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Honest question: Should a company like google take the lesser evil route and still provide neutered service simply because target audience is huge? Google could

Honest question: Should a company like google take the lesser evil route and still provide neutered service simply because target audience is huge? Google could still bring a lot of good to the people. Sure it doesn't exactly subscribe to the Western ideals, but is distancing from China throwing baby out with the bathwater?

curt15 8y ago
>Google could still bring a lot of good to the people. Such as...?
- yourbandsucks 8y ago
  Such as the 99.9% of human knowledge that isn't politically objectionable to the CCP?
  - titzer 8y ago
    ...and implicitly consecrating the non-existence of the 0.1%? This is pretty much the problem.
    - yourbandsucks 8y ago
      Depends on who you're worrying about. If you're worrying about Chinese people, you're improving their access. If you're worrying about your own moral purity, I suppose you'll have to balance that against above mentioned access. If you want, you can find some people who live in China and ask them how much Google's "consecration" moves the needle for them.
      - titzer 8y ago
        Well, if anything, this just makes discrete a soft type of censorship which is algorithmically unavoidable and already widespread in non "censored" countries. We're already in a post-truth world, so why not a post-truth internet?
        yourbandsucks 8y ago
        I don't know why I have to keep repeating this, but "uncensored Google" isn't on the table here. Unfortunately. It's "Google minus political topics" vs "no Google whatsoever". If you enable more connectivity, however imperfect, you're improving things and you're enabling contact between cultures. Maybe that even enables more political information via side channels. It's a slam dunk net positive compared to not engaging at all.
        titzer 8y ago
        > It's a slam dunk net positive compared to not engaging at all. I appreciate your passion here but I'm going to resist my urge to offer overly definitive statements in the other direction for the sake of further argument. But no, it is not a slam dunk IMHO.
      - raxxorrax 8y ago
        Imagine if you were to live in a country where government dictates the nature of information you can access. A foreign service provider happily complies with that. Nice guy, I seriously want to get to know them. Completely irrelevant, I know. You cannot even quantify the information people would get additionally on market deployment. Because the assumption is pretty baseless to begin with. Therefore I have nothing to balance against besides Google's bottom line. Believing alternative explanations is heavily naive. On the contrary: If said bottom line is established, you can be very sure Google would be very open for suggestions by the respective government. Logically.
        yourbandsucks 8y ago
        "Imagine if" is actually the whole problem. Nobody wants to listen to people who've actually lived in China.
    - mikejb 8y ago
      I think that's a bit of a stretch. "Companies have to comply with the law, so they're consecrating it". What else? People living in the US are consecrating the politics of Donald Trump? To quote Tim Cook: Your choice is: do you participate, or do you stand on the sideline and yell at how things should be, [...] And my own view very strongly is you show up and you participate, you get in the arena because nothing ever changes from the sideline.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - curt15 8y ago
    Which is already provided by extremely successful and well established companies like Baidu. Google would be bringing nothing new except perhaps a mechanism to report the phone numbers attached to "illegal" searches for possible prosecution.
    - yourbandsucks 8y ago
      Two questions: 1) You honestly believe Google couldn't create better connections between the Chinese internet and the Anglo internet? 2) Could you give me a link to English Baidu? Oh, sorry, bonus question: 3) Do you consider this fragmentation to be a positive?
  - simion314 8y ago
    >Such as the 99.9% of human knowledge that isn't politically objectionable to the CCP? So without Google the chinese people can't access the internet? Or you imply that Google is the only search engine that can find things? Do Chinese people need Google or Google needs the Chinese people?
  - Markoff 8y ago
    you mean knowledge like blocking wikipedia and any major news website?
    - yourbandsucks 8y ago
      English Wikipedia isn't blocked in China.
gldalmaso 8y ago
It might be a slippery slope. Once you are in there, what's to say lord vader doesn't start altering the deal? "I'm gonna need you to put up these propaganda ads on top of yours."
ArchD 8y ago
It's not simply about the first-order effects. Making a large investment in the Chinese market controlled by the CPC means putting up great value at risk that the CPC can leverage to assert influence. Evil influence spreads into the company and it becomes even more evil. Considering the history of their actions against even their own people, and the words they say, 'evil' is not an understatement. Yes, other states are also evil, but their evil is deeper and more fundamental. For example, they actively censor the history of their own misdeeds, including massacre of their own people from a few decades ago in 1989, and because of the strong censorship, who knows what else they are doing nowadays that's hidden? A concrete example of what may happen is that after making a huge investment in China, Google gets a request to do more than just censor, an offer it cannot refuse. It is asked to spread malware to dissidents, or extend the censorship to other countries like Taiwan, or something nefarious like that. If it refuses, it'll be kicked out of China for some bullshit reason. Getting kicked out means incurring a big loss because of the huge investment. What will it do then? If it can't say 'no' now, it will not be able to say 'no' then. This country does not have "rule of law", but it has "rule by law". There is no independent judiciary. The state can say F U and there's nothing you can do about it.
- oconnor663 8y ago
  > A concrete example of what may happen is that after making a huge investment in China, Google gets a request to do more than just censor, an offer it cannot refuse. It's possible that the opposite could happen too. China's leverage over Google is that they can pull the plug on google.com, but I don't know (correct me) if there are a lot of employees that they can throw in jail. So if Google builds up a lot of brand capital over 5 or 10 years, and pulling the plug becomes an unpopular move for the government, it could be that Google ends up with some leverage of its own about what to do with search results. This isn't my area, so I'm just making all this up, but I notice that the tone of the thread is "something something I thought they said don't be evil," and I'm imagining that the reality is more complicated.
brandmeyer 8y ago
What makes you think that the technology wouldn't be applied to anyone else's search results? Once developed, Google will face intense pressure to apply this technology to other purposes and markets as well.
amadeuspagel 8y ago
Providing neutered service is not the lesser evil. Censoring search results creates a false impression about the world. People assume that if google doesn't return results on something, that thing doesn't exist. Imagine you are a professor of history. You are allowed to travel to china, give a tour, where people will ask you questions about history, most of which you'll be allowed to answer, however if someone asks you about the Tiananmen Massacre, you'll have to say that you never heard of such a thing. Would you travel to china under these conditions?

