Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/876351501/zoom-acknowledges-it-suspended-activists-accounts-at-china-s-request

by dehrmann • 6 years ago

1069 365 6 years ago

amrrs• 6 years ago

The company said it would no longer block accounts outside of mainland China at Beijing's request, but did not say outright how it would handle such requests that affect users within mainland China. Instead, Zoom said, it would develop technology to block users based on geography.

Funny how these kind of statements are thrown around wherever something is blown up about Zoom. I'm one of those who had goodwill on Zoom but looking at the amount of issues popped up recently and their "Yeah this was intentional but I'm sorry next it it won't happen' response Pattern indicates that the company is aimed at only one thing - Growth at any cost

ciarannolan• 6 years ago

It's the Facebook playbook of doing something illegal/immoral, getting caught, saying 'gee sorry, that was an accident', then doing it all over again.

ct5203• 6 years ago

LOL for real. I will cry no tears for FB when they get what’s coming to them. Will be the MySpace of my kids time.(if it’s not already is)

polemic• 6 years ago

Hard disagree. Until extremely recently Zoom was a mature enterprise video conference solution. It's a B2B product that has suddenly exploded in general consumer usage, and suddenly product and commercial decisions made in that context are at odds with their new market.

They don't sell ads or your personal data, they're not interested in your private life, and their users are their customer. In other words, they lack the nefarious motive of the Facebooks of the world.

They're changing - rapidly - and I believe we can take their efforts to change at face value.

giantDinosaur2• 6 years ago

I'm surprised they don't implement particular forms of shadow banning, such as degrading connections and causing dropouts for particular accounts. That'd be much harder to prove than account termination. Frustrate instead of infuriate, like aspects of the GFW.

duxup3• 6 years ago

I feel like they would get caught and China doesn't want "just bother these people"....

giantDinosaur2• 6 years ago

Yes, it's probably unworkable in terms of getting away with it.

dsalzman• 6 years ago

Vote with your wallet.

duxup3• 6 years ago

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

dehrmann4• 6 years ago

If I were a company using Zoom, I'd be a little worried. Zoom already proved security isn't part of it's culture; now, likely because of it's dev office in China, it's doing at least some of what China asks. I'm suspicious of their end-to-end encryption claims (and implementation), and it's in the realm of possibility that the Chinese government is spying on Zoom calls.

runawaybottle• 6 years ago

Does anyone know if Zoom is built on any open source video streaming tech?

I’m have a hard time believing their product isn’t going to meet massive amounts of competition very soon.

Edit: After some Googling - https://webrtchacks.com/zoom-avoids-using-webrtc/

Wowfunhappy• 6 years ago

No, it’s a custom solution.

bigphishy• 6 years ago

They were former employees of webex and may have taken a lot software design from that product.

jdm22122• 6 years ago

Given that purely from the standpoint of product quality, WebEx is a gigantic dumpster fire and Zoom is fantastic, it seems likely that they learned mostly what not to do from WebEx.

dehrmann4• 6 years ago

I’m have a hard time believing their product isn’t going to meet massive amounts of competition very soon.

There have been several vendors doing this for years. Google Hangouts, Skype, BlueJeans, Webex. Zoom just did it better. Except for security; Zoom doesn't understand security.

ridewinter3• 6 years ago

Paul Graham tweeted the other day about the opportunity to supplant Zoom with something better.

Zoom doesn't seem to have much of a moat, right? Most users aren't even logged in.

montroser• 6 years ago

Some quality "indie" zoom alternatives:

https://whereby.com

https://team.video

gonehome13• 6 years ago

“The reality is Zoom operates in more than 80 countries and continues to expand, which requires compliance with local laws even as Zoom seeks to promote the open exchange of ideas.“

This kind of rationalization isn’t just a problem with Zoom, Apple does the same thing - blocking podcasts and other apps in the Chinese market (also the Taiwan flag emoji).

This is wrong.

What’s legal and what’s right are not the same thing, Zoom’s PR about the promotion of an “open exchange of ideas” is nonsense and both Zoom and the CCP know it.

Companies that work to suppress the rights of citizens are complicit in that suppression and its legality is irrelevant.

When Zoom is requested to send over names and videos of political dissidents to authoritarian leaders will they comply?

I’m sure those killed will be pleased to know Zoom was operating within the legal framework of their country.

Legality should be the bare minimum standard - and in countries with bad laws (Middle East, China) it shouldn’t even be that.

f00_• 6 years ago

they have a lot of staff in china proper right? I mean, it's likely like every other business trying to operate in china (including google) bow down to the government to get the money

what can you expect, just use open source

barry-cotter• 6 years ago

Almost all their engineering staff are in China.

