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Comment by c3534l | Hacker News Reader

It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical. But even if we assume that there is no legal way for a company to operate ethically in China, is the world meant to close our borders to them entirely? 20% of the planet lives there and we do business with China every day when we buy something manufactured there, but do not feel morally required to boycott them on account of their government.

Edit: to all the comments saying I equated lawful with ethical, please read my comment again. In particular the second sentence in which I clearly distinguish between the two.

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No. It's not fair to justify building the machinery of a totalitarian state as simply "abiding by local laws and regulations." Not when the consequences involve clear violations of human rights.

You don't have to look far to see how bad things have gotten recently in China, from abductions of booksellers in Hong Kong to an activist being carted away literally during a phone interview with Voice of America.

When Western companies act like this is totally normal and even develop censorship technologies for regimes in countries with poor records for human rights, it lends false legitimacy to these unjust systems and even emboldens them to commit more serious violations of human rights.

Don't forget them placing 1 million Uyghurs (and counting) in "re-education camps" designed to destroy their culture and religion.

You mean engaging in actions that meet the UN-accepted definition of genocide? May as well just call it genocide.

The last residential 'school' (which was aimed to do the same for First Nations people) in Canada closed in 1996, with little more then a hummm-hummm.

Our shit stinks almost as much.

Whataboutism is a really poor argument. The history of the West is full of atrocities, but that doesn't somehow excuse the Chinese government from current human rights abuses. Nor does it mean that I as a Westerner do not have the right to criticize the Chinese government. In fact we have an obligation to condemn human rights abuses wherever they occur.

It is perfectly fine argument for calling out hypocrisy though, and I think that is the main point of it.

It (whataboutism) is a favorite tactic of the "50 cent army." It's more to distract and sidetrack the topic.

The issue is that "calling out hypocrisy" is crap. Hypocrisy is not a logical fallacy.

When an addict tells you that you shouldn't use heroin because it will ruin your life, the fact that they used heroin and it ruined their life doesn't make them a liar, it make them experienced.

And the sole legitimate purpose in calling out hypocrisy is to get the other party to follow their own advice. But that means for Nazism and McCarthyism to be relevant you have to identify some specific present day instance of them that currently needs to be eliminated. At which point we would need to oppose that and what China is doing.

When an addict tells you that you shouldn't use heroin it doesn't make them narcology expert. WRT "currently", does Guantanamo count?

> When an addict tells you that you shouldn't use heroin it doesn't make them narcology expert.

Especially when what really matters is academic credentials and not first-hand experience.

> WRT "currently", does Guantanamo count?

Sure. So let's oppose Guantanamo and what China is doing. At not let one derail every attempt to address the other one -- because stopping both is more important than which order we do it in.

But you still bought an iPhone

It doesn't excuse them, but nobody is outraged that Google is doing business with Canada, Israel, Brazil, Hungary, Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia, the United States, etc. Maybe we should be, though?

Human rights violations aren't an all or nothing. Every government of note has committed them, and many continue to commit them. You're outraged about Ughurs? Great. I'm not sure that should top your list of injustices, though. It doesn't top mine, because it's not one thats happening in my back yard.

But what about their record? I don't know, what about ours? Should Google not do business in any country that mistreats it's people? Or just ones that CNN doesn't like? Or is it because it's China, it's obviously different?

> Maybe we should be, though? [..] Great. I'm not sure that should top your list of injustices, though. It doesn't top mine, because it's not one thats happening in my back yard.

So do you think we should care, or shouldn't we? If your point ultimately is no, we should not care, then why not be honest and say "but we shouldn't care, and here's why".

And how can you claim "nobody" cares? Are you sure there aren't people in many countries who wish companies wouldn't just deal with their butcherers, but give the oppressed a voice? If you don't care, just say it.

It's not about where it happens, it's about whether my "friends" are involved in it. If Google didn't use this site as a PR platform, too, there'd be no point in talking about it. But since many people here use their products, because they claim a "Hi fellow Kids" kind of humanness, it is relevant. When some total stranger acts horrible to others, but they can handle it themselves, I probably wouldn't bother getting involved. But if that guy was chatting to me 5 minutes prior to that, and considers himself someone on good terms with me, I would absolutely at least say something.

