I’ve received in response to Here’s My Own Damned “Google Manifesto” (https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/09/heres-my-own-damned-google-manifesto), which was posted a day earlier.

Now I’m hearing from Googlers — Google employees, some of whom I’ve known for years — who feel physically threatened by the escalating situation triggered by the sexist proclamations of now fired Googler James Damore, who has allied himself with alt-right racists, and apparently is now comparing the well-paid, perk-rich jobs at Google with Soviet-era forced labor (at least if we judge from the newly featured “Goolag” t-shirt on what appears to be his new Twitter account — which is currently unconfirmed).

But it’s not this twisted clown that is of primary concern. Alt-right superstars are latching onto these circumstances in ways that threaten actual physical violence — which is of course in keeping with their Nazi heritage.

Individual Googlers who argued against Damore’s sexist manifesto — their identities made public when internal Google discussions were leaked — are being targeted by alt-right superstars and others in the alt-right ecosystem — in postings that have enormous readerships. Plans for potentially violent marches on Google offices have also been announced.

Back when I was consulting to Google several years ago, I never would have imagined that leaking of this sort or magnitude would ever take place, particularly leaks that could foreseeably trigger physical violence of the worst sort.

This is an intolerable state of affairs.

That we’ve reached this dangerous juncture is a direct consequence of normalizing racist, antisemitic, sexist hate groups thanks to the tacit support of Donald Trump and his white supremacist cronies.

And the tech industry overall bears responsibility as well. As a group we were far too slow to recognize that the racist and otherwise lying hate spew of “fake news” and false rhetoric — pouring forth from the “new” alt-right and traditional white supremacist groups — cannot safely be permitted to monetize or otherwise leverage our search and social media platforms to spread their filth.

For many years I’ve been battling against the prevalent attitude in tech that our job is just to build the systems and let the content fall where it may — “all content created equal” as it were.

All content is not equal. And by handing these groups our giant megaphones of servers, switches, and bandwidth, we are complicit in the monstrousness that has now been unleashed — not just here in the USA, but around the world.

We helped to release this evil genie from his bottle. As extraordinarily difficult as the task will be, it’s our responsibility to stuff him back inside.

–Lauren–

UPDATE (August 10, 2017): Google Employees Are Being Targeted by Alt-Right Racists

– – –

The now fired Google employee who wrote the now infamous sexist internal memo has been busy giving interviews to alt-right racists of the worst kind, where he’s spouting fake science of the same sort promoted by segregationists decades ago, and blaming everyone but himself for this situation.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading the reactions to Here’s My Own Damned “Google Manifesto” that I posted less than 24 hours ago. Some of these are in various public venues, most are arriving in my inbox –(https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/09/heres-my-own-damned-google-manifesto).

We can leave aside for now the majority of these reactions — which agree with me that Google not only was correct to fire that jerk, but really had no ethical alternative to doing so. I appreciate these of course, but they don’t provide us with the really interesting data.

On the other hand, the negative reactions are most telling.

A relative few attempt to make reasoned arguments in favor of the ex-Googler, but of course fail miserably since the “science” arguments on which he based his rant are so fundamentally and completely flawed.

But polite disagreements are always welcome.

As you’ve no doubt surmised by now, the vast bulk of the disagreeing reactions were anything but polite.

It’s not just that they’re vile, crude, obscene, sexist, racist, antisemitic, threatening, and otherwise so despicable. What’s fascinating is how just plain stupid the authors appear to be.

Apparently most of them dropped out of school at third grade. Or perhaps its inbreeding. In any case, you’d be hard pressed to find a more illustrative collection of alt-right morons — incapable of correctly writing sentences even of just a few words, spelling skills roughly equivalent to your average brick, and of course “stuck” caps-lock keys. Many are unable to even spell common obscenities correctly. Sad!

Perhaps most amusing are the ones who incorrectly assume from my first name that I’m female (and have apparently never bothered to view my “official” photo — https://lauren.vortex.com/lauren.jpg), and so are not only using inappropriate obscene terminology for referencing me, but are also rudely and obscenely suggesting physically impossible personal interactions.

I don’t often quote the Bible, but Proverbs 13:20 seems appropriate here:

UPDATE (August 10, 2017): Reactions to My Own “Google Manifesto”

– – –

I feel like vomiting. Since the saga of the leaked, sexist “manifesto” authored by a (most appropriately fired) ex-Google employee started to hit the media, I’ve been feeling increasingly ill.

Not just ill. Also depressed. And angry. The last is the worst. I don’t like to be angry. As the old TV meme says, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

I’ve been writing about this for days and doing multiple radio interviews on the topic. Each time, I’m even more angry.

I don’t care much about the jerky ex-Googler himself, whom we now know performed a sexist skit at Harvard for which the administration formally apologized — making it clear that his sexist attitudes were not suddenly formed after he joined Google.

Nor do I care about his educational background — I’ve known great scientists who couldn’t punch their way out of a paper bag when it comes to understanding the real issues of people and social policies.

