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Google's China Problem
Wraithfighter writes "The New York Times has a rather lengthy, but informative, piece on the origins of Google's current Chinese search engine, as well as a very informative look at how censoring is actually done in China. From the article: 'Are there gradations of censorship, better and worse ways to limit information? In America, that seems like an intolerable question -- the end of the conversation. But in China, as Google has discovered, it is just the beginning.'"
Are there gradations of censorship, better and worse ways to limit information? In America, that seems like an intolerable question
Oh come on, very few in Amertica would argue against any limitations on information.
From trade secrets to copyrights to defamation to classified documents to pornography laws, restrictions on information are inherent in our whole legal system. How about court sealed documents? Furthermore, atatcking "propaganda" stations has long been considered a legitmimate aim of our military in waging wars.
Of course there gradations of censorship. The debate has ALWAYS been about which information can be restricted. Pretty much everyone agrees that some should be. Prentending otherwise is unhelpful and it's dishonest.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
Near the end of the first page, Lee sums up the attitude on both sides of the Pacific pretty well: "I don't think they care that much. I think people would say: 'Hey, U.S. democracy, that's a good form of government. Chinese government, good and stable, that's a good form of government. Whatever, as long as I get to go to my favorite Web site, see my friends, live happily.'"
It's nice to know the Chinese are as apathetic about their government as we are in the U.S.
What?
There are still many ways to bypass the block. Assuming one knows that the web page exists. Thanks to this "optimization", this is no longer the case.
If the effect of this "filter that is no censorship" is merely cosmetic, then why was Google forced to include it or face being banned from operating in China?
Surely there's a difference between "this event happened (because there's search results for it) but your country doesn't want you to see any information about it " and "this doesn't exist - look - that event ***never happened***"?
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Flamebait because he doesn't elaborate?
The U.S. is very good at withholding information. Not to unload too big a can of postmodernist wupp-ass on anyone, but it does so by creating whatever reality it wants. There STILL ARE/WERE WMDs in Iraq in the minds of many people because a chain of The New York Times, Judy Miller, Scooter Liddy, Dick Cheney SAID there were. Why _withhold_ information when you are the country with the Madison Avenue/Hollywood expertise to _create_ whole realities? When you have the mass seeing your reality, any "truths" are just insignificant background chatter.
I guess it was the comparison between apartheid South Africa and the U.S. where this first became glaringly apparent to me. Generally, South Africa dealt with dissent by "slips in the jail shower" and "suicides out the third floor window" -- excuses which are themselves shapings of reality, but crude post-incident excuses. It was only in the very latest years that they discovered the proactive power of advertising. If you aren't sipping KWV brandy in your decorated 10 room split-level in Soweto like the commercial shows you, it's because you're a LOSER. Doesn't have anything to do with politics.
It was their own fault it took them so long to discover advertising as a weapon. They only allowed TV in the '70s. In the U.S., we were born swimming in media and generally don't even recognize its inherent unreality.
Only in this country, censorship is not done in the name of the government. It's done almost solely to "protect" children or those with weak sensativities. I don't necessarily agree with the idea but I am saying that it does exist here.
Is it 5:30 yet?
>Google isn't censoring the internet for the chinese, they are optimizing it.
Thats a new one.
They are omitting results due to local laws. If this is optimizing, why don't they omit every single search result in America that would break local laws here?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
>google add a note at the bottom of the page saying something to the effect of "some of your search results have been omitted in compliance with local laws".
Suppose I search for "rumsfeld secretary of defense " and I get a nice set of results but at the bottom of the search page it says "some of your search results have been omitted in compliance with local laws".
Now is it;
1. Faked pictures/fan-fic stories about Donald Rumsfeld that clearly (or maybe not so clearly) break one of the multiple local decency laws.
or
2. Legitimate criticism of a high-ranking official highlighting his various professional flaws worthy of public discussion.
For me the whole Google/China thing comes down to the question - Do you trust a company and a government to think for you?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Do two quick searches to see for yourself, the difference between google.com and google.cn. These links refer to the image search on the U.S. and Chinese Google pages, respectively.
http://images.google.com/
http://www.google.cn/imghp?hl=zh-CN&tab=wi&q=
Search for "Tiananmen" on both sites and notice the *significant* difference in content returned by each.
I think you just ignored what he was saying. If you know a certain page exists, then there are many ways to bypass China's internet filtering. It's not perfect, and it never will be.
But by removing the blocked pages from Google's index completely, it's as if they never existed. In fact, blocking them no longer matters, because most people will never realize they exist in the first place.
Fundamentally, it's the difference between being handed a history book that's been filled with black marker lines covering stuff that's "redacted," and being given a history book that's been totally rewritten to only show one point of view. In the first case, you're at least painfully aware that you're getting a one-sided viewpoint, in the latter case you're not.
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Google did not do anything ethically wrong.
Blocking the results ensures that chinese people can use Google.
It is not teribly difficult for a chinese citizen to bypass the firewall, but guess what? It is also fairly easy for a chinese person to bypass the google censorship too!
Those who cannot figure out how to bypass the google censorship would likely have trouble bypassing the Great Firewall. Therefore the censored results are all that they have a use for.
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Maybe I shouldn't tell you about how Alexander Hamilton and his banking buddies got rich buying up confederation currancy for pennies on the dollar and then passing laws that it would all be honored at full value.
Or how much of the revolution was just mob violence at anyone who tried to regulate the economy including the burning of multiple warehouses and private residences because they were involved in British attempts to regulate the illegal rum trade.
Or how Thomas Jefferson, contrary to what Swordfish would tell you, never actually executed a man for treason on the Whitehouse lawn, he did have a man accused of treason and basically run out of town using his political power simply because the two of them didn't get along.
If you want to go a little further down, Abraham Lincoln publicly stated that he had no intrest in slavery either way, it was none of his business. He engaged int eh civil war to hold together the Union and nothing else. His later decision to emancipate the slaves in the area under martial law was commendable, but it wasn't part of his agenda, nor was he able to emancipate the slaves in territory that had remained in the Union as it wasn't under his war-powers control. I have the utmost of respect for the founders of our nation which I believe to be one if, if not the greatest in the world, but these men were far from saints and it's soemthing that people like to overlook.
Didn't the president of China visit Bill Gates before Pres. Bush?
I agree completely that what we have today is far from the ideals of the Constitution, my point is that so was what they had then. As you said it men, are men.
I don't think revolution is the solution. What has revolution brought us that reform could not? We end up with the same institutions, the same corruption, just with a different set of leaders.