The worst part of it is that you cannot report these advertisements. I thought that foreign governments influence was better managed after 2016 with Russia propaganda?
ggm · 19h ago
$45m seems cheap. I would think this was a discounted deal with a view to longterm GCP and other government service relationships.
Surely most governments do this? The outrage machine is on 11 because of the evils of the Netanyahu government but all governments pay people to put a positive spin on their national strategic message.
Personally I think the focus here should be terrorism, human shields, hostages, the rule of law, just war, war crimes and genocide. Not advertising budgets.
sporkxrocket · 14h ago
Propaganda is what fuels genocide.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 17h ago
People don't have to accept money and do work for terrible people. Google chose to enter this contract. Google could have chosen to not enter the contract. No one forced their hand. $45M is certainly not an existential amount to Google. They could have easily turned down the business. It was completely within their power to say no.
They chose to take the money and do the work.
Calling out businesses for doing business with terrible people is a good thing to do. As to your closing paragraph, that's kind of the point - calling out Google for doing business with a government that is committing genocide. If not for Netanyahu's treatment of Gaza, this contract would not be newsworthy.
ggm · 2m ago
"calling out" is what I am reacting to I think. Firstly, it feels very performative because what isn't happening is the "calling out" of Amazon, Azure/Microsoft, all the other cloud choices. All of them. Oracle, SAP, you name it. And, its doubly performative because people are going to step outside, spend money with stripe (cloud hosted) on coffee (traded by shipping companies using cloud companies) in clothes bought from people using cloud companies.
Choosing who to attack like this, is choosing to ignore the other 99% of the world equally tied up.
I get it. IBM helped the holocaust. It happened. Google is helping a modern day collective-punishment on people. It's similar. But without over-doing it. so is the maker of your sausages, clothes, your coffee, the phone company, Intel...
Surely most governments do this? The outrage machine is on 11 because of the evils of the Netanyahu government but all governments pay people to put a positive spin on their national strategic message.
Personally I think the focus here should be terrorism, human shields, hostages, the rule of law, just war, war crimes and genocide. Not advertising budgets.
They chose to take the money and do the work.
Calling out businesses for doing business with terrible people is a good thing to do. As to your closing paragraph, that's kind of the point - calling out Google for doing business with a government that is committing genocide. If not for Netanyahu's treatment of Gaza, this contract would not be newsworthy.
Choosing who to attack like this, is choosing to ignore the other 99% of the world equally tied up.
I get it. IBM helped the holocaust. It happened. Google is helping a modern day collective-punishment on people. It's similar. But without over-doing it. so is the maker of your sausages, clothes, your coffee, the phone company, Intel...