curt15 8y ago

>Google could still bring a lot of good to the people. Such as...?

yourbandsucks 8y ago
Such as the 99.9% of human knowledge that isn't politically objectionable to the CCP?
- titzer 8y ago
  ...and implicitly consecrating the non-existence of the 0.1%? This is pretty much the problem.
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    Depends on who you're worrying about. If you're worrying about Chinese people, you're improving their access. If you're worrying about your own moral purity, I suppose you'll have to balance that against above mentioned access. If you want, you can find some people who live in China and ask them how much Google's "consecration" moves the needle for them.
    - titzer 8y ago
      Well, if anything, this just makes discrete a soft type of censorship which is algorithmically unavoidable and already widespread in non "censored" countries. We're already in a post-truth world, so why not a post-truth internet?
      - yourbandsucks 8y ago
        I don't know why I have to keep repeating this, but "uncensored Google" isn't on the table here. Unfortunately. It's "Google minus political topics" vs "no Google whatsoever". If you enable more connectivity, however imperfect, you're improving things and you're enabling contact between cultures. Maybe that even enables more political information via side channels. It's a slam dunk net positive compared to not engaging at all.
        titzer 8y ago
        > It's a slam dunk net positive compared to not engaging at all. I appreciate your passion here but I'm going to resist my urge to offer overly definitive statements in the other direction for the sake of further argument. But no, it is not a slam dunk IMHO.
    - raxxorrax 8y ago
      Imagine if you were to live in a country where government dictates the nature of information you can access. A foreign service provider happily complies with that. Nice guy, I seriously want to get to know them. Completely irrelevant, I know. You cannot even quantify the information people would get additionally on market deployment. Because the assumption is pretty baseless to begin with. Therefore I have nothing to balance against besides Google's bottom line. Believing alternative explanations is heavily naive. On the contrary: If said bottom line is established, you can be very sure Google would be very open for suggestions by the respective government. Logically.
      - yourbandsucks 8y ago
        "Imagine if" is actually the whole problem. Nobody wants to listen to people who've actually lived in China.
  - mikejb 8y ago
    I think that's a bit of a stretch. "Companies have to comply with the law, so they're consecrating it". What else? People living in the US are consecrating the politics of Donald Trump? To quote Tim Cook: Your choice is: do you participate, or do you stand on the sideline and yell at how things should be, [...] And my own view very strongly is you show up and you participate, you get in the arena because nothing ever changes from the sideline.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- curt15 8y ago
  Which is already provided by extremely successful and well established companies like Baidu. Google would be bringing nothing new except perhaps a mechanism to report the phone numbers attached to "illegal" searches for possible prosecution.
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    Two questions: 1) You honestly believe Google couldn't create better connections between the Chinese internet and the Anglo internet? 2) Could you give me a link to English Baidu? Oh, sorry, bonus question: 3) Do you consider this fragmentation to be a positive?
- simion314 8y ago
  >Such as the 99.9% of human knowledge that isn't politically objectionable to the CCP? So without Google the chinese people can't access the internet? Or you imply that Google is the only search engine that can find things? Do Chinese people need Google or Google needs the Chinese people?
- Markoff 8y ago
  you mean knowledge like blocking wikipedia and any major news website?
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    English Wikipedia isn't blocked in China.

