It is simply not possible to both cooperate with the Chinese (or, to a lesser extent, any other) government against its citizens and remain transparent. Part of this type of cooperation includes a requirement by the government for opacity. This is easier for less-principled and/or more closed companies. You can only not-cooperate transparently (and even then, only sometimes).
The real problem is you can't have a we'll-publicly-disagree-but-do-it-anyways approach with China like you might elsewhere. There's a reason a CEO might make a public post disagreeing with the approach of one government yet will forever remain mum concerning another.
Just stop requiring growth at all costs, chalk up the China (and military) market as a loss, and continue operating at your massively profitable status quo. It may seem like it's a double standard when other companies have access to those markets sans media backlash, but just recognize the differences are known out here in the masses.
First, writing off China isn't that easy. It's a big market and a growth market. Soon it will be the clear number 1. Opting out of china is part way to opting out of being a global business.
2nd is the nature of the best online businesses. The big online cash cows operate on market/niche dominance. A search engine with 5% of Google's search volume does not generate 5% of Google's revenue. Far from it. A social network with 5% of the people you know is a totally different beast to Facebook. An operating system (eg Android) either has a large market share, or it does not have an ecosystem.
Size, market share and such are relevant to these businessess well beyond the simple "economies of scale" rationale. They are not going sacrifice this for "don't be evil."
3rd is that by denying governments, Google & FB would be saying "we're allowed but you aren't."
FB & Google track and use all sorts of customer data for their own commercial reasons. If it is a privacy violation for the Chinese/US government to see/use this data, why is it OK for Google & FB to use this data?
FB decides who should see which article. This is done algorithmically, optimizing for FBs goals. "Old media" had a code of journalistic ethical guidelines, justifying content decisions. FB does not. Why is it OK to widely circulate a (for example) totally false article in order to achieve FBs commercial goals, but not to achieve the Chinese governments "societal harmony" goals?
The NYT could answer that question. They'd have journalistic ethic reasons for not allowing governments to influence content. FB can't. It doesn't.
Btw, what is true for China is true for other countries too with variations and degrees.
> FB & Google track and use all sorts of customer data for their own commercial reasons. If it is a privacy violation for the Chinese/US government to see/use this data, why is it OK for Google & FB to use this data?
Because Google & FB can't lock you up for saying something about Tibet, for example?
> Just stop requiring growth at all costs, chalk up the China (and military) market as a loss, and continue operating at your massively profitable status quo.
This is what Google did initially; instead of censoring themselves like the Chinese government demanded, they opted to leave the Chinese market entirely.
But that's almost ten years ago now; meanwhile, the Chinese economy / GDP has doubled, its connected population has more than doubled, and Chinese internet companies have entrenched themselves. China will - if it isn't already - be the biggest potential market for internet companies.
"If we ignore China it will go away" hasn't worked. I doubt Google can re-enter the market and be successful though. Their local competitors are well entrenched and Google doesn't offer anything new.
> This is what Google did initially; instead of censoring themselves like the Chinese government demanded, they opted to leave the Chinese market entirely.
This is the narrative that Google is successfully pushing; the truth is that they pulled out due to repeated hacking attempts.
Google did have a censored china version of its search engine.
Google should have been building tools for bypassing the great wall of china since 2006 when they first caved into setting up a censored search engine.
Think of the market potential of being the niche underground websearch in china.
>There's a reason a CEO might make a public post disagreeing with the approach of one government yet will forever remain mum concerning another.
Can anybody help me find the video or podcast of a prominent VC from SF heading its Chinese operations goes silent when asked about Chinese censorship. I just can't recall the name or seem to find it in my bookmarks.
> Just stop requiring growth at all costs, chalk up the China (and military) market as a loss, and continue operating at your massively profitable status quo.
It could be that it's not just about profit or growth, but about preventing Chinese companies from developing competing technology.
How would this work? It seems more likely that Google’s collaboration could allow them access to technology that they will copy and iterate upon. This is what Japan did and they now exceed the US in several technological domains (e.g. automotive manufacturing).
By entering a market as a big player, you effectively steal money from the existing players. Also, you're increasing the barriers of entry for new players.
Perhaps in a free, highly competitive market. But that doesn’t seem true in a state-controlled market like Chinese IT, where collaboration with the government is required. The CCP is free to pick winners and losers, intrude and interfere with little recourse for the companies who disagree with their decisions or end up on the wrong side of them.
Yes! Thank you for writing this. I bought Baidu stocks after the dip and haven't done very well lately. Perhaps with posts like this we can stop Google from infiltrating China.
Fact 1: Google only pulled search business out of China. adsense/adwords/maps works fine in China
Fact 2: Search engines are more and more irrelevant these days. All interesting new content are either from Weibo or Wechat (or other closed garden)
Fact 3: all reports about "Google returning to China" are based solely on the "Intercept report"[1] as source. I suggest everyone take a look at it. I think there's a huge misunderstanding. Maybe it's in-app search for some domain business only instead of web-wide search?
