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.
I think the situation should be looked at more holistically.
Here are some other factors to consider:
- Does it soil our hands to build the "Mental handcuffs" of China, even if Baidu started it?
- Does it stop at China? Or what about Turkey? Iran? Would we build a search in Saudi Arabia that didn't let women look up divorce if the government wanted it?
- Does it come to America? What about searches that seem criminal?
This disagreement is much more fundamental than China. It's about the role of free-information and free-education being the basis upon which beliefs should be formed, rather than beliefs being used to block out free-information.
Google is already censoring specific searches all over the world, in the EU for example, the right to be forgotten and many "hate speech" laws already force google to censor many sites that are filtered out.
Censorship in the EU is generally intended to protect individuals; censorship in China is meant to protect the ones doing the censoring. The EU has democratically elected governments; China is an authoritarian dictatorship.
I'm sure the Chinese would say exactly the same thing that the EU does about their system; it "protects" individuals from what they don't need to know.
Comments like this make me glad I live in the USA. We don't discriminate on what types of censorship are acceptable or not. Less extraordinary exceptions (Child pornography, Libel), any censorship is in violation of our constitution and most closely held core values.
> I'm sure the Chinese would say exactly the same thing that the EU does about their system; it "protects" individuals from what they don't need to know.
It doesn't matter what the Chinese government says, because if they say something like that they're lying. Their censorship is meant to protect the power and privilege of the already powerful and privileged, and keep everyone else complaint to them.
The only way Chinese censorship "protects" individuals is by discouraging them from having dissident thoughts that the government may decided to personally and physically oppress them for having.
How is that any different from European censorship?
Nazism is despicable, but censoring the Nazi voice is effectively the same as preventing citizens from having those "dissident thoughts" that contradict modern western government, and you actually can receive prison time for expressing Nazi sentiments in Germany so the government absolutely does "oppress them" for having those thoughts.
China views western influence the same way. In China's history, rule by the west has seen terrorism, imperialism, and corruption, which have lasted far longer (since the 1800s when the First Opium Wars were fought), and I would argue have led to greater suffering (certainly the numbers are in favor of this being the case).
Accepting government censorship in the EU is, in principle, no different from censorship in China. The only difference is the flavor.
I also live in the USA. I think the differences between our censorship and the EU's are mostly of degree, but I wouldn't disagree too strongly with you if you think otherwise.
>I'm sure the Chinese would say exactly the same thing that the EU does about their system; it "protects" individuals from what they don't need to know.
I'm sure they would. I'm also sure that Donald Trump would say that he's not a liar. That doesn't mean it's an argument we need to take seriously. You can make judgments for yourself - I believe that the EU leadership is more or less acting in good faith (and is likely to continue doing so), and the CCP is not. That's a meaningful difference.
You do see what you're saying right? Essentially, you're saying the government is responsible for the laws regarding censorship, not the businesses that operate there.
If censorship existed in the USA, Google would have still started under it, and simply operated with that constraint. This is no different than operating in China.
Google can't influence one way or another what censorship laws exist in China, currently. If they had a significant market share there, then they might be able to negotiate terms, since they would have some leverage.
Why would they have leverage? Oh no, Google is threatening to leave if we don't change our censorship policy, and if Google leaves - then what? Citizens get upset? I don't think that's exactly a strong motivator to the CCP. That's kind of the problem with dictatorships; you don't have to win elections.
>If censorship existed in the USA, Google would have still started under it, and simply operated with that constraint.
"If the US were just like China, we'd be in no position to criticize them" - sure, but it isn't. The USA and the PRC are not the same, and I don't think it's a relevant hypothetical.
Laws passed by duly elected representatives (whether in the US, EU, or elsewhere) may not be perfect, but they certainly have more legitimacy than "laws" promulgated by an authoritarian regime that sends political and religious dissidents to "reeducation" camps.
Why single out China though? If Google had to stop doing business in any country that forces it to censor stuff, they would not be allowed anywhere, I think even the US forces them to filter out illegal gambling. Where does it stop?
It boils down to what the American culture, or I guess the employees at Google's culture, are willing to censor.
China wants to censor its own human rights violations, I think there morally bad. Certain EU Nations want to prevent fat right nationalist radicalization via censorship. I think that's clumsy, but good.
So hence "why single out China." It stops whenever the employees put up a fight. Isn't that the point of integrating a company-wide value system? You want to mimic an individual value system, in that you are clear on why you made certain decisions, because you can point to your value system?
> Certain EU Nations want to prevent fat right nationalist radicalization via censorship. I think that's clumsy, but good.
But, who will be deciding what is considered as ultra-nationalist? Some liberal government that might be overly corrupt and is about to lose the election could just label their political opponents as modern day Nazis and have them be censored on Google search. For example Germany treats the AfD as a far-right party, but in other countries they would be centrist at best. There is no middle ground, because morals wary from individual, we might try a consensus, but that would destroy individual rights. To me it seems that it's best to have a censor-free search engine, perhaps only censor stuff that is related to illegal activities or terrorism, but make everything else be publicly available.