Hell, he’s still young, and perhaps he can still be salvaged.

Or perhaps not, given the example of a vile, 71-year-old sociopath, by all accounts a sexist and serial woman abuser since his youth, now splitting his time between playing President of the United States and playing golf while running up a historic leisure travel bill on the taxpayers’ dime.

So it’s not really the immature kid’s manifesto alone that is most sickening — it’s the reactions after it was leaked from Google that show the depths of depravity that creatures like Donald Trump have normalized.

It’s therefore not surprising that criminals and other alt-right, racist superstars of the worst sort have rushed to the defense of the fired Googler, and are proclaiming boycotts against Google.

Good luck with that, guys.

In fact, the racist, sexist, antisemitic Nazis and Nazi-wannabees — or in other words, a large percentage of Trump’s support base — have been increasingly pissed off at Google, Google’s YouTube, and other major Silicon Valley firms.

Why? Because observers (including myself) have been urging these firms to stop treating the lying, fake news, false propaganda spewing sites as if they were legitimate news or fact sources, and now the large search and social media firms are beginning to crack down on those endless spews of violent hate speech and the Russian-directed lie machines. It particularly irks the hate-complex when they can no longer monetize their filth or use major suggestion engines to try sucker in new converts.

In a horrid, ironic way we probably need to thank Trump for the fact that the dangers represented by the white supremacists and their assorted bands of cronies have finally became too obvious to be ignored, now that they’ve gone public after crawling out from under their rocks.

And I for one don’t care in the least how long it took for these major firms to finally act against them — the point is that actions are now being taken, and everyone who cares about keeping the USA great, and not permitting it to be flushed down the toilet of racist, sexist, alt-right sickos, should be supporting these ongoing anti-hate efforts.

The fired Googler case isn’t even a close call. His sexist manifesto was chocked-full of the same kind of fake science, fake extrapolations, garbage arguments that you can find virtually word for word in old essays arguing that blacks are inferior and unsuitable for technical jobs of any kind.

Disseminating that kind of garbage inside Google, without Google then taking action to condemn his screed, would have led to a toxic work environment — especially for women — that Google could not ignore. To NOT have fired him would have been absolutely wrong. He ended his own ability to effectively work in the team-oriented environment of Google going forward. He wrote what he wanted to write, but seemingly didn’t understand that one must be responsible for the consequences of your words on your coworkers.

Of course, the fact that the Nazi crowd has rallied around that author doesn’t mean that the problem is solely in their sphere.

That fact is that Google — like virtually all tech-oriented firms — has had diversity problems and has been working diligently to improve the diversity of their own workplace. That’s part of what makes the now fired Google employee’s manifesto so harmful — it was seemingly calculated to throw a monkey wrench into Google’s efforts in this regard.

And to be utterly clear about this, these diversity issues when it comes to women in the tech workplace have nothing whatever to do with “biology” as he claimed — but have everything to do with men treating women like dirt, as I’ve seen throughout my career and noted in: “Meet the Guys: The Jerks of Computer Science” – https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/02/27/meet-the-guys-the-jerks-of-computer-science

So these problems are not new, but we now face the specter of the alt-right racists and their ilk — cheered on by Donald Trump and his cronies — trying to turn back the clock to normalize or even expand conduct that is unacceptable in any civilized 21st century society.

There is no more middle ground. The time for neutral stances regarding sexism, racism, and associated hate leaders and hate groups has long since passed.

If you do not take a firm stance against such hate, you are by definition helping to pave the way for the expansion of its malignancies.

When firms like Google — imperfect as are we all — act to push back on sexism, racism, and other hate as in this case and more generally across their ecosystems — they should be strongly supported in those actions.

In a very real sense, we’ve reached the point where we each must decide if we’re absolutely and firmly opposed to alt-right and other hatemongers, or if we’re willing to continue tolerating them, and so in essence tacitly partnering with them. None of us can sit this one out.

Make your choice.

–Lauren–

Last night I spoke for several minutes on the national “Coast to Coast AM” radio program about the controversy over the Google employee who wrote an inflammatory internal post regarding Google’s diversity efforts, in which he asserted that women are biologically unsuited for technical work. That document was leaked from Google and has now become a global story.

The MP3 audio file of my interview for download is:

https://lauren.vortex.com/lauren-c2c-8-6-2017.mp3

or you can hear it directly via this player:

Brief segments of this clip at the beginning and end include discussion of an unrelated social media issue in the United Kingdom.

My full blog post regarding this Manifesto controversy is:

“A Googler’s Leaked Google ‘Diversity’ Manifesto — Lose-Lose-Lose” – https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/08/05/a-googlers-leaked-google-diversity-manifesto-lose-lose-lose

As always, my thanks to show host George Noory and the entire C2C team for so frequently providing me the opportunity to discuss the realities of technology and technology policy issues with their very large audience. Background information about the program is at: 

https://www.wired.com/2006/02/coast-to-coast-am-is-no-wack-job/

Be seeing you.

