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Amnesty International on China Censorship  (View post)

Seth Finkelstein [PersonRank 10]

Friday, July 21, 2006
17 years ago4,784 views

I support it. But how to make corporations consider human rights over profits?

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Seth : by lobbying the collective wisdom of the crowds!!

The more the community yells "foul" – the louder the noise. Once it hits that threshold , it will be become total digust and that is when profits will begin to drop.

Users will retract themselves from Companies that DONT value- human principles as part of thier mission statement. By that, I mean stop the Lip service and "corporate screech" -and get down that ivory tower, sit on the flootr and listen to us.

The power resides with the community. Companies that listen will survive and thrive, those that don't will organically die. (die painfully slow deaths- I hope!!).

Grrrrrrrrrrr.. I just throw in the last statement as emphasis :)_

ShellehS [PersonRank 5]

17 years ago #

cn.yahoo.com is a joke, when i google "an open letter of super rabbit corp to yahoo cn corp"in chinese now, then google down. that is, yahoo crop warned SR corp to stop uninstalling yahoo assistant maliciously.and the leader of super rabit wondered how it not to b a malicious uninstall?

   yahoo has a tool called "yahoo assistant", lots of users in china agree it is a malicious shareware, and we cant uninstall it compeletly unless del related keys by regedit.exe. or,use tools like super rabit , etc.

google these characters " 卸载 yahoo助手 " if your system suports chinese(simple) and u will c so many people(include me) hate this shit and how difficult to uninstall it ...

xujie [PersonRank 5]

17 years ago #

In China,If you search some words on google.com,like "democracy"、"humanrights"、“freedom”,etc....,then your network will be cut down for a few minutes.

Support Freedom! [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Seth and PD, you have the right idea.

We've seen Google's founders publicly expressing doubts about censorship in China--it may be genuine or a hollow PR comment, but the public reads about it regardless and it helps form their opinions.

The louder our voices become, the more people we tell, then the more likely even large corporations will feel it's easier to do the right thing than risk outraging their customers.

Seth Finkelstein [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

The problem is that I've yet to see it has much effect – that it goes beyond the "Usual Suspects". Do Google or Yahoo actually *change* their behavior?

It's complicated. Here's some interesting thoughts from someone well-versed in the issue:

http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2006/07/china_the_inter.html

ShellehS [PersonRank 5]

17 years ago #

to xujie

i dont konw where u r , but in fact, i googled both in en and cn, all work..here u will see them:

"R35|_|17z 1 – 10 0f 4b0|_|7 6,870,000 f0r 人权"
"R35|_|17z 1 – 10 0f 4b0|_|7 2,300,000 f0r humanrights"

ohh, seem cn results more than en resuts. cool. *^_^*

paperghost [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

at the end of the day. who gives a crap! Were not in China so stop bloddy going on about it!!!!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Seth
> Do Google or Yahoo actually *change* their behavior?

I see three potential effects of massive negative feedback:
1. Direct: The company reverts its current actions
2. Indirect: The company will be slower (or completely stop) to expand this feature in the future
3. None: The company doesn't care either way

I think #1 is always what everyone's hoping for, but sometimes #2 is more natural. But we can't see it, because the effect is indirect.

Let's put it this way; would there be Google self-censorship in China if the whole world would have harshly protested the Google self-censorship in Germany and France that has been going on for years? As it was, due to only minor protesting, Google learned the lesson that they sometimes get away with self-censorship. As it is in China now, Google learned the lesson that they do not get away with China censorship however. This might make future censorship expansions requested by the Chinese gov't harder, and it may make it harder for other countries' gov't's to demand the same censorship "feature".
It may also push Google engineers to consider alternative routes. Emphasis on *may*. But we can't change our observations and demands based on what we believe at one time or another to have realistic effects... how can we ever know for sure? I think we can't...

But every protest increases the treshold for Google and others to repeat similar actions, through moral concerns or self-interest... the two of which may be inseperatable (word?) in a future where companies feed on user trust.

Paperghost
> Were not in China so stop bloddy going on about it!!!!

Who is "we"? Clearly some of us are indeed in China.

Seth Finkelstein [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> But every protest increases the treshold for Google and others

My question – how much is the increase? That is, does it *really* build up *much*, or does it reach a certain limit and stop at that point?

Is the following metaphor understandable? Consider a geometric series:

1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + 1/128 + 1/256 + ...

It is true that:

A) Every term increases the total sum

B) The total sum never exceeds the value "2" (here being "The Usual Suspects").

Elias KAI [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

It looks like IKEA Yellow and Blue.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> > But every protest increases the treshold for Google and others
>
> My question – how much is the increase? That is, does it
> *really* build up *much*, or does it reach a certain limit and
> stop at that point?

Yes, when Google is in another meeting discussing whether or not to allow Country XYZ to hand over a blacklist to Google, they will have protests on their China move in mind. Unless they become totally ignorant of the outside world. They may also remember the protests when the Chinese gov't hands over to them an expanded blacklist.

I don't think there are any absolute numbers, just a long line of gray. For example, while in Germany results were always and still are censored, it has become a bit better as since a while missing results are disclosed as such on result page footers. Is it a coincidence that this didn't happen for a long time, but suddenly was implemented after the China protests?

Santosh [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

What google did may be wrong. But google is not the social organization where people donate money. Google has shareholders who expect money in return for there investments. If google does not obey the guidelines of the Chinese government than it will go out of business in China.

webwalker [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

> Paperghost
> > Were not in China so stop bloddy going on about it!!!!
>
> Who is "we"? Clearly some of us are indeed in China.

"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
   — Martin Niemoller

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
   — Adolf Hitler

Millions of people died for this over 60 years ago.
World War II was to be the war to end all wars.
Thousands (more?) people in Chinese prisons (and elsewhere)
are dying for this now. And yet we poor humans continue on ...

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