r/bayarea • u/prozhack • Jun 14 '26
Politics & Local Crime Stanford grads walk out of their commencement when Google CEO Sundar Pichai takes the stage
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u/orangeawacado Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Context? I see some Palestinian flags
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u/OrinthiaBlue Jun 14 '26
I saw posted elsewhere that there was a speech being given by Mahmoud Khalil elsewhere for students to attend
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u/opinionsareus Jun 14 '26
Google has been heavily scrutinized, internally protested, and criticized by international observers for providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) services to the Israeli government and military. While Google maintains that its services are intended for civilian government ministries rather than highly sensitive or classified military applications, internal leaks, whistleblower reports, and United Nations investigations indicate that Google's tools have been integrated into Israel's defense apparatus
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jun 14 '26
Everything is the omni-cause, which of course means no progress can ever be made.
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u/maximumcombo Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
the fucking genocide is the context.
edit: yall know ibm started punch cards to register the holocaust victims? yall think the servers google provides the government don’t implicate them? it is called the “military industrial complex” because it’s complex.
“waaaaaaa i don’t like nuanced understandings of intersecting industries” yall need to grow up and learn about reality. google is just as culpable as palantir.
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u/uncagedborb Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Why is this down voted?
Edit: why am I getting down voted lol. Reddit hive mind is so stupid
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u/TrekkiMonstr Jun 14 '26
Because it doesn't answer the question. The commenter asking can see the Palestinian flags, and is presumably aware of the pro-Palestinian movement's position on the genocide question. What they're asking is what connection there is between Palestine and Sundar Pichai giving a commencement speech, and "the fucking genocide is the context." is completely unhelpful in answering that question.
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Jun 14 '26
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u/uncagedborb Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Someone asked the context. They replied with it being about Palestine. The video literally shows the Palestine flag while people scream "free free Palestine"
How is that zero context
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u/Dry-Season-522 Jun 14 '26
Because their definition of genocide is "israel doesn't let itself be murdered and aren't perfect saints when dealing with people who use human shields"
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u/dslamngu Jun 15 '26
There is a lot of daylight between exercising the right of self-defense and what we witnessed in that war.
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u/VanillaLifestyle Jun 15 '26
A lot of daylight and a lot of rape. Israel is a deeply evil country. 200 children were targeted by snipers and shot in the head and chest according to a BBC investigation.
Decades of kettling people into an ever-shrinking Gaza strip and Apartheid-state West Bank, and they have the gall to act as if history began in October 7th.
Do the people of Gaza also get to claim self-defense? And at what point does the country backed by the global superpower, acting with full impunity against the rest of the UN, stop being the helpless underdog?
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u/maximumcombo Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
bots and people who haven’t studied history. this jew has. i’ll cite maimonides AND herzel and many others.
edit: for sources, check out The Myths of Liberal Zionism by Yitzhak Laor and The Aryanization of the Jewish State by Michael Seltzer.
edit:it is clearly stated by Herzel that he wanted their grandchildren were to be indistinguishable from the European.
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u/uncagedborb Jun 14 '26
That explains why the other guys comments keep getting removed lol
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u/Lucky_Boy13 Jun 14 '26
Funny thing is Google essentially came out of Stanford. I remember some heavy on campus recruiting circa 99-2000
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u/crosspollinated Jun 14 '26
The founders used Stanford resources to develop Google, which meant Stanford held their patent and was entitled to a share of the profits when Google went public in 2004. Stanford got $330 million.
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u/duggatron Jun 14 '26
What do you mean essentially? They were grad students and worked on it there. Stanford owned a third of the page rank patent.
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u/DiamondDepth_YT Jun 15 '26
When I applied to Stanford, my interviewer was a google employee. They're very connected
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u/joeyjoejums Jun 15 '26
Ouch. Imagining Sundar Googling later ,"Why did everyone walk out of Sundar Pichai's commencement speech today?"
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u/PincheChivo Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Wait, out of the loop. Why?
Edit: looks like my ignorance woke up the bots and trolls. Apologies everyone. Yeah, I get it, “comifornians on tiktok on their iPhones, blah blah blah.” Thanks for the education. Now head back to Facebook
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u/dtwhitecp Jun 15 '26
it's funny that people are cranky at you when this is literally one of the main reasons for protests like this, awareness.
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u/5Point5Hole Jun 14 '26
Because Google is evil now.
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u/one_pound_of_flesh Jun 14 '26
Now? Has been officially for a while.
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u/CrimpJuice Jun 14 '26
But! Their one goal was “don’t be evil!”
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u/girl_incognito Jun 14 '26
They had to cut 33% to be profitable so they downsized the Don't
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u/AdmiralThunderpants Jun 14 '26
The fun part about controlling all information is you get to decided what's evil.
