
I’m Chinese, Google’s DragonFly Must Go On - ithinco
https://github.com/ithinco/i-am-chinese-the-dragonfly-must-go-on
======
jldugger
> If Google were in China, perhaps the young man named Wei Zesi would not have
> died as a result of deadly fake medical advertisements searched through
> Baidu.

As the wikipedia article
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi)
makes clear, those medical adverts were not fake. They were certainly deadly.
They were also run by the Second Hospital of the Beijing Armed Police Corps. A
state owned hospital. On what basis would google refuse to run that ad?
Barring them from advertising seems like a great way to get a midnight knock
at your door from the Beijing Armed Police Corp. And it's not like an
algorithm will easily tell when medical claims are is truthful.

Would the auction algorithm produced a different ad result? Google's pay per
click model maximizes revenue per ad shown, not human welfare; presumably the
hospital willing to pay to get to the top of the searches is willing to go the
extra mile to improve click thru rates.

Would marking it more clearly as an ad have made a difference? Google is
already walking down that slippery slope; today Google places ads directly in
line with search results. If Baidu is able to legally get away without even
marking ads, it seems like Google is an A/B test away from a very profitable
locale specific change to the UI.

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
Just come here, not to debate, but to add some background information about
its public perception.

The Cancer Center and other departments of the Second Hospital of the Armed
Police Beijing Corps were actually outsourced to the operation of the Putian
network, the latter has a long history of false advertising of various
ineffective medical treatments.

Basically, the general public believes Baidu was the largest supporter of the
Putian network, and Putian hospitals may have contributed 12 billion RMB (1.8
billion US$) of the total of 26 billion RMB (4 billion US$) in ad revenues
reported by Baidu that year.

[https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/the-putian-
conne...](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/the-putian-connection)

[https://www.whatsonweibo.com/behind-baidu-scandal-baidu-
puti...](https://www.whatsonweibo.com/behind-baidu-scandal-baidu-putian-
medical-group/)

------
codemac
If we counted the number of people the PRC has killed by finding them through
their "great" firewall, does the OP think that number is less than bad baidu
medical ads?

I don't understand is the false equivalency between baidu's advertising and
PRC's notorious human rights violations.

This post doesn't address any of the concerns brought up by the original
letter they decry?

~~~
fermienrico
It’s a ridiculous rhetorical rebuttal without ever mentioning the dystopian
motives of the entire Chinese tech industry puppetted under the Xi Jingpin’s
vision. From Baidu to Tencent, everyone is in bed with the government.

Weak arguments are covered up with emotional rhetoric about deaths and such.

Please do not respond to my comment about “what about US Federal agencies in
bed with the FANG”. Before we discuss, China is not even on the same ballgame.
It’s not the same sport. It’s like going to another planet where your entire
identity is linked to your cellphone number. I visit China multiple times a
year and without WeChat, I can’t do anything. On HN, I often see comparisons
to the US and the west but it’s just shifting the discussion somewhere else.
US has democracy, open and fair justice system and I can sue the government, I
have Miranda rights, freedom of speech and the whole American dream enchilada.
It’s still alive despite of the shit president and it is here to stay.
Negativity against the US is rampant here.

~~~
yourbandsucks
You like using Bing when you visit? Don't ever miss YouTube? Or checking your
Gmail without a VPN?

~~~
fermienrico
I have my company’s VPN access so it’s not a problem for me. But contacting
people is really difficult without WeChat. You could do EVERYTHING with this
one app.

------
SteveGregory
The objections to DragenFly are _not_ about what is best for the Chinese
citizen.

This is not the concern in the signed letter. It is also not related to any of
the core concerns from commenters here, as far as I can tell.

Yet somehow, many people are feeding the idea that the primary question is a
cost-benefit analysis from the perspective of a person living in China. Of
course, access to a pseudo-Google in China would be better for people there.
It would be another option, and probably a tad closer to uncensored.

The concerns are simply not about that.

This is about setting a precedent of a company in a liberal democracy bending
to the wishes of the government of a non-liberal-democracy.

The concern is that this compromise is not only something that happens in
China, but also something that happens next in UK and then in Germany, and
then in the US.

The concern is that any society with an "unfiltered" Google becomes a thing of
the past. The concern is that the largest organization in the world
controlling access to information begins "partnering" with governments and we
step into an accelerated path towards disinformation.