Fact 4: Firewalls in China has a hierarchical layers of blocking. Some times the plain text http is effected, sometimes it's the DNS, sometimes it's the tis certs, most of the time it's heuristics (e.g. SVM model to classify traffic) and random. There are also collateral blocking, like a blocking a CDN. You can't guess exactly which one piece of information was the culprit. And it all varies in places and time. All "blocking" are based on empirical assumptions, no one have ever done a large scale, down to the packet level study of it. Administrative notices of taking down articles are blurry as hell. Sometimes there's even corporates faking govn't orders to remove some review as PR move. So it's very hard to suggest if an "article" should be blocked or not. The chinese govn't utilize this method to force everyone to "self-censorship" and some business are making a profit of it.
well, it's good to know the same two people are verified again and again. I do really appreciate those links.
Are there any further development besides the initial "Intercept report" details?
My best guess is that Google China somehow partnered with a major Android ROM developer in China to provide a search component in Android system, some kind of integration with "Custom Search API".
It's nothing like the full search experience is returning to China, but technically it's based on the same google search infrastructure.
It’s odd that you’re willing to so vehemently question sourced reporting, while simultaneously postulating, without any evidence, that a very narrow, favorable to Google scenario is likely to be the case.
Those newer sourced reporting adds the "media credibility", reduced the noise, but did not increase signal. Thus multiple sources equals one source to me. Source is not some kind of score that can be accumulated, if you believe source quantity than quality then you are fallen into the power user trap.
I like to analyze the structure & dynamic of a topic, not the number of "sources".
Forgive us if we completely disregard anonymous sources. This sort of "reporting" is not based on any kind evidence or actual investigation. It is pure gossip.
At this point we know only that there are people inside Google who are, for various reasons, leaking information to the press. We have no direct quotes from these anonymous sources nor any information about who they might be. For all we know they could be janitors.
What's so funny is that I remember the days when Greenwald used to rage daily against the media for using anonymous sources. Now this has become the primary type of "reporting" that the Intercept trucks in.
> Fact 1: Google only pulled search business out of China. adsense/adwords/maps works fine in China
YouTube and Gmail also don't work in China, which are significant. They technically didn't leave China, however, because they never entered it.
> Fact 2: Search engines are more and more irrelevant these days. All interesting new content are either from Weibo or Wechat (or other closed garden)
I think you mean to qualify that with in China?
> Fact 4: Firewalls in China has a hierarchical layers of blocking
Most of the western-world web moved to HTTPS specifically because China was inspecting plain text packets. It was interesting to watch the change over happen from 2008-2011.
Are you aware of the fact that Google has search apps on both iOS Appstore and Android Playstore?
If you want to know who is using such apps, look up the reviews on them.
Did you mean com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox and id284815942 ?
These are not exactly web page search. It need deep integration with account(gmail), maps (with up-to-dateupdated POI), schedules, music, movie reviews, news.
It covered much more than just search. I am not sure google can pull that off the same app in China. It will be very unlikely.
I use google's search app on Android multiple times every day. Its a one-click from the home screen to open the voice input and process requests that way. Opening a browser, pressing the voice input key, speaking, then pressing the search button is way more steps than using the native app for search.
Maps "works", there are essentially zero updates for many years. Walk down a street in Shanghai where business pop up/ shutdown/ move more often than annually on average, hardly a single name ever correlates with google maps.
Google maps is not accessible without a VPN in China. Not sure what the disagreeement is about. I’m looking at it being blocked on my computer right now.
You can see your own location in the Maps app, but that’s based on the phone’s GPS, not a google service.
Not sure what the comparison to Japan is, but maps works fine in Tokyo. I use it extensively every time I go there.
I forgot to clarify, I'm using Google Fi in Beijing right now. My point was that, even though maps may be blocked, it really works flawlessly. It's better than Baidu maps, though Baidu has made great strides in quality lately.
Yes, phone autocorrected Fi fiber...edited it but soon enough it seems. Google Fi is available in the US with certain phones. I got the Pixel 2 specifically for it... otherwise I'd probably have the Huawei P20
I initially had that reaction but then remembered the initiative Facebook has to provide "internet" to impoverished places (basically just a portal to Facebook). And it's not just other countries—most of my non-technical friends do not browse news aggregators where they are exposed to multiple new sources (it's amazing how many blogs and smaller sites I've found because of HN and reddit).
Fact 5:
The Chinese Government, which Google will collaborate with to operate in China, has upwards of two million Uighurs and Muslim minorities in what the UN calls a “massive internment camp.” Uighurs are also reported to be being detained upon re-entry into the country, with some then “dying in custody”
I can guarantee you that labeling China with these can go on forever, but how does your fact help with the quesiton we are discussing?
btw Yes I do think Google made the wrong move to cooperate with China. But also I don't think a search app is the plan here. Maybe there are some misunderstanding from the source.
