[mocae]

> 6/ The other thing I find disturbing, after all these years, is the willingness of my former colleagues to not only comply with the censorship but their enthusiasm in rationalizing it. It is not a coincidence that the rationale they give was the same one management had given them

This is the really disgusting thing. Are they "just" sucking up to management or are they maybe the only ones who buy the propaganda?

Or is this some kind of self-justification process that protects them from their dying sense of guilt?

[gjm11]

The fact that management and employees give the same rationale for doing a thing isn't evidence of bad faith, because this is also what would happen if there were a good reason, or at least one that looks good to some reasonable people, that both management and employees were convinced by.

I'm not familiar with this case, but if e.g. the reason is "Whatever we do, the Chinese government is going to ensure that any search results its population can see are censored. So our choice is whether they get censored Google search results or censored someone-else search results, and it's hard to see how the first of those can be worse either for us or for them" ... then I don't know whether it's actually a good reason, but it does seem like a reason that some decent and intelligent people might find convincing, even if they have a normally functioning sense of guilt.

For the avoidance of doubt, the opposite position -- "if you do this you're an accomplice to oppression, and 'if we don't do it someone else will' is a lousy response" -- also seems to me one that some decent and intelligent people might find convincing. No one on either side of this needs to be an idiot or a scoundrel. (Though I bet some people on both sides are both, because that's always true.)

[humanrebar]

The counterargument is that censoring political speech is decidedly indecent regardless of anyone's intentions. If political censorship ceases to be unconscionable, then a culture is convinced that there is no right to speech or conscience.

That is clearly true for China. It seems to be true for Google as well.

[pliny]

>The counterargument is that censoring political speech is decidedly indecent regardless of anyone's intentions

This is (as I understand it) a deontological, rather than a consequential, argument. So that cannot really be a 'counterargument' because it has a disjoint set of premises. You can argue that the premise for GP's argument (something along the lines of `The decision of whether to operate Google in China should depend on the aforementioned having better outcomes for chinese citizens than otherwise`) is incorrect or you can argue on the basis of his premise, but giving a different argument on a different premise (something like `the rule "don't censor political speech" should never be broken`) does not make a counterargument.

[humanrebar]

Part of the argument is that decent and intelligent people can disagree on this.

The counterargument is that suppressing truth and speech is indecent, regardless of intent. That is, the lesser wrong is still wrong. Boiling people down to utilitarian guesswork is part of the problem. It is fair to point out that the alleged decency is premised on skipping past established ethical and moral frameworks.

[gjm11]

A lot's hanging on the definition of "decent" here, and utilitarianism is also an established ethical and moral framework even if you consider it a pernicious one.

So let's avoid arguing over the definition of "decent" by being more specific. I claim:

It's possible for someone to endorse the position taken by Google management on this even though that person is highly intelligent, is far from indifferent to others' suffering and oppression, and habitually goes out of their way to treat others well, including others who are unlike them and far away.

I do, of course, agree that if you get to define what "decent" means then you can make it so that no decent person disagrees with you. In this case, I think that requires a definition that has built into it either an answer to the specific object-level question at hand, or else a specific position on a subtle philosophical question (consequentialism versus deontology versus virtue ethics versus whatever else) on which smart people who spend their whole lives thinking about this stuff are far from all agreeing.

[olalonde]

As a foreigner living in China and stuck with Bing, I decidedly disagree with you on that. I'm a consequentialist...

[yourbandsucks]

If we presume that the world isn't black and white, and we give some credence to the principle of "least harm"..

There's a case to be made for providing more net information while being less than 100 percent morally pure in the process.

The choice we're confronted with isn't "uncensored vs censored". It's "more information and access vs less information and access".

It's a practical call. Chinese people are very practical, they'll figure it out.

[humanrebar]

The concern isn't about personal purity. It's about other human beings being treated as less equal or less important.

Everyone is equal on some level just by being human. They are inherently worth treating well. That includes freedom from death and harm. But that also includes freedom of thought, conscience, and expression.

[yourbandsucks]

If you really believe that, then you must understand that 99% of a loaf is better than none.

Docs, Hangouts, YouTube. All very difficult to censor. Its whack a mole, complicated by https. Information wants to be free.

Standing on principle here denies them that 99%. Are you going to make that call for them, or should they make it for themselves?

[michaelmrose]

I guess you could call turning politic prisoners into organ donars practical

https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/

As is deliberately killing pedestrians after accidentally injuring them in order to pay a lessor death benefit instead of expensive care.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...