~~~
jhanschoo
Nevertheless, as OP mentioned, the decision concerns Chinese citizens, and it
is always useful to obtain input from stakeholders.

~~~
pas
I don't think they care much. Baidu works, and if they are dissatisfied there
is Bing. Yet Baidu is the market leader there. Why would they switch to
Google?

~~~
cben
Why did I care when I discovered Infoseek, Excite, Open Directory Project,
Dogpile (I'm fuzzy on the exact order) and eventually Google? Do you remember
your feeling when playing with a new search engine? Differences in access to
information are real and quickly felt.

(disclaimer: ex-googler. In words Google itself likes to use, because long-
tail search matters. Also I should mention I now default to DuckDuckGo, on
privacy grounds, but it's not a step up just "surprisingly not bad", I
frequently repeat a search in Google and get more results)

------
jnbiche
To be clear, fake and illegal medical advertisements make their way onto
Google, too:

[https://www.wired.com/2013/05/google-pharma-whitaker-
sting/](https://www.wired.com/2013/05/google-pharma-whitaker-sting/)

(This is only the most infamous case from the past 10 years)

So if the post author's only argument for DragonFly is that China needs Google
because China needs a search engine that doesn't promote fake meds, it's a
false premise.

EDIT: Changed 5->10 years since the case in question was from 2009-2011. Also,
as another comment points out[1], a Chinese state medical clinic was
responsible for the Baidu fake medicine incident. It's highly unlikely that
Google would turn down a government agency from its ad buying. So again, not
seeing a huge difference between Baidu and Dragonfly, other than the quality
of their results (but not their ethics).

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18574669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18574669)

------
publub
I'm really glad someone with a Chinese background finally spoke up about this.
If you look at the anti-DragonFly post, you'll notice that there are almost no
Chinese names on the list. Every Chinese citizen I've talked to is pro-
DragonFly, myself included.

DragonFly will probably be the largest step to democratizing information that
has ever happened for the Chinese people. It's a huge step forward. It won't
change the fact that the Chinese government already does censor information,
and that it does spy on its people. This isn't new. DragonFly will just
provides Chinese citizens so much more information that we can't get otherwise
without resorting to VPNs.

For the people in China who aren't dissidents (a large chunk of the 1.4
billion, or 4x the population of the US), this will be an entirely positive
change that could save millions of lives.

Please, please launch DragonFly.

~~~
jldugger
> Every Chinese citizen I've talked to is pro-DragonFly, myself included.

Why would a Chinese citizen who was anti-dragonfly out themselves?

~~~
xster
Because these said people don't live in the fictional mental construct you've
created where they're cowering in a corner, shivering in fear of saying the
wrong thing and waiting for the white man to swoop in and defeat their
oppressor.

They're just normal people living normal lives. They have 2 legs and 2 arms,
eat ice cream, complain about traffic and politics in person and online the
same you and I do. Google is a nice to have but at the end of the day, not
that important.

~~~
jldugger
True, I was more thinking about the bit I should have quoted instead, about
how few Chinese named Google engineers signed. That's a much more public
statement with negligible upside.

------
ForrestN
The problem with this logic is that it treats the malevolent dictatorship as a
given. If you believe that there will be concentration camps, dissident
crackdowns, and absolute censorship in China forever, this is a reasonable
position.

If you believe there is any hope for the Chinese people, foreign entities
should focus on aiding the regime and the political status quo as little as
possible, hypothetical ad business improvements or not.

~~~
ehsankia
1\. No, but you have a much better chance of actually bringing change if
you're in there, than if you leave it on its own.

