Both Google and Yahoo have been criticized for censoring their search results in China. What are your feelings about this? Why should Google, or why should Google not, produce different search results for different countries?
The digital explosion truly is changing the world. Today, people seem to be throwing books and newspapers aside and instead look toward the internet for information retrieval. There are millions of websites out there and I think that every person should have the same access to the information on them, especially since regular people like us could be the ones creating them. However, with websites like Wikipedia, some of the information might not be true so I understand why some would be skeptical. But I think that it is up to the individual to decide whether or not to believe it. This why I do not think that Google should produce different search results for different countries. On page 13 of “Blown to Bits” it states,
“An ugly downside to the explosion of digital information and its movement around the world is that information may become less available even where it would be legally protected. Publishers fear ‘libel tourism’-lawsuits in countries with weak protection of free speech designed to intimidate authors in more open societies."
I understand that different countries have different cultures and government styles and I understand that Google might be trying to avoid any possible lawsuits from more conservative areas, but I don’t think it is fair to omit information from people. I mean information is information and like I said before, it should be up to the individual as to what to do with it.
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I don't disagree with you. But I have to ask the question:
ReplyDeleteIs all information equally valuable? Is all information the same?
Consider information that can harm vs. information that can help. If you ran a company that used social networking to help employees "connect" and "organize," would you have a policy about what was appropriate to post to this network? Or let anything go?
I didn't think of it that way. I was thinking in terms of omitting information from an entire country, to me, at first that seemed unethical. But in terms of a company setting, I think that I would have a policy regarding what is appropriate to post because while working, people have a specific duty to fulfill and the company would want to avoid anything that could potentially harm the business.
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