–Lauren–

UPDATE (August 9, 2017):  Here’s My Own Damned “Google Manifesto”

UPDATE (August 7, 2017):  Audio from My Radio Discussion About the Leaked Google “Diversity” Manifesto Controversy

– – –

The topic of the leaked — and already widely viewed and discussed — Google “diversity” document (an internal opinion “manifesto” authored by a single Googler, not a statement of Google policy) is sufficiently depressing that I’m already getting tired of the queries I’m receiving about it.

I view the leak itself as an extraordinarily serious breach of trust. This breach stands apart from a separate issue — was it appropriate for such a missive to have been written and disseminated even in Google’s extraordinarily frank and open internal discussion ecosystem? That discussion environment overall provides major benefits to Google and ultimately to its users.

While the issues are separate, they together create a cascade of damage, a true lose-lose-lose situation.

It seems impossible to tease out any positive aspects from the manifesto. Even if we leave aside its foundational and the other fallacies which permeate its structure, any reasonable, dispassionate observer would predict that such a document could only do damage — not only to individuals but potentially to Google itself if it was propagandized by Google Haters — which now indeed seems to be the case if I judge by various of the queries filling my inbox.

Enough such damage would have been done if the manifesto had stayed purely internal to Google. That such an inflammatory document might have been expected to have a significant risk of being leaked does not in any way excuse the leaking, which has poured a tanker car of gasoline onto the already blazing fire.

What perhaps saddens me the most about this situation is that I’ve seen similar twisted, sexist claims — as in that Googler’s manifesto — so many times over the years. For all our talk, for all our efforts, such malignant views continue to persist. In the age of negative role models from vile sociopaths like Donald Trump, they may even be expanding.

I touched on some of this several years ago in “Meet the Guys: The Jerks of Computer Science” (https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/02/27/meet-the-guys-the-jerks-of-computer-science) several years ago, and I am unconvinced that the situation described there has improved in any notable aspect to date.

And all of this — both the abominable manifesto itself and the leaking of same — gives me the strong urge to punch my fists into my screens and pray for the aliens to show up to put Earth out of its misery.

But we can’t always have a happy ending.

Be seeing you.

–Lauren–

There’s a story going around currently about a group of researchers who claim to have de-anonymized a variety of browser users’ search data. The fact that proper anonymization of data is a nontrivial task is quite well known. Sloppy “anonymization” can be effectively as bad as no anonymization at all.

But the interested observer might wonder … where did these researchers get their search data in the first place?

It turns out that the main source of this data are the individuals or firms behind third-party browser extensions and apps, which provide or sell the user data that they collect to data brokers and to other entities.

And so we open up a very big can of worms.

The major browsers (e.g., Google’s Chrome) provide various means for users to install extensions and applications (also known as “add-ons” or “plugins” or “apps”) to extend browser functionalities. While the browser firms work extensively to build top-notch security and privacy controls into the browsers themselves, the unfortunate fact is that these can be undermined by such add-ons, some of which are downright crooked, many more of which are sloppily written and poorly maintained.

Ironically, some of these add-on extensions and apps claim to be providing more security, while actually undermining the intrinsic security of the browsers themselves. Others (and this is an extremely common scenario) claim to be providing additional search or shopping functionalities, while actually only existing to silently collect and sell user browsing activity data of all sorts.

The manner in which these apps and extensions end up being installed can be insidious, and relates to the fundamental complexity of the underlying security models, which are not understood by the vast majority of users, especially non-techie users. For the record, similar confusion exists regarding smartphone app security models, e.g. for Android.

The bottom line is that most users, faced with a prompt to install an extension or app that claims to provide useful functions, will simply grant the requested permissions, no matter how privacy and/or security invasive those permission actually are.

And why should we expect these users to do anything differently? Expecting them to really understand what these permissions mean is ludicrous. We’re the software engineers and computer scientists — most users aren’t either of these. They have busy lives — they expect our stuff to just work, and not to screw them over.

I recently helped an older Chrome user whom I know clean out their Chrome browser on Windows 10. As is routine for me, I used Chrome Remote Desktop for this purpose (please see: “Google Asked Me How I’d Fix Chrome Remote Desktop — Here’s How!” – https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/07/24/google-asked-me-how-id-fix-chrome-remote-desktop-heres-how).

He must have had 25 or 30 “crap” extensions installed that I needed to individually remove (some of which appeared to have been “slave” extensions installed by other “master” extensions). He claimed not to have knowingly installed any of them. Almost certainly, these were all prompted installations at sites he visited once or twice, with which he could have easily interacted without installing any of these add-ons at all.

But these sites push users very hard to install these privacy-invasive, data sucking extensions, and as noted above most users will grant requested permissions, implicitly assuming that they’re protected by the browser itself.