2\. Almost every single Chinese citizen I've spoken to is for this project. I
find it a bit ironic that all the opposition is from Westerners who love to
feel outraged in their place and assume they know what's best for others. Why
not let them decide what they want for their country, rather than shoving your
ideals on them? You're not the one who has to live without dozens of Google
services that only have shitty alternatives, they are.

~~~
bicubic
> I find it a bit ironic that all the opposition is from Westerners who love
> to feel outraged [...] Why not let them decide what they want for their
> country, rather than shoving your ideals on them?

I don't think you understand what this debate is about. This isn't about what
Chinese citizens want. This is the rest of the developed world standing up and
saying they don't want to be involved in aiding an oppressive regime. China
doesn't get to hold the wellbeing of the citizens it's oppressing as a
bargaining chip here.

If chinese citizens are worse off for it, they should be looking to make their
government more like the west rather than making baseless pleas for the west
to become more like China. Ultimately this is the heart of the debate. Is
China's market size big enough to force western tech to bow down to unethical
practices for some sweet $, or is the western tech industry big enough to send
a loud and clear message that the Chinese regime is not acceptable to the
developed world.

~~~
TACIXAT
>This is the rest of the developed world standing up and saying they don't
want to be involved in aiding an oppressive regime.

By the rest of the developed world you mean a small and loud subset of Google
employees?

------
z0r
China can allow access to Google whenever they choose.

~~~
darawk
But they won't. And that has real consequences for actual people. Google has
the option to improve those people's lives by going there, even if it means
bowing to the demands of Chinese censors. Nothing is gained by staying out.
China isn't going to magically change its opinion on censorship because Google
won't enter their market. The objections of the Google employees are
shortsighted and naive.

~~~
creato
Funny, I'd say it is your objections that are shortsighted and naive: caving
to the demands of an authoritarian dictatorship steadily growing in influence.

~~~
darawk
Ok. Play your tape all the way through. What are the negative consequences of
doing so? The positive consequences of entering the Chinese market are
obvious.

~~~
AlexandrB
The negative consequences are that Google are the best at cataloguing and
searching information. This expertise can now be leveraged by the Chinese
government to search for dissidents.

Edit: Do you honestly think that once the Chinese government has some leverage
over Google (because they now make a portion of their revenue from the Chinese
market) they wouldn't use that to get additional concessions?

As an example, Chinese citizens can still access Google if they can connect
through an outside VPN. Google _may_ be able to identify such users through
cookies, reCaptcha or another Google tracking technology. What if China asked
Google to censor results for Chinese users using VPNs too?

~~~
darawk
Sure, and right now Baidu is doing that for them. Baidu is likely not as good
at it as Google, but Baidu is also much more likely to comply willingly.
Google can drag their feet and build low quality censorship/anti-privacy tools
for the Chinese government, and simply say "sorry it's the best we could do".

By abdicating that responsibility to an actor like Baidu, who is much more
aligned with the Chinese government, they make the problem worse. By agreeing
to their demands, and then doing the shittiest job possible of complying, they
actually have a lot more power and influence.

> Edit: Do you honestly think that once the Chinese government has some
> leverage over Google (because they now make a portion of their revenue from
> the Chinese market) they wouldn't use that to get additional concessions?

Yes, but that's a two way street. Chinese citizens will come to rely on Google
search, and will be unhappy when its taken away. So both sides become
enmeshed.

~~~
AlexandrB
> Baidu is likely not as good at it as Google, but Baidu is also much more
> likely to comply willingly. Google can drag their feet and build low quality
> censorship/anti-privacy tools for the Chinese government, and simply say
> "sorry it's the best we could do".

This is an argument akin to "I'm joining the system so I can change it from
the inside".

This _can_ work, but you need leverage. What leverage would Google have over
the Chinese government in this case? Say what you will about the current
Chinese leadership, but they're not stupid and they know what Google is
capable of. If they think Google is dragging they're feet why wouldn't they
just block Google again?

~~~
darawk
Or just...i'm joining the system, and i'm going to do whatever I can to help
it as little as possible, while providing a valuable service to its people.

~~~
pas
Sure, that's the known positive. But this makes Google 1984 compatible in
other regimes too. And with the capability there it's a matter of
configuration to run it in other countries too. Proliferation of totalitarian
machinery is a worry.

------
andrewflnr
No matter whether you agree with them or not, asking someone to sear their
conscience is one of if not the most corrosive things you can do to them and
to humanity at large. The author probably didn't mean it quite that way, but
that's what this post is asking of googlers.

