I’m Chinese, Google’s DragonFly Must Go On • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by publub » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 8:12 PM UTC

Markoff wrote: post #133

publub wrote: post #69

I'm really glad someone with a Chinese background finally spoke up about this. If you look at the anti-DragonFly post, you'll notice that there are almost no Chinese names on the list. Every Chinese citizen I've talked to is pro-DragonFly, myself included. DragonFly will probably be the largest step to democratizing information that has ever happened for the Chinese people. It's a huge step forward. It won't change t…

what stops them from using Bing? you are naive if you think crippled Google would change anything, lived in China plenty years to know better, majority would be ambivalent and it would be used only by people who wanna look cool

They could use Bing. From personal experience Google is much better. I make the assumption that crippled Google will still be much better than crippled Bing.

I have no illusions about Google creating social change. That's not the point. Google will make it much easier than Bing to find information you need. It is more convenient. It could save lives in the right situations. That's enough of a sell for me.

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

#142

Post by ausjke » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

tinza123 wrote: post #103

nomel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The situation is mostly the government's fault, the people just want options, any options would be better than nothing. Serious question, but shouldn't grievances like this be taken up with the elected/appointed officials?

The country mainly works from the top down instead of the other way around. People don't really vote, and the vote doesn't work the same way it is in the US. There are also some things no officials would like to touch at all, for fear of pissing off the party and lose a career / future. Information censorship is one of those things. In fact most of the censorship is not enforced by written regulation, but are conduct…

the point is the word "Must", your government sucks, it's not Google's problem, maybe your people favored that government, all is good, but that gives you no right to mandate companies overseas to "Must" give you an option, God only helps those who helps themselves.

next time, try ask for it humbly at least.

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

#143

Post by smsm42 » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 6:24 AM UTC

Terrible argument. Surely for every influential decision one can find somebody who was influenced negatively, especially if one wants to go deeply enough in hypotheticals. The question is not whether having competition between search engines is good (we know it is), it is whether Google should participate in a sham competition controlled by Chinese government, on conditions set by them and under their supervision, and thus participate - directly or indirectly - in many atrocities this government perpetrates. Serving better ads sounds like a pretty weak case for this - especially as we can't even be sure it would be the case at all (it's not like Google never served ads from shady providers).

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

#144

Post by darawk » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 7:15 AM UTC

wrs wrote: post #140

darawk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to say that "authoritarian policies" is a deceptively weak phrase for the stuff China is doing lately. Sure, call it what you want. I'm no fan of the Chinese government. > In any case this reasoning is flawed -- the correct analogy to "China has authoritarian policies but pulled billions of people out of poverty" would be "the United States had slavery but populated a continent while creating wealth for mill…

The analogy is getting out of hand, but the question here is more like making ankle trackers for the slaves than making cotton gins.

Except that there is already a company making ankle trackers and selling it to the slave owners, but their ankle trackers chafe the slaves ankles and Google's do not. That is my point.

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

#145

Post by Markoff » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 11:32 AM UTC

publub wrote: post #141

Markoff wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what stops them from using Bing? you are naive if you think crippled Google would change anything, lived in China plenty years to know better, majority would be ambivalent and it would be used only by people who wanna look cool

They could use Bing. From personal experience Google is much better. I make the assumption that crippled Google will still be much better than crippled Bing. I have no illusions about Google creating social change. That's not the point. Google will make it much easier than Bing to find information you need. It is more convenient. It could save lives in the right situations. That's enough of a sell for me.

from personal experience Google it's absolutely useless for Chinese language search, nobody stopping them providing good search outside China, since they can't do even that uncensored i have zero belief their censored project would be any better

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

#146

Post by wohenyingyu01 » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

I'm Chinese too, I lived in China. The DragonFly must DROP immediately!! What I'm going to say represents a certain amount of Chinese people. There are many alternatives in China, such as Bing, Sogou or 360. Why are you so obsessed with Baidu when you claimed that you're suffering? That doesn't make any sense. Those people you claimed as victims of Baidu will not use Google even if google enters China, because of the same reason they don't use Bing or Sogou. On the opposite, dragonfly will affect current Chinese users, they may be trapped in censored version of Google. Using google is already hard in China, please don't make it harder! I wrote the same comment in the GitHub but they deleted it, because Chinese culture is always allergic to different ideas. They don't want our voice be heard and they claimed all Chinese citizens are pro-dragonfly. That's a liar! And that's also the reason why we need neutral Google. Google is the only organisation that stands against Chinese censorship, most of Chinese people respect that. We will remember. If Google wants to make more profit on DragonFly from Chinese, we also respect that. Since Google is a commercial company after all, not a charity. But don't claimed it as a noble cause because it makes us sick. If any one in China stand against GFW, they should stand against dragonfly, it's a humiliation for all Chinese people.

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

#147

Post by haoel » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 7:31 AM UTC

I am Chinese from mainland. Everyday, I have to use Proxy/VPN to visit Google/Youtube/Wikipedia/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit... across the Great Firewall.

I can understand it, but it is shortsighted!! The main problem is not Google back to China, it's China blocks Google.

So, Google must drop the DragonFly project!

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

#148

Post by SuperSandro2000 » Mon, Dec 03, 2018, 11:54 AM UTC

SteveGregory wrote: post #104

The objections to DragenFly are not about what is best for the Chinese citizen. 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 woul…

Thats the point! We in the west want to keep our freedom. If Google would censor there search for china every other dictatorship in the world would want there own censored one. Maybe Germany wants swastikas and Hitler censored. China should become more liberal but this won't happen because then the Chinese leadership will fall and a revolution would happen and together with that North Korea would fall and leave Russia as the last communist country.

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

#149

Post by cben » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 11:19 AM UTC

pas wrote: post #125

jhanschoo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevertheless, as OP mentioned, the decision concerns Chinese citizens, and it is always useful to obtain input from stakeholders.

I don't think they care much. Baidu works, and if they are dissatisfied there is Bing. Yet Baidu is the market leader there. Why would they switch to Google?

Why did I care when I discovered Infoseek, Excite, Open Directory Project, Dogpile (I'm fuzzy on the exact order) and eventually Google? Do you remember your feeling when playing with a new search engine? Differences in access to information are real and quickly felt.

(disclaimer: ex-googler. In words Google itself likes to use, because long-tail search matters. Also I should mention I now default to DuckDuckGo, on privacy grounds, but it's not a step up just "surprisingly not bad", I frequently repeat a search in Google and get more results)

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

#150

Post by SCLeo » Tue, Dec 04, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

Please note, this only represents a (likely small) portion of Chinese audience. There were a lot of people opposing the idea. They initially posted their opposing view on GitHub issues so it was overwhelmed by disagreements. However, the author disabled the issues on that repo so it looks like it is the widely accepted opinion, which is not true.

Then, people start to write articles in order to show their disagreements. For example, there is one: https://github.com/CT-ABT/Also-as-a-mainland-Chinese-why-do-.... The only problem is that it does not have an English translation.