
We are Google employees – Google must drop Dragonfly - daveowei
https://medium.com/@googlersagainstdragonfly/we-are-google-employees-google-must-drop-dragonfly-4c8a30c5e5eb
======
nimbius
Pretty bold. A lot of people are saying this wont work, but speaking from my
own experience, you'd be surprised what companies are amicable to when it
comes to business.

Im an engine mechanic by trade, and our shops handle bids for cash strapped
local governments that outsource their motor pool maintenance. We do things
like fire trucks and police cars, but we were working on a new regional idea
as a "service center" for municipalities that purchased MRAP combat vehicles
for their police departments.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP)

We all, especially the veterans I work with, hated this idea. MRAP's are for
combat, not police work, and have a dangerous propensity to roll over in city
streets or escalate already violent situations. 14 of us sent a signed letter
to the owner and senior management detailing our major concerns and heard
nothing back for about a month. Then out of the blue we got a call for a
meeting with 3-4 very senior managers at a local irish bar.

They paid for dinner and tried to explain how the business would be extremely
lucrative. we would all see major bonuses, we could hire more workers, and
grow the business faster than just large truck repair. It took 3 very
emotional hours, but we eventually talked down a handful of people from making
a very wrong decision.

for a week after, we were all sort of stunned that it actually worked at all.
Tire cages meant for MRAP tires were cut up and turned into random parts
holders, or as new hangers for air lines...one even replaced our mailbox post.

~~~
alangibson
You deserve massive credit for striking a blow against this madness. A great
example of how working people have more power than they think if they're
willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.

I say that fully realizing that not everyone is in the financial position
where they can risk a fight with their employer. You can't expect everyone to
be Ghandi.

~~~
shareometry
> A great example of how working people have more power than they think if
> they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.

I believe this is key. If more folks at more organizations were brave like
this and willing to take the risk, a good chunk of the problems our
civilization is facing might be greatly improved.

~~~
kiliantics
Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I
wish this fact was more widely appreciated.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies.
> I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.

The problem with modern unions, particularly in tech, is that the legacy
structure is inapt for current problems. Tech workers don't need a union to
negotiate compensation, they're compensated fine already. They don't need a
huge bureaucratic structure for engaging in long-term detailed negotiations.
They don't need a _contract_ at all.

What they need is a no-dues no-fulltime-union-reps union that operates through
direct democracy. It does _nothing_ unless the employer is doing something bad
wrong. Then if the majority of the union members vote to refuse, either the
employer concedes or they strike.

Because it's not about a thousand little things here, it's about a small
number of big things. It needs to be able to address those and then go back to
being invisible instead of succumbing to feature creep and destroying the host
with overhead and principal-agent problems as we've seen with the auto makers.

~~~
cultus
> Tech workers don't need a union to negotiate compensation, they're
> compensated fine already.

Software one of the highest margins of any industry. They can afford to pay
more, especially since they are constantly whining about "shortages" of tech
workers.

[http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/...](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/margin.html)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> They can afford to pay more

Which is why they already do pay more than other industries.

The best argument you have against that is the anti-poaching shenanigans
they've engaged in -- but that's already illegal, so the answer there is a
courtroom rather than a union.

~~~
ygjb
No, it really isn't. The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be
aware of the pattern, and be willing to risk their reputation. With a union,
the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE
folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the pattern

How is that different with a union?

> and be willing to risk their reputation

Class action suit or submit evidence confidentially to the attorney general.

> With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour
> action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn
> off.

If Apple won't hire Google employees then the Google employees can retaliate
against Apple by not working for them?

------
Puer
I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me,
but their decision to backtrack on their promise in China changed my mind. I
do not morally condemn anyone who works at Google. I have many good friends
that are both bright engineers and undeniably good people that work there. I
just feel that as someone who's family is Taiwanese, I cannot in good
consciousness support the company. I let the recruiter know this because I
believe it's important that they know. I'm curious if anyone else on HN has
had similar experiences.

~~~
headsupftw
Do you in good consciousness support the U.S. government? I'm asking because
the government doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent country and kicked
Taiwan out of the United Nations in 1971.

~~~
khuey
The United States did not kick the Republic of China out of the United Nations
in 1971, the UN General Assembly did. The US voted against Resolution 2758.

------
megaman8
I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places
values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the
long term. By placing values above profits, it increases it's goodwill with
customers thus increasing it's moat and it's retention, as well as it's
employee retention. This strategy made sense in the early days.

Not anymore.

As Google's position becomes increasingly strengthend (with all the market
share it can capture in search already realized ~ and it slightly decreasing
anyway due to it's slightly tarnished brand), it doesn't need to maintain this
illusion of values over profits anymore.

~~~
nostrademons
The "values over profits" approach was always more of a recruitment tool than
a PR tool. It did give a nice PR boost, but realistically Google's been the
best choice of search engine since it came out in 1998. They don't need
additional customer goodwill for people to keep using them, they just need to
continue to give good results for esoteric queries.

Since 2005, though, good engineers have had _lots_ of options for where to
work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google. And
"Don't Be Evil" was a great way to persuade them to come work for Google
rather than Yelp or Facebook or some hedge fund, and keep them there rather
than have them go off and found their own startups that potentially could
compete with Google. Because so much of their product moat depends upon
technical excellence, keeping the best engineers within the company is
critical for them.

I'll predict that if they don't reverse course on this, we'll see a mini-
exodus of Googlers who either end up founding their own startups or start
working on political-tech projects. Ultimately I think that may be good for
the world, but it's not really in Google's long-term interests, although
perhaps at this point their moat is entrenched enough and they're big enough
that it doesn't really matter.

~~~
tanilama
> Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to
> work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google.

Growth probably, but very few actually pays better than Google considering all
the perks and work life balance you would get from working for Google. And
since the startup boom is almost over, it is even more so like that now...

~~~
nostrademons
Almost all wealth in Silicon Valley comes from equity price appreciation.
Google stock has appreciated 7x since 2009, but Facebook has appreciated 38x
in the same time period, Yelp 13x, Netflix about 35x, Apple about 6-7x.

I think the boom in web & mobile startups is basically over at this point, but
there's a new boom in cryptocurrency & AI startups that's just beginning,
along with a social movement (multiple social movements, actually) that's just
beginning and will likely need communication technology to organize.

~~~
joshuamorton
This is only really true at startups. At a bigco, your on paper comp can be
250 or 350k annually in cash equivalents. That quickly generates wealth even
if you are given only cash.

You're comparing 2 pre-ipo companies to Google and apple.

~~~
nostrademons
Still true at BigCo. Total comp as a senior SWE at Google when I left (almost
5 years ago - it's more now) was something like ~$175K cash, ~$125K stocks +
options, ~$50K bonus. With the 5x appreciation in stock that was going on
while I was there, the stock portion could be worth $625K/year by the time it
all vested. That's as employee 20,000+.

------
patrickaljord
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.

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

~~~
patrickaljord
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.

~~~
Varcht
> Besides who are we to decide for the Chinese what is best for them?

You do realize that the "people" do not have a voice in China right? It is not
a democracy...

~~~
virmundi
The Chinese appear to think, collectively, that authoritarianism is better
than democracy. They could revolt. The Chinese military is under funded with
failing equipment, though they are trying to improve in areas. The sheer size
of their military makes it difficult to have common weapons and gear
available. 100 million citizens throwing themselves against that machine,
would wear it down quickly. They don't do this.

The Chinese had a century or more of bloody civil war recently, within
historical terms. They don't like regime change.

They historically were fine under the emperor, who was authoritarian. They are
use to autocratic, central government. Unless things get extremely bad, I
don't see them thinking that democracy is better than their current stability.
If Xi Jinping does a decent job of getting rid of corruption and improving the
air quality, I doubt you'll see a revolt even with a depression in China.

Edit: for those downvoting, how about a dialog? Democracy is not a native idea
for the Chinese. Their major philosophical systems support a rigid hierarchy,
which is not compatible with the democratic norm of anyone can attempt to run
for office. They've lost millions to wars before Mao calmed everyone down.
Even with Mao's major famine, there wasn't a revolt. 45 million died, and no
uprising. If 100k died at the hands of the US government, there would be blood
in the streets. Probably true with 1k. The Chinese do not care about
authoritarianism.

~~~
tangent128
The military equipment is irrelevant; they are still far more _coordinated_
than the civilians are permitted to be. Suppressing collective action is one
of the central goals of authoritarian censorship.

Democracy is no more a native idea for western culture; 250 years ago every
state was a monarchy, and political ideologies based in hierarchy still
regularly win elections.

------
gregmac
Quick summary (if you don't know the name "Dragonfly", like I didn't):

> We are Google employees and we join Amnesty International in calling on
> Google to cancel project Dragonfly, Google’s effort to create a censored
> search engine for the Chinese market that enables state surveillance.

> Our opposition to Dragonfly is not about China: we object to technologies
> that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be.

~~~
ehsankia
> we object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the
> vulnerable, wherever they may be.

And where's the actual research showing that Google in China would do such a
thing? By all calculations, it would bring more knowledge and access to
Chinese citizen that they already have.

This make it sound like Google is the reason why the citizen don't have access
to information.

