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I recently picked up a book called, "No Wall Too High", the translated man who escaped from a Chinese labor camp under Mao Zedong. In this book, during his time
by ex3xu 9y ago
I recently picked up a book called, "No Wall Too High", the translated man who escaped from a Chinese labor camp under Mao Zedong. In this book, during his time in a re-education camp in Lijiang, the author relates seeing the story of Yang Shukang -- a man whose crime was simply writing a letter to the central leadership in Beijing saying that two thousand people had starved to death in his town of Jiuhe during the great leap forward.
The author tells the story of seeing Shukang stand up in front of the entire prison and refuse to "confess his crimes" -- and was summarily spat on and beaten to near death by a group of party zealots. Tortured this way for three more days, Shukang hanged himself on the fourth day after writing characters on the wall, among which -- "The victims of the Great Leap Forward will live forever in the hearts of the people!"
We must not forget the victims of the past, and we must remember that we are less than two generations removed from men being killed simply for telling the truth when the facts do not align with political convenience. The intolerance of dissenting voices and contradictory information is a dangerous slippery slope on the fall from a free and healthy society.
- jcoffland 9y agoGreat story but I fail to see the connection. This is a case of don't shit where you eat. If you want to speak out against Google then don't belong to an organization funded by Google.
- 21 9y agoThat organization doesn't say on it's website "we are a Google PR firm", or "we will never criticize Google", they imply they are an "independent think-tank not influenced by money".
- waisbrot 9y agoAnd this isn't a Google-created group where you'd dig into their founders/records a little and be able to see that they're a Google PR firm. It's just that Google (among other companies?) has successfully given them funding to a degree where they can no longer afford to annoy Google.
- rhizome 9y agoSaid another way, the organization has become successful enough in their messaging for Google to become annoyed.
- ebola1717 9y agoThat's exactly how we got to the situation we're in with climate change. The fact that corporate money can hold so much influence over what we research, what we say, and therefore what we know and believe, is and has already proved itself to be dangerous.
- bllguo 9y agoThought provoking comparison. But it illuminates a key difference in assumptions. Climate change is objectively bad, and one of the greatest problems society faces. It is wrong for corporations to silence the truth about climate change. OTOH I don't think Google is a clear and present danger to the world, and I don't think criticism of Google is objective truth; hence I don't think this is an evil act from Google. I do believe that corporate money should not even be in this equation. Unfortunately, the strong governmental influence necessary for that to be true is an unlikely reality in the US.
- notliketherest 9y agoCould just as easily be restated: If you don't want to speak out against China then don't live in China. Increasingly these transnational corporations have become in some cases more powerful than states, recording our every movement online and offline, curating what news we read and pushing their agendas and biases.
- kobeya 9y agoI didn't have any trouble choosing not to buy Echo/Alexis/whatever.
- mmirate 9y agoYet. First it will be extra features and conveniences to miss; after some time (cheaper hardware etc etc) it will become feasible that all nontrivial Amazon interactions must go through Alexa.
- kobeya 9y agoAlexa is never going to reach the market penetration necessary for that to be plausible.
- jonbarker 9y agoIts becoming much harder to be an organization that in some way does not benefit from larger corporations. Asking anyone to first get their funding right then get their free speech right is not the right order IMO although in an ideal world it would be great. What if the funding takes a long time to sort out? Don't do free speech until then?
- hsod 9y agoHow is this a free speech issue?
- bllguo 9y agoPray tell how this is a free speech issue. Open Markets is free to go say their piece elsewhere. Why are they entitled to speak freely under New America?
- jonbarker 9y agoI get what you are saying, but the problem is that writing under the auspices of that group increases your audience quite a bit I'd imagine.
- metaphorm 9y agowhat counts as funded by Google? if you have a media product that is monetized through ads and you put Google ads on your site, are you funded by Google? if you are a member of a political party that Google made contributions to, are you funded by Google?
