Spam: The other white meat

In Davos at the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates came to Google's defense in their policy of happily complying with China's demands to censor themselves.

While it's not surprising, especially given Microsoft's own compliance with China, it's painfully clear that Gate's (and probably Google's) position is that as long as China provides market access, he's willing to engage. The begged question is of course what engagement actually means. For Gates, even a censored presence is substantial: "access to the outside world is preventing more censorship".

This claim, while perhaps true to the extent that access makes it harder to censor absolutely everything, entirely overlooks the fact that the compliance with the Chinese censorship rules legitimizes information censorship by the Chinese government. Even if the remote possibility is increased slightly that individuals might have a chance of having access to information, the immediately accessible information (which has been directly propagandized- opposed to the implicit propaganda found elsewhere) becomes increasingly legitimate through two factors:

1) the Google brand legitimizes content by virtue of its function. By being a top ranked item on Google, the user believes that their search result reflects in some sense the greatest number of other sites which see the search result as relevant. This is a perfect example of the "wheat separating from the chafe" of liberal free speech theory. While this is criticizable in its own right, what is relevant is that the Google brand creates a credentialling mechanism for content.

2) By submitting to censorship, Google is actually devaluing their own brand (which of course has its own implications), but more significant is that Google effectively endorses a direct propaganda model of information. Though it is imaginable that there are circumstances where this is desirable, it seems uncontroversial to argue that this is not one of them.

Gates, of course, doesn't see things this way. Instead, he sees the potential for profit expand, and pulls a Reagan-esque "trickle down" argument:

He added that despite the disparity between China’s urban and rural areas, the country was on track toward reducing poverty, a move that would mean more people would be able to afford broadband internet access.

"The greatest surprise in poverty reduction ... is China," he said.

While it is entirely unclear from the article how Gates thinks this might happen, he takes a turn for the worse, suggesting that increased access to censored content sets the stage for national change:

"I do think information flow is happening in China ... saying that even by existing there contributions to a national dialogue have taken place. There’s no doubt in my mind that’s been a huge plus."

While one needn't go back to Marx to look at the claim that capitalism does an amazing job at liberalizing society, what seems nefarious in this incarnation of the confrontation of authoritarianism and capital is that the capitalists are even less interested in the evisceration of authoritarianism- they are happy to accept it as long as it provides a market. Certainly while the mercantile class which tore apart feudalism had its own version of political agnosticism, what appears different in this case is that capital is actually propping up authoritarianism.

Original Article

Update
Sites Google Censors gives a good idea of how Google's filtering impacts search result returns for "mein kampf"
This also has a pretty detailed list.
This is a fairly apologetic article, although has some good pieces of information.