Underlying browser security models can complicate the situation. For example, one of the most common — and most easily abused — categories of permissions requested by extensions and apps is one that grants read and write access to all data at all websites you visit — or even that *plus* all data on your computer!

Now, here’s the kicker. While these sorts of permissions are the golden ticket for abuse by crooked and sloppy extensions or apps, there are many legitimate, well-written add-ons that also require such permissions to operate.

But how is the average user to make a reasonable determination in this context, faced with a site urging them to install an add-on that is being portrayed as necessary? Most users don’t have a site reputation database at hand for reference — they just want to get on with what they’re trying to do online.

I will note here that I know of various corporate environments where security policies absolutely prohibit the installation of apps or extensions with such broad permissions, with few if any exceptions (e.g. unless they’re of internal origin and have passed rigorous internal security and privacy audits).

I don’t have a brilliant “magic wand” solution to this set of problems.

Personally, I install as few browser extensions and apps as possible unless I am absolutely confident in the reputation of their origins, and I absolutely minimize the installation of any add-ons that require broad permissions either to websites or the local machines. Sometimes there are situations where an app or extensions looks very useful and enticing — but I still need to say “no go” to them the vast majority of the time.

One last thing. I urge you to check right now to see what extensions and/or apps you have installed, and remove the ones that you don’t need (or worse, don’t even recognize). For most versions of Chrome, you can do this by entering on your browser address bar:

chrome://extensions

and:

chrome://apps

On the extension list, a little trash can at the right is where you click to remove an extension. On the app list page (page select is at the bottom of that page), right click to access the menu that includes a “Remove from Chrome” entry. On Chrome OS, you may not be able to access the app page(s) using the link above. If the link doesn’t work in this case, click on the white circle in the bottom of screen toolbar to bring up the app page.

Is this all too complicated? Yep, it sure is.

Be seeing you.

–Lauren–

Rarely does a day go by when I don’t get an email from some outraged soul who has seen on some wacky site — or perhaps heard on a right-wing radio program somewhere — the lie that Google sells users’ personal information to advertisers. I got a phone call from one such person very recently — an individual who hardly would calm down enough for me to explain that they’d been bamboozled by the Google Haters.

‘Cause Google doesn’t sell your data. Not to advertisers, not to anyone else. But the falsehood that they do so is one of the most enduring of fabrications about Google.

To be sure, Google is partly responsible for the long life of this legend, because frankly they’ve never done a really good job of explaining for non-techies how the Google ad system works, and Google ad relevance is often so accurate that users naturally assume (again, falsely) that their browsing habits or other data were handed over to third parties.

Here’s what actually happens. Let’s say that you work in warp engine design and testing. So you’re frequently using Google to search for stuff like antimatter injectors and dilithium crystals.

Now you start seeing “top of page” search results ads from some mining operation on Rigel XII for exactly the raw crystals that you need, and at an attractive price with free shipping, too! (Yes Trekkies, I realize that in this early episode they were actually referred to as “lithium” crystals — go tell it to Spock.)

But you wonder: Did Google provide my search history to those ragtag and somewhat disreputable bachelor miners — out there on a planet that is so windy that you clean pots by hanging them out to be sandblasted?

How else could that ad have been targeted to me?

The answer is simple, and you don’t need a dose of Venus Drug to understand it. (OK, happy now, Trekkies?)

The miners create an ad that is aimed at users who are looking for warp drive paraphernalia, based on the logical keywords — like dilithium, for example.

When Google’s ad personalization algorithms detect that your search terms are relevant to that ad, Google displays it to you. The miners back on Rigel XII don’t even know that you exist at this point. They didn’t display the ad to you, Google did.

Now, if you proceed to click on their ad and visit the miners’ sale site, you’ll be providing more information to them, much as you would when visiting other sites around the Web.

But if you don’t click on the ad, there’s no connection between you and the advertiser.

And you don’t have to simply accept Google’s default handling of ad personalization. Over at:

https://adssettings.google.com

you can change Google ad personalization settings or even disable ad personalization entirely.

So the next time that someone tries to fervently sell you the big lie that Google is selling your personal data, tell them that they’re wrong and that they’re a stick in the Mudd.

Be seeing you.

–Lauren–

Eleven and half or so years ago, a younger and more darkly bearded version of myself gave an invited talk at Google’s L.A. offices that I called “Internet & Empires” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGoSpmv9ZVc). Things were still pretty new there — I believe I was the first external speaker that they taped, and since there was no podium yet I presented the talk while sitting on the edge of a table (which actually turns out to work pretty well).

The talk had been scheduled well in advance, so it was a total coincidence that Google had earlier that day announced their (ultimately ill-fated) agreement with China to censor Chinese search results as demanded by the Chinese government.

I had already planned to talk about topics such as censorship and net neutrality. I even had managed to work in a somewhat pithy reference to the classic 1956 sci-fi film “Forbidden Planet” and the downfall of the Krell.

