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Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

theintercept.com

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Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#171

Post by dyarosla »

londons_explore wrote: post #157
adrianmonk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought there were two ways to interpret that, and I was never sure which one was correct. One is that the hack made Google realize it was not a good, stable place to do business, and the other reasons were just a good PR side effect. The other is that the hack gave Google occasion to reevaluate, and they realized being involved in that kind of censorship didn't sit right with them. I suppose it could also b…

There were other, bigger, non-public reasons.

Care to elaborate?

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#172

Post by zelon88 »

saulrh wrote: post #163
russdpale wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how old you are, but google blossomed under the guise of "do no evil", that is why its controversial.

Moral of the story: never try to be a good guy, because you'll be held to a higher standard than anyone else and crucified while your competitors, who never claimed to be anything other than malignant stains on humanity, fly under the radar and laugh. How disappointing.

What about; be good in the beginning and then stay good even when you don't have to anymore?

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#173

Post by jeron »

redisman wrote: post #167
burtonator wrote: post #148

True story... I run a web crawling company named Datastreamer where we license data to social media monitoring firms. We're very white hat... Don't even like to mess around with grey hat areas as we don't want something like the Cambridge Analytica situation coming back to bite us in the ass. About 1.5 years ago we were contacted by a 3rd party firm which we eventually found out was a cut out for Saudi Arabia. The de…

Too bad there are so many people like Manafort who are happy to take on that job for a quick buck. Sure people are being hunted down but check out the ostrich jacket!

for every company that refuses, there'll be one that will take it on for the right price...

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#174

Post by jo2ie »

redisman wrote: post #167
burtonator wrote: post #148

True story... I run a web crawling company named Datastreamer where we license data to social media monitoring firms. We're very white hat... Don't even like to mess around with grey hat areas as we don't want something like the Cambridge Analytica situation coming back to bite us in the ass. About 1.5 years ago we were contacted by a 3rd party firm which we eventually found out was a cut out for Saudi Arabia. The de…

Too bad there are so many people like Manafort who are happy to take on that job for a quick buck. Sure people are being hunted down but check out the ostrich jacket!

Well the depressing part for me is I have seen good friends, extremely smart people who have no sane reason to be working on shady shit, fall down the rabbit hole. And I really haven't found effective ways to do anything about it...

There are two issues at play

1. Not everyone is prepared mentally to turn down big payouts. I have seen this happening up and down the food chain. You only understand how hard this is after you have been in that position. And these day some of the cheques that get waved in your face are insane.

2. People get sucked into a certain kind of "lifestyle" that they get insecure about loosing. And will do whatever it takes to maintain that lifestyle. Once they get "trapped" they are part of this global mega machine of similar folk. Sometimes it feels like watching ants in an anthill. All on autopilot.

The thing is they know they are trapped and convincing them to give it up is not simple.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#175

Post by gammateam »

zelon88 wrote: post #172
saulrh wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moral of the story: never try to be a good guy, because you'll be held to a higher standard than anyone else and crucified while your competitors, who never claimed to be anything other than malignant stains on humanity, fly under the radar and laugh. How disappointing.

What about; be good in the beginning and then stay good even when you don't have to anymore?

Then what is the corporate structure for?

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#176

Post by [deleted] »

QML wrote: post #116
izacus wrote: post #5

Great! So will Apple employees walk out next in protest of Apple assisting Chinese government by giving them iMessage and iCloud data? Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

A note that Tim Cook is in favor in doing business in China: "Your choice is, do you participate or do you stand on the sideline and yell at how things should be," Mr. Cook said. "My own view very strongly is you show up and you participate, you get in the arena, because nothing ever changes from the sideline." [1] [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-tim-cook-no-point-yellin...

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#177

Post by Andrex »

QML wrote: post #116
izacus wrote: post #5

Great! So will Apple employees walk out next in protest of Apple assisting Chinese government by giving them iMessage and iCloud data? Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

A note that Tim Cook is in favor in doing business in China: "Your choice is, do you participate or do you stand on the sideline and yell at how things should be," Mr. Cook said. "My own view very strongly is you show up and you participate, you get in the arena, because nothing ever changes from the sideline." [1] [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-tim-cook-no-point-yellin...

The sideline also isn't very profitable, though the status quo can be. As always, corporations have public and private reasons for every decision.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#178

Post by saulrh »

zelon88 wrote: post #172
saulrh wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moral of the story: never try to be a good guy, because you'll be held to a higher standard than anyone else and crucified while your competitors, who never claimed to be anything other than malignant stains on humanity, fly under the radar and laugh. How disappointing.

What about; be good in the beginning and then stay good even when you don't have to anymore?

There's no such thing as omniscience or perfect prescience and you will always screw up eventually. There's no physical law that says that people can only crucify you if you actually do something bad. Every one of your competitors is doing their level best to set up damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't fork and you will never outplay all of them all of the time. Nothing says that there's always a right answer that is Good. Nothing says that people are any good at all at telling what is Good. Nothing says that the entire population has a single definition of Good; nothing even says that any given situation has a course of action which anyone will perceive as Good. There are subjects on which the public has disjoint definitions of Good.

"Just stay good all the time" is the kind of logic that tears down exactly the people and institutions that we should be supporting. You can argue that they should be doing a better job. You can argue that they have taken on additional responsibility and should live up to it. You can argue that we would be better off if nobody claimed to be good in the first place. But "just stay good all the time" is a myopic double standard, crab-bucket thinking at its finest.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#179

Post by anonymouzz »

whatshisface wrote: post #160
anonymouzz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm taking the moral high ground here, but you should contact the media or human rights organizations, spill the beans to help them investigate. Anonymously if necessary.

Which organizations other than Wikileaks have a history of successfully pursuing this stuff?

I'd see which newspaper had a reaction to the Khashoggi's death and try to directly contact the journalists writing the articles. They're people and they may be quite happy for the ammunition provided. For example:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/silicon-valley-hoped-the-k...

Don't let scumbags have their way, if you can tip the scale in the other direction. But again, don't want to take the moral high ground and tell people what to do.

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