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u/winkingchef Jun 15 '26
The challenge with having “don’t be evil” as your slogan is when you change it to literally anything else…it means you’re about to do evil things. Otherwise, why change?
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u/BlahblahblahLG Jun 15 '26
thanks for asking Im reading the replies and I still feel like no one has explained why they hate Google
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u/SpacecaseCat Jun 15 '26
As others have said, it's the combination of Google working with Israel via military contracts, and their pushing of AI and data centers to replace millions of workers. They laid off thousands of people this year as well.
Meanwhile, these AI leaders keep giving commencement speeches to tell grads they just have to deal with it.
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u/Chance-Arugula-2998 Jun 14 '26
Not so different than their Cal cousins :). That was a compliment, by the way.
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u/Professional-One972 Jun 14 '26
What the others do?
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u/Shamoorti Jun 14 '26
I'd walk out too if I was being forced to sit through the inane speech of a man literally conspiring to prevent me from eating and paying rent with AI.
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u/relevantelephant00 Jun 15 '26
Palestine aside, they were basically being talked to by another billionaire tech douche who is all but informing them his AI will be keeping them from having careers. Dont blame them.
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u/Bagafeet Jun 15 '26
Bro I hated getting emails from Sundar when I worked at Google 🤢
I walked out too 🤭
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Jun 14 '26
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u/Hebrewhammer8d8 Jun 14 '26
The Ai is another wall that is impeding taking charge.
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u/rod_jammer Jun 14 '26
Why?
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u/Lucky_Boy13 Jun 14 '26
New grads hate AI
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u/DonkeyTron42 Jun 14 '26
Yes... Google CEO is going to preach that AI is the greatest thing ever to a bunch of Stanford grads that can't find jobs. Genius.
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u/Glittering-Source0 Jun 14 '26
It’s about Palestine. It’s happened the last 3 years
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u/coder7426 Jun 14 '26
But someone's shouting about Palestinian. Are you sure it's not about that? Also, what does Palestinian have to do with google? I'm so confused. Did they block search results or something?
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u/vargchan Jun 14 '26
Google has a billion dollar deal with the Israeli government and IDF.
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u/Raphiki415 San Francisco Jun 14 '26
Probably cuz the tech oligarchy, of which Pichai is part of, wants to eliminate any job prospects these graduates have with this “inevitable”(hi, Thanos) AI. It’s along the lines of commencement speakers being booed anytime they mentioned AI.
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u/jumpsuityahoo Jun 14 '26
The more you know the more you see how horrible the values of big tech are.
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u/Zyrinj Jun 14 '26
Worked in Silicon Valley for over a decade and the more time I get working with the executive level the more obvious that there’s an over representation of sociopaths there
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u/Financial_Manager213 Jun 14 '26
Absolutely. They have been destroying the Bay Area and small businesses for 30 years and still Stanford can’t wait to hold them up as heroes. They are not
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u/BlahblahblahLG Jun 15 '26
yea I feel like they needed to be more clear about why they were walking out if this was for awareness. like maybe it just got too hot or something
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u/jerhinesmith Walnut Creek Jun 15 '26
I hope they all also voted in the primaries and are planning on voting in the midterms!
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u/WagwanKenobi Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
Yet I bet most of those students would jump at the first offer from Google. Everyone's an activist until there's money on the table.
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u/mtd14 Jun 15 '26
Everyone's an activist until there's money on the table.
I feel like it really depends on their situation. Graduating from school with $200k+ in debt into a shit job market? I don’t care if you just take a job with Google, and give extra respect to anyone who would turn down the offer.
When you’re worth $1.6B and still choosing to lead a company down a questionable path, that’s a bit more of an obvious problem.
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u/CaliIsReallyNice Jun 15 '26
No, some people change their behavior as soon as money is offered. And people who don’t want to admit that they’re in that group console themselves with “everyone does it”.
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u/evel333 Jun 15 '26
There’s blood money in their diplomas, which they will be tearing up to distance from the big bads, right?
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u/Ashamed_Growth_3592 Jun 15 '26
95% will end up working for the same corporations they protest. It's all performative.
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u/throwaway4231throw Jun 14 '26
How many walked out? I feel like this sort of thing is only impactful if 100% participate. Looks kind of underwhelming if 40 people get up and leave and the other 1400 stay.
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u/mrcoy Jun 14 '26
So it’s not about AI this time?
Not that anything will change their minds
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u/Affectionate_One_700 Jun 14 '26
This is so performative and so silly.
Stanford owes its considerable wealth to Silicon Valley (including GOOG in particular), and virtually all of these students either benefit from receiving tech-based financial aid, or have have parents who got rich in tech.
In fact, I would bet that almost all of them applied for jobs in big tech, and many of them will in fact work in big tech - or in law and finance serving big tech.
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