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If I was in China and had to choose between having a choice between censored baidu and censored google vs just censored baidu, I'd rather have both baidu and go

If I was in China and had to choose between having a choice between censored baidu and censored google vs just censored baidu, I'd rather have both baidu and google. It's easy for us here in the western world as we have access to both and more uncensored sources to take the moral high ground and subject the Chinese to a "let them eat cake" attitude. Not sure if this will benefit people over there though to ban google completely.

melling 8y ago
Google can't change the laws in China. Personally, I'd rather have Google in China if I lived there. It's a great tool. People should be made aware that there's a filter and all searches are made available to the government.
- orblivion 8y ago
  Come to think of it, that's exactly what it could do by refusing to do business with them. If China is left out in the cold for long enough they may move a little. That said, they need to be rewarded for moving or a boycott wouldn't help anything.
  - melling 8y ago
    At this point you should realize that you're clearly wrong. China is already the second largest economy and their goal is to be a world leader in AI by 2025. China isn't going to be left out of anything.
    - orblivion 8y ago
      Well if Baidu sucks so much as people say, maybe they have limits. Or maybe Baidu will catch up.
- pixl97 8y ago
  >Google can't change the laws in China But Facebook can influence elections. Something isn't adding up to 100% here. More so, I'm not worried about Google influencing China, I'm worried about China putting pressure on Google to spy on the world or lose potential profits.
fghtr 8y ago
But why do you need two censored search engines? What would be the difference between them?
- NullPrefix 8y ago
  Filters might not overlap completely
- criddell 8y ago
  The same as the difference between Google and Bing for us. They surface different things.
  - crazy_monkey 8y ago
    Bing surfaces trash!
- patrickaljord 8y ago
  Google is technically superior to baidu in many areas, specially for a developers. It gives better answers in many subjects, not just the censored ones. Besides who are we to decide for the Chinese what is best for them? Sounds a bit condescending and paternalistic. Here here, baidu is enough for you to play with, don't bother with google.
  - TallGuyShort 8y ago
    It's only condescending in a nationalist sense. I look at my own government and how well it chooses what is best for me, and I have to ask, who is the Chinese government to decide what is best for the Chinese people?
    - patrickaljord 8y ago
      Unless you're an anarchist, that's exactly what the government's job is: decide what's best for people. That's why you have prescription only drugs, anti-vice laws, securities. All these things exist because the government think the people are too dumb to decide things by themselves. Not saying I agree with it, just saying you would need to argue for anarchism if you were to argue "who is the X government to decide what is best for the X people?".
alexandercrohde 8y ago
I think the situation should be looked at more holistically. Here are some other factors to consider: - Does it soil our hands to build the "Mental handcuffs" of China, even if Baidu started it? - Does it stop at China? Or what about Turkey? Iran? Would we build a search in Saudi Arabia that didn't let women look up divorce if the government wanted it? - Does it come to America? What about searches that seem criminal? This disagreement is much more fundamental than China. It's about the role of free-information and free-education being the basis upon which beliefs should be formed, rather than beliefs being used to block out free-information.
- patrickaljord 8y ago
  Google is already censoring specific searches all over the world, in the EU for example, the right to be forgotten and many "hate speech" laws already force google to censor many sites that are filtered out.
  - alexandercrohde 8y ago
    All the more reason to take a stand right now.
    - patrickaljord 8y ago
      Why single out China though? If Google had to stop doing business in any country that forces it to censor stuff, they would not be allowed anywhere, I think even the US forces them to filter out illegal gambling. Where does it stop?
      - alexandercrohde 8y ago
        You're right, maybe it shouldn't stop at China. Maybe google should commit to a policy of "protected free speech" on a wide range of political topics that it will never censor in any country (roughly in line with the first amendment). Great idea.
rashkov 8y ago
I wonder if these things go in both directions though. Google becomes beholden to the Chinese government on threat of being kicked out of the country. Maybe in a few years Google is making a bunch of money in China, and then the govt asks them to censor search results in the western world too. Also, as China requires more surveillance infrastructure to be built for Chinese google, that can bleed over to western google. Let's say Google starts to enhance China's social credit score system with users search behavior. It's easier for western governments to point to these capabilities on China's Google and request for them to be instantiated in their own countries.
tivert 8y ago
> Not sure if this will benefit people over there though to ban google completely. It won't really help them, and focusing on the Chinese market misses the most insidious problem: a censored Google search engine in the PRC gives the Chinese Communist Party leverage over Google outside of the PRC. Just look at what happened with the airlines: the PRC forced them to change their foreign websites to reflect a PRC political positions by threatening their access to their market. Think of what they could do to "uncensored" American Google with similar leverage: * Chinese human rights websites are deranked from relevant searches down to the second or third page. This is a subtle and deniable type of censorship. * Ditto with critical coverage of Tibet or Xinjiang. * Taiwan is shown on Google maps and infoboxes as part of the PRC. * Google gives Xinhua, the PRC's English-language propaganda outlet [1], prominence on Google news. * etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhua_News_Agency#Bias_&_political_correctness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhua_News_Agency#Bias_&_poli...
- gfo 8y ago
  You assume they don't already have leverage in Google. I would be more surprised if the Chinese haven't already found ways to leverage Google for external influence (akin to Russia, Iran, etc. via Facebook). But I agree with the core point - the 'legal' influence would bother me just as much.
nradov 8y ago
Those are not the only two options. What if Google were to put some of its considerable technical resources toward undermining and subverting the Great Firewall of China? That would be in keeping with their mission statement, and might deliver a huge payoff in the long run.
cloudwalking 8y ago
I have to agree with this. Some search is better than no search. Not everything can be censored and people WILL find information they are not supposed to find, just with more digging than in the rest of the world. Saying that Google should not provide any search product in China is shortsighted and purely ideological.
- _Tev 8y ago
  > Saying that Google should not provide any search product in China is shortsighted and purely ideological. > and purely ideological. Umm. Is that not _the_ point? OP disagrees with China gov't ideology so hard, that it just can't support it (the ideology) in any direct way?
jjcc 8y ago
Totally agree with you. I guess that's the real reason that many Chinese googler don't want to sign. I'm totally against censorship. But I also don't agree the those who see themselves stand on the moral high ground while don't understand the complexity of the issue. Also a lot of people don't differentiate facts and opinions. They blame those who don't agree them are influenced by China government.