In January 2020, Zoom had over 2,500 employees, 1,396 are in the United States and 1,136 are in their international locations.[69] Although 700 employees within a subsidiary work in China and develop Zoom software.

...

Zoom's product development team is largely based in China, where an average entry-level tech salary is one-third of American salaries, which is a key driver of its profitability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications

monocasa3• 6 years ago

Also, as absolutely reprehensible Apple's similar actions are, Zoom canceled _a US based account_ because of a Chinese request. It's one thing to be all "we comply with local laws", and another to enforce one country's geopolitical aspirations across international borders.

Like, I think companies should take a stand and both aren't acceptable, but Zoom takes new, additional steps here.

HALtheWise• 6 years ago

Most US companies that I am familiar with apply US laws to all their users, at least to some extent. For example, I don't think that YouTube will allow you to post a blatantly copyright-infringing video, even if your account declares a country that doesn't enforce US copyright laws. Similarly, I suspect that Facebook would take down a page for a terrorist group, without needing permission from the country they are based in. I'm curious if you know of counterexamples.

I'm not necessarily saying that US and Chinese laws are equivalent in this sense, but it does seem like something of a double standard.

joyfulmantis12• 6 years ago

If you read the zoom blog post they admit they made mistakes as they did not have the ability to block meetings by region. They have absolutely no desire to enforce chinese laws globally.

From their blog post

"We strive to limit actions taken to only those necessary to comply with local laws. Our response should not have impacted users outside of mainland China. We made two mistakes:

We suspended or terminated the host accounts, one in Hong Kong SAR and two in the U.S. We have reinstated these three host accounts.

We shut down the meetings instead of blocking the participants by country. We currently do not have the capability to block participants by country. We could have anticipated this need. While there would have been significant repercussions, we also could have kept the meetings running."

baybal25• 6 years ago

Companies that work to suppress the rights of citizens are complicit in that suppression and its legality is irrelevant.

100% true. American corporations, and businessmen who collaborated with NSDAP in jew gassing "because it was the law," well, just did what they did. It made them genocide collaborators, and criminals regardless if they did it under the law, or not.

As ancient Romans were saying "a crime can be a tiny stone in a bag of flour."

Slavery is a crime, even if it is not unlawful in a last few countries practicing it.

People who go rape children in places, where, well, child rape is not illegal are committing a crime.

Dotcoms who go play ball with criminal states, which make a crime lawful under a law, claiming "we just follow the law!" even if the law itself is criminal, are just as decidedly criminal.

A crime can not be made less criminal under a law for sane person's moral judgement. I would say, a crime that was legislated, makes it an even bigger crime.

A word crime in a sense as a fault, as something objectively morally reprehensible itself underlines that a wrongdoing is discerned through a thorough judgement rejecting anything that is made to hide, "wrap around," or divert focus from the original fault.

cm2187• 6 years ago

Though frustrating, the rest of the world has had to deal with the extra-territoriality of US laws for decades now, particularly in finance. I don't think it's good. But at least it is recriprocal.

NicoJuicy• 6 years ago

I'm against China here.

But people should realize that the US law is almost forced to every online company/user.

xyproto• 6 years ago

But that was a mistake, and they promptly restored the US based account?

ThrowawayBandit• 6 years ago

It's one thing to be all "we comply with local laws", and another to enforce one country's geopolitical aspirations across international borders.

Not 'whataboutism', but just to generalise on this: The US do this all the time. I believe that in US law the US criminal law has universal jurisdiction, and they also use the fact that they are such a large and important market that companies will have a presence and assets in the US so they that they'll have to comply (which interestingly is exactly what China is often accused of doing.) Not to mention that they are powerful enough to 'suggest' how to behave to other countries, and we're also seeing that all the time.

So fundamentally I think we're seeing China becoming powerful enough to behave internationally the way the US do, and that is something the US are not used to, being used to being the only superpower in town.

markdown• 6 years ago

It's one thing to be all "we comply with local laws", and another to enforce one country's geopolitical aspirations across international borders.

The developing world has been subjected to this sort of crap for a century, at the hands of the west. I mean, the US will invade your nation and kill tens or hundreds of thousands of your people in order to kill one man.

I have to click on a button on every website I visit to comply with some law in a foreign land.

Look at this sort of tyranny (including all the articles in the sidebar): https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/384636/fiji...

One company deleting an account is nothing, absolutely nothing in comparison.

Why the double standard?

Aunche5• 6 years ago

and another to enforce one country's geopolitical aspirations across international borders

What China does is small potatoes compared to the US. The US fined a French bank $9 billion for violating US sanctions.

