Google’s Secret China Project Sparks Fury Among Workers

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-02/pichai-the-pragmatic-plows-into-china-and-google-workers-fume

by doppp • 8 years ago

81 82 8 years ago

pmoriarty• 8 years ago

I am proud of those Google employees who've taken a stand against the unethical practices of their employer.

This world would be a much better place if more people did that rather than looking the other way and acting as mercenaries for the highest bidder.

ironjunkie3• 8 years ago

I don't know if I would be proud.

It is very easy to be morally outraged for something that everyone in the West already agrees with. At this point it is almost a way to display a morale high ground.

I would rather see morale outrage on more subtle subject such as the digital addiction that Youtube etc creates, literally destroying lifes. [1]

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-...

partiallypro3• 8 years ago

Oppression destroys more lives than an addictive freedom.

mcny• 8 years ago

I think the reaction is much better than the reaction we saw out of Facebook about a leaked internal memo earlier this year.

dr1337• 8 years ago

So much for Silicon Valley corporations and their "culture" and founding myths.

I guess people don't even remember that Google once you used to have an informal mantra of "Don't be evil."

ironjunkie3• 8 years ago

The way I see it, it is mainly Koolaid and a narrative told to the young influenceable techies so they feel invested with a mission, and perform better.

xbmcuser• 8 years ago

Not unexpected with all the restrictions on data collection being put in place in the West. Google needs the data for its ai. China is more open to data collection as long as it is shared with the government.

steven2012• 8 years ago

Is this because of the leadership of Sundar Pichai? It seems as though he might have good plans on making more revenue, but it flies in the face of the expectations of his employees. Does this bode poorly for him as CEO if his employees are openly rebelling against these high-profile projects such as this and the drone AI project?

beaner10• 8 years ago

Why is it unethical to launch a censored search product in China?

The alternative isn't to launch an uncensored search product. That's not possible. The alternative is simply to not be there.

How do the Chinese benefit from that?

It seems to me that the presence of any international company could only act as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship controls over time.

If Google is more restrictive than other search engines, this does not do any harm, since the other options still provide the less restricted results, meaning the exact same amount of information that is currently available to people in China will continue to be available, and will not be affected by Google's entry.

If Google is less restrictive, well then that's a win for the Chinese people.

This means that the entry of any search engine into China, restricted or not, is at worst neutral and at best good for the Chinese.

throwaway20483• 8 years ago

It seems to me that the presence of any international company could only act as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship controls over time.

this was the justification to the more lenient treatment of china with international trade deals, it has gone nowhere, all that has happened it is has economically empowered china to become a lot more troublesome on the world stage, while they have not liberalized in virtually any way.

The presence of Google legitimizes and empowers the state level control of information that the CCP does at a massive scale, it does exactly the opposite of "acting as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship"

Should be noted that China is a country, that right now as we speak, is putting an entire ethnic group in concentration camps, 1 million+ people and more coming in an attempt to "reeducate them" and stamp out their culture.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/opinion/china-re-educatio...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/islamic-leaders-have-no...

This is not a system that Google should be legitimizing through collaboration.

beaner10• 8 years ago

I think this ignores the rest of my comment. Not sure I agree that trade deals and search engines work the same way.

You could also say that the United States is an imperialist devil that kills innocents in the middle east with drones, and that Google should exit the US in protest and move to Europe. But that doesn't seem like a great argument.

partiallypro3• 8 years ago

Isn't Google also helping the Chinese government with some tech projects?

07d046• 8 years ago

Because it's collaborating with the Chinese government to oppress the people.

graeme• 8 years ago

This could have precedent for other markets, no? Countries would demand google censor themselves the way they did for China.

gaius• 8 years ago

I think you have it backwards - Google will perfect it’s censorship offering in China then actively resell it to other governments

fulafel2• 8 years ago

I think there are 2 ethical arguments in your message:

a) Someone's going to the bad thing anyway, so the world won't be worse off if it's us

b) I'll join the wrongdoing organisation in doing the bad things and affect change from within the cooperation framework

I think a) is quite hard to defend philosophically. We don't generally excuse a member of an actor just because the bad thing was done as a member of a group, either in everyday life (think raising kids) or in national law, or in international law.

b) would need a clearer and bigger counter-badness component with "the lesser evil" to even be arguably defensible, even then being a pretty dark shade of realpolitik.