Isn't it strange how in just a few days we go from "credible reports" of 1 million individuals to a fact of two million people in one "massive" "camp"?
> Documents seen by The Intercept, marked “Google confidential,” say that Google’s Chinese search app will automatically identify and filter websites blocked by the Great Firewall.
This part does not make much sense. It's simply impractical.
> Eight years after Google initially took a stand against Internet censorship by exiting the Chinese search market
Wried, don't just mention the censorship reason. The bigger picture is [0][1]:
1. China government demanding content deletion by "Red-Header Files" (Government document) rather than law (As it will make the censorship too apparent), and it's violated Google's policy. NOT because of Google is an anti-censorship enthusiast as many people think they are.
2. During that time, Google (including Gmail) also under attack (with possible internal help) by a group of hackers who Google claims are sponsored by the government.
Now, 8 years later, things changed a lot. Especially after the implementation of the China Internet Security Law (中华人民共和国网络安全法)[2] which makes censorship a public responsibility ...
This disproportionate focus on China is being used as a distraction from the all encompassing surveillance currently run by the NSA, GCHQ and Google, Facebook and others which is a far bigger and ongoing threat to democracy and citizens here. China's actions are limited to China.
There is hardly any activism against the invasive surveillance of SV companies or protests against the NSA. This forum itself has its fair share of apologists for surveillance capitalism. Where are the protests in front of Google and Facebooks campuses and in Washington?
So if people don't care about these issues at home how can they care about them in China? This is simply not credible or serious.
China's actions don't impact you, your governments and companies here do. In the absence of any mainstream activism, just singling out China for outrage and anger is duplicitous and comes across as motivated more by politics than any genuine concern for the issues.
> There is hardly any activism against the invasive surveillance of SV companies
Wut? It's obvious that's not true at all, and really easy to prove. Just read this NY Times article from yesterday, about how privacy activists got a law passed in California to reign in those same SV companies: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/magazine/facebook-google-....
This only proves the point, the whole perspective of the nytimes piece is a lone 'accidental' activist fighting against the system facing pushback at every stage.
Where are the software engineers of SV who work for these companies and implement these programs in the activism, where are the dissenters, where are all the folks who are outraged about China on every article?
Without mainstream activism against surveillance capitalism, NSA surveillance, secret courts, secret processes and secret orders surveillance will become a dragnet few will be able to escape from.
How can we hold China accountable for the same things we are doing? The least that can be done by the tech community is try to get Snowden back with full honors, but like Assange he lies discarded with zero activism, and even demonized in some sections of the press as a 'traitor' and here we pretend to care about these things.
> There is hardly any activism against the invasive surveillance of SV companies or protests against the NSA
There are plenty of encryption projects around here, and I would not describe the HN crowd as pro-NSA or even pro-Facebook.
Keeping Google insulated from the influence of the Chinese market seems at least somewhat realistic as an activism goal. Separating Google from the US gov't is simply impossible.
I'm an American, own and operate two Chinese companies (an operations/engineering consulting company and a factory). I was here when Google left.
From the end user's viewpoint, internet censorship has only become more strict. While VPN access has never been totally unavailable, it can be painful to use. I've changed my browsing habits to settle for using Bing more than I otherwise would have. At the same time, I'm thankful at least Bing is here. At least, Bing provides reasonable access to search results for technical queries in English. Like, returning helpful answers to Stack Overflow programming questions. Baidu is useless for this.
From a business point of view, to give you some sense of my perspective. I'm not operating with corporate deep pocket money, own 100% of my company, bootstrapped, sales between $1-$3M USD/year for past five years. At this point, I guess I fit into a class of entrepreneur best labeled "multi-national small business owner". It is a tough segment to try to operate in. It requres a complex business structure with entities in several countries (now in China, Hong Kong, and USA). Lots of filings and tax issues to deal with. Being an American makes it even harder with rules and regulations.
So I read this article from the viewpoint of my own biases and experiences (as we all do).
What struck me was, the EFF takes a pain to focus on "the public, Google’s users, and Google’s employees". Further, they ask - "What sacrifices will Google make to its own operating practices in order to enter the Chinese market? Will it have to comply with China’s internal strict regulations, and how will these compromises affect its offerings outside of China?"
From my view, first let me just be frank, China does not give a fuck about Google. If Google comes to China, it will not change China's policy in any way. If Google does not come to China, it will have zero impact on China's policy, in any area.
So to address the first question EFF raises. Yes, with every company that comes to China, the company must adapt to China, not the other way around. There will be many sacrifices and changes to operating practices. As there are for every company that enters China.
For the second question. Yes, to compete here in China, Google will have to adapt to China's strict regulations regarding the things they do not want to be discussed. But, China is well aware of how to operate with separate sets of rules. Hell, they invented "One country, two systems" by integrating Hong Kong. It will not affect Google's offerings outside of China. But while inside their walls, you got to follow their rules.