LudwigNagasena• 6 years ago

I don’t remember anyone calling such actions reprehensible when people agree with laws in question (copyright, child porn, revenge porn, etc). Seems like hypocrisy on your side.

dicomdan• 6 years ago

The difference is that Zoom does China’s censorship outside of Chinese borders.

joyfulmantis12• 6 years ago

These were accounts that were holding meetings with large amount of mainland chinese users. Whatsmore they admitted the blocking was a mistake caused by their inability to prevent users from joining a meeting by region, a functionality which they are now developing because of this problem.

kfk2• 6 years ago

I don’t want to justify zoom but I do want to point out that we shouldn’t be ok with judging a country to the point of saying they have “bad laws”. Maybe it’s because I am Italian and have seen what happens when discussions go head to head like this (II world war for instance). If we would stand by “no acceptance of bad laws”, we’d isolate those countries even more. I think it’s far better to accept that’s how they operate today BUT also engage with them in conversations that matter to us like democracy and human rights.

DoofusOfDeath• 6 years ago

I think it’s far better to accept that’s how they operate today BUT also engage with them in conversations that matter to us like democracy and human rights.

That's a nice idea, but China's approach is to deplatform those conversations.

whiddershins2• 6 years ago

That’s creeping up on moral relativism and there is a huge corpus of relevant work decrying that position.

duxup3• 6 years ago

Apple blocks things in China right?

Zoom performs China's bidding globally.

systemvoltage• 6 years ago

Yea, bringing Apple into the picture dilutes what Zoom does. Not to mention things they do that we don’t even know.

Why is that US gets muddled up with a truly authoritarian regime like the CCP. Shit is broken in America, but millions of people marched in last couple of weeks. I don’t think there is a possibility of any kind of anti-gov protests in China.

Apple is an extremely privacy centric company to the point where it’s become it’s primary selling point. It’s advertising it proudly and backing up with real actionable steps - T2 chip, iMessage, Face ID, localized ML, etc.

Nextgrid• 6 years ago

When setting up an iPhone in China the “iCloud” is actually operated by a local third-party and has access to all the content.

Most of Apple’s privacy promises and commitments go out the window when it comes to being in China.

TheSpiceIsLife12• 6 years ago

You can choose not to abide by local laws and likely be shutdown entirely.

That way you’ll have effectively zero ability to influence local legislation / promote the interests of users.

Do you mean to imply you believe this would be a more optimal approach to the problem?

There’s perfect, and then there’s the dirty, mean, savage, brutal, beautiful world.

Edit to add:

The company said it would no longer block accounts outside of mainland China at Beijing's request

Blocking accounts of non-Chinese at China’s request seem like an incredibly dumb move in the first instance.

I wonder what motivated them to comply with that request. Aren’t a lot of the Zoom devs based in China? It’d seem fairly trivial then for China to demand compliance via those employees based there.

gonehome13• 6 years ago

People use this to rationalize continued involvement (often when it also happens to be profitable).

People can basically rationalize any bad behavior - it really seems like a skill that has no limits up to and including genocide.

In practice, I think the negative impact of helping to enable censorship for an authoritarian country outweighs whatever (likely zero) influence you’d believe you’d have.

Sometimes to be on the right side of history the right thing to do is to walk away.

dheera4• 6 years ago

Legality should be the bare minimum standard - and in countries with bad laws (Middle East, China) it shouldn’t even be that.

Honestly an app only needs to operate out of one country. To have users in other countries, all that is needed is an open TCP/IP connection and a cross-border payment system (e.g. PayPal, bitcoin); it is not necessary for them to operate a local business entity, which would mean that they should not be subject to local laws.

Although this may be an unpopular opinion, and given the HN climate it's likely I'm going to get downvoted to hell for saying this, but I personally think the same should be true of GDPR. GDPR is an EU law and the EU has no right to impose its EU laws on the US or anywhere else. Neither does China. It doesn't matter if the laws are good or bad laws -- laws should stay within their jurisdiction. Letting the EU have their way is a slippery slope of a precedent for other countries who may have less-noble laws they want imposed on the US.

(That said, the US can implement its own version of GDPR for US businesses, but US businesses shouldn't be subject to EU laws).

bonestormii_2• 6 years ago

I'm inclined to agree with you actually, and in spirit, I definitely do. But what's to stop a European from hosting content on USA servers, posing as USA company, and violating their regulation--even specifically targeting users local to their area from that remote server?

Granted, if significant revenue is generated they'll have to exist officially in one place or another in order to report the income, but not all such sites would need to generate such income, and could forgo it specifically for the purpose of violating local regulations in some cases.

ponker• 6 years ago

I work at a FAANG and we implemented GDPR for everyone because it was 1) cheaper to have only one code path and 2) less liability if we fuck up identifying an EU user

tsimionescu2• 6 years ago

The Internet does not invalidate national sovereignty. I believe this has been a very bad principle in the past, this idea that you can do business in some country, and if it's via the Internet you somehow shouldn't care about their laws. If you accept one connection from a user in some country, you are doing business in that country. And much more uncontroversially, if you are accepting payments from someone in another country, then you are definitely doing business in that country.

