The hypocrisy of western activist types on this issue is astounding. One week, they demand that tech companies across the US censor what they find "harmful", but the next week, they condemn the Chinese for doing exactly the same thing for content they find "harmful".
Either you're in favor of free speech or you're just partial about which content you want to censor. The activist crowd in the west lost all moral standing on this subject years ago.
I think there is an important distinction to be made.
Censorship that is meant to block all criticism of the current rulers to keep them in power forever is unlike all other kinds of censorship because it is self-referential and self-reinforcing.
If a government censors, say, sites that distribute pirated movies or sites that glamorise suicide, I can still protest against that ban or campaign to get a different government elected.
But if a government censors both those sites and my criticism of the ban, then that is a wholly different kind of censorship.
Any censorship is almost be definition self-reinforcing. If you censor something, there's less of it and the ideas that aren't censored proliferate more, getting stronger.
In that sense, censoring criticism of rulers in general is doubly self-reinforcing.
It reinforces the specific laws and rules they make and it reinforces obedience, lack of critical thinking and intransparency of the censorship decisions themselves.
I don't see how anyone could deny that censoring political opposition in general acts on a meta level and is therefore categorically different from all other stuff that gets censored.
I think there are two things to say. The first is that you aren’t comparing like for like. In the Chinese case, the Chinese government gets to choose what is censored and any search engine has to censor the same things, whereas in the US it would presumably be Google that gets to decide what to censor and so someone could conceivably go to another search engine to avoid it.
It’s also worth noting that even if search results are censored, in the US model the websites can still be accessed (although US-based illegal websites can get shut down), whereas in the Chinese model the websites themselves are banned.
The second is that even if one were to accept that the models are similar, that doesn’t mean that google has to have both or have none. It could take any stance on what level of censorship (or pushing down in search rankings) is acceptable in what cases and choose what to do based on that.
For example google already tries to remove spam that tries to gain its rankings but I don’t see people complaining that Google’s rankings unfairly penalise these sites and suppress their “free speech.”
> In the Chinese case, the Chinese government gets to choose what is censored and any search engine has to censor the same things, whereas in the US it would presumably be Google that gets to decide what to censor and so someone could conceivably go to another search engine to avoid it.
I don't think that's true.
Google (and any other search engine) is compelled by US law to take down content that violates copyright. In China, Google will be compelled by Chinese law to take down content that e.g. criticize the government. See the similarities?
Sure, you could argue that taking down copyright infringing content is ultimately good for society, while taking down content critical of the government is bad for society, and yes I am of that opinion myself.
But this is a subjective moral judgement, and not a universal truth. And just like there are people in the US who morally object to copyright enforcement, you will find people in China who do _not_ morally object to censorship, at all.
In any case, it's not like Google is making any _less_ information available to Chinese internet users by operating in China. Whatever will be censored was already inaccessible to Chinese internet users, because Baidu, Bing and so on are already applying the same censorship anyway.
I think I was maybe unclear in my first reply but I think that it is ultimately a moral judgement of the company (ie the company’s management plus any employeee unrest) as to whether they (a) operate in some market following its laws, and (b) what rules or policies they apply on their own accord.
Just because this is a fuzzy moral judgement it does not mean that one must choose an absolute (although this may be an easier position to hold), but rather (and this is what I am suggesting is likely to happen) they will choose somewhere in between, even if this is not a consistent position. Therefore it is silly to say things are the same when different people consider them different in different ways and those people may influence the decision of google to enter/leave the market or to change internal policies.
There really is a way to balance these two things: you don't censor outright, but you just don't rank it highly. So it's not easy to find, but the moment someone searches about something, or spends more and more time narrowing down results in search of something that matches a piece of data - if they really want to find data pertaining to their query - then in the index they can.
It might result in a resources problem (or storage and computing power), but theoretically it could even exhaustively apply to spam. Even spam would be indexed in a radical free speech database, but with good algorithms it'll just take longer to find because a very small (almost zero) people in the world algorithmically denote it as content of worth.
Very few people believe in absolute free speech; few people think it is okay to falsely say someone is a paedophile, which gets them lynched. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44709103
Absolute free speech is very rarely the actual debate. The actual debate starts after we all, mostly, agree that people shouldn't be lynched or defamed from comments.
Hypothesis: some "mild facts" are legally considered "harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive." These two things can both be true, but if they are, companies might still be obligated to minimize a harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive workplace.
> some "mild facts" are legally considered "harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive."
What? I thought the argument from the other end was always to deny these were facts. You are saying, yes, they are facts. But they are too volatile so we won't examine them?
Well I believe Google is in the right to fire him. But what I found most embarrassing is most people who I'd imagine to mostly liberal and reasonable behaved like he said something so vile that he must be censored across all news media.
they fired Damore, because he was pushing an agenda. he presented those 'mild facts' selectively and then used the selection to argue for something bigger that is very questionable/false, i.e. that women have no place at top STEM positions
If I am reading you correctly, you are saying that all restrictions of free speech are basically equivalent. You claim that these things are "exactly" the same: moderating harassment on a private website versus government-enforced suppression of evidence of a massacre. You conclude that to be for one but not the other is to be hypocritical. I think that's a very reductionist way of looking at some complex issues.
I find it useful to ignore the value of consistency when considering people's actions holistically. Otherwise you'll never get anywhere when trying to determine what people really want.
I suggest this if only for practicality sake, as only fanatics are completely consistent with some set of edicts/ethics/beliefs/ So you need to be able to communicate and reason with people who are inconsistent.
Without devolving into a semantic debate, I would argue that people are consistent with their desired outcomes, but decidedly inconsistent with the means of which they achieve their outcomes.
The unstated single standard for the vast majority is "whatever works out best for me."
That entitlement of self-righteous is jarring. They need to have some awareness/consciousness what is happening around the world. They are losing, power talks, value is overrated.
Either you're in favor of free speech or you're just partial about which content you want to censor. The activist crowd in the west lost all moral standing on this subject years ago.