Don't do that.

~~~
vokep
Is it though? I definitely disagree with the author, but I don't know if
they're asking really to sear conscience as much as offer the perspective of
their own conscience. They are not asking googlers to be ok with everything
China does but are arguing that Google removing itself from China causes more
harm than good. They're wrong (I think) but, its perfectly reasonable to make
such an argument if one believes it.

~~~
andrewflnr
These Googlers' conscience is telling them that collaborating with a
repressive regime's repression is wrong. OP is asking them to collaborate
anyway. QED, honestly. I know the intent is what you've outlined, but I'm
saying that's not as important, here anyway, as the conscience angle.

~~~
pas
This is probably a mismatch of ethics. Some are deontologists (say no to
collaboration on principles) some are consequentialist/utilitarian.

However it's hard to assess the long term effect of this on Google and other
Google users. That's the real question.

Okay Google builds DragonSpy. Okay, please make it work for Vietnam too says
Vietnam, then me too says Putin, Venezuela, Iran, Turkey and so on.

As long as dictators are forced to block it wholesale, people have a signal.
(Even if it is propagandized and spin as a good thing, let's say for economic
protectionism.) When dictators can fish for their enemies, people have a
problem.

~~~
andrewflnr
It's more than that. Deliberately creating the environment where people ignore
their conscience is always a huge mistake, beyond the particular issue. As a
species, we need to be paying more attention to our consciences, not less.

------
smsm42
Terrible argument. Surely for every influential decision one can find somebody
who was influenced negatively, especially if one wants to go deeply enough in
hypotheticals. The question is not whether having competition between search
engines is good (we know it is), it is whether Google should participate in a
sham competition controlled by Chinese government, on conditions set by them
and under their supervision, and thus participate - directly or indirectly -
in many atrocities this government perpetrates. Serving better ads sounds like
a pretty weak case for this - especially as we can't even be sure it would be
the case at all (it's not like Google never served ads from shady providers).

------
NicoJuicy
This is probably the first time I see something from a concerned Chinese
citizen.

I applaud this truthfully, it also gave me an alternative view about ( why)
entering the market and what some Chinese think.

~~~
vtesucks
How do you know he's not propaganda. I'm not claiming so, I'm in the middle
but you seem confident otherwise.

~~~
publub
His GitHub profile looks like just a normal guy. Maybe China keeps a bunch of
GitHub accounts around and makes active commits for the purpose, and posts
homework solutions while they are at it. Maybe I’m a propaganda bot.

------
majia
This is essentially a hostage situation. Chinese government holds its people
as hostage. If google doesn’t give in to censorship demands, people die or
suffer from the lack of information.

Some people would argue that Chinese peolple dying is not our problem, and we
should stick to our “principles” to force Chinese government to change. Others
think that something is better than nothing; even limited information can help
people there.

Sadly, this disagreement leads to the worst outcome: Chinese people are
deprived from even limited information while there is insufficient pressure to
force the government to change course.

