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Google.cn Has Already Lifted Censorship
An anonymous reader writes "In an update to Google's withdrawal from China, there are reports that censorship has already been lifted. It's probably taken a while to report because of Google's ranking system." Just a warning that the language on that blog post is NSFW but it does provide evidence.
Google's expat employees are now out of China.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It's probably taken a while to report because of Google's ranking system.
I don't understand how this explains it. The searches shown have very low results for the offensive images? I don't think Google would be foolish enough to remove values from their page ranking system or fiddle with those numbers. Rather it would seem much more intuitive to build an interface that filters designated problem links and images. It's probably even automated for some bullshit arm of the Chinese government (who the devil is it these days? The Ministry of Culture?) that can go into a web portal and just add images and domains and pages to a list of restrictions. Maybe even the government is savvy enough to have an feed or service that gives this information out to companies to assure compliance and ease of compliance? A simpler answer is that a few new sites popped up and the government just hasn't added them to the no-no list yet. If you look at the URLs in the images, they are from blogspot.com which means they're probably new blogs that need to be individually blocked by the Chinese government and/or Google. What you're probably seeing is lazy censorship or the latency of an adequate solution for censorship -- which is pretty much as defective by design as it gets. I don't think "lifts" censorship is what's going on here or else Google would be looking at losing business to one sixths of the world's population. While Google professes 'do no evil' they still have shareholders to satisfy.
My work here is dung.
"Status @ 22:30 NZT, 17:30 Beijing time, 13-01-10: Despite reports to the contrary Google.cn is still censored."
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
Just a warning that the language on that blog post is NSFW but it does provide evidence.
So, do you by any chance work in a church?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
There's still search differences though
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=falun+gong
is quite different to
http://www.google.com/search?hl=zh-CN&q=falun+gong
Though either does a lot better than Yahoo!
http://search.cn.yahoo.com/s?p=falun+gong&v=web&pid=ysearch
I always wanted to own a Megacorporation, like Shin-Ra. You know, a big business that has its own army and basically can control the government by military force.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
When something is on the internet, there should be no possibility of withdraw.
DNS is the first thing that needs securing. I know DNSSEC gives authenticated proof of non-existence. That's a start, because DNS whitewashing is the low hanging fruit of internet censorship.
The internet community needs the technical infrastructure to steamroller Chinese censorship, Southern states on an anti-gambling warpath, Conservative Australian ... Peter Mandelson
If this is true. Google will now be able to provide porn to the Chineese market (though can individuals get arrested in China for viewing it or were only the cites censored?).
Oh yeah....Slastdot.org is a family site now, consisting of clean Ethical Apple Christian Hackers.
on troll dev/null
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Meanwhile German Google is still censored (no youporn and a few other porn sites, no neo nazi sites).
I wish our government would do something to piss Google off so that we could have uncensored search results (to be fair: In Germany we can just switch from the censored google.de to the uncensored google.com)
The Chinese need to learn that we will not do business with them until they clean up their human rights issues, implement better protection of IP, and stop being the dishonorable cheaters that they are.
Not Safe For Work
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I think it's more likely that there were other business considerations that had already made Google feel like it was difficult to do business with China, and the censorship lift is just PR gravy.
I appreciate the warning over language, though it didn't look worse than other sites /. links to from my brief look. But there are (albeit thumbnailed) images of the Tiananmen Square massacre, which are probably more important to warn people about.
Also, the article has evidence that censorship has not ceased so YMMV with this story.
Well, I know that from now on, that is what I will be reading it as.
No need to explain the term. He's probably away from his computer, being perp-walked to HR as I type.