melling 8y ago

Google can't change the laws in China. Personally, I'd rather have Google in China if I lived there. It's a great tool. People should be made aware that there's a filter and all searches are made available to the government.

orblivion 8y ago
Come to think of it, that's exactly what it could do by refusing to do business with them. If China is left out in the cold for long enough they may move a little. That said, they need to be rewarded for moving or a boycott wouldn't help anything.
- melling 8y ago
  At this point you should realize that you're clearly wrong. China is already the second largest economy and their goal is to be a world leader in AI by 2025. China isn't going to be left out of anything.
  - orblivion 8y ago
    Well if Baidu sucks so much as people say, maybe they have limits. Or maybe Baidu will catch up.
pixl97 8y ago
>Google can't change the laws in China But Facebook can influence elections. Something isn't adding up to 100% here. More so, I'm not worried about Google influencing China, I'm worried about China putting pressure on Google to spy on the world or lose potential profits.

fghtr 8y ago

But why do you need two censored search engines? What would be the difference between them?

NullPrefix 8y ago
Filters might not overlap completely
criddell 8y ago
The same as the difference between Google and Bing for us. They surface different things.
- crazy_monkey 8y ago
  Bing surfaces trash!
patrickaljord 8y ago
Google is technically superior to baidu in many areas, specially for a developers. It gives better answers in many subjects, not just the censored ones. Besides who are we to decide for the Chinese what is best for them? Sounds a bit condescending and paternalistic. Here here, baidu is enough for you to play with, don't bother with google.
- TallGuyShort 8y ago
  It's only condescending in a nationalist sense. I look at my own government and how well it chooses what is best for me, and I have to ask, who is the Chinese government to decide what is best for the Chinese people?
  - patrickaljord 8y ago
    Unless you're an anarchist, that's exactly what the government's job is: decide what's best for people. That's why you have prescription only drugs, anti-vice laws, securities. All these things exist because the government think the people are too dumb to decide things by themselves. Not saying I agree with it, just saying you would need to argue for anarchism if you were to argue "who is the X government to decide what is best for the X people?".