------
gcb0
wow. someone defending google and the main point is that their Advertising
Business is less predatory than Baidu's?!

~~~
tinza123
Well it is way less, unfortunately. Baidu seems lacks basic morals and
governing. It literally killed people, if you check out the links on that
github article.

------
KayL
The DuckDuckGo is not an option if Google is the only good search engine for
you. Bing.com is working in China but the 551,615,600 peoples given up.

Yahoo Search is powered by Bing. If you looking at Hong Kong & Taiwan data. It
still a quite amount of people using them. It's enough for them for their
daily lives. Why not in China?

The tech person who using VPN in China. Have you ever tried to advice
551,615,600 peoples in China to use cn.bing.com?

You already have an option like DuckDuckGo that you suggested in the article.

For most people in China, Google is a luxury brand more than useful.

The remaining 250,384,400 peoples. Your first step isn't fighting for
DragonFly in China but flight for Hong Kong & Taiwanese Celebrities can tell
you where they from without the word "China" in the TV show.

------
nabla9
There is argument made for trading with authoritative states when they take
tiny steps towards the right direction and increasing living standards bring
change themselves. Taiwan and South Korea are good examples of this kind of
progress.

But as China is becoming economically more powerful and tightening up it's
control at the same time. Deng Xiaoping was no means liberal, but he made
changes into right direction. Xi is walking even these small moves backwards.

In the end China will have their own internet and it will be heavily censored.
It's up to Chinese let Google in as Google. Not to ask Chinese version of
Google.

------
Leary
Glad to see that Hacker News is willing to listen to the people actually
affected by this decision.

------
haoel
I am Chinese from mainland. Everyday, I have to use Proxy/VPN to visit
Google/Youtube/Wikipedia/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit... across the Great Firewall.

I can understand it, but it is shortsighted!! The main problem is not Google
back to China, it's China blocks Google.

So, Google must drop the DragonFly project!

------
SCLeo
Please note, this only represents a (likely small) portion of Chinese
audience. There were a lot of people opposing the idea. They initially posted
their opposing view on GitHub issues so it was overwhelmed by disagreements.
However, the author disabled the issues on that repo so it looks like it is
the widely accepted opinion, which is not true.

Then, people start to write articles in order to show their disagreements. For
example, there is one: [https://github.com/CT-ABT/Also-as-a-mainland-Chinese-
why-do-...](https://github.com/CT-ABT/Also-as-a-mainland-Chinese-why-do-I-
resolutely-oppose-Google-s-dragonfly-project). The only problem is that it
does not have an English translation.

------
bcaa7f3a8bbc
Anyone who have spent some time on the social media in China interacting with
people from the IT sector would know, the petition is clearly genuine, not
propaganda.

Currently, Google's launch of Dragonfly creates an interesting disagreement in
public opinion. In the U.S, the opinion in the "technosphere" is overtly
negative, due to its implication of supporting censorship and oppression of
the general public.

But in China, the public opinion from the "technosphere" is completely the
opposite. The dominate search engine, Baidu's reputation has became notorious
after the death of Wei Zexi, the 21-year-old cancer patient, after finding
misleading treatment information on search engine Baidu. Citizens on the
social media became aware of the existence of Putian Medical Group, a special
interest group in the profit-driven healthcare market for its questionable
medical treatment. Baidu was believed to be the largest supporter of the
multi-billion-dollar industry, they may have contributed 12 billion RMB (1.8
billion US$) to Baidu's ad revenues. (See this article for the background:
[https://www.whatsonweibo.com/behind-baidu-scandal-baidu-
puti...](https://www.whatsonweibo.com/behind-baidu-scandal-baidu-putian-
medical-group/))

But it's not the only scandal. Baidu is known for its predatory and invasive
advertisements, including consumer support fraud, visa fraud, medical fraud.
Most of the time, entering any common keyword, people are confident to say
that the first three results of the search list are the ads, and highly likely
to be frauds. The daily victims of these ads is likely to be hundreds, if not
thousands. Baidu is doing little, if not actively supporting the false
advertising.

The public opinions of the IT workers in China, in my own words, is basically:
if Google is a criminal, then Baidu is a maddog. The politics is
authoritative, changing it is out-of-question. Then at least you can replace a
wild maddog with an ordinary megacorp, which at least has a well-defined
bottomline and more or less under the public supervision of the citizens.

I don't know what to say. On one hand, censorship and oppression surely causes
long-term damage, but on the other hand, the damage of victims by these frauds
is also a large number. Even if I take an utilitarianist approach, then what
is valued greater?

u(free from censorship and oppression) x Google's contribution?

    
    
                                               ^likely small

or

u(free from ubiquitous frauds from Baidu)?

~~~
PavlovsCat
Just think of it, to

> replace a wild maddog with an ordinary megacorp, which at least has a well-
> defined bottomline and more or less under the public supervision of the
> citizens

requires petitioning Google, not Baidu or the CCP... because that is probably
easier than forming a consumer group that petitions the government to enact
laws against the predatory ads Baidu has, and which they hope Google will not
have (it's not like Google didn't attempt some shady shit with making
sponsored results look nearly like normal results before). That's just "out of
the question"

And predictably so. Because to organize like that, for something the people
wanted for themselves, without being told they should want it? Yeah, right.
After decades of killing dissidents en masse, the remainder of what people
still are able to even consider has shrunken considerably.

