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AlternateHistoryHub presents:
This is going to be a rant, so forgive me.
The public square has always evolved
with every change in how we get information.
What used to be just a town crier, yelling the news
in the public square
became books, became newspapers
radio, TV,
and now the internet.
The internet is an amazing tool
to receive information.
It has allowed the public square
to explode.
Everyone can now be a voice.
Podcast, forums, and online video
or even the comments section below said video.
But as the internet has matured,
that public square
has become monopolized.
The social media sites,
the way we receive information,
and the way people reach an audience
is really in the control
of less than 5 companies.
You cannot get a large following
to spread your message without
Twitter, Facebook, Twitch,
or in my case Google, with Youtube.
"Don't be evil" was Google's motto
when they first became the world's largest search engine.
Right out of the gate,
they might as well have been a monopoly.
Nobody's using Yahoo or Bing.
If you're in the West,
anything you looked up,
anything you saw,
you were probably using Google.
Now, 20 years on
Google is expanding to a new market.
An untapped oil well..
China.
Google tried to get into China in 2006,
but the Chinese had a certain set of rules
they needed Google to comply by.
Censor any information that can be against the government.
The standard stuff that the Chinese sites already did.
Google wasn't fine with this and left China in 2010.
Sacrificing profits for morals.
Well, now in 2018
it appears like those profits
and that vast market of potential users
was too much to shy away from.
Google has decided to go back into China,
With a thing called "Project Dragonfly."
With Dragonfly, Google has said
they are attempting to bring the outside world into China
by allowing more search results
that those Chinese search engines could never offer.
However, that turns out to not really be the case.
What Google has really done is simply come back to China
under the guidelines that the authoritarian government
have set.
The Tiananmen Square massacre is
famously something never allowed to be discussed
inside Chinese borders.
Anything pertaining to Taiwanese or Tibetan independence
or how Xi Jinping, the head of China
resembles a certain honey loving bear—
those are also blocked too.
But its not just about what China has done
and is trying to suppress that information..
China doesn't want the things they're doing now to be talked about.
In its most western province of Xinjiang -sorry if I pronounced that wrong-
there is a population of Turkic speaking Muslims called Uyghurs.
This area is far disconnected from the industrial east
and is a hotbed of violence between
Han Chinese and ethnic Uyghurs.
The last few decades have consisted of
militant Islamic groups causing bombings or stabbings
that have disrupted the area and they angered the Chinese.
So what did China do?
Recent reports have come out
that China has imprisoned 1 million people in mass detention camps
or as the Chinese government calls them.. re-education camps.
To make them "more model Chinese citizens"
and its not just the camps,
the entire province and anywhere with Uyghur influence
has basically become occupied by a constant surveillance state
Growing a beard, quitting drinking,
reading a book about Uyghur history
are now considered extremist, illegal acts.
The Chinese created an environment where
telling on neighbors or family for un-Chinese activities are rewarded
and just like North Korea, sometimes entire families are punished.
Now terrorist attacks are of course wrong
and Muslim extremism is of course wrong
but what the Chinese are doing is putting the boot on an entire local culture
to destroy any "wrong-think."
Over decades, the government has even encouraged
Han Chinese to move into the region to simply outpopulate the natives.
It's not just Muslims,
this policy is cracking down on..
Christians, any religion,
and of course, any actions deemed against the government.
And they probably will continue doing this
until there is no more "wrong-think."
They did the same thing in Tibet.
No matter your opinions on how to deal with terrorism,
1 million people in camps, is certainly not the way.
Now as all of this is happening,
Google still is eager to work together with the Chinese government on expanding into the country.
But instead of as partners,
Google is more like a lackey
who is taking orders so they don't lose that market.
And this isn't some conspiracy,
this move has been criticized and protested from within the company itself.
This is a huge move,
the more we find out about the atrocities China is doing
the harder it might be for Google to justify themselves.
Yet for now, Project Dragonfly is going forward
and I can guarantee Google will not allow you to look up the detention camps inside China.
And if you do in 2020, you might harm your social credit score.
Which when implemented,
will basically be a credit score
but instead of payments, it will reward and punish depending on
what you search, buy, and say.
It's not crazy that China, the authoritarian state that it is
doing the actions that it is.
I guess the point of this video is that
an American company, one that we all know
seems to not have a problem with going into this market
and helping out an authoritarian state.
When I first started making this video it was very difficult
to know where to start and formulate my ideas.
But what I think is happening in China
or with Facebook sharing information
is a good reveal of what these companies truly are.
People trust that the social media giants will not use their monopoly
in this new public square to control information.
But I think China is a good warning of what these companies
are really capable of and how they really think.
These are companies that have a monopoly
on how we share information
and so much so, the only way I can talk about this
is through a Google service.
So to my boss, I say
please, don't be evil.
The internet is becoming a far stranger place
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This is Cody from Alternate History Hub.