Google forced by internal conflict to end censored Chinese search engine project

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-search-engine-2/
https://archive.is/dSt4p

GOOGLE HAS BEEN forced to shut down a data analysis system it was using to develop a censored search engine for China after members of the company’s privacy team raised internal complaints that it had been kept secret from them, The Intercept has learned.

The internal rift over the system has had massive ramifications, effectively ending work on the censored search engine, known as Dragonfly, according to two sources familiar with the plans. The incident represents a major blow to top Google executives, including CEO Sundar Pichai, who have over the last two years made the China project one of their main priorities.

The dispute began in mid-August, when the The Intercept revealed that Google employees working on Dragonfly had been using a Beijing-based website to help develop blacklists for the censored search engine, which was designed to block out broad categories of information related to democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest, in accordance with strict rules on censorship in China that are enforced by the country’s authoritarian Communist Party government.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

In their defense, if you've ever done tech support it's hard not to believe the average person is too dumb to live.

However Google isn't acting acting like this from a tech standpoint, like you said, it's an identity politics standpoint. Shit hitting the fan with James Damore was proof enough of that and then they just kept doubling down on dumbassery. Like when they fired Tim Chevalier for speaking out against racism and sexism at Google and that dude was 1 POC away from winning oppression bingo. It doesn't matter what side of the identity politics coin you're on, if you speak up they will shut you up.

The average person isn't that bright. The beauty of a big decentralized democratic system is that it doesn't matter. Like a leaf cutter ant colony building a complex gas exchange system to keep from suffocating on their own exhaust while no individual worker has the slightest idea what they're doing; a democratic capitalist country can accidentally create a global economy that leads to unprecedented standard of living, even while made up of stupid parts. It's all emergent properties. People are stupid. The system they create through their interactions is not. Authoritarianism just puts some retard on top of that system, neutering its advantages.

 

[BoingBoingBoi]

it's pretty striking that the thing got shut down due to internal complications and concerns about secrecy. it seems that there are degrees of evil even among top tech execs.

hopefully there's reshuffling at the top of google and they get a new CEO and other senior management who isnt interested in fellating china.

edit: actually, this article, about google CEO Pichai getting drilled by congress, is a bit more interesting because it demonstrates how detail-averse pichai was when being asked about dragonfly.

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/11/google-congressional-hearing/

this paragraph is pretty interesting:

Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., quizzed Pichai on what user information the company would share with Chinese authorities. Pichai did not directly answer, stating, “We would look at what the conditions are to operate … [and we would] explore a wide range of possibilities.” Pichai said that he would be “transparent” with lawmakers on the company’s China plan going forward. He did not acknowledge that Dragonfly would still be secret — and he would not have been discussing it in Congress — had it not been for the whistleblowers inside the company who decided to leak information about the project.

so because this is so awful, it had to be kept secret. if it wasn't kept secret, it would be met with vicious protest because it's so obviously a case of a company helping a foreign power violate human rights. were it kept secret, it would have been rolled out in china *in a few months*. the non-answer about sharing info with the chinese government also suggests that they probably would have, as that's SOP in china.

 

[QI 541]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say exactly. What about my position is similar to communism? This is a capitalist position. I'm not talking about willing anything away through the socio-political system, I'm talking about simply NOT using force. And if not anyone can snatch a blueprint and put the thing together then doesn't that seem to undermine the idea that copycats will immediately eat all the profits? I don't think it took Apple 20, 30 or 50 years of research to develop the iPhone either, all of our new technology is built on the back of whatever came before it, before they started selling iPhones they were selling iPods, whatever portion of what you've already created goes into what you make in the future, it's already there for you. The R&D cost is only that huge if you look at that cumulative sum as if they had to spend all of it developing one product, that isn't how it works in reality though. It's like looking at the development of a burger from mcdonalds as if the company first had to domesticate the cow, invent agriculture and discover fire.

This is like horseshoe theory applied to libertarianism/communism.

The average person isn't that bright. The beauty of a big decentralized democratic system is that it doesn't matter. Like a leaf cutter ant colony building a complex gas exchange system to keep from suffocating on their own exhaust while no individual worker has the slightest idea what they're doing; a democratic capitalist country can accidentally create a global economy that leads to unprecedented standard of living, even while made up of stupid parts. It's all emergent properties. People are stupid. The system they create through their interactions is not. Authoritarianism just puts some exceptional individual on top of that system, neutering its advantages.

History disagrees. In most cases, the path a country takes is defined by the elite. The average person is nothing more than fodder. Interestingly, the rise of social media has given the average person an inflated sense of self-importance, and occasionally the elite allow an average person their moment in the spotlight.

 

[Slap47]

I'm not sure I agree. They very clearly are winning. The discussions we're having today are drastically different (in a much worse way) than we were having 8 years ago. They very fact that these people exist now in frightingly large numbers is a very bad sign. Furthermore, this shit is coming from the media, the supposed "counter-culture," teachers, the intellectual gurus, etc. Even Bernie Sanders's popularity and Occasio-Cortez getting elected is a sign of this, the socialism stuff is pretty entwined with social justice.

