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The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Do you accept money for your work? Odds are that some of that money was gained through less than 100% ethical means -- if not directly by the person/company you got the money from, then perhaps by the person/company they got it from, etc. At some point down the line, some of it might be called "dirty money" or maybe even "blood money".

So what do you do? Do you stop accepting money because you have to be 100% ethical?

Do you stop interacting with any company that's not 100% ethical, with any person that's not 100% ethical, with any country that's not 100% ethical? Do you devote your life to protesting these unethical individuals, companies, and countries?

Some people do, but they are a vanishingly small number -- so small that if all positive change relied just on them, nothing would change.

The rest of us choose to make compromises, and we're not 100% pure. But that doesn't mean that we can't protest anything unless we protest everything, and it doesn't mean we can't accomplish some good while unfortunately participating to some extent in a non-prefectly ethical system.

right but the choices of what crosses the line seem arbitrary and often people protest things that aren't nearly as bad as things they are complicit in. Its moreso to make themselves feel better and maybe out of boredom.

what causes are just?

when is it okay to protest?

are there any cases, either in the past or present, that you consider worthwhile and in good faith?

> I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voice their concerns while looking the other way when tweet from their Chinese made iPhones, and write dissenting articles in their Chinese made computers.

I don't get it — following your logic people shouldn't be protesting anything China-related because they're using chinese goods? I mean, this isn't a binary issue — you can buy chinese computers because most computers are made there and regret that Google is building a search engine to censor political queries.

I agree with you. My comment is about those who put these issues at the center of high-profile debates and seem to demonize individuals and organizations without looking at how their actions contribute to the issue.

By no means, I'm trying to say that you can't regret an issue without indirectly being part of a system that aggravates the same issue. I think nobody can escape this.

But it's different when you want to raise someone or something to a certain moral standard without understanding how fungible is that particular moral standard.

Sometimes people are just wasting their energy on things that are only an issue by their standards and not by the standards of the people who are ultimately affected by the issue itself (in this case the Chinese people).

I would like to see Google employees object with the same energy, things like Google unhinged data collection practices.

>Sometimes people are just wasting their energy on things that are only an issue by their standards and not by the standards of the people who are ultimately affected by the issue itself (in this case the Chinese people).

That’s not how morals work. Just because you’re not the victim of human rights abuse doesn’t mean you can’t try to prevent it.

I don't think that's what whoisjuan meant. The Chinese people who would be "victimized" by Google welcome the new search engine. Presumably, they would choose to use it because they want to. It is not productive to be angry on their behalf.

Given the state of activism and rebellion brewing in China, I am doubtful. From what I've learned about censorship in china in 2019, i am convinced we are on the same side.

I'm Chinese and I can tell you I think Dragonfly will do more good than harm. You can check my comment history if you doubt I'm a real person.

Here's another Chinese person saying the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308777

I've never, in any of the many comment threads on Dragonfly, found a Chinese person who thinks otherwise.

All my Chinese relatives I've talked to also feel the same way, and from their reports, the majority of Chinese people feel the same way.

You are welcome to disagree, but don't put words in our mouths.

Taking a moral stand requires resources, and is therefore more of a privilege than a right. Implicit in this argument is that one must choose their battlefront carefully, because it is usually impossible for one person to fight on all fronts at once. One individual might be an exceptional engineer, and to take a moral stand this individual will refuse to work at certain companies. Another individual might be a wealthy investor, and for the same reason refuse to invest in certain companies. Finally, some people may try to avoid buying products from a particular country of origin.

Pressure on countless different fronts from countless different people for the same moral cause can, and often does, lead to change. Hence, it is not hypocritical at all - to the contrary, it is pragmatic and effective. It's simply individuals doing what they can for something they believe in, and most of them know that they cannot win the battle alone. If it's a worthy cause, such people should be encouraged.

To call the individual who takes a stand on one but not all fronts a hypocrite is, ironically enough, a way of discouraging people from taking a stand at all.

While its not necessarily my opinion, the issue is not about working in/with China, its about building a censored search engine.

The funny thing is that Google search engine is already censored in various parts of the world.

E.g. 1. Right to be forgotten. 2. DMCA. (differing views on this). 3. Russia (?)

Their regular search engine is already censored. Do you think those top 10 results are really the actual unfettered top 10? What do you specifically consider "censorship?"

1) is different in quality. possibly 2), too, but I don't know enought about it.

in CH, search engines are state-censored for political reasons - mainly to keep in power a semi-dictatorship.

the right to be forgotten was implemented to protect individual rights. one may or may not agree with such a protection. however, the motivation was not systematic political censorship.

edit: missing word.

I'm guessing you typo'd CN as CH, as CH is Switerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:CH but if you mean CH (the post you were mention other agency supervision) could you share more?

My objection isn't even the censorship (I mean, I object to that too, but to a lesser degree).

My primary objection is that Google is (was?) arranging the system so that every user is identified and, if they search for something forbidden, are reported to the government.

Why do you think censored search engine is bad? All other search engine in China have same censorship but worse quality. Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality?

Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?

The argument is that Google shouldn't build a censored search engine for one authoritarian state, because once it's built, it's easier for other states to ask for the same treatment. China's existing censored search engines are confined to that country, and I would also oppose any adoption of those services in the US.

(As a side note: Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.)

> Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.

I think it's wrong of you to label someone as "enthusiastically pro-China" for thinking that having access to a censored version of Google would improve the state of the Chinese search engine market (without using VPNs, anyway). That's more of an anti-China position.

If you ignore comments by Chinese people on China (presumably because you suspect them of being government shills?) you're just discounting the opinion of those with actual first-hand experience and an incentive to see things improve.

It's also worth considering that besides this thread, the only other post from that account was "Wow, GTA V IRL.". I think it's reasonable to be suspicious of the veracity of the account.

>Why it's bad to have another censored search engine with higher quality?

Again, this isn't exactly my personal opinion but the obvious difference is this is one of the US's largest tech companies participating, not some Chinese company that US citizens are not familiar with.

>why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there

Google employees have the power to protest Google projects, not big oil projects.

Microsoft has a censored search engine live in China right now, where is the backlash against them?

I'm sure all three users revolted.

There's literally dozens of them. Dozens!

Nobody expected any better from Microsoft. That's a lost cause.

Search engines are already censored.

Exactly. There are many websites which won't show up in a Google search in the West also, even if you search for their exact domain name. Some of them can be found on other search engines, some other maybe not.

So it must be that the opponents of this project are not opposed to censorship in general, but to censorship as applied in the People's Republic of China.

Right. The West's censorship is somewhat about fighting crime, protecting at-risk people, protecting people from themselves, and so on. But it's also about protecting the status quo. And, as much as I wouldn't like living in China, their censorship is arguably not that different. At most, there's more emphasis on protecting the status quo.

There's nothing morally wrong with being hypocritical. Everyone is hypocritical. Surely it's better to be inconsistently principled than consistently unprincipled?

Well said.

Moreover we’re all consuming censored results. One is more heavy handed than the other, but we’re all consuming curated results, to one extent or another.

Because Resisting China is so iconic, it now becomes Google's identity. Now they have some pragmatic board members what to go into that market once again, but find themselves unable to do so, because it is enshrined by many of its employees as its glorious legacy.

I'd say forget about Chinese market, let aside Google's own identity struggle, Chinese government, under Xi, is much more stringent about its iron fist control over internet. Also the internet demographics have evolved. When Google quits China, it was hailed by many secretly as hero, now the ultra-nationalist new generation of netizens will welcome Google by their endless outrage against Western hypocrisies. To them, Google isn't the gold child of Western technologism, it is just a homeless dog who is disliked by its new master.

Nobody gives a shit about companies building products for China. People are upset about building censorship and logging tools that will be used to suppress free speech and kill/intern dissidents.

Supporting Chinese businesses by buying from them and being against selling suppression tools to the Chinese government are both sides of the same coin.

You’re conflating “made in China” with “made in America for suppressing the Chinese”. This is textbook propaganda to make the Chinese government and its citizens seem like a unified entity.

“Why would you buy a slice of Pizza in New York and simultaneously complain about the Belgians selling guns to the US government?”

> ...to do something in China

They are not doing "something", they are building an oppression machine.

Your comparison between consuming Chinese goods and actively aiding the oppressing system is a false equivalence fallacy.

We are morally objecting on behalf of the People of the People's Republic of China, who are too stupid/incapable to object for themselves. </sarcasm>

If you get sent to a gulag/executing for objecting i'd say you're incapable of objecting

Yes but a Westerner would hardly be the objective judger of such gulags/guantanamo bays of China. That being said if too many people were being sent to prison in China, unjustly, they'd have another revolution.

The fact is that even if evidence was revealed they had absolutely 0 gulags, or whatever it is you're claiming, it would not do much to silence anti-China sentiment. The presence of the gulags are not falsifiable, since opponents can always claim fabrication by the authoritarian regime. The only objective way is to defer to the majority of Chinese citizens, which currently approve of their government.

There's little point in arguing if the communist party is a party of saints—they'll always be doing something wrong, and they definitely are. The question is do they have a legitimate control of China? That's something only someone under their regime can answer and fight for, not a Western imperialist.

is there a difference in human suffering based on color of skin/cultural background?

In theory, no, but in practice, there's a question to the underlying motivation and ulterior motives if one is fighting for another's rights more than that other person is.

For example, to an American the invasion of Iraq may be officially an Operation for Iraqi Liberation, but to an Iraqi it may seem like control of OIL was the motivation. From a third party perspective you have to assume an American is motivated in self-interest, so if they seem more interested in the "liberation" of another group more than that group is itself, your duty is to question that motivation. The primary purpose of the US government is to serve American interests, so any reasons it gives of altruistic or justice-serving intent can be immediately thrown in the trash. I'm saying this as a tax-paying American citizen by the way.

There is no opting out of ethically wrong choices under global capitalism. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to change things.