Last, Google has direct competitors that are in China. This EFF article makes no mention of "shareholders" or "business". But, Google has the responsibility to their shareholders to enter new markets to compete where there is a void. It is not Google's responsibility to fight China. As far as human rights, censorship, etc, that is not Googles fight either, but one thing is certain, choosing to avoid China cannot help things in the future. If you are not here, physically inside China operating, there is zero chance you can have an impact, should the time ever arise.
Net/net. I think it is better for all parties to have Google back in China.
> It will not affect Google's offerings outside of China. But while inside their walls, you got to follow their rules.
No. Having operations in China gives the Chinese government leverage over you, which they're starting to use to pressure companies to toe their line even outside of the PRC. For examples, see the recent articles regarding airline's treatment of Taiwan on their websites [1]. See also how Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologize for posting a Dalai Lama quote on Instagram [2], and how a Marriott employee was fired after he "liked" a post about Tibetan independence [3]. The latter two happened despite both websites being blocked in China. Years ago, Yahoo also handed the Chinese government information revealing the identities of two Chinese pro-democracy activists, which resulted in their imprisonment [4].
Maybe you were too small for them to bother with, but I'm not sure the PRC could resist the temptation of using the leverage they'd have over a Google with significant Chinese operations. After all, Google is the gatekeeper of information in the West (Google Search), and one of the main ways Westerners and dissidents communicate (Gmail).
Any company operating in China must necessarily welcome a new stakeholder to the table, which are the Chinese citizens, themselves. With that, Chinese citizens are on the whole proud nationalists. Flag waving, chest thumping Nationalists, proud of their country and protecting against any perceived or real slight. Sure, many of them are likely Party members, raised from birth. So, it seems hard to discern the line here between it being an actual concerted government action against these companies vs. just simply a function of a gang of these loudly screaming nationalist citizens, connected through social media, calling out the companies.
In the case of airlines, it was the Chinese gov't directly. I would assume that they attempt to solve issues through "grassroots" complaints before officially stepping in.
But it doesn't really matter. The end result is the same, Google becomes more susceptible to blackmail.
That does not at all alleviate the concerns about Google's presence in China affecting the business outside of China. How does that square with the "separate sets of rules" you mentioned earlier?
> So, it seems hard to discern the line here between it being an actual concerted government action against these companies vs. just simply a function of a gang of these loudly screaming nationalist citizens, connected through social media, calling out the companies.
>Google has the responsibility to their shareholders to enter new markets
I don't think so. I think Google has the responsibility to make money. It could hypothetically be the case that entering a new market would cause a loss of money, and thus Google shouldn't enter it. Potential reasons it might cause a loss of money include employees quitting and bad publicity. Uber entered China and lost money, and eventually had to leave.
Is there anywhere I can read about Bing in China? My attempts to Google this before seeing your coent led to contradictory claims, like Bing being blocked.
At the end of the day, Google is still an American company. When Google engineers implement censorship on the behest of the Chinese government in their offices in California, they will be judged by the society here, and it will be done by the standards that are applicable here, not in China.
That would imply that there actually IS such a thing. The West is not a monoculture. The political and cultural differences between the Netherlands and the US are as vast as the cultural and political differences between the US and China.
We have to apply the same Western liberal standard to companies that are registered and headquartered in a Western liberal country, and especially to the kind of stuff that they produce in such a country.
They're welcome to spin off a Chinese branch to implement all this - with the engineers doing censorship filters and executives signing off on them subject to that censorship themselves. As it is, they want to reject the "liberal standard" while earning that money, but not when they are spending it.
I'm seeing a lot of anti Chinese propaganda these days. I come from a small country whose first priority is always the economy so it seems awfully shortsighted. China isn't going to disappear you know. Best learn to get along.
I said this on another thread, but it bears repeating:
If you do interesting or novel technical work with a Chinese company, especially on things like AI, it will be used by the People's Liberation Army and the Ministry for State Security. You can almost guarantee it.
So if you don't want to work on technology used by a military, then don't work on technology with any Chinese based company.
Because a future Google that is susceptible to blackmail by the CCP is dangerous in a way that most other companies just can't be.
Gap, at worst, can be ordered to change their t-shirt designs[1]. But nobody considers crappy t-shirts a source of truth, unlike Google Maps or Google Search. What if (when) China asks Google to apply censorship outside of China in order to stay in the Chinese market?
Absolute BS. Don't Google censor tons of results already according to the US law? Dare they show any pro-ISIS website to the American audience? Dare they stop performing all those DMCA takedowns? What's the fundamental difference between these two? Each country has its own laws regulating the online space and neither China nor the US is an exception to this. I really don't think any of them can offer any sort of convincing response to such questions. Just another display of typical arrogance and double standards that they have long shown, nothing new at all.
