AmIFirstToThink

Google in China would have been a way for Google (and Western Democracies) to get the most current listing of what China is asking companies to filter.

Whatever China was not comfortable asking international companies to filter (it shows to others things that Chinese government is trying to control), would have been shown by google to Chinese users by default.

Question for the google engineers here objecting to filtered products in China... Is the right to restrict right to the outcome of ones labor after it is sold universal? Who else would you grant the right to restrict the fruits of their labor from being used by you if they don't agree with you on something that may be important to them?

Can a coal miner ask the utility company to stop electrical service to the parents of a google engineer residing in heartland? If no, why not?

Why can't the baker deny decorating a cake a certain way against their will?

If you are asking for a ethical right to deny basic things (internet search is just about there as electricity, food, shelter, emergency care), just imagine if all the things you depend on came with similar exceptions that excluded you from using it.

I would have imagined lot of googlers taking objection to blatant content/speech suppression on YouTube. But they are completely fine if it is their ideology winning as a outcome of a said effort, no matter the ethics.

The cost of creating artificial exclusivity, enforced by the state against natural human learning/discovering capabilities, is even higher.

File a defect log to the book of Genesis, assign it to original developer, the God himself.

Why are you surprised that humans are being humans?

Why can't you put trust into the fact that there are more people being good most of the time.

Internet tools should be like paper and pencil, opinionless. Pencil maker doesn't get to control what gets written by the pencil, a social media platform maker doesn't get to control what gets said on the platform. Only when legally required, the pencil may be seized; only when legally required a social media post be taken down.

If with the protection and power of USA we can't stand by the Freedom of Expression in the marketplace of ideas, we are doomed to get an authoritarian overlords.

This "I don't like this free and open internet" because my ideas are losing is very dangerous power grab.