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Why is it unethical to launch a censored search product in China? The alternative isn't to launch an uncensored search product. That's not possible. The altern

• throwaway2048 8y ago
  >It seems to me that the presence of any international company could only act as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship controls over time. this was the justification to the more lenient treatment of china with international trade deals, it has gone nowhere, all that has happened it is has economically empowered china to become a lot more troublesome on the world stage, while they have not liberalized in virtually any way. The presence of Google legitimizes and empowers the state level control of information that the CCP does at a massive scale, it does exactly the opposite of "acting as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship" Should be noted that China is a country, that right now as we speak, is putting an entire ethnic group in concentration camps, 1 million+ people and more coming in an attempt to "reeducate them" and stamp out their culture. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-education-camps.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-educatio... https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-nothing-to-say-about-chinas-internment-camps-for-muslims/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-no... This is not a system that Google should be legitimizing through collaboration.
  • beaner 8y ago
    I think this ignores the rest of my comment. Not sure I agree that trade deals and search engines work the same way. You could also say that the United States is an imperialist devil that kills innocents in the middle east with drones, and that Google should exit the US in protest and move to Europe. But that doesn't seem like a great argument.
    • opnitro 8y ago
      Seems like a decent argument to me dude.
      • beaner 8y ago
        Can't tell if you mean this as a joke, but the following this logically we'd find that every country is doing something immoral, and if we all exited/revolted at governments not 100% completely moral, we'd have a lawless anarchy of a world which is much worse than the one we live in now.
        • opnitro 8y ago
          Sure, but lines should be drawn somewhere. The invasion of Iraq was a humanitarian nightmare and our country decided not to take any action to punish those who committed it. If the China performing censorship is enough a reason for Google to morally avoid that market, then the US certainly falls on the other side of the line as well. And if that's too far in the distant past, the war in Yemin should suffice.
          • beaner 8y ago
            For me, "somewhere" is the line between business and politics. People can use voice and voting to change their laws, and businesses are free to roam within those laws. Promoting politics through business is a conflation that doesn't seem to serve anyone very well.
            • throwaway2048 8y ago
• partiallypro 8y ago
  Isn't Google also helping the Chinese government with some tech projects?
• 07d046 8y ago
  Because it's collaborating with the Chinese government to oppress the people.
• graeme 8y ago
  This could have precedent for other markets, no? Countries would demand google censor themselves the way they did for China.
  • gaius 8y ago
    I think you have it backwards - Google will perfect it’s censorship offering in China then actively resell it to other governments
• fulafel 8y ago
  I think there are 2 ethical arguments in your message: a) Someone's going to the bad thing anyway, so the world won't be worse off if it's us b) I'll join the wrongdoing organisation in doing the bad things and affect change from within the cooperation framework I think a) is quite hard to defend philosophically. We don't generally excuse a member of an actor just because the bad thing was done as a member of a group, either in everyday life (think raising kids) or in national law, or in international law. b) would need a clearer and bigger counter-badness component with "the lesser evil" to even be arguably defensible, even then being a pretty dark shade of realpolitik.
  • Leary 8y ago
    Just because it's realpolitik does not mean it's not ethical.
  • beaner 8y ago
    I actually do not think A is the proper argument here. Google providing a restricted search service is not doing a "bad thing." It will be a product that helps people find what they are looking for, which is a good thing. At the same time, they are restricted from sharing certain information, a restriction that is applied blanketly to all of China's citizenry. Imagine that there exists a prison wherein any prisoner can escape by simply knowing the escape passphrase. One of the jobs in this prison is to walk around providing water to the prisoners, keeping them alive. Everyone in the prison is prevented from speaking the escape phrase, punishable by death. You are a water provider in this prison. You know the escape phrase. You know that by doing your job, more prisoners are fed more quickly and are healthier and have better lives. But you know they would have even better ones if they could escape. Would the moral thing to do to be to quit in protest and remove yourself from the equation, because you cannot speak the passphrase, which is a decision that ultimately helps no one? Or would the moral thing be to continue providing a helpful service that prisoners need, meanwhile having access to the prisoners and the wardens, and being able to push for the ability to speak? It seems to me that the providing of water and the ability to speak the passphrase are two separate things that you as a water-provider have the ability to do. And when you remove yourself from the prison on the absolutist moral basis, you leave the prisoners worse off in practical terms, for essentially no purpose. I think in Google's case, it is helpful to identify what is the water and what is the unspeakable passphrase. Water is returning benign results, and the unspeakable passphrase is (separate & distinctly) returning censored results. Providing water is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is not aiding the prison in hurting its prisoners, it is keeping the prisoners alive and healthy. The citizens are permitted health, and it is a good thing to help them have it. Providing benign search results is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is not aiding China in censorship, it is keeping the citizenry within quick reach of benign information. It is a good thing to help them have that. A bad thing for you as a water-provider to do would be to not provide water, or whack the prisoners with sticks. A bad thing for Google to do as a search provider would be to not provide benign results, or to develop tools for forcing the Chinese to have access to less information than they currently do. The providing of water is a good thing and is distinct and separate from bad things. Not speaking the escape phrase is not a bad thing, because it is not your choice. It is forced on you by the context. At worst, not speaking the escape phrase lets you continue to provide water. At best, while you're there, you can try to convince the warden to loosen up, possibly leading to more freedom. I think the point here is that given the threat of force, morality is not absolute, it is contextual. When your options are morality vs. survival (or knowledge/life-promoting things), then your morality must be re-evaluated, because survival (and life-promoting things) are the goal of any framework that is actually moral. Returning benign search results is a good/life-promoting thing. There is a large swath of search results which are very good for the Chinese to have access to, which enriches their lives, which Google can provide better than anyone else. This is the knowledge/life promotion on one side of the equation. On the other, many are holding an absolutist position that only complete uncensorship can be offered morally. They are holding adherence to the morality in a specific context (the US/free speech), above the actual goal of the morality, which is life-promotion. I argue that when a morality leads to the removal of good/life-promoting things in this way, it must be re-evaluated for the context, because it is no longer achieving its goal. We must see what parts of the morality we cannot apply because _it is not our choice whether or not to apply it_. We discover that within the context of the threat of force, it is acceptable to abide by that force, and provide a subset of results that is still helpful for people to have access to. Morality only applies to decisions you can make within a context. If you don't enter that context, you can't claim to be doing anything moral. And if you do, the things that are not your decision cannot be part of your morality. Given what remains, you do the best you can. This is why I think Google should enter China with a restricted search engine.
