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Comment by publub | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

You might want to talk to some Hong Kong people, or even people from Taiwan, if they are still considered "Chinese" for this matter.

A real concern for HK/Taiwan people is, what if CCP demands Google to turn over HK/Taiwan user's data? Do you think Google can push back by saying "nah we don't think HK/Taiwan is part of China"?

Also as a Chinese myself, I'm in the "meh" camp on Dragonfly. Baidu does have its own problems, but for Chinese people Bing has always been there. How much difference does it make? For Google, if launching Dragonfly would damage the "Google" brand's image and reputation, is Dragonfly going to bring enough benefit to offset such damage?

> this will be an entirely positive change that could save millions of lives

A censored search engine will save millions of lives? Reads like propaganda to me.

> DragonFly will probably be the largest step to democratizing information

Democratized information... with Chinese characteristics.

> A censored search engine will save millions of lives? Reads like propaganda to me.

What in the world does censorship have to do with this? Information will strictly be more available by having Google in China, than not having Google in China. Google is orders of magnitude better than Baidu, which makes not even a superficial attempt at hiding that it censors and reranks information. DragonFly will simply not allow you to search censored phrases, rather than selectively remove results.

As to why I think it’ll save lives. Let me give you an example. I once tried to search for the US consulate in China on Baidu. The phrase for that is “美国领事馆”. Try it on Baidu. When I last searched it, the website for the consulate was on the 3rd or 4th page, the address was nowhere on Baidu, and the rest of the results were travel agencies trying to make a profit.

Now think about searching for “suicide” or “depression”. Still think it won’t save lives?

Not everything has to be about censorship and human rights with China. Partial information can still save lives.

> Democratized information... with Chinese characterisitics.

Yes, what’s your point? America was built on democracy with a nice twist of slavery.

> As to why I think it’ll save lives. Let me give you an example. I once tried to search for the US consulate in China on Baidu. The phrase for that is “美国领事馆”. Try it on Baidu. When I last searched it, the website for the consulate was on the 3rd or 4th page, the address was nowhere on Baidu, and the rest of the results were travel agencies trying to make a profit.

I'm not in China but the Baidu show the related information (ustraveldocs.com) on the first result. To search "suicide", you've got the telephone for help.

I don't know why you selected “美国领事馆” while similar issues happened in China. Google's DragonFly will block it too. If you search "香港政府", you get the best on the first result.

> and the rest of the results were travel agencies trying to make a profit.

It's smarter than Google! People in China are trying to escape at the time. Baidu shows a more accurate result base on the trend. It works like the Yahoo or newspaper's homepage.

I fully understand this and would have been Pro DragonFly a few years before. Now that I have learned more, I am against it. And this post is possibly a ploy from China.

Why should Google join China, give away its IP one way or another, let CCP exerts its force on more Western Companies, and further strengthen its power in China and the world?

Does anyone has the slightly idea what the hell is going on inside CCP's mind? I wish the WTO had a new terms for anyone joining, the nation must allow democratic election after joining WTO. There is no such thing as free market in a one party system.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

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

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

Chinese people criticize the government/party all the time when talking to each other. What even was your perception of the situation that would lead you to talk about "outing" lmao

China suppresses free speech, yes. But it doesn’t go so far as citizens being terrified of being known as someone wanting Google to enter China. It’s not like 1984. The secret police isn’t going to come stick you and your family in an underground prison for wanting Google.

People are pretty open about what they want. Google is something many people (who know about it) want.

FWIW, yes, I could be propaganda. But if I were, I’d be doing something much more useful with my time than browsing hackernews and trying to argue against opinionated software engineers who don’t want to be convinced otherwise.

> The secret police isn’t going to come stick you and your family in an underground prison for wanting Google.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with what happened recently to bookstore owners in Hong Kong. Or people who "stir up trouble" by criticizing the government on WeChat.

Funny that you mention underground prisons, because they are a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_jails

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.

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.

what stops them from using Bing?

you are naive if you think crippled Google would change anything, lived in China plenty years to know better, majority would be ambivalent and it would be used only by people who wanna look cool

They could use Bing. From personal experience Google is much better. I make the assumption that crippled Google will still be much better than crippled Bing.

I have no illusions about Google creating social change. That's not the point. Google will make it much easier than Bing to find information you need. It is more convenient. It could save lives in the right situations. That's enough of a sell for me.

from personal experience Google it's absolutely useless for Chinese language search, nobody stopping them providing good search outside China, since they can't do even that uncensored i have zero belief their censored project would be any better

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