Erm... Google images search for tiananmen square tank man in china:
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=en&safe=active&um=1&sa=1&q=tiananmen+square+tank+man&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&start=0
And on google.co.uk:
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&safe=active&um=1&sa=1&q=tiananmen+square+tank+man&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&start=0
To expand on this NSFW is used to mark anything that could get you fired reprimanded or flat out arrested
(anything that would be a career limiting move) significant nudity language above network primetime and medium or higher violence would be the highlights
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Even though I as a rule don't visit anything that would be deemed NSFW while at work, just the fear of something accidentally popping up and earning me that perp walk has convinced me to face my screen away from the door of my office. If someone walks in they have to walk around the desk before they can see what's up on the screen.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Is it just me or is there a "spin disconnect" with this news stroy. I hear and read from multiple sources that "Google" is "pulling out of China" because of cyber attacks. My guess is most will read such stuff and concluded that google is either removing censorship or leaving .cn because it can't protect itself from hacking. Reading google's post on the topic here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html seems to suggest that google is modifying its policies or leaving because "Chinese human rights activists" were primary targets. Google doesn't go so far as to say they are siding with "Chinese human rights activists," but it does seem to be implied.
So which is it? Is google championing "Chinese human rights activists" If so, why doesn't google focus, or redirect, the media coverage accordingly?
Wait. Stop scrolling for a sec. O.K. Thanks. - P
China was here before Google, and will be here long after
The funny thing is, for a short while today Baidu's search results also became less censored. Feel free to draw your own conclusions on what this means ;)
Google gets a fair amount of /. bashing just because it's grown as large as it has and sometimes they may even deserve it, but here we have an example of Google doing a good thing. You don't see many megacorporations taking a stand against internet censorship. Even if Google profits from this in some way and it isn't entirely a selfless act it's nice to see them doing something that benefits us little people too.
mmmm...forbidden donut
Funny it is Slashdot 'accidently popping up' for hour on end that has convinced me to face my screen away from the opening of my cubicle.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
If someone walks in they have to walk around the desk before they can see what's up on the screen.
Nope, I still can see what's on your screen, it's blurry though, look behind you, do you see me?
I remember back when Google first decided to offer censored search in China they were questioned as to whether they were in keeping with their motto of not being evil. Some said that by cooperating with China at all they are participating in the evil being done. Others thought that it was better to offer some search to the people rather than none. People can still make use of a good quality search, and some illicit material will still be available since no filter is 100%.
Now they could just keep cooperating with the Chinese government to stay in business there. Most companies would probably do that rather than stand up for themselves and fight back. It helps themselves as much as it is a good thing to stand for.
They probably have many non-altruistic reasons for doing what they are doing. But I bet the thought of their image, or brand, and how it would look depending on what they do had an impact on what they decided. So by having the motto of "Don't be Evil", they actually become less evil. And if doing good things helps their image, and helps to make them money, then so-be-it. At least good things are being done rather than more of the status-quo of mostly evil.
Hurray Google!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Just compare
the cn version with the one that the rest of the world sees
No matter what it does, we are too distrustful of large MNCs to ever assume they are capable of actually making a principled stand that would run contrary to business interests. The Google narrative of the situation is fairly clear: one of the costs of doing business in China was to kowtow to government censorship demands (complying with Chinese law, as they comply with American law in America and German law in Germany). They felt it was wrong (or not) but claimed the greater evil would be to NOT enter the search market, leaving it to be dominated by companies who would have no qualms about censorship whatsoever (see Yahoo handing over IP addresses).
They later discovered they had no leverage; the good they could do by being able to provide search results that were clearly marked as "censored" was outweighed by the harm that could be done by leaked information, and they were unable to do anything (within the bounds of Chinese law) to prevent it. Thus, they reevaluated, and are considering exiting the market.
The alternative is that it is simply a business strategy switch: they discovered the market is unprofitable, and are exiting or some shit.
The problem with this is simple: even if we concede that Chinese consumers don't click or buy anything through Google ads, rendering their business model moot, Google needs the market share. The Chinese will not always be poor. There are huge number of middle class Chinese in cities with enough disposable income to make purchases. The revenue streams will grow over the years. If they cede the market to Baidu, by the time the Chinese are rich enough to afford to buy products online through ads, Google will have to enter the market as a new player with no market share to start. Not being a business analyst for google, I do not know exactly how many clicks they need to remain profitable in China. But given the huge numbers of urban Chinese with money to spare, and the impressive rate of growth, it will only be a matter of time before (urban) China catches up to Taiwan and Korea (and eventually Japan). When that happens, it will be a much more profitable market than the US and Europe.