It's exactly like how people would clamor to censor all sorts of alt-right websites with glee, but defend all Trump-bashing websites to death. It's not that I approve of any alt-right ideology at all, but if they are serious about real "free speech", they need to drop this sort of double standards asap. Otherwise it's just another laughable exercise in hypocrisy and only labeling what helps their own interests as "just", exactly what the US government has been doing overseas in all these decades. Nobody would buy into such nonsense.
Is it just me, or on all of the recent China articles is there been a noticeable increase in newly-created accounts with "quality of local newspaper comment sections" comments? I'm not super pro China, but there is a lot of FUD and poor commenting going on.
Why are we going as far as China? Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, among others need to come clean about their censorship of conservative voices right here in their back yard. All the folks who rallied for net neutrality are now cheering for the coordinated Big Tech assault on free speech. This needs to be talked about. Agree or disagree with the voices they are silencing (ie. Alex Jones), what is happening these days is a dangerous precedent.
It's no "assault on free speech". The right of free speech doesn't mean that private corporations have to be a platform for it.
The right embraced private corporations having "religious and moral rights" with the cake shop and Hobby Lobby cases. This is the other side of the coin.
> The right of free speech doesn't mean that private corporations have to be a platform for it.
Free Speech is a principle that the First Amendment applies when restricting government. Private corporations that decide to be a platform for public speech (I think publicly accessible social media posts count) have to consider how they promote free speech. If, on the other hand, the private corporations want to exercise their freedom of association and take clear editorial positions, that's fine too. But, philosophically, they can't have it both ways.
Also note that Google, Facebook, and Apple seemed to have coordinated the ban. Both in size and in style, this is a different beast than Masterpiece.
Finally, Masterpiece was about being compelled to make specific cakes. Customers weren't banned from all cakes or anything. In that way it resembles demonetizing specific YouTube videos more than banning entire channels.
* I think it's fine to boot Alex Jones on the merits, for the record. Though the level of coordination among the BigCos here is concerning.
Finally, Masterpiece was about being compelled to make specific cakes. Customers weren't banned from all cakes or anything. In that way it resembles demonetizing specific YoyTube videos more than banning entire channels.
YouTube hosts videos. Apple doesn’t host podcast. Apple didn’t feel “compelled” to scrape Alex Jones podcast.
Well, the analogy to Masterpiece is that Apple is not compelled to list any given podcast.
And, applying the Masterpiece ruling narrowly, Apple just needs to be careful that a pattern of discrimination against a protected group isn't established in its decisions.
But that's all legal reasoning. The original point is that people should be allowed to speak and the best response is better speech, not censorship, even if the censorship is private.
And Apple is the least interesting of the bunch since they're not really a microblog platform or social network. The coordination with the other platforms is probably the only concern there.
You're aware of how Masterpiece was ruled, correct? It seems that you're implying that Masterpiece was found to be acting in accordance to the law, but that's not what the ruling was based on or addressed at all.
The Supreme Court found that Colorado didn't give enough respect or credence to the owner's religious beliefs. The owner's religious beliefs being openly mocked by a Colorado Civil Rights Board member was used as an example. The board was found to not have worked under the assumption of religious neutrality.
For those reasons, the case was found in his favor.
The Supreme Court did not at all rule on whether or not it was legal for Masterpiece Cakeshop to deny his gay patrons the cake they wanted.
They made no decision on whether it was within the owner's first amendment rights to deny service, or if what happened was denial of service.
> ...Apple just needs to be careful that a pattern of discrimination against a protected group isn't established in its decisions.
I was just pointing out that the facts of the case didn't involve a persona non grata. It was about compelling someone to create something (speech?), not about businesses' right to choose their clientele.
Fine as long as we recognize that taking to oneself (Google for instance) the task of policing content will increasingly become a minefield - a rod for their own back. Irrespective of the rights of a private company to do what they wish (of course they can), the message is: 'we'll decide what you can see and say because you're not to be trusted to make a judgement. We're your moral custodians'. It might take time but someone should see the massive opportunity here.
Exactly. And look at the uproar that the bakery caused with the constant mainstream news coverage back then. But now? Silence, and if not silence, total justification and questioning why Big Tech didn't do it sooner.
Exactly? Scarface is saying that the refusal to promote a message is also part of free speech, and an easier case than the refusal to serve gay customers. At best your response is to ask those who have sympathy towards gay people, "Why don't you get angry at laws which suggest that businesses have to serve gay people, even if their religious beliefs tell them that homosexuality is a sin?"
I also wouldn't be surprised if the thinking behind so many Fortune 500 companies is at least due to a calculation of brand posture going into the future. A lot of the companies being discussed at the moment are social media companies, and youth are the ones who can drive a MySpace event.
I also must ask for elaboration as to the Alex Jones brand of conservatism -- does it involve a narrative of white extinction and undeserving blacks? False flag stories about the Sandy Hook shooting? Does he represent American conservatism?
