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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,

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.

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.