While I'm inclined to distrust MNCs, it is possible that they really are trying to make a stand. Did anyone know/leak this before it was announced, making them fear a Yahoo-style shitstorm? Otherwise, it would have made more sense to keep it quiet, simply say there was an attack, and leave the targets of the attack unannounced, and then continue business as usual. But no matter what it does, it will be accused of simply following the money. But hey, props to google for trying, in my book.
Of the search results from google.cn. That's a big deal, folks. Let's see how this plays out....
"Current Status @ 23:30 NZT, 18:30 Beijing time, 13-01-10: Heaps of reports of uncensored stuff. My post below may not be accurate. The images below show massive differences between google.cn results and google.com.hk results. The difference may be just a residual effect of the censorship - because Google ranks stuff based on links, previously censored materials may still be poorly ranked, even though they're no longer censored."
I am Chinese and have been using the Google.com (/ncr) for years. Never touched that .cn shit, and actually we call it "the eunuch Google".
Is any one working on this? With all the excess capacity in the hardware, a software upgrade is overdue. Seems like a viable product to me.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
More to the point, it's a good PR move drawing attention towards 'evil China initiating cyber attacks against Google to find human rights activists' and away from 'evil Google keeps enough information about your searching habits that an attacker could use them to identify human rights activists.'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Google.cn fails the basic Chinese Censorship Test: http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tiananmen+square&btnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&aq=2z&oq=ti
From what I read (outside of TFA) Google itself wasnt really hacked, just that Gmail accounts were broken into (which means their passwords were dictionary'd/guessed/phished).
Type "Judaism is", "Hinduism is", or "Christianity is" into google, and an autocomlpete will give the option of "... is false". Now try the same with Islam .... in fact try to get any negative sounding suggestion. You'll find it has been cenostrd as "non PC", or maybe google staff got some death threats or something like that.
'Slashdot' is currently trying to wrap its collective mind around the issue.
Your characterisation of it being of a single mind is a bit premature.
Furthermore, I have seem more (in number as well as in intelligence) comments commending Google's stance than disparaging it...
But seriously, even if true, this is going to last all of five minutes. Google has a losing hand against the Chinese government. The original press release did not say they lifted censorship. It said they would discuss the legality of "legal unfiltered results" which is clearly COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE if you have been paying any attention to the violent hermetic paranoia of China's government.
One of three things will probably occur:
If Google had a real stake in open-ness they would start discussing all the other jurisdictions they currently censor.
you had me at #!
Check this image from the article: http://publicaddress.net/assets/img/OnPoint/100113-1720-Google-NZ.jpg with what it is now... http://images.google.cn/images?q=Tiananmen%20Square&langpair=en%7Czh&hl=zh-CN&sa=N&tab=Di (I couldnt find the exact symbols the guy used, so I'm not sure if it counts... although I know the last search was very different hours ago.)
Here it is: http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87&gbv=2&aq=f&oq= [google.cn]
Here is the search with the terms used in the image you linked.
What say we lobby Steve Balmer and Carol Bartz (Yahoo!'s CEO) and see whether they have to cojones to fight against what is a very serious problem: Chinese state-funded black hats.
What I don't understand is that the West has made China what it is today. Why bite the hand that feeds it?
Espionage is one thing, disrupting other countries commerce by subverting the basic rules of the internet is economic war. Let's treat it as such.
*** Don't be dull.***
Google announces that it will now display pictures of some guy's brain lying on the ground in Tiananmen Square, and while passing that on, Slashdot pre-warns people about "holy shit" being displayed on a workplace computer screen.
A high-expectation joke from good Mr. Taco?
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Google represents access to the internet. So by proxy, it represents Everything. When China had a full buffet of Google, and Yahoo and MSN and Baidu, it could maintain the illusion that people really had access to Everything.
If Google takes itself off the table, it will become clear that they don't, and that goes to the heart of the social contract between the Chinese government and its people.
No it doesn’t. You just said the complete opposite in the previous paragraph:
Sure, Chinese businesses might not do as well if they couldn't deal with Google, but dealing with local search leader Baidu, or Microsoft, or Yahoo, that's hardly going to cripple the economy.