It doesn't matter what's on "top" of the "list of priorites", it only matters that it matters, and that I have a position on it I must make known or be complicit by silence. It's really simple, we understand that intuitively in all sorts of situations, it doesn't get more complicated because the behaviour to have a position on gets worse. Totalitarianism in a country claimed to be on the way to become superpower #1 is on such a vastly different scale than anything else you could bring up. It's threatening the very canvas on which you might otherwise drawn and write and rank things. It's not in your backyard, you are in its backyard.

I'd be perfectly fine with Google doing business in China and otherwise shutting up. But they'll parade their new awesome whatever, and that's not okay. Pick one, make your bed and then lie in it. Just consider the Noam Chomsky talks at Google:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnLWSC5p1XE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3PwG4UoJ0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C-zWrhFqpM

It's not a matter of my priorities. They do not get to decorate themselves with the feathers of Noam Chomsky, they do not get to speak on subjects like discrimination, as important as they are, as long as they play along with builders of concentration camps. My moral compass doesn't even enter into any of that. If the whole "make information accessible" stuff hadn't become a bit of a joke a long time ago, I'd add that, too.

> If you do a commercial, you're off the artistic rolecall - everything you say is suspect. You're a corporate whore. There's a price on your head and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink. End of story.

-- Bill Hicks

Same thing with any sort of ethical or intellectual claims and then dealing with butcherers. Super basic stuff, really.

And that "it's all connected", that hardly anyone isn't somehow involved with something that sucks, knowingly or unknowingly, voluntarily or not, doesn't mean you don't do anything. The first step is to not make excuses when others criticize something. It's not even you doing something, it's you not getting in the way of those who are doing something.

> But what about their record? I don't know, what about ours?

You started your comment with "It doesn't excuse them"...

"Whataboutism" has become a tedious buzzword and is now pretty much a signal of offtopicness here.

The word does have some curious properties. Since it's nearly always used reflexively, it reproduces the phenomenon it criticizes. That makes it a word with anti-persuasive power, i.e. it refutes itself.

(Not picking on you personally! It's just a bit of a pest: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=whataboutism&sort=byDate&dateR...)

Aren't you asking Western companies to take a stand, in place of yourself?

Even if your moral position is correct, there should be a law made in the USA to do what you're talking about. Otherwise, less well known companies would be able to scoot under the radar, while more prominent ones would be taken down. So, to be fair, the onus is on you to stand up for what you believe in and campaign and vote for the ideas you want to bring about.

Pointing your finger at others and telling them what to do, while you do nothing yourself, all to support your own agenda, is lazy and shows a false sense of entitlement.

Parent's action or inaction regarding this matter makes zero difference to the subject at hand. You've attacked the parent post without actually refuting a single thing it contained.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

What about 'practice what you preach'?

You are right. Nissim Taleb describe as no skin in the game. I see it especially strong when all ethical concerns about Google/FB etc disappear while discussing huge salaries, bonus and stocks.

More whataboutism, I read "skin in the game" it was ranty and poor, but beyond that, there is absolutely skin in the game for everyone when we are discussing a massive country falling into totalitarianism.

Yes, there should 100% be a law. I believe the failure of even USA airlines to push back against the recent Chinese bullying over Taiwan is evidence of this.

Luckily, a lot of current and ex-intelligence members are speaking up about China being the biggest national security threat. Not just a threat to the USA, but to liberal democracies around the world. Hopefully we will find some way to push back and get our Corporations on-board with the efforts.

I firmly believe that the Chinese government is so fundamentally at odds with the values of modern liberal democracies that it's only a matter of time before it comes to a head. We may all end up regretting turning a blind eye to their BS for so long..

> It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical.

Ethical and legal are two entirely different concepts. What's really unfortunate is there's a significant number of people who haven't been able to break out of their indoctrination to equate these things and to follow laws without questioning them or assessing the ethics involved.

The overwhelming majority of laws is written by the rich and powerful to represent their interests, which are entirely divorced from ethics. It is the ethical responsibility of every individual to refuse to abide by those laws and act to change them. We can't pretend that your kind of viewpoint is acceptable. We have had too many historical examples of people committing some of the worst atrocities of all time while abiding by the laws of the time and 'just following orders'.