~~~
midasz
By building and delivering such a system they'd be condoning the actions of
the Chinese government.

~~~
jasonx1e
I don't understand the outrage about censorship particularly with respect to
the Chinese government.

Google has agreed to remove plenty of stuff from the search engine that many
Europeans see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google)

Sounds like double standards to me.

------
hnphillipj
Given how trash of a search engine Baidu is, Google would likely achieve
market share dominance in China within a couple years - should they move
forward with Dragonfly. Complying with demands of the Chinese gov't is the
only way they can penetrate the Chinese market.

Search engine advertising constitutes close to 85% of Google's revenue. And
unlike Project Maven, which was ended due to internal resistance from
employees, doing business with the second largest economy in the world isn't
an expendable venture.

Curious to see how they move forward. My guess is they will: human outrage
never really lasts long, especially when their livelihoods are far from in
jeopardy.

~~~
schalab
Why dont western companies band together and threaten a boycott until some
kind of IP laws are enforced?

They just keep getting picked off one by one.

~~~
garmaine
Have you used the internet in China? There is no meaningful presence of
foreign companies. They’re already kicked out.

~~~
gfo
Not disagreeing with you, but with a lot of our manufacturing happening in
China there is definitely a different kind of presence.

But still, not sure if they would give up the low cost of manufacturing for
this. Frankly, the regime makes that possible.

~~~
garmaine
Are there? You can’t open a business in China without it being majority
Chinese owned. There are plenty of companies doing their manufacturing in
China, but every example I know of the wforeigb company contracts the Chinese
company to do the manufacturing. Often they’re even further removed, such as
Apple who works with a _Taiwanese_ company who just happens to have their
manufacturing in China.

------
partiallypro
I find the Google/Chinese search engine troubling, but I do think people are
playing this up to be a lot more than it should be. I think one fact is that
Google is in an area and recruits people that are hyper liberal individuals.
For example: not wanting to work with the U.S. military on projects, having AI
use gender neutral writing, random PC things, little diversity in political
thought etc. I don't think Google has so much changed as their employees have
changed.

Look, I am a huge Google critic, you can view my past posts, but a lot of what
employees are complaining about seems pretty laughable, unattainable and shows
a lack of maturity. In my estimation, Google's power struggle between making
money and its employees creeping political stances is and has been
unsustainable. I think censoring results in China is one thing, but there are
so many other cultural problems at Google that honestly just don't belong in a
corporate environment. Google has long been seen as a playhouse, and has let
employees be too dramatic and vocal about politics as well. In a normal
company, it is -not- normal to have a sit down after an election to baby sit
staff members, and offer grief counseling.

So while, yes Google certainly has some problems with "values," I think there
are two problems, not just one. It's not so much that leadership has moved to
drive profits no matter the cost (Google has long done that!) it's that while
that is still happening there has been a shift in the company's politics.
Again, I'm not talking about the Chinese censorship itself, I want
Google/Microsoft/Facebook etc to not empower Xi. But it's all the other stuff
going on that just seem so counter productive, not only to culture but to
profits.

~~~
sneak
Declining to work with paid murderers is not a partisan position.

Opposing sexism is not a partisan position.

Attempting to reframe these sorts of things as “lefty silliness” and paint
them with the same brush as being sad and disappointed that a rapist won the
election is simply subterfuge.

~~~
YetAnotherNick
> Declining to work with paid murderers is not a partisan position.

Calling military paid murderers is definitely a partisan thing. What else do
you propose? Someone has to do the dirty work to keep the citizens safe.

> Opposing sexism is not a partisan position.

Are you talking about harassment cases. Have you been to Google or talked
about it to a Googler? It generally is swift and works without any proof. What
they are asking is anonymous complaint system and things like that, which can
definitely have two thoughts.

What about Google giving huge advantage to women in hiring. Just one verified
anecdote, in kickstart, which google uses to hire in Asia Pacific, men do get
a call for interview within rank 50, many time lesser than that. And they have
definitely called women if they got rank 1000, likely even more.

~~~
ionised
> Calling military paid murderers is definitely a partisan thing. What else do
> you propose? Someone has to do the dirty work to keep the citizens safe.

How exactly did US operations in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua
etc. keep you 'safe'?

~~~
partiallypro
As someone that worked to get someone asylum from Afghanistan, there are many
many many citizens in Afghanistan that long to have the US back with a
significant presence. It's not easy sleeping when a car bomb just went off
outside your house and it was targeted at you for not being a religious
hardliner.. The US isn't always about keeping its own citizens safe, it often
steps in when there is genocide, etc.

~~~
ionised
> there are many many many citizens in Afghanistan that long to have the US
> back with a significant presence

Which would be true of any military force that invaded, slaughtered hundreds
of thousands and then pulled out leaving a power vacuum.

The US didn't go into Afghanistan to save people from car bombs.

If the US has somehow done you a favour as a result of its wars of aggression,
it's a complete coincidence.

> It's not easy sleeping when a car bomb just went off outside your house and
> it was targeted at you for not being a religious hardliner..

Sounds like Iraq and the rise of ISIS doesn't it? Another US war of aggression
that left hundreds of thousands dead along with a power vacuum filled by
religious extremists.

~~~
partiallypro
The US went in because it facilitated terrorism and led to the direct death of
3000 Americans. The rise of religious extremism was well before the 2001
invasion of Afghanistan. Am I for US intervention as "world police,"
absolutely not. I don't agree with our presence in Iraq, but there is
certainly a point where US presence is warranted and needed. Anything else is
just a naive world view. I was like that when I was in my early 20s, then I
grew up and realized how complex the world really is.

~~~
ionised
None of this address the original point I was making, in that US wars in the
last few decades have not made Americans safer. Or anyone else for that
matter.

The fact that people might now be clamouring to have them back after they left
a power vaccuum to act as blocker on warlords and religious zealots fighting
for control doesn't change that fact.

> nything else is just a naive world view. I was like that when I was in my
> early 20s, then I grew up and realized how complex the world really is.

Implying that I'm immature because I disagree with you doesn't make you look
as good as you think.

~~~
YetAnotherNick
> None of this address the original point I was making, in that US wars in the
> last few decades have not made Americans safer. Or anyone else for that
> matter.

Can you just recite the number of American civilians killed due to terrorist
attacks after 9/11 and compare it with how many terrorists have seriously
threatened and even died to kill Americans. If someone is ready to die to kill
less than one person on average, it needs to be taken seriously.

While, yes there are things which every military mishandles from time to time,
certainly US, you are calling out all activities, for which I hate to say it
but you are too naive.

------
liamkinne
I'm glad Google Employees are taking a stand rather than just leaving the
company and having their replacements do bad things thinking it will be a one
off.

~~~
pojzon
Those are mostly "Software Engineers" and not a lot of them. Google can kick
them out and replace within a month.

Unfortunetly I dont think executives will give a slightest heck about this
article..

~~~
bluejekyll
> Google can kick them out and replace within a month.

Ah. A believer that software engineers are cogs and can just be “replaced”
without training and learning of code bases.

Hiring software engineers, bringing them up to speed, and having them
contribute to production features, is expensive. Also, you’ll never truly
recoup the lost knowledge that goes.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Google has literally _thousands_ of engineers. A significant percentage of
those engineers leave every year as part of normal attrition. Google is
certainly capable of dealing with the fallout these folks leaving without
feeling a thing. While it's true there are some "one-in-a-million" type
engineers that work at Google, I don't see any of the well-known ones on this
list.

All that said, I commend the folks who signed this letter. If anything, the
fact that most of the folks who signed are in relatively junior positions
shows how Google has lost its way when it comes to it's morals. The more
senior execs feel the pressure of serving Wall Street and have more to lose,
while these more junior folks, while taking a risk know they can get hired
anywhere else in a heartbeat. It's the kid standing up saying the emperor has
no clothes.

~~~
oceanplexian
Does a few engineers leaving hurt google? No. Does the massive PR storm that
will never be erased from the Internet cause problems for them down the road?
Absolutely.

The fact this is posted on HN and the regular gauntlet of tech sites is enough
to have a major impact on their recruiting. I, like many of the people here,
am a frequent target for Google recruiters and Dragonfly is more than enough
for me to turn down an interview with them. Maybe they will have more luck
with fresh college grads and interns who are less discerning.

~~~
abecedarius
Same. I normally avoid me-too comments, but...

------
aibrahem
As someone who lived most of his life in a dictatorship, I really struggle to
understand the logic of these employees. I was actually surprised Google
stepped out of China a couple of years ago and felt like the decision was
taken by a bunch of people who don't understand what it's like to live in a
non-democratic country.

Do they think that everybody in China cares that their internet is censored or
that they're being watched? I'm pretty sure if there was a poll conducted
inside China to choose between censored Google vs no-Google almost everybody
would choose censored Google.

It's not like a person who's opposing the Chinese government online is going
to be using Google without a secure connection anyway. For the rest, you're
providing a service that is significantly better than what they're currently
being offered.

~~~
SubMachineGhost
While i do understand where you are coming from, i think if google gave up it
will set a precedence and many countries will demand their own censored
version of google.

~~~
realradicalwash
and it's one thing to accept censored Google as a Chinese consumer. what's the
choice when all products are censored. whatever your values, you have no
choice.

but it's another thing as a Google employee. I assume that working towards a
censored product and passing on user data to the Chinese government is opposed
to the values of a lot of Googlers. developers do have a choice.

------
scarface74
And if the employees placed thier values over profits, why are they still
there?

I wonder if they are going to refuse their stock based compensation?

~~~
minimaxir
> btw if I quit on Feb 1, I'm walking away from half a million dollars in
> stock. This has some serious monetary consequences for me.

