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Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

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Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#41

Post by Nasrudith »

intralizee wrote: post #33

I'm happy I never put in the hours studying algorithms to work at Google. Whatever happened to following their slogan?

Public shareholders and their destructive unrealistic expectations. They expect to see growth continue regardless of the size of the company when risk/stability and rate of growth are in an inverse relationship equilibrium (low risk-high returns eventually leads to more investment which leads to diminished returns, high risk leads to less investment which means better margins from lack of competition if the risk pays off). They have proven downright allergic to long-term planning in favor of the short term.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#42

Post by dsr_ »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #38

What's the difference between Google adopting Chinese regulations in China and Google adopting GDPR regulations in Europe?

When a company does something good for human rights and civilization, we say "Good." When they do something bad for human rights and civilization, we say "Bad."

What's the deal with pretending that laws are ethically neutral?

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#44

Post by kodablah »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #38

What's the difference between Google adopting Chinese regulations in China and Google adopting GDPR regulations in Europe?

I'm anti-GDPR and even I see that as a poor equivalence. The difference? Morality, so maybe to you there's no difference but to others it's obvious. The implementation difference, EU hasn't started large-scale blocking of sites that violate its laws (yet).

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#45

Post by ansy »

At the risk of sounding nationalistic, I think companies in the United States and other democratic countries should reconsider any and all business relationships with authoritarian regimes like those in China and Russia. And I say regimes because most "companies" in these countries are really just instruments of the state.

There may be money to be made, but not only are companies like Google tightening these authoritarian regimes' grips on millions and billions of people, but they are undermining the foundations of democracy by strengthening those who choose to crush it in their own countries.

I have no business of my own to withdraw from China or Russia. But if I did, I would look to send my investments to Taiwain, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand instead.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#46

Post by throwaway8879 »

Sangermaine wrote: post #9
c3534l wrote: post #2

It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical. But even if we assume that there is no legal way for a company to operate ethically in China, is the world meant to close our borders to them entirely? 20% of the planet lives there and we do business with China every day when we buy something manufactured there, but do not feel morally required to boycott them on account of t…

>It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical. What a disgusting comment. What is legal and what is ethical are not the same thing at all. I have difficulty believing this was written in good faith.

And what is ethical exactly? Objectively? And this is something that you get to decide?

Maximizing profits seems pretty ethical to me.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#47

Post by kodablah »

amarkov wrote: post #10
ben_jones wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical. What about local laws in countries that are deeply homophobic? Is it unfortunate if countries don't hand over lists of gay users?

Certainly not. But is Google planning to hand over lists of users who search for banned terms? It seems like there's a big difference between handing over lists of users and restricting information.

> It seems like there's a big difference between handing over lists of users and restricting information.

I think what you're not understanding is it's not Google doing this vs that, it's Google doing what they are told, whatever that may be, or leaving.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#48

Post by 628C6l0 »

Honestly, the censored stuff is crap anyways. Reading the censored stuff is what leads people to devote their lives to "politics", "activism", and "social justice", and away from the really good stuff such as math, science, and philosophy, which the Chinese government never blocked. Any time spent on the activism stuff is time you are not spending on genuinely meaningful and personally fulfilling pursuits. In a sense, political activity is like playing video games and doing drugs, except more dangerous because you don't tend to feel as guilty for spending a lot of time on it. I think it's a good thing that drugs are generally banned, but there are also such things as "drugs of the mind" such as video games and political agitations and I don't see why reasons for banning the former shouldn't generalize to at least some of the latter

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#49

Post by buttholesurfer »

628C6l0 wrote: post #48

Honestly, the censored stuff is crap anyways. Reading the censored stuff is what leads people to devote their lives to "politics", "activism", and "social justice", and away from the really good stuff such as math, science, and philosophy, which the Chinese government never blocked. Any time spent on the activism stuff is time you are not spending on genuinely meaningful and personally fulfilling pursuits. In a sense…

Wow.

Re: Google's censored Chinese search engine: a catalogue of ethical violations?

#50

Post by smallnamespace »

ansy wrote: post #45

At the risk of sounding nationalistic, I think companies in the United States and other democratic countries should reconsider any and all business relationships with authoritarian regimes like those in China and Russia. And I say regimes because most "companies" in these countries are really just instruments of the state. There may be money to be made, but not only are companies like Google tightening these authorit…

> I have no business of my own to withdraw from China or Russia.

That's probably untrue from the face of it, just from the amount of products and goods that are produced in whole or in part in China.

In fact, for many products, good luck finding a choice that doesn't directly or indirectly lead to money ending up in the coffers of the Chinese businesses, which is just one hop away from tax revenues of the Chinese state.

But, like, everyone also directly buys or depends on gasoline, which indirectly funds plenty of unpleasantly authoritarian regimes.

What I'm curious is how anyone can have clean hands when everything is just shades of grey in a global, fully-connected economy where everyone is just a few hops from everyone else.

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