Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Defends Itself On China Allegations
Vitaly Friedman writes "Yahoo defends its policies in China as doing more good than harm, even as multiple dissidents have been jailed based on Yahoo Mail evidence. From the article: 'Yahoo continues to defend itself against charges that its Chinese operations have been responsible for the jailing of multiple dissidents. Multiple reports have surfaced which tie Yahoo Mail to various Chinese court cases that have ended in imprisonment for writers with politically unpopular opinions.'"
"Yahoo defends its policies in China as doing more good than harm, even as multiple dissidents have been jailed based on Yahoo Mail evidence."
Only a Yahoo would believe such a claim. In related news, has anyone read Gulliver's Travels? I take it the people who chose the name for the company didn't.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
In other news, in Jailand, a nation with a rate of imprisonment of people who later turned out to be innocent which recently topped 45%, a police spokesman commented that as the rate was below 50%, the police force was still doing more harm than good.
Q: Doesn't 'Yahoo' mean Chinese Whore?
A: It does now!
Jeez - why do people expect these for-profit companies to be driven by the same idealistic, personal visions they have for the internet?
The internet is a technology - it's goal is not to undermine communism or authoritarian governments or to impose US ideals/values upon other countries. So why are so many people 'shocked' that companies like Yahoo! actually abide by the laws in the countries they do business in?
Look at wikipedia - just how successful do you think they'll be in China now that they're officially blocked??? Exact same thing would happen to Yahoo!
So clearly, Yahoo is also powerless to change there own business practices.
I mean, that totally makes sense, right?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
But Yahoo! is a US company. Not only that, it is a publicly traded company. News of what Yahoo! is doing in China is very much something to be concerned about.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
:wq
It's a concern because Yahoo is a US run corporation helping a communist government crack down and imprison people for things that are not crimes in a truly free nation.
Of course China is worth billions to the US so not much is said about it. If it were, say, Cuba, then politicians would be beating their chests and wanting to invade as Cuba has little financial impact on the US economy. China does.
It's all about the almight fucking dollar.
Trolling is a art,
We are all just people.
China is not the United States and they not only can, but do run things differently. ... I say let China do what China is going to do and lets concentrate on making things better in America first - then we can work on improving China's (online) rights.
... I say let [The Third Reich] do what [The Third Reich] is going to do and lets concentrate on making things better in America first - then we can work on improving [The Third Reich's] rights." In fact, I do believe many people did in fact say many things to that effect.
Except that in at most 20 years, China will be a superpower, so if you don't fix them now while they might still listen to you, in 20 years they definitely won't listen to you. In 30 years, China may very well be the superpower, at which point how broken the US is affects me and the majority of the world's population a lot less than how broken China is.
I'll leave you with one though: around the annexation of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain remarked: "How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!" or something to that effect. I'm sure people might have said something of a similar effect regarding the Holocaust if they had known: "[The Third Reich] is not the United States and they not only can, but do run things differently.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Guess which country is a solid #1 for prisoners per capita?
a p
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_per_c
To clarify, the annexation of Czechoslovakia referred to the annexation thereof by Nazi Germany, and "The Third Reich" = Nazi Germany. Forgive me for being condescending, but I simply do not have much faith in the capacity of people with mod points to know or understand these things.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
Ahhh, the old "greater good" fallacy. What a load. The only "good" coming out of this is Yahoo's bottom line. Which is far more valuable than the lives of a couple of lousy dissidents, evidently. Well, if they're doing this in China, I wonder what they're doing to the Americans. Oh, yeah. Pretty much the same thing. With even less evidence of any crime. We should start seeing some arrests in the near future, but "national security" interests will prevent us from ever finding out.
What?
but to make a big case out a small, and common occurrence (that we know about mind you) seems silly.
You have it bass ackwards. You're making a small case out of a big (and common) one. Freedom of speech is something we deem fundamental and universal.
When we lose the capacity to care about injustice, what good are we?
In an opinion piece on 19 Feb 2006, Kristoff of the New York Times all but called for a boycott on Yahoo. He thought that Google got a bum rap, Cisco and Microsoft were sleazy (but nothing like Yahoo), and that Yahoo was a national disgrace.
6 0815F63B5A0C7A8DDDAB0894DE404482&n=Top%2FOpinion%2 FEditorials%20and%20Op-Ed%2FOp-Ed%2FColumnists%2FN icholas%20D%20Kristof
Kristoff: "...nobody should touch Yahoo until it provides financially for the families of the three men it helped lock up and establishes annual fellowships in their names to bring Web journalists to America on study programs."
I think Kristoff's suggestion sounds doable.
Pay only link: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F
The website that coordinates the Yahoo boycott follows:
http://www.booyahoo.com/
Booyahoo has a link which details some of the alternatives to Yahoo services (hotmail, etc.) Some Slashdot users may want to help flesh it out.
Wikipedia lists some of the Yahoo owned sites and services (to avoid?):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!
Yahoo made money. To them, that's all that matters. The taxes on their profits help fund your schools, your hospitals, your roads, your military.
The profit chain doesn't just stop with Yahoo. Ultimately, the suppression of the Chinese people benefits Americans, and most other western countries. Not just through Yahoo, but through the collusion of countless other multinational companies with the Chinese oligarchs.
Our societies profit from the oppression of other nations. They did it during the colonial era, and they are doing it right now. The method has changed, some might say it's less severe now, but the result is the same.
People lose their freedom, so we live in opulence. And for most people in the west, it's a price they are more than happy to accept. Compassion is a rare commodity in the face of profit.
May the Maths Be with you!