Wow Google’s licking boot like there’s no tomorrow.
Fucking shameful.
Google Calendar removes Pride Month and Black History Month
Submitted 2 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Every time a straight person has wondered why I hate rainbow capitalism, shit like this is why.
“Oh but it moves your kind forward, you should be thankful they support you now!” They only supported us when the government wouldn’t take away contracts and people were sure they supported queers.
Same thing for every other company and every other minority. I can at least mask that I’m queer, black people can’t mask being black.
God I hate being right about horrible things.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m not angry at this point. Just sad.
It’s disheartening how quickly everything was washed away.
Teppichbrand@feddit.org 2 months ago
Wait, rainbow capitalism wasn’t sincere?!
teri@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Google managed to create a very clean image of themselves in most heads, but looking closer it is an ugly profit maximization machine. It cares about shareholders. If it cares about you, then probably for spying on you and learn how to manipulate you and others better. I hope people start realizing finally.
And let’s state it clear: Google could have a voice. They could object to the Musk-Thiel-Trumpian destruction machine. They could be there for the world. But they’re not. Not at all. They serve the money. And if it pays off, then they are willing to ruin peoples lives.
Google is on the wrong side of history.
sfxrlz@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Seems like their motto isn’t „don’t be Evil“ anymore for a reason.
teri@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
It was limiting them. To truly maximize profits they need to strip off all limits. I’m not joking. Really not. This is why capitalism and fascism go so well together.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Can they even argue they following washed version of “do the right thing”
SabinStargem@lemmings.world 2 months ago
I am hoping that Google bites the dust from this. Having stuff like Peertube becoming common, would go a long way towards mitigating media moguls from controlling narratives. As we have seen, the media organs of the right are staying silent or downlplaying what has been happening.
Also, it would be nice if the folk didn’t have to deal with baseless copyright takedowns. A lot of culture has been lost to feckless corpotacracy.
Eagle0110@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I agree with your points, but what do you think are some of the specific things Google or other similar tech companies in such a similar capacity could realistically and meaningfully do object the Musk-Thiel-Trumpian destruction machine?
I would like to learn more
teri@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
They could decide not to give 1M to Trump, but they did: theguardian.com/…/google-microsoft-donate-trump-i… They could use their reach and make a clear public statement: “we don’t support this”. But I’ve never seen any. They could give higher rating to actual useful information and try to show less fascist propaganda to people. I have to assume that’s going wrong as well.
Because of their giant impact, they send a message to all others. “We go with the fascists, we are not on the side of humanity but on the side of profit”. That creates dangerous dynamics.
gamer@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Literally nothing. A corporation, especially a publicly traded one like that, can’t do much but maximize (ideally long-term, but usually short-term) shareholder returns.
The Activision-Microsoft merger is a good recent example of this. During the anti trust trial, the CEO of Activision literally came out and said that he believes it’s a bad idea that will be bad for the industry and bad for the company in the long term, using the impact of consolidation in Hollywood as an example, but he has to side with the board. He’s basically legally obligated to.
I’m not saying it’s unjust or a bad system (and I’m definitely not trying to paint Bobby Kotick as a good guy), I just want to point out that corporations are very simple in their purpose, and nobody should be expecting anything more from them. If you’re disappointed that Google made this 180, that’s on you for falling in love with a corporation. They’re useful tools for producing goods and services, but terrible as a political tool for democracy.
But for some reason, it became popular to fetishize tech companies, and that spawned megalomaniacs like Elon, Zuckerberg, Horowitz, Thiel, etc who feel like they should be the supreme rulers of our civilization.
HonorableScythe@lemm.ee 2 months ago
This was always going to happen. Companies in Germany when Hitler rose to power didn’t protest and speak up against him - they needed to sell his army goods. They made his uniforms and cars and didn’t say a peep about the extermination of people around them. The companies that spoke up were crushed. A corporation’s bottom line is their bottom line, no matter what horrors they need to assist in perpetrating.
Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The Nazis organized a closed door meeting with the leading German industrialists and told them about their plans to rebuild the German military to take revenge for WW I. They agreed and many of those same asswipes escaped the post war prosecution.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Now these closed meetings happen at MaraLargo
SabinStargem@lemmings.world 2 months ago
Most of the key people behind the Civil War and 1st Business Plot also were excused from justice, for the sake of soothing political tension. IMO, executing them would have been better for curtailing the corrosion of our society.
Urist@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
They did not merely passively “assist”. They established factories in close proximity to the death camps so that they could profit off of the slave labour deemed too fit for immediate extermination.
teft@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Any one who doesn’t know what happened should go watch Schindler’s List.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 2 months ago
Corporations are not people. They are machines
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
We’re a long long way from those lofty goals of yesteryear, aren’t we Google?
The audacity to still have this quote up, right now, is off the charts.
