These dual standards for censorship annoy me. Google on Venezuelan censoring: bad, fight it Google on Chinese censoring: complicit, support it
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Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
81–90 of 148 posts
Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
They no longer use that word.
That's incorrect, it's still in the code of conduct. It's the last statement: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html
Just another example of why codes of conduct are fuzzy hypocritical bullshit.
If you want to actually change something, create clearly defined, actionable rules, specify scope and follow them 100% of the time. Like "we do not log any information except X and Y".
Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#83Can we get a rename of this story? "Alphabet's Jigsaw" would be more appropriate. Jigsaw is, at best, a sibling of Google, not a part of Google. It is explained in the very first sentence, but comments so far don't seem to acknowledge that.
This is an interesting communications dilemma. I don't think most people have really understood the Google/Alphabet transition. When most people think of "Google" they're actually thinking of Alphabet. If you say "Google" then you're conveying the correct information using the wrong term. If you say "Alphabet" then you're using the right term but a lot of people won't know what you're talking about. What to do? This…
> This is an interesting communications dilemma. I don't think most people have really understood the Google/Alphabet transition.
If the media consistently referred to Google as Google and Alphabet as Alphabet, people would learn the difference more quickly. Using one term for the other is just delaying this process and sowing confusion.
Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#84These dual standards for censorship annoy me. Google on Venezuelan censoring: bad, fight it Google on Chinese censoring: complicit, support it
Perhaps this project is to create demand for Google-China-like solutions in other countries. Venezuela is not a large market but perhaps they want a demo vehicle for Saudi Arabia to witness to help get them a deal (and a more favorable one than China).
The most profitable SW projects often have a lot of reuse.
Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#85Can someone explain why a government couldn't block the IP of this service? Whether it's a VPN or just dns over https, it seems the servers wouldn't have infinite dynamic ips and could therefore be blocked.
Yep that's how countries like Egypt block things, lovely reset packets! But activists pretend that doesn't happen sigh
Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#86The app itself fails a DNS leak test, is this app trustworthy?
Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#87Good job Google.
I'm a very harsh critique of Google due to the threat they pose for privacy, however here they are doing a good thing, along the lines of the public DNS servers they provide, which I know have helped people [1].
Having your requests go through Google is not ideal, however not many people have the capacity to search for better, but more obscure solutions.
Also this isn't about privacy, but about working around censorship at the DNS level. If you want privacy, you use an anonymous VPN or Tor. And frankly, if you can't trust Google's privacy policy for this service, then you shouldn't use a Google phone.
Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a few things: 1) This tool is made by an Alphabet owned company (Jigsaw), not Google, another Alphabet owned company. The companies will have different missions, even if profits flow the same direction. 2) Venezuela doesn't have a huge market where Google is blocked by a nation-wide firewall. 3) China has a nation-wide firewall blocking any Google service, thereby forcing Google to negotiate how their service wo…
> Google as a company (and Alphabet, probably more so) is almost certainly anti-censorship, philosophically; they just don't operate in a vacuum. Since when was being motivated to do wrong a mitigating condition for having done wrong? "Sorry officer, I wasn't going to steal it at first, but then I started wanting it."
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Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#891) What's stopping these countries from blocking the hard-coded Google/Cloudflare IP addresses? Doesn't seem like a great solution technically speaking.
2) I wouldn't use this if I lived in China. Companies operating in China are required to turn over data about their users to the government. And Google is soon going to be partnering with China to release a censored version of their search engine[1]. Now they can provide the government your entire browsing history, not just your searches!
[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engi...
Re: Alphabet's cyber unit Jigsaw introduces a new security app to bust censorship
#90These dual standards for censorship annoy me. Google on Venezuelan censoring: bad, fight it Google on Chinese censoring: complicit, support it
Just a few things: 1) This tool is made by an Alphabet owned company (Jigsaw), not Google, another Alphabet owned company. The companies will have different missions, even if profits flow the same direction. 2) Venezuela doesn't have a huge market where Google is blocked by a nation-wide firewall. 3) China has a nation-wide firewall blocking any Google service, thereby forcing Google to negotiate how their service wo…
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.
Alphabet and Google can't claim to be against censorship while they're profiting from it. They can't have their cake and eat it too.
Clearly the only thing Google and Alphabet are "for" is making more money, so there's really no point pretending they have a moral compass guiding them.