>But, who will be deciding what is considered as ultra-nationalist?
Presumably legislatures, that are elected? I'm not sure how it works over there.
>Some liberal government that might be overly corrupt and is about to lose the election could just label their political opponents as modern day Nazis and have them be censored on Google search.
Well, that's happening in America right now, the executive branch is labeling his opponent political party as Communists, don't respect rule of law, saying they want Open Borders or to "Take the Guns Away!" despite the fact that this is factually incorrect. In the USA, we have several branches of government that helps balance when this happens - for example, our judicial branch recently restored the press pass of a journalist removed for being a thorn in the executive's side. I imagine a balance is similarly struck in these European nations? They are all democracies, right?
It seems very much an age of free flow information and rule of the people. Despite the warning-flag-waving of the alt-right in the USA that labeling people nazis will somehow cause totalitarian liberal rule, it really seems like the opposite is happening - far-right nationalism seems to be on the attack for totalitarianism, with the democratic systems keeping it at bay.
I am very interested in discussing this further, however, because I don't believe it's a simple, black and white issue, and I am curious if there's ways to prevent bad things like far-right nationalism without restricting speech (which, the argument goes, could backfire).
How about I said to you that all men are descendants of Genghis Khan? Well, 1 in 200 are, and Eric Swalwell is 1 of the 198 Democrat representatives (though that percentage gets much lower if we lump in total Democrats in elected office...) http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-...
My claim that the president's factually incorrect statements, are factually incorrect, remain unchallenged in any rhetorically effective way, though I invite you to try again if you please.
Picking some minority view and ascribing it to all of your political opponents seems to be a very popular tactic nowadays, on all sides of the political spectrum. All it does is raise the level of hateful rhetoric, and does nothing to actually help people discuss the actual issues. Because of flaws in the way our minds work, it continues to work, and people continue to use it.
> For example Germany treats the AfD as a far-right party, but in other countries they would be centrist at best.
That is an "example" of an "overly corrupt" government that labels them far-right, because they would otherwise have lost an election to them? What speech of the AfD got censored in any shape or form?
Yes, in other countries what is considered far-right in Germany is considered centrist. Those countries also consider what we consider centrist as leftists. So? They're a German political party, they will get judged by Germans, on the grounds of German history, thankyouverymuch.
> perhaps only censor stuff that is related to illegal activities or terrorism
So basically, back to square one, since you haven't really solved the problem of who defines that and how (which we do actually over centuries, it's not a problem to not have it solved once and for all perfectly, right now -- if anything the problem here is the misunderstanding that this could be possible), achieving nothing other than claiming that the AfD isn't far-right.
> Certain EU Nations want to prevent fat right nationalist radicalization via censorship
But why don’t they apply the same censorship to the far left? That’s where I have my problem with it, it isn’t to protect the people from the far right, it’s to control public discourse in a way that reinforces their leftist ideology. The Communist Party isn’t censored in Europe, but right-wing groups are. You can celebrate Stalin, but would be arrested for celebrating Hilter. How is that any different than Chinese censorship? Maybe degree, but definitely not intent.
Nazism is wrong, though. So is a good majority of what far right nationalists preach.
It's almost, but not quite, false equivalence. You could make a moral relativism argument, but at the end of the day the global zeitgeist is moving towards the "good" that some people associate with liberal values, and always has been.
From an anthropological standpoint, I'm with you - the ideologies are indistinguishable. From a moral standpoint, I disagree strongly - one is generally Bad, the other is generally Good.
Communism is not Good either I'd say. Better argument would be "Europeans at least liked Commies when they have taken over, Nazis just invaded everyone".
The best would be to just admit that Europe is wrong in censoring stupid far right (Nazis), while mostly ignoring stupid far left (Commies).
But some people liked the pseudo-communist regimes, while almost nobody liked Nazi occupation (which is still in fresh memory). So the opposition to banning Commies is real and noticeable. So not so simple.
Tl;dr: Simplified "moral standpoint" holds no water in these discussions.
Maybe google should commit to a policy of "protected free speech" on a wide range of political topics that it will never censor in any country (roughly in line with the first amendment).
So you do support censorship, just not on political topics you agree with. Problem is, what's politically acceptable is highly subjective and varies greatly from country to country.
I read the parent differently - just don't censor political speech. Regardless of whether we agree with it.
And that sounds reasonable. I hate FUD-spreading around e.g. immigration, but I don't support any censorship around it. Just debunk the FUD, hiding it won't solve anything, and might hurt a lot when some people get "redpilled" by discovering censored opinions.
>Does it come to America? What about searches that seem criminal?
My guess is that it is already here, just for things we deem acceptable. The problem with censorship is that everyone has something they think acceptable to censor, so the infrastructure to censor will be developed with mass approval.
I wonder if these things go in both directions though. Google becomes beholden to the Chinese government on threat of being kicked out of the country. Maybe in a few years Google is making a bunch of money in China, and then the govt asks them to censor search results in the western world too.