Even in tourism there is some level of cross-border law enforcement, especially given international treaties.

So to me it makes sense that a company that wants to take money from (or even to serve content to) people in country A need to respect the laws of country A as a general rule.

Of course, the people of a company should be free to do what they believe is right, such as not upholding unjust laws. The law is not an excuse from moral duties. So I have no problem with companies flouting censorship or even copyright rules. I also don't have a major problem with companies enforcing somewhat benign censorship rules (by taking down content, not by going against individual users), such as imposing certain public decency laws (e.g. no swearing, even no blasphemy) when serving content to countries that prohibit this kind of behavior.

On the other hand, closing down accounts or giving over information about people who have broken those laws to regimes that may punish them brutally should not be taken lightly. You can scrub messages denigrating Mohammed from Saudi Arabian YouTube and that can be argued as respecting the tastes of your Saudi Arabian visitors. But that does not mean that it is also acceptable to report a user that made such a comment to the authorities there, knowing that they may be severely punished. In fact, scrubbing the comments could even help protect the individual who made them from the authorities enforcing the unjust law in that country.

The world is a subtle place and trying to apply simple rules to moral and ethical questions is a fool's errand.

dannyw3• 6 years ago

Example: Google famously exited China.

darawk2• 6 years ago

This is kind of a weird problem though. It seems like the equilibrium effect of not obeying Chinese laws will be that the companies are simply excluded from the Chinese market. I'm not sure how that really helps anyone. It feels like a moral victory, but i'm not sure that it actually helps anyone. It seems like the right approach might be to comply as minimally and poorly as you can get away with, while steadily trying to liberalize China through foreign exposure.

It's a tough call, though. It's not a decision I would want to have to make, that's for sure.

gonehome13• 6 years ago

That sounds nice in theory, but it doesn’t work that way in practice. You just end up corrupting your own principles in the end.

I think the best approach would be to try to support users by making it easier for them to get access in spite of the great firewall.

honzzz• 6 years ago

Although your opinion seems reasonable, I disagree based on my experience growing up in a communist country. The problem is that there is some weird moral feedback loop; each little steep towards complying with something problematic makes you change, you rationalize it and this makes you more likely to walk further in that direction. The concept you describe, comply and liberalize... I never observed it in reality. People do not change the system from within for the better. The system changes people trying to compromise for the worse.

remarkEon• 6 years ago

It seems like the right approach might be to comply as minimally and poorly as you can get away with, while steadily trying to liberalize China through foreign exposure.

I'm assuming this is a joke, because this has been the strategy of the West since Nixon first went to China. And the exact opposite has happened. They engage in a kind of neo-mercantilism, and we basically pretend that if they just open their markets up a little bit more they're one more step toward liberal democracy.

x3haloed3• 6 years ago

Trying to steadily liberalize China through foreign exposure is extremely unrealistic. They have an iron grip on all information flow.

The decision to cater to China’s demands is a decision for profit. They need to be excluded from the world internet economy instead of embraced. We have to play their game in reverse. They are huge, but the rest of the world is larger still. We have the power to make this happen if we are willing to stick to our values over profit.

sillysaurusx• 6 years ago

Zoom has many employees in China, don’t they? If they lose their business license, they’ll lose those employees. Imagine losing half your company almost overnight. How well would you do?

gonehome13• 6 years ago

I think that’s just evidence that this isn’t an issue they ever cared about.

They were planning to just censor whatever the CCP wanted from the beginning, their “mistake” was extending this to a US account because they don’t have the granularity to separate out mainland China users (which itself should be disturbing since they’re clearly not walling things off to protect accounts the CCP shouldn’t have access to).

They’re in this position because they don’t think what they’re doing is unethical in the first place.

I still think it’s wrong, I wouldn’t have been in China in the first place because of this.

Lio3• 6 years ago

This strikes me as equivalent to outsourcing to a country with lax environmental protection to cut costs.

Personal opinion but Zoom shouldn’t be allowed to undercut firms using developers based in liberal democracies and still have market access to the West.

mkhpalm• 6 years ago

While emotionally I agree with everything you said. Realistically I wonder what anybody who talks like this would do when somebody with a very official legal document shows up on your doorstep. Its not as simple as it seems and most people want as little to do with problems like this.

Who are we really mad at here? Zoom or the CCP for essentially forcing their will on helpless entities?

gonehome13• 6 years ago

Yeah I think you’re right and honestly it’s hard to know what you’d do without being in that situation.

I’d hope I’d refuse to rationalize it.

I’d like to think that, but few people actually get that kind of character test for real (and even fewer pass it when they do).