Im not worried about their practicality but rather that they are culturally morally bankrupt and revealing how morally bankrupt people like Google are.

[dang]

Nationalistic flamewar is not allowed here, so please don't haul in talking points for that purpose.

Moreover, if you post another national or racial slur, like you did here and confirmed below, we will ban you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[michaelmrose]

I will avoid similar topics in the future I suppose this forum is only really fit for tech. Things that drift into political matters stir up strong feelings.

[bun_at_work]

The existing systems in China place various pressures on the people there. You can't make the claim that Chinese people are morally bankrupt based on those cases alone.

The government is, for sure. However, it's the legal system's fault for letting the punishment of injury outweigh the punishment of manslaughter.

Furthermore, it's not as if Google has gone out of its way get into a position of censoring search results in China. Those search results are going to be censored no matter what. What Google does, whether they operate in China or not, doesn't effect that. All that changes is how much search-engine-generated money goes to Google or doesn't.

[michaelmrose]

The people are responsible for their government.

[yourbandsucks]

Oh, yeah, give me more of that raw prejudice. Got any blood libel?

[dang]

We just asked you to stop posting like this. If you do it again we will ban you.

[platz]

> management and employees give the same rationale

That is called ideology

"Ideology is the practice of augmenting reality."

http://mitp.nautil.us/feature/271/ideology-is-the-original-a...

[MaxBarraclough]

'Self-serving biases' are well-studied psychological phenomena. [0]

We can expect that a Google employee working with China will be more favourable to the work, even accounting for factors like selection bias.

My money is on self-justification being at least a part of the explanation, but that doesn't preclude some amount of sucking-up to management as well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias

[rangibaby]

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. – Upton Sinclair

[mocae]

I get this dependency argument. I'm actually very familiar with it. There is still a level below where you become part of the story.

[pjc50]

This effect is really strong, and people don't usually realise they're doing it. "Power creates opinion", as the man says. As does loyalty. It's much more psychologically comfortable in an organisation if you reflexively adopt its attitudes and values.

[lake99]

> Are they "just" sucking up to management or are they maybe the only ones who buy the propaganda?

IMO, neither. I don't like this purported dichotomy between "management" and "colleagues/employees". I have seen several of my former classmates and colleagues transition into management roles. Their ideology hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. For example, in the Indian context, their view of Kashmir and the army's role there is pretty much the same as the government propaganda. "Management" did not convince them when we were all still in college, and did not convince them when we were all low-level employees. The people just happened to grow up in an environment where a certain ideological bent was considered "right", "virtuous", etc.

[mocae]

Well this is kind of different thing since it's politics that is not necessary related to your business (I assume).

Here you had people leaving because of the clash between business ideology and their (as well the outsides) moral values. The company did not only advance and hire people who already had no moral values. They just found out. Now they shift people around until the compatible ones stay.

[lake99]

I wouldn't go as far as to say the company hired people who had no moral values. Just different from that of people who advocate anti-censorship values. Progressive political values are the current mainstream. Liberalism has long been on the decline in the mainstream. Both managers and employees, by and large, subscribe to progressivism. As a clear example of this culture, just look at what kinds of voices have been silenced on social media, and what kinds have been given free reign. I'm not even talking about the content of the employees' speech here.

[est]

Technically, removing results by DMCA or hate speech or "fake news" is about the same procedure as political censorship.

The mechanism is already there. The difference is only which part of the model to tweaks and for whom.

[matz1]

This isn't suprising, every person have different moral compass and value. I too would gladly work on this. Censorship is just a necessary work around (for now) to enter the chinese market.

[programmarchy]

This is lazy thinking. Or do you think the unabomber was justified because he simply had a different moral compass?

[mikejb]

Not who you replied to, but your comparison is a bit off. Everyone has to choose their own morals and values, and what they think is right or wrong. But no one can choose whether something is legal or not. If someone thinks that destroying property or killing a person for reason XYZ is ok, than they have the right to believe that - and surprisingly many people do. But that doesn't mean they are allowed to, or should be doing it. We have laws because we can't rely on people's morals.

[matz1]

>no one can choose whether something is legal or not

Yes some can, it's matter of influence or how powerful you are

[mikejb]

Fair point. (Luckily the Unabomber did not have that power or influence)

[matz1]

To him it was justified and no matter how evil a person you think it is, I'm pretty sure you can always find some other people who think its is right.

[bliblah]

Is it really that odd?