[https://twitter.com/lizthegrey/status/1067469950594486272](https://twitter.com/lizthegrey/status/1067469950594486272)

~~~
scarface74
I’m not saying anyone should walk away from money. But the same people who
want Google to walk away from the world’s largest country aren’t willing to
walk away from thier stock but expect Google executives to make financial
choices for moral reason.

~~~
galvarez800
I don't think walking away from all your stock vs. a company walking away from
a deal that would account for a small fraction of its profits is a fair
comparison.

A more fair comparison would be asking if employees would be willing to have
their stock decrease in value 10% in exchange for their company being more
moral. I expect many employees would take such an exchange, although not all.

~~~
chii
But those employees who _did not_ care about morality also would have their
stock decrease by 10% in value due to no fault of their own. Therefore, it's
only ethically correct for those who want to take the stance to also accept a
decrease in stock compared to those who didnt.

~~~
FireBeyond
And if the stock rebounds? Are they then going to forego the rebound?

Or is it "all privilege, no responsibility"?

------
blaisio
It really pains me how Google has changed. When I was younger I always wanted
to work there. Now that I've graduated college, I would probably never want to
work there.

~~~
catacombs
I agree. However, for every person who doesn't want to work there, five others
are willing to join the company, especially those who live overseas and are
willing to work for pennies.

~~~
ltdanimal
Exactly. They still are one of THE companies to work for, and throw so much
money at people its hard to say no

------
Nasrudith
Really the Chinese market seems to be a greed trap. Companies drool over
themselves at the prospect of the second largest economy, compromise
themselves and harm existing sales only to find that China isn't a greenfield
market like they arrogantly expected and if there wasn't already a local
competitor there will be soon.

------
EZ-E
At this point I don't believe this project could be successful. Even if it's
not canceled the Chinese government is never gonna let a foreign company get
the market share against the local champions : even more as this company has
internal disent about the project. Also the links with the US government won't
help.

~~~
HillaryBriss
agree. i don't quite see what _enduring, long-term_ competitive edge Google
could actually have in China.

is it the huge quantity of computing resources behind their search engine?
(wouldn't Baidu or other Chinese companies be able to easily outbuild Google?)

is it the incredible, mysterious superiority of the super-duper secret Page
Rank algorithm? ( jk )

is it the sophisticated and complex home page design and superior google
doodles?

i mean what is it exactly?

google won't be able to reach the monopoly level of market share it enjoys in
the US search market so it would actually have to _compete_ on a month to
month basis for its very life. this means it will hire a lot of very hard
workers in China. and that means google's secret sauce (if it even exists)
will make its way out and into the competitive landscape _before_ Google can
get close to being a monopoly. it just seems like a losing game.

~~~
lostgame
Yeah, it seems like it's more of Google's desire than China's, even, which
especially makes it questionable.

------
mirimir
But then there's Outline, from Alphabet's Jigsaw.[0] It utterly simplifies the
creation of private VPN servers on Digital Ocean droplets.[1] They use
Shadowsocks obfuscation. It's apparently effective against China's Great
Firewall, and seems popular among Chinese dissidents. So the main intended
application is pretty obvious, no?

So are they playing both sides? Or trying to con the Chinese government? Or
just a large and loosely coordinated organizarion?

0) [https://jigsaw.google.com/](https://jigsaw.google.com/)

1) [https://blog.digitalocean.com/digitalocean-outline-jigsaw-
vp...](https://blog.digitalocean.com/digitalocean-outline-jigsaw-vpn/)

~~~
CamelCaseName
Perhaps a bargaining chip in a larger negotiation? Retaliation for previous
attacks?

------
g9yuayon
Even though Google's search engine will censor some content in China, it will
still be miles better than Baidu. People who use Google will find highly
relevant results quickly when searching about health, academic research, and a
million of other things. They won't have to worry about finding thinly
disguised promotions of illegal hospitals
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi))
on the first page of Google. They don't have to worry about combing through
pages of search results for something that should've been found in seconds.
They don't have to play the game of mouse and cat just to get a usable VPN to
use Google outside of the GFW.

So, the logic of this protest is that Chinese people do not deserve even
incremental improvement, a huge improvement by the way, in their lives?

~~~
amckinlay
They do deserve it, just not a censored one.

~~~
scarcely
As a Chinese living abroad, I censor my internet voluntarily via custom ublock
cosmetic filters that kick in automatically upon match of certain regex
patterns. I call it my "outer great firewall". Very effective protection
against hate speech

~~~
dlivingston
Out of curiosity, why would you do this? Why would you want to voluntarily
censor information from yourself?

------
lgleason
While I agree with their stand on this issue, there is a big level of
hypocrisy in these statements since Google is well known for suppressing
search results and banning people on YouTube etc. based on political ideology.
So I'd like to see them stand up against that as well.

~~~
Mahn
> Google is well known for suppressing search results and banning people on
> YouTube etc. based on political ideology.

Can you give some examples of this?

~~~
stevecalifornia
PragerU is a right-wing channel that Youtube is constantly suppressing by
removing videos or demonetizing them. The content is about on-par with what
you might hear on a politically slanted news show. It doesn't make sense that
Youtube would expend trust capital to harass such an uninteresting channel.

------
umvi
Good for them. Any company claiming to have moral backbone should not cater to
the demands of the Chinese government which has shown time and again that it
is a tyrannical regime.

------
lappet
I have a counter question - what about Google's support to the US Government?
Have people forgotten the PRISM project? The US Government has backdoors at
almost every big tech company.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
People have forgotten. Hey, as long as our searches are not censored!!

In all seriousness, I find this current dragonfly outcry ridiculous when you
consider the NSA dragnet that’s currently monitoring most if not all US web
traffic.

~~~
shard972
Because data collection is purely for out protection and maybe to help us shop
from time to time.

Censorship is just evil, full stop.

------
dandare
What am I missing? The cost of switching to an alternative search engine like
Bing or Duck is next to zero. (Actually, I dropped Google for Duck just 2
months ago.)

Brand is the most valuable asset Google has. Is the Chinese search market -
and other evil projects - really worth the damage to Google's public image?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's a billion users potentially, and Google only has a few billion users to
begin with. Which is to say, yes, corporate greed suggests the opportunity to
grow by 20-30% is absolutely worth sacrificing petty things like conscience
and morals.

~~~
snaky
Business don't decide that kind of things, consumers do.

If there were clear intention from the majority of Western people to stop
using every Google product the same second Google launch the censored search
service in China, then Google would never do it.

Western people don't really care much? Well, they should blame themselves
then, not Google.

~~~
_petronius
> Business don't decide that kind of things, consumers do.

This is a cop-out. Businesses have a responsibility for the decisions they
make, and "it's profitable" should only be one factor.

> If there were clear intention from the majority of Western people to stop
> using every Google product the same second Google launch the censored search
> service in China, then Google would never do it.

I think you underestimate how much Google has become not just the default
choice, but the only choice for a lot of people, who have never heard of
alternatives and who use Google because it's what their browser defaults to
(we even call the very act of running a search on the internet "Googling it"),
and might not know how to switch, much less reasons why they should.

I find the "market forces will take care of it, and if they don't then people
don't care" argument more than a little disingenuous, because it ignores the
huge number of variables that account for why people choose product A over
product Y that have nothing to do with the quality of the product or the
company that makes it.

------
vasilipupkin
I respect the motivation of the people behind this but I disagree with the
logic here. It seems to be a zero or none type of logic. Are Chinese better
off with not having google search engine as a choice, even if censored and
having only local options, or are they better off having at least some choice,
even if that choice is censored? I think it's the second, not the first.

~~~
sulam
(Spoken as if to a Google employee) — Someone will build them a search engine.
In fact several someones have already. Your company doesn’t have to do it, and
you don’t have to work for them if they do.

~~~
vasilipupkin
well, the company doesn't have to do it, I agree. the discussion is, if the
company were to do it, would it be a bad thing for the company to do,
conditional on professed company values? I don't think so.

------
marcantonio
"Many of us accepted employment at Google with the company’s values in mind,
including its previous position on Chinese censorship and surveillance, and an
understanding that Google was a company willing to place its values above its
profits."

When has it ever put values above profits? Google is selling our data to
everyone. What values?

~~~
rock_hard
Just like Facebook, Google is NOT selling anyone’s data!

What they are selling is the ability to run targeted ads based on that data.
But the data never leaves Google!

~~~
adtac
What do you think sold data is used for? If the end product is the same, the
ethics of the medium doesn't matter.

------
freyir
While the primary motivation of companies is to generate profits, Google has
been in a unique position, thanks to its near monopoly, to generate profits
while sticking to its values. It’s a shame they’ve started down this other
path.

------
divbzero
Even if Google drops Dragonfly, centralized tracking will always be a tempting
honeypot for abuse.

DuckDuckGo [1], the non-tracking search engine, is seriously worth
considering. It wasn’t good enough 5 years ago, but is now and serves well as
my default search engine.

[1]: [https://duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com)

( _I have no affiliation with DuckDuckGo, just rooting for them to stay true
to their mission._ )

------
justinmchase
They may need to do more than demand, they may have to organize a strike. Get
more people involved, unionize or not, you're going to have to strike.

Putting your name out there like this will just serve to have to replaced one
at a time slowly which will kill the momentum until nobody is willing to take
action again.

------
hbosch
When you chose to take 50% of your compensation in stock, you too have chosen
to place company profits over company values.

