Google and Project Dragonfly

[XT]

I didn’t see a thread on this so thought I’d start one. If there is on, mods feel free to close this one down if someone will simply link to it.

Anyway, I’ll link to a few things, starting with this article (which, ironically, I Googled to get :p) which talks about the issue. https://thinkprogress.org/google-dragonfly-china-censorship-human-rights-fe1fe1ddf55a/

For years, Google has acted as the model of a Big Tech company with an ethical backbone. Much of that reputation stems from the company’s 2010 decision to leave China entirely, a move Google attributed to its desire to “no longer continue censoring our results” in the face of Chinese government pressure.

Over the past few months, however, Google’s moral standing has plummeted. Thanks to a series of insider leaks and investigations, coupled with concerted pressure from human rights groups, Google’s plans to quietly return to China and aid the Chinese government’s unprecedented censorship regime are no longer secret.

Google’s “Dragonfly” project is a new search engine — one the company claims is only in its earliest stages — that would censor information at the behest of the Chinese government. Dragonfly would not only allow Chinese authorities to prevent citizens from learning about issues like human rights, but it would also, according to one Google employee who resigned in protest, even block access to accurate air quality data.

The development of Dragonfly comes as the Chinese government continues building the world’s largest system of concentration camps globally, disappearing and detaining at least one million Muslims across the country’s western region of Xinjiang. The camps are the latest in the Chinese Communist Party’s lengthy list of human rights abuses, from becoming the global leader in executions to cracking down on Christians to widespread organ harvesting.

Lies, damned lies, and Google
Much of the concern over Google’s decision to return to Beijing and work directly with the Chinese Communist Party stems from the company’s choice to cloak the project in secrecy and go out of its way to misdirect and misinform anyone asking questions about Dragonfly.

Google executives “forced employees to delete a confidential memo… that revealed explosive details” about Dragonfly, according to The Intercept. The outlet also discovered that Google executives were “trying to shut down employees’ access to any documents that contained information” about Dragonfly.

“Pichai’s statement that Dragonfly was in its early stages ‘was ultimately horse shit.'”

“Google’s leadership considered Dragonfly so sensitive that they would often communicate only verbally about it and would not take written notes during high-level meetings to reduce the paper trail,” the outlet wrote in late November.

Alongside the effort to prevent Google employees from learning about the project, the company’s top executives repeatedly ducked questions about their work in China.

Much of that obfuscation has come from Pichai himself. Reportedly an enthusiastic supporter of the project in private, Pichai has said in public that Dragonfly is an “experiment” without any firm plans to launch — a claim that not only contradicts reporting on the project but Google employees’ own understanding of its status. Pichai even claimed Google would still be able to service 99 percent of queries with Dragonfly. (The censored terms, again, reportedly include words like “human rights.”)

As one Google employee said, Pichai’s statement that Dragonfly was in its early stages “was ultimately horse shit.”

I’ll also link to this YouTube video that also talks about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcvTeRmFsXE

I guess the most recent part of this is that Google has said (I believe to a congressional committee looking into this) that they don’t plan to put this in at this time, but that seems to be geared more towards the bad publicity they are getting than that they actually feel it’s a bad move for them as a company. I guess the topics for debate are what do 'dopers think of Google going this route? Also, are you concerned that it might flow back the other way? What I mean by that is, once Google gets into China (leaving aside the fact that there are already home grown Chinese search engines that already comply with the CCP AND are, well, Chinese companies, which are run by either members of the CCP or by folks aligned with one faction or another in the CCP and are going to have huge advantages over someone like Google coming in from outside), might they start censoring their own searches to comply with the CCP? Especially if the CCP threatens whatever market they build in China with some new rule or constraint? What if the CCP wants, say, Google to downgrade searches on the search engine outside of China for, oh, say something random like Tiananmen Square in, oh, say 1989? I mean, nothing really happened then, according to the CCP and Chinese search engines, so maybe Google should ensure everyone knows that?

[Slash1972]

@XT

I guess the topics for debate are what do 'dopers think of Google going this route? Also, are you concerned that it might flow back the other way? What I mean by that is, once Google gets into China (leaving aside the fact that there are already home grown Chinese search engines that already comply with the CCP AND are, well, Chinese companies, which are run by either members of the CCP or by folks aligned with one faction or another in the CCP and are going to have huge advantages over someone like Google coming in from outside), might they start censoring their own searches to comply with the CCP?

I’m not sure why I should care about what an Internet search engine does in China. And if Google started censoring search results, there are literally thousands of other sites that one can find out about things happening in China.

[enipla]

@Slash1972

I’m not sure why I should care about what an Internet search engine does in China. And if Google started censoring search results, there are literally thousands of other sites that one can find out about things happening in China.

Not sure if you read that right manson. I’d have to look into it more, and it’s late. But it looks like social engineering on a massive scale. That bothers me in many, many ways.

What if Google limited the abuses that Trump does? I know that wouldn’t be ok with you.