- sreenadh 9y agoIf Google cannot handle some criticism from a "supposedly friendly entity" (since they are bank rolled by Google), this shows their level of arrogance and the unwillingness to change their ways. You need to evolve with time. Especially a tech company like Google failing to understand that is rather sad. Now Google has set precedence that they will not tolerate anything critical. So, the consultants & advisor will just praise Google till the day it sinks.
- geodel 9y agoTo me it seems mooching off Google while criticizing their policies is not tolerated. It is not too dissimilar than Damore's firing from Google which was unsurprisingly justified as policy matter. The only difference I see is last case was of some hated conservative chump but this time it is of "independent intellectual"
- astrodust 9y agoWas not aware that 2000 people starved to death at Google.
- shemnon42 9y agoThey are starving because they refuse to eat Kale.
- guiomie 9y agoYou meant cabbage.
- ryanx435 9y agoWay to miss the forest for the trees in the analogy. Google is removing people that have views that differ from the progressive narrative. It's not just about Google, it's about people who hold progressive beliefs seem to think that it is ok to remove people who express differing opinions. There is a large number of politicians who hold progressive beliefs. The Google incident can be interpreted as a warning that progressive politicians would remove citizens that express differing opinions if they could. The ops anecdote about China is a reminder that humans are shit and have the capacity to murder people for expressing differ in views. It's a warning that progressive are only tolerant to surface characteristics such as skin color and extremely intolerant to anything, even the truth, that contradicts their utopian world view.
- bllguo 9y agoThis is ridiculous. Not everything needs to be twisted into a slippery slope. This is not about "removing citizens that express differing opinions," it's about Google not wanting to fund people that criticize them. Is that good? No. Is it evil? I don't think so. They are free to criticize Google without benefiting from Google's money.
- astrodust 9y ago> Google is removing people that have views that differ from the progressive narrative. Good for them. If you don't like the culture nobody's holding you there at gunpoint and forcing you to work. This isn't China under Mao. It's a free market economy. > The Google incident can be interpreted as a warning that progressive politicians would remove citizens that express differing opinions if they could. A private company is not the government. First amendment is still intact and nobody is suggesting otherwise. Save your panic for actual threats. You really need to open your filter bubble.
- guelo 9y agoGive me a break. Nobody is even censoring anybody's speech here. The real evil here is the lobbying organization itself. Corporations and billionaires buying our politicians and distorting the public debate is a much bigger threat than some lobbyist's freedom to argue against his boss's interests.
- imaginenore 9y agoThat's rich, considering Google just fired a guy for an internal memo full of apologies and facts backed by citations.
- kobeya 9y agoThe real evil is people willing to pivot any discussion to whatever topic they think is more important, destroying a platform for open discourse.
- root_axis 9y agoCastigating someone else's opinions as the destruction of open discussion is the height of irony.
- rhizome 9y agoIt's condescending to plainly try to change the topic to what the poster thinks the issue "really is." As a bald assertion, it's threadshitting.
- root_axis 9y agoWhether or not it's condescending, it's not "destroying open discourse", that's absurd hyperbole.
- rhizome 9y agoI agree, but that's in a bad-faith reply to guelo, who was the one trying to tell us "how it really is." Presumably because we're all dumb or watching the wrong news sources or something.
- slg 9y agoWhat has political discourse become that everyone is either Hitler or Mao? It is possible to say "free speech is important" without also saying "Google is a lot like this person that killed some 50+ million people."
- Grustaf 9y agoThis is exactly the opposite of the lesson here. Communist repression (and fascist for that matter) WAS of the brute force variety, like in 1984, but what we are seeing now is something completely different. Not quite Brave new world, but definitely with aspects of that. Giants like google don't use violence, very likely they never will. They don't need to. They can nudge leaders and populations in the direction they want, and achieve their goals, through entirely legal and voluntary means. Looking back at what abuse of power looked like in the past is very dangerous, we will miss the signs of the novel ways that the powerful move their positions forward.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dang 9y ago> victims of the past [...] slippery slope Would you please not take HN threads on generic ideological tangents? It's against the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html