This is a screenshot from today. Get fucked Google.
YaDownWitCPP@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s true though, Google search does make it easy to discover a broad.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Hot broads in your area want to talk to you!
karpintero@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Remember when they removed “don’t be evil” from their code of conduct back in 2018
dev_null@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
They didn’t. They moved it from the foreword to the final line.
To be clear, Google is absolutely evil, and the unofficial motto was always worthless. I am just annoyed everyone ate the clickbait reporting about something that never happened and is repeating it to this day. I guess “Google moved Don’t be evil Clause to a less prominent spot” doesn’t click as well.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
I cannot believe this is the first time I’ve heard this.
Etterra@discuss.online 2 months ago
Pepperidge Farm remembers. And so do I.
samus12345@lemm.ee 2 months ago
kava@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Corporations, at their core, are profit-generating engines—nothing more, nothing less. The corporate board’s one legal imperative is to ensure the shareholders see a return on their investment, by any means necessary. Morality? It’s merely a decorative flourish, not the operating principle.
All companies are evil. Google is not any more or less evil than any other company. The difference is they have a significant power base and therefore have a lot to gain or lose in the transition to fascism. They understand that Trump is spiteful and willing to bend and even break the law to punish those who defy him. They also understand he rewards those who bend the knee. Therefore, the most profitable path of action is bending the knee.
This should not surprise anybody. You substitute Google for any large corporation and they would have done the same thing. Don’t believe me? Google around (while you still can freely search for information) for the Coca-Cola saga in Colombia, where union leaders were getting forcibly suicided by narco-paramilitary death squads hired by Coca-Cola.
You know- the commercials that make you feel all warm and fuzzy around Christmas time with the polar bears and Santa Claus? Yeah, they’ll murder you if you threaten their bottom line. It’s just what they do.
There’s a simple math equation:
Let
P = Probability of getting caught,
F = Expected fine or penalty,
R = Potential revenue or profit,
Constants
α = The weight assigned to the probability of getting caught ( P ). If this constant is high, the corporation is more cautious… if it’s low, the corporation is willing to make more risks. In Colombia, this is much lower than in the US.
β = The weight assigned to the probable size of the penalty ( F ). A high β means there’s a serious potential danger. However, if β is low (like when Ford decided the cost of simply paying lawsuits from deaths due to known car malfunctions was probably lower than the price of recalls) then they’ll be more likely to push forward
γ = The weight assigned to the impact on their bottom line ( R ). For example, if Boeing thinks they will lose a lot of money from whistleblowers, they will find a way to suicide them. If the impact is small, then it’s not worth the potential risks.
C = ( αP ⋅ βF ) − γR
Let’s give an imaginary example. Let’s say a corporation is considering dumping toxic waste illegally into a river, potentially giving thousands of people cancer. Let’s say they’re gonna save $10M a year from doing this.
R = 10,000,000
The probability of getting caught is 10%
P = 0.10
The expected fine is $5M
F = 5,00,000
Let’s try out some constants
α = 1.5 ⇒ they’re somewhat cautious about getting caught
β = 1.2 ⇒ they’re moderately concerned about the penalty
γ = 2.0 ⇒ they’re really motivated by profit (maybe their profits went down 10% last year, a big no-no)
Plug in the values
C = (1.5 · 0.10 · 1.2 · 5,000,000) - (2.0 · 10,000,000)
C = (900,000) - (20,000,000)
C = -19,100,000
C is less than 0? Dump that toxic waste, baby. It’s the logical position if you’re trying to maximize profit. Sometimes you will get caught, but imagine you did this in a simulation 1,000 times. Most of the times, you will be more profitable because of it and therefore you dump the waste.
It’s like a poker player. If you get AA, you raise pre-flop. Sometimes you will lose on the flop to some dunce who goes in with 2-7… but in the long term, most of the time, you will win. Therefore it’s the right move.
This is what companies do. People need to realize and internalize this. They are profit generating engines. Nothing more, nothing less. They are not your friends. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t care about the future of the world or anything. Literally nothing at all.
They are a math formula and if destroying everything you love happens to be the most profitable move most of the time, they will do it without second guessing. Because they aren’t people. They are a machine.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
All companies are evil.
Disagree. Publicly traded companies are amoral, so whether they do something good or evil depends on what’s profitable.
Healthy competition tends to make “evil” actions unprofitable. Google doesn’t have healthy competition, hence the current situation.
These companies aren’t the bad guys in the same way that weeds in your garden aren’t “bad.” If you don’t want weeds to take over, make sure there’s sufficient competition and incentives so desirable plants crowd them out, and stay on top of the handful of weeds that take root. We’ve neglected the garden for decades and allowed some truly nasty weeds in, but that doesn’t make the weeds “evil,” that means we were poor gardeners.
kava@lemmy.world 2 months ago
To me, apathy and amorality when the consequences are harm towards others is evil. It’s sort of like if a driver was in a rush and ran over a protestor on his way to work.