alexandercrohde 8y ago

I think the situation should be looked at more holistically. Here are some other factors to consider: - Does it soil our hands to build the "Mental handcuffs" of China, even if Baidu started it? - Does it stop at China? Or what about Turkey? Iran? Would we build a search in Saudi Arabia that didn't let women look up divorce if the government wanted it? - Does it come to America? What about searches that seem criminal? This disagreement is much more fundamental than China. It's about the role of free-information and free-education being the basis upon which beliefs should be formed, rather than beliefs being used to block out free-information.

patrickaljord 8y ago
Google is already censoring specific searches all over the world, in the EU for example, the right to be forgotten and many "hate speech" laws already force google to censor many sites that are filtered out.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  All the more reason to take a stand right now.
  - patrickaljord 8y ago
    Why single out China though? If Google had to stop doing business in any country that forces it to censor stuff, they would not be allowed anywhere, I think even the US forces them to filter out illegal gambling. Where does it stop?
    - alexandercrohde 8y ago
      You're right, maybe it shouldn't stop at China. Maybe google should commit to a policy of "protected free speech" on a wide range of political topics that it will never censor in any country (roughly in line with the first amendment). Great idea.

rashkov 8y ago

I wonder if these things go in both directions though. Google becomes beholden to the Chinese government on threat of being kicked out of the country. Maybe in a few years Google is making a bunch of money in China, and then the govt asks them to censor search results in the western world too. Also, as China requires more surveillance infrastructure to be built for Chinese google, that can bleed over to western google. Let's say Google starts to enhance China's social credit score system with users search behavior. It's easier for western governments to point to these capabilities on China's Google and request for them to be instantiated in their own countries.

tivert 8y ago

> Not sure if this will benefit people over there though to ban google completely. It won't really help them, and focusing on the Chinese market misses the most insidious problem: a censored Google search engine in the PRC gives the Chinese Communist Party leverage over Google outside of the PRC. Just look at what happened with the airlines: the PRC forced them to change their foreign websites to reflect a PRC political positions by threatening their access to their market. Think of what they could do to "uncensored" American Google with similar leverage: * Chinese human rights websites are deranked from relevant searches down to the second or third page. This is a subtle and deniable type of censorship. * Ditto with critical coverage of Tibet or Xinjiang. * Taiwan is shown on Google maps and infoboxes as part of the PRC. * Google gives Xinhua, the PRC's English-language propaganda outlet [1], prominence on Google news. * etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhua_News_Agency#Bias_&_political_correctness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhua_News_Agency#Bias_&_poli...

gfo 8y ago
You assume they don't already have leverage in Google. I would be more surprised if the Chinese haven't already found ways to leverage Google for external influence (akin to Russia, Iran, etc. via Facebook). But I agree with the core point - the 'legal' influence would bother me just as much.

nradov 8y ago

Those are not the only two options. What if Google were to put some of its considerable technical resources toward undermining and subverting the Great Firewall of China? That would be in keeping with their mission statement, and might deliver a huge payoff in the long run.

cloudwalking 8y ago

I have to agree with this. Some search is better than no search. Not everything can be censored and people WILL find information they are not supposed to find, just with more digging than in the rest of the world. Saying that Google should not provide any search product in China is shortsighted and purely ideological.

_Tev 8y ago
> Saying that Google should not provide any search product in China is shortsighted and purely ideological. > and purely ideological. Umm. Is that not _the_ point? OP disagrees with China gov't ideology so hard, that it just can't support it (the ideology) in any direct way?

jjcc 8y ago

Totally agree with you. I guess that's the real reason that many Chinese googler don't want to sign. I'm totally against censorship. But I also don't agree the those who see themselves stand on the moral high ground while don't understand the complexity of the issue. Also a lot of people don't differentiate facts and opinions. They blame those who don't agree them are influenced by China government.