~~~
daveFNbuck
How does that follow? If I benefit from a stock rising, that doesn't
necessarily mean I value that benefit above all else.

------
tvvocold
Local Chinese here, Personally, I don't need Dragonfly because I can cross the
GFW of China, but other people in China can't. They currently suffer from
China monopoly - Baidu's shitty and annoying search results. So I'd like to
see an alternative search engine come to here even if it does have some trade-
offs. From another perspective, even Google does provide an uncensored search
result here, most Chinese users still cannot access them because of the
firewall. What's the difference of censored and uncensored result for them? In
the long run, I do think China will close the firewall someday. So let us
(Chinese) take the trade-off for now and move forward.

------
Bucephalus355
Extremely brave. Especially people putting their names down on paper as
individuals.

I printed this paper out to look at the names more and to keep for the record.
If you signed it and are reading this comment, I find what you did incredibly
brave (US hasn’t had almost any labor activism like this in decades), and
worthy of much more merit than any CEO or billionaire co-founder. Thank you.

------
commandlinefan
On the other hand, I recall reading somewhere that people who were forced into
making munitions for the German army during WWII got to be really good at
manufacturing faulty products that would still pass rigorous inspection. If
you're really concerned about the moral implications of a project like that,
it might be worth keeping your mouth shut (since somebody's going to do it
whether you do it or not) and finding ways to make it plausibly breakable.

~~~
rexpop
> keep your mouth shut (since somebody's going to do it whether you do it or
> not)

How do you know?

------
jerkstate
But Google already built a censored search engine that enables state
surveillance, that's what we have in the west.

------
altmind
The alternative to google censoring its search is using chinese services -
search, shopping, payment, IM.

For work reasons I had to use chinese web, and believe me, the later is much
worse for a westerner.

Minimal i18n, confusing visual design, payments that dont go throught, random
network errors, total reliance on you having a mobile phone.

Yes, censhorship is bad, but I rather use censored service from a western
company than a censored service from a chinese company.

~~~
Jorge1o1
It’s not just about having a search engine that’s fast and convenient albeit
“censored.”

It’s very plausible that Dragonfly will be used to feed people in China flat
out misinformation and lies, and then monitor them 24/7.

News that doesn’t toe the party line will literally be deleted. Try and search
for a controversial book or subject, and you’ll be placed on a watchlist. Fake
news and government created media will be the first and only result always. In
other words, the Chinese government will have more access than ever into the
minds of its people, and then it will try to either manipulate them or just
repress the problematic ones.

This will happen whether Baidu or Google does it, but that doesn’t make it
morally acceptable for Google to join in. We don’t get a free pass to do evil
just because we’re not the first.

In fact, it’s worse for Google than Baidu. The people at Baidu don’t have a
choice, it’s the country they were born in. But Google is one of the world’s
richest companies, and if they chose not to operate in China, it would just
maintain the status quo, not actively hurt them.

There’s no moral justification for this, even if now the search engine is
faster and more polished.

------
jiveturkey
It's nice to see a lot of signatures, 277 at the time of writing. Given the
culture at Google I wouldn't call them brave (they aren't putting their jobs
or future promo at risk, at least within Google), but certainly it's a
powerful statement.

However, let's guesstimate 55k full-time staff. That's .5%. At that level,
it's a gesture that will get addressed in corporate-speak if at all. It's a
vocal minority. You will not hear from the 20% that are in favor and the 79.5%
that don't care much either way.

Now if they would all commit to (say) a 6-12 month timeline to "divest" or
they will leave, that's saying something that Google will have to listen to.
Sure, there is an unlimited supply of equally capable others that will be
thrilled to take their place, but it will be a cultural game-changer, a risk
the powers-that-be probably don't want to see play out.

------
maxhedrome
I deleted Youtube, maps, chrome, hangouts, sheets, docs, drive, Authenticator
and nearly every other G app from my phone, fuck this shit.... working on
migrating gmail. That’s a hassle tbh, but I’ve only raised my Google alert
status from “Don’t be evil”

To “Experimenting with Evil”, so we’re not full blown Orwell yet.

------
educationdata
There are not many Chinese names in the signed letter, and I can fully
understand. If you are a Chinese H1B or green card holder, and you signed this
letter, it is almost certain the Chinese government will contact your family
in China.

~~~
politician
How many Chinese social credit points would the family members of the signer
lose if a Googler were to sign this letter?

~~~
educationdata
[https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/665597190/families-of-the-
dis...](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/665597190/families-of-the-disappeared-
a-search-for-loved-ones-held-in-chinas-xinjiang-regi)

"If you are a Uighur, you automatically lose 10 points," recalls Seytoff. "If
you pray? Another 10 points. You've been overseas? Another 10 points. You have
relatives overseas? Another 10 points. If you're 50 or below, you're unsafe
and you go to a camp."

By simply having relatives overseas, you lose 10 points. Now imagine how many
points you will lose if you have a relative signed this letter.

~~~
callmekit
I'm confused by these exact point values. My understanding that the social
credit system is not yet implemented, and it's unlikely it will be a number,
probably more a set of black lists for different purposes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System)

------
jameslin
I know I am going to get a lot of criticism, but hey freedom of speech:

First of all, I live outside of China and I am not against freedom of speech
and human rights.

Let’s take a look at it at another angle: if Google drops dragonfly, the
Chinese netizens will end up using “Baidu”, is it better or worse for the
netizens of China? For the very least, dragonfly improves the situation from
monopoly and gives much better/accurate/scam-free/spam-free search results.
That is one way to improve their online experience.

I could be very wrong, but what I understand is these people oppose dragonfly
because the government can restrict results, okay that’s not very ideal, but
at least the government cannot force it to give false search results, right?

------
indogooner
TBH I am so divided on this. I did a little thought experiment over this and
came up with two possible outcomes Negative: We live in a strange world where
valuing morals limits our career opportunities. If I am a Google employee and
I walk out now where does it end? If I am not a hypocrite I cannot work at
Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Uber or even Apple. I am limiting where I can
work and hence will have to settle for lesser wage. This will discourage
people from speaking against wrong practices.

Positive: OTOH this activism has a potential to let companies know that some
very smart people will not join you if your moral compass is faulty.

------
throwawaysea
The number of participants in these efforts are so small and unrepresentative,
to a point where it is not material and these companies should not change
their direction. It is unclear to me why the media gives these stories so much
attention. I have to think it starts with these activists secretly working
with 1-2 journalists who are similarly politically-motivated, which then leads
to the story being given prominence on a couple media outlets. And from there
it makes the rounds, even though it is an undeserved amplification of a non-
story.

There are FAR more employees who either do not share these same views or are
OK with the company pursuing its own profit-maximizing agenda independent of
employees' personal political views. For example with workers not willing to
build image recognition algorithms that assist/augment the capabilities of
joystick-drone-operators, I bet there are a much larger number that are
totally willing to work on it, and they are signaling that by not
participating in employee activism even when it is socially/professionally
safe to do so.

As for the others who are not just indifferent but are for the company's
actions in pursuing new opportunities - they're just not screaming about it
due to the intolerance exhibited by far-left progressives at these companies,
especially with all the purposeful/malicious leaking,the Twitter outrage
machine, and other vicious tactics used by the intolerant activists. And as a
left progressive, I think that sort of behavior undermines all of us, and
should not be tolerated.

~~~
tspike
At what point do you consider it acceptable to speak out against something you
consider ethically wrong?

------
pettersolberg
"We no longer believe the company places values over profits". Ehm... has it
ever?

------
writepub
The employees willfully obstructing potential revenues and profits, and hence
styming Google's market cap should put their money where their mouth is.

These employees should be willing to accept a 50% reduction in compensation (
salary, bonus, stocks, etc). That would at least reduce costs for Google
that's being actively blocked from revenue streams other American & European
companies (Bing, Amazon, etc) are already participating in.

------
stevehawk
No kidding?!?!

[https://www.cnet.com/news/google-files-for-
unusual-2-7-billi...](https://www.cnet.com/news/google-files-for-
unusual-2-7-billion-ipo/)

[http://time.com/4060575/alphabet-google-dont-be-
evil/](http://time.com/4060575/alphabet-google-dont-be-evil/)

It's almost like the writing was on the wall but no one saw it...

------
stevenicr
Ive been telling people, writing to people and complaining about google's
increased censorship for years. The lack of transparency to webmasters and
google search users is just as damaging as hiding content from people when the
company spent years trying to develop trust, now many people believe what they
find on google is truth - and they do not know how much of the internet has
been filtered out, and ranked down by small groups of people with non-
transparent agendas and algorithms.

For this reason is does not surprise me that this kind of thing was in the
works and the ramifications to society being degraded in the name of big
profits.

I wrote about some of these issues in comments here recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18546828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18546828)

and if people started watching the pbs docu thing about the 2018 dilema of
facebooks power and failures - and you started to watch part two at 43:11 till
45:30 ( [https://www.pbs.org/video/the-facebook-dilemma-part-two-
iev1...](https://www.pbs.org/video/the-facebook-dilemma-part-two-iev1xh/) )-
thinking it's about google - that sums way part of my feelings watching these
things unfold over time on this side of the pond.

I am glad to see some people at google speaking outside the plex finally.
These decisions have global consequences, and the culture of don't tell them
so they can't use it against us, or steal our secret sauce, that omerta is
part of the toxic culture that has created the faang monstrosities that are
upon us today as they are.

