
I Quit Google Over Its Censored Chinese Search Engine - evo_9
https://theintercept.com/2018/12/01/google-china-censorship-human-rights/
======
sirbearington
Isn't this the same guy who quit back in September?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17980424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17980424)

[https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-
engi...](https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-
employee-resigns/)

~~~
jkaplowitz
Yes. The provided article links to that earlier one. The biggest difference is
that this article is written directly by the former employee in question
instead of by a journalist. He also says a small number of additional things.

------
mabbo
If you have "Google Engineer" on your resume, quitting your job and finding
another is a much simpler task than for 99% of the rest of the world. This
guy? He can quit and he'll be fine. He can walk into any dev shop in Toronto
and we'd take him- maybe not at Google salary rates, but close.

Now consider the rest of the world. The large majority of people for whom
quitting for moral/ethical reasons means a significant risk of your kids going
hungry. They can't just quit without something else lined up ahead of time.
When you're precariously employed (and a growing percentage of the world is)
you can't take that kind of a risk even if you work for the devil himself.

So given this dichotomy between employees, you would think that there would be
more than just a handful of Googlers quitting for ethical reasons over
Dragonfly. But there aren't. The sad truth is, the thought of making just that
little bit less money per year at another company (but still more than enough
to live well), the thought of losing that status symbol of "Googler", that's
enough that they're willing to accept that their work will support suppression
of human rights.

Instead, they'll find a mental justification for why it's okay. That's far
easier. Look, Sundar Pichai has done a wonderful job of it.

And so that is why Google won't stop. Because there's no reason to. They won't
lose many employees. They're dominant enough that they won't lose customers.
They'll be just fine.

~~~
manfredo
Or alternatively, the employees have reasoned through the benefits and
potential negatives of doing business in mainland China and have concluded
that the benefits outweigh the negatives. How, exactly, does Dragonfly make
the world a worse place? Sure, I'm opposed to censorship or policing citizens'
interests. But there's no real indication that the censorship or surveillance
is any worse than the existing search engines present in China. As far as that
front is concerned, Google in China would be no worse than the status quo.

The potential benefits are substantial. Google could be the first big tech
player to break into what is usually seen as a walled off market. Over time
economic ties could bring the countries closer together, and reduce the
likelihood of conflict (this is the original rationale behind the EU, for
example). As far a I can see, Dragonfly is not any worse than the status quo,
and had potential benefits - and this is speaking from someone who had no
incentive to see Google succeed. I don't work there nor do I own any stocks in
the company.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _does Dragonfly make the world a worse place?_

Yes. It normalizes suppressing political speech that disagrees with the
incumbent power. That flies in the face of values democracies hold dear.
"Someone else would do it" isn't a valid excuse. If you're doing it, you're
complicit. (Also, Google will do it better than almost anyone else. That a
respected American technology giant will work with China's censorship regime
gives the institution legitimacy.)

~~~
Aunche
The difference is that impact of normalizing behavior is completely
speculative, but search is a real product that can benefit people. Any
business with China normalizes their suppression, but I doubt that the people
who oppose Dragonfly have a problem with how many of their parts in their
smartphone were sourced from China. Conveniently, Dragonfly doesn't offer
anything to Americans, so that just crosses the line of what's "evil."

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Dragonfly doesn 't offer anything to Americans_

Precedent matters. Google having built a censored search engine for China
makes it harder to say "no" to Saudi Arabia, Russia, Poland, France or even
the American government. Apple understood this when they refused to build a
cracking tool for the San Bernardino shooter's phone.

~~~
vsl
The same Apple that, also famously, moved iCloud data of all its Chinese
customers to servers in mainland China controlled by a Chinese company (and
thus, accessible to the government)?

It's also worth reminding that Google _did_ exit China in 2010 because of
precisely these ethical concerns. Only to watch all of its competitors - Apple
included - unscrupulously do business in China. It's no wonder they
reconsidered their stance.

------
s3r3nity
>"Yet, a little more than a week later, Google CEO Sundar Pichai attempted to
invoke an engineering defense by arguing that Google would not need to censor
'well over 99 percent' of queries."

