Source: I publicly resigned from Google over dragonfly and dedicated months of my life and income to fighting it.
I am not advocating defeatism. I am simply trying to be realistic. It is a fact that within the tech community Google has always been given more leniency than their competitors, even when they're all guilty of the same crimes. The tech community assumes the best when it comes to Google and gives them the benefit of the doubt, even when they don't deserve it. Google's executives recognize this and have exploited this goodwill to further maximize their profit margins again and again, knowing that they can always quell any community outrage with empty promises to change and carefully crafted PR statements. Before it was Oracle, but now it's Facebook, Amazon, and Uber--As long as these companies exist, Google just needs to be the "lesser evil" and they'll always be excused.
Real, meaningful change would require a paradigm shift in the tech community that simply isn't going to happen while they're still overwhelmingly viewed as the most desirable company to work at and people still believe the "don't be evil" nonsense. The Google Kool-Aid is real and the tech community is drowning in it.
And we are already making huge impacts.
And, if press over the last six months (especially the NYT Rubin expose) is any indicator, Google's management is no longer viewed as benevolent.
I'm saying if this is important to you, don't be complicit... because the current response to this isn't enough to stop it.
I would posit that Google is given slightly more leniency because their infractions always tend to be slightly less bad.
• Google tracks everything, but is ever-so-slightly more transparent than Facebook or Amazon, and the opt out process is ever-so-slightly easier.
• Google had their own version of the Facebook's opt-in but highly-invasive research app, but only for people who were over 18 (at least as of the past couple years).
• Android is kind of open source depending on your definition.
• Google left China the first time, whereas Microsoft, Apple, and others continue to operate in the country in compliance with Chinese censorship laws.
I am (very obviously, I hope) not saying Google is an angelic savior, nor that we should accept their actions. However, I do think people's slightly-better opinion of Google is more-or-less commensurate with the company's slightly-better track record.
This equivocation is a little ridiculous imho. Google's app was literally a tracking app by its very claim, there was no sense of deception or bait-and-switch.
Doesn't that feel like it deserved more backlash?
Which is less annoying for me, but not really the moral high ground for other issues. Still, it influences my view of them.
Anyway. I can't say I'm surprised by this. I'm just hoping we manage to overcome nationalistic behavior in time. Global problems (AI regulation, climate change, human augmentation) will require global cooperation on a level that will allow no self-serving behavior. And unfortunately evolution has ill prepared us for this.
I will grant that in recent years I do not see a strong involvement from Larry and Sergei, in the spirit that I expect from them, and Google has been acting mostly like you would expect from any other corporation. And I definitely do not extend my goodwill to Eric Schmidt. But still, Google has vestiges of the srappy startup, moreso than any of the comparable tech behemoths, in my mind.
Oh? How do I opt out of Google's spying? I already don't have an account or use their services, but they still collect data on me from a wide variety of sources, both online and not. As far as I can tell, there is literally no way to get them to stop it.
I don't think Google has much of a high road here.
I was primarily thinking of google.com/dashboard.
It's far from perfect—for instance, it's only for people who have Google accounts—but when I go to Youtube, for instance, my video recommendation list is 100% generic, which is how I want it (no filter bubbles!).
I would really like to do the same on Amazon.com, but it's completely impossible. There's no dashboard equivalent.
Google isn't spying on you. They don't give a damn who you are. This may come as a blow, but your browsing history is not valuable in and if itself.
Your identity and behavior is only valuable to Google for the purpose of making you happy with their services. It's only desirable to Google to the extent that it represents an ongoing voluntary relationship between you and them. Otherwise its value goes negative.
Your data, your history, your preferences, if you don't want to use that information to make their site and services more useful, then they have no reason to keep it. It's a liability instead of an asset. It gets purged pretty quickly. This is true all across the company. No information is retained without your ongoing consent. I am dead certain this happens.
This obviously doesn't apply to aggregate/anonymous data. They don't decrement their count of people living in San Francisco by 1 just because you don't want people to know you exist. That's not how opting out works. It's not how population statistics work.
Ad targeting?
As I stated in a few comments down below: if we let American tech companies build custom tools to enable authoritarian governments in their political oppression, how could we possibly think they would stand up to protect something actually controversial, like a protester or a labor organizer?
But I have another point of view on the subject after having worked in SE Asia. I'm not trying to contradict anyone here, just give my (hopefully informed) opinion.
