Google Is Handing the Future of the Internet to China
foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com
So it is now official, Google can not longer be considered as "not Evil". And we know this thanks to this sentence that has finally served as a warrant canary.
Last updated July 31, 2018"
«“Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.»
The fact they removed this (e.g. "providing our users unbiased access to information") and that they are now setting up a censored version of their search engine shows that everything that they have removed in there should now be considered as deprecated.
[1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
If no one got nothing of value to add, there's always some reference to "evil" and suddenly everyone has an opinion on a Google related topic.
There are many here (as well as those 1,400 Googlers who signed the letter) who turned a blind-eye toward censorship and public manipulation when they agreed with the politics. This is the end result. Sadly... it's just the tip of the iceberg as the future looks much more bleak.
By exiting China, except pleasing the those moral puritans, I fail to see what exactly Google achieves. China now has a self-contained internet ecosystem, which is moderated and censored by the party's will, yet vibrant and providing countless business potential and shaping the society at breakneck speed. The only one holds China's internet's future is apparently, China.
You don't even have to have much imagination to realize that by exiting China, Google removed the leverage the Chinese government had over it. If Google has operations in China that it values, the Communist Party can use those operations as a hostage to manipulate Google, just like it did with the airlines.
Do you want an authoritarian government to have leverage over the service that you use to search for the answers to your questions? It's not inconceivable that that the CCP might use that leverage to get Google to change the rankings of its search results to be more to its liking.
If Google starts censoring results in the US or EU with clear political motives, a Searx instance will be clearly superior (probably Bing and DDG standalone will be too). Many people will switch and search will become a more competitive market all of a sudden.
I'm not pro-censorship and I think Google censoring results for China would be disgusting. But if they migrate the practice to Western democracies I think they'll basically commit suicide. (Therefore they probably won't do it.)
If Google is going to be more cooperative, there are more than just censorship that Google and Alphabet can provide.
Personally I would flee China but the relocation would require a higher-than-medium paying job which is difficult to get as a foreigner in most of the Countries, and I believe the status also applies many others.
Or you know, why not bring back chronological feeds... I'm convinced part of the polarisation in previous years can be put down to "algorithms" boosting particular posts.
The legal process was completely removed. They use this to help their election campaigns by branding government critical content as extremist and having it removed without due process.
You'd think that when they remove content like that, they'd report the offenders to legal authorities -because after all, they are only allowed to remove content that is clearly illegal- but in most cases they don't. They just want the content gone and move on, which makes it very clear that this is just a censorship tool and their generous interpretation of illegal hate speech wouldn't hold up in any court.
It does point toward a bigger issue, where Facebook is used and trusted by so many users that they do not access alternative sources of information.
The situation is absurd. Facebook is legally required to pay for censorship by companies with close ties to the government.
Directly from the devil himself.
Arvato belongs to Bertelsmann. Here's a German article about how close they are to the government.
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Lobbyismus-Koenig-Bertelsma...
And that's exactly the problem with it: It cannot be clearly defined and everyone is offended by different things, which makes it a perfect tool to censor just about everything you want.
Government critical pages with millions of followers were deleted, playing directly in the hands of the (re-elected) government.
I don't want to be the judge of what's reasonable and what's not. As you see, having any kind of hate speech laws can and will be abused and end in censorship and stupid political games, as almost anything can be labelled as hate speech. It only depends on the perspective.
Personally, I'd go with the American model of anything goes. I don't think it's great, but it's better than this. Hate speech laws don't change anything - there will always be people who say something stupid or something you don't like. I prefer offensive people any day to people who deliberately misinterpret things and paint themselves or others as victims to discredit their opponents.
Well, hate speech is not about offending people... It's about inciting violence. A good example would be a nazi or ISIS leader publishing a video calling on their followers to attack, say, Jews, homosexuals and journalists. Hate speech laws exist to forbid such communications, because they are likely to result in violence against others. Of course there are many cases which are less clear cut than my example, where it's debatable (and hotly debated) how much violence is actually caused... but that's very different from debating "offense" or "misunderstandings", which have nothing to do with hate speech laws.
> Government critical pages with millions of followers were deleted, playing directly in the hands of the (re-elected) government.
Can you give us sources on this please?
> As you see, having any kind of hate speech laws can and will be abused and end in censorship
Not really, you haven't provided any evidence or details.
https://i.imgur.com/mY0iBWU.jpg
That's an earlier screenshot of the page. It had about 2 million likes at the end. They posted provocative content, government critical stuff, some of it true, some of it false and some of it utter nonsense. None of which is illegal. Welcome to election campaigns around 2018. It's not our fault they have sunk to such a low level, but that's what it is and there's no consolation price for being the good guy.
This page had more readers than all but the biggest printed newspapers, which is quite a feat. Then one day their page was disabled and later deleted.
No real person has been and would be prosecuted for what they did. Personally, I think their content was crap and didn't follow it, but that's besides the point. They did what most politicians and official newspapers do to get attention and clicks.
This was in the early days, when the law was in planning, but not officially passed. Since then, many other pages like that simply disappeared.
" Article 10 – Freedom of expression
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary."
> Once Google’s new Chinese business is up and running, there will be nothing to stop Beijing from seeking to dictate how references to Taiwan are addressed not just in China but throughout the site globally. China may also demand to shape how protests in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or the mainland are addressed or what happens when people search for dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo or topics such as human rights. While Google executives may believe that their company would never accede to such requests outside of China’s borders, there are no guarantees. If China gains the leverage to shape how Google presents what Beijing considers to be sensitive topics throughout the rest of the world, it will deal a mortal blow to international principles of freedom of expression and thought.
"Proof:" Google for "Mercedes apologies to China after quoting Dalai Lama" in a tweet for its European customers.
It's not hard to imagine China then asking them to use their "new and improved" version of Google too.