This isn't evidence against the echo chamber claim. An example of valid evidence might be rational debate about a conservative memo, as opposed to censorship, demonization, slander, etc.
Google has internal Republican and Libertarian newsgroups and has had them for years. Damore's central issues have been debated for a long time on those kinds of lists and never censored.
What I think you're finding is people used to majority privilege, suddenly finding their viewpoints in the minority, becoming obsessively sensitive and claiming victimhood for which there is paltry evidence.
Why is it that when a majority of people hold progressive views, it's an "echo chamber", but if you're a minority growing up in the Midwest, or a liberal in a Red State, it's not an 'echo chamber'? There's some kind of weird assumption going on that somehow, conservatives should be able to expouse views and not feel like they're an outlier minority opinion.
> What I think you're finding is people used to majority privilege, suddenly finding their viewpoints in the minority, becoming obsessively sensitive and claiming victimhood for which there is paltry evidence.
Most of the egregious cases (including the Google Memo) involve liberals who are censored, harassed, or assaulted by progressives for openly inquiring or pointing to inconsistencies in the progressive narrative. Based solely on the frequency of these starkest of cases, I don't know how anyone could reasonably conclude that the evidence is paltry. Everyone should be allowed to ask questions and express (at least moderate) political ideas without fearing for their safety or income. This has nothing to do with privilege, and it shouldn't be a right conferred only to the extreme left.
> Why is it that when a majority of people hold progressive views, it's an "echo chamber", but if you're a minority growing up in the Midwest, or a liberal in a Red State, it's not an 'echo chamber'? There's some kind of weird assumption going on that somehow, conservatives should be able to expouse views and not feel like they're an outlier minority opinion.
Prior to the last few years, I've only ever heard the term applied to conservatives, who ostensibly failed to live up to the formerly-progressive value of open-mindedness. Conservatives have always been taken to task for failing to abide by progressive values (tolerance, free speech, open-mindedness, etc). Now progressives are under the same gun and it's all "poor progressives! why aren't conservatives faulted for failing to live up to progressive values?"; at any rate, the term is still widely (and justifiably) applied to conservatives.
Existence of one echo chamber doesn't disprove existence of another echo chamber.
And considering public did not see those old internal debates (there was not even a quote or reference to them in official statement about the firing), google now looks from the outside like that echo chamber.
Oh I'm not defending him. Some of his points were interesting but he seemed determined to piss everybody off to the point of no return. However that stuff happened after he got himself fired from Google.
My point is that Google is not particularly tolerant of dissent, or at least a specific type of dissent. Even back then (it seems worse now).
