Comment by chw9e | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chw9e | Hacker News Reader

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Chinese social media and search platforms employee loads of people to only censor information. If any of the Western companies tried to match the level of censorship required it would dramatically increase costs of operation. If Facebook or Google agreed to censor their content to the degree that Chinese companies do, I believe they could operate in China. Google and Facebook claim to be morally opposed to censoring information, but it's unclear to me if this is really the case, or if spending the money required to self-censor is the impetus behind their "moral actions." Obviously if China got rid of the censoring then the market would be much more attractive from a profit-based view.

At the same time, if Facebook entered China today I don't know how many people would convert to using it like people from other countries do. WeChat is a really powerful player and a lot of recent Facebook Messenger features are basically pulled straight from WeChat.

Same with Youtube and Vimeo - Youku and PPTV are basically Youtube, Netflix, and HBO combined in one. Chinese users can watch Netflix and HBO shows for free via Youku and PPTV's license deals with Western content producers. Plus Chinese users watch much less user-generated content online, unless it is live-streaming.

1. You're conveniently ignoring the fact that Google did self-censor from 2005 to 2009. So the idea that it's "too expensive" being the reason is just FUD. Unsubstantiated speculation.

2. The question about whether or not Facebook/Google will succeed today is more misdirection. The real question is whether Google would have succeeded 11 years ago, and whether Facebook would have succeeded 7-8 years ago, because that's when they would have entered the market.

I don't think that fact disputes my argument. Let's consider a few assumptions to try to see a more well-rounded view of the firewall problem. Consider for a moment that all domestic firms must comply with self-censorship or be forced offline (see Papi Jiang's recent problems with cursing in her programming and being forced offline). From this we can assume that censorship issues are not only an issue for foreign firms, but also a primary concern for domestic companies. If we accept these assumptions, then censorship is just a market condition in China, the same way that bad infrastructure or government instability are market conditions in some countries. The difference is that through the internet, foreign companies can escape this market condition and still compete with domestic firms. Whereas in a country with poor infrastructure all companies are subject to the market condition. Without a firewall, domestic firms would be at a severe disadvantage because foreign companies would be able to easily escape government discipline.

Now, under these assumptions we can consider the Google case. Google tried to compete under these market conditions and lost. Thus, if we accept that the firewall is a way of the Chinese government extending market conditions to force fair competition, then any argument that Google could have beaten Baidu in the Chinese market is wrong.

Of course, this assumption may not be correct, but unless you work in the Chinese internet bureau it is not possible know the motivations behind the firewall. I'm simply presenting a devil's advocate view.

> From this we can assume that censorship issues are not only an issue for foreign firms, but also a primary concern for domestic companies

This does not follow from the previous statement. Also, it doesn't refute the reality that Google was fine with self-censoring between 2005 to 2009. The self-censorship system was already implemented (because, you know, they were already self-censoring).

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