A senior researcher has quit his job at Google in protest over the company’s leaked plans to create a censored web search app for China, codenamed “Dragonfly.”
The Chinese communist regime runs the world’s most sophisticated system of internet censorship and requires foreign companies to censor topics it deems “sensitive,” such as democracy, human rights, and persecution of groups like Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, human rights activists, and others. Companies are also forced to share their data stored in China with the regime.
Past Censorship
Google ran a censored version of its search engine in China from 2006 to 2010, when the company backed out. Its stated reason for exiting was a cyber attack originating from China that targeted Google email accounts of dozens of Chinese human-rights activists.Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who was born in Soviet Russia, said in 2010 he saw “some earmarks of totalitarianism” in China, which was “personally quite troubling” to him, The Wall Street Journal reported. The newspaper cited “people familiar with the discussions” as saying that then-Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and others advocated staying in China.
Poulson joined Google in May 2016 and worked on “international query analysis,” which aims to improve the accuracy of Google search systems.
He said he joined viewing Google’s withdrawal from China and Brin’s comments of support for individual liberties as a statement of principle. If Google is betraying such principles, he doesn’t want to “be complicit as a shareholder and citizen of the company,” he said.
While Google was applauded by human-rights advocates for its 2010 action, it might have withdrawn for economic reasons. The company struggled to make inroads in the Chinese market, where the regime supports home-grown companies with top cadre connections at the expense of competitors.
Poulson warned that if Google chooses to cave to Chinese censors again, it may embolden other regimes to push their demands, too.
Google Response
Google reportedly tried to keep its China plans secret to all but a few hundred of its 88,000 employees. Once the info leaked, more than 1,400 employees signed a letter demanding an investigation of “urgent moral and ethical issues” raised by the project. Still, Google has declined to confirm the Dragonfly project, despite multiple media reports confirming its existence through unidentified sources.Poulson said about four other employees also quit over Dragonfly.
“It’s incredible how little solidarity there is on this,” he said. “It is my understanding that when you have a serious ethical disagreement with an issue, your proper course of action is to resign.”