Also, do you really believe that the people of China do not know that they live in an oppressive censoring state, and that they do not know that they don’t have access to everything?? Seriously??
Sorry, but what argument should I take from you, if you are contradicting yourself? There’s nothing left to take, but to laugh at you.
And all that is pure interpretation, based on one single Twitter post:
"It's not Google leaving China, it's China leaving the world."
Ridiculous.
P.S.: Don’t dare putting me in a drawer with either Google or China, and modding based on your wrong assumption. I think they are both just results of the same mechanism (gaining power over other[ thing]s), that is a result of natural selection at work. Which makes them “evil” from the outside standpoint, and “good” from the inside standpoint. But really, there are of course no absolutes for good and bad.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Something tells me that the Chinese government didn't just try to hack a few Gmail accounts, for government agencies try to do that all the time. Also, that's not a good enough reason for Google to withdraw itself completely from China leaving it wide open for Bing to take over. I think the Chinese wanted copies of all Google accounts(gmail, docs, etc) that belong to Chinese people(or just the activists) such that they save time and money of trying to hack into their accounts. Google, whose man niche is having such horrendous amounts of valuable data, didn't want it.
Funnily enough, it sounds like just the sort of thing that Google would do really well!
http://www.google.com/finance?q=google
http://www.google.com/finance?q=baidu
Or to see the differential together:
http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=1&chfdeh=true&chdet=1263416400000&chddm=10108&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NASDAQ:GOOG&cmptdms=0&q=NASDAQ:BIDU&ntsp=0
Just thought it might have an effect. Its huge effect !!
Google will take a small hit for this i thought, but its really more than i thought.
I have mad about 250% on shares this year, and simple world events like this combined with technical trading make this an easy game for making money
Free USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand!
Usually a little of both.
I said it in the other thread, but it bears repeating: the Chinese government wants its own little kiddie pool of an internet. The presence of a foreign search provider is inherently a bad thing in China's eyes. Now, if that foreign search provider wants to take it in the ass and censor everything, then sure the Chinese will tolerate it. But, if Google folds its tents in China, I guarantee you no one in the Communist Party is going to shed a single tear over it.
Even if China were the most open democracy in the world, the disappearance of Google wouldn't bother the Chinese. It's in their national character to disdain outsiders. Hell, google.cn might as well be Mandarin for Great Barbarian Ignorance Network. It's just how the Chinese see the world.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen%20square%20massacre&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Because I sure see some pictures of tanks if you add the word massacre to that search.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Islam is the one true religion. It says so right on the box.
It's not the fault of any Muslim that the other religions simply neglected to try this key marketing ploy. Geez.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Big changes in China tend to take a long time, and then brutally wreck the entire country.
It's not a culture disposed to ideological revolution. Historically, the Chinese government rots away from the inside over a long period of time, until eventually the outer fringes -- essentially the non-Han ethnic areas -- no longer respect the central authority. They start testing what they can get away with, and then the downward spiral begins.
Right now the Chinese government is doing a good job of keeping the fringes under control. There just isn't much chance of China undergoing meaningful change anytime soon.
And, frankly, should it happen, it will be a humanitarian nightmare.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The original press release did not say they lifted censorship. It said they would discuss the legality of "legal unfiltered results"
you are 1/2 right. the quote is below,
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.
they haven't done it yet (at the time the blog was written), but they said they have decided that they will lift censorship, period. the decision was made. this is a pretty strong statement. if they backtracked on this, they would face a PR nightmare.
The Nationalists really, really fucked that country up. I mean, Robert Mugabe-style. Complete with deliberate currency devaluations to eradicate debt.
Then Mao really fucked the country up after that.
To say that China is better today is to simply state that it still exists. Because it could not have gotten worse without turning into Somalia.
