The search app, which has the code name “Project Dragonfly,” is still very much alive, even though the company claimed last December that it was not planning to launch it after all in the wake of widespread condemnation.
The search platform is designed to blacklist information the Chinese government doesn’t want its people to see about topics like democracy, human rights, peaceful protests, and religion. It will also link the searches people carry out to their phone numbers so the government can keep tabs on them. Some of the terms that would be blocked include “human rights,” “Nobel prize” and “student protest.”
Right now, Google’s search service can’t be used by most Chinese internet users because the communist country’s “Great Firewall” has blocked it. The new app will adhere to the strict Chinese censorship laws; the government blocks its people from reading information online about news, academic studies, political opponents and sex, among other topics. Many popular Western news and social media sites are also censored, such as the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, the New York Times, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram....read more>>>...