7 ms·

Never really understood why Google running a search engine in China is controversial, it wouldn't be the first US company doing business there, nor the first to

by srkmno 8y ago

Never really understood why Google running a search engine in China is controversial, it wouldn't be the first US company doing business there, nor the first to censor due to local laws (Apple censors their app store etc) and it's not like tiananmen square queries will be the bulk of their traffic.

shanghaiaway 8y ago
It's controversial because Google made such a big deal of not running a search engine in China, and built their corporate brand on top of that conviction.
- srkmno 8y ago
  I don't think that's it, it's not just about pointing out hypocrisy or anything vapid like that, Congresspeople were grandstanding against the move. It's all just out of proportion somehow.
russdpale 8y ago
I don't know how old you are, but google blossomed under the guise of "do no evil", that is why its controversial.
- saulrh 8y ago
  Moral of the story: never try to be a good guy, because you'll be held to a higher standard than anyone else and crucified while your competitors, who never claimed to be anything other than malignant stains on humanity, fly under the radar and laugh. How disappointing.
  - zelon88 8y ago
    What about; be good in the beginning and then stay good even when you don't have to anymore?
    - gammateam 8y ago
      Then what is the corporate structure for?
    - saulrh 8y ago
      There's no such thing as omniscience or perfect prescience and you will always screw up eventually. There's no physical law that says that people can only crucify you if you actually do something bad. Every one of your competitors is doing their level best to set up damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't fork and you will never outplay all of them all of the time. Nothing says that there's always a right answer that is Good. Nothing says that people are any good at all at telling what is Good. Nothing says that the entire population has a single definition of Good; nothing even says that any given situation has a course of action which anyone will perceive as Good. There are subjects on which the public has disjoint definitions of Good. "Just stay good all the time" is the kind of logic that tears down exactly the people and institutions that we should be supporting. You can argue that they should be doing a better job. You can argue that they have taken on additional responsibility and should live up to it. You can argue that we would be better off if nobody claimed to be good in the first place. But "just stay good all the time" is a myopic double standard, crab-bucket thinking at its finest.
      - zelon88 8y ago
        Hey it's their label, not mine. I guess in that sense then yes, "good" it subject to opinion. But so is "innocent" and "guilty," which is why we have laws to define the two. Google realizes that "good" is subjective. That's why they have QA, privacy teams, security teams, ect. They rely on a consensus of these groups to define what "good" means to Google using a variety of perspectives. Choosing to ignore literally all of these mechanisms not only means that something isn't "good," but it's also a pretty clear indicator that the people behind it know it's actually bad.
- V-eHGsd_ 8y ago
  yep, "don't be evil". and humorously/tellingly that phrase was removed from the code of conduct just this past may. https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393 https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
  - mda 8y ago
    It is not removed.
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    So tired of people spreading this misinformation. You can look at the code of conduct and verify for yourself this is not true.
    - V-eHGsd_ 8y ago
      it's still there as the last sentence, but the document used to literally open with "Don't be evil".
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Maybe I'm lacking in morality but I don't understand how serving censored content to people that already live in a society where the content is censored is considered evil.
  - russdpale 8y ago
    Well, its a line that everyone has, and its probably a little bit different for everyone. Plus I think there are real concerns about googles extremely cozy relationship with the all-seeing-eyes nations. Beyond that, though, the early internet was very progressive and I think a lot of people saw google as a chance to show the world the good things that technology was capable of. I don't think anyone would argue that some curation is a great thing.. no one wants to find dentists in kansas if they live in montreal of course. I would honestly prefer that breitbart and publications of its ilk be filtered out of my results... but where is the line? Up until recently google was scanning people's emails, which seems a bit dystopian.
  - simion314 8y ago
    >Maybe I'm lacking in morality but I don't understand how serving censored content to people that already live in a society where the content is censored is considered evil. If only was just a simple web search with some results removed maybe it won't be such a big deal, but consider this: - Google does this for big money, so they want to sell ads and maybe other services in China - To make money from ads Google tracks people and collect their data - By law all this data from China will have to be hosted in China and the government can access it whenever they want, no warrens needed, no way to opose such a request So Google will track and collect data and hand it over to China to do whatever, I imagine they could do an SQL query to find who searched some "illegal" keywords and send them to work camps or worse. I think is normal as an employee to tell your bosses that you don't want to work on tools that will be used for harming others and try to convince them to find other contracts since they have already enough money they could maybe be less greedy.
int_19h 8y ago
According to the rumors, Dragonfly goes far beyond censorship, in that it has provisions to identify specific people from search queries. So it's not just that searching for "Tiananmen Square" wouldn't give any useful results, but it'd also let the Big Brother know who was inappropriately curious. Combine this with their upcoming social credit system, and you can easily see how this is proactively helping build an authoritarian panopticon dystopia.
- srkmno 8y ago
  It's what all companies there are required to do and the Chinese people accept it, and a lot of them welcome the social credit system (according to reporting on the program) it's arrogant to to presume we know what's best for them.
  - joejerryronnie 8y ago
    >and a lot of them welcome the social credit system The first rule of the social credit system: do not disparage the social credit system.
  - julienreszka 8y ago
    Turns out you seem to not believe in your own moral values as your are ready to give them up
  - Zhenya 8y ago
    " it's arrogant to to presume we know what's best for them." Would you say the same for the victims of the khemr rouge, millions killed by Stalin? Maybe the yellow stars helped the Jewish people gather for the Sabbath? /S Basic human rights are not relative.
    - Zhenya 8y ago
      Downvotes!!!! China-apologist brigade in full effect. Why not tell me how you disagree?
  - usepgp 8y ago
natch 8y ago
But not understanding something is not a valid argument against it. It says more about you than about the issue. It may seem like a trivial point to counter you on, but I do think this line of (non-) reasoning is overused or at best just very poorly worded, and should be confronted as such. There are reasons. For example, it would be desirable for Google to avoid being complicit in human rights violations.