That's a typical but significant misrepresentation of the bakery case. The baker was/is completely willing to serve gay individuals in any capacity aside from creating customized cakes for gay weddings. He would have been fine with the gay couple buying absolutely anything in the store, including pre-made cakes that could be used for a wedding, and he also offered to create customized goodies for any other service including wedding showers -- but the one thing he would not make is the centerpiece cake for the wedding itself as he felt it would require him to personally 'endorse' their marriage with what he viewed as customized art, something the price tags these cakes carry tends to validate.
Most people do not intuitively see wedding cakes as art, but you can see the issue much more clearly if you view him as a literal artist. An artist refusing to sell a print of one of his pieces to a gay individual because they were gay is illegal and absurd. An artist refusing a contract because he felt the piece requested would endorse homosexuality, which went against his personal views - is not unreasonable.
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As for companies positioning themselves for the future, I think you might be surprised if you decided to do some searching for information on the aggregate views of generation z. Political trends in the US are on a pendulum. One side goes batshit insane in one direction which results in the growth of a major counter culture which eventually reaches a happy medium but then they themselves start to go batshit insane in the other direction, breeding what would now be seen as a counter-counter-culture to people who have lived long enough. This repeats seemingly to no end. The 60s created the 80s which created the 2000s which is now creating the 2020s. Probably not coincidentally that 20 years is just about the length of time it takes for a new generation to come into its own. Oh well, we can all at least look forward to the 2030s - Mars and political sanity!
And in the case of Apple - the first company that took action against Jones - they didn't block access to his website or podcast. They just decided not to index it.
Edit:
To clarify that Apple doesn’t host the RSS feed. It just indexes it like Google indexes web pages. The RSS feed is self hosted on another server.
With the changing demographics in America, I doubt we will ever go back to the Trump style populism where if you’re not a White Evangelical straight Christian you aren’t a “true American”.
I’m Black, live in a town that was famously a “sundown town” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town) up until the mid 80s and even here the demographics and mindsets are changing. We are still very much the minority but my son’s classmates and thier parents welcome him with open arms into thier homes.
True the county is overwhelmingly Republican but they are more Romney/Bush style Republicans thsn Trump populists.
He represents free speech. He is just one of several conservative leaning voices silenced by Big Tech in recent months.
One of the most troubling aspects of the Alex Jones ban is the obvious coordination among Apple, Facebook, YouTube and others to completely take him off their platforms at the exact same time. How this doesn't bother HN is crazy.
It's truly crazy how YouTube takes down Alex Jones easily but ElsaGate pedo like predatory channels are still thriving on their platform, with millions of views and comment threads full of cryptic information exchange of the worst kind one can imagine. And it's still up. Insanity prevails.
If FANG were government institutions then yes I think a lot of the people here would be alarmed. But they aren't -- they are private companies, who can suppress or promote whatever they want. It doesn't matter whether or not you or I or anyone else likes it, that's just how it is.
The courts have affirmed corporate personhood, and their resulting freedom of speech, and in this case they are free to suppress things they host on their platform.
There is an interesting legal argument I heard recently that says that if you operate a private space much in the way as if it were a public space (like a privately-owned park open to the public) then there is a sliding scale regarding how much that space is legally considered 'public' (regardless of ownership), for the purposes of law enforcement, or whatever else (like being a venue for protected free speech). I wonder if, at some point, Google/YouTube et al could possibly be seen under such a lens. Maybe then you could argue private takesdowns are a violation of free speech.
Or maybe we should just conclude that if a company is in such a position where its private rules have such a strong and broad effect, that is prima facie evidence of it being a monopoly that is distorting the market, and break it up.
While you may genuinely believe what you're saying, I think many people saying as much are doing so out of cognitive dissonance. For instance, imagine if these tech companies decided to start removing all negative discussion of Trump. There would be quite the outrage, and very understandably so. I say understandably so not because of the topic in question, but because these companies have become monoliths of speech in the US. It's not like a local coffee shop or whatever kicking somebody out because of their views - removing direct access to hundreds of millions of people is something altogether different.
One issue we have is that companies today, in the era of the internet, have grown well beyond any conceivable notion of what it meant to be a company in the past. Facebook now has more than 30% of the world's population in monthly users. They have more active users than any country has citizens. And they exercise more control over them (at least within the confines of the digital world) than nations do as these users' rights and privileges are dictated under a set of unidirectionally imposed terms as opposed to any sort of a public constitution or system of rights. In a way it almost feels like the digital era is perhaps echoing back our evolution from master-slave societies which gradually evolved to feudal societies and eventually onto democratic ones.
Should companies begin to be treated more as we might think of governments once their reach begins to expand beyond that even of governments? I'm not sure, but I do think that we also can't simply appeal to former views. For instance the founding fathers certainly gave no consideration to how companies, with more users than the world population in the 18th century, ought be regarded.