Also, as China requires more surveillance infrastructure to be built for Chinese google, that can bleed over to western google. Let's say Google starts to enhance China's social credit score system with users search behavior. It's easier for western governments to point to these capabilities on China's Google and request for them to be instantiated in their own countries.
But Facebook can influence elections. Something isn't adding up to 100% here.
More so, I'm not worried about Google influencing China, I'm worried about China putting pressure on Google to spy on the world or lose potential profits.
Come to think of it, that's exactly what it could do by refusing to do business with them. If China is left out in the cold for long enough they may move a little.
That said, they need to be rewarded for moving or a boycott wouldn't help anything.
I have to agree with this. Some search is better than no search. Not everything can be censored and people WILL find information they are not supposed to find, just with more digging than in the rest of the world. Saying that Google should not provide any search product in China is shortsighted and purely ideological.
> Not sure if this will benefit people over there though to ban google completely.
It won't really help them, and focusing on the Chinese market misses the most insidious problem: a censored Google search engine in the PRC gives the Chinese Communist Party leverage over Google outside of the PRC. Just look at what happened with the airlines: the PRC forced them to change their foreign websites to reflect a PRC political positions by threatening their access to their market.
Think of what they could do to "uncensored" American Google with similar leverage:
* Chinese human rights websites are deranked from relevant searches down to the second or third page. This is a subtle and deniable type of censorship.
* Ditto with critical coverage of Tibet or Xinjiang.
* Taiwan is shown on Google maps and infoboxes as part of the PRC.
* Google gives Xinhua, the PRC's English-language propaganda outlet [1], prominence on Google news.
You assume they don't already have leverage in Google. I would be more surprised if the Chinese haven't already found ways to leverage Google for external influence (akin to Russia, Iran, etc. via Facebook).
But I agree with the core point - the 'legal' influence would bother me just as much.
Totally agree with you. I guess that's the real reason that many Chinese googler don't want to sign.
I'm totally against censorship. But I also don't agree the those who see themselves stand on the moral high ground while don't understand the complexity of the issue. Also a lot of people don't differentiate facts and opinions. They blame those who don't agree them are influenced by China government.
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.
This argument is backwards - Google isn't the one preventing Chinese people from using Google! Nobody has said that China isn't allowed to have Google except the CCP.
Google has already provided China with a product: uncensored search. If the Chinese (for the sake of argument, naively assuming that the CCP acts on behalf of its citizens) don't think that's what's best for China, fine. They don't have to use it.
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.
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.
I think your notion here is naive. Assuming a majority of people in China is fine with the way the government runs, does not negate the fact that many people are not. In a country of a billion people, we are speaking of millions of people. For this, as a first step, you just need to look at minorities like Uighurs, Tibetians, Mongolians. It does not end there.
Also, you cannot use the word "choice" when no options were ever given. A large chunk of people can be unhappy with how the government operates while still not marching the streets. The world is not binary. People living in China also know that the government went to extreme lengths when it came to ending protests in the past: shooting at their own citizens.
The joy of market processes is that those who like Pepsi more and those who like Coke more can both be satisfied at the same time, unlike the Republican voters of San Francisco or the Democrats of Utah.
It's only condescending in a nationalist sense. I look at my own government and how well it chooses what is best for me, and I have to ask, who is the Chinese government to decide what is best for the Chinese people?
Unless you're an anarchist, that's exactly what the government's job is: decide what's best for people. That's why you have prescription only drugs, anti-vice laws, securities. All these things exist because the government think the people are too dumb to decide things by themselves. Not saying I agree with it, just saying you would need to argue for anarchism if you were to argue "who is the X government to decide what is best for the X people?".
I think the government's job is to provide the goods and services that the free market can't effectively provide or wouldn't provide to most citizens. Roads, military defense, healthcare, etc. I'm no anarchist but I very much disagree the government should be deciding what is best for people. Areas where it tries to are a mistake.
> that's exactly what the government's job is: decide what's best for people.
Wrong. The government’s Just is to protect life and liberty and ensure a legal framework for the enforcement of contracts. It’s just is most certainly not deciding what is best for people. Protect my rights and otherwise stay out of the way.
Why could we not protect ourselves? Many ancaps or ancoms would argue that would be possible. The government assumes they know better than you do on how to enforce contracts or protect yourself and impose a monopoly on force by force to make sure you can't build alternatives. So yeah, it is based on the premise that they know better than you do on certain areas of life. People just disagree how wide these areas should be. I may be mistaken though so feel free to prove me wrong.
Also, Baidu is completely in the pocket of the Chinese government. They are happy to censor anything and everything they're asked. Google is not beholden in this way and will censor the minimum amount possible.
Those are not the only two options. What if Google were to put some of its considerable technical resources toward undermining and subverting the Great Firewall of China? That would be in keeping with their mission statement, and might deliver a huge payoff in the long run.