by srkmno 8y ago

shanghaiaway 8y ago

It's controversial because Google made such a big deal of not running a search engine in China, and built their corporate brand on top of that conviction.

srkmno 8y ago
I don't think that's it, it's not just about pointing out hypocrisy or anything vapid like that, Congresspeople were grandstanding against the move. It's all just out of proportion somehow.

russdpale 8y ago

I don't know how old you are, but google blossomed under the guise of "do no evil", that is why its controversial.

saulrh 8y ago
Moral of the story: never try to be a good guy, because you'll be held to a higher standard than anyone else and crucified while your competitors, who never claimed to be anything other than malignant stains on humanity, fly under the radar and laugh. How disappointing.
- zelon88 8y ago
  What about; be good in the beginning and then stay good even when you don't have to anymore?
  - gammateam 8y ago
    Then what is the corporate structure for?
  - saulrh 8y ago
    There's no such thing as omniscience or perfect prescience and you will always screw up eventually. There's no physical law that says that people can only crucify you if you actually do something bad. Every one of your competitors is doing their level best to set up damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't fork and you will never outplay all of them all of the time. Nothing says that there's always a right answer that is Good. Nothing says that people are any good at all at telling what is Good. Nothing says that the entire population has a single definition of Good; nothing even says that any given situation has a course of action which anyone will perceive as Good. There are subjects on which the public has disjoint definitions of Good. "Just stay good all the time" is the kind of logic that tears down exactly the people and institutions that we should be supporting. You can argue that they should be doing a better job. You can argue that they have taken on additional responsibility and should live up to it. You can argue that we would be better off if nobody claimed to be good in the first place. But "just stay good all the time" is a myopic double standard, crab-bucket thinking at its finest.
    - zelon88 8y ago
      Hey it's their label, not mine. I guess in that sense then yes, "good" it subject to opinion. But so is "innocent" and "guilty," which is why we have laws to define the two. Google realizes that "good" is subjective. That's why they have QA, privacy teams, security teams, ect. They rely on a consensus of these groups to define what "good" means to Google using a variety of perspectives. Choosing to ignore literally all of these mechanisms not only means that something isn't "good," but it's also a pretty clear indicator that the people behind it know it's actually bad.
V-eHGsd_ 8y ago
yep, "don't be evil". and humorously/tellingly that phrase was removed from the code of conduct just this past may. https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393 https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
- mda 8y ago
  It is not removed.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  So tired of people spreading this misinformation. You can look at the code of conduct and verify for yourself this is not true.
  - V-eHGsd_ 8y ago
    it's still there as the last sentence, but the document used to literally open with "Don't be evil".
oh_sigh 8y ago
Maybe I'm lacking in morality but I don't understand how serving censored content to people that already live in a society where the content is censored is considered evil.
- russdpale 8y ago
  Well, its a line that everyone has, and its probably a little bit different for everyone. Plus I think there are real concerns about googles extremely cozy relationship with the all-seeing-eyes nations. Beyond that, though, the early internet was very progressive and I think a lot of people saw google as a chance to show the world the good things that technology was capable of. I don't think anyone would argue that some curation is a great thing.. no one wants to find dentists in kansas if they live in montreal of course. I would honestly prefer that breitbart and publications of its ilk be filtered out of my results... but where is the line? Up until recently google was scanning people's emails, which seems a bit dystopian.
- simion314 8y ago
  >Maybe I'm lacking in morality but I don't understand how serving censored content to people that already live in a society where the content is censored is considered evil. If only was just a simple web search with some results removed maybe it won't be such a big deal, but consider this: - Google does this for big money, so they want to sell ads and maybe other services in China - To make money from ads Google tracks people and collect their data - By law all this data from China will have to be hosted in China and the government can access it whenever they want, no warrens needed, no way to opose such a request So Google will track and collect data and hand it over to China to do whatever, I imagine they could do an SQL query to find who searched some "illegal" keywords and send them to work camps or worse. I think is normal as an employee to tell your bosses that you don't want to work on tools that will be used for harming others and try to convince them to find other contracts since they have already enough money they could maybe be less greedy.

int_19h 8y ago

According to the rumors, Dragonfly goes far beyond censorship, in that it has provisions to identify specific people from search queries. So it's not just that searching for "Tiananmen Square" wouldn't give any useful results, but it'd also let the Big Brother know who was inappropriately curious. Combine this with their upcoming social credit system, and you can easily see how this is proactively helping build an authoritarian panopticon dystopia.

srkmno 8y ago
It's what all companies there are required to do and the Chinese people accept it, and a lot of them welcome the social credit system (according to reporting on the program) it's arrogant to to presume we know what's best for them.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  >and a lot of them welcome the social credit system The first rule of the social credit system: do not disparage the social credit system.
- julienreszka 8y ago
  Turns out you seem to not believe in your own moral values as your are ready to give them up
- Zhenya 8y ago
  " it's arrogant to to presume we know what's best for them." Would you say the same for the victims of the khemr rouge, millions killed by Stalin? Maybe the yellow stars helped the Jewish people gather for the Sabbath? /S Basic human rights are not relative.
  - Zhenya 8y ago
    Downvotes!!!! China-apologist brigade in full effect. Why not tell me how you disagree?
- usepgp 8y ago

natch 8y ago

But not understanding something is not a valid argument against it. It says more about you than about the issue. It may seem like a trivial point to counter you on, but I do think this line of (non-) reasoning is overused or at best just very poorly worded, and should be confronted as such. There are reasons. For example, it would be desirable for Google to avoid being complicit in human rights violations.