I'm upvoting you so we can keep this terrifying sentiment at the top of the thread for all to see and discuss.

Google's situation is similar to many American authors' experience when confronted with the choice of 1) not publishing in China. and 2) publishing a censored version of their book.

The decision is not an easy one, even for those who support freedom of information. Those who deem Google's actions unethical often fail to realize that without Google or foreign books, Chinese internet users and readers will have less access to information.

Peter Hessler, an American writer detailed such the discussion of censorship in the West https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/travels-with-m...

"Western commentary about censorship often turns inward, portraying limitations in other countries in a way that celebrates our own values. One of the most striking qualities of foreign portrayals of censorship in China is the apparent lack of interest in Chinese readers and editors. "

There is a very simple and clear line, actually. The moment you have to write a single line of code to specifically enable political censorship, you're complicit in it. Such as in this case, where they're not just talking about e.g. taking down links in search results when asked, but inserting new code into the entire Android software stack, or even writing new apps outright, to enable such censorship.

And yes, of course it celebrates our own values. Why should we use any other values to judge our companies? If they don't want to be subject to this, they can always split their Chinese branch away entirely, and let it be run by the locals. Then it would be a Chinese internal matter. But when software engineers in California are implementing censorship for Chinese government, they're going to be criticized by the standards that apply in California.

> but inserting new code into the entire Android software stack, or even writing new apps outright, to enable such censorship.

Let's not forget Apple already has done this with iOS. It's just worth mentioning that this isn't Google-specific.

> portraying limitations in other countries in a way that celebrates our own values.

This rings very true to me. Like others have commented in this thread, google is unethical because "they are disrupting the foundations of democracy by abiding by totalitarian rules" as if democracy is the one True form of governance.

Democracy is the form of governance that led to the international phenomenon that has lately been a venue for free speech, anonymity, free exchange of ideas and has enabled innumerable communities to organize and work for the common good like never before -- more widely known as the Internet. Google as a company would not have been possible without the Internet, as its core business relies on Internet remaining open and free. The less freedom users have, the less useful the Internet becomes and the less business Google is able to do. Therefore in the long term Google is shooting itself in the foot, not to mention the rest of us who are betrayed by this huge corporation which we allowed to grow in hopes that it stays true to its roots and customers.

It is therefore our responsibility to take back control at this crucial point in time by regulating the responsibilities of companies such as Google to ensure that such companies can not and will not undermine our freedoms by conspiring with totalitarian regimes. If we fail to act, we will quickly find ourselves in a world where censorship and other forms of manipulation spread across Internet like cancer; even our own democratic governments will start abusing it and making up rules that benefit them or their powerful sponsors in the short term, but hurt everyone else. The Internet will become segmented and the quality of information will go down. The likelihood of someone, somewhere, snooping our traffic and using it against us will increase, until we no longer feel safe to state our opinions or share any personal info online. We will become segmented, disconnected, unorganized, going back to the pre-Internet era.

> without Google or foreign books, Chinese internet users and readers will have less access to information.

If Google is using the same censorship filters as other search engines operating in China, is censored Google actually providing new or different information?

This is a good point. What value is Google search in China adding beyond better-targeted and more profitable ads - a filter bubble within a filter bubble? Will Google Books be available? Is Project Gutenberg available in China?

"Abiding by local laws and regulations" is a veil behind which international companies hide, claiming lack of responsibility for actions that many of us would consider unethical. Just as with Yahoo's outing of Chinese dissidents[0], at some point companies in China (like Apple, now hosting iCloud data in Guizhou) are going to be forced to hand over data to the Chinese government in order to "abide by local laws". Cue the "but the NSA collects all our data, anyway" arguments..

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo!#Outing_of_...

> It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical.

Laws anywhere are never a guarantee of ethics and not having Google help build part of a censored internet in China is not the same as closing our border to them entirely.

Google Search provides information. Blocking access to information is, by the nature of the action, disenfranchising and oppressive. If Google were to re-enter the Chinese market, their Search product would either be controlled by the current government or they would be kicked out. I would argue that Google providing censored results is harmful to that 20%, so it is better to stay out.