To those that have chosen to speak out, thank you. I hope more open to the
discussions occur.

------
dasm
Let's assume that this event is Google officially jumping the shark (in terms
of workplace desirability, which has decreased due to moral turpitude and a
gradually lowering engineering bar).

Who's the new Google? Is there a company that can pick up the mantle of near-
universal desirability to software engineers? I don't think it's any of the
other FAANGs.

------
yalogin
Without stating an opinion on the topic itself, what does the community think
about employees agitating against a company practice like this rather than
just leaving and doing something else. Obviously they feel strongly about it
and want to make sure it doesn’t happen at all, while the company feels they
have a huge untapped revenue source.

~~~
kaens
It's refreshing to see people deciding that things can be important enough to
warrant taking some sort of action other than washing one's hands of the
matter.

Recognizing that there are paths available other than "doing what the company
says" or "walking away" is a good thing, and people should speak up if they
feel their work is being used in unethical ways.

There's a view that employees are subservient to employer's wills, to the
extent they agree to stay under their employ. While obviously true to some
extent, it seems silly to extend this to carte blanche for what employees must
agree to be complicit in.

------
yange
I can't find even one Chinese name on the signing list. These people have no
idea what Chinese people really want and what they really need. Chinese people
already lost all their privacy. They have nothing to lose by having Google
operating in their country. But in contrast, I believe having Google operate
again in China can actually help human rights in there. Why? Because currently
the Chinese search market is monopolized by Baidu, and if you read the story
behind Baidu and Putian Medical Group, or know about how Baidu is making money
by abusing all kinds of human rights, even putting lives in real danger, you
would understand how necessary it is for Chinese people to have a search
engine, that at least doesn't direct you to a fake hospital.

If you search the word "Baidu" in the first page of HN comments, you will find
0 results (at least at the time I'm writing this). No one cares the reality in
China, because that's different than their imagination, and they live in their
arrogant imaginations.

These people are just hypocrites. They don't care about human rights, or
Chinese people's well-beings as they already lost human rights. They don't
even bother to think in others' shoes. They are just feared. They are afraid
that one day their own government will utilize the same practice and steal
their little privacy. Cut the bullsh*t. If you really care about human rights,
try to make some changes in China, start by making a better and healthier
search engine than Baidu. There are many more evil business practices in
China, like in food delivery, bike share, P2P loans, etc. Try make some
healthier alternatives in these business as well. This is the way you should
help human rights, not just keep ranting about something they have already
lost.

Just do me a favor: ask any Chinese people you know, or think about this as
you were Chinese: would you prefer a censored Google as an alternative, or the
monopoly of Baidu? Please do this before you leave any comment.

------
exabrial
I have mixed feelings about this... I fully support free information not
filtered by nation states, but abandoning search in China means you abandon
the chance to make it a better place :/ I think developers and engineers we
often do assign enough value to "progress" vs perfection.

Rome didn't fall in a day, as they say.

~~~
scribu
I don’t follow your logic. If the first step to entering the Chinese market
requires bending to the government’s will, what makes you think Google would
have any leverage in the future to be able to “make it a better place”?

~~~
exabrial
You inadvertently demonstrated exactly what I was talking about. You're
thinking in absolutes, and I would point to the legalization of marijuana in
Colorado to demonstrate the power of subtle resistance.

~~~
scribu
Can you point to a summary of the history of marijuana legalization in
Colorado?

I imagine most non-US readers, such as myself, won’t have any idea about that.

------
btbuildem
I don't see any Distinguished Fellows on that list. Please, distinguish
yourselves! Put your clout behind a cause.

------
Isinlor
I have a similar sentiment, but it's hard for me to put a finger on it. There
is so many things happening over years. I'm wonder how much of this shift in
Google could be attributed to Sundar Pichai and how much to just normal
process of becoming soulless corporation.

Maybe they just have worse PR?

~~~
seunosewa
Only founder CEOs really have the luxury of putting values over profits, and
that’s because they can’t really be fired. Once they put someone else in
charge, that is over, though it doesn’t become clear until much later.

------
afarrell
One thing I've wondered about "don't be evil" is: what stories does the
company tell itself about how that value gets put into practice?

Any value which actually drives organizational behavior in the real world is
going to be complex -- complex enough that it cannot be fully conveyed in a
3-word-phrase. This is especially true when the phrase includes such a not-
agreed-upon word as "evil". So the ways that the organization expects
individuals to apply the phrase need to be explained. From to Lexington the
data structure that humans have historically used to store those explanations-
of-values is the story. So what stories did Google employees used to tell each
other about "don't be evil" and what stories do they tell each other now?

~~~
cwkoss
They have been walking back on the "don't be evil" motto recently.

------
kirvyteo
Has anyone thought about the effects of NOT having google search product and
services in China? I read a lot of negativity about how it is ruining the
culture and personal beliefs about freedom. Has anyone balanced it with what
is the upside to users (not money for Google)?

~~~
advisedwang
IMHO there isn't much effect of Google not being in China. Baidu works for
Chinese uses. I've seen an argument that Google would be a better, freer
experience, but Dragonfly shows that wouldn't really be the case.

~~~
kirvyteo
If we can take "freer" out of the argument for a minute.. (because not
everyone in the world places personal freedom on the same level of importance)

Better search results? Better quality of information for Chinese researchers
and developers? Better road information? Or email? Cloud services?

------
erikb
The painpoint is, they will do it anyways. Maybe not Google leadershipt but
someone elses management. Google and Facebook have shown that we can execute
power over datasizes that are too big for any group of humans to understand
themselves, and they have shown that by manipulating these datasets they can
manipulate human behaviour. This is too big a power to not fight over. That's
bigger than the nuclear bomb. So the question is not whether or not it will
happen, but who will be the first. The first might very well be the one
deciding the new world order.

------
craftoman
What's wrong with that? US government already have that kind of under-the-
table deal for years now and Chinese people wanted a similar project. Truth
is, even a 10 years old kid knows how much an evil company like Google respect
their users and how shamelessly they collectively spy everyone but if I was
picked by Google I won't shouting out self-evident facts about the true nature
of the company, instead I would be grateful that I got picked by thousands of
other companies afterwards just for working at Google.

------
bane
If Google kills Dragonfly it will be because of financial reasons. But because
of this, they'll be able to claim it was because they were responding to
employees.

grumble, I think I'm getting jaded.

------
MrZongle2
I'm not going to hold my breath.

There's too much money to be made, and too many "journalists" willing to write
puff pieces for Google and provide cover for this activity.

------
hnaccy
I'm shocked.

------
Aeolun
Or else what?

I appreciate you sending this letter, and your concerns have been duly noted.
After careful deliberation however, we regret to inform you we have decided to
proceed anyway.

Have a nice day.

------
dgudkov
It's a trend -- Google employees raise voice more and more often. The Damore
memo, the defense contracts, and now this. Clearly something is happening
there.

------
ProAm
You cant support diversity and cultural differences and not support it at the
same time. But at the end of the day business is business and cash is king.

------
resters
Ironically a censored search engine makes it easier to compare results from US
google to Censored Google. Not sure how that’s a bad thing for anyone.

------
HillaryBriss
wild speculation here:

both the US and China want Dragonfly for different reasons. each thinks it
will benefit from Google's presence in China.

China is confident it will control the flow of sensitive information Dragonfly
might obtain, and, at the same time, gain valuable insights about how Google
operates, paving the way to ultimate replacement of Google in China (and
perhaps outside China). plus, in the mean time, Dragonfly gives China some new
leverage over Google's current global operations (e.g. calling Taiwan "China",
promoting positive news about China to the outside world, etc).

the US government intelligence agencies are confident they will gain valuable
information about China's society, government, military, and economy through
Dragonfly (somehow). they want any inside presence they can get.

google is lukewarm on Dragonfly but thinks of it as a necessity. google knows
it won't be profitable, but also knows that running Dragonfly gives it
leverage to keep the US government's regulatory and anti-monopoly enforcement
at bay, protecting its leadership in its most valuable market: the US.

------
danielor
I think it is good that these engineers are standing up for what they believe
in. It will be an interesting litmus test for the leadership to see what type
of company they want Google to become.

Also, I am interested how the tense China-US relationship will effect the
broader tech investment strategy in East Asia. Are we going to see divestment
in the next 18 months by US tech companies in China?

------
bitrrrate
As a 'tech worker' myself these folks have my respect. Along with Dragonfly
and some of the egregious privacy and sexual harassment issues at Google I
have stopped using any Google products.

However, between this and the 20,000 Google employee/contractor walkout I have
gained a lot of respect for what the individual employees are collectively
doing.

------
dcposch
I'm glad this exists, but a bit disappointed that I don't see a single name I
recognize.

Brad Fitzpatrick, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Jeff Dean, Sanjay, etc etc plus a
lot of less famous people I know who work there. None of them have signed this
open letter.

\--

I recommend the author org add a call to action. There should be an easy way
for other Google employees to add their name to the list!

------
kawaiiKitty123
I find it troubling people take this to the political level -- China vs
Taiwan. School me how is this related to the censorship? FYI, Chinese do not
recognize Taiwan as independent, so there will not be censored comments here
because Chinese has unified views on this historical problem.

------
rch
A protest against censored search could hold the door open for creative
alternatives.

Hopefully this effort helps by encouraging search-oriented sneaker nets and
decentralized content platforms. I think Google itself could provide the
former, which would be very welcome in remote locations like Haiti.

