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Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

theintercept.com

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Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#11

Post by mc32 »

topspin wrote: post #7
ProAm wrote: post #6

Why would they? Google fears China is going to create their own version of Google and will lose access to the country and possibly more of Asia. They are going to try very hard to keep their foot in the door there.

> Why would they? Morals, perhaps.

Google censors it’s results everywhere.

The main difference is in one instance it’s censoring itself + it’s censoring according to localized laws + some activist input (both right and left).

In China it’s basically also following laws to censor material plus doing some real-time censoring and removals.

So it could be argued it’s the kind of censorship that people disagree with rather than in principle being against it.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#12

Post by mc32 »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting…

Moreover we’re all consuming censored results. One is more heavy handed than the other, but we’re all consuming curated results, to one extent or another.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#13

Post by abakker »

ProAm wrote: post #8
topspin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would they? Morals, perhaps.

Money will always trump morals with companies. It's not ideal but the truth.

If corporations are people, then laws are corporation's moral compass. The solution would likely be to produce regulations to provide a moral compass to corporations so that they are required to exhibit the behavior we would like them to have. Corporations are legal automatons, and need to be treated as such.

This doesn't necessarily mean we need more rules - we could easily improve regulation by creating rules with fewer, broader commands. Certainly, this would create some inefficiency, but it would be inefficiency on the commercial side, rather than the legislative one. (i.e. simpler, broader laws make certain commercial activities illegal when there might be nuanced reasons that they should be allowed, vs detailed and exhaustive regulations create more corporate opportunity but also more loopholes and regulatory surface area.)

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#14

Post by karim »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting…

> I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voice their concerns while looking the other way when tweet from their Chinese made iPhones, and write dissenting articles in their Chinese made computers.

I don't get it — following your logic people shouldn't be protesting anything China-related because they're using chinese goods? I mean, this isn't a binary issue — you can buy chinese computers because most computers are made there and regret that Google is building a search engine to censor political queries.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#15

Post by jayd16 »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting…

While its not necessarily my opinion, the issue is not about working in/with China, its about building a censored search engine.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#16

Post by [deleted] »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting…

[deleted]

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#17

Post by [deleted] »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting…

[deleted]

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#18

Post by pmoriarty »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting…

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Do you accept money for your work? Odds are that some of that money was gained through less than 100% ethical means -- if not directly by the person/company you got the money from, then perhaps by the person/company they got it from, etc. At some point down the line, some of it might be called "dirty money" or maybe even "blood money".

So what do you do? Do you stop accepting money because you have to be 100% ethical?

Do you stop interacting with any company that's not 100% ethical, with any person that's not 100% ethical, with any country that's not 100% ethical? Do you devote your life to protesting these unethical individuals, companies, and countries?

Some people do, but they are a vanishingly small number -- so small that if all positive change relied just on them, nothing would change.

The rest of us choose to make compromises, and we're not 100% pure. But that doesn't mean that we can't protest anything unless we protest everything, and it doesn't mean we can't accomplish some good while unfortunately participating to some extent in a non-prefectly ethical system.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#19

Post by nostrademons »

abakker wrote: post #13
ProAm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money will always trump morals with companies. It's not ideal but the truth.

If corporations are people, then laws are corporation's moral compass. The solution would likely be to produce regulations to provide a moral compass to corporations so that they are required to exhibit the behavior we would like them to have. Corporations are legal automatons, and need to be treated as such. This doesn't necessarily mean we need more rules - we could easily improve regulation by creating rules with…

This is pretty challenging for a multinational corporation operating in a globalized world.

The issue here is that Google is trying to produce a product that conforms to Chinese laws for doing business in China. These laws are deeply offensive and immoral to many people in Google's largely-American workforce.

Trying to create a moral compass that multinational corporations can live by requires creating laws that apply to everyone on earth. Personally, I think that's a great idea. Then the hard work is in finding a set of global laws that everyone can agree on, and that's the sticking point, because peoples' moral sensibilities on earth are largely contradictory.

Americans would be quick to say "Well, we should all operate under democracy - let the people decide what these laws should be", not realizing that if we actually did world democracy 1-person-1-vote style, the legal framework they would live under would likely be some weird amalgamation of the Chinese & Indian political systems, because close to 50% of the population lives in those countries. America would get about 5% of the vote, so it's a good bet that our wishes would be ignored. Personally, though I love the idea of world government in theory, I didn't sign up for those conditions. Given the general resistance to globalization by populist bodies in basically every nation on earth, most other people didn't either.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#20

Post by ahoy »

whoisjuan wrote: post #9

I find kind of hypocrite to reject the idea of a company working in a product that serves the Chinese market (which, btw, is ultra protectionist), while actively consuming goods that are manufactured in China. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting…

There is no opting out of ethically wrong choices under global capitalism. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to change things.
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