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Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

bbc.com

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Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#61

Post by kyrra »

peteretep wrote: post #50
kyrra wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the arguments at the time when dragonfly was leaked, it was brought up that there is censorship, though in a different form, already in the EU. Be it right to be forgotten, or filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU. Then the US and EU both have censorship around things protected by law. So you can sue people to take down slanderous material, or material tha…

> Be it right to be forgotten Works for me, and seems to empower the people, rather than the state... > filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU Could you link me to some credible sources for this?

https://newrepublic.com/article/147364/verboten-germany-law-...

Not filtering, but censorship.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#62

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

geophertz wrote: post #27
anvandare wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they even started the project speaks for itself. Companies don't have ethical standards, only slick PR departments.

Strangely people do not care about Apple doing the same thing. Even on HN posts talking about how Apple sells privacy as a product are upvoted and reach > 1000 upvotes.

You know what company was once in China and pulled out on moral grounds? Google. [1]

Yet nobody cares, as evidenced by the number of companies who do plenty of business in China without backlash. So Google tries to go back to China, and everyone loses their minds.

It's frustrating to be honest, it's as if they're be punished for a good deed they did 10 years ago. If they had just never left, they'd be in the same situation as Apple, where nobody (or magnitudes less, if you want to get pedantic) cares.

I at least hope governments will ban Baidu from ever competing outside of China. I would hate to see Google suffer because they weren't ever allowed to compete with Baidu on their home turf.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-pulls-out-of-china-20...

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#63

Post by gentro »

chrischen wrote: post #47
peteretep wrote: post #41

To me, this feels like an area Uncle Sam and the EU need to get involved in. Declare all censorship or need to comply with the Great Firewall to be a trade barrier, freeze out all Chinese tech companies on that basis, and find a way to strongly discourage American and European companies from in any way enabling it.

Any sort of heavy hand the West takes to “prove” that whatever it is that China is doing (censorship, communism, etc) is wrong/doesn’t work is going to backfire to the highest degree. It will entrench them in their already strong beliefs that the West is only interested in holding progress back from China (out of jealousy at their high economic growth). If you believe your system is better, then you really should not…

Also if you ask regular Chinese people if they want a censored version of google, most of them would probably say hell yea, when does it launch?

What’s the alternative? Only other censored search engines. And Chinese people know baidu search results suck ass compared to google’s.

So basically the western commentariat killing off dragonfly has a demonstrably negative impact on Chinese quality of life.

But we’re only trying to protect the freedoms of oppressed Chinese people, right?

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#64

Post by hnarn »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #60
peteretep wrote: post #41

To me, this feels like an area Uncle Sam and the EU need to get involved in. Declare all censorship or need to comply with the Great Firewall to be a trade barrier, freeze out all Chinese tech companies on that basis, and find a way to strongly discourage American and European companies from in any way enabling it.

That's nice and all, but the reality is that these multinational companies actively and willingly accept these terms (and more!) in order to exploit Chinese labor. The rhetoric about IP and censorship is all bark, no bite because the people at the top knew exactly what they signed up for.

> these multinational companies actively and willingly accept these terms

That's why it needs to be worked on a political level, like the post you replied to stated.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#65

Post by ethbro »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #60
peteretep wrote: post #41

To me, this feels like an area Uncle Sam and the EU need to get involved in. Declare all censorship or need to comply with the Great Firewall to be a trade barrier, freeze out all Chinese tech companies on that basis, and find a way to strongly discourage American and European companies from in any way enabling it.

That's nice and all, but the reality is that these multinational companies actively and willingly accept these terms (and more!) in order to exploit Chinese labor. The rhetoric about IP and censorship is all bark, no bite because the people at the top knew exactly what they signed up for.

> these multinational companies actively and willingly accept these terms (and more!) in order to exploit Chinese labor

... under current international agreements and rules.

