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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

#41

Post by NoodleIncident »

chivas wrote: post #37
jayd16 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you think censored search engine is bad? All other search engine in China have same censorship but worse quality. Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality? Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?

The argument is that Google shouldn't build a censored search engine for one authoritarian state, because once it's built, it's easier for other states to ask for the same treatment. China's existing censored search engines are confined to that country, and I would also oppose any adoption of those services in the US.

(As a side note: Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.)

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#42

Post by perfmode »

roywiggins wrote: post #39
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's nothing morally wrong with being hypocritical. Everyone is hypocritical. Surely it's better to be inconsistently principled than consistently unprincipled?

Well said.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#43

Post by lnyng »

While it seems like people don't like the idea of this censored search engine called Dragonfly, I wonder what people think about Microsoft's Bing. Bing is definitely running a censored version in China, or it will not survive the government regulation.

Is Bing less bad than Dragonfly in terms of censorship? or is it also bad but engineers in Microsoft care little about that?

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#44

Post by NoodleIncident »

nostrademons wrote: post #19
abakker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 appl…

American companies have to follow American laws. If those laws are incompatible with China's then too bad, those companies can't make money in those exact ways. There's no need to fearmonger about a non-existant world government.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#45

Post by scarmig »

geofft wrote: post #28
supernova87a wrote: post #23

Google invited these long-term problems onto itself (and so did many other startups) by marketing a culture aside from their technology that got people to join them. "Do good" they said, which invited people to judge them and decide to work there based on whether they continued doing good. Compare to other companies that were not so "hot" that just promised some less fulfilling employment, but no strong moral or glob…

A counterpoint: Google believed they could attract better engineers (which can be explained either as genuinely more skilled people, who have more ability to choose where they work, or simply more passionate people) with the "Don't be evil" policy. Oracle existed all along. Google wanted to not be Oracle. Now, Google has decided they want contracts like they're Oracle and they want staff like they're not Oracle. They…

> Nobody forced Google to be a public company

This is the relevant part.

As soon as you're public, it inevitably introduces strong pressures to pursue profit no matter its cost, as it decouples the negative social externalities corporate actions can cause from the profit made from those actions.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#46

Post by yorwba »

robbrit wrote: post #4

I think what will end up happening is Google employees will just self-sort until there aren't enough people left in the company to oppose projects like this. People who are strongly opposed on moral grounds will leave, further strengthening management's choices. While Google is probably sad to see them go, it would be even sadder to continue missing out on the world's largest market. I doubt the employee protests wil…

For that reason, Googlers who oppose these kinds of projects should enthusiastically sign up to work on them, so they can have a chance at influencing the outcome. It may feel like the morally superior choice to avoid getting involved, but it just means that the dirty work is done by someone who doesn't care.

For the same reason, I don't think creating a censored search engine for the Chinese market is bad in itself. If you accept that the Chinese government isn't going to change its mind on censorship any time soon, you can still try to do your best within that constraint, e.g. by finding a site with the censored content that's not on the blacklist yet.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#47

Post by anon654432 »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #41
chivas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think censored search engine is bad? All other search engine in China have same censorship but worse quality. Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality? Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?

The argument is that Google shouldn't build a censored search engine for one authoritarian state, because once it's built, it's easier for other states to ask for the same treatment. China's existing censored search engines are confined to that country, and I would also oppose any adoption of those services in the US. (As a side note: Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-…

> (As a side note: Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.)

Depends. Do you feel the same way when reading pro-Russia or pro-Israel comments?

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#48

Post by cronix »

hcnews wrote: post #25
jayd16 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The funny thing is that Google search engine is already censored in various parts of the world. E.g. 1. Right to be forgotten. 2. DMCA. (differing views on this). 3. Russia (?)

Their regular search engine is already censored. Do you think those top 10 results are really the actual unfettered top 10? What do you specifically consider "censorship?"

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#49

Post by jayd16 »

chivas wrote: post #37
jayd16 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you think censored search engine is bad? All other search engine in China have same censorship but worse quality. Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality? Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?

>Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality?

Again, this isn't exactly my personal opinion but the obvious difference is this is one of the US's largest tech companies participating, not some Chinese company that US citizens are not familiar with.

>why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there

Google employees have the power to protest Google projects, not big oil projects.

Re: Google Employees Uncover Ongoing Work on Censored China Search

#50

Post by perfmode »

lnyng wrote: post #43

While it seems like people don't like the idea of this censored search engine called Dragonfly, I wonder what people think about Microsoft's Bing. Bing is definitely running a censored version in China, or it will not survive the government regulation. Is Bing less bad than Dragonfly in terms of censorship? or is it also bad but engineers in Microsoft care little about that?

Google is the one that matters. Priorities.

Given infinite time and resources, by all means: pursue infinite objectives.

Given finite resources, sort in impact-priority order.

search engines aren’t like weeds

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