Leary3• 8 years ago

Just because it's realpolitik does not mean it's not ethical.

beaner10• 8 years ago

I actually do not think A is the proper argument here.

Google providing a restricted search service is not doing a "bad thing." It will be a product that helps people find what they are looking for, which is a good thing.

At the same time, they are restricted from sharing certain information, a restriction that is applied blanketly to all of China's citizenry.

Imagine that there exists a prison wherein any prisoner can escape by simply knowing the escape passphrase.

One of the jobs in this prison is to walk around providing water to the prisoners, keeping them alive. Everyone in the prison is prevented from speaking the escape phrase, punishable by death.

You are a water provider in this prison. You know the escape phrase. You know that by doing your job, more prisoners are fed more quickly and are healthier and have better lives. But you know they would have even better ones if they could escape.

Would the moral thing to do to be to quit in protest and remove yourself from the equation, because you cannot speak the passphrase, which is a decision that ultimately helps no one?

Or would the moral thing be to continue providing a helpful service that prisoners need, meanwhile having access to the prisoners and the wardens, and being able to push for the ability to speak?

It seems to me that the providing of water and the ability to speak the passphrase are two separate things that you as a water-provider have the ability to do. And when you remove yourself from the prison on the absolutist moral basis, you leave the prisoners worse off in practical terms, for essentially no purpose.

I think in Google's case, it is helpful to identify what is the water and what is the unspeakable passphrase. Water is returning benign results, and the unspeakable passphrase is (separate & distinctly) returning censored results.

Providing water is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is not aiding the prison in hurting its prisoners, it is keeping the prisoners alive and healthy. The citizens are permitted health, and it is a good thing to help them have it.

Providing benign search results is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is not aiding China in censorship, it is keeping the citizenry within quick reach of benign information. It is a good thing to help them have that.

A bad thing for you as a water-provider to do would be to not provide water, or whack the prisoners with sticks.

A bad thing for Google to do as a search provider would be to not provide benign results, or to develop tools for forcing the Chinese to have access to less information than they currently do.

The providing of water is a good thing and is distinct and separate from bad things.

Not speaking the escape phrase is not a bad thing, because it is not your choice. It is forced on you by the context.

At worst, not speaking the escape phrase lets you continue to provide water. At best, while you're there, you can try to convince the warden to loosen up, possibly leading to more freedom.

I think the point here is that given the threat of force, morality is not absolute, it is contextual. When your options are morality vs. survival (or knowledge/life-promoting things), then your morality must be re-evaluated, because survival (and life-promoting things) are the goal of any framework that is actually moral. Returning benign search results is a good/life-promoting thing.

There is a large swath of search results which are very good for the Chinese to have access to, which enriches their lives, which Google can provide better than anyone else. This is the knowledge/life promotion on one side of the equation. On the other, many are holding an absolutist position that only complete uncensorship can be offered morally.

They are holding adherence to the morality in a specific context (the US/free speech), above the actual goal of the morality, which is life-promotion.

I argue that when a morality leads to the removal of good/life-promoting things in this way, it must be re-evaluated for the context, because it is no longer achieving its goal. We must see what parts of the morality we cannot apply because _it is not our choice whether or not to apply it_. We discover that within the context of the threat of force, it is acceptable to abide by that force, and provide a subset of results that is still helpful for people to have access to.

Morality only applies to decisions you can make within a context. If you don't enter that context, you can't claim to be doing anything moral. And if you do, the things that are not your decision cannot be part of your morality. Given what remains, you do the best you can.

This is why I think Google should enter China with a restricted search engine.

solidsnack90003• 8 years ago

Maybe their argument is more in line with "harm reduction"? Just because we can't do the best thing doesn't mean we have to do nothing.

jpalomaki• 8 years ago

How do the Chinese benefit from that?

If products and services from companies like Apple and Google are not available in the market, it raises the question why. More people may become aware that there are certain limitations which prevent these services from being used.

Offering the censored versions means it is easier to think that things are the same as in other parts of the world - we even have access to the same products and services they are using.

I'm not saying that people would not otherwise know of the censorship - they certainly do. I see this more as an awareness thing. When something is constantly on people's minds, they might be more active in trying to push a change.