Baidu has monopolized power in Chinese market as a search engine. It sold advertisement to fake hospital and ranked the advertisement as a top searching result. A young Chinese student died because of the fake hospital advertisement (Wei Zexi scandal). A censored google can still create more competition. How could it be harmful to that 20%?

Because everyone knows that Baidu is government-controlled. So google.cn, even though many would know that it's also compromised, would basically be a honeypot. It would be far better for access to Google to remain dependent on VPN and Tor. And in that regard, it'd be very cool if Google didn't block Tor exits.

Baidu is not government controlled, just submissive to it. Though it operates under the credo of “ask for forgiveness rather than permission” like almost every other Chinese tech company, so even that relationship is complicated.

Like a dog on a leash isn't controlled by its owner, it's just submissive to him? Riiiiiight.

If Baidu was really doing anything independent, then it would get reined in, like the overseas Chinese real estate firms are.

As for censorship:

"According to the China Digital Times, Baidu has a long history of being the most active and restrictive online censor in the search arena. Documents leaked in April 2009 from an employee in Baidu's internal monitoring and censorship department show a long list of blocked websites and censored topics on Baidu search."

I don't think Baidu came up with that list all by itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu#Censorship

I don't think you really get how Chinese businesses operate. Tech businesses, as long as they are Chinese, operate under an assumption of semi-impunity as long as they don't cross political boundaries. So healthcare fraud is in bounds, and if they get caught, they'll just get a slap on the wrist. Its not like the government condones the fraud, more like they don't care as long as it doesn't result in social instability.

Real estate firms and other industries like taxi groups are more likely to be directly controlled by princelings, so those are something else altogether. The government has a direct channel into these industries, because they are basically like a state-controlled mafia.

> Tech businesses, as long as they are Chinese, operate under an assumption of semi-impunity as long as they don't cross political boundaries. So healthcare fraud is in bounds, and if they get caught, they'll just get a slap on the wrist.

Wait. So are you arguing that Chinese tech businesses are under state control, or that they aren't? Your examples point to a horrible compromise: political censorship with freedom to defraud the public.

They are under state control so much as they are subject to state regulation and law and pressure. At the same time they are controlled they are also really free.

Ya, and it does suck for consumers.

A censored google can still create more competition.

A censored Google isn't more competition. It's just more of what already exists, with different branding.

Sounds like there's a parallel with boycotts of Apartheid South Africa?

Anyways I think the best answer for society to the general question of "if there's no legal way for a company to operate ethically, should it not?" is a resounding yes. However game theory will ensure that in absence of external pressure (via regulation or public sentiment), companies will try to serve the market for profit.

> It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical

No, it's that speaking up against local "laws" and quit, then come back again that's unethical.

Local laws in East Berlin sanctioned the murder of Germans who sought to escape. Local laws in Vichy France required people to report hidden Jews to the police. Local laws in America under Jim Crow forbade interracial marriage, and denied Blacks their right to vote. Would you consider it unfortunate that some held these local laws to be unethical?

I’d ascribe no more legitimacy to similar laws made by an unelected, authoritarian government with a history of kidnapping, torturing, and killing nonviolent dissidents. I’m privately amazed that the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights is now a subject of controversy. Why do we believe the Chinese Communist Party when it says, “China is special, and the Chinese people do not deserve basic human freedoms?”

"sanctioned the murder of Germans who sought to escape"

I have read a page on capital punishment in Germany, found no such claims.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_German...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Peter_Fechter

Many similar cases.

I'd love to know why the parent has been downvoted.

Further evidence, if any is needed:

"The use of lethal force on the Berlin Wall was an integral part of the East German state's policy towards its border system."

"The Stasi took charge of "corpse cases" and those injured while trying to cross the border, who were transported to hospitals run by the Stasi or the police where they would recuperate before being transferred to Stasi prisons. The Stasi also took sole responsibility for the disposal of the dead and their possessions. Bodies were not returned to relatives but were cremated, usually at the crematorium at Baumschulenweg. Occasionally the cost of the cremations was covered by the victims themselves using money taken from their pockets.[25]

Stasi officers posing as policemen would inform the relatives, though not before trying to obtain "valuable pieces of information on the border violation". Deaths would be stated as being due to "a border provocation of his own causing", "a fatal accident of his own causing" or "drowning in a border waterway". Every border death was investigated in detail to identify how the attempt had been made, whether there were any vulnerabilities in the border system that needed to be remedied and whether anyone else had been involved. If necessary, the family, relatives, friends, colleagues and neighbours were put under surveillance."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_at_the_Berlin_W...