------
kmlx
This is good for the ecosystem, as google's loss is a lot of other companies
gain. If Google's employees don't want to help the Chinese people and their
government, no problem. There are literally thousands of corporations that
will be helping instead of Goog.

------
fzss_
Hypocrites. Have you considered the human rights of Chinese users?

Thanks to the absence of Google, monopoly of Baidu has enabled them to sell
ads of unlicensed hospital that literally kills people.

A censored version of Google in Chinese will undoubtedly improve the quality
of life of Chinese Internet users.

~~~
electrograv
Do you really think Google stepping in would prevent them from selling ads to
unlicensed hospitals, etc.? If anything, this represents Google’s willingness
to violate the moral standards of their own employees (I’m talking about the
majority, and leadership prior to being corrupted by greed) no matter what, so
long as it means growing their revenue/profit.

It was clearly demonstrated that all Google cares about is money, when they
canceled project Maven immediately after protest, yet refuse to back down on
Dragonfly. The only difference? Dragonfly promises to be _immensely_
profitable, whereas Maven was small enough that the employees lost over it was
assessed to cost more than the project’s profit.

So you really think that Google would then suddenly develop the moral
fortitude, out of thin air, to reject bad ads in China that are nonetheless
profitable? Even if their policy is to do so now, don’t expect that to stay —
remember, their policy used to be _’we will not be complicit in censorship,
because it is morally wrong, period.’_

And even if it did, many would argue that it’s still a bad idea to seek a
short term good at the expense of the long term. Enabling state censorship by
giving the state more advanced censorship tech, could be seen as akin to
enabling a heroin addict by giving them more heroin. Sure, they’ll feel good
and they won’t suffer withdrawal. But overall it’s going to lead to a very
dark place that ultimately yields extreme suffering and often even death.

~~~
electrograv
P.S. In fact, here is evidence that Google does absolutely _nothing_ about
fraudulent directory listings and ads, like the one you seek to think will be
solved by Google moving into China:
[https://youtu.be/5c6AADI7Pb4](https://youtu.be/5c6AADI7Pb4)

------
Geekette
Wow. It's fascinating to watch this issue grow in realtime: When I started
reading, I saw earlier comments indicating the letter had 139 signatories.
Then I checked and noticed it was at 250 and it's now at 276. Curious to see
what the tally will be by tomorrow.

------
true_religion
If this is immoral, it should also be illegal, no? Is anyone for also lobbying
to create a law or executive order to that effect?

Otherwise, another company will simply step into Googles place, or they could
be tempted later to try again. The market is too profitable to do otherwise.

~~~
gpm
Making everything that is immoral illegal is putting the government in charge
of defining morality, it's a bad idea. It leaves little room for disagreement.
Little room for nuance. Slows the ability to adapt to new situations or
improved understanding. Opens up the process of deciding what is moral to
abuse. Etc.

~~~
true_religion
I am not for making everything illegal, just support of dictatorial
governments.

Isn't that the sort of thing that diplomacy, and national policy is for?

------
rmc
I hope they get somewhere. There's a tactic that has historically been quite
effective. A strike. Sysadmins can't be replaced on a moments notice, taking
weeks to get up to speed. If google.com 404s for a few minutes, management
will talk to you.

------
throwaway_1_1
Google employee here through a throwaway.

To me the optics of refusing to work for the US government on maven but
complying with censorship in China seem very bad in the US’s politics climate.
There is nonzero risk that the brand will be, for lack of a better word,
fucked.

------
surfcao
I understand they want to hold the principles they value, but practically, I
think it will do good to Chinese living there to have Google's presence in
China, by providing a not-so-much-censored alternative/competitor to Baidu
etc.

------
bhartzer
This from employees of the company that argued (successfully) in a United
States court that no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy when
connecting to any Google service. Sorry, Googlers, you need to get your
priorities straight.

~~~
paulddraper
Which Googlers are you talking to...the ones that wrote the blog post?

------
debacle
What percentage of Google employees work for sectors in Google that actually
make money?

------
reneberlin
Priceless gorilla-advertising for the Opera browser directly from Google.

Pretty cool.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Dragonfly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Dragonfly)

------
ausjke
I recall 'dont be evil' was the motto, but it's removed a while ago, maybe
it's removed because Google realized as far as company&profit goes, it is not
different from any other companies.

~~~
quest88
It's there: [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-
conduct/](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/). Ctrl+f evil

------
AchieveLife
Values are not about profits. They are about Innovation. Which fuels market
share and has the intended result of increased profits.

The assumption that profits rule the world is a projection. Imo, Innovation
rules the world.

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Innovation" is a buzzword. It's so context-dependent that the word by itself
is almost meaningless.

Values as people understand them are usually about neither profit nor
"innovation". It's about people, morality, and goals other than money.

~~~
AchieveLife
It's a buzz word in marketing.

In strategy, there are 2 types of innovation

Incremental and Disruptive

Both types give organizations increased power over territory.

People are the blood of an organization. Ethics and people determine culture
which determines goals.

Innovation is the strategic foothold for keeping an organization alive as it
travels into the future.

EDIT: I want to add that all organizations (even non-business) need
innovation. Civilizations, Empires, Protests, Support groups, Religious
groups, etc... This is due to environments constantly changing. This is what
Strategic Planners help with.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's a buzzword in marketing, and it's a buzzword in corporate strategy. Or
"soundbite", if you wish. It's not as if the latter was a hard science.

> _Incremental and Disruptive_

I'm guessing you're taking this from a particular philosophy, perhaps a
particular known book. Even if the word makes sense in there, it's not
necessarily how other people are using it.

For comparison, if you look at the first paragraph of Wikipedia's article on
innovation, you'll find so much wiggle room in there that you could call every
business "innovative".

~~~
AchieveLife
Here's a book to introduce you to the domain "The Psychology of Innovation in
Organizations"

------
throwaway6497
I don't see anyone above Staff level or many product/marketing/sales people in
the signed letter. Are staff+ engineers, manageres and non-engineers at Google
mostly supportive of Dragonfly?

------
Quemon
It is interesting to see the standard to which these big internet companies
are being held lately. The mere fact that Google debated and waited many years
before jumping into China with a censored search engine puts it into the top
of the most ethical for-profit corporations to ever exist, in my book.

All this bad-will seems to come from their advertising business models, which
I find is loudly criticized with rather thin arguments, given that these
companies are often the only ones defending the users from the dirty tactics
of advertisers (who get none of the blame). I've neve seen criticism of coca-
cola for using Google's targeting abilities to its advantage and shove ads
down our throats for money without a moral concern. And rightly so.

------
mrhappyunhappy
While they're at it, why not protest the NSA dragnet? Somehow being compliant
with China is terrible but monitoring millions of Americans through their
searches doesn’t call for any action?

------
crimsonalucard
I say google should go for it. If they don't build it, someone else will. If a
lot of people start using the tool, google will have a lot of influence to
actually make change happen.

------
Mikeb85
> Google’s effort to create a censored search engine for the Chinese market
> that enables state surveillance.

You mean Google's effort to break into a market that it's currently frozen out
of.

~~~
gipp
I can't tell if you see that as a better or worse framing.

------
Rjevski
I find it ironic that these employees complain about an unethical search-
engine project but have no issues stalking & violating the privacy of billions
of people across the world.

~~~
gaius
Quite. For everyone who signed this I bet there are 100 salivating over what
they could do in a country with no privacy concerns whatsoever.

------
bbd
Instead of comparing what chinese have to what westerns have today, try to
compare what chinese have without Google to what chinese will have with
Google.

------
slackfan
You called us paranoid whacos when we blew the whistle on google and other
tech companies becoming too big.

You made this bed. Now damn well lie in it, and think of England.

------
taytus
"This is why we’re taking a stand."

By writing a Medium post? What about offering resignations?

I might be downvoted to hell but man... writing a post is not taking a stand.

------
pyabo
Do you Google Employees think that NSA isn't watching what we do? Mmm, it
looks like China is evil so they can't do what USA can

------
resters
Uh, isn’t a censored google the best way to do an A/B comparison to find the
information China doesn’t want its citizens to know?

------
oh_sigh
So 200 people signed, 50,000+ didn't sign...

------
amelius
Why doesn't Google offer massive Tor services and related tools so the Chinese
can use the regular version of Google search?

