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I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

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Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#71

Post by bduerst »

Aperocky wrote: post #43
virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

> ethical sense Define that. For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? Does it improve information flow over existing domestic search engines? I think the answer is obvious. People subscribe to overly simplistic thinking - if something is not perfect, it must be the worst. I see a lot of people promoting sanctions on a country because of government. Who gets…

Censorship is a red herring.

It's the Chinese firewall censoring the sites, so even if Google did link the site in the search results, users wouldn't be able to click and access it.

The bigger issue with project dragonfly was sharing user search queries with the government. This seems terrifying but pretty much every other tech company (Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) existing in China does this with their Chinese user data.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#73

Post by bduerst »

amadeusw wrote: post #69
akfanta wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chinese citizens and migrants who didn't leave China for political reasons. According to whom?

There's plenty. Here's one example [0] > Convoys of Chinese patriots in Ferraris and other high-end sports cars have been revving up pro-Beijing demonstrations in Canada, home to tens of thousands of Chinese millionaire migrants. [0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3023499/wors...

That's an article about a car enthusiast club in Vancouver, not Google employees.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#74

Post by novok »

akfanta wrote: post #57
shadowgovt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google hired a significant number of Chinese citizens and migrants who didn't leave China for political reasons. Not surprisingly, they tend not to see China's government policy as evil.

> Chinese citizens and migrants who didn't leave China for political reasons. According to whom?

They moved for primarily financial reasons. When your apolitical and not actively discriminated against, it would be hard to leave china for 'political' reasons when your primary reason is financial.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#75

Post by bigcohoneypot »

virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

The younger they hire, the more they will hate the USA and love china.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#77

Post by bauerd »

untog wrote: post #64
Aperocky wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ethical sense Define that. For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? Does it improve information flow over existing domestic search engines? I think the answer is obvious. People subscribe to overly simplistic thinking - if something is not perfect, it must be the worst. I see a lot of people promoting sanctions on a country because of government. Who gets…

> For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? Does it improve information flow over existing domestic search engines? I think the answer is obvious. What does that have to do with ethics, really? Your argument seems to be that utility should outweigh ethical concerns. > I see a lot of people promoting sanctions on a country because of government. Who gets hurt…

>What does that have to do with ethics, really? The argument seems to be that utility should outweigh ethical concerns.

It's called utilitarianism and here it demonstrates nicely that ethics comes in various flavors

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#78

Post by song »

Aperocky wrote: post #43
virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

> ethical sense Define that. For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? Does it improve information flow over existing domestic search engines? I think the answer is obvious. People subscribe to overly simplistic thinking - if something is not perfect, it must be the worst. I see a lot of people promoting sanctions on a country because of government. Who gets…

Back when I lived in China, I used to think that having Google in China even with censorship was better than not having Google at all. But, this was also because back then, they did have a notice saying that some of the results had been censored. Back then, it felt to me to be an interesting compromise.

What does scare me though, is that by accepting censorship, it normalizes it and weakens the position of any company protesting against it even in countries that traditionally are more pro-human rights like European countries and the US. So it is a complex question...

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#79

Post by song »

mkolodny wrote: post #68
Aperocky wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ethical sense Define that. For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? Does it improve information flow over existing domestic search engines? I think the answer is obvious. People subscribe to overly simplistic thinking - if something is not perfect, it must be the worst. I see a lot of people promoting sanctions on a country because of government. Who gets…

> For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? I don't think so. If Chinese people want to use Google, then they have to use a VPN. And if Chinese people use a VPN, their search results won't be censored. If Google releases a censored search engine in China, then people will have less incentive to access an uncensored one.

The problem is that it is becoming harder and harder to just use a VPN to the point where a lot of people no longer bother. There's value in information being easily accessible

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#80

Post by throwawaylolx »

throwlaplace wrote: post #35
hpoe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of them have been open about the fact they are ruthless profit making centers focused only on money and you shut up and stay in line or else you're toast. Google's model was "don't be evil" and for years went on the image that they are fighting for the public good and that they were an example of the ability to be principle centered, do good for the world, and get stinking rich at the same time. Now that the…

>They were able to cash in on this image of moral superiority and principle first for years and it gave them a leg up okay but honestly how silly is it to take a company's branding to heart? like are we all children that believe in santa claus too? >do good for the world, and get stinking rich at the same time i'm old enough now to understand that these two things are mutually exclusive because the latter necessarily…

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are saying, but e.g. how did Sal Khan do net evil rather than net good with his Khan Academy project?
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