Back at the time of that talk, I was fairly critical of Google’s privacy and data management practices in some key respects. In ensuing years, Google evolved into a world-class champion for data privacy, user control over data, data transparency, and data portability. I’ve been honored to work with them and to put considerable thought into the complex ways that Google-related issues can be seen as proxies for critical policy issues affecting the entire Internet.

During the talk, I mentioned the newly announced China situation. I explained that while I understood the reasoning behind the decision to launch a censored version of Google Search for China (essentially, that some access to Google Search was better than none, and might help push China toward reforms), I suspected that this effort would end badly.

My main concern was based on history. Once authorities and governments start down the censorship path, they virtually always attempt to expand its reach, both in terms of content and geography. Government censorship is in many ways the classic example of the “camel’s nose under the tent” — you almost inevitably end up with a complete camel smashing everything inside.

And so it was with China and Google. China kept demanding more and more control, more and more censorship. Ultimately, Google reversed their decision, and wisely ceased participation in China’s vast censorship regime. Some other firms have not been as ethical as Google in this regard, and are still kowtowing to China’s censorship czars.

Fast forward to today. Depressingly, we find that in major respects the censorship and net neutrality issues that I discussed more than a decade earlier are in even worse shape now.

Dominant ISPs have been using dishonest political gamesmanship — often outright lies — to trample net neutrality, as if they weren’t already raking in the dough from often captive subscribers.

And in the censorship realm, the threats are more ominous than ever — not just from totalitarian countries like China or Russia, but from western countries as well — like Canada. Like France. And more broadly, from the European Union itself.

Today we’ve learned that Apple has reportedly surrendered to Chinese officials and has suddenly removed VPN apps from the Chinese users’ version of Apple’s App Store. These apps are crucial not only to the free speech of Chinese users but also in many situations to their physical safety in that dictatorial regime.

In some countries, a single Facebook post deemed to be critical of the local royal or elected despot — or other government officials — can trigger decades-long prison sentences.

And even in the so-called “enlightened” western environs of Canada, France, and the European Union more generally, domestic officials are attempting to impose global censorship over Google search results (via the horrific “Right To Be Forgotten” and other twisted means) — all in an effort to each become censors dictating what everyone else on this planet can see.

Success in such efforts would result in a lowest common denominator rush to the bottom, with politicians and other leaders around the world all attempting to cleanse search results of any materials that they find to be politically or otherwise personally offensive — or even simply inconvenient.

Unfortunately, all of this is very much in keeping with the predictions that I made in that Google talk years ago.

And here’s a new prediction. While Google will valiantly battle these oppressive forces in courts, in the long run the masters of censorship will continue to expand their choking grip on free speech globally, unless more drastic measures are deployed by free speech champions.

Imagine that you own a large store stocked with all manner of merchandise for a wide variety of customers. Now let’s say that you had some customers who insisted that they wanted to continue patronizing your store, but that they personally disapproved of various items that you stocked, and demanded that you remove them — even though those items were still very important to the vast majority of your other customers.

Most likely you’d tell the customers making those demands to either grow up — realize that they are not the only fish in the sea — or to take their business elsewhere. Period.

This is very much the kind of situation that Google and various other large Internet service firms are now facing. Users around the world demand access to the services that these firms provide, but increasingly their own governments are demanding to dictate not only what users in their own countries can access and see, but are also demanding the right to censor other users everywhere on Earth.

Here’s my admittedly drastic proposal to deal with these scenarios: Cut those countries off from the associated services. No more Facebook, no more Google Search or Gmail for them. No more cloud services. And so on.

Let these countries’ leaders deal directly with their citizens who would no longer have access to the global services on which they’ve come to depend for their business and personal communications, entertainment, and much more in their daily lives.

Tough love? You betcha. But this could end up being necessary.

If the would-be global censorship czars can’t behave like decent 21st century adults, with an understanding that they do not have the right to dictate planetary content controls, then let them build their own services in their own countries using their own money — but no longer would they be permitted to leverage our services to dictate terms to the rest of us.

Obviously, given the vast sums of money at stake, taking such a path would be a very difficult decision for these firms. But I would assert that permitting domestic governments veto power over your global services will be absolutely deadly in the long run, and that the time to stamp out this malignancy is now, before it spreads even more and has achieved a veneer of a new, repressive status quo.

In fact, the odds are that serious threats of service cutoffs would likely serve to cause some major rethinking in government circles, well before actual cutoffs would be necessary.

The Chinese “death by a thousand cuts” torture seems applicable here. Given escalating censorship trends, it’s difficult to postulate how to successfully fight this scourge through litigation alone in the long run. Meanwhile, individual censorship orders are likely to expand massively both in scope and number, eating away ever more of global free speech by increasing degrees each and every time.

While continuing to fight this trend in the courts is of course an appropriate primary tactic, I’m ever more convinced that the sorts of drastic actions outlined above — details to be determined — should be under consideration now, so that rapid deployment is possible if current censorship trends continue unabated.