There are no democracies in SE Asia. There are a couple of countries that pretend to democracy (Cambodia and the Philippines spring to mind), but even these are highly controlled, and elections are not "free" as we would understand the term. For most of SE Asia, it's worse than that, and any elections are a complete sham. E.g. Thailand, where a king and a military junta rule the country, and the elections are insignificant in terms of actual power.
This situation is portrayed in western media as being a result of bad governments and oppressive regimes. But having lived there and talked to locals, it's more complicated than that.
SE Asian culture (actually a whole set of diverse cultures, but they have this in common) have a large "power distance". This means they tolerate large amounts of differences in power levels between individuals. In practice, this means that they don't expect to be equal. There is a strong concept of karma between lives (you're born into the life you deserve based on your karma from previous lives) and a strong concept of community, respecting your elders, looking after your family, working together for the good of the whole group. Individuality is frowned on, truth is less important than respect (this one was hard to grok- it's better to tell your boss what they want to hear than to tell them the truth. It sounds like cowardice to us, but it's actually all about respect and social harmony).
It's very hard for westerners to understand this culture. We come from a different set of base assumptions about life and how it should be lived. And SE Asians don't understand our assumptions either.
This cultural gap plays into the efforts to make Asian democracies. It doesn't work like that there. Most of the efforts I've seen make no effort at all to understand the culture they're trying to change, and make a blanket assumption that western democracy is a one-size-fits-all best-practice method for governing a country. I thought that, too, until I actually went there and experienced it. Now I understand why democracy has never worked in SE Asia, and I understand why they like "strong" rulers, and I understand why free speech isn't important to them.
I don't want to paint efforts to liberate SE Asia in such a bad light, but there is, still, a strong element of cultural imperialism here. The opinion the "West is Best" and that our democratic values are superior to the undemocratic values held by SE Asians is strong. There are organisations out there promoting western values who have no clue about the SE Asian values (and the ancient, strong cultures behind them) that they're trying to change. It's not coming from a place of understanding, but from assumed superiority.
I have no idea if Google has spent the time to understand the Chinese market, but creating a search engine that doesn't return "sensitive" topics would be consistent with that kind of research. I get that it contradicts western ideals of free speech, but those values are less important there. Social harmony is more important. It sounds weird and wrong to us, and it would be if it was being implemented in a western country. But this ain't Kansas, and the rules are different.
It is not an assumed superiority. We learn the lesson through our history, whether this lesson is right or wrong. We too had traditions of divine right, holistic medicine, censorship and similar, but those were replaced by current "Western" values. Censorship is seen as an unnecessary, oppressive weakness that we do not want to contribute to.
But by forcing our values onto SE Asian cultures, we are assuming that they cannot come up with "better" answers, and assuming that our way is the only way. Maybe there's an alternative to western society that they'll discover and share with us if we just let them do it their way? Maybe our western society is just not a good fit for their culture?
Of course, this would mean turning a blind eye to a lot of inequality and suffering, something that contradicts our values. We're seeing this play out in Australia with the indigenous culture being destroyed by western culture, (i part) because we cannot turn a blind eye to the poverty that appears to be a consequence of living in that culture. There is no obvious answer to this.
There's a lot of "forcing [of] values" going on in many SE Asian cultures, but the forcing is indigenous and towards maintaining existing power structures against other indigenous desires for reform.
If left alone, those "'better' answers" you speak of could be to the question of how authoritarians can suppress the kinds of cultural and political changes that happened in the West to bring about democracy.
In the end, I don't think SE Asian democracy would look exactly like modern Western society, but that doesn't mean that the status quo should be left undisturbed as some kind of experiment.
Maybe if we started with the point of view that SE Asians have the right to determine their own government, and that may not look like our western ideas of "acceptable" government, instead of starting with the assumption that these people need saving from tyrants and monsters?
Right now the status quo in most of SE Asia is rapidly accelerating wealth. In Europe that brought the kind of social changes that demanded democracy. Maybe leaving them "undisturbed" is exactly the right thing to do...
For instance, "Western" medicine is undeniably better than "traditional X" medicine. Because what people actually mean by "Western" medicine is modern medicine leaving behind all the historical western folk remedies that didn't work and keeping the folk remedies that worked. A lot of modern medicine comes from countries which would not be considered Western. You can of course split hairs in this discussion as well.