This is one of those egregious misuses of statistics that really gets to me:
while Sundar's point might be valid, not all queries deserve equal weight. To
the author's point, equating "human rights" to "pictures of kittens" is not a
fair way to frame the problem.

~~~
justicezyx
The point is that Google should not be held as moral entity.

If it's held onto the moral standard, Ads should not be Google's business at
all, as Larry Page stated sometime in the early days of Google. (I cannot find
the reference though, the statement is on the line of "advertising is
fundamentally immoral).

On the other hand, if you look at what search service is provided in China
(Baidu would sell online groups to advertisers entirely and let the
advertisers to pretend to be genuine community member and manipulate the
content), by simply providing a censored Google search is a morally noble
service to Chinese Internet users.

I do not support or disapprove censored search on the human rights level.

I do support censored search on the basis of providing a more normal search
service, and make non-political high-quality information available to normal
Chinese citizens.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> The point is that Google should not be held as moral entity.

Any company is just a bunch of people doing stuff. Those people always remain
morally responsible, there's just legal exceptions, but no moral ones.

If one doesn't question something, or even seeks to remain ignorant of it,
they could be argued to even be responsible even for something they didn't
know about -- since it wasn't despite, but because of their efforts that they
were ignorant of it.

> simply providing a censored Google search is a morally noble service to
> Chinese Internet users

There is nothing "noble" about slightly better product, any more than making a
slightly thinner laptop is "noble".

> _" We could have taken a moral stand, but what good would that have done?"
> But the moral good of a moral act inheres in the act itself. That is why an
> act can itself ennoble or corrupt the person who performs it. The victory of
> instrumental reason in our time has brought about the virtual disappearance
> of this insight and thus perforce the delegitimation of the very idea of
> nobility._

\-- Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To
Calculation" (1976)

It's a disappearance of insight, not new insights. Some regressed into a moral
stone age, but they didn't change the world as much as just themselves with
that.

~~~
justicezyx
> simply providing a censored Google search is a morally noble service to
> Chinese Internet users

No, considering what Chinese consumer are getting, a US normal search product
is morally more noble.

People literally get gulled into spending their life's saving because of
Baidu's fake ads.

Just like giving African famine victims some amount of food is morally noble.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> People literally get gulled into spending their life's saving because of
> Baidu's fake ads.

Then try this, in order of ascending difficulty: make link lists and web
rings, make search engines, organize for consumer protection, actually demand
the concentration camps be closed, for starters.

You can't appeal to humanity, "mercy for the non-dissidents", while ignoring
the dissidents as out of scope and irrelevant. That's like telling someone
they should stop snoring while you are operating machinery at 500dB or
something. You can't impress me by saying this person who burned 23089234
dollars needs my 50 cents or they will starve.

And that's besides the point anway. It's not about the wellbeing of Chinese
non-dissidents, it's about the potential complicity of companies in countries
which so far are not totalitarian. I'm not going to feed someone who is
starving if it means I wipe my whole intellectual heritage with some virus I
bring home. To even bring up a sub-optimal search engine as something that
could ever matter in such a context is staggering.

> Just like giving African famine victims some amount of food is morally noble

That "victim" is in turn currently brutalizing (and/or complicit with the
brutalization of) someone else who is _both_ starving and being brutalized.
The only condition for "giving them food" is to stop with that, something they
should have done already anyway. But even now, the actions show that the
brutalization and/or the looking away is more important to even themselves
than the "food".

The appeal to compassion to normalize being _not_ compassionate does not work.
If you can't have sympathy for someone kidnapped or murdered for pissing off
the wrong corrupt henchman, then don't talk about ads mixed with search
results like some super tragic thing.

Comparing the results of what humans are doing (or fail to do), with a famine,
which basically just "happens", that is also duly noted, and fully rejected.
At this point, I think I could make a totalitarianism rationalization bingo
card.

~~~
justicezyx
Tbh I do not get what your saying and their connection with my statements.

But mine probably appears the same to you...

~~~
PavlovsCat
1.) Chinese citizens can't fix their own stuff, because organizing for a
change that _they_ want is not something they dare / are allowed to do.

2.) To not spread that into non-totalitarian companies, we must not mormalize
totalitarianism. If we did, who would _we_ beg for a better search engine or
such petty gimmicks -- when the whole world is a corrupt place run by
murderers?