It is indeed extremely unfortunate that we’ve reached the point where actions such as these must even be seriously contemplated, but that’s the reality that we now are facing.

Be seeing you.

–Lauren–

A Google “Project Fi” user contacted me on Google+ this afternoon, expressing his extreme displeasure at a Gmail message (please see image below) that he received a week or so ago from that project. His comment: “I’m sure they’re trying to tell me something, but I can’t really read it.”

Not surprisingly, it’s in the dandy new Google low-contrast font style — oh so pretty and oh so useless to anyone with less than perfect vision.

Perhaps he saw my recent post “How Google Risks Court Actions Under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)” — https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/06/26/how-google-risks-court-actions-under-the-ada-americans-with-disabilities-act — in any case he thought that I might be able to help with this overall accessibility issue.

Well, I’m willing to keep writing and talking about this until I’m Google blue, green, yellow, and red in the face — but so far, I’m not having much luck.

I’ll keep on tryin’ though!

–Lauren–

I don’t currently use Twitter all that much — it’s become loaded down with too much timeline content in which I’m utterly disinterested, and I’m far happier with ad-free Google+ (https://google.com/+laurenweinstein). But I do post on Twitter those items that I hope are interesting, nearly every day, via https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein.

I’m also more than happy to stay engaged with my Twitter followers. Lately though, a number of them have been emailing me and contacting me through other means, asking why I’ve been ignoring their replies and other routine Twitter-based interactions.

The reason is simple — Twitter doesn’t tell me about you any more. At least, not in a way that’s useful to me.

Until early this month, Twitter would send me a short, individual notification email message for mentions, replies, new follows, retweets, and likes. These were easy for me to scan using my available tools as part of my normal email workflow.

But now, Twitter no longer sends these individual notifications. Instead, once a day I receive an utterly useless “digest” from them, only providing me with the counts in each of those categories. No clue as to the contents. For example, the one I received today looks like this:

– 6 new followers – See them
> https://twitter.com/i/notifications
– 32 likes – See them
> https://twitter.com/i/notifications
– 3 replies – See them
> https://twitter.com/i/notifications
– 29 Retweets – See them
> https://twitter.com/i/notifications
– 5 mentions – See them
> https://twitter.com/i/notifications

A Twitter help page claims that this is to reduce my “email clutter.” It wasn’t clutter to me, it was how I stayed on top of my Twitter activities. 

Pretty clearly, this change was made to reduce Twitter’s email load, and to try drive users more frequently back to their site.

Frankly, I don’t have the time to keep running back to that one ridiculously long page on their site to plow through all of those notifications, which are stuffed in there like a Thanksgiving turkey. I presume this isn’t a big problem for folks who live on Twitter all day long, but it’s a total no-op for me.

So unless somebody knows of a way to get those individual email notifications back again (screen scraping apps, perhaps?) you can safely assume that your Twitter interactions with me will almost certainly be going into a black hole for now.

And that’s really a shame. Or to put it another way — shame on you, Twitter.

–Lauren–

Since my posting a few days ago of “Another Google Accessibility Failure: Chrome Remote Desktop” — https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/07/21/google-accessibility-failure-crd — I’ve been contacted by a number of Googlers whom I know, asking me specifically how I’d address the accessibility problems that I noted therein. These queries were all friendly of course — not of the “put up or shut up” variety!

OK, I’ll bite. And Google can have this one for free — but like I’ve said before, this isn’t really rocket science.

Before I begin, I’ll answer another question that a number of readers have posed to me in response to that same post.

Why do I think that Google has so long ignored these sorts of problems with Chrome Remote Desktop (and various other of their products, for that matter)?

Without addressing Chrome Remote Desktop (CRD) or Google products specifically in this context, I’ll offer one possible explanation.

Around the information tech industry, it just isn’t usually considered to be career enhancing to be working on older software fixes and/or improvements, even when that application is fairly important and widely used.

By and large, most software engineers feel that rising on the career ladder is facilitated by working on new and “sexy” projects, not by being assigned to the “maintenance detail” — so to speak.

That’s a difficult corporate cultural problem, but a very important one to solve.

All right, let’s get back to Chrome Remote Desktop.

Here’s how I would fix the most glaring accessibility problem that I’ve noted regarding CRD operations — the damned “share mode ten minute timeout” (which, as I’ve noted in the referenced post above, actually can push users into terrible security practices when they attempt to work around the sorts of problems that the timeout causes — please see that previous post for details about this).

There are various somewhat complex ways to approach this issue — such as permitting the local user (the user who is sharing their screen with a remote user) to specify a desired timeout interval.

But the most straightforward and likely most useful approach for now in most cases would be to permit the local user to simply disable that timeout at the start of individual sessions, for the duration of those sessions.

Currently, when a local user provides a one-time CRD access code to a remote user, and the remote user attempts to connect using that code, the local user is presented with a dialogue box (which varies a bit across operating system platforms) that typically looks like this:

Obviously, only the local user can interact with this dialogue. They click “Share” if they wish to accept the connection.

