I’m Chinese, Google’s DragonFly Must Go On

This is not the concern in the signed letter. It is also not related to any of the core concerns from commenters here, as far as I can tell.

Yet somehow, many people are feeding the idea that the primary question is a cost-benefit analysis from the perspective of a person living in China. Of course, access to a pseudo-Google in China would be better for people there. It would be another option, and probably a tad closer to uncensored.

The concerns are simply not about that.

This is about setting a precedent of a company in a liberal democracy bending to the wishes of the government of a non-liberal-democracy.

The concern is that this compromise is not only something that happens in China, but also something that happens next in UK and then in Germany, and then in the US.

The concern is that any society with an "unfiltered" Google becomes a thing of the past. The concern is that the largest organization in the world controlling access to information begins "partnering" with governments and we step into an accelerated path towards disinformation.

That's not the point. People already DID get killed, and ARE getting killed. Millions and millions of them. Totalitarianism is the fact on the table. That's not just "another market", and the benefit to China gained by Western complicity in it, is nothing compared to the damage we are doing to ourselves.

I doubt you understand how important this is and how deep it runs. We're not going to throw millenia of evolution of thought, and ultimately thought and human agency itself away, just to make not resisting more comfortable for "the large chunk of non-dissidents" or Silicon Valley or whoever may come.

> The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough cir­cuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Nor did they possess a really effective system of mind-manipulation. In the past, free-thinkers and revolutionaries were often the products of the most piously orthodox educa­tion. This is not surprising. The methods employed by orthodox educators were and still are extremely inefficient. Under a scientific dictator education will really work -- with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.

> Meanwhile there is still some freedom left in the world. Many young people, it is true, do not seem to value freedom. But some of us still believe that, with­out freedom, human beings cannot become fully hu­man and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.

-- Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World Revisited" (1958)

Currently, Google's launch of Dragonfly creates an interesting disagreement in public opinion. In the U.S, the opinion in the "technosphere" is overtly negative, due to its implication of supporting censorship and oppression of the general public.

But in China, the public opinion from the "technosphere" is completely the opposite. The dominate search engine, Baidu's reputation has became notorious after the death of Wei Zexi, the 21-year-old cancer patient, after finding misleading treatment information on search engine Baidu. Citizens on the social media became aware of the existence of Putian Medical Group, a special interest group in the profit-driven healthcare market for its questionable medical treatment. Baidu was believed to be the largest supporter of the multi-billion-dollar industry, they may have contributed 12 billion RMB (1.8 billion US$) to Baidu's ad revenues. (See this article for the background: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/behind-baidu-scandal-baidu-puti...)

But it's not the only scandal. Baidu is known for its predatory and invasive advertisements, including consumer support fraud, visa fraud, medical fraud. Most of the time, entering any common keyword, people are confident to say that the first three results of the search list are the ads, and highly likely to be frauds. The daily victims of these ads is likely to be hundreds, if not thousands. Baidu is doing little, if not actively supporting the false advertising.

The public opinions of the IT workers in China, in my own words, is basically: if Google is a criminal, then Baidu is a maddog. The politics is authoritative, changing it is out-of-question. Then at least you can replace a wild maddog with an ordinary megacorp, which at least has a well-defined bottomline and more or less under the public supervision of the citizens.

I don't know what to say. On one hand, censorship and oppression surely causes long-term damage, but on the other hand, the damage of victims by these frauds is also a large number. Even if I take an utilitarianist approach, then what is valued greater?

u(free from censorship and oppression) x Google's contribution?

                                           ^likely small

u(free from ubiquitous frauds from Baidu)?