3.) Speaking of that, murder is not government. Obedience towards murderers is
not citizenship.

4.) You just used the word "noble" to deny the nobility of those quitting
Google, and ascribe it to something that is not noble in the least. It's like
something you noticed other people care about, you just don't quite know what
it is.

> _Every powerful state relies on specialists whose task is to show that what
> the strong do is noble and just and, if the weak suffer, it is their fault._

\-- Noam Chomsky

> _Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could
> keep the truth and let God go._

\-- Meister Eckhart

5.) The confusion is not mutual.

------
bad_user
When discussing project Dragonfly there are two perspectives:

1\. what's good for China's citizens

2\. what's good for the rest of the world

You must keep this in mind. For China's citizens it's undeniably good for
Google to be there, because Baidu lacks competition and I hear that it sucks.
Having a good search engine is important for education.

For the rest of the world, Google being there is backpedaling on their core
values and we're then in danger for one of the world's most powerful and
dangerous software companies to succumb to Chinese demands, because of money,
which can affect all of us.

I would prefer for Google to not go to China. I'm a privacy fanatic and a
liberal, so I don't want the Chinese administration to further destabilize our
liberal democracy, which is already too fragile these days. But if there's an
uproar, let's not do double standards. Google isn't a special snowflake. I
want the same outrage for Microsoft or Apple or other big software companies
that sell products and services in China. Because they aren't much less
dangerous and prone to succumb to Chinese demands.

But that's a personal opinion. Maybe having these multi-nationals pull out of
China would be a net loss for the whole world. Who knows. And having some
Chinese acquaintances, I certainly don't wish for them a lower quality of
life.

~~~
kelnos
> _For China 's citizens it's undeniably good for Google to be there, because
> Baidu lacks competition and I hear that it sucks._

In the short term, maybe that's true. But longer term, it just makes Chinese
citizens even more comfortable with censorship. If all sources of information
in China sucked, and citizens knew about it, they'd be more likely to protest
or push for change.

If non-Chinese entities decided to keep or move business elsewhere due to
human rights and censorship concerns, the Chinese government would eventually
have to change. They might be an economic powerhouse now, but being cut off
from the rest of the world makes that position untenable.

~~~
bad_user
> _If all sources of information in China sucked, and citizens knew about it._

This is wishful thinking. The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.
70 years later communism still sucks, yet in China it endures.

Being born in an ex-communist country from the Warsaw pact I can tell you ...
the only reason USSR fell was because of hunger. Without hunger, which is a
primal instinct, human beings can adapt to everything else. In other words,
for as long as China's economy is strong, their political system has virtually
no opposition, censorship is part of politics and this isn't an issue that the
population can vote for.

China blocks Internet sources that aren't filtered via their firewall. China
also blocks many VPN services. They also use tactics like making foreign
online services unbearably slow. That Google is or isn't doing business in
China has absolutely no consequence on the Chinese' ability to search for
unfiltered information.

> _If all sources of information in China sucked_

The problem that you're not seeing is that in order to assess whether
something sucks or not, you have to have an alternative to compare it with. In
absence of an alternative, this scenario will not happen.

So while I agree that Google shouldn't go to China, because it would be
against our interest for obvious reasons, trying to frame it as not being in
the interest of the Chinese people is wrong, possibly dishonest.

------
bigtones
Why are Microsoft and Google employees so different that it's OK for Microsoft
to have a censored China specific Bing search engine, but it's not OK for
Google to have one ?

[https://www.bing.com/?mkt=zh-CN](https://www.bing.com/?mkt=zh-CN)

[https://www.economist.com/analects/2014/02/12/bings-
chinese-...](https://www.economist.com/analects/2014/02/12/bings-chinese-
enigma)

~~~
leptoniscool
Some Google results in USA are removed for dcma reasons, are these considered
censorship?

~~~
tmoravec
By many people, yes. And here in Europe, it's even so much worse (right to be
forgotten, all kinds of hate speech, etc.)