And this is the obvious location to place a “session timeout disable” flag, as emphasized in my quickie demo mock-up here:

It’s that simple — and that logical. This checkbox (which defaults to timeouts enabled) only applies to the current session. The usual ten minute timeout is automatically restored for the next session.

– – –

Addendum: As suggested in the first comment on this post today, it would be reasonable to also provide this same timeout disable option in the actual ten minute timeout popup dialogue boxes themselves, so that even if the local user did not disable timeouts at the start of a session, they’d be able to later disable them for the remainder of the session if they so chose.

– – –

We probably should remind the local user that they’ve disabled timeouts for a session. There are logical places to do this, too.

CRD already provides a warning to local users that they’ve shared their desktop. For example, in Chrome OS (e.g. Chromebooks), a dialogue box like this is used:

An information notification is also popped up for the user with the same information in the Chrome OS notification area.

The CRD implementations for other OSes behave similarly. Windows systems provide a “currently sharing” dialogue box similar to the above, and also display a “floating” notification:

For all of these info notifications when timeouts have been disabled, it would be straightforward to add within them a text “warning” such as:

Timeouts have been disabled for this session.

If we’re feeling particularly paranoid about this — even given all of the other security elements that have already been satisfied to get the sharing connection open in the first place — we might want to add some sort of new warning box that can’t be covered, minimized, or moved by remote users, providing the same reminder that timeouts have been disabled.

That’s pretty much the whole enchilada. This paradigm should not be difficult to implement, and from security, usability, and accessibility standpoints overall it’s definitely a big plus for Chrome Remote Desktop users.

OK, Google — the ball’s back in your court!

–Lauren–

Two of the most active Google users whom I know are in their mid-90s. They use Google Search and News. They use Gmail. I moved one of them from Windows to a Chrome OS Chromebox, and I recently showed the other how to use Google Docs as an alternative to paying Microsoft’s ransom for a full-blown version of Office on their new Windows 10 system. Frankly, they’re better versed at using their computers and Google services than some users I know who are less than half their ages.

I support these users — and many other persons that I also support informally among friends, family, and acquaintances, almost entirely via Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop (CRD) — I rarely if ever see various of these folks in person, and some live across the country from me. For the Chromebox and Chromebooks, CRD is the only viable remote sharing option that I know of. For Windows systems I consider CRD overall to be the easiest for talking a user through the initial installation over the phone, and then to use for the majority of associated purposes going forward.

In most respects, CRD is excellent. Data is encrypted, and in most circumstances the data connection is peer-to-peer without going through Google servers. In some configurations, system audio is sent along with the screen image.

But Chrome Remote Desktop also has a horrible, gaping accessibility problem — that has persisted and generated bug threads that in some instances now stretch back unresolved for years — that seriously limits its usefulness for those very users who could most benefit from its use.

And this flaw is unfortunately representative of a rapidly growing class of accessibility failures at Google — in terms of readability, user interface deficiencies, and other related problems — which have been spreading across their entire ecosystem to the dismay of myself and many other observers.

You’ll be hearing a lot more from me about Google accessibility problems — which in some cases may rise to the level of actual discrimination (though I don’t believe that discrimination is Google’s actual goal by any means) —  across their various products and services, but let’s get back to Chrome Remote Desktop for now.

I’ve written about this particular aspect of CRD before, but after spending a couple of hours yesterday battling it with a nonagenarian Google user, it’s time to revisit the topic.

CRD uses a completely reasonable system of credentials matching and/or access/PIN codes to provide session setup authentications. But CRD also imposes a “faux” security feature that ends up driving users crazy, making CRD much more difficult to use than it should be in many cases, and can actually result in reduced security as users seek workarounds.

There are two basic authentication mechanisms available for CRD. For non-Chrome OS versions, there is a choice between one-time access codes and “persistent” login credentials (the latter is really designed primarily for remote access to your own computers). For Chrome OS installations of CRD, only one-time access codes can be used as far as I know.

For most typical remote support situations, the one-time “share” access codes are the appropriate choice, since sharing of actual Google login credentials should be avoided of course (that’s not to say that this doesn’t sometimes become necessary when trying to help some users, but that’s a matter for a separate discussion).

And herein is the problem that has generated long threads of complaints — as I noted above some going back for years now — on the Chromium support forums, with users pleading for help and Google doing essentially nothing but occasionally popping in to make frankly lame excuses for the current situation.

Unlike in the shared credentials persistent connection model, when using the conventional one-time share codes in the typical manner to use CRD, the remote user is prompted every 10 minutes or so and must quickly respond to avoid having the connection terminated. There is no way to change this timeout. There is no way to disable it. And when trying to support a panicky or confused user remotely — irrespective of their age — this situation isn’t security — it’s a godawful mess.

Often users just want you to fix up their system remotely while they go do other things. Sitting there or running back every 10 minutes to refresh the timeout is a hassle for them at best, and can be extremely confusing as the associated prompts keep interrupting attempts to repair problems and/or explain to the remote user the details of their problems.