Sure, he did not wish any harm on the protestor. He just simply needed to get past them and chose the most effective and efficient path.
It’s an amoral act but the act (and the driver) is still evil. Evil is not just a mustache twirling genocidal dictator or sadistic serial killers… In fact, the amoral does infinitely more harm than the malicious.
Healthy competition tends to make “evil” actions unprofitable
Competition helps. I agree that this negative aspect of capitalism is exponentially magnified when monopolies form.
The thing is, in capitalist the wealth tends to snowball. Wealth is power and wealth buys influence. Look at how Disney singlehandedly changed copyright law when Mickey Mouse was about to enter public domain. Once you reach a certain size, you can modify the rules of the game. So it creates a self-perpetuating cycle.
This position we are in is the natural consequence of free market capitalism. I agree that free market is better. But this is the grown up version of free market. There was never going to be any other scenario but the one we are in.
We’ve neglected the garden for decades and allowed some truly nasty weeds in, but that doesn’t make the weeds “evil,” that means we were poor gardeners.
We can debate on the ontology of the world evil. It really is an interesting debate. But for all practical purposes, if the weeds are killing the crops that feed your family… what is the difference? Whether they want to kill you indirectly through starvation or don’t want to kill you- you’re dead either way.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Great write up, I appreciate the modeling.
samus12345@lemm.ee 2 months ago
They also removed Holocaust Remembrance Day. Probably because it’s going to have to be renamed Holocaust I soon.
wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I’m happy to say I’m officially degoogled in my personal life/computer.
I still have legacy accounts with gmail that I can’t migrate though.
padook@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Fuuuuuckkkk I wish I could degoogle again
Don’t be evil, lol
Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Companies have decided to cut the crap and just focus on their core mission of being evil
Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The only thing I need to drop is my gmail account. Everything else went into the circular file.
prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I bought a domain and use Fastmail, I’ve just been switching what I need and letting the rest go to a dead Gmail.
It’s been fairly easy.
MusketeerX@lemm.ee 2 months ago
A good alternative. I moved across too.
Youtube is the only thing there isn’t a really viable alternative to at this stage.
communism@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
It is a bit nuts how hard it is to switch email accounts. Although conveniently I believe gmail has a forwarding feature. Protonmail unfortunately doesn’t in its free tier (I recently switched from protonmail to self-hosted postfix/dovecot), and paying for a protonmail subscription just to forward my emails to a different email seems to defeat the point of paying for an email service.
SabinStargem@lemmings.world 2 months ago
I used Thunderbird to simultaneously access and download my gmail and protonmail, gradually migrating my ecosystem to the latter. The way I figure, Protonmail would be good, on account of being based in Switzerland. That means assorted EU protections - and now with Vichy America likely to become a thing, having the servers in a safe spot seems really helpful.
The odds of us having military action in our neighborhoods has shot up by a disturbing degree.
ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
What’s your setup for self hosting? Do you use a vps or host on your own network?
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Honestly I wish they had a setting for only federal holidays. The ones where banks close.
I also want to be able to switch back to general holidays too though. These people at google are chicken shit cowards.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Honestly I wish they had a setting for only federal holidays. The ones where banks close.
Those are bank holidays.
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Ok
azalty@jlai.lu 2 months ago
It’s a shame, fuck Google anyways :)
Just shows that companies show their support to please the people in power and that’s just []-washing
Opinions are still divided on whether companies should have a political opinion
frog_brawler@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Lmao, damn… I was done with them before this announcement but thanks for reinforcing my decision.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They sent it all to the Gulf of Mexico…
RedSnt@feddit.dk 2 months ago
Fuuuuuck… I was really hoping I didn’t need to migrate away from gmail… But looks like this is it.
lemming741@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I went to proton about a year ago, and I don’t live it. I’m not ready to leave yet, but I’ll tell you to do as much research as you can and consider a paid service if you have to. I wish I had.
danc4498@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’ve already deleted Google maps. Deleting calendar will be tough.
varyingExpertise@feddit.org 2 months ago
Just get hosted Nextcloud somewhere and DAVx5.
danc4498@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’ve never heard if this, but that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
peregrin5@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Is there an alternative to Google Drive that doesn’t lock me into using MS Office. I particularly need to ability to share and edit files online.
t0fr@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Cryptpad
TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
1gb or 5gb for $5 a month is kinda rough tho, as a heads up to anyone looking, it is there more as a means to encrypted collaboration, not large storage and sharing of files.
TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Tuta is supposed to be developing one that’s using their post-quantum encryption but it’s been 2 years so, womp.
truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 2 months ago
AES is already post quantum crypto so that sounds a bit marketingy.
