I Quit Google Over Its Censored Chinese Search Engine

Edit: to be more precise: I'm not certain they ever did, or if they simply got lucky/stumbled their way through previous incidents.

> you would think that there would be more than just a handful of Googlers quitting for ethical reasons over Dragonfly. But there aren't. The sad truth is, the thought of making just that little bit less money per year at another company (but still more than enough to live well), the thought of losing that status symbol of "Googler", that's enough that they're willing to accept that their work will support suppression of human rights.

My point is that people are not quitting, will not quit, and Google has no real worries about an employee uprising. Because other than this guy and a handful of others, nobody is going to quit over this. Google leadership doesn't care. There's too much money for them to worry about ethics.

The overwhelming majority of casualties in modern warfare are civilians.

If a government is currently using software to target, kidnap, and torture journalists and you supply them with new software that basically does the same thing then you're still complicit in the bad behavior. You're still responsible for your actions even if others would be willing to do it if you didn't.

In China's case there's also a history of this rationalization that getting involved will help westernize the country, while there's some truth to this with their embrace of capitalism - the government is not trending in a good direction. Eliminating presidential term limits, deep packet inspection, social credit system, total/unrestricted surveillance.

Western companies that operate there in a capacity larger than just manufacturing seem to just have their IP stolen and then a Chinese approved local company gets explicit government support.

It's important to help citizens of countries where the people are more vulnerable - I'd argue it's irresponsible for a company to help an authoritarian government oppress its own people. It's not a question of whether or not it's legal, something can be legal and still be wrong.

Yes. It normalizes suppressing political speech that disagrees with the incumbent power. That flies in the face of values democracies hold dear. "Someone else would do it" isn't a valid excuse. If you're doing it, you're complicit. (Also, Google will do it better than almost anyone else. That a respected American technology giant will work with China's censorship regime gives the institution legitimacy.)

Just because a communist country doesn't need our help oppressing people doesn't mean we are A-OKAY to assist them with it..

Yes. Read the open letter by Google employees[1]. One of their main concerns is how Dragonfly will be used to put people into political prison camps[2].

From the open letter by Google employees:

> Our company’s decision comes as the Chinese government is openly expanding its surveillance powers and tools of population control. Many of these rely on advanced technologies, and combine online activity, personal records, and mass monitoring to track and profile citizens. Reports are already showing who bears the cost, including Uyghurs, women’s rights advocates, and students. Providing the Chinese government with ready access to user data, as required by Chinese law, would make Google complicit in oppression and human rights abuses.

[1] https://medium.com/@googlersagainstdragonfly/we-are-google-e...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...

It sets the precedent of Google censoring search results for a government. Once they do it for China you don't think other countries will say "censor these results like you did for China or GTFO"?

We've recently seen leaked internal discussions by Google engineers saying they want to ban media publications they don't like. You can say they're a private company but at this point if google bans you, you effectively don't exist online

The potential benefits could be substantial, we could be the first big US weapons manufacturer to break into this regime's market. Over time, economic ties could bring the countries closer together and reduce the likelihood of conflict...

Do you see how insane it is to justify something morally repugnant with potential long term economic benefits? The only way your argument works is if you don't care about censorship in the first place. If that's the case, then you need no justification at all because it's just another regular customer.

Just because some evil thing would have happened anyway, with or without your assistance, doesn't absolve you from moral responsibility for that assistance if you offer it.

And that belief is great. But what happens if leadership does nothing? What if they do as they are currently doing and making excuses about it? They aren't currently saying there are any plans to change the course on this. Will those same people you mention leave when nothing changes in another year? I doubt it.

As I said above: your friends want their free lunches, their high salary, their status-symbol job. They'll convince themselves leadership listened to them and will ignore that they didn't change anything.

And lest you think I'm being an asshole about this because I'm not in the situation: I have quit a good job over ethical concerns before. Had meetings with senior leaders that I truly respect and said "this is wrong". They wouldn't budge so I walked. Got a job paying less money. Slept a lot better at night.

Any company is just a bunch of people doing stuff. Those people always remain morally responsible, there's just legal exceptions, but no moral ones.

If one doesn't question something, or even seeks to remain ignorant of it, they could be argued to even be responsible even for something they didn't know about -- since it wasn't despite, but because of their efforts that they were ignorant of it.

> simply providing a censored Google search is a morally noble service to Chinese Internet users

There is nothing "noble" about slightly better product, any more than making a slightly thinner laptop is "noble".

> "We could have taken a moral stand, but what good would that have done?" But the moral good of a moral act inheres in the act itself. That is why an act can itself ennoble or corrupt the person who performs it. The victory of instrumental reason in our time has brought about the virtual disappearance of this insight and thus perforce the delegitimation of the very idea of nobility.

-- Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation" (1976)

It's a disappearance of insight, not new insights. Some regressed into a moral stone age, but they didn't change the world as much as just themselves with that.

