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> does Dragonfly make the world a worse place?

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.)

The difference is that impact of normalizing behavior is completely speculative, but search is a real product that can benefit people. Any business with China normalizes their suppression, but I doubt that the people who oppose Dragonfly have a problem with how many of their parts in their smartphone were sourced from China. Conveniently, Dragonfly doesn't offer anything to Americans, so that just crosses the line of what's "evil."

Many people would like to see America become less dependent on China's industrial base, maybe even most people.

> Dragonfly doesn't offer anything to Americans

Precedent matters. Google having built a censored search engine for China makes it harder to say "no" to Saudi Arabia, Russia, Poland, France or even the American government. Apple understood this when they refused to build a cracking tool for the San Bernardino shooter's phone.

The same Apple that, also famously, moved iCloud data of all its Chinese customers to servers in mainland China controlled by a Chinese company (and thus, accessible to the government)?

It's also worth reminding that Google did exit China in 2010 because of precisely these ethical concerns. Only to watch all of its competitors - Apple included - unscrupulously do business in China. It's no wonder they reconsidered their stance.

I don't think you can say Google would do it better than almost anyone else.

I think people forget there are probably more engineers not working at Google that are better than Google engineers. Yes Google does try to hire the best, and often does.

There are tons of amazing Engineer that never applied or have no desire to work at Google.

Please also keep in mind the Google we all think of as being awesome is gone, simply because the churn rate is so high. Many of the people who were responsible for building google to it's current status simply are not working there anymore ( yes some still are, but the vast majority seem to have gone or don't care anymore )

We really need to stop acting like getting a job at Google means you are a good engineer.

Well the flaw i see in your logic is that all those awesome engineers that don't work for Google are spread all over the place. There's a special magic when you get a bunch of really good engineers working together...

Also I'm not sure where you get the idea that Google churn is higher than elsewhere or that it's grown significantly. To say those remaining don't care anymore implies there has been a dramatic attitude change, what are you basing that on?

As long as Google attracts the best(which i think they generally do) working there will be a signaling trait of a good engineer.

Last I checked most of them are in a single location -- the internet..

That being said I can just point to Linux, FreeBSD, and a bunch of other open source projects that have no real central home of operation that are comprised of teams of smart people spread all around the world who have done amazing things.

So the flaw in your logic is that we are actually spread all over the place, when we are all spread around on this rock but find our self's milliseconds away from each other.

> To say those remaining don't care anymore implies there has been a dramatic attitude change, what are you basing that on?

I am saying there is a markedly different quality of software coming out of google today than in the past. Things that flowed and worked flawless now do not. Things that were fast and clean are no longer. There have been many HN post about various things coming out of google that are not optimal and raise a lot of questions.

> As long as Google attracts the best(which i think they generally do) working there will be a signaling trait of a good engineer.

Google attracts everybody -- not just the best. Working at google only signals a trait of doing interviews well. The average tenure at google is 1.90 years, which is just about the time it takes to realize you are not cut out for the job.

You really have to start asking yourself how so many people have strings of less than 2 years at a job. At a place like google it probably takes you 1 year to even get up to speed.

I have happend to work at a company long enough to see the pattern. Mediocre employees often have a long string of short stays -- and many of them leave a path of destruction behind them.

It takes at a minimum 3 years but more like 5 years at any given company to know if the work you did was any good. Simply having a launch means nothing, the real quality shows under pressure years later.

So, for now, if Google was hiring amazing people who could do awesome things they simply would be staying there longer -- and google would be doing everything it could to ensure they did.

If you look this is a trend in SV. This is partly because the entire industry has been flooded with people who chose this line of work because it makes money, not because they had any real passion about writing software or solving hard problems.

This industry was built in the 90s when computer nerds where made fun of, and it was not cool. Then the money started flowing and it was flooded with all the wannabe software devs, because it was cool, and it made money. It was built on the type of person who knew how to program before taking their first programming class in College.

I agree, once they have done it for one country they don't have a moral standing to reject another country's request to do the same for them. At times it might not even be a request they might just say do it our way or you don't get to do business here. This is how free speech dies. Instead of hoping that sometime in future China would lift censorship for good we now have to hope other countries won't follow suite.

It's already normalized.

Every Chinese expat I've talked to is pro dragonfly, because of the exact reasons in parent comment: no new negatives, some new positives.

For some reason, nobody seems to care what they think. The anti people just pivot into demonizing the Chinese, resolving their cognitive dissonance in one nice hypernationalist stroke.

This is a bit overly simplistic, and there are many things to consider.

Let's say we agree with the premise that search censorship is bad, and we want to work to get rid of it. What is the best way to accomplish this if you are Google?

Maybe the best answer is to refuse to work with the Chinese government and not do this project. Maybe, though, the best approach is to comply and try to work within the system to change it.

I am not saying that answer is correct, either. I am just saying you can't act like the answer is cut and dry without any room for differing opinions or debate as to the best way to accomplish the goal.

The debate which you outline is not a new one. And while the two sides may seem to have comparable efficacy, it also seems that those who hold their principles strongly abhor even the thought of working on terrible products like this one. And it seems glaringly obvious that those on the "work within the system" side are rationalizing away their immoral behavior in favor of their perks, status, salary, etc, on the off chance that they "work within the system to change it".

If you're making a huge salary at Google, and you value that, and working there for x more years will net you an even huger salary, what are the chances that you start to work against it from the inside at that point, if you're not already doing it now? It ain't gonna get easier. You're not gonna become more of an outsider/breath of fresh air.