------
curt15
>"Code had been written to show only Chinese air quality data from an unnamed
source in Beijing"

Anyone remember "To organize the world's information and make it universally
accessible and useful."?

~~~
HillaryBriss
yes and the OP sums up Dragonfly's specifically known problems with:

 _...blacklisting the phrase “human rights,” risking health by censoring air
quality data, and allowing for easy surveillance by tying queries to phone
numbers_

there seems to be a parallel between China's desire to censor local air
quality information and what certain US presidential administrations have
tried to do with scientific research on climate change

------
jammygit
Lots of people talk, but this guy is giving up a lot of money for this stand.
That takes character

~~~
JustSomeNobody
But there's always the question: Do I stay and try to change things? Or do I
leave and expect others to?

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Engineers are commodities. If this is what the board and shareholders want, an
engineer has a ~0% chance of leading a revolution and changing that. This is
real life capitalism not The Hunger Games.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Engineers can move up and have influence.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Influence is irrelevant. A publicly traded company (especially of Alphabet's
size) has fiduciary obligations.

~~~
anticensor
Some engineers also have shares.

US for-profit (non-bank, non-insurance, non-investor bund) companies, unlike
European ones, are not legally required to maximise profits unless they are
insolvent. Primary reason for short-time profit drive is investor pressure.
The most important fiduciary duty is _business competence_. The right to reap
profits is given in exchange for that.

------
gingerbread-man
I'm surprised no one from Google has made a full-throated defense of this
project. Not that I personally agree with it, but there is a case to be made
that projects like Dragonfly embody the longstanding US policy of
"constructive engagement" with China. It's not hard to imagine Hennessy or
Pichai extolling the virtues of compromise and highlighting a handful of key
concessions from the Chinese gov't.

Why haven't we heard that? Either 1) Even Google's leadership doesn't believe
this has any moral upside, only financial, or 2) They can't so much as admit
that they're making concessions to an authoritarian regime, for fear of
offending said regime. Both explanations betray remarkable moral cowardice.

~~~
fizwhiz
Because the advocates of the project keep the conversation internal (and
civil) instead of trying incite outrage through leaks, mobs, grandstanding,
moral posturing and what not[1].

Source: I'm a Google employee.

[1] [https://medium.com/@googlersagainstdragonfly/we-are-
google-e...](https://medium.com/@googlersagainstdragonfly/we-are-google-
employees-google-must-drop-dragonfly-4c8a30c5e5eb)

~~~
_iyig
I’m also a Google employee. The overwhelming majority of internal opposition
to Dragonfly has been civil and considerate. There have been uncivil remarks
and accusations by several who support Dragonfly. (EDIT: I should clarify that
these rude voices are a minority, on all sides of the issue.)

Please keep discussion of this issue substantive.

~~~
fizwhiz
Do you have any links you can point me to that demonstrate the pro-Dragonfly
folks going through similar lengths to "have themselves heard"? What part of
my statement seems unsubstantive?

~~~
_iyig
You frame the anti-Dragonfly contingent as “trying incite outrage through
leaks, mobs, grandstanding, moral posturing and what not.” This generalization
is inaccurate and non-substantive.

------
buboard
Good for him but this is not very helpful. Google needs to be brought to admit
that freedom of information is not their business, and at a minimum they
should be pressured to be transparent about the kind of stuff they censor,
inside and outside of china. (Pity that GDPR did not cover that). Thanks to
recent events, its no longer taboo to say you censor stuff, and the question
needs to move to who benefits from that and who loses. Childish responses
about "99 percent" are just that, infantilizing and insulting.

~~~
gowld
> transparent about the kind of stuff they censor

That's often illegal, be it "National Security Letters" in USA, or anything in
China.

If they slap on a generic disclaimer "This Serach Engine may censor results
known to the State of California to cause cancer or known to the People's
Republic of China to cause civil discontent", that helps no one.

~~~
buboard
people have become so accustomed to censored things, and often so supporting
of them , that i wouldnt be surprised if the NSA just went ahead and be public
with it. As for china, google can be transparent about it to the rest of the
world, they are a US company.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
> As for china, google can be transparent about it to the rest of the world,
> they are a US company.

And then Google would make enemies with the CCP, which kind of defeats the
purpose of giving in to their demands for censorship and the identification of
dissidents.

------
fumar
Can someone help me understand why Google would create such a solution for the
Chinese government? Is it money (does Google need it)? How else does Google
benefit? Does this mean other search engines like Bing will follow suit?