------
refurb
Maybe engaging China is the first step to them opening up their society?
Similar to the arguments against the Cuban embargo.

~~~
eiaoa
> Maybe engaging China is the first step to them opening up their society?
> Similar to the arguments against the Cuban embargo.

No. Them "engaging China" will not open up Chinese society, because Google
will have to implement the exact same censorship regime that all the other
Chinese sites do.

The Chinese government doesn't give a shit about Google's prestige in the
West. They'll kick it out the second it gives them a little lip or is non-
compliant with their demands. Google has zero power to change anything for the
better.

Also, China has discredited the idea that capitalist engagement will cause
liberalization. They've shown that an autocratic regime can have its
capitalist cake and eat it too.

------
nicodjimenez
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Google's leadership has a responsibility for doing what they think are best
for the long term prospects of the company.

In the grand scheme of things, yet another censored search engine in China is
not going to hurt anyone.

China can run their country however the hell they want. YOU may not agree with
their values, but THEY might not agree with yours.

The irony is that Google is hardly known as a company that values free speech
- look at what happened to James Damore.

------
thwoawayyowser
First thing they will do is try to take the dialog "indoors" and it being
Google that means some internal tool

------
jeremyarose
The market has to value values over profits for this to matter. For all the
talk and hype, I don't see it (yet)...

------
jxramos
> *We will be updating this post with additional signatures as they come in.

As of a few moments ago the head count was 187 folks.

------
hyperpallium
And if it's created for China, it will sooner or later be used everywhere
else. Like Cisco routers were.

------
discoverfly
Are they really familiar with Chinese people? Really know what Chinese want?
Cold-blooded Google SWEs.

------
mikehines
I think those Google enployees should take a step further and ask the US to
stop trading with China.

------
easytiger
I presume they also don't use any chinese made electronics day to day in
protest either

------
euos
I am also a Google employee. Dragonfly needs to happen, no matter what random
SJWs say.

------
nakedrobot2
So go work for someone else! :-)

OH, you're getting a huge salary from Google, you say? Aaaaaaaah.

------
gojomo
"Must" – or else? Will these employees quit & start a competitor?

------
iscrewyou
And this is why unionizing works. It’s collective bargaining and it’s not
evil.

------
lostgame
I think it's about time for Google to change their 'mantra'.

------
hanswesterbeek
Ah, so /this/ is where these Googlers draw the line?

------
beams_of_light
Thank you, brave Google employees, for speaking out.

------
balibebas
Why choose Medium and not Blogger for this post?

------
gnufreex
This is nonsense, they did not cry against PRISM like that. Ohwait, they did
not know at all, until Snowden told everyone. So STFU Googlers, precentant has
been set already.

------
wallace_f
Why was this purged from HN's front page?

------
resters
Why is having a censored google to easily compare with uncensored google a bad
thing?

The danger isn’t simply that censorship exists, it’s that we won’t be able to
tell what was censored.

------
enriquto
phew, I thought it was referring to the BSD!

------
_wmd
60 signatures, 88,000 employees :(

~~~
gpm
Now 91, > 0.1%.

I'd be curious to hear what people think a reasonable target is, 1%?

------
Volker_E
Only two directors signed this.

------
kchoudhu
No one from the business.

------
i_phish_cats
Why not quit in protest?

------
fabiospampinato
It might be interesting to hear the answer Eric Schmidt himself gave to the
question: "Is Google willing to accept internet censorship to enter China?"
here:
[https://youtu.be/3tNpYpcU5s4?t=4296](https://youtu.be/3tNpYpcU5s4?t=4296).

TL;DR: He said no.

~~~
jerf
Actions speak, words don't.

(I find I had to update the old aphorism for the late 20th and 21st century.
After centuries of studies on how to use words to manipulate people, words are
now simply nearly useless and while I'm human and I can't claim total success,
I try to just ignore them now. )

~~~
fabiospampinato
Sure, mine wasn't an attempt at refuting what's happening.

------
barisser
This would be more credible coming from shareholders rather than employees.

------
gammateam
Its nice to see so many opening in high level positions

------
kevmo
I morally judge (not condemn) people who work at Google. If you can get a job
at Google, you can get a job almost anywhere. There is tons of great work out
there for you. People who work at Google are choosing to aid in the
suppression of human freedom.

~~~
lostgame
>> People who work at Google are choosing to aid in the suppression of human
freedom.

The fact that there's a large number of employees who signed this document
provides great evidence to contradict this claim.

It's kind of a blanket statement - I'm sure a bunch of the folks here on HN
work at Google and are trying to do exactly the opposite.

Heck, some of the people who signed off on this document could be HN'ers!

You can sometimes change a corrupt system from the inside. It takes a lot of
work and dedication and it certainly doesn't always work out - but it's a
choice some people make. It certainly isn't mine! :)

~~~
bad_user
I would also like to add that companies encouraging freedom of speech
internally to a level that makes such protests possible are exceedingly rare.

In most companies employees have no freedom of speech unless unionized and not
even then. And protesting against projects based on moral principles publicly
is a sure way to get you fired.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Don't forget the Damore case. Regardless of people's views on content of his
memo, this was a case of Google essentially baiting an employee to express
their honest views _on internal forum_ , and then firing them for not agreeing
with the prescribed party line.

------
resters
But when the state was the US and the data it was trying to censor was from
Wikileaks, Google (Schmidt) adopted a right wing stance and offered no help,
and openly criticized Wikileaks like one would expect a defense contractor to
do.

This absurd righteous indignation about China censorship is unbelievably
hypocritical considering that nobody at Google tried to help Wikileaks shed
light on US Government crimes.

------
tomschlick
> MRAP's are for combat, not police work

While they were designed for combat, they are effectively the same thing that
Brinks uses to transport money. They are meant to stop bad things from killing
the people inside. They have 0 offensive weapons.

They are entirely defensive vehicles that have been used to rescue downed
officers, civilians in harms way (gunfire), and multiple times in natural
disasters where other vehicles would have gotten stuck.

While I get that they "look scary" to some people, they do have utility and
come very cheap from the federal government that is trying to get them off
their books. Local police pick them up because when there is a
gunfight/hostage situation/disaster it's better to have one 5 mins away than
an hour away.

I honestly don't get the outrage about them.

~~~
driverdan
They are not the same thing as a standard armored truck. The name itself gives
that away (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected). Police do not need mine-resistant
vehicles.

MRAPs have high maintenance and running costs. The simple fact that they are
former military vehicles contributes to the military mindset of many police
depts, something that should be avoided. Militarization of police forces is
bad for citizens.

~~~
tomschlick
> Police do not need mine-resistant vehicles.

Serious eye roll here. You're discarding all of the other capabilities and
suggesting that because it is ALSO mine resistant it must be bad.

> MRAPs have high maintenance and running costs.

That's assuming they are used all the time. Most departments have them parked
at their HQs and only use them for call outs or training. Regular maintenance
wouldn't reach the same levels of cost as buying a bearcat + maintaining that.
Also as more depts get them, the maintenance costs will go down (excluding the
OP comment here's area).

> contributes to the military mindset of many police depts

While I generally agree with that notion, I would much rather them buy the
cheaper milsurp vehicle with more capability than buy one from Lenco, or not
buy one at all and have to wait an hour during an active shooter.

~~~
ed_elliott_asc
Why do Americans seem to do everything they can about people with guns, except
take away their guns?

~~~
tomschlick
Because we have a constitutional right to said guns so we don't take removing
them lightly. That said if someone has any history of violence, crime, or
mental disorder I'm 100% in favor of removing access to weapons.

~~~
roywiggins
There was no Constitutional right to carry a gun- or to own a gun- until 2005,
and the 2005 Heller decision only covered keeping handguns in the home.
Exactly how far the right extends beyond that is very much not settled law.

------
beams_of_light
If you think that denying information to Chinese people because their
Orwellian government demands it is the same as the stone you use to grind your
obviously conservative axe on, you may need to pause and think a bit more on
it.

~~~
throwawaysea
Labeling someone's thoughtful arguments ('conservative') serves only to
invalidate those arguments via an appeal to emotion or an association fallacy.

~~~
yourbandsucks
What's especially funny is that in 2018, the red scare is 'liberal' and
wanting to work with the Chinese is 'conservative'.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The more things change the more things stay the same

------
gowld
More comment traction at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542597)
that links to a story that adds more context around the Medium posted letter.

------
thoughtexplorer
Obviously Google doesn't place values over profits. Let's be brutally honest
here. Nor do the employees.

Are the employees that make $200,000/year donating the extra income to those
in need or are they buying things to engage in lifestyle inflation like most
people? Are they going to quit Google and work for a non-profit?

------
prolikewh0a
I also feel like they've changed search so much for profit purposes that it's
impossible to find certain things without receiving pages of irrelevance. I've
been using Google since the early 2000's and it's so easy to tell Search has
dropped in quality. Certain words & phrases I know would produce legitimate
useful search results in 2008 will now just pull pages of unrelated ads.

It's still the best, but the profit motive is harming the amazing work that
Google once did.

~~~
nickthegreek
examples please

~~~
RickS
Not OP, and not sure this is what OP's talking about, but I have examples.

First, anything piracy related. Previously you could search something like
"albumname zip rar torrent" and get vast lists of downloads. It's unclear
whether the presence of scam links or the illegality of filesharing prompted
the removal of valid results for this class of searches, but it's nonetheless
true that this type of search returned useful results in the past and is now
fully, intentionally, and obviously nerfed.

Second, the filtering GUI for searches has degraded over time. Timeboxing and
verbatim searches will negate one another when trying to build some queries. I
brought this to the team's attention [1] and received a response last June,
and it's still broken as of last week. Attempting to bypass the GUI by
combining the desired URL params from two searches also yielded broken
results, IIRC.

Google's search is in many ways improved since 2008, but it's also worse in
some ways. Subjectively, it feels that in the last decade, search has
transitioned from "show me what is on the internet, limited by the power of
our algorithms" into something more like "show me what is on the internet,
limited by the overton window[2] of our legal, PR, and advertiser-relations
departments".

I liken google's transition, in search and elsewhere, to apple's. As they've
grown, their customer base has changed from "small number of hackers" to
"large number of laymen" and the preferences and tolerances of those groups
shifts in a way that causes these products to be less useful for the HN crowd.
One of the core shifts is away from "build abstractions to wrangle reality in
custom ways" to "build abstractions that obscure reality in convenient ways".

I don't have the answers here. It seems that if you want your reality to be
unbounded by such filters, you're doomed to be some kind of
hacker/pirate/outlaw/non-normie.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/riiiiiiiikk/status/1012859335095959552](https://twitter.com/riiiiiiiikk/status/1012859335095959552)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)

~~~
starbeast
>search has transitioned from "show me what is on the internet, limited by the
power of our algorithms" into something more like "show me what is on the
internet, limited by the overton window[2] of our legal, PR, and advertiser-
relations departments".