For some of the users even seeing those prompts is difficult, and as frustration grows over the continuing interruptions they often just want to give up or keep begging you to do something to stop the interruptions themselves — which is impossible, without asking them to share their credentials with you so that you can use persistent mode instead where that’s available.

And sometimes that’s what you end up having to do — violate proper security protocols by having them give you their Google credentials and switching to persistent mode where the interruptions won’t occur (keeping in mind that this apparently isn’t even an available option for Chrome OS — you’re stuck with the interruptions with no way out).

The upshot is clear — a feature that Google apparently thought was a security plus, easily becomes a massive security minus.

Now here’s the really sad part. From a technical standpoint, fixing this should be straightforward. The bug discussion threads — which as I’ve said have been largely ignored by Google — are replete with suggestions about this (including by yours truly).

If the view is that having a default connection timeout is security positive, at the very least provide a means for users to disable and/or change the duration of that timeout as they see fit, either permanently or on a per-connection basis. This could be implemented in a manner so that this could only be changed by the local user, not by the remote user.

But in the name of bits, bytes, and beer, don’t keep forcing everyone trying to use Chrome Remote Desktop to fight a wired-in 10 minute timeout that is incredibly disruptive to many users and in many support situations, and that drives users to using workaround methods that are detrimental to security!

Over on those bug threads, there’s considerable speculation about why Google refuses to fix this situation. The most likely reason in my opinion is that the Googlers in charge of CRD (which may not be a particularly desirable assignment) either don’t understand or just don’t care about the kinds of users for whom this situation is so disruptive. Perhaps they’ve never supported non-techie users, or older users, or users with special needs.

And unfortunately, we can sense this view across a wide sweep of Google products. A particular, young demographic appears to be the user group of overwhelming interest to Google, with everyone else increasingly left twisting slowly in the wind.

I view this as neglect, not actual malice — though the end result is much the same in either case.

Strictly from a dollars and cents standpoint, concentrating on your most desirable users can be viewed as at least being rather coldly logical, but users not in that demographic are just as dependent on Google as anyone else, and at Google scale represent vast numbers of actual human beings.

As I’ve said before, I fear that if Google does not seriously move now to solve their expanding accessibility problems (alternative user interfaces are one possible positive way forward) — in terms of readability, user interface designs, and other areas such as we see here with Chrome Remote Desktop — governments and courts are going to start moving in and dictating these aspects of Google operations.

Personally, I believe that this outcome would likely be a disaster both for Google users and Google itself. Government micromanagement of Google via the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act — or heavy-handed directives from E.U. bureaucrats — are the last things that we need.

Yet this seems to be the direction in which we’re heading if Google doesn’t voluntary get off their proverbial butt and start seriously paying attention to these accessibility problems and the affected Google users.

I don’t doubt for an instant that Google can accomplish this if they choose to do so. I know of no firm on the planet with employees who are more skilled and ethical than Googlers.

But the clock is ticking.

–Lauren–

Let’s compare the readability of two Google blogs. On the right, a recent item from Google’s main blog, which has converted to Google’s new low readability design. On the left, a recent entry from the Google Security Blog, which is currently still using the traditional high-readability design.

The differences are obvious, and the low contrast on the right is especially bad for persons with aging vision (this degrading of vision typically begins around age 18, by the way). Both samples are at the same (default) zoom level.

Google is failing at accessibility in major ways, and this is just one example. For more discussion, please see: “Does Google Hate Old People?” – https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/02/06/does-google-hate-old-people and “How Google Risks Court Actions Under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)” – https://lauren.vortex.com/2017/06/26/how-google-risks-court-actions-under-the-ada-americans-with-disabilities-act.

–Lauren–

A bizarre sequence of events has unfolded involving the Reddit user who apparently created the Trump-WWE-CNN video that encouraged violence against reporters. Trump shared this sickening video — then Trump and the White House defended it. But it turned out that the Reddit user was then found to have also posted a wide variety of racist, antisemitic, and other hate speech materials.

Then it gets even stranger.

The user apparently posted a lengthy apology for his trolling and other despicable actions, which was noted in various media today, e.g.:

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-reddit-hanassholesolo-racist-anti-semitic-cnn-meme-tweet-2017-7

But this apology was quickly attacked by other Reddit users who didn’t want him to apologize. The apology post was then apparently deleted (by the user?) and the Reddit thread was locked (by Reddit moderators, the user asserted). That user then claimed that he was going to repost the original apology:

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6l9mx8/posting_my_apology_again_mods_locked_it_and_dont/

But now, the user has apparently deleted their Reddit account:

https://www.reddit.com/user/HanAssholeSolo

On the surface it appeared to be a pretty decent apology, far more than we’d ever expect from vile Donald Trump himself.

What’s really going on with this saga now? Who knows?

Stay tuned.

–Lauren–