~~~
seemuch
This is a very common way of looking at this problem, and I find it absurd:
Google is creating this "for the Chinese government". How about for the
Chinese users? I for one am a Chinese use, and I would love to be able to use
Google in China.

~~~
whizzkid
Quite the contrary, I think Chinese people would benefit much more if Google
would refuse to build a search engine with cencorship.

By accepting their rules, Google would validate the cencorship that government
is forcing to their citizens, and government could easily tell to their
people: "Look, whole world is agreeing with me and what I am doing."

By not accepting to build it, Chinese people will always have the upper hand
in the argument, and something to reference it to.

~~~
seemuch
I think you need to stop telling Chinese people what they need. We know what
we need. As long as there is still cencorship, we will always have something
for the argument. More to the point, an argument is not even what we need the
most right now. It is not even close to the top of the list. We need the best
search engine in the world much more than an argument with the government.

Looking at your comment makes me feel that it is not the Chinese people who
are afraid of "losing an argument". If anybody, it is you. You believe so
deeply in the evilness of Chinese government, that you are afraid your
evidences are drifting away from you.

Just a hypothesis. No offense.

~~~
whizzkid
Im sorry that my comment made you feel this way. I was not trying to win any
argument here. My comment above would be my reaction if it would happen to me.

I think it helps to brainstorm all the aspects of a problem. Of course, I can
not say what you need specifically, you are right about that.

> If anybody, it is you. You believe so deeply in the evilness...

Btw, this feels more like an attack than a hypothesis, just saying.

~~~
seemuch
I am very sorry to make you feel attacked. I honestly did not mean that. I
really appreciate you still being able to stay cool even when you feel
offended.

~~~
whizzkid
It is healthy to disagree with each other as long as it does not get personal
with assumptions. Thanks for the discussion :)

------
frebord
This is so over blown. Providing Chinese people with slightly censored search
is better than no Google search at all.

Think how fucking much you use google every day, it's easy for you to sit here
and yell human rights violation.

FFS Google already censors your search results here in USA, why are you
complaining that they will also do it in China.

~~~
brlewis
Does Google censor results according to how I want it to (SafeSearch) or
according to how my government wants it to?

~~~
oh_sigh
Both. You won't have much luck using US Google to find child porn, bomb-making
manuals, terrorist propaganda, etc.

------
topspin
Question; does anyone know whether Dragonfly is designed to support China's
Social Credit system? Censorship is one thing, but using Google et al. to
assist China in turning life into even more of an MMORPG than it already is is
a whole other level of evil. If the answer isn't known then I'm left to assume
that Dragonfly will be a feed for Social Credit, because it isn't plausible
that Chinese authorities would forego using it for some reason.

------
curt15
>"Human rights and basic political speech are not an ignorable edge case."

This aptly summarizes the key point for the critics of Dragonfly. Why isn't
this the lede?

------
wrs
Regardless of the specifics of the project, what's disappointing to me, as a
Google user and fairly significant Cloud Platform customer, are the internal
dynamics depicted in this earlier article [1]: the head of Google China
operations sidelining the internal privacy and security teams, keeping
employees and even top management in the dark, and driving hard toward a _fait
accompli_ project launch because he _knows_ he's doing something that will
cause a huge backlash internally and externally. This seems very un-Googly.

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2018/11/29/google-china-censored-
se...](https://theintercept.com/2018/11/29/google-china-censored-search/)

------
kodablah
> Dean argued that [...] China’s surveillance is analogous to the U.S.’s
> Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, secret warrants purportedly
> issued for the purpose of rooting out foreign spies.

So, since Google has made it publicly clear they disagree with the opacity
around FISA warrants and have fought to make some transparent, can we expect
the same level of public disagreement and fight for China policies?

This is what is frustrating me more than the actual censorship. Businesses
that kowtow to Chinese government demands may use this whataboutism to compare
to western governments, and they're right about the similarities. But they
refuse to publicly even disagree with the practices like they will for western
governments. If you do business in the US and your principles are pro freedom
and/or pro privacy and publicly denounce US government actions against those,
how can I really believe those are your principles if you remain mum in other
instances. Does even the inability to disagree w/ certain ideals publicly
trump your principles?

Google and other companies need to stop drawing comparisons if they refuse to
draw them in the other direction. Google, come out in an official blog post
and say you don't like China asking you to censor stuff. Apple, come out and
officially say you don't like being forced to use Chinese clouds for your user
data. This isn't like asking you to expose an NSL, it's like asking to to
oppose the idea. Otherwise, we have to assume you do agree with the practices,
or at the least don't disagree.

------
whatshisface
Pichai, now is your opportunity for future generations of Americans to not try
to awkwardly avoid talking about you when Europeans grill them about the
history of American sympathizers with what will then be known as one of the
greatest bloody disasters in history.

------
joejerryronnie
Google is well within their right as a US company to build whatever censored
search engine they want for China. The follow on opportunities may be
financially enormous. But at some point, establishing and sticking with a set
of values can make or break a company’s future. Maybe not today or tomorrow
but a decade down the line we may look back at some of these decisions as a
tipping point. Running a company as large, powerful, and influential as Google
is not easy - there are very few items which are morally black and white (e.g.
choosing to work with the DOD). But this issue seems to be pretty straight
forward from a moral justification standpoint. I hope Google makes the right
call here.

------
mindslight
We're in the era where finance has taken over the web, so Google doing
business in China is a forgone conclusion [0]. But it would be interesting if
Google turned around and published the resulting censorship databases outside
of China. I can imagine independent research looking into newsworthy summaries
of what's been blocked, models of how practical censorship actually functions,
offline thumbdrive dumps (to be smuggled in by activist organizations), etc.
It would be a great public dataset for their cloud computing offerings.

[0] as an organ of the Chinese government, just as they're an organ of the US
government in the US