Of course, it is a bit hard to relate to this thing. Uber is pretty much the only example that I can come up with. In my local market, the taxi business used to be heavily regulated and Uber could not operate here. People having used to using Uber abroad were annoyed and I think that helped at least a bit in pushing more relaxed regulation.

Leary3• 8 years ago

Thanks for laying this out. This challenges the conventional wisdom that somehow Google not entering China will lead to less censorship.

hugh4life• 8 years ago

"It seems to me that the presence of any international company could only act as a wedge to gradually loosen censorship controls over time."

But future demands may go beyond censorship...

rdlecler1• 8 years ago

Or it could be used as a wedge to increase censorship in the U.S. overtime as the Chinese government exerts leverage over Google.

killjoywashere2• 8 years ago

China is already doing this quite aggressively in the US universities.

rqs• 8 years ago

Why is it unethical to launch a censored search product in China?

No, it's ethical in the government's views.

However, then why do people in China would going to use such search engine knowing it's as bad as Baidu currently is?

Actually, to understand the problem here, you need to know who are the main user of Google in China: The progressives (maybe overly simplified, but these people are who actually sicked with Google for a very long time). And most of them also very sensitive to those bad things Google did in the recent years.

Plus, in the long run, a local Chinese company (Baidu for example) can bring far better benefit to the government compare to a foreign one, AND without causing any headache worrying about the company could become too strong to control.

So, Google just can't win the battle with local giants.

If Google re-enters China, the only thing they can probably be succeed, is to make Baidu fear again thus stop doing it's shitty business.

fauigerzigerk7• 8 years ago

It is unethical because it normalises the worst kind of censorship, the one that is meant to keep illegitimate rulers in power. This is not like other types of censorship that can be criticised and overturned by democratic means, but Google will now conflate the two to justify its actions.

Google not being in China has been a very prominent sign that this is not normal, that the Chinese regime does not speak for the Chinese people and therefore their laws have no legitimacy at all.

Google not being in China has been an ever present pointer towards the fact that Chinese search enginges do not tell the truth.

It is also unethical because Google can now be blackmailed by the Chinese regime, which will affect Google's behaviour towards its users in the rest of the world. This isn't just an ethical concern but also a very pragmatic one.

beaner10• 8 years ago

Thanks, this is a good argument.

Being from the western world, it is very clear to me what Google's absence from China signifies.

Given that China censors its media, do you think the Chinese citizenry are aware at all about Google's position up to this point, or its symbolism?

It seems to me that the Chinese would not be influenced by Google's absence or presence, since the reasoning is the kind of thing that would already be censored.

spacehunt• 8 years ago

To many Chinese people though, Google not in China is simply a sign that it can't compete with homegrown companies. Many are still drunk on the 厉害了我的国 kool-aid.

closeparen• 8 years ago

China has been ruled autocratically for thousands of years. There's nothing to "normalize." It is normal.

We have pretty substantial empirical evidence on the outcomes of US- and Silicon Valley-backed regime change operations in the modern world. They don't work out too well. One could argue that trying to plunge China into civil war is the real unethical behavior here.

sbinthree• 8 years ago

The search in other parts of the world is already distorted or full on censored across various "morally acceptable bounds". China just happens to have different morality. This is more akin to McDonalds having a different menu everywhere than it is akin to Orwellian thought policing or that being a universal wrong. The morality is different and ethical is subjective. If you don't like it, don't use it, but to say this is some kind of outright evil imposed by the government is to ignore that the majority of Chinese support Confucian morality and there is little concept of Western style privacy. Why should China abide by Google employees morality? That is the bigger question to me. Why should Google abide by their employees morality either?

panarky• 8 years ago

It's unethical to build the tools that repressive regimes use to subjugate their citizens.

Whether it's mass surveillance or automated censorship, if you help build it, it's wrong.

pasbesoin• 8 years ago

Simplistic, but encompassing:

Liberals: It restricts free expression.

Conservatives: The government is picking winners and losers.

As for being a wedge to gradually loosen censorship. The GFC (Great Firewall of China) started with Western companies selling technologies and consulting to the Chinese government that enabled early versions. Did that participation act as a wedge that opened up Chinese society?