Speaking of predatory and invasive:

[http://www.hoteliermiddleeast.com/33151-marriott-employee-
fi...](http://www.hoteliermiddleeast.com/33151-marriott-employee-fired-for-
twitter-error-speaks-out/)

The CCP is already treating other people in free countries like they're
treating their "own" people. Yes, and Western companies play along, and I
don't blame China for that at all -- but it also shows how the CCP is ticking,
for those that need examples.

Totalitarianism is not just censorship and oppression. That's like saying war
is hitting people and loading things on trucks. The "total" in its name means
something, after all, it's not a self-given label.

> _We don 't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would
> require the control of the whole planet._

\-- Hannah Arendt

China never opened up _to_ the West in any meaningful way. I mean, if a
murderer invites you to dinner, with the implicit understanding that you're
not to talk about the murders -- that's using someone as fig leaf, that's
rubbing it in, not opening up. Meanwhile, the guy asks questions, and makes
sure to tell everybody you were over to dinner. China is opening the West up
to it.

I'm not saying the West is just great and perfect, with the wars of aggression
and whatnot. But I'm vocal about that as well, and just because your arm is
burning, why would you set your leg on fire, too?

If anything, the opposite would make sense. _Because_ our governments are so
corrupt, _because_ we have this push for mass surveillance and militarization,
we cannot afford to get in bed even more deeply with a totalitarian regime.

> _Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you
> can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this
> country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers,
> mutes, and hooded executioners._

\-- John J. Chapman

I want to be able to at least say I might have been deserving to live in a
better world, even if I couldn't do enough to make this one that world. I want
to remain in the company of thinkers and humans. Nothing more, nothing less.
If humanity turns the world into an eternal torture chamber, I do not want to
be guilty of having belittled or supported that. And if people think that's
hyperbole, I _certainly_ don't want to be guilty of it just so people wouldn't
roll their eyes at me. I'm responsible for what I see and know, not for what
others see and know. I compare what I have against the loss I see, not the
loss others don't see because they were raised without it in the first place.

Even the idea of weighing normalization of and cooperation with
totalitarianism against "online frauds" is, well, we live in completely
different worlds.

> Even if I take an utilitarianist approach

The "even" implies that even then, it would come up the same, but your
"formula" seems to show the opposite, that Google's contribution is "likely
small", while fraud is "a lot". Like, I guess that is counted in units, eg.
one murder vs. one fake viagra pill, so of course 5 murders are not easy to
weigh against 50000 people defrauded with fake viagra pills... am I getting
this correctly?

Since "surely causes long-term damage" also struck me as rather cold, while
kinda giving lip service to not being cold, it occured to me that reading it
as "cold", the "even" makes sense. Reading it as a cold description of
something that is NOT meant to be belittled, the "even" does not.

But even this argument is only possible on the backdrop of Chinese citizens
fixing their own search engines, even though they ALL seem to hate it and
should have a lot of power, being "out of the question".

------
ausjke
You must not use "Must", just let DragonFly die, use true google or stick with
Baidu, in the meantime feel grateful that github.com is still accessible.

~~~
tinza123
So your solution to the Chinese people that wants alternative is to just pray?
There is no easy way to "use true google", so not really an option. The
situation is mostly the government's fault, the people just want options, any
options would be better than nothing.

~~~
nomel
> The situation is mostly the government's fault, the people just want
> options, any options would be better than nothing.

Serious question, but shouldn't grievances like this be taken up with the
elected/appointed officials?

~~~
tinza123
The country mainly works from the top down instead of the other way around.
People don't really vote, and the vote doesn't work the same way it is in the
US. There are also some things no officials would like to touch at all, for
fear of pissing off the party and lose a career / future. Information
censorship is one of those things.

In fact most of the censorship is not enforced by written regulation, but are
conducted by the website / company / media themselves for the fear of being
shutdown overnight. Therefore companies differ from one another a little, and
people hope in the worst form Google is still better than what's already out
there.

~~~
ausjke
the point is the word "Must", your government sucks, it's not Google's
problem, maybe your people favored that government, all is good, but that
gives you no right to mandate companies overseas to "Must" give you an option,
God only helps those who helps themselves.

next time, try ask for it humbly at least.

