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Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China

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

#71

Post by smolder »

noelsusman wrote: post #52
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.

Good luck convincing US and EU residents to take a significant economic hit in the name of standing on principle against censorship that doesn't affect them.

I feel like you could possibly get popular support for it here in the US, but almost certainly not from businesses and their lobbyists.

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

#72

Post by chvid »

curt15 wrote: post #46
iamnotacrook wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know whether there are in fact "exact requirements" at all, or whether you just have informal off the record chats with officials where you're given to understand that it would be "looked upon favourably" if this or happens or does not happen. From everything I've read about how China operates it's sort of the exact opposite in one sense from the west. In the west there are rules and there are loopholes a…

>From everything I've read about how China operates it's sort of the exact opposite in one sense from the west. The main differences can be summarized as "rule of law" versus "rule of people". Also connections with someone in the upper levels of gov't are paramount for any company looking to make it big. Source: Chinese family members.

Ok.

But a big project like this has to gather its requirements somehow. Do google then have dialogue with a representative of the government?

Bing and outlook is (or was at least around 2015) accessible and localized in mainland China.

I wonder how they did it?

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

#73

Post by dpatru »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #54
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…

Right to be forgotten gives the individual the right to have his data removed from permanent storage by companies, for whatever purpose: not sure how it relates even remotely with censorship. " filtering of information related to things unsavory to the past of any given country in the EU." Some specific reference to some EU government forcing companies to remove controversial information about their countries' past w…

> Right to be forgotten gives the individual the right to have his data removed from permanent storage by companies, for whatever purpose: not sure how it relates even remotely with censorship.

Books are also permanent storage, often stored centrally in public libraries. Does an individual have the right to have information about him removed from books in libraries? Wouldn't that be a kind of censorship? The only difference is that so called "right to be forgotten" applies to Google's electronic storage rather than your local library's books. Just like you don't have a right to remove pages about you from your local public library's copy of your high school yearbook, so you shouldn't have the right to remove information about yourself from Google's indexes. Both are censorship.

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

#74

Post by tmcronn »

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.

Companies foreign to China cooperate with the local government for another reason also: they want access to Chinese customers.

If Google were to refuse the Chinese terms of business, they would be barred from doing business with the largest population in the world. And the climate over there is that their government risks little political capital in banning non-compliant firms.

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#76

Post by tgragnato »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #62
geophertz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sit…

> I at least hope governments will ban Baidu from ever competing outside of China.

"If you open the window, both fresh air and flies will be blown in." 邓小平

That ideology works and benefits China only if there is a disparity between what China is allowed to do in the rest of the world and what China allows the world to do. I am also convinced that restoring an equal relationship is a great way to make the Chinese problem settle on its own.

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

#77

Post by wool_gather »

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…

What "forcing"? This is the international equivalent of, "Hey, Bob, you're kind of an ass---- and we don't want you coming to the softball league anymore".

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

#78

Post by CodiePetersen »

gentro wrote: post #63
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…

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 t…

That's not the only reason. You're trying to conform your neighboring country to an acceptable global standard. It's not just the feel good immediateness of "I'll take a censored Google because fighting for open access Internet is too hard" It's about that influence that will begin to dictate googles policy as more of their revenue comes from China. It's about changing the way China acts towards its citizens and adjacent neighbors. They are a power that can not be ignored. Their influence and policy progrogates through all companies navigating international business. That in turn effects societies they come from. Additionally they represent a HUGE chunk of the Internet and its hardware and on the topic of information security China definitely plays an important part on the way the global community thinks about policy going forward.

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

#79

Post by hangonhn »

ta20190717 wrote: post #22

Does anyone know the technical details of what Google would have needed to comply with in China? From my understanding, a lot of western companies do business in China via (51% local controlled) "Partners" that ostensibly run their infrastructure for them, and obviously have to abide by local regulation. This includes operating an "Information Security Management System" (a euphemism of a sort) that interfaces with t…

I don't know the nuances of the new ownership laws but the 51% rule no longer applies. The Tesla gigafactory in China is wholly owned by Tesla. These protective measure is unnecessary now that China has grown so much economically.

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

#80

Post by CodiePetersen »

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.

I wouldn't say people don't. I would definitely say HN seems not to care.

I think what is more the issue is there are a lot of people on HN who see any criticism of China as nationalistic behavior from Americans at least considering the language our president has chosen to use. Which I would say that is a bad stance to take just because someone else's language is nationalistic on an issue doesn't mean my criticism is. But that seems to be the main issue. Not any particular company just talk around China.

But I agree many of these tech companies are constantly stepping over the line because they have no real competition. Which is why I say break them up.

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