The only reason Google employees opposed the censorship thing was that Google leadership forgot to couch this in social justice terms. Maybe there's a few old schoolers there with grimy beards that pre-pend "GNU" in front of "Linux" but like the ACLU is becoming, the "free speech" fighters only believe in free speech in a very loose way the resembles what we understand the term by.

It's odd how these neoliberals who want to give more power to corporations are viewed as socialists.

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

It's odd how these neoliberals who want to give more power to corporations are viewed as socialists.

Because they are. Socialists view whatever they personally believe and do as being "inherently" for the people no matter whose face they're stomping on or how many people they're starving, they do this shit and think it's fighting American imperialism or such shit. So even when they're perpetuating a system they claim to hate they think they're working for it because they're doing what they personally want to do, and to them that's socialism.

 

[Vlad the Inhaler]

I wasn't saying we should invade China. Nor was I saying we should use nukes. You do realize not all submarines carry nuclear weapons, right? They use normal missiles like most naval units. They are powered by reactors. I suggest you do research before stating which country could hurt which worse.

You sperging the fuck out about Chinese history and warlords and how they've suffered just so much uwu.

They are little more than sheeple, and if you think for even a second that these people who will be forced into a social credit system would fight for their government in an invasion, you are a fool.
Read what I was replying to before throwing a bitch fit, please.

Yeah, you're probably right those sheeple will never fight for their government. Just like they'd never fight for those douchebag North Koreans, right? Cause that could *never* happen!

Keep making your war plans, they're completely John Birch Society-worthy. I'm sure your understanding of the Chinese psyche is as thorough as your grasp of military matters. Like how we can launch a major attack on them with conventional weapons without suffering massive, crippling retaliation. They'll welcome us as liberators and throw off the oppressive yoke of a gov't that has modernised the whole country and turned them into a global economic power. Who wouldn't?

I can't wait to see how that stock market's going to growing like gangbusters from all this.

 

[uncleShitHeel]

I'm sorry. On what plane of reality, using what hallucinatory substances, is starting a war with China an even remotely plausible idea. Your idea is what, exactly? A massive first strike with hundreds of nuclear weapons in the hope we can neutralize their entire nuclear arsenal? Let's set aside for just a moment the fact that 1960's technology nuclear weapon armed submarines (no matter how fucking loud) and mobile launchers make that idea beyond our or anybody else's capability. Aside from the complete insanity and unspeakable immorality of such a move, how long do you think it would take for every other nuclear power to annihilate us as an unaccepatable threat to the rest of the world? How many dozens of thermonuclear weapons that survive our first strike would be acceptable loss? Not to mention the nuclear fallout and complete collapse of our economy in the wake of all that. Terrorists knocked down two buildings and our economy freaked. How about having San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, DC, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami and Dallas (for starters) incinerated?

But we could just blockade their trade, eh? You do realize a naval blockade is an act of war, and they have more than the military capability to end such a blockade, and full justification for doing so. Okay, so we'll just start a trade war with the foreign country that happens to hold the largest share of our debt held by foreign countries. Do I need to explain why that is completely moronic? How they can hurt us FAR worse than we can hurt them? That there is a difference between a recession and a depression, and which one they can inflict on us?

And all why? Because they want Google to help them restrict what their citizens can search for online? I'm sure this is going to go over like a turd in a punchbowl, but China is a sovereign nation. They are also a communist country, and neither they, nor their government has any great interest in changing that. And who the fuck are we to tell them what they should or shouldn't do? Do you know anything about their history of the last 100 years or so? Do you know how many Chinese died during the Boxer Rebellion? How foreign powers completely controlled her? How they spent 40 years being brutalized by warlords, the Japanese, the Kuomintang, and then their civil war all before Mao and his communists showed up and taught them what real suffering meant? The Chinese are fucking terrifying just because of what they can take and still keep going, getting stronger. They are perfectly willing to leave us the fuck alone if we leave them. Only a fool thinks we have any realistic choice but to gladly accept their offer.

I was the one who suggested we invade China you exceptional fuck.

Take that micro dick out of your mouth and listen for a second.

 

[Xarpho]

"Don't be evil", am I right?

I could have called this. As early as spring 2002, a few years before they went public, if you typed in the suffix for the Chinese Google (forgot what the suffix was but you could just type in the alternate URL, no VPN required), you could type in "Tiananmen Square" into Google Images and get pictures of happy tourists while the regular Google would show the famous "Tank Man" picture or variants of it. This was even before fall 2002 when the Chinese government blocked Google access for the first time. Maybe tomorrow I can find that magazine article that mentioned it...