------
yadongwen
I'm pretty sure the data DragonFly may collect is much much less than many
companies in China are already collecting. The government literally knows
everything about you in real time.. which hotel you are in, what websites you
have visited, what messages you just sent, etc. So Google won't be able to
help Chinese government anyway. On the other hand Google indeed can help the
people a lot with high quality search results.

------
georgraphics
This argument is wrong on so many levels. Why deal with massive shit just
because there is even more massive shit in place at the moment. Fix the root
cause.

------
forkLding
A lot of people on here presume getting rid of a dictatorship is easy and
presume the Chinese people == Chinese govt., however last time I checked the
Syrian Civil War is still going on and the Arab Spring is all but vanquished.

Moreover, the Tiananmen massacre happened 30 yrs ago and somewhat fresh on the
memories of my parents cos they were almost part of it and in Beijing at the
time.

------
sexy_seedbox
Lots of emotion and not much reasoning addressing Amnesty's concerns. Doesn't
even mention human rights in the rant.

------
ngcc_hk
You do not know how powerful chiense culture and money is. Also, all those new
graduate even from aboard ... let us see who made new twins and rumour is that
the guy may have said he can handle any unhealthy babies if the ccr5 or other
area gene turned bad

And anyone sending helper

Similar to 6m Jews are gased or how many million is jailed for re-education to
be killed mentally. Ok they are Jews, they are catholics, they are Muslims,
they are ... we are all Hans one day and you will have to be as well.

Or using technology to monitor and control 1/5 humanity down to each and every
movement. We can laugh that their AI is no good to do photo and id wrongly. We
can improve I supposed.

This they-will-improve approach still do not get it. It is the soon to be no 1
economy in the world. You will be changed. The Beijing consensus will rule.
You are just helping them not you them la.

------
ithinco
A response to “We are Google employees, Google must drop DragonFly”

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

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dna113
It's easy for us to scream "human rights" when we aren't the ones that don't
have access to a platform that has changed our daily lives

------
HillaryBriss
wait. why would Google be any more capable of stopping ads for fraudulent
medical equipment or treatments in China than Baidu is?

is the implication that somehow Google would know more about the fraudsters
than Baidu does?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Baidu was/is extremely complicit in the ads, their ability to make money
depended on them. When fraud makes its way on google, it’s usually because
they got past a control, google isn’t active in making the ad work with paid
search rankings.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I recall from your previous comments that you spent a lot of time in China.
What's your take on dragonfly?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
To be honest, I'm neutral. I don't think Google should ransom their sole to be
in China, but them being there, even if much more censored, wouldn't be a net
negative. Its kind of the same way I feel about Chinese Bing, the censorship
is annoying, but in a pinch it is 100 times better than Baidu.

------
Markoff
so judging by logic of this article we should never do embargo on let's say
north Korea because majority of population will suffer as result?

------
choonway
How does government accountability sound like in China?

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diguifi
Awesome

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herrosheep
This has to be a spy or propaganda machine.

------
wohenyingyu01
I'm Chinese too, I lived in China. The DragonFly must DROP immediately!! What
I'm going to say represents a certain amount of Chinese people. There are many
alternatives in China, such as Bing, Sogou or 360. Why are you so obsessed
with Baidu when you claimed that you're suffering? That doesn't make any
sense. Those people you claimed as victims of Baidu will not use Google even
if google enters China, because of the same reason they don't use Bing or
Sogou. On the opposite, dragonfly will affect current Chinese users, they may
be trapped in censored version of Google. Using google is already hard in
China, please don't make it harder! I wrote the same comment in the GitHub but
they deleted it, because Chinese culture is always allergic to different
ideas. They don't want our voice be heard and they claimed all Chinese
citizens are pro-dragonfly. That's a liar! And that's also the reason why we
need neutral Google. Google is the only organisation that stands against
Chinese censorship, most of Chinese people respect that. We will remember. If
Google wants to make more profit on DragonFly from Chinese, we also respect
that. Since Google is a commercial company after all, not a charity. But don't
claimed it as a noble cause because it makes us sick. If any one in China
stand against GFW, they should stand against dragonfly, it's a humiliation for
all Chinese people.

