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Google Confirms Chinese Censorship Claims
UnanimousCoward writes "A spokesperson has responded to the 'censorship' questions in this article: '"Google has decided that in order to create the best possible search experience for our mainland China users we will not include sites whose content is not accessible," company spokeswoman Debbie Frost said Friday.'" Our original article ran on Wednesday.
No use listing them if the users can't get there (that's if they're not using one of the proxy's)
Were people in China able use the google cache to circumvent the governmental censorship? If that's the case, it seems that leaving the service active would provide a "better experience" to me.
Would it be better if China took Google offline entirely?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Google, as much as we love it, is a priviate company, and they have to abide by the laws, regulations and codes of conduct in forign countries, whose markets they wish to enter.
Don't get upset with goodle over cencorship, get upset with the government who's laws they must abide.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
that it wouldn't exactly be "good service" if google provided them with links to news(among approved news) that would get the clients ass in jail(if he read the link).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
let the Chinese people see what their government is hiding from them? Probably because the government would then ban google. Silly communists, oppression of ideas is for fascist regimes!
So in other words, it isn't exactly censorship. It's "you're-not-going-to-be-able-to-view-this-site-any way, so-we're-going-to-save-you-the-trouble-and-not-lis t-it"-ship.
There's nothing I hate more than doing a search for something and getting a bunch of (useful-looking) results that then turn out to be 404 or inaccessible for some other reason. It gives my mind a case of intellectual blue balls.
Breaking out the "C" word on Google here doesn't seem exactly fair. Fix the broken communist Chinese dictatorship and Google won't be forced into silly positions like this.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
No, not really. However, how responsible should Google be in fighting oppression in other countries?
"Do no evil", but does that mean to fight against evil whenever possible? I don't think Google has any right, let alone responsibility, to make a stand against the Chinese government. If the socialists in that country see fit to regulate the media to the extent that massive nation-wide filters need to be erected to keep "bad" things out, then Google (an American company) has no business telling them they are wrong.
The internet is international and some nations prefer to keep some of the worst areas out of the hands of their publics. Is that such a wrong thing? Isn't it more wrong to hand over porn to the kiddies via a web search than it is to filter it out?
Dancin Santa
"We must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most. And that is the indifference of good men." -- Boondock Saints
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
This article makes me wonder, do they not index any banned sites period or are they just not listed in the Chinese version?
If they don't index banned sites period hI think the best way would be to not list them in the chinese version, and in the general version, list them but not cache them. That way there are no broken links for chinese users, they abide by the laws (from my understanding), and we can still see those websites.
There is a use to listing censored sites - so that people in China can know what's being withheld from them. (In the dubious words of Rumsfeld - listing censored sites makes them known unknowns rather than unknown unknowns....) A precursor to any sort of political change that enhances liberty is knowing that your freedom is being curtailed - and to what degree. I would say that Google is, in a limited way, enhancing China's ability to present a false picture of the world to its people.
But we love Google... Google always good...
Feeling like a James T. Kirk versus Robot logic issue.. head will blow up soon! Cannot resolve conflicting Slashdot logic!
KHaaaaaaaaaaannnn (just for effect)
Agile Artisans
... is silent censorship. And that is the kind of censorship that I find the most frightening about the digital age.
When you censor a physical document, it has to go somewhere. You have to take it, you have to steal it, you have to burn it, etc. On the web, a page that is gone is just gone, quietly and painlessly, with only perhaps a few broken links to show that it was ever there. Google may think those broken links are just an annoyance, but in truth they are all that seperates the futile censorship that regimes have practiced since civilization began from 1984.
If the Chinese government wants to censor sites, then we cannot stop them. Since they claim that they are doing it for the good of their own people, then they can have that discussion with those people, and we should not be accomplices to sweeping it under the rug.
The sad thing is that Google already have a precedent here: the way they mark search results that have been censored due to the DMCA (cf this). If they truly believed in "not being evil" they would do the same thing with Chinese news: place a disclaimer that some results have been removed because the news sources are available in China. Leave it to CG to explain why.
I know that there's more to this issue than algorithmic accuracy, and it's easy to say that Google shouldn't be doing China's work for them, but given that Google's a good search engine, and its availabilty is accordingly boon to free speech, even if its coverage isn't comprehensive, it's better than it not being available at all. It's notable that they've not promised to create any new censorship, only to "respect" existing censorship.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the beginning of the end of Google's dominance. They've just opened the door for the competition because we can now question the integrity of the main function it serves.
The whole reason most of us began using Google ages ago was because we knew that what was entered into that lone input box on the front page would return results as accurate as could scientifically be obtained. If the search didn't result in the match you wanted, you knew it wasn't Google's fault but your own.
But now they've admitted to editing the returns. How do we know this is the only case? Perhaps another search engine would return something more accurate?
