Google's Project Dragonfly 'Terminated' in China • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by tmcronn » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

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…

If Google proceeded per the government's wishes for these reasons, that sets an interesting precedent.

Companies would be able to implement features they deem to be ethically questionable, so long as they or the public determined that "it's what the customer wanted, anyway".

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

#92

Post by jmeng0122 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #89

khc wrote: post #86

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some inf…

It's not just censorship. It never was. Dragonfly also includes actively assisting the Chinese Communist Party in identifying and persecuting people who look for information about freedom or for information about crimes committed by the Party/government

any article or press to support your claims?

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

#93

Post by alephr » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

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.

I agree that there should be action taken to push things like this in a better direction but I think the obvious things to do can easily back fire and just make the situation worse. AFAIK in china there is a lot (not necessarily universal) of support for the government so it would be easy to cast something like this in a way that just bolsters that support (foreign countries trying to hurt china for their own gain) and makes things like this worse.

Foreign policy is hard and I don't pretend to know the best way to do it but I think given recent history we have to be more careful about how we try to influence developing nations so that we actually have the effect we want. This might include doing things that could seem unpalatable in the short term.

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

#94

Post by api » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

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.

Oh yes, this. The Great Firewall is absolutely a trade barrier and I've long suspect that this rather than censorship is its main purpose. It's a way of implementing extremely strong trade barriers (protectionism) while still claiming to be in compliance with the letter of our trade agreements.

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

#95

Post by throwaway2048 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #81

hnarn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It’s game theory, each company needs to stay ahead of the others and end up in a globally suboptimal state. One solution to the prisoners dilemma is “the don” who ensures nobody defects, aka the government.

aka if you defect the big boss shoots you in the head.

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

#96

Post by sidibe » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

It's amazing the outrage a project investigating how to comply has generated while Bing is quietly working just fine in China.

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

#97

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:10 PM UTC

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.

The US censors content like child pornography, some bomb making manuals, etc.

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

#98

Post by ezoe » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

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.

Both US and EU exercise censorship in the name of:

+ copyrights

+ trademarks

+ patents(really bogus patents)

+ religion(these days, US outright ban any casual religious reference because it offend some believers, resulting modifying some manga/anime/game)

+ national security

+ ex-political party symbol(swastika, but they can't tell the difference between nazi symbol and Buddism symbol which is widely used in Japanese commercial products, especially manga/anime/game)

+ child porno(their definition includes some commercial Japanese manga/anime/game which we believe not possibly be a child porn since it's a pure fiction and no real-life human being harmed).

I believe these are also a trade barrier for Japan. But I bet you disagree some of the above points and justify the censorship because it's against your moral based on your culture.

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

#99

Post by whatshisface » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

khc wrote: post #86

As an overseas Chinese (born and grew up in Hong Kong but have relatives in China) I am sadden by this and HN comments. Any claim that Google would have helped China censor Chinese citizens ignores the fact that Chinese search engines are already censored. Because laws in this area are often vague, I can see that dragonfly would apply varying levels of censorships and as a side effect, allow people to access some inf…

You're assuming that Google would act as a mole, implementing the censorship in bad faith. Why wouldn't they advance the state of the art for censorship, making it even more effective in an attempt to please the Chinese government? In fact, if China is allowing them in, the party must have some reason to believe the second one will come to pass instead of the first.

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

#100

Post by gowld » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

lvmii wrote: post #59

noelsusman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The EU doesn't even have free speech to begin with[] and it doesn't seem like it bothers many people. [] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...

That article is about a case of Austrian law that EU allows. EU allows countries to make their own determination. Not all countries ban anti-religious facts. And it does bother many people. But it's not a very big deal because even in the worst case reported in the article, it was a very small penalty for a very large amount of speech. The scale matters.