Censorship? Protectionism? These are less obvious concerns. That someone does not see the tragedy in holding a wife accountable for the democratic leanings and agitations of the husband and seeks to punish the husband by imposing punishments on the wife is so obviously unjust to me. The possibility that maybe society can be better when punishments are imposed in this way (the empirical question that would justify it under a utilitarian analysis) is just unconvincing to me (because I doubt it is true, I devalue utilitarian justice over individual justice and I don't even think the husband committed a crime). I could be wrong, though.
I wonder if you consider India to be in SE Asia. If not, please ignore the following.
Last I looked there were regular elections happening there, with "strong leaders" being voted out of power with some regularity. They have problems (same as everywhere including the USA), but democracy / free elections aren't a problem (yet).
"Democracy has never worked in SE Asia" is an extremely strong statement, and in your comment, I find too many stereotypes about the region, and a shallow understanding. (paraphrasing -'some of them believe in karma and so democracy can't work there' is so ridiculous an argument that I wonder if you are doing it deliberately to provoke discussion. Makes about as much sense as saying that some catholics believe that a monarchy is the best form of government so elections won't work in Ireland)
It is a strong statement. But as far as I can tell it's a true one. As far as I'm aware there's no SE Asian country that has a democratic government that we in the west would consider acceptable. I could be wrong - there are a lot of countries there and I'm not familiar with all of them.
My apologies for the sweeping statements. It's a complex subject and a HN post doesn't give room to explore the topic fully. I totally agree that this is a bit stereotypical. But it is based on my actual experiences in the region over the past few years. I have no idea whether more time there would change my opinion or reinforce it.
ok. that's fair.
Do you consider Japan to be part of SE Asia? Taiwan? (Due disclosure, I've never lived either country - only transited through them - and don't follow their politics closely, but afaik they are both democracies with regular and fair elections).
In your opinion are these countries 'true' democracies? (fwiw, not trying to pick a fight, just trying to wrap my head around what you are really saying)
I would include China in there, but not Korea or Japan, for not very well articulated reasons. I guess "Southern China" if that was a thing ;) Not sure about Taiwan at all.
So, looking at the "Democracy Index"[1], the highest-ranking SE Asian countries are Malaysia and the Philippines, at 52 and 53 respectively, out of the 167-member list. The lowest is Laos at 151. Only 4 (those two, Singapore and PNG) count as "flawed democracies" (but then the USA is in that category too). The rest are "hybrid" or "authoritarian". I guess it's a spectrum rather than a black-and-white "true"/"not true" democratic rating.
I get that Japan and Korea have fully-functioning democracies, yet similar power distance in their cultures and a similar religious cultural basis. I haven't visited those places yet, so again my ignorance is profound.
Consider the fact that vast majority of search queries will not be affected by the censorship. Your actions are depriving billion+ people from these queries. Think of all the things kids could have found out about science and western literature by better search that they currently aren't.
Finally, I would to leave a note on cultural aspects. Being in western world, we assume that every culture in the world wants democracy. We firmly believe that every culture resents censorship. From my contact with many asian folks, I have changed my assumptions and such belief. Chinese culture is fundamentally different. Government is not looked at some agency that people allowed to govern but rather an agency that is charted to protect culture even if it is at the expense of individualism. My theory is that even if Chinese government was toppled, the replacement would still have same characteristics because that is the expectation that people have from their government.
google.com exists and serves Chinese queries. If the Chinese Communist Party wants to continue blocking that because they don't like their citizens learning about human rights or Nobel prizes (yes, that is literally on the blacklist), then that is their option. But, for an American tech company to actively aid them for profit is a bridge too far.
I refuse to help normalize what I now know to be a history of American tech companies committing human rights abuses in exchange for access to foreign funding (with Cisco's creation of a surveilance and torture-management system targeting the Falun Gong being a particularly disturbing example).
Depends on the culture. Currently the Chinese government is doing its best to eradicate certain cultures and put their adherents in concentration camps[1].
It isn't just a censorship issue. Dragonfly would help put people in camps.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...
You push back against the Party in China, you're out of business. It is common knowledge that being in good terms with party officials is a prerequisite for any really successful company in China.
Taiwan is a counterexample.
edit: despite economic pressure from China.
But why should they have a realistic impression if information is controlled?
> But why should they have a realistic impression if information is controlled?
