Do you accept money for your work? Odds are that some of that money was gained through less than 100% ethical means -- if not directly by the person/company you got the money from, then perhaps by the person/company they got it from, etc. At some point down the line, some of it might be called "dirty money" or maybe even "blood money".
So what do you do? Do you stop accepting money because you have to be 100% ethical?
Do you stop interacting with any company that's not 100% ethical, with any person that's not 100% ethical, with any country that's not 100% ethical? Do you devote your life to protesting these unethical individuals, companies, and countries?
Some people do, but they are a vanishingly small number -- so small that if all positive change relied just on them, nothing would change.
The rest of us choose to make compromises, and we're not 100% pure. But that doesn't mean that we can't protest anything unless we protest everything, and it doesn't mean we can't accomplish some good while unfortunately participating to some extent in a non-prefectly ethical system.
when is it okay to protest?
are there any cases, either in the past or present, that you consider worthwhile and in good faith?
I don't get it — following your logic people shouldn't be protesting anything China-related because they're using chinese goods? I mean, this isn't a binary issue — you can buy chinese computers because most computers are made there and regret that Google is building a search engine to censor political queries.
By no means, I'm trying to say that you can't regret an issue without indirectly being part of a system that aggravates the same issue. I think nobody can escape this.
But it's different when you want to raise someone or something to a certain moral standard without understanding how fungible is that particular moral standard.
Sometimes people are just wasting their energy on things that are only an issue by their standards and not by the standards of the people who are ultimately affected by the issue itself (in this case the Chinese people).
I would like to see Google employees object with the same energy, things like Google unhinged data collection practices.
That’s not how morals work. Just because you’re not the victim of human rights abuse doesn’t mean you can’t try to prevent it.
Here's another Chinese person saying the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308777
I've never, in any of the many comment threads on Dragonfly, found a Chinese person who thinks otherwise.
All my Chinese relatives I've talked to also feel the same way, and from their reports, the majority of Chinese people feel the same way.
You are welcome to disagree, but don't put words in our mouths.
Pressure on countless different fronts from countless different people for the same moral cause can, and often does, lead to change. Hence, it is not hypocritical at all - to the contrary, it is pragmatic and effective. It's simply individuals doing what they can for something they believe in, and most of them know that they cannot win the battle alone. If it's a worthy cause, such people should be encouraged.
To call the individual who takes a stand on one but not all fronts a hypocrite is, ironically enough, a way of discouraging people from taking a stand at all.
Or do you want to say you can't have better search engine until the whole censorship is overhauled? If that's the case, why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there?
(As a side note: Is it wrong of me to be suspicious of comments on HN that are enthusiastically pro-China because they have English grammar errors in every sentence? Maybe, but I'm going to do that anyway.)
I think it's wrong of you to label someone as "enthusiastically pro-China" for thinking that having access to a censored version of Google would improve the state of the Chinese search engine market (without using VPNs, anyway). That's more of an anti-China position.
If you ignore comments by Chinese people on China (presumably because you suspect them of being government shills?) you're just discounting the opinion of those with actual first-hand experience and an incentive to see things improve.
Again, this isn't exactly my personal opinion but the obvious difference is this is one of the US's largest tech companies participating, not some Chinese company that US citizens are not familiar with.
>why not first stop use oil from Middle East until the war is complete ended there
Google employees have the power to protest Google projects, not big oil projects.
E.g. 1. Right to be forgotten. 2. DMCA. (differing views on this). 3. Russia (?)
in CH, search engines are state-censored for political reasons - mainly to keep in power a semi-dictatorship.
the right to be forgotten was implemented to protect individual rights. one may or may not agree with such a protection. however, the motivation was not systematic political censorship.
edit: missing word.
My primary objection is that Google is (was?) arranging the system so that every user is identified and, if they search for something forbidden, are reported to the government.
So it must be that the opponents of this project are not opposed to censorship in general, but to censorship as applied in the People's Republic of China.
I'd say forget about Chinese market, let aside Google's own identity struggle, Chinese government, under Xi, is much more stringent about its iron fist control over internet. Also the internet demographics have evolved. When Google quits China, it was hailed by many secretly as hero, now the ultra-nationalist new generation of netizens will welcome Google by their endless outrage against Western hypocrisies. To them, Google isn't the gold child of Western technologism, it is just a homeless dog who is disliked by its new master.
Supporting Chinese businesses by buying from them and being against selling suppression tools to the Chinese government are both sides of the same coin.
You’re conflating “made in China” with “made in America for suppressing the Chinese”. This is textbook propaganda to make the Chinese government and its citizens seem like a unified entity.
“Why would you buy a slice of Pizza in New York and simultaneously complain about the Belgians selling guns to the US government?”
They are not doing "something", they are building an oppression machine.
Your comparison between consuming Chinese goods and actively aiding the oppressing system is a false equivalence fallacy.
The fact is that even if evidence was revealed they had absolutely 0 gulags, or whatever it is you're claiming, it would not do much to silence anti-China sentiment. The presence of the gulags are not falsifiable, since opponents can always claim fabrication by the authoritarian regime. The only objective way is to defer to the majority of Chinese citizens, which currently approve of their government.
There's little point in arguing if the communist party is a party of saints—they'll always be doing something wrong, and they definitely are. The question is do they have a legitimate control of China? That's something only someone under their regime can answer and fight for, not a Western imperialist.
For example, to an American the invasion of Iraq may be officially an Operation for Iraqi Liberation, but to an Iraqi it may seem like control of OIL was the motivation. From a third party perspective you have to assume an American is motivated in self-interest, so if they seem more interested in the "liberation" of another group more than that group is itself, your duty is to question that motivation. The primary purpose of the US government is to serve American interests, so any reasons it gives of altruistic or justice-serving intent can be immediately thrown in the trash. I'm saying this as a tax-paying American citizen by the way.
I'm not saying that people don't have the right to morally object something like this project, but it's kind of baffling that many are loudly voicing their concerns and demonizing any company that is attempting to do something in China, while looking the other way when tweeting from their Chinese made iPhones, and writing dissenting articles in their Chinese made computers.
People should try to find better ways to calibrate their moral compass and focus their activism into more important and threatening issues. There are liberties that are being violated right here, right now.
If you think you can't work at Google because they are building a product for China, it would be pretty hard to work for any company in America, given how everything in this country is piggybacked on Chinese made goods.