As far as Zoom and the CCP, I think it’s reasonable to be upset with both. Zoom isn’t helpless, they have agency and could choose to do the right thing.

The citizens they're suppressing though have a lot less agency.

It’s easy to do the right thing when it costs you nothing, the real test is when it’s hard.

monokh• 6 years ago

Zoom can either

a) Keep their moral code and be happy in the idea that they will probably be cut off from that market (China)

b) Drop their morals, appease to the local laws as unjust as they may be in the hope that their business there continues.

They chose the latter and still want to pretend they are doing both. That's a problem.

Melting_Harps3• 6 years ago

When Zoom is requested to send over names and videos of political dissidents to authoritarian leaders will they comply?

No, the CCP will just get the UN (according to Humans Right Lawyer at the UN) to do it for them:

https://thehumanoid.net/un-whistleblower-emma-reilly-un-huma...

Cool handle, I wished more people would just stop using propriety closed source software, we can at least try and make inroads that way.

Because realistically no fledgling startup going after marketshare is going to realistically turn down CCP money, and will accept what ever they have to gain access to China and this is why its so dangerous why they have infiltrated this space as this is just one example of so many violations due to it. God only knows what all of those facial recognition companies with CCP blessing have done.

6AA4FD5• 6 years ago

I'm very suspicious of this article. I've watched a decent bit of the interview, and I'm concerned about the lack of verification that she is in fact a UN employee as she claims, and the absence of any incriminating emails she mentions in the interview.

Quick edit: It just occurred to me to search for other articles by the whistleblower's name. I still don't see any evidence so I am skeptical, but anyone else reading should have the chance to judge for themselves. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1292510/un-human-rights... https://www.foxnews.com/world/un-human-rights-office-china-d...

jeswin• 6 years ago

It's unfair to lay the blame squarely on private companies when things like this happen. If we have to defend freedom, democratic nations need to step up. The US probably will (for various reasons), but Europe won't. Europe will speak up and act when it comes to smaller nations, but will continue to do $550B in trade with China without complaining.

There has never been a peaceful rise of a dictatorship. Hong Kong and South China Sea today, Taiwan is next. The future is scary.

BiteCode_dev2• 6 years ago

The alternative is to not be in China at all.

The problem with that of course, if that the softwares that do comply will suddently win an unfair market advantage against the ones taking a moral stand.

Lio3• 6 years ago

There is an argument that where China is blocking market access, the West should reciprocate.

If Zoom is a Chinese company with just a registered US office as has been suggested, then it would appear to be an attempt to circumvent that.

fomine3• 6 years ago

This. Google does this for a long time while competitors don't do this but weirdly Google isn't praised well in HN or other places.

badrabbit3• 6 years ago

You do realize that what you're saying is a political opinion? Political dissent and a free press are democratic rights not human rights. China is not a democracy. Democracy is not a moral right and many would also say it's a wrong. Things like national sovreignity mean something.

You don't get to decide if other country's laws are bad, the people of that country do, and if they don't like it, it's up to them to do something about it with or without peace. The only exception is human rights violations which you didn't list in your opinion. Short of that, how dare you imply a company should break laws for political reasons? If Facebook helped russia inferfere with your elections would that be ok? because they agree with Russian politics or are you saying the western and democratic way is right and all else should only be tolerated when convenient?

ellimilial• 6 years ago

Not that suppression of said rights leads to violation of (what is a current consensus of)of human rights.

Ironically, those events were hosted for remembrance of those violations.

A fantastic approach meant at justifying non-interest, always present in the history of totalitarian regimes.

Mediterraneo10• 6 years ago

Political dissent and a free press are democratic rights not human rights.

Those are considered human rights under Articles 18–21 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yes, the UDHR represents largely the thinking of the Western elites in the years immediately after World War II, and it has been argued that its understanding of human rights is foreign to China and unacceptable to it. Nevertheless, the line between democratic rights and human rights is not as clear cut as you suggest.

gruez• 6 years ago

human rights

wait, what are human rights then?

varjag• 6 years ago

Towards the Marketplace of Ideas Through Banning the Free Speech

jcytong6• 6 years ago

Comparing Apple blocking apps might not be entirely accurate in this case because, the local law might require Zoom to supply data that identifies the attendees to CCP.

This could lead to the loss of lives and/or imprisonment. eg Chen Qiushi, a civilian reporting on the ground of Wuhan during the pandemic is currently still missing after 126 days with no clear reason other than having too much international attention https://twitter.com/chenqiushi404/status/1271460191972634624...

fit2rule4• 6 years ago

What’s legal and what’s right are not the same thing,

I look forward to Americans putting their war criminals in prison.

Moral relativism doesn't help. For every company that has to comply with local laws, there is only one greater power that can overcome compliance with that requirement: war.

