The challenges with information have changed drastically within the past two decades. In the late 1990’s the main challenge is accessing the information. To retrieve information, one would have to locate the specific book, journal, or newspaper in a library or watch what’s on the news/TV. Today, information is so abundant and easily accessible through internet databases, search engines, social media, and other media outlets, that the biggest challenge we are facing is to learn how to filter out false and/or unreliable information. Having access to valuable information in a timely manner may lead to more informed decisions and profits. On the contrary, the lack of valuable information may lead to a major financial loss that is evident during the 2008 financial crisis.
The issue that now arises is – who should determine what information to filter out and what information to keep? In China, the Chinese government took this matter into their own hands when it censored sensitive word searches on the Google search engine. For example, Google searches related to the Chinese character, “Jiang”, is censored because it is associated to the death rumors of former President Jiang Zemin. However, “Jiang” is also the Chinese character for “river”. Click here to read the full article. 

Do you think it is ethical for the Chinese government to censor searches on search engines like Google? Do you think the US government and US-based companies follow a similar practice (maybe at a lesser degree) but is currently unknown to the general public (think of Yahoo’s and YouTube’s removal of “inappropriate” content in the comment section of its articles and videos)?