People who honestly hold strong principles are usually focused on doing whatever they can to achieve their goals. Many times the best way to do that is by working within the system.

Think of things like the Civil Rights Act... it was passed by people with conviction that worked within the system (or at least some of them worked within the system)

Were the congresspeople who pushed the law through hypocrites because they worked within a system that was horribly oppressive towards minorities?

No, but that system's intent was never to be horribly oppressive to minorities and so working within it was not contradictory to the system's values. Oppression was a byproduct of other factors (the racism and classism of individuals). Google's very existence relies on making profits, and its profits come from ads served in search (and adwords, mainly). Working to stop Google from expanding into as juicy a market as the chinese one is diametrically opposed to the goals of the system. That's why I don't find these things to be comparable.

Edit: though I do see how the "individuals" argument can be used in both directions - I'm essentially arguing that google and its ilk are fundamentally tainted by their business models, in a way that the US government never was.

I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that selling ads inherently makes you 'tainted'... it seems that your argument would apply to every business? Are you arguing that every business is inherently bad and we should work for no business?

Every business exists to make money, and China is a huge market for all of them, so wouldn't they all have the same problem?

I know some people make that argument, but it is a pretty extreme view.

Most of them don't operate at the scale that google does, or have the amount of stakeholders that google does (and therefore don't need to expand into the chinese market aggressively). And yes, an organization whos goal is to make boatloads of money _is_ fundamentally morally tainted when that goal directly conflicts with taking what we'd call ethical action.

"working within the system to change it" when its barreling in the opposite direction from the one you desire seems a highly dubious choice at best.

>How, exactly, does Dragonfly make the world a worse place

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

I admit to not having seen those discussions, but I doubt they show consensus within google that certain publications should be banned. In any group of people there will be some who will say they'd like to ban something, be it Hello Kitty or whatever.

Disclaimer: ex-googler

Does it matter if there's consensus?

From everything we know so far, there was no consensus about Dragonfly, but it got built anyway.

They don't need to show consensus; they simply need to show (as they have done) that there is some number of bad actors within the company with both the means and motivation to enforce their own bias on the rest of the world.

The claim I replied to is: "We've recently seen leaked internal discussions by Google engineers saying they want to ban media publications they don't like."

Individual engineers did not have the means to ban in 2013 when I was an engineer in Search Features. I seriously doubt that's changed.

If I were Google and a government told me to GTFO I would, leaving a message saying "Leader of Country, call this number when you change your mind", wait 5 mins for everyone to complain to the government, and then answer the phone

You'd be waiting more than 5 minutes. China has told lots of companies to get lost and built compelling substitutes internally. This is about Google wanting into the biggest global market in a bad way, not finally relenting to China's long term overtures.

Those other countries better have as big a market as China, or Google will choose to GTFO

Not to mention, they need an alternative to Google. Russia has Yandex, China has baidu, and everyone else has dickall.

> But there's no real indication that the censorship or surveillance is any worse than the existing search engines present in China. As far as that front is concerned, Google in China would be no worse than the status quo.

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.

> does Dragonfly make the world a worse place?

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-...

Could it be that the letter authors are misguided?

Google probably has 5000 Chinese national employees. Where are they on the issue? Wouldn't they be in a better position to judge than a bunch of Americans who grew up hearing that our system is the only workable one?

> Could it be that the letter authors are misguided?

No. China is taking millions of political prisoners and putting them into camps[1].

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

You've pivoted away from "what's best for Chinese people" to "how best to oppose China's rise", here. Did you notice that you did that? Was it intentional?

But again the question is:

1. Is this the case in existing Chinese search engines?

2. If yes, Do you have evidence to suggest that Google's Chinese search engine would be any more harmful than said existing search engines in China?

If these points cannot be proven, then it does not seem intellectually honest to claim that Dragonfly is making China a worse place. To say that it fails to make China a better place, sure that makes sense. But to say that it makes it worse necessitates proving that the status quo in China without Google is better than a China with Google. Most commenters in this thread aren't actually outlining the impact of the product iself, choosing instead to criticize the fact that Google isn't signalling American or Western values as much as they want . I'd be opposed to Google entering China if the majority of Chinese were opposed to it, but this does not seem to be the case. It seems patrimonial on my part to think that I'm better equipped to judge how a society on the other side of the world functions than the people that actually live there. No doubt some Chinese oppose censorship, but the majority seem to accept it or even support it as a necessary means to ensure social stability.

Implicating another party, in this case Google, in state-sanctioned censorship and political imprisonment makes the world a worse place.

Not worse than the status quo can still be something unethical to be involved in.

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.

I would say its in the same vein as an aiding and abetting conviction not being based on the need of the principal offender for that assistance.

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

Well the country is going to commit genocide anyway. Why not try to sell them the weapons because we make much better weapons and US companies haven't been able to break into their weapons market yet.

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.

Isn't that what the US is doing with Saudi Arabia? Gen. McChrystal was making this argument on the Economist podcast. If we sell them the weapons, at least we have some control in the long run, because these type of deals include training, logistics, support...etc. and you leverage these dependencies in future negotiations. Would you rather give this leverage to Russia or China?

I think the same might be applicable to this scenario.

What US is doing with Saudi Arabia is a travesty of its own. All that effort we're spending to goad other countries into an Iran embargo should really be a KSA embargo.

Thank you for presenting an alternative view. What I didn't like about the person you're replying to, is how they made a bunch of assumptions about Google's employees, and their motivations, and passed it on as a fact.