 

[Nobunaga]

I'm sorry. On what plane of reality, using what hallucinatory substances, is starting a war with China an even remotely plausible idea. Your idea is what, exactly? A massive first strike with hundreds of nuclear weapons in the hope we can neutralize their entire nuclear arsenal? Let's set aside for just a moment the fact that 1960's technology nuclear weapon armed submarines (no matter how fucking loud) and mobile launchers make that idea beyond our or anybody else's capability. Aside from the complete insanity and unspeakable immorality of such a move, how long do you think it would take for every other nuclear power to annihilate us as an unaccepatable threat to the rest of the world? How many dozens of thermonuclear weapons that survive our first strike would be acceptable loss? Not to mention the nuclear fallout and complete collapse of our economy in the wake of all that. Terrorists knocked down two buildings and our economy freaked. How about having San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, DC, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami and Dallas (for starters) incinerated?

But we could just blockade their trade, eh? You do realize a naval blockade is an act of war, and they have more than the military capability to end such a blockade, and full justification for doing so. Okay, so we'll just start a trade war with the foreign country that happens to hold the largest share of our debt held by foreign countries. Do I need to explain why that is completely moronic? How they can hurt us FAR worse than we can hurt them? That there is a difference between a recession and a depression, and which one they can inflict on us?

And all why? Because they want Google to help them restrict what their citizens can search for online? I'm sure this is going to go over like a turd in a punchbowl, but China is a sovereign nation. They are also a communist country, and neither they, nor their government has any great interest in changing that. And who the fuck are we to tell them what they should or shouldn't do? Do you know anything about their history of the last 100 years or so? Do you know how many Chinese died during the Boxer Rebellion? How foreign powers completely controlled her? How they spent 40 years being brutalized by warlords, the Japanese, the Kuomintang, and then their civil war all before Mao and his communists showed up and taught them what real suffering meant? The Chinese are fucking terrifying just because of what they can take and still keep going, getting stronger. They are perfectly willing to leave us the fuck alone if we leave them. Only a fool thinks we have any realistic choice but to gladly accept their offer.

Hey Xi, ching ching chong chong, how about you suck my big dong

 

[ObeseScreamingBlackMan]

This thread has gotten super :autism: super fast.

 

[Jaimas]

This thread has gotten super :autism: super fast.

That's the Kiwi Farms promise.

 

[Superman93]

Hey Xi, ching ching chong chong, how about you suck my big dong

Me love you long time baby

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

History disagrees. In most cases, the path a country takes is defined by the elite. The average person is nothing more than fodder. Interestingly, the rise of social media has given the average person an inflated sense of self-importance, and occasionally the elite allow an average person their moment in the spotlight.

Yes and democratic capitalist societies that I'm talking about are by far the exception and not the rule. Most of our history was various forms of petty tyranny or oligarchy. Yet this small minority of free nations rules the world and brought us to the unprecedented level of technology we currently enjoy.

 

[Slap47]

This thread has gotten super :autism: super fast.

Yes and democratic capitalist societies that I'm talking about are by far the exception and not the rule. Most of our history was various forms of petty tyranny or oligarchy. Yet this small minority of free nations rules the world and brought us to the unprecedented level of technology we currently enjoy.

Even autocratic governments are limited by what the society will allow. Hitler had to hide the camps, industrialize his process of genocide and only use a small corp of dedicated fanatics. The Rwandans just took out machetes and committed the worst genocide of the 20th century (800,000+ in 100 days).

The House of Lords was overwhelmingly planters but when you get a petition with half a million signatures saying "end slavery" you gotta pay attention.

Asian societies are the worst though. They didn't develop any principles except advance your own family so when it comes to dictatorship there is no rules.

 

[QI 541]

Yes and democratic capitalist societies that I'm talking about are by far the exception and not the rule. Most of our history was various forms of petty tyranny or oligarchy. Yet this small minority of free nations rules the world and brought us to the unprecedented level of technology we currently enjoy.

Less than 100 years ago these free nations were killing each other by the millions. We have a few decades of relative peacefulness and suddenly everyone thinks we're invincible.

 

[BoingBoingBoi]

i just noticed this comment from the article is somewhat interesting:

perhaps Atm is oversimplifying how google might make a CCP-friendly search engine. that doesn't matter. what might matter is the possibility that google was actually trying to reverse-engineer the great firewall using data from 265.com.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

History disagrees. In most cases, the path a country takes is defined by the elite. The average person is nothing more than fodder. Interestingly, the rise of social media has given the average person an inflated sense of self-importance, and occasionally the elite allow an average person their moment in the spotlight.

Alexander the Great would have been a nobody without the army his father armed and trained.

 

[Miller]

GOOGLE HAS BEEN forced to shut down a data analysis system it was using to develop a censored search engine for China after members of the company’s privacy team raised internal complaints that it had been kept secret from them, The Intercept has learned.

I don't trust that at all. I think the whole thing is put on stand by. I might sound black-pilled but the system that Google was building for China is the Silicon Valley's vision of the future, especially since the 2016 US elections. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 10 years the western countries will ask Google to make a version for each country.

 

[Agent of Z.O.G.]

They're just going to move all the devs to the Great EU Firewall then quietly turn it back into the Chinese version.

 

[XYZpdq]

You joke, but we just saw Newgrounds become relevant again.

2019 will be the year of Jeeves, I can feel it.

Jeeves, Jeb, and Jeff Jarrett!