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Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

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Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#91

Post by iamshs »

justicezyx wrote: post #72
mobmobmob wrote: post #62

These US corporate elites are selling out US and the rest of the democratic free world in order to meet shareholder's expectations (and of course, MONEY!). And giving into a dictatorship and giving that dictatorship jobs, money, capital, knowledge, and power. That dictatorship now has imprisoned close to 1 million people in Xinjiang. Shame on you, Sundar Pichai. At least when Google was lead by Erich Schmidt, Google…

> That dictatorship now has imprisoned close to 1 million people in Xinjiang. Sources please? Xinjiang is not that big, they have 20mm people in total, 1mm will be fractional big enough to make the street appear more empty...

The infamous Xinjiang re-education camps for Muslims. Shawn Zheng has painfully curated this list, follow his twitter too. I think he is doing a great research work, more so because it puts him at a personal risk.

https://medium.com/@shawnwzhang/list-of-re-education-camps-i...

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#92

Post by doombolt »

_iyig wrote: post #7
c3534l wrote: post #2

It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical. But even if we assume that there is no legal way for a company to operate ethically in China, is the world meant to close our borders to them entirely? 20% of the planet lives there and we do business with China every day when we buy something manufactured there, but do not feel morally required to boycott them on account of t…

Local laws in East Berlin sanctioned the murder of Germans who sought to escape. Local laws in Vichy France required people to report hidden Jews to the police. Local laws in America under Jim Crow forbade interracial marriage, and denied Blacks their right to vote. Would you consider it unfortunate that some held these local laws to be unethical? I’d ascribe no more legitimacy to similar laws made by an unelected, a…

"sanctioned the murder of Germans who sought to escape"

I have read a page on capital punishment in Germany, found no such claims.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_German...

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#93

Post by dnomad »

carapace wrote: post #78
justicezyx wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That dictatorship now has imprisoned close to 1 million people in Xinjiang. Sources please? Xinjiang is not that big, they have 20mm people in total, 1mm will be fractional big enough to make the street appear more empty...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/world/asia/china-xinjiang... "U.N. Panel Confronts China Over Reports That It Holds a Million Uighurs in Camps" Twenty seconds on a search engine...

I don't think you understand what constitutes "evidence." A NY Times article that doesn't contain a single verifiable fact or even a first hand witness account is not evidence, by any actual reasonable basis, that a million people have been disappeared.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#94

Post by mmirate »

throwaway8879 wrote: post #46
Sangermaine wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical. What a disgusting comment. What is legal and what is ethical are not the same thing at all. I have difficulty believing this was written in good faith.

And what is ethical exactly? Objectively? And this is something that you get to decide? Maximizing profits seems pretty ethical to me.

Ethics are inherently subjective, which is why their only actual usefulness is as a shorthand/proxy for "unlikelihood to generate bad press".

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#95

Post by mmirate »

_iyig wrote: post #7
c3534l wrote: post #2

It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical. But even if we assume that there is no legal way for a company to operate ethically in China, is the world meant to close our borders to them entirely? 20% of the planet lives there and we do business with China every day when we buy something manufactured there, but do not feel morally required to boycott them on account of t…

Local laws in East Berlin sanctioned the murder of Germans who sought to escape. Local laws in Vichy France required people to report hidden Jews to the police. Local laws in America under Jim Crow forbade interracial marriage, and denied Blacks their right to vote. Would you consider it unfortunate that some held these local laws to be unethical? I’d ascribe no more legitimacy to similar laws made by an unelected, a…

> I’m privately amazed that the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights is now a subject of controversy.

I'm not amazed. It tells us "thou shalt steal from the rich to give this specific set of goods to every poor person in thy nation". That's not a human right, that's a declaration of (among other things) the principle that wealth is zero-sum. (Which it fundamentally isn't.)

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#96

Post by seanmcdirmid »

reaperducer wrote: post #37
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baidu is not government controlled, just submissive to it. Though it operates under the credo of “ask for forgiveness rather than permission” like almost every other Chinese tech company, so even that relationship is complicated.