The biggest thing that defends the Communist Party today is that Chinese culture is so rife with the corruption that the CCP largely functions as a clearinghouse for bribery and extortion. Everyone gets their cheap goods, and no one asks how it happened. For all intents, China is nothing but a better organized version of Nigeria.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Appears to still be cesored. http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&oq=tiananmen&ei=ZQFOS5iEIZDQM9e07PkM&sa=X&oi=pinyin&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CA0QBSgA&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8&spell=1
Still displays "According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown.".
It's
http://www.mandarintools.com/cgi-bin/wordlook.pl?word=%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6&searchtype=chinese&where=whole&audio=on
liu4 si4 - 6 4 i.e June 4th
shi4 jian4 - incident
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The specific mention of human rights activists is Google's way of telegraphing, without saying it directly, that they believe the hacking was done by or sponsored by the Chinese government itself. This is also reflected in the fact that they drew a statement from the U.S. Secretary of State--not the typical response to a business blog post.
Google is taking the side of business. Despite what you might read here Slashdot, businesses cannot win against government opposition. If the Chinese government itself is attacking Google, then Google has no certainty in any Chinese business dealings, since things like contracts and IP are (supposed to be) protected by the government. It would be like trying to walk forward when giant cracks in the ground are opening up all over the place. At some point you have to decide whether the prize you're walking toward is actually worth the risk you take with each step.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
One search to rule them all,
one search to find them,
one search to bing them all
and in the darkness squirt them.
Opps I was supposed to bash The G.
Yah I'll be here all week. Sorry.
Yes. Seems to be the case.
Wait. Stop scrolling for a sec. O.K. Thanks. - P
No matter how powerful a corporation gets, it's goal is to make money for its investors. A government doesn't have any such mandate. As such governments have far more resources to invest in non-profitable sources of power: Soldiers, guns, and tanks. Money is powerful, but it is always trumped by a soldier with a gun. A powerful corporation is only powerful while it is allowed to be by the local government.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Hey don't laugh. It could be very helpful to use an MS-office style (Does OO.org do it too? I hardly use office apps anymore) green squiggly to highlight potential errors or areas that could be improved - light up "seize and desist" "win or loose" "for all intensive purposes", etc and it could make a huge difference to the spelling/grammar/writing-impaired.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That’s actually what grammar checkers our supposed too help with.
However, Word 2003’s grammar check didn’t find anything wrong with that statement. Clearly, it’s not perfect.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If Google made it work and gave it to Open Office, for that one improvement it would deserve to crush MS Office.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Hey don't laugh. It could be very helpful to use an MS-office style (Does OO.org do it too? I hardly use office apps anymore) green squiggly to highlight potential errors or areas that could be improved - light up "seize and desist" "win or loose" "for all intensive purposes", etc and it could make a huge difference to the spelling/grammar/writing-impaired.
Maybe... But do we want everyone to have that sort of power?
Spelling, word comprehension, and sentence structure can all add a veneer of validity; and particularly in the case of online posts that veneer can make a big impression.
I appreciate seeing bad grammar online the same way I appreciate the presence of racism in political discussions. Sometimes it nice to have a big flag pointing out those who either don't have a clue or aren't willing to place thought before speech.
While this isn't going to be a popular suggestion, MS Word's latest incarnations actually have grammar and style checkers that do pretty well (there's now a blue line in addition to green and red). Between the three colors, most mistakes of a contextual use nature are dealt with
Bad spelling and grammar can afflict anyone, only when repeated should your judgement waver. Let he who has never wished for an edit button on slashdot cast the first stone.
....it could make a huge difference to the spelling/grammar/writing-impaired....
It would make an even bigger difference if people would learn how to spell while still in school. Someone who can't even correctly post a short note on a forum such as Slashdot, should not even get a high school diploma.
All theory is gray
Thanks for the info. I have MS Office 2k and XP but only ever use notepad myself. Mostly SpellCheck just nags me about unknown words &c. I use odd language. ;]
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
So by having the motto of "Don't be Evil",
But it is not their motto. It is one non-central remark on the advertising aspect of their business on their long corporate values page. Obviously it has been blown out of all proportion by brand enthusiasts over a decade ago.
Since China owns the majority of the United States national debt...
1) Google gives US huge loans
2) US pays of China debts
3) ???
4) World domination by Google