“This involves a lot more risk to employees, activist tech workers have told me over several months of covering their efforts. “I can’t talk about things that relate specifically to Google’s…product decisions, in that those are things that could potentially get me fired,” said Google staff developer advocate Liz Fong Jones when I asked her about the Project Maven controversy.
Yet on Tuesday, she put her name to the anti-Dragonfly letter. What’s more, she and at least one other Googler pledged to quit if the company doesn’t enact some key reforms. Fong-Jones’s ethical focus has been on diversity and inclusion at Google, issues for which her outspokenness is legally protected (although she has faced severe online harassment).
Now she’s come out as a critic on those touchy discussions about how the tech giants’ products are used–forming another wave in a growing tide of dissent that hit peak visibility in the global walkout protest of at least 20,000 employees on November 1.”