But there is no framework in the law for addressing gargantuan companies directly. Sure the government can take potshots with antitrust suits or financial investigations or whatever, but short of a black swan-type event-slash-legal-scandal there really aren't a lot of legal tools at the US gov's disposal to crush outsized corporations.
Saying "companies are too big, we have to do something about them" is making a point grounded in concept, not concrete law or action. I too am worried about our current crop of megacorp but if history is indicator the US government will outlive them (as stable governments usually do).
Mostly agreed, but that's not the issue right? Whether people are "alarmed" or not (to use your phrasing) by something has little to do with whether it's legal or not. The reason some, and I think most, people of certain views are not alarmed is not because the behavior is acceptable, or legal, but because the "victims" are. Engage in the exact same behavior with different "victims" and they would swap their views 180 degrees.
However, this is a major problem because people of both 'sides' of the issue engage in the exact same behavior, ignoring bad behavior when the victims are people they dislike. In our little parallel world where the victims are swapped, suddenly those currently "alarmed" by the behavior would be appealing to "Well, it's not technically illegal - so whatever." This results in bad behavior never being constrained because, so long as society is sufficiently divided, somewhere around half of people will be okay with even quite awful actions.
On corporations, I do disagree with you however. I see no reason to think that the trend of megacorps will end. On the contrary, I see no reason to think that they will not continue to grow in power and influence until they are effectively more powerful than governments and eventually may even begin to supplant governments as the effective ruling forces of the world, even if governments remain as a proxy.
On corporations, I do disagree with you however. I see no reason to think that the trend of megacorps will end. On the contrary, I see no reason to think that they will not continue to grow in power and influence until they are effectively more powerful than governments and eventually may even begin to supplant governments as the effective ruling forces of the world, even if governments remain as a proxy.
20 years ago, Yahoo was king, Amazon was a minor bookseller, Microsoft was thought to be unstoppable, Apple was nearly bankrupt and BlockBuster was king of video rentals.
15 years ago MySpace was king.
The old guard especially in technology can get “disrupted” quickly.
The past few hundred years are littered with the dead and dying of megacorps.... US Steel, IBM, Sears, Dutch East Indies Company... where are they all now? IBM is still relevant... sort of...
For instance, imagine if these tech companies decided to start removing all negative discussion of Trump. There would be quite the outrage
For all practical purposes does it matter? Facebook in particular creates such an echo chamber. People only see opinions from other people they already have. If it wasn't for my one wacko MAGA conservative friend, I would never have known that thier was a child molestation ring controlled by Democrats under a pizza parlor, Obama was a secret Muslim trying to impose Sharia law, the military was trying to take over Texas or that Walker Texas Ranger was going to rescue it.
The baker comparison doesn't work. You don't see one guy or even three companies in Colorado controlling 99% of the messages going on cakes, globally, like you do with social media speech on Google/Facebook/Twitter platforms in California. Whether you like it or not, they are monopolies who are coordinating attacks on conservatives by stifling speech that is by and large perfectly legal in the US. Very concerning.
If you are completely dependent on exposure through Google, Facebook, and Twitter, you're doing it wrong. I read about plenty of bloggers who lost half thier traffic the day Google Reader shut down for instance. Wasn't their a clickbait company that went out of business due to an algorithm change on Google?
Even if you aren't controversial, you are just one of millions of people trying to get your ideas out. You're going to languish in obscurity unless you have an alternate means of promoting yourself.
No one "stifled" Alex Jones' speech. His podcast is still being published on his own site like it always was and you can still add it to your podcast app of choice.
When did the mainstream right start openly embracing racist as thier people outside of the South? I could never see any former Republican President or leadership in the modern era support someone like Alex Jones.
Alex Jones podcast was not "banned" from Apple's platform. Apple never hosted either the media or the RSS metadata. Anyone who wants to listen to the podcast can go on Google do a search find the feed subscription and add to the podcast app.
That's not my point. I don't like or listen to the guy, but your reaction shows precisely why they chose him. Who is next? If they can take down someone as vocal as Alex Jones, they can take down anyone.
Conservatives are always embracing the free market. If there were a market for his ideas, he should have no trouble finding funding, advertising, etc.
If his ideas really are that popular, he should be able to create the conservative versions of Twitter, Facebook, etc. All of the FAANG companies started out competing against entrenched incumbents by offering a service they didn't. Why can't he do the same?
You mean like a certain reality star that had no funding, was outspent by his rivals in the primary, who the conservative establishment fought against the entire time and still ended up becoming President?
If your ideas are popular enough and you know how to market yourself, you don't have to be a sharecropper on FAANG's farm.
Let this be a lesson to us all. If you blatantly violate terms of service, there's no amount of harassing families of school shooting victims that will get your platform back.
Banning people like Alex Jones won't unharass those parents either. People around the country still think that those parents lied about the death of their children in order to score financial or political gain.