AsyncAwait• 6 years ago

and in countries with bad laws

If EARN IT passes, the U.S. would be one of these countries.

growlist• 6 years ago

This is textbook globalism. If we don't fight it, it will end up making the whole world a horrible place to live.

HenryBemis• 6 years ago

authoritarian leaders will they comply?

Apologies for the seemingly seagull-ish comment/rant, but it is 100% true: "money talks, bullshit walks". Zoom is not going to miss out a 1bn ppl market because of ethics. Apple will not miss out a 1bn market because of ethics. Blackberry handed the keys to the kingdom so fast the heads of the tortured people were spinning, and the tale goes on and on. Autocratic regimes play by our (civilized) rules when they claim "local laws, terrorists, pedophiles", etc.)(hey our govs use the same narrative, right?)

We don't stoop to their (autocratic regimes) level and ignore there legal (and unethical requests).

Capitalism (aka money flowing from country A to country B) is cross-border, freedom-agnostic, and amoral (not IM-moral)(utter lack or morals instead of bad morals).

I use a phone made in China, and thus allow a USA company reduce the number of workers in the USA market and increase dividend to its shareholders. That empowers China to continue its thing since all they care for is my money. Not my attention and my opinions. In the end, I help them get the power they seek. This is why we placed embargo to Iran, Russia, NK.. to teach them a lesson. But China? Too much £€¥$ at stake to isolate them.

May the one without sin cast the first stone. We are all in this together unless we ALL boycott Zoom, Apple, Google, Cancerbook, and the rest until they either help CHANGE China, or we let them isolate and starve until the people will start the fight back.

tomComb2• 6 years ago

Google is the one company that did walk away from a billion person market - and a strong, established position in it - when asked to censor, and you want to boycott then too?

It's no wonder companies don't bother doing the right thing. People just ignore that massive sacrifice and pull out some other reason to not like Google.

claudiawerner• 6 years ago

Capitalism (aka money flowing from country A to country B) is cross-border, freedom-agnostic, and amoral (not IM-moral)(utter lack or morals instead of bad morals).

The idea that capitalism is an amoral system is presented as if it were fact, but I can think of several philosophers of morality who have arguments for the morality or immorality of capitalism.

DoubleGlazing• 6 years ago

In a perfect world the EU/US (and others with big tech presences) would have laws that state companies based in their jurisdictions can only operate in other countries where they aren't required to change their policies or practices in ways that would breach UN human rights guidelines.

sneak• 6 years ago

This is the problem with services that censor sometimes. Everything will seem fine and great, and the will gain much popularity and even perhaps become de facto defaults, until one day in an emergency the thing that has always worked suddenly does not.

We just also saw the article about Facebook censoring Messenger on behalf of employers.

You’d have to be crazy if you think Gmail, IG DMs, Docs, Messenger, et c are not subject to the same sort of “but the military asked really nicely” occasional censorship. These platforms are inherently dangerous as a result.

https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/

Remember that time everyone shut off banking for Wikileaks, years prior to anyone in the organization being charged with any crime?

Centralized censorship services are a direct path to a non-free society. We are already seeing certain topics memory holed off of YouTube, and many otherwise-reasonable people are calling for the same on Facebook despite Zuckerberg’s objections.

Very soon it will be difficult, if not impossible, to publish an entire set of legal things, even in peacetime.

x3haloed3• 6 years ago

This is a huge issue of our time. The internet is a shared, virtual space. Who is to say how it is used? There’s barely any real basis for determining what falls under local law.

Surely, physical connections to the internet are geographical in nature and can be regulated. So are servers. But internet services, hosted within one nation’s borders should not be held responsible to the laws of every nation nation from which a user’s physical connection is located.

No, this is economic bullying, pure and simple. China is a huge market, and they know it’s lucrative to internet companies. They also have the ability to block their citizens from accessing the whole internet. So if a company wants access to the Chinese market, they have to play ball. It’s a genius move, but it’s also distasteful, and to many of us, quite immoral and infringent on human rights.

The decision to comply with the requests of totalitarian governments is entirety a business decision, and I would argue that it’s wrong. Play the game in reverse. If China threatens to cut off American companies from their market, American companies should threaten to cut China out of American services. Maintain our values. American software run buy American companies should uphold American values. If China wants to participate in the American internet, they need to accept American values - that we do not silence people for being critical of our or any government.

Greedy American companies who erode American values at a global level ought to be shunned. China should be allowed access to our services, but fuck the Chinese government if they demand we be complicit in their fascism.

Is there a compiled list out there of American software companies who comply with Chinese censorship demands? Or the reverse, as I suspect most American companies would gladly support fascism in a remote country to earn a buck. This issue needs visibility so that change can occur.

dathinab• 6 years ago

This kind of rationalization isn’t just a problem with Zoom, Apple does the same thing - blocking podcasts and other apps in the Chinese market (also the Taiwan flag emoji).

