Google plans to crack down on posts on a popular company bulletin board in a bid to quell heated employee debate over the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.
The Silicon Valley-based tech giant’s internal message board Memegen, a tool used for 14 years to defuse issues such as complaints against bosses, has been filled with frustration following the Oct. 7 Hamast terrorist attack. became.
Israeli and Jewish employees are outraged by messages deemed anti-Semitic.
They say they are at odds with their Arab and Muslim employees and that their voices are being suppressed.
To reject this rhetoric, Google executives decided to remove the option to vote a “dislike” on a meme because it made employees feel uncomfortable. According to the New York Times.
The “dislike” button triggers a ranking mechanism, where memes considered to be more popular are displayed more prominently, and less popular posts are downgraded or removed entirely.
It will also remove metrics that allow people to see how popular their colleagues’ memes are.
The company said the changes are expected to go into effect later this year, adding that these changes were determined in response to employee feedback and were not based on any specific topic or incident.
A Google representative told The Post, “Teams are transparently sharing with employees and experimenting with industry-common practices similar to what other internal and external social platforms have done. “There is,” he said.
Google has long been known for a company culture where employees feel free to express themselves, including being critical of the company’s leadership and management.
During CEO Sundar Pichai’s all-hands meetings, employees often accessed Memegen to comment on what they were hearing in real time.
But employees are now claiming that management’s recent changes to Memegen are aimed at effectively killing the company.
Google’s ties to Israel have worried employee groups, who are demanding the company cancel its participation in a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, code-named “Project Nimbus.”
Last month, Google fired an engineer who publicly criticized the head of its Israel operations and accused him of promoting “genocide, apartheid, and surveillance.”
In November, a group of Google staff including “anti-Zionist” Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, and Arabs circulated an open letter It demanded that management terminate the Nimbus contract for “providing material support to this genocide.”
At least two Google employees resigned in protest over the issue. According to the time.
Google isn’t the only tech giant grappling with ways to give employees a voice on the Israel-Gaza war.
In November, Apple reportedly created a campaign created by Muslim and Jewish employees after employees posted Quranic verses and organized protests in response to news from the Middle East. It has been reported that the company’s internal Slack channel has been shut down.
In the days and weeks following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Microsoft internally announced that after an employee wrote about “a deep sense of disillusionment with our work and our company,” citing “one-sided statements.” The bulletin board has been closed. Management supporting Israel.