And what exactly is Alex Jones' brand of conservatism? Does it involve a narrative of white extinction and false black victimhood? Climate change as a conspiracy? Obama is a Muslim who isn't even a US citizen? What makes Alex Jones conservative?
No it won't "unharass people" just like it won't stop people from seeing porn just because Apple doesn't sell "Debbie Does Dallas". Every private company has a brand that it wants to project.
Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter can't do business in America unless they engage in state-enforced censorship against conservatives, like they would in China against its political opponents, or are you drawing false equivalencies?
You don't hear Mozilla or Apple complaining about Google returning to China though. I am not really sure why Google matters in China and how this matters to anyone. You enter someone's country and you ought to obey the local laws there. Just as Chinese companies entering U.S. need to respect U.S. laws. There is no conflict of interest. It's simply a business decision. If people really care about privacy and what not, Google wouldn't have 50,000 engineers today. It would be like 1/3 gone at least. But why so many Googlers are staying anyway? I don't have to spell the answer but I will: $$.
So let's not pretend we are not guilty of being an enabler. To come clean, one must be totally out of the whole Google business. This means Googlers should all quit - but trust me, most people won't, even though they cheer others to stand up. I am not being cynical at all, just being realistic about hypocrisy and reality.
> You enter someone's country and you ought to obey the local laws there.
China doesn’t have rule of law, they never had a law about censorship, at least not back when google left. It was basically the party telling Google that they had to police themselves and not to talk about what they told them in public, because transparency is a horrible thing in China.
It’s like a top secret law that no one is allowed to know about but everyone must follow.
Google leaving China the first place was about bad governance and corruption, not censorship.
> I am not really sure why Google matters in China and how this matters to anyone. You enter someone's country and you ought to obey the local laws there. Just as Chinese companies entering U.S. need to respect U.S. laws.
That assumes a certain moral equivalency between local laws that just isn't the case. Would you say the same thing about the Nuremberg Laws?
Moreover, there IS a huge conflict of interest on Google's part as far as its users' privacy goes.
Suppose China becomes a significant part of Google's business in a number of years. Does anyone familiar with China doubt that its government would be willing to exercise that leverage over Google to extract private user information ... even about it's non-Chinese userbase?
How would future Google respond? Would there not be a gigantic financial incentive for Google to hand it over? Would it be willing to leave the Chinese market to withhold its user's personal data?
None of this is certain, but the risk is real enough imo that it makes me uncomfortable as a US-based Google user.
Sure, you can argue "well the US has done this in the past" but A) it's much more possible for Google to say "no" in the US, and B) the US government's interest in such data has historically been limited to (admittedly arguably overzealous) national security concerns, whereas the CCP's interest in such data seems to be for "whatever we can get out of it."
> Yet even for those who have escaped China, surveillance and intimidation have followed. As part of a massive campaign to monitor and intimidate its ethnic minorities no matter where they are, Chinese authorities are creating a global registry of Uighurs who live outside of China, threatening to detain their relatives if they do not provide personal and identifying information to Chinese police. This campaign is now reaching even Uighurs who live in the United States.
The Chinese government has hands in every bit in the Chinese internet. My point was to illustrate that no matter where you do business, you are subjected to local laws. Put the Chinese government aside and pretend it’s EU. Some would argue EU is doing too much, interferring with business competition - Yahoo, AOL and MSN were big back in 2000s but hey, Google took them down too. So why aren’t everyone crying about EU?
To your final point: are you sure national security is not really a pawn for being in control, whatever government can get out of us? That donors could get their pay out? The only difference is here we have a trillion miles better freedom of press and speech thanks to BoR.
> You enter someone's country and you ought to obey the local laws there.
There are plenty of human rights activists, reporters and publishers in China who have been imprisoned without a trial. Would you say the same thing to them?
And are you sure that noone in history had to challenge local laws in your own country for your right to voice your own opinion like this?
> I am not really sure why Google matters in China and how this matters to anyone.
It matters because Google is an American company. So not all laws - and not all social conventions - are created equal in this context; American ones get priority.
In a similar vein, if a Chinese company decided to operate in US, and the Chinese government took offense that they freely distribute information about e.g. Tibet there, they would be in their right to criticize such a company, or use legal measures to prevent them from doing it.
TL;DR: you can't argue for absolute cultural relativism when things flow across the border; at the very least, the countries on both side of that border have a say.
The real problem is you can't have a we'll-publicly-disagree-but-do-it-anyways approach with China like you might elsewhere. There's a reason a CEO might make a public post disagreeing with the approach of one government yet will forever remain mum concerning another.
Just stop requiring growth at all costs, chalk up the China (and military) market as a loss, and continue operating at your massively profitable status quo. It may seem like it's a double standard when other companies have access to those markets sans media backlash, but just recognize the differences are known out here in the masses.