Honestly the US could kinda easily look it down. They already use and abuse the position they have to force all kind of trade regulations on companies, even such not seated in the US. They could use the same system to force companies to not undermine free speech, opinion and press.

Through it won't happen as the people currently in power are them-self interested in undermining free speech, free opinion and free press....

mindB• 6 years ago

I'm 100% in agreement with you. Laws and ethics are only tenuously linked, and we must expect companies (made up of people) to act ethically first and foremost.

It's interesting watching you expressing that opinion in opposition to the Chinese government/Zoom getting a very positive reaction. When I expressed a similar sentiment about the Spanish government/Github a few months ago, the reaction was much more mixed[1]. I wonder if it has more to do with the parties involved or just changing opinions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398271

EDIT: scrolling further down, the reaction to your comment is far more negative than I had originally thought.

drummer• 6 years ago

I agree, the old forms of slavery were also legal but never morally right. We should focus on what is morally right.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

What’s legal and what’s right are not the same thing[...]and in countries with bad laws (Middle East, China)

What are bad laws, whatever people socialised in the anglosphere deem bad? You don't have a monopoly on ethics, sorry. Companies should behave legally, they're not the extended arm of the respective culture they reside in, because if they are we will constantly pester each other with our respective moral values and that's a recipe for conflict.

The solution is pretty simple. Chinese companies need to stop censoring things in the US, the US needs to stop trying to spread its values beyond her own borders, and we can all do business in peace.

What we don't need is countries with messianic attitudes interfering in each other's affairs, and to give businesses primacy over the law in sovereign nations.

refurb• 6 years ago

What I'm shocked about is that a group of senior leader at Zoom thought this was a good decision.

Maybe they thought they could get away with it and things would blow over?

BadassFractal• 6 years ago

Or they knew this would blow up on Twitter, but that they would get in trouble in China for refusing the government request of their own volition.

So they did what the govt wanted, waited for the uproar, and now they can CYA by blaming the Western mob on the forced change of heart. Zoom ends up doing the right thing, and the execs don't end up in a gulag somewhere.

dirtyid2• 6 years ago

Pretty much what I speculated [1]. Chinese companies / companies with large Chinese footprints are going global, many are exploring ways to disassociate from Chinese influence as controversies crop up. It's an uphill battle, at least for some western markets. US will object the loudest and has the domestic alternatives to shift the balance.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23484028

Speculation: Chinese zoom users were required to switch to Chinese version of Zoom last September. There were probably mainland users using international version + VPN to participate in the event, probably some sort of local regulation that prevents users in CN from interacting with international meets, especially on no-no subjects. From 2nd link below:

>Intensifying international tensions and the country’s upcoming 70th anniversary are cited as reasons for the block, according to Chinese media.

Some old articles:

Zoom suspends Chinese individuals users from hosting meetings due to ‘regulatory demand’ https://technode.com/2020/05/15/zoom-suspends-chinese-indivi...

China’s Zoom users switch to local version after blockage https://technode.com/2019/09/19/chinas-zoom-users-switch-to-...

China blocks US video-conferencing tool Zoom https://technode.com/2019/09/09/china-blocks-us-video-confer...

baybal25• 6 years ago

The thing is, this is the model how many US dotcoms wanted to operate in China, where Chinese legal requests would have no impact outside of China.

And another thing is that it has totally set off Chinese government. On one side, they are very unhappy that this completely works around the very much intended action to shut up their opposition's voice abroad, but on other side this precludes further action China can do while still formally claiming it follows legal process, and not claiming extraterritorial jurisdiction explicitly.

This is why they pushed out such de-jure compliant, but not de-facto incompliant Western companies with equally silly, passive aggressive tactics, like closing companies offices for months on end under pretext of fire safety violations.

joyfulmantis12• 6 years ago

the offical blog post is at: https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/06/11/improving-our-poli...

Was it wrong to suspend accounts outside of mainland china? Ultimately yes, but as they stress these were accounts that were holding meetings with mostly mainland chinese participants in it.

Any company operating globally needs to follow all the local laws where they operate in. Zoom's decision to develop technology to ban participants from specific countries joining meetings seems to be a good solution to this problem.

yingw787• 6 years ago

I'm not sure I agree with Zoom's strategy here. Adtech can get away with compromising user's privacy because users aren't customers, they're eyeballs for advertisers. Zoom by contrast does primarily B2B sales, and calls do need to have some semblance of privacy. If a Western-based multinational corporation competes with a China-based company, Zoom suddenly looks a lot scarier.

