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Such as the 99.9% of human knowledge that isn't politically objectionable to the CCP?
by 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 agoDepends 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 agoWell, 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 agoI 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 agoImagine 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 agoI 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 agoWhich 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 agoTwo 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 agoyou mean knowledge like blocking wikipedia and any major news website?
- yourbandsucks 8y agoEnglish Wikipedia isn't blocked in China.