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
What I found particulary amusing about this article are the "related links" on the right, pointing to "Best deals: Censorship" on pricegrabber.
That's probably an accurate description of the situation....
Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Doing no evil doesn't necessarily mean Google has to be the progressive cause for change," Li said. "(In China), they are saying, 'This is the law of the land, and there is nothing we can do to change it.'"
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
vindicate companies that did business with the 3rd Reich too?
I find something to be very flawed with the reasoning that it is moral to enter into an market in which you know your company's actions are furthuring the immoral policies of the government. Trying to absolve one's self of blame just because you are "trying to make a profit" which is "what comapnies do" doesn't seem to be a very wholesome answer.
Uh huh.
place a checkbox in the advanced search options:
[ ] display search results your government wont allow you to view.
-- john
Google does not only do this in China. In Germany, national socialism is largely forbidden, so the well-known NS/WP site stormfront.org is blocked. Try this link from German google, and notice how it claims to find no matches on stormfront.org. The same search on American google.com returns 53,500 matches.
I remember a few years back when China was in process of building "The Great Fire Wall" and how Cisco was providing a significant portion of the equpiment.
./'s favorite poster child company does the same thing, and its "well they have to obey the laws!" Pick one. Either you're against censorship, or you're for Capitialism and following the laws of the land. Don't apply the rules differently to different companies.
Slashdot erupted with much weeping and gnashing of teeth of the evils of Cisco and how they sold out to the devil and censorship yadda yadda.
Now
As citizens of a free country we should be offering an uplifted middle finger to the thugs who run China [1], and I cannot feel good about any company rooted here supporting them.
[1] And Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and Pakistan, and the list goes on. But the response should always be the same, contempt and derision for the thugs, and support for those citizens who are attempting to overthrow the thugs who run those countries.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
... says Google's motto. But what exactly does the company mean by that? To quote Sergey Page in an interview he and Larry Brin did for Playboy.
So what exactly is the right, ethical thing to do in the situation Google is having to face when it comes to providing search services in China? Abide by Chinese censorship laws in the name of business, or not deploy a local version of their search engine in that country rather than having to provide access to a search engine with censored results?After all, is this the right, ethical thing to do as far as Google is concerned? ... If it truly is, then I believe we ought to be somewhat more cautious about the company than we actually are and stop considering it as one which can only do good to the extent of sacrificing business opportunities in the name of ethics. Otherwise, perhaps we should just content ourselves of reconsidering the said motto.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If Google indexed banned sites, then they would still be available via Google's cache.
Nope. China already blocks Google's cache, as well as most proxies they can find.
Would it be better if China took Google offline entirely?
Not from their point of view. It's a too obvious a form of censorship. They want to maintain the illusion of freedom as much as possible. That's why they don't want Google listing these banned pages to begin with; it makes the censorship more obvious.
I bet Google did this to avoid being blocked themselves. The obvious, non-cowardly solution, would be to present the "blocked" links in a way that identifies them as blocked. This would be doubly informative, for it would show the Chinese user what he or she could access once their oppressive, human-rights violating government is replaced (or, once they are able to emigrate); and, it would quantify the results more appropriately. How long before Google filters U.S. results for politically-appropriate content?
The question then becomes, "if Google created these 'known unknowns,' how long would it be before Google itself gets blocked?"
Why does that have to be the question? Why can't it be "Is it necessary to put aside our principles of Freedom of Information to get access to the Chinese Market?"
A person would have the moral censure of his community to risk if he were to do this. But a corporation evades it because it has a mandate against moral choices.
Because a corporation will not make the same choices as a person, and because a corporation isn't subject to moral censure in the same way an individual is, the community should have special controls over what the corporation is allowed. This should include restricting its activities in anti-democratic political domains.
This reveals Google's "be good" mantra as nothing more than marketing nonsense.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
I knew of a student from mainland China who lived at the prime of communism in the 80s. Today he's a U.S citizen. If there is one thing for sure... he can't believe the difference in American TV and internet news.
On TV we censor so damn much, but everything's fair game on the internet. And that's great. Google is now playing axis of evil. The last place a student from China could find real content is now being censored.
Google was blocked by China for certain time last year.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
That's the game Google is playing. Your game, the one which goes as follows, has but one conclusion:
- Google opens for business in PRC, providing cache access to documents blocked by the government's filteres
- PRC blocks Google
- Game over. The people of China lose.
By going in soft, Google can build public mindshare by providing a powerful search tool that will help the public see into the gray areas of PRC's censorship, and begin exploiting them.With your approach, Google's principles would become instantly worthless to the people in China. With Google's approach, they will have the opportunity to attack the problem of censorship from within, rather than from outside.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
Something like 65%? Oh, you mean outside the U.S.? I have no idea....
http://www.rootstrikers.org/