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Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

theintercept.com

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Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#311

Post by AndrewKemendo »

quotemstr wrote: post #306
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it useful to ignore the value of consistency when considering people's actions holistically. Otherwise you'll never get anywhere when trying to determine what people really want. I suggest this if only for practicality sake, as only fanatics are completely consistent with some set of edicts/ethics/beliefs/ So you need to be able to communicate and reason with people who are inconsistent.

People are generally consistent: it's just that their true beliefs are seldom what they espouse. As the old saying goes, behind every double standard is an unstated single standard.

Without devolving into a semantic debate, I would argue that people are consistent with their desired outcomes, but decidedly inconsistent with the means of which they achieve their outcomes.

The unstated single standard for the vast majority is "whatever works out best for me."

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#312

Post by white-flame »

macspoofing wrote: post #22
mywacaday wrote: post #20

Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. If we have a problem with how their government works policy should be applied that prevents/manages how businesses subject to our laws operate abroad. The majority of people don't really care how corporations behave. If they did Google search/gmail/maps would not be so popular. They have the right price point(0$) fo…

>Why should there be a different standard for Google and other tech companies to not expand into China. This exactly. I would even make a stronger case. It's not fair to expect a technology company to fight a major world economic power. This is a failure of US and EU governments. They should pressure China to liberalize their government and provide a level economic playing field (it is insane what China gets away wit…

The very notion of independent sovereignty of nations means that you can't and shouldn't expect to normalize behavior between countries.

If doing business in the USA is free & good, many outsider businesses will do business there as well. If doing business in China is not all free & good, outsider business won't do business there. How much that hurts foreign businesses vs hurts China is up for debate. But governments individually rule what goes on in their borders, and use those rules both for internal ideological pursuit as well as to attract or detract external interest, as is their role.

"Fairness" of doing business isn't exactly extreme human rights violations or anything. (Other behaviors are, but not this particular point you're making.)

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#313

Post by ibrault »

smsm42 wrote: post #300

What I recently heard is that there are Google workers actively protesting against Google's involvement with projects connected to US DoD and US Army. What I am not hearing now is Google workers actively protesting against Google enabling censorship and oppression in China. I wonder whether this is an artifact of how news are reported (or how I am consuming new) or a genuine phenomenon? And if the latter, why is that…

It sounds like the source for the leak is an insider, although the author is very cautious to tiptoe around saying that.

> which is being planned by a handful of top executives and managers at the company

This quote also paints it as a very hush-hush project that isn't under development yet, so maybe not widespread internal knowledge?

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#314

Post by manigandham »

nostalgeek wrote: post #98
manigandham wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a big difference? It's removing fake junk vs hiding truthful information.

Who decides what Junk is? who guards the guardians?

There is such a thing as objective truth.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#315

Post by xvector »

mynewtb wrote: post #241
pacala wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employee A reading email X does not scale. Google reading everyone's email with ever-better AI systems does scale, and is a much bigger threat to freedom, political or economical.

A person reading your mail is a much more immediate, direct danger than your mails being slurped into the big data silo that can slowly and widely ruin society.

> that can slowly and widely ruin society.

There is nothing to say these "big data silos" will run "slowly." And even if they ran slowly, the impact they could have on your life would likely be far larger than the more immediate impact of an employee reading your email.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#316

Post by CobrastanJorji »

bilbo0s wrote: post #140
bad_user wrote: post #133

There might be many tech companies in China, no doubt, including big names, and companies should comply with local regulations if they want to do business, however the fact that Google pulled their search engine out of China, defying their censorship attempts, is one big reason for why I respected Google, in spite of my reservations for them. So let me tell you what I think as an EU citizen that's actively concerned…

"...Google is the destroyer of privacy. Google tracks their users at an unprecedented level in the whole history of humanity..." In fairness, you never had a problem with that privacy invasion before. You still respected them in spite of the fact that they were Gestapo-like privacy invaders. As evidenced by your claim that, "...the fact that Google pulled their search engine out of China, defying their censorship att…

> They would sell any one of us out to any number of governments if they were asked. And they would do so without hesitation.