Like a dog on a leash isn't controlled by its owner, it's just submissive to him? Riiiiiight. If Baidu was really doing anything independent, then it would get reined in, like the overseas Chinese real estate firms are. As for censorship: "According to the China Digital Times, Baidu has a long history of being the most active and restrictive online censor in the search arena. Documents leaked in April 2009 from an em…

I don't think you really get how Chinese businesses operate. Tech businesses, as long as they are Chinese, operate under an assumption of semi-impunity as long as they don't cross political boundaries. So healthcare fraud is in bounds, and if they get caught, they'll just get a slap on the wrist. Its not like the government condones the fraud, more like they don't care as long as it doesn't result in social instability.

Real estate firms and other industries like taxi groups are more likely to be directly controlled by princelings, so those are something else altogether. The government has a direct channel into these industries, because they are basically like a state-controlled mafia.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#97

Post by throwaway852 »

One thing that really concerns me about Google operating in China and fully complying with their laws is what the effect will be on residents and citizens of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan which are under a different legal system from the mainland but which the mainland claims authority over. Will our access to Google eventually be censored and will our data start flowing across the border to the central government?

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#98

Post by mstaoru »

For once, I am on Google's side with this one.

Somewhat of a discourse. In the last years, "China and Russia" became a new racist norm against anything and everything there. My mom and dad are absolutely against totalitarianism, but their "cardinal sin" is that they were born in Russia and they lack the financial means to move to another country. For years, they can't even buy any good cheese because the cheese was "sanctioned" as an import. Those imported goods that didn't disappear doubled and tripled in price. So whom did it hurt? I assure you that people in the government can buy any cheese they want.

Back to Google and China. You can't find anything on Baidu or Sogou, it's so ridiculously bad that most of the knowledge in CNnet is concentrated within a few large systems: Wechat, Zhihu, Weibo. The idea of a "website" or a "blog" is almost unheard of, mostly because there will never be any exposure to this website or blog. Everything in China is on some kind of platforms. And as long as there are just a few big platforms, the government can control it all.

Even now Google is a much better source of relevant information on the Chinese internet, and if it works in China officially, it will give regular Chinese people unprecedented flexibility and knowledge exchange. Okay, you won't be able to find Winnie the Pooh on Chinese Google, you won't be able to find Xinjiang concentration camps. But you will be able to find information about democracy, economy, physics, law, sociology, psychology, art, literature! It's equally important to let normal people of China access better information. China is incredibly high-tech and innovative, but the Chinese internet is extremely low-quality. Google is necessary here to provide the fertile soil on which thinkers can raise and start questioning their political status quo.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#99

Post by seventhtiger »

mstaoru wrote: post #98

For once, I am on Google's side with this one. Somewhat of a discourse. In the last years, "China and Russia" became a new racist norm against anything and everything there. My mom and dad are absolutely against totalitarianism, but their "cardinal sin" is that they were born in Russia and they lack the financial means to move to another country. For years, they can't even buy any good cheese because the cheese was "…

You're right. Here's food for thought: have sanctions ever resolved authoritarianism or dictatorship?

Economic war should only be used to disable aggressive enemies, because it has never actually helped anyone better their human rights or political rights. In fact, among "passive" abusers of human rights we see that more contact with the rest of the world improves conditions.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#100

Post by Aunche »

mobmobmob wrote: post #62

These US corporate elites are selling out US and the rest of the democratic free world in order to meet shareholder's expectations (and of course, MONEY!). And giving into a dictatorship and giving that dictatorship jobs, money, capital, knowledge, and power. That dictatorship now has imprisoned close to 1 million people in Xinjiang. Shame on you, Sundar Pichai. At least when Google was lead by Erich Schmidt, Google…

Shame on you for writing this comment on what's probably a Chinese-manufactured device. Even if you don't, you're definitely reaping the benefits of open trade with China. Google entering China doesn't help the PRC in any way, but buying Chinese goods definitely does.
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