~~~
pixl97
This is the real problem here. Once you are dependent on Chinese profits, the
Chinese government will lean on you to conform, or they will cut those profits
off. Just like the US govt.

~~~
jammygit
The possible 'profits' suddenly become possible losses once you're invested.
Its easier for shareholders to turn their back on some profits than to swallow
losses

------
conductr
Just wanted to point out that China does not suffer by your quitting Google.
You need to quit China.

------
usr1987
dont get it... people dont want censorship in china but they are fine with it
here!

~~~
EpicEng
Who's fine with it? Which of those actually understand the ramifications? Are
any of them also in the group which opposes helping China censor the internet?

~~~
nostromo
There has been a "deplatforming" wave in the US where large monopolistic (or
oligopolistic) megacorps censor people from their platforms. And by-and-large
this censorship seems to have been well received by the media.

You may not like Gavin Mcinnes or Milo Yiannopoulos or Alex Jones (I don't!)
but I also don't think the tech monopolies should be allowed to erase them
from the internet without losing their common carrier protections.

~~~
snek
Being removed from a specific platform and being inaccessible on the internet
are two different things.

Alex Jones could purchase IP space, peer with other IXs and theoretically get
his own news site to rival any existing ones. This should always be allowed.

Individual services run by private entities should always be allowed to remove
users from the service. xkcd 1357 is a good match here.

edit: there could also be an argument that IXs could remove his peering, but i
think that's a separate discussion. Ideally IXs should peer regardless of
content.

~~~
billylindeman
its a bit of a slippery slope though isnt it?

look at gab getting their domain and cloud hosting dropped... censorship is
moving down the stack. why wouldn't it hit the IX's?

~~~
camjohnson26
You have a right to free speech, not a right for other people to repeat it.

~~~
stale2002
I mean, ok, just don't come crying to everyone else about "net neutrality"
when large megacorps start censoring competing services and putting your
streaming traffic in the internet slow lane.

I mean, it is their service,right?

~~~
Townley
That's the whole point behind Title II. No, it's not their service: it's a
common carrier providing a public utility. With that comes responsibilities
towards consistency and neutrality of service.

------
jackcosgrove
Don't want to be evil? Don't become a public corporation.

Three cheers for the bootstrappers! Patience is a virtue.

------
sroussey
Who is the $ person behind this article? TheIntercept has no ads, no
subscription, but a huge budget and obviously a billionaire-like benefactor.
I’d like to know who that is. It should add color to any story published
there.

------
pimmen
Let's say a country allows well over 99% of websites to be accessed, it only
blocks Google products because the country's government doesn't agree with
them fundamentally. I think that would make Google a tad upset.

------
matchagaucho
_" Anybody who does business in China compromises some of their core values."_

The same can be said for Europe.