There are a lot of posters in HN that are FAANG employees, yet talk big game about Open Source, Data Security, Free Speech, etc yet time and time again these companies fail to uphold these values.

When you are making a 6+ figure salary with vesting options it's really easy to bend your principles and if you are lucky you can become wealthy enough to become a philanthropist somewhere down the line to undo some of the damage you have done.

[aaaaaaaaaab]

Sounds like peak employee engagement to me! I’ve heard this is what companies should strive for.

[sieabahlpark]

Judging by how many internal political issues they have I don't doubt there are some shitty people making Google evil.

[Fricken]

I really don't understand what people are upset about. Whether or not Google rolls out a censored search engine in China has no influence at all whatsoever in any way shape or form over whether or not the communist party will continue to enforce censorship. If Google backs out for political reasons, it's not like the party is going to suddenly see the error of their ways and do an about face on censorship.

It's just business. Americans has been doing business with China, and the Chinese people for decades. In spite of the fact that the west and China are beholden to very different identities, we can still cooperate on things to the benefit of everyone.

People are 99% the same everywhere, but the 1% that makes us different are matters of identity, and that's what we gripe about and go to war over. It's kind of stupid if you ask me, but then again, no one in the history of the world has ever come up with a reliable solution for human nature.

[emptybits]

> we can still cooperate on things to the benefit of everyone

Yes. What is the benefit of hobbling a world-class search engine so that it intentionally prevents "everyone" (I include Chinese citizens in your "everyone") from accessing free information and news and facts about the world and about China itself?

All countries are guilty of mistakes and atrocities. So what is the benefit of preventing citizens from discovering this, learning from it, and discussing it?

[RichardCA]

If Google ever rolls out a search engine where if you type "Tiananmen Square" you get back nothing of value, but your identifying info goes into some government watch list, people will remember that. It's disingenuous to pretend it's not important. And whoever authorized that will have to live with themselves and what they did.

[ardy42]

> I really don't understand what people are upset about. Whether or not Google rolls out a censored search engine in China has no influence at all whatsoever in any way shape or form over whether or not the communist party will continue to enforce censorship.

I'll list out some of the issues:

1. The view the censorship is immoral. The argument that "we should help them because we can profit and they'll do it with or without us" has some very serious flaws that can be easily shown by a few thought experiments.

For instance: your colleague is going to rob a bank and there's nothing you can do to stop him, is it right for you to volunteer to drive the getaway car since he'll pay you handsomely if you do? If you don't drive, someone else will, and you'll be leaving money on the table.

> It's just business. Americans has been doing business with China, and the Chinese people for decades. In spite of the fact that the west and China are beholden to very different identities, we can still cooperate on things to the benefit of everyone.

2. Doing business with China gives the Communist Party leverage to influence corporate operations elsewhere for ideological reasons. They've shown increasing willingness to use that influence to push their political views (for a recent example, see the recent situation with how foreign airlines represent Taiwan on their foreign-language websites).

Imagine, ten years from now, Google because popular and profitable in mainland China. The Communist Party wants to manage Western perceptions of an issue (say Tibet) and gives Google an ultimatum: derank all pro-Tibet independence websites from the top 20 results of certain Tibet-related searches, or they'll shutdown their Chinese operations. What choice do you think the shareholder-value maximizing corporation is going to make?

This article tackles the topic from a different angle: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/11/if-the-u-s-doesnt-contr...

[Fricken]

It's funny, we get upset that China censors the free and open exchange of ideas until the subject of intellectual property comes up, and then we get upset because China doesn't respect the fact that we like to keep ideas under lock and key. Once you get under all the bullshit it's as simple as America believing that it should win and China should lose. The problem is, that by merit of demographics, and China's stable political and economic system, they're on track to become the dominant and economic power in the world, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

You can worry that China could have too much leverage over Google if they become dependent on profits earned in China. It's corroborated in the article you provided:

>a deeply conservative Pence sounded like liberal stalwart Sen. Elizabeth Warren in arguing the Chinese are using America’s own short-term-oriented financial system against it.

Our shareholder value short-term oriented financial system is a problem in our own backyard, something we can do something about rather than fearmongering against China. It remains a strict hypothetical that that Google would kowtow to China's demands and censor it's domestic search engine. I don't think they'll do that, but even if they did, we can cross that bridge when we get to it, until then it's just a hypothetical worst case scenario. If Google has a dangerous amount of control over the flow of information, that's because it's the service that most Americans choose to use, which is kind of the shitty thing about a free and open society. In China if they decide something is a net negative, they can stop it.