gldalmaso 8y ago

It might be a slippery slope. Once you are in there, what's to say lord vader doesn't start altering the deal? "I'm gonna need you to put up these propaganda ads on top of yours."

ArchD 8y ago

It's not simply about the first-order effects. Making a large investment in the Chinese market controlled by the CPC means putting up great value at risk that the CPC can leverage to assert influence. Evil influence spreads into the company and it becomes even more evil. Considering the history of their actions against even their own people, and the words they say, 'evil' is not an understatement. Yes, other states are also evil, but their evil is deeper and more fundamental. For example, they actively censor the history of their own misdeeds, including massacre of their own people from a few decades ago in 1989, and because of the strong censorship, who knows what else they are doing nowadays that's hidden? A concrete example of what may happen is that after making a huge investment in China, Google gets a request to do more than just censor, an offer it cannot refuse. It is asked to spread malware to dissidents, or extend the censorship to other countries like Taiwan, or something nefarious like that. If it refuses, it'll be kicked out of China for some bullshit reason. Getting kicked out means incurring a big loss because of the huge investment. What will it do then? If it can't say 'no' now, it will not be able to say 'no' then. This country does not have "rule of law", but it has "rule by law". There is no independent judiciary. The state can say F U and there's nothing you can do about it.

oconnor663 8y ago
> A concrete example of what may happen is that after making a huge investment in China, Google gets a request to do more than just censor, an offer it cannot refuse. It's possible that the opposite could happen too. China's leverage over Google is that they can pull the plug on google.com, but I don't know (correct me) if there are a lot of employees that they can throw in jail. So if Google builds up a lot of brand capital over 5 or 10 years, and pulling the plug becomes an unpopular move for the government, it could be that Google ends up with some leverage of its own about what to do with search results. This isn't my area, so I'm just making all this up, but I notice that the tone of the thread is "something something I thought they said don't be evil," and I'm imagining that the reality is more complicated.

brandmeyer 8y ago

What makes you think that the technology wouldn't be applied to anyone else's search results? Once developed, Google will face intense pressure to apply this technology to other purposes and markets as well.

amadeuspagel 8y ago

Providing neutered service is not the lesser evil. Censoring search results creates a false impression about the world. People assume that if google doesn't return results on something, that thing doesn't exist. Imagine you are a professor of history. You are allowed to travel to china, give a tour, where people will ask you questions about history, most of which you'll be allowed to answer, however if someone asks you about the Tiananmen Massacre, you'll have to say that you never heard of such a thing. Would you travel to china under these conditions?