Does Google want to omit search results for publicly crawled Euro information?
Probably not. But GDPR requires it.

~~~
siruncledrew
So effectively anyone who owns anything "Made in China" is transitively
enabling someone doing business with China?

Does Google having offices in the Middle East also compromise core values?

Turkey, UAE, Israel, and South Africa aren't exactly saintly nations known for
their lack of censorship either.

[https://www.google.com/about/locations/?region=africa-
middle...](https://www.google.com/about/locations/?region=africa-middle-east)

------
gojomo
Good for you, righteous dude. Now, start a competitor to Google. Hell, start a
competitor offering uncensored search to the Chinese market!

------
dugluak
probably relevant here.

[https://github.com/ithinco/i-am-chinese-the-dragonfly-
must-g...](https://github.com/ithinco/i-am-chinese-the-dragonfly-must-go-on)

Disclaimer - I am not the Author

------
AmIFirstToThink
Google in China would have been a way for Google (and Western Democracies) to
get the most current listing of what China is asking companies to filter.

Whatever China was not comfortable asking international companies to filter
(it shows to others things that Chinese government is trying to control),
would have been shown by google to Chinese users by default.

Question for the google engineers here objecting to filtered products in
China... Is the right to restrict right to the outcome of ones labor after it
is sold universal? Who else would you grant the right to restrict the fruits
of their labor from being used by you if they don't agree with you on
something that may be important to them?

Can a coal miner ask the utility company to stop electrical service to the
parents of a google engineer residing in heartland? If no, why not?

Why can't the baker deny decorating a cake a certain way against their will?

If you are asking for a ethical right to deny basic things (internet search is
just about there as electricity, food, shelter, emergency care), just imagine
if all the things you depend on came with similar exceptions that excluded you
from using it.

I would have imagined lot of googlers taking objection to blatant
content/speech suppression on YouTube. But they are completely fine if it is
their ideology winning as a outcome of a said effort, no matter the ethics.

------
dssu
Probably beneficial for Google that he quit and is no longer working on the
project

------
resters
So why not quit over Google’s compliance with FISA warrants?

Without drawing some very specific parallels and distinctions, the decision to
quit over Dragonfly is mainly a voice of support for neoconservative anti-
China warmongers.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
>the decision to quit over Dragonfly is mainly a voice of support for
neoconservative anti-China warmongers.

I... must be reading you wrong. Can you please explain?

~~~
resters
The idea that the will of the Chinese people does not matter OR is not being
reflected by the Chinese government's policy.

Then the conclusion from this that the Chinese people are victims of their
government, or dupes.

This is step one in declaring a state illegitimate, which is always done
implicitly or explicitly when the US wishes to frame a country as the enemy.

This is the view of Saddam Hussein's government that was used to sell the Iraq
war. The idea that destroying a lot of infrastructure and removing him from
power was actually doing the will of the Iraqi people.

Applying the label of victims or dupes to an entire population for some reason
does not trigger any skepticism in the US. The view is paternalistic and
packed with implicit white supremacist ideas, such as the idea that the
Chinese people and culture are not naturally suited to undertake steps to
change their government.

The ideas is similar to critiques aimed at Haiti's government by avowed
racists, yet for some reason Americans are much more eager to believe this
kind of white supremacist nonsense about the Chinese people.

It is clear that elements in the US wish to escalate things with China.
Trump's trade war, the announcement by an FBI leader that many Chinese
academics and cultural groups are espionage oriented, the chip implants on
motherboards story, as well as the many stories about bad living conditions
and failing infrastructure in China, one the other day about a bunch of
runners cheating in a Chinese marathon, etc. These run like clockwork in
American papers.

So by adopting the same set of premises about the relationship of the Chinese
people and their government, the anti-Dragonfly activists are laying the
planks for the neoconservative case that the Chinese government needs to be
replaced.

This comment might be downvoted, but I'm quite sure there will not be a
coherent counter-argument provided by anyone who disagrees and who also claims
to oppose things like the Iraq war.

I suspect that the people concerned about Dragonfly are the same people who
would have protested a Google decision to launch in Iraq on the basis of
various social policies that existed there under Baath party rule. This is
pretty much the definition of neoconservatism.