The agreements and rules change, the calculus changes. Companies optimize continuously for the current environment they find themselves in.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#66

Post by alephr »

malms wrote: post #49
chrischen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sort of heavy hand the West takes to “prove” that whatever it is that China is doing (censorship, communism, etc) is wrong/doesn’t work is going to backfire to the highest degree. It will entrench them in their already strong beliefs that the West is only interested in holding progress back from China (out of jealousy at their high economic growth). If you believe your system is better, then you really should not…

> If you believe your system is better, then you really should not have to actively participate in fighting opposing systems of belief. Forcing it through just shows that you are motivated by self interest, and not a core belief in the superiority of your own values. Uh why ? I think it's exactly the opposite

I don't claim to be an authority on this by any means and it's a very complex space but...

the approach of "forcing" a foreign country to take on social/political beliefs seems like a very difficult task when the local culture doesn't already support them implicitly. The worst example of this in recent history is probably our(US) interactions in the middle east that in many ways have backfired and made the situation worse by creating economic uncertainty and power vacuums.

I think generally more liberal values become more attractive as economic prosperity. if this is true it seems like a simpler/more effective foreign policy strategy to create economic opportunity for citizens of the foreign country and simply tie an example of the liberal values we want to spread to those opportunities. Then pushes for these sorts of changes would have a much stronger local, and thus more aware of the local situation, base of support.

If the views really are superior it should be easy to derive them independently given examples as your lower level concerns become less of a problem. And if they come to those positions in a more independent way the likelihood that they'll last is much higher.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#67

Post by fareesh »

How different is project dragonfly from what is already being proposed by some political folks in the USA?

YouTube has arbitrary content policies which seem to mirror whatever the Democratic party wants. From China's POV they want the same thing except they call their party the Communist party.

Guys like Dennis Prager are trying to run a YouTube channel with conservative viewpoints and are finding it impossible to do so without obstacles. I don't think there is a single channel that is right of center which is not mistreated by YouTube.

Politics aside, let's look at political correctness. On YouTube you cannot be critical about a class of people because of their immigration status. I watched a documentary about of smuggling of illegal immigrants from North Africa into Europe. They showed footage of a guy who couldn't go out into his own farm at night because smugglers would trespass on his property en route to the shore where the boats were. The documentary was one of those "live" launches on YouTube. Conveniently the live launch was bugged out. I had to refresh the page an hour after I realized it didn't release.

24 hours later it was banned by YouTube.

So I ask again, is it only Chinese censorship that western society has a problem with?

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#68

Post by wjmao88 »

malms wrote: post #49
chrischen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sort of heavy hand the West takes to “prove” that whatever it is that China is doing (censorship, communism, etc) is wrong/doesn’t work is going to backfire to the highest degree. It will entrench them in their already strong beliefs that the West is only interested in holding progress back from China (out of jealousy at their high economic growth). If you believe your system is better, then you really should not…

> If you believe your system is better, then you really should not have to actively participate in fighting opposing systems of belief. Forcing it through just shows that you are motivated by self interest, and not a core belief in the superiority of your own values. Uh why ? I think it's exactly the opposite

This is basically a free market argument. If something is superior then it shouldn't need to convince people to choose it, because people will naturally choose it over other inferior options.

Re: Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

#69

Post by CodiePetersen »

chrischen wrote: post #47
peteretep wrote: post #41

To me, this feels like an area Uncle Sam and the EU need to get involved in. Declare all censorship or need to comply with the Great Firewall to be a trade barrier, freeze out all Chinese tech companies on that basis, and find a way to strongly discourage American and European companies from in any way enabling it.

Any sort of heavy hand the West takes to “prove” that whatever it is that China is doing (censorship, communism, etc) is wrong/doesn’t work is going to backfire to the highest degree. It will entrench them in their already strong beliefs that the West is only interested in holding progress back from China (out of jealousy at their high economic growth). If you believe your system is better, then you really should not…

If those companies operate within our country we have an obligation to ensure they are following ethical standards everywhere. If you don't you directly fund any unethical standards being enforced elsewhere.

It doesn't matter who it is, whether it's NSA or Russia or Sweden if Google is cooperating with them in unethical ways you should do something about it. Apathy and a blind eye is why corporations can get away with working people to death so we can live in comfort. People may have excuses for that but there is no excuse for allowing them to go so far as what has been written in dystopia literature.

Also just step back for a moment and try to think of scenarios in which people would have to apply your "don't fight opposing systems". I feel you will find it does not apply to a great many things.

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