Google Engineer: Company Blacklisted Dissident to Please Chinese Government

A Google software engineer revealed concerning details about the company’s efforts to please the government China before it launched its latest entry into the country — the censored Chinese search app “Project Dragonfly” — which allegedly included the company blacklisting Chinese dissidents from its buildings for fear of upsetting the Chinese government.

In a series of Twitter posts, Thursday, Google software engineer Mike Wacker discussed Project Dragonfly — Google’s controversial censored Chinese search app — and claimed Google refused to allow Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei on the company’s New York City campus for fear of upsetting the Chinese government.

“A story relevant to Project Dragonfly, the censored search engine Google is building for China: back in September 2016, Talks at Google snubbed [Ai Weiwei], an artist and activist who has criticized the Chinese government’s stance on democracy and human rights,” declared Wacker. “The decision to not host [Weiwei] at Google’s NYC campus back then was related to Google’s (unsuccessful) attempts to launch Google Play in China. As one could imagine, hosting a political dissident such as [Weiwei] would probably upset the Communist Party of China.”

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