They may not know Taiwan well enough, but on average they know it much better than westerners.
This is obviously supported by extremely authoritative measures from government. Just look at what's happening in Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan. Imagine now, what happens when the growth engine stops or even reverses. The population might be much less accommodating to restrictive policies like the social credit system.
And I suspect the fate of Ceausescu must weigh on the minds of the party leaders.
This is the point I rarely heard here, or any Western communities.
As a Chinese, I was genuinely baffled when I first heard that there are people actually boycotting the re-entry of Google in China, instead of celebrating this milestone. I thought we can finally have a usable search engine.
I guess we get in the way of ideality. Oh well.
On the other hand, as you say, a purely pragmatic view is that it wouldn't make the situation worse if they offer a censored search engine, because that's the only thing (most) Chinese users get now anyway.
Entering China at the cost of 1) having to hand over personal information wholesale to the Chinese government in compliance with "local laws" (remember not to look at Xinjiang!) and 2) being forced into a losing position against local competitors like Baidu anyway is neither ethically great nor financially prudent.
In any case, Google is acting only in the interest of profit (as a for profit company beholden to shareholders), and painting it as some kind of great privilege for China to be receiving is big-headed on Google's part and a saccharine narrative justifying a purely business decision to make more money.
On the other hand, I don't feel Google's departure from China in 2010 was purely based on ideals either.
I for one judge people who look away by the facts, not the facts by others looking away, and after over half a century of killing political dissidents, the people who live now aren't the ones I would ask for direction. I would ask the ones that got killed first, if anyone.
> Think of all the things kids could have found out about science and western literature by better search that they currently aren't.
I first and foremost think of all the western literature, and more importantly history, I read and understood. I go by what I know for a fact, not by what others don't know yet. I don't "assume they want democracy", I know for a fact that I must not participate in totalitaranism, and won't break bread with those who do, or who offer it fig leaves.
Our intellectual and moral tradition, and the responsibilities that history places on us, is as it is. People can cut themselves off from it by ignoring it, to avoid a bit of friction here and get a bit of money or tourism there, but in the end that's just a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mess_of_pottage
The CCP doesn't value Google, and they will ban them if they "push back." If Google wants to operate in China, they will have to be the most slavish of lackeys.
You're also ignoring the leverage the CCP will gain over Google's non-PRC operations by allowing them in. It's not hard to find recent examples of the CCP/PRC using economic leverage on foreign companies to make them fall in line with its political positions (e.g. representation of Taiwan on airline websites, treatment of Tibet and the Dalai Lama, etc.). I think the most important aspect of Project Dragonfly is that leverage.
> I publicly resigned from Google
Because for every one that resigned, there are most likely hundreds that stay.
I do admire your courage and willing to take a stand. In the face of an oppressive government like China I hope I would have the courage to do the same.
Google employs at least 20k engineers. I'd be shocked if 100 quit over this news.
Google could be murdering kittens to cool servers with their blood and you could probably find enough competent engineers to keep 10 Google's fully staffed. The vast majority of people do not give two shits.
Everybody dies anyway, nobody is remembered, or gets to keep anything; we can build what we want, end result is the same. The only brief moment of reality is our experience of the universe and the kind of life we lead, and if what you claim true for "the vast majority of people" was true, IMO that would just mean the vast majority are deeply sick and probably frightened shitless of death. That'd no doubt be very important for them, but how would it matter for me? Should I jump into their pool, to drown alongside them and make them feel better?
All it takes is for a few good people to do nothing...
Additionally, leaving a secure, well-paid role in political protest takes a certain amount of privilege. My father left an amazing job in protest over immoral actions and I can assure you that it had huge financial impacts on my life growing up. I respect him for his decision and I like to think I'd make the same one, however, I can understand how people even less fortunate aren't making political choices with their employment.
Good.
It's not like a good, ethical developer is going to change things from the inside. Companies are not democracies, they are dictatorships.
So what if Google has no good and moral developers left? At least it will become more obvious what Google truly is while the 'good' developers can make a positive contribution elsewhere. It was clearly never going to happen at Google anyway, not with a incentives a publicly-traded company has.
I would much prefer Google to be manned entirely by the kinds of people I wouldn't dream of inviting into my home. I'm already against the company's existence, so Google having nobody left with a shred of integrity or backbone would make it a whole lot easier to argue for the company's demise, in whatever shape that may come.