As I said at that time, China is the prototype. Now, we have not just these Western companies but also the Chinese selling Great Firewall solutions to other countries. (And the Chinese have the more turnkey systems and a proven track record.)

There's the old but apt adage: "Don't play by their rules."

(Which, by the way, has been modern China's approach to us, the past few decades.

Or, they've been playing by the rules they observed in us, not the ones they were told by us.

Break the law as much as you can. Cost/benefit. Might makes right...)

everyone• 8 years ago

Google employees having issues with Google being unethical... Really????

The ones objecting to this must have godlike powers of selective perception.

artificial• 8 years ago

It's actually a feature called personalized perception to give more relevancy. I believe it can be disabled in the settings. /s

DenisM• 8 years ago

Google got an edge in hiring when they deployed their “don’t be evil” mantra, but the long-term result is a workforce that’s leaning heavily left and in many ways dictates what the company can or must do. And I doubt they can ever undo this - hiring is performed by the people already on the inside.

knowaveragejoe• 8 years ago

I'm sorry but, the problem here is that their employees are mostly left-leaning?

jobigoud• 8 years ago

He didn't say it was a problem.

jimjimjim• 8 years ago

so... you're saying google is missing out on employees that are attracted to evil?

that is what you are saying isn't it?

intended• 8 years ago

I think he’s saying that corporate ambitions are now dealing with googles legacy values.

I’d say this is a good thing

oh-kumudo• 8 years ago

Or pragmatic? Is google a church or anything, and requires idealogical purity that is not relevant to its core business, advertising?

sunstone• 8 years ago

So first it's the US military projects and now it's bending the knee to the eye of Sauron. Is Larry losing his touch here?

pjmlp• 8 years ago

No, it is money speaking, "do no evil" was marketing for the coffee shop developers that hate Microsoft and needed an hero.

onetimemanytime• 8 years ago

Nope, the same MO. They've already ruined a lot of competition, filled the pages with their ads instead of searches, monetized virtually everything and to keep growth he is ready to do the next thing needed...

opnitro6• 8 years ago

This is one of the real reasons that tech workers need something like a union. If we want to take responsibility for our work, and hold the corporations we work for the those values, then we'll need the power of collective bargaining.

solidsnack90003• 8 years ago

This is not the role of unions at all, actually -- they aren't a tool to allow a skilled professionals to undertake political action and make decisions for everyone else.

That's what political parties are for.

opnitro6• 8 years ago

Unions aren't for exercising the political will of workers? What is it that the labor movement has achieved then? What did the strikes achieve? If not forcing those in control of the company to take seriously the demands of workers, then what else is a union for?

millstone• 8 years ago

What do we (we being the west) want to actually happen in China? Presumably we want a dramatic liberalization across political, economic, and civil liberties. So how might western multinationals help effect this?

One theory is that western multi-nats such as Google or Apple withdraw from China, isolating it and forcing the CCP to liberalize (or a revolution). But Apple and Google are small players in China so this would require a much larger coordinated effort.

A second theory is that western multi-nats can partially participate in the PRC economy, attempting to balance state demands against ethical responsibilities. Their products, while still censored, nevertheless increase the availability of the Internet, strong privacy tools, etc relative to Chinese domestic offerings. The result is a more informed Chinese citizenry which can in turn pressure the CCP to liberalize.

I suppose the risk of #2 is that it provides cover and legitimacy to the CCP, so it might increase their power. Nevertheless it seems to me that #2 has a better chance of working.

throwaway20483• 8 years ago

#2 has been in action for decades, and they haven't moved an inch. The only result has been a much stronger CCP and china.

zn44• 8 years ago

As easy as it is to say that it’s not google place to judge China government, what concerns me most is the precedent that this will create. I am pretty sure there will be a line of governments wanting to do the same and google will end up with censorship as a service product.

torgian• 8 years ago

Well, Microsoft Bing has been in China for a long time and nobody says anything about that....

It’s inevitable. Consumers will continue to use google because they aren’t aware of the alternatives, so it’ll be a minority that uses other browsers in a silent protest.

I’m sure a Wesrern version of the great firewall will be built soon

JudasGoat• 8 years ago

Does anyone else think that Google should release major policy changes to the people that work there before the Press?

Google’s Secret China Project Sparks Fury Among Workers

Related Stories