Well this is certainly awkward:
JUST IN: Google employees call for it to be kicked out of San Francisco Pride parade https://t.co/U3j0jxH8Ae pic.twitter.com/E98q5PTe0L
— The Hill (@thehill) June 26, 2019
Dozens of Google employees have sent an open letter to the organizers of San Francisco’s annual Pride parade urging them to kick Google’s company float out of the parade.
In a letter posted to Medium, the employees wrote of a work atmosphere where concerns from LGBTQ employees are regularly brushed aside.
“We have spent countless hours advocating for our company to improve policies and practices regarding the treatment of LGBTQ+ persons, the depiction of LGBTQ+ persons, and harassment and hate speech directed at LGBTQ+ persons, on YouTube and other Google products,” the letter read.
The gist of the letter isn’t that Google’s LGBTQ+ employees are being treated badly at work, but that the company isn’t stringent enough about cracking down on WRONG SPEECH on YouTube.
People from different parts of the political/social spectrum might feel differently about that, of course:
“The livelihoods of people who professionally produce content disseminated over social media are now subject to the whims of these companies," writes @DanFriedman81.https://t.co/JPoEhwx5nw
— Quillette (@Quillette) June 26, 2019
The victim-group hyperbole in the letter is a bit much:
We are told to wait. For a large company, perhaps waiting is prudent, but for those whose very right to exist is threatened, we say there is no time to waste…
The line about “those whose very right to exist” would be more believable were Google’s headquarters located in Tehran. When it’s being written in a country that is filled with Pride parades and corporate logos being changed to the colors of the Pride flag in solidarity for a month it rings a little hollow. They’re risking a reprimand at work, and they won’t even get that.
That’s a bit less severe than what they would be facing in North Korea or much of the Middle East.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member