I'm also saying that people who are saying this will hurt Google or make it hard for them to hire new people are flat-out wrong.
If we remember Occupy Wallstreet and look at how many people have been placed on lists, or how many protesters got hurt, in comparison with what the movement achieved, then it's proof that leaflet-campaigns achieve nothing. The bankers are still not held accountable a decade later and continue to collect fat bonuses all around the world. Peaceful protests aren't the solution. Anyone who reads history knows peaceful discourse has never triggered change when it mattered.
Peaceful protests are just a lot of noise. Ranting on facebook or twitter unfortunately solves nothing. Real action is painful and people (often millions) die. That's the only time when change happened in the past. Denying this is wishful thinking (at best) and akin to white-washing history (at worst).
"War on the planet" is happening as we speak. Yet all people do is talk while we're getting boiled like proverbial frogs. We rather engage in wishful thinking that tech / science (our new substitute religions) will solve these problems (what else to tell kids in their 20ies today?). The reality on how change can happen is bleaker. A whole spectrum of options are available - but none of them are peaceful. It essentially involves getting rid of at least 2/3 of the global population to give the planet a chance of recovery from humanities crimes against the planet.
With the compounded damage from climate change and global dimming, even if the human population is reduced to 10K surviving individuals, it's still no guarantee that the planet survives in that case.
So leaflet campaigns and peaceful discourse are laughable considering that all humans do in the face of these terrors is to engage in identity politics and fight for individual "rights" instead of talking about responsibilities.
EDIT: clarity/typos
But the fact that these weren't only ignored but didn't even result in a meaningful discussion is exactly my point.
[1] 10 Demands Being Made By The Wall Street Protesters https://www.businessinsider.com/finally-specific-demands-fro...
[2] PICKET: Occupy Wall Street protesters post manifesto of 'demands' https://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/oct/3/...
As opposed to ranting on HN?
“Does it really change anything on the ground? Someone else will assassinate Archduke Ferdinand?”
Etc. being morally opposed to something and trying to abstain from supporting it is not the same as campaigning against something’s existence. I wouldn’t work for a bomb company, but I’m not trying to shut down Lockheed Martin.
There’s many different moral systems. Some people are trying to not make things worse. Others are doing different things. It’s ok that there are gradations.
They also imprison a large amount of people in re-education camps.
>Google literally building a blacklist
Every single search engine or social media in China already has that. Yes, Google likely will build one for their services if they plan to enter China. But it's not like they come up, or "actively" help with this idea.
And when an org develops a habit of pushing people out who can see the moral dimension, it increases the number of decision makers within the org that don't.
I know someone who resigned for similar Moral Reasons when we were working on a project for a foreign country. At the time, I am ashamed to say, lot of people laughed and attacked him for the reasons being "superficial".
Exec Mgmt's position was - we are doing things conforming to the "local laws". The thing was, local laws existed in name only. You could get away with whatever you wanted by bribing people or helping the wrong kind of people. And once you have managers in place who have no problem with that what do you think happens?
Fast forward 15 years and we saw massive fines and few people went to jail. This plays out constantly in companies.
I was trying to say that from my (together with some other Chinese people's) perspective, it is "more moral" to re-enter China because it helps Chinese people to educate themselves better by giving a significant better search service. I don't see it as a way to help our gov. to suppress us. Quite the opposite, actually.
Again, I respect our ideality or value difference. But I think I should voice my view on it.
This was the idea years ago when we allowed it enter WTO. We were wrong on that. Now we are debating whether we should allow China export censorship?!
You're a kind person. You'll probably be alright economically, but if you ever feel socially excluded for what you've done, remember that what you did was right.
your impact is larger than you think - thank you
Rather than fight it, wouldn't it have been more effective to try to replace it?
A couple of really smart folks with some funding can found "NotGoogle, and actually not evil."
Breaking Google's monopoly would do far more good than just taking on this single issue.
No, probably not, even if it would be more effective if you did actually replace it.
> A couple of really smart folks with some funding can found "NotGoogle, and actually not evil."
Isn't that the concept of DDF?
> Breaking Google's monopoly would do far more good than just taking on this single issue.
Perhaps. But if displacing Google were “easy” (like on the scale of “it would only take some of the best tech talent in the world and an enormous supply of capital”), the FAA and M of FAANGMAN, and some others, would each already have done it.