101–110 of 148 posts
Can 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.
I find it ironic that both CloudFlare and Google which this app uses, were involved in the censorship of DailyStormer. It was a vile site and Google and ClouFlare were fully within their rights to terminate their business agreement with them. However, they do not also get to turn around and claim the high moral ground of being anti-censorship in principle. So this is not about censorship vs free speech, it is about g…
These dual standards for censorship annoy me. Google on Venezuelan censoring: bad, fight it Google on Chinese censoring: complicit, support it
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sneetches_and_Other_Storie...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> China has a nation-wide firewall blocking any Google service, thereby forcing Google to negotiate how their service works if they want to make money there. So if the Chinese demand they get real-time access to all information Google has stored about anyone, or Google gets banned from China, they should do that too?
Is there a difference to how the NSA does same albeit with a time delay instead of being instantaneous?
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-m...
Good 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 worki…
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This is about preventing dns manipulation attacks. That assumes that a DNS server (like 8.8.8.8) is generally accessible, but an adversary is trying to manipulate the responses. In China, you anyway can't access regular global dns servers. You need to use official dns supported by the government. So the question of dns manipulation is moot.
So that makes it morally consistent...how?
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> 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."
This isn't like theft. It's more like the law says you can't read certain things, so a printing company adjusts the books they print for the people of that country. Obviously they don't want to censor things, but they also want to profit. They can either be totally censored or partially censored and still make money. Are you asking for them to give up and accept total censorship and forfeit money? If not, what would…
Not only will they steal it, but they'll use it for whatever they want.
Right now China is talking to Google because they lack the technological prerequisites to make their goals happen by themselves. If you want to see a Chinese Google competitor, just let Google get a shoe in the door and wait a couple years. Then when China has what it wants they'll dismiss Google.
Google's short-sighted greed is going to divide the internet in two. We should be letting China either stand on it's own or join the rest of the world. Instead they will prioritize market share in a technologically inept country and, quite advertently, give the Chinese everything they're lacking to completely break away from the world wide web and start their own.
I just can't wait until Google gets kicked out of the party they created for themselves.
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The parent was arguing that it was less wrong because Google was motivated to do it by self-interest. That's simply not a mitigating factor in any case.
I guess that’s what the GP was saying. I’m not sure what the alternative is, though - Google could completely pull out of the Chinese market and leave it for competitors like Facebook, Yahoo and MS? Didn’t we go through that already?
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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.
Why can’t they make that claim? There are many things in this world that I oppose yet benefit from. I can’t fight every injustice in the world — I don’t know how to, I haven’t got the skills, I don’t have the resources. It’s like a prayer to serenity: Grant me the courage to change what I cannot accept, the serenity to accept what I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Google maybe rich beyond the dr…
this seems a bit reductive if not weaseling. google isn't a bystander, they're knowingly and voluntarily aiding a state oppress it's people.