>Local laws in East Berlin sanctioned the murder of Germans who sought to escape.

The local laws in East Berlin sactions up to 8 years of prison when trying to escape.

Of course, most of the guards at the wall had order to shoot on sight, the number of traps and deadly traps didn't help people survive getting spotted.

The order to shoot on sight (Order 101) actually ran contrary to standing east german law, it was actually illegal (not that the regime actually cared)

> It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical.

What about local laws in countries that are deeply homophobic? Is it unfortunate if countries don't hand over lists of gay users?

Certainly not. But is Google planning to hand over lists of users who search for banned terms? It seems like there's a big difference between handing over lists of users and restricting information.

They'll almost certainly hand over user data to the central government. They're required to partner with a Chinese firm, and this is a fairly common practice among Chinese technology companies.

> But is Google planning to hand over lists of users who search for banned terms?

Yes? That's so obvious I'm a little stunned you're even asking. If the government orders them to hand over that information, they won't have any choice.

> It seems like there's a big difference between handing over lists of users and restricting information.

I think what you're not understanding is it's not Google doing this vs that, it's Google doing what they are told, whatever that may be, or leaving.

We don't have to close them off entirely, but we do have to acknowledge the problem in our faces. Google would be happy to apply the censorship worldwide, not just in China!

If Western culture isn't dead, if our Western legal traditions mean anything at all (I'm talking about individual rights here) then we have to fight the good fight for ourselves and on behalf of those who can't. Otherwise we'll succumb to the least common denominator because technocrats simply don't care.

I'll tell you the truth--I don' think the new generation in SV has any understanding of history whatsoever. I think they believe they are the most brilliant, infallible people in the world. So I don't have a great outlook on what our future holds because it's always like this when a generation arrogantly forgets the past and thinks that nothing bad can ever happen. SV is almost 100% Democrats, coincidence?

>It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical.

What a disgusting comment. What is legal and what is ethical are not the same thing at all. I have difficulty believing this was written in good faith.

And what is ethical exactly? Objectively? And this is something that you get to decide?

Maximizing profits seems pretty ethical to me.

It's something that everybody gets to decide for themselves. And then judge others accordingly.

Ethics are inherently subjective, which is why their only actual usefulness is as a shorthand/proxy for "unlikelihood to generate bad press".

How come others have to have "objective" morals, but for you "seems to me" is perfectly fine? Of course it's subjective, that doesn't take away from it at all, since any opinion that it being subjective is a problem is subjective as well.

> Maximizing profits seems pretty ethical to me.

Up to extracting gold teeth from people murdered in concentration camps, or is there a limit for you?

> [Q: Isn't there a certain calculus that someone who is sitting in the shoes of a Condoleezza Rice can make, that they're responsible for the best outcome for American citizens, and there's an upside of going into Iraq which is we get one of the greatest material possessions in world's history, and there're downsides which are: we upset the international community, and maybe there's more terrorism. Couldn't you envision a calculus where they say, sure, that's the reason, and it's a good reason, let's do it. What's the flaw in the calculus?]

> Oh, I think that's exactly their calculus. But then we ought to just be honest and say, "Look, we're a bunch of Nazis." So fine, let's just drop all the discussion, we save a lot of trees, we can throw out the newspapers and most of the scholarly literature, and just come out, state it straight, and tell the truth: we'll do whatever we want because we think we're gonna gain by it. And incidently, it's not American citizens who'll gain. They don't gain by this. It's narrow sectors of domestic power that the administration is serving with quite unusual dedication...

-- Noam Chomsky, Talk titled "Why Iraq?" at Harvard University, November 4, 2002

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> It's really unfortunate that abiding by local laws and regulations is considered unethical.

It seems unfortunate to you, because you are not aware of the thought and research that went into this insight, and the roughly 100 million dead people.

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