Google's annual transparency report indicates that they reject about a third of all government requests for user info.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#317

Post by knuththetruth »

sykhic wrote: post #103
StreamBright wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why should they do that? What was the last time Western interventionism brought any good for the world? Who are the US and EU representing to tell other countries how to live their lives??

The Korean War ended up benefitting South Korea in the sense that they didn’t up like North Korea. The free trade agreements have largely been responsible for large numbers of the world's population improving their living standard. There are other examples of intervention being good. Of course there are lots of examples of intervention being bad. There is nothing special about Western intervention vs. intervention by…

>The Korean War ended up benefitting South Korea in the sense that they didn’t up like North Korea

This is an incorrect understanding of Korean history. US anti-communist policy played no small part in creating North Korea in the first place.

In the postwar period, US support for the right-wing dictator Syngman Rhee, who murdered tens of thousands of Korean citizens he suspected were his political opponents, empowered and drew popular support to Kim Il-Sung. Sung was further bolstered by the US giving favored status to Japan over Korea, forcing them, for example, to purchase goods and expertise from their brutal, former colonial rulers. With this state of affairs, Sung, a former anti-Japanese resistance fighter, was successful in persuading many that that the US-backed rule of Rhee was just an extension of the pre-War colonial rule, ultimately devolving into the never-ending civil war we have today.

This in no way benefitted the south, but instead has been a nearly 70 year long drag on their economy, as well as their development into a liberal democracy (which really didn’t happen until a popular revolt in the 80s because the continued US to provide financing and support to authoritarian rulers in the south).

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#318

Post by xvector »

macspoofing wrote: post #287
mocae wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between not having a choice and openly advertising and justifying unethical behavior. The fact that this is the only sentence you've touched speaks for itself.

>There is a difference between not having a choice You have no choice? >and justifying unethical behavior. I get it. It's not unethical when you engage in commerce with a regime you find unethical, or when you buy from all the other companies that manufacture their goods in China ... but it's unethical if Google doesn't want to ignore 1.4 billion people? >The fact that this is the only sentence you've touched speaks…

> It's not unethical when you engage in commerce with a regime you find unethical or when you buy from all the other companies that manufacture their goods in China

Who says it's not unethical? Why are you putting words in peoples' mouths?

On one hand you talk about having a good-faith discussion but then you go ahead and base your argument off of words you've put in someone else's mouth.

> but it's unethical if Google doesn't want to ignore 1.4 billion people?

Most people find corruption of data far worse than the absence of data. I'd rather not be told anything than be told a lie.

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#319

Post by BrandonMarc »

knuththetruth wrote: post #299
skybrian wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know one way or the other, but this proves too much. You're talking about this like Google is the Borg and everyone always has the same opinions. It's certainly possible some of the people in the room at the time actually were motivated by free speech issues. I agree about not trusting corporate PR, but the conclusion is that we don't know the company's motivations and it's probably a mistake to treat it as a…

Whether or not people at Google have different opinions is largely irrelevant, unless they’re going to engage in coordinated labor action like they did with the drone program. Google, despite all its townhalls and Q&As, is not a democracy. It’s a corporation governed by an authoritarian command hierarchy who have seemingly chosen to get in bed with another authoritarian regime called the Chinese government.

> unless they’re going to engage in coordinated labor action like they did with the drone program.

What was this?

Re: Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

#320

Post by [deleted] »

kalleboo wrote: post #189
panarky wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should there be a different standard for Google Because Google "is not a conventional company" [1]. A tired trope on HN is that corporations cannot and should not be ethical entities. They are legally mandated to maximize shareholder value, and this usually requires taking actions that people find morally repugnant. This is a myth and it is horseshit. Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and…

> This is a myth and it is horseshit. Exactly. As for an example of a company showing some backbone... https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej... : "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader. He didn't stop there, however, as…

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