I'd say it has gone full; "Show me what your advertisers and other sources of
income, would like someone like me to find on the internet."

~~~
tru3_power
I’ve realized the same thing. Do you have any google search alternatives?

~~~
starbeast
Using bookmarks to record useful list sites, same as I did before search
engines.

------
Annatar
Google has been the equivalent of an IT Gulag for a long time. I always pitied
the poor souls working there thinking they've racked up some sort of prestige.
Not worth the 7000 days in Siberia.

~~~
alexeiz
And the funny thing, it's not easy to get in there.

------
onetimemanytime
I know it at least since the 2008 crisis. Google made a choice, manipulate
search results /display on page to stop sending as less visitors as possible
to non-Google sites.

~~~
ashrk
I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to, but as someone who's used
Google since back when it had a bunch of serious competitors, I'd also pick
2008-2010 as about the time they stopped even appearing to match words with
actions and became just another company, from an outside perspective, at
least. It surprises me that people are just now forming this opinion about
them.

Perhaps not coincidentally that's about when the fundamentally-a-bad-idea
service of Facebook started to get huge as it grew past college campuses, and
showed it was really easy—like, incredibly easy—to convince all these new
Internet users to give strangers tons of information about themselves, in
gross violation of previous Internet norms of avoiding posting personal info
anywhere, and that one could make stupid amounts of money by facilitating
these poor choices.

------
sova
Is it not inevitable that where the ethical Code sees Injustice the corporate
bottom line sees a dollar sign? I believe the correct avenue of approach for
this type of issue is to offer an alternative. Simply telling your higher-ups
to stay out of the market is not going to be sustainable. And given that you
all work at Google, I expect there are many alternatives you could come up
with. Such as banking on Google scholar to help bridge misunderstandings with
China. Google is an advertising company and asking Google to not show ads to
billions of Chinese people is like asking a shark to go vegan. The ethical
imperative is not a part of the reward system that the corporate algorithm
known as Google optimizes for. If you really want to change Google's core
mission you must change what is positively reinforced. However it seems like
any capitalist endeavor aimed at the Chinese market must first be subservient
to that bright red flag. China is well aware of this and doesn't care if
Google doesn't have a market share. Google, seen as a foreign company, also
doesn't get any special perks or connections in China. At any rate, there are
plenty of untaken letters in the alphabet, I'm sure the higher-ups will find
one that will suit the purpose of a censored search engine. I'm sorry to seem
dismal in my analysis but a Google employee who is fed by advertising dollars
must also understand that the party wants to control entirely what people see
hear and think. Google doesn't have to provide this functionality, plenty of
other firms will and are already. I think what would make a bigger difference
is asking Google to acquire Chinese companies and slowly unfold them from the
inside out. I would be cautious about mixing volatile compounds such as
Chinese information technology and a global tech giant, and I think efforts of
both the higher-ups and the upset employees would be better aimed at ending
censorship, instead of asking the bear to avoid some incredibly tempting
honey. Currently the big G believes that doing the right thing must involve a
dollar sign. However the argument can be made that the purity of the franchise
is at stake. Of course like most big companies, you can always make two
versions of something and sell the upgrade. For example that could be a
censored version in China but magically with a certain USB key other results
get through. But even with something that sly and sleuthy, I don't understand
why Google would want to control opinion in China. The party is in the
business of controlling opinion. It's like the Jesuits going to Japan and
greeting the shogunate with the Bible, explaining that the character of the
Bible was even higher than the Shogun. Naturally this did not sit well with
the Shogun. So began a long period of ostracization and casting out of
Christians in Japan. Google makes hardware, it's not like Google isn't in
China, but if Google wants to get into the rich multimedia aspects of a
Chinese person's everyday life, it will either be through government certified
hardware, or otherwise attained hardware and software. the biggest challenge
is that the network is entirely controlled by the party. Honestly though, de-
censorship of a large area of China for a long enough period of time would
probably have real life sociodynamic consequences. In short instead of
chanting "Chinese money is no good here" how about you start chanting "mesh
networks that circumvent centralized data storage for all"? As long as the
party controls the network you must play by their rules. So why don't we have
a fully mesh distributed decentralized internet yet? It is almost 2019, do you
know where your bits are?

------
scarcely
Censorship has its uses. I often open these China threads on HN just to add
users to my cosmetic filter.

~~~
stochastic_monk
Can you provide more details regarding your cosmetic filter and why posters
from a post on China would be good candidates? It’s not clear to me from your
post.

~~~
scarcely
I'm not a programmer, I'm an academic. Topics in my academic specialty
routinely get posted on HN. When they do, I browse the comments section, look
for users who exhibit many signs of lacking rigor and/or intellectual honesty,
and add to my filter accordingly, on the grounds that their opinions on
programming topics are probably not worth reading either.

I'm also a Chinese person. China matters is like an extra AOS for me and so I
apply cosmetic filters for the same reasons

------
romeisendcoming
They (google employees) enable capitalization and market of leaky personal
data made more leaky through browser and protocol but put a brave face on
something overt like this?

------
resters
It’s shameful that google employees supported google’s attacks on Wikileaks
but now find so much righteous indignation when the state that doesn’t want
secrets out is China. Wow.

------
Fins
That's nice that the kids are standing up for something (that's unlikely to
affect them, of course). But I would be far more impressed if they stood up
against something closer to home, like personalized search results, dark
patterns to make sure they monitor you, or monitoring whether you agreed to it
or not, misuse of private data, creation of filter bubbles etc. etc. But that
might actually affect their paychecks, so no, can't have that.

------
thrower123
So, 36 people (at present, anyway) sign a letter. What in the flying frig is
that actually supposed to accomplish? There's nothing really actionable here;
you've got the nothingness of "that leadership commit to transparency, clear
communication, and real accountability."

Are these people going to actually do anything - quit in protest, sabotage,
what? No, they are going to whine, and keep drawing their very lucrative
salaries and benefits. Put up or shut up.

~~~
alexandercrohde
"So friggin what? One black lady refuses to give her seat up on a bus to a
white person? Is she really actually going to do anything?"

~~~
thrower123
She did actually _do_ something, and engage in an act of civil disobedience,
and get arrested. Not sign a mildly written letter.

------
nakedrobot2
OH these fresh young naive minds, who think censorship never happens.
Censorship happens ALL THE TIME. The Radio, TV, and Film industries in the USA
- they have all been censored, from the very beginning.[1] So it was self-
censorship at the behest of the government. What's the difference? Censorship
is all around us.

Americans self-censor tits and genitals, Europeans self-censor violence.
Censorship is everywhere.

I think this whole discussion is extremely naive.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-
Empire...](https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-
Empires/dp/0307390993)

~~~
alexandercrohde
I find the way you phrase this super-alienating. If anything, it pushes me
away from your cause.

1\. Comes across as ad-hominem

2\. Comes across as emotional/pedantic

3\. For example, yes "pornography" is censored on broadcast TV, but many other
things aren't. There are obviously degrees of censorship.

4\. If your goal is to convince people that things are more censored than they
realize you might want to cite some real world examples of political
censorship that happened in America that support that point.

5\. Your whole comment is pretty much irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Regardless of whether censorship is common or uncommon in the US, it's still
meaningful to take a stance against creating a politically-censored search in
China.

~~~
scarcely
I don't think the user you are responding intends his comment to be putting
forward some watertight argument. It sounds light-hearted to me. It's puzzling
to me that you'd pick on this one particular comment to produce a detailed,
five-point rebuttal in a thread like this one where there are so many other
more important targets to go after.

~~~
alexandercrohde
I think I understand where you're coming from.

Here's my motivation - I think there are actually some pretty scary problems
out there. However, I think it is possible to talk about an important issue in
a way so emotional that it actually backfires and creates a negative
impression of those who care about an issue.

For example, Alex Jones is right to lament the pesticide atrazine that changes
frogs sexes [1], but by virtue of being Alex Jones actually may look a wider
swath of environmentally-conscious look somewhat unreliable by association.

Another example is Al Gore: even though he had an important message on climate
change his manner was so distasteful that it's hard to argue he helped the
cause.

When I see someone who agrees with my beliefs but comes across as hysterical I
try to metaphorically "hold a mirror up" so they can learn to phrase their
message in a way that won't drive people away.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrazine#Amphibians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrazine#Amphibians)

~~~
scarcely
Ah! My bad for not realizing that. I would only add that those who give so
much weight to tone/delivery heuristics are also to blame. But I see your
point, I feel similarly frustrated sometimes and I can definitely imagine
myself acting the same way you did.

------
kyleblarson
They should volunteer to give up some of their generous benefits to offset the
lost revenue from Dragonfly.

~~~
sova
If only giving up salary was equivalent to serving more ads. I get paid by
serving ads so by actively not serving ads they actively not get paid. On top
of that offering some of what you do get paid to make up the difference leads
to zero quickly. I do agree with you in principle, more alternatives should
have been offered if they really wanted to catch someone's ear in upper
management