• Leary 8y ago
  Thanks for laying this out. This challenges the conventional wisdom that somehow Google not entering China will lead to less censorship.
• hugh4life 8y ago
  "It seems to me that the presence of any international company could only act as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship controls over time." But future demands may go beyond censorship...
• rdlecler1 8y ago
  Or it could be used as a wedge to increase censorship in the U.S. overtime as the Chinese government exerts leverage over Google.
  • killjoywashere 8y ago
    China is already doing this quite aggressively in the US universities.
• rqs 8y ago
  > Why is it unethical to launch a censored search product in China? No, it's ethical in the government's views. However, then why do people in China would going to use such search engine knowing it's as bad as Baidu currently is? Actually, to understand the problem here, you need to know who are the main user of Google in China: The progressives (maybe overly simplified, but these people are who actually sicked with Google for a very long time). And most of them also very sensitive to those bad things Google did in the recent years. Plus, in the long run, a local Chinese company (Baidu for example) can bring far better benefit to the government compare to a foreign one, AND without causing any headache worrying about the company could become too strong to control. So, Google just can't win the battle with local giants. If Google re-enters China, the only thing they can probably be succeed, is to make Baidu fear again thus stop doing it's shitty business.
• mlindner 8y ago
  Why is it ethical to censor speech just to cater to the whims of totalitarian government?
• fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  It is unethical because it normalises the worst kind of censorship, the one that is meant to keep illegitimate rulers in power. This is not like other types of censorship that can be criticised and overturned by democratic means, but Google will now conflate the two to justify its actions. Google not being in China has been a very prominent sign that this is not normal, that the Chinese regime does not speak for the Chinese people and therefore their laws have no legitimacy at all. Google not being in China has been an ever present pointer towards the fact that Chinese search enginges do not tell the truth. It is also unethical because Google can now be blackmailed by the Chinese regime, which will affect Google's behaviour towards its users in the rest of the world. This isn't just an ethical concern but also a very pragmatic one.
  • beaner 8y ago
    Thanks, this is a good argument. Being from the western world, it is very clear to me what Google's absence from China signifies. Given that China censors its media, do you think the Chinese citizenry are aware at all about Google's position up to this point, or its symbolism? It seems to me that the Chinese would not be influenced by Google's absence or presence, since the reasoning is the kind of thing that would already be censored.
    • killjoywashere 8y ago
      There were 2 arguments: beacon of truth and avoiding blackmail.
      • beaner 8y ago
        Regarding blackmail I suppose I would say that China already has search engines, which seem to have been able to provide a consistent experience for many years. I would imagine that if there were instances of them being blackmailed, we would have seen the results as drastic product changes or inconsistent experiences. Since Google does not seem to be aspiring to provide a service that goes beyond that local competition in any profound ways, it seems hard to see why or what they would be blackmailed for, that others wouldn't. Google has also tried to enter China once and willingly withdrew when it would not cooperate, so they have displayed historically a willingness to exit when the situation is something they cannot agree with. For these reasons it seems unlikely that a blackmail situation would occur, or, if it did, what it would be for or what it would accomplish.
• panarky 8y ago
  It's unethical to build the tools that repressive regimes use to subjugate their citizens. Whether it's mass surveillance or automated censorship, if you help build it, it's wrong.
• pasbesoin 8y ago
  Simplistic, but encompassing: Liberals: It restricts free expression. Conservatives: The government is picking winners and losers. As for being a wedge to gradually loosen censorship. The GFC (Great Firewall of China) started with Western companies selling technologies and consulting to the Chinese government that enabled early versions. Did that participation act as a wedge that opened up Chinese society? As I said at that time, China is the prototype. Now, we have not just these Western companies but also the Chinese selling Great Firewall solutions to other countries. (And the Chinese have the more turnkey systems and a proven track record.) There's the old but apt adage: "Don't play by their rules." (Which, by the way, has been modern China's approach to us, the past few decades. Or, they've been playing by the rules they observed in us, not the ones they were told by us. Break the law as much as you can. Cost/benefit. Might makes right...)