As a former Chinese citizen, I've always been a bit confused why people get mad at companies operating in the country, censored.
At least in my experience, a censored version of a foreign website is always much better than the stuff developed locally, and there are some political reasons for this I won't go into.
In my opinion, it's pure virtue signalling to argue that "a company compromising morals in a different country is bad", at least in the general case. I would totally rather use a censored version of Google over Baidu.
Arguing that "companies operating in China while censored hurts the Chinese people" is pure nonsense. The only people that care that {some company} is censored in China are distinctly people outside of China.
Because those people feel that their culture/ideas are the correct one's and that the other county should change(Sometimes they may even be right!). They view the domestic companies as a vehicle to push their views and effect this change.
There are a couple camps:
Do business but censor, in the hopes that the users become aware and become promoters of your views
Don't do business as to not enable the regime to succeed and hope the potential users notice and become promoters of your views.
I think that for the most part, even companies like Google or Facebook will not be able to change a country, similar to how the US was not able to change Cuba or North Korea.
I think that there is a lack of understanding in Western society that other societies view their government/societal structure not as vehicles for increased personal freedom but as a structure to promote social stability over long periods of time(1000 of years. Something I think China is particularly proud of, for good reason).
I take your point - elsewhere I've said that I come from a place of pragmatism, not ideology. My question about this is that your example search engines, where this article is about Amazon selling products. I think the trade-offs are subtly different.
You seem to have taken this quote out of context. My point is that "a less censored platform is always better", in other words "Google but censored is better than Baidu".
Back when India was throwing off the British Raj there was a strategy among the rebels to murder the good British officials (judges and so on) rather than assassinating the corrupt or incompetent ones.
The idea was that the good British made the Raj more tolerable.
- - - -
Edit to add: I should point out that that strategy did not result in victory. It was famously Gandhi and the Non-violence movement who ultimately succeeded.
How would I know? I wasn't there, and I don't have a crystal ball nor a time machine.
If you check the Wikipedia link in my previous comment you'll see that it was actually a whole epic constellation of events and forces and personalities and masses of people. Not quite the Mahabharata but still pretty epic.
The particular thing that Gandhi's "arc", if you will, achieved was to demolish utterly the rationale for the British Raj in the first place: that Indians needed outside governance. The non-violent movement showed that Indians were the moral equals or even superiors of the British, and Gandhi knew it.
Winston Churchill: What do you think of Western civilization?
My counter-argument is that a complete lack of alternate platforms, although worse in the short term, might actually catalyst a long term improvement.
Just like russians are now being forced to learn to live without Ikea furniture or Intel computers, for the hopes that the complete lack of the better stuff might encourage them to think about overthrowing their oppressors.
Google with censorship is like a false hope, a kind of political PR greenwashing. The people of China use Google and think it's the same Google the rest of the world uses. It might be better to reveal the ugly truth, and say, you either get the whole truth, or no truth at all. To reveal the liars.
At least in my experience, a censored version of a foreign website is always much better than the stuff developed locally, and there are some political reasons for this I won't go into.
In my opinion, it's pure virtue signalling to argue that "a company compromising morals in a different country is bad", at least in the general case. I would totally rather use a censored version of Google over Baidu.
Arguing that "companies operating in China while censored hurts the Chinese people" is pure nonsense. The only people that care that {some company} is censored in China are distinctly people outside of China.