Kolonel_Kahlua@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sooooo.
Any recommendations on a replacement for Google calendar?
I’ve got shot of maps with that Gulf of Mexico business. The search engine due to ads, the mail client for the same reasons (still using the mail address but Fairmail as a client).
Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Nextcloud Has been fairly reliable for me
TurtleMelon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I use Simple Calendar from Simple Mobile Tools.
3aqn5k6ryk@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It has been bought. Please switch to fossify apps. Same dev and foss.
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s no longer available on FDroid for some reason.
gaspar_petersen@programming.dev 2 months ago
I don’t understand why was this ever a thing. Fuck google, and fuck rainbow washing. They never really cared, and where just taking advantage of a noble cause.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Cowardly sycophants giving their “divine” leader his wishes without question
the_doktor@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Remove Google (Alphabet), Apple, Microsoft, Facebook (Meta), and Amazon from your life (and more, of course, but these are the big tech ones). Difficult but 100% necessary these days. De-Google your Android phone/tablet (basically Android without Google is possible), use Linux, order from small businesses, don’t use social media owned by big corporations, etc.
spegin@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
De-Google your Android phone/tablet
Got any recommendations? I looked into this but found only graphene or calyx as real contenders but it requires a pixel phone. Not that I’m absolutely am against pixel hardware but having to buy a new phone while I still have 3 or so years of software support on my current phone seems a bit silly: - /
Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Next thing you know Facebook is going to get rid of Daughter’s Day!
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I would only want actual state/local holidays anyway.
If I actually care about an event I am more than capable to set the event mysekf (e.g. Sysadmin day)beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Bow!
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A haunting reminder that rainbow capitalism is 100% about profit and convenience.
Corporations were never your friend. They were never going to defend you.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Corporations were never your friend. They were never going to defend you.
They were going to defend you for as long as doing so remained profitable.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
I like to say that corporations will never go out of their way to be charitable. There’s always a bottom line, being it PR or direct profit. Even PR and Marketing spend has to eventually lead to increase in profit.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
It’s not even “rainbow capitalism.”
This goes all the way back to women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights era.
They didn’t start accepting women into the workforce and blacks into the workforce because they saw them as valuable humans just for existing.
They realized they were leaving money on the table. If women had money, they could be marketed products, if blacks had money, they could marketed products. That was “opening up new markets.” Hiring them meant they would get paid and have money in their pockets to spend at your business.
Every single group that got attention and understanding was about being able to exploit them for more money. The only color they’ve ever cared about is the green on their money. This is also why it’s been such an uphill battle for anyone disabled, because if you can’t maximize your output by absolutely destroying your body and mind for capital: they don’t want you.
Further, if you get enough money to do some capitalism yourself and create something like “Black Wall Street” they’ll bomb the living fuck out of you to put a stop to it.
Kramkar@lemmy.world 2 months ago
POTD
Beetschnapps@lemmy.world 2 months ago
10 out of 10
RedSnt@feddit.dk 2 months ago
Reading about the Tulsa race massacre is so crazy, like World War 1 planes, some say up to 12, others at least 8 of them doing stuff like: “… turpentine or nitroglycerin bombs being dropped and men shooting from planes”
ISOmorph@feddit.org 2 months ago
That’s why I’m a big fan of voting with my wallet. Switch to tutanota for mails, search with duckduckgo, use f-droid as an app store… No one needs google, it’s just somewhat inconvenient to get used to alternatives
kat@orbi.camp 2 months ago
Plug for kagi.com for those who can afford to pay for searches. Best search engine experience, love the personalized results where you manually raise and lower specific domains.
masterofn001@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Wallets mean nothing to people and corps with more money than the rest of humanity combined.
The people calling the shots need to be… Uh…
You live by the sword you die by the sword.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
As stupid as it is… You have to buy a fucking Google Pixel to really be able to get away from Google because it’s not as simple to get an alternate OS that is de-googled on any other phones.
The Pixels, for example, are the only ones supported by GrapheneOS, widely considered one of the most secure phone operating systems.
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Way ahead of you. I already use an alternative paid email service, don’t use Android, and don’t use Google search.
TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Thanks. See Tuta mention 2 years ago they’re making a drive alternative but… that’s still not a thing. Kinda sad would definitely like that.
syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Yeah, it’s essentially a weathervane or thermometer. You can indicate the state of a country by it.
At this point the US has joined the ranks of, well, grim theocracies. Not that the people at the top in the US worship anything but Mammon.
Fluffy_Ruffs@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Right. If you react to this news with disappointment, and believe me I’m disappointed, maybe it’s more a wake up call the support was never real to begin with. I feel we’re better off without such hollow gestures. Then again I’m not a part of a marginalized group and maybe it’s not that black and white.