False. Companies are made up of people, who are morally responsible for their actions, which, by extension, are the actions of their company. You don't get to dodge moral responsibility just because you have a corporate umbrella over your head.

As with most issues, where you come out depends largely on where you draw the baseline and I don't think it's fair to say that the baseline for Chinese consumers is no censorship or that for no access to Google and no censorship on Google is better than limited access to Google because of censorship.

I know I personally would much rather have limited access than no access - especially if there was a search censored disclaimer like before.

It’s much easier to say no now before they get used to the new revenue stream

Search activity is linked to a phone number so it could be used in the social score. Do you think a message on the result page will help with that consequence?

Don't delude yourself into thinking Google is somehow making China a nicer place to live because it's easier to search for pictures of cats.

"Sorry, the source data underlying that statistic is part of the censored 1%. We'll forward your interest to the relevant authorities though."

"Thanks Google!"

This is wishful thinking. The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. 70 years later communism still sucks, yet in China it endures.

Being born in an ex-communist country from the Warsaw pact I can tell you ... the only reason USSR fell was because of hunger. Without hunger, which is a primal instinct, human beings can adapt to everything else. In other words, for as long as China's economy is strong, their political system has virtually no opposition, censorship is part of politics and this isn't an issue that the population can vote for.

China blocks Internet sources that aren't filtered via their firewall. China also blocks many VPN services. They also use tactics like making foreign online services unbearably slow. That Google is or isn't doing business in China has absolutely no consequence on the Chinese' ability to search for unfiltered information.

> If all sources of information in China sucked

The problem that you're not seeing is that in order to assess whether something sucks or not, you have to have an alternative to compare it with. In absence of an alternative, this scenario will not happen.

So while I agree that Google shouldn't go to China, because it would be against our interest for obvious reasons, trying to frame it as not being in the interest of the Chinese people is wrong, possibly dishonest.

Really? Just how many idealistic engineers are there?

Sincere idealism is rare. Most of the engineers I've met just want to make lots of money and work on interesting stuff, which is likely why the overwhelming majority of Google employees are still working there.

This logic would apply if you were a board member or you held a significant number of voting shares.

As an employee, your role is to do what the board and shareholders want you to do.

As an employee, you will be replaced should you rock the boat or affect their bottom line.

Please keep discussion of this issue substantive.

This is why in any legal proceedings against companies they only allow the jurors and judge to be made up of employees or major shareholders.

It also notes the bias that the Chinese Government is the customer, and the people just hapless victims of that government.

This disrespect of the agency of the Chinese people is being used as it always is, to justify an over-simplified, binary, political type of moral indignation.

The warning sign should be the emotion of indignation over foreign politics. It’s a clue that one is probably wrong.

By accepting their rules, Google would validate the cencorship that government is forcing to their citizens, and government could easily tell to their people: "Look, whole world is agreeing with me and what I am doing."

By not accepting to build it, Chinese people will always have the upper hand in the argument, and something to reference it to.

From your perspective, is the Chinese government the one who is compromising in order to give its citizen access to a tool?

You may not like Gavin Mcinnes or Milo Yiannopoulos or Alex Jones (I don't!) but I also don't think the tech monopolies should be allowed to erase them from the internet without losing their common carrier protections.

Then the conclusion from this that the Chinese people are victims of their government, or dupes.

This is step one in declaring a state illegitimate, which is always done implicitly or explicitly when the US wishes to frame a country as the enemy.

This is the view of Saddam Hussein's government that was used to sell the Iraq war. The idea that destroying a lot of infrastructure and removing him from power was actually doing the will of the Iraqi people.

Applying the label of victims or dupes to an entire population for some reason does not trigger any skepticism in the US. The view is paternalistic and packed with implicit white supremacist ideas, such as the idea that the Chinese people and culture are not naturally suited to undertake steps to change their government.

The ideas is similar to critiques aimed at Haiti's government by avowed racists, yet for some reason Americans are much more eager to believe this kind of white supremacist nonsense about the Chinese people.

It is clear that elements in the US wish to escalate things with China. Trump's trade war, the announcement by an FBI leader that many Chinese academics and cultural groups are espionage oriented, the chip implants on motherboards story, as well as the many stories about bad living conditions and failing infrastructure in China, one the other day about a bunch of runners cheating in a Chinese marathon, etc. These run like clockwork in American papers.

So by adopting the same set of premises about the relationship of the Chinese people and their government, the anti-Dragonfly activists are laying the planks for the neoconservative case that the Chinese government needs to be replaced.

This comment might be downvoted, but I'm quite sure there will not be a coherent counter-argument provided by anyone who disagrees and who also claims to oppose things like the Iraq war.

I suspect that the people concerned about Dragonfly are the same people who would have protested a Google decision to launch in Iraq on the basis of various social policies that existed there under Baath party rule. This is pretty much the definition of neoconservatism.

There is no peaceful neoconservatism, there is always a stick that must be used to punish those who are holding back the idealistic sort of progress that the neocon narrative claims will exist if only various wars can happen.