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Censorship is censorship. It's either bad or it's not. If Google truly cares about the issue of censorship it should act consistently, not just try to find an
by grandalf 17y ago
Censorship is censorship. It's either bad or it's not. If Google truly cares about the issue of censorship it should act consistently, not just try to find an area in which opposition to censorship is unanimous among people in the US and make a big stink about how bold it is being.
This is a business decision. Try posting a video of a naked 17.5 year old person on youtube and see how long it takes before it is taken down. Try posting a video slide show of sensitive wikileaks docs and see how long the video stays up.
Your argument also falls apart in terms of the humanitarian argument. Search increases freedom and thus is helpful to humanitarian goals. If Google makes a decision that results in less search, the decision results in less freedom.
Similarly, if you are running late to an event and you drive 100 MPH on the highway and you get pulled over for speeding, you might actually get there later than if you'd just driven the speed limit. If you want to optimize within the law you don't speed. Google is doing the equivalent of going 100 MPH and then blaming the cop.
- orangecat 17y agoThe Sophisticate: "The world isn't black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It's all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else." The Zetet: "Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view..." -- Marc Stiegler, David's Sling http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/
- grandalf 17y agoI love this quote. I think most people apply the Sophisticate's error to China by supposing that since both the US and China are different shades of gray, they may then decide arbitrarily to critique China... similarly: We saw it manifested in yesterday's post - the one who believed that odds of two to the power of seven hundred and fifty millon to one, against, meant "there was still a chance". All probabilities, to him, were simply "uncertain" and that meant he was licensed to ignore them if he pleased. If you care about censorship, you are not licensed to ignore censorship in the US just because both are gray. If you care about humanitarian abuses, you are not licensed to ignore them in the US just because China may commit worse ones.
- orangecat 17y agoIf you care about censorship, you are not licensed to ignore censorship in the US just because both are gray. If you care about humanitarian abuses, you are not licensed to ignore them in the US just because China may commit worse ones. You are however "licensed" to focus more on China, on the grounds that their abuses are orders of magnitude worse.
- grandalf 17y agoI challenge that assertion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1217082 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1217082