There is no peaceful neoconservatism, there is always a stick that must be
used to punish those who are holding back the idealistic sort of progress that
the neocon narrative claims will exist if only various wars can happen.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> _I 'm quite sure there will not be a coherent counter-argument provided by
> anyone who disagrees and who also claims to oppose things like the Iraq
> war._

Your whole point is because party A wants something, anyone else who may ageee
to any of their arguments (even those who don't even "agree" but came up with
the same thing from first principles in a clean lab environment), wants that
thing party A wants, too. You're using one gang of villains to excuse another,
that doesn't even stand on its own, it collapses before any counter-argument
can reach it. It's like pointing out the Mafia drinks water and then claiming
everybody who thinks water is necessary is aligned with the Mafia.

> _The idea that the will of the Chinese people does not matter OR is not
> being reflected by the Chinese government 's policy._

> _Then the conclusion from this that the Chinese people are victims of their
> government, or dupes._

Dissidents have been murdered for decades. People who have family in China
simply cannot openly speak. When they post on HN, it always ends with stuff
like "I didn't fully read the article" or "I don't understand". I can't blame
them, but I also can't pretend that's not going on.

So, what's wrong with that idea and the conclusion? I mean, I think you want
to imply there's something wrong with it, but it's hard to tell, since both
those two "sentences" don't even have a verb.

> _This is the view of Saddam Hussein 's government that was used to sell the
> Iraq war. The idea that destroying a lot of infrastructure and removing him
> from power was actually doing the will of the Iraqi people._

No, Colin Powell made a presentation in front of the UN, sweating very much
IIRC, talking about trailers and chemical weapons and nukes.

If you're going to claim it was ever mainly about the Iraqi people, I'll need
citations. I wasn't just against the Iraq war, it's the reason I can write
somewhat coherent English. For me, that war was "Hitler attacking Poland", I
tried to stop it before it started by arguing on the interwebs to the point of
exhaustion. Even today, several times a year I bring up the idea that an
arrest warrant against Bush and Blair would be the _beginning_ of a move back
into civilization. I think it's disgusting that Trump rehabilitated Bush, that
him slipping Michelle Obama some candy during McCain's memorial service is now
"cute". I think Americas obsession with empty language and "leadership" is one
of the examples of how George Carlin was right when he said "Germany lost WW2,
fascism won it".

etc.

So? Doesn't make me excuse concentration camps or pretend totalitarianism
isn't totalitarianism. Read "Origins of Totalitarianism". Actually do visit
concentrations, and actually live in cities where you know Jews have been
dragged from their homes, as the neighbours looked away. But spare me your
assumptions about what "the people concerned about Dragonfly" are or want.

> [..] so that it is as if everybody melted together into giant being of
> enormous proportions. This too does the for a totalitarian environment so
> well prepared vernacular express in its own way when it no longer speaks of
> "the" Russians or "the" French, but tells us what "the" Russian or "the"
> Frenchman wants.

\-- Hannah Arendt, "origins of Totalitarianism"

> _I suspect that the people concerned about Dragonfly are the same people who
> would have protested a Google decision to launch in Iraq on the basis of
> various social policies that existed there under Baath party rule._

What kind of argument is this? You suspect something you can't prove and
nobody can disprove, because it takes place in some alternative universe?

> _This is pretty much the definition of neoconservatism._

You mean that thing going on in that alternative universe? And you actually
think that's an argument that requires a counter-argument?

So basically, because you claim to know (well, you just "suspect", but that's
just the plausible deniablity variant, just like the "I'm not sure I agree"
and other phrases HN is full of) what someone would have done 15 years ago in
a situation that never was, you can now call everyone who is critical of
Dragonfly or Chinese totalitarianism neo-conservative?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513113)

> _Basically, HN is run like Singapore. It’s very tidy but there is an
> authoritarian dimension that is unsettling._

I came to this comment from that comment, and now I'm confused to put it
mildly. How can the same person who wrote that have written what I just
responded to? How can you object to manipulation on a private website, but
imply totalitarianism represents the people under its heel? Why not simply say
"the average HN users is reflected by this policy" and that's that?

------
aviv
Why are we surprised they're okay with censoring in China when they already
censor here at home, for example conservative voices on Youtube.