People sometimes say nothing came of the Snowden revelations. I think they're wrong. When the NSA mentioned connections between datacenters were tapped, I believe FAANG immediately end-to-end encrypted links between datacenters, because otherwise your business secrets depend on how cozy you are with the government.

I'd even say it may have played a role in Google Fiber. I don't know about Google laying its own fiber because it wants to be nice or because it wants to roll in the mud with Comcast. But if Google was suspicious that ISPs could get Google data by tapping end users, then it makes sense to keep up the pressure, and less sense after getting everybody to use HTTPS. Timing seems to work out.

Might be a load of conspiracy hogwash, but it fits the laws of power.

KerrickStaley• 6 years ago

When the NSA mentioned connections between datacenters were tapped, I believe FAANG immediately end-to-end encrypted links between datacenters...

This is correct, at least for Google. I worked at Google when the Snowden leaks happened and there was an immediate company-wide push to encrypt all server-to-server traffic.

koheripbal3• 6 years ago

... but wouldn't all DC to DC traffic be over an encrypted site-to-site VPN anyway?

jdm22122• 6 years ago

Zoom's strategy is to follow local laws as much as possible. For US-based users, they follow US laws. For China-based users, they follow Chinese laws. International calls probably have to be compliant with both countries' laws.

You may disagree with Chinese law, and maybe if you were Zoom's CEO you'd cease offering Zoom in China, but then you'd just be ceding the Chinese market to some Chinese videoconferencing solution that would do the exact same odious stuff and possibly use the Chinese market as a springboard to challenge Zoom in other countries. So the net effect would be that the world would be no better off, and Zoom would be worse off.

Google was able to lock the NSA out because the NSA didn't have any legal power to intercept traffic between data centers. The Chinese government in contrast has the power to do pretty much whatever it wants with Chinese internet traffic.

jobigoud• 6 years ago

The argument that if they don't do it another one will do it is constantly used to justify unethical things. It just shows that money is more important than compromising one's values.

lmz3• 6 years ago

I don't see why this is such a big deal. Company with operations in China gets order from Chinese government to suspend accounts of people the Chinese government don't like. Company with operations in the US gets order not to trade with people from US embargoed countries [1]. What's the difference?

[1]: e.g. https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2018/07/19/gcp-move-update/

082349872349872• 6 years ago

In the old days, this game used to be played with passports and visas[1].

I was surprised to hear a recording of Paul Robeson singing "Old Man River" in Moscow, with the lines

    Show a little grit
    And you land in jail

Someone must've narced on him for showing a little grit: he didn't land in jail, but his economic livelihood (from touring internationally) was effectively destroyed when his passport was pulled.

"Yes, Minister" introduced me to conjugations of the form:

    I am an activist
    You are a troll
    He is a bot

To be perfectly clear: I am in favor of free exchange of ideas (what day of Eternal September[2] is today?); just trying to point out that repression at the hands of the state can take many forms, some more obvious than others.

[1] why do US visa authorities harvest VK and Youku accounts, anyway?

[2] that was too cynical; we're actually living in one of the easiest times for ordinary people to communicate, with other ordinary people in other cultures, ever. Not only do we have an internet (so timezone is more of a barrier than location), machine translation is no longer "invisible, insane."

summerlight3• 6 years ago

This case can be framed more like "an american company suspended an american account of an american citizen to comply with Chinese local law." Operating in China doesn't necessarily expand its jurisdiction into the US. What Zoom should have done is blocking participants in China from the meeting created by Zhou and Wang rather than suspending a US citizen's account.

For the case of Gitlab, Google and Gitlab are both US based companies so it makes sense to comply with the US law.

lmz3• 6 years ago

Do they not have a local Chinese subsidiary that hires their employees there?

xster• 6 years ago

I mean our Twitter and Facebook have been shutting down accounts from elected offices of NATO "targets" like Venezuela and Iran for a while now https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/12/us-pressure-social-media-.... I don't see people up in arms saying "legality is irrelevant".

lrem• 6 years ago

Twitter and Facebook are American companies, with the US being part of NATO. Zoom tries to pretend it's not a Chinese company.

remus• 6 years ago

Similarly, I don't think we can really hold the US up as some sort of bastion of moral excellence. As a non US citizen you have very little right to privacy and the US government will use this against you (see: forcibly having to unlock your devices so border agents can search them).

On balance I think the US is a lot better than China, but there's a lot of room for improvement.

echlebek• 6 years ago

Luckily, you don't have to hold up the US as a bastion to criticize China. They can both be criticized independently.

jcytong6• 6 years ago

That's not the right comparison. To use your example, a closer example would be

You believe it's unjust to have those FB/Twitter accounts shutdown and you host a Zoom call to build a campaign to voice out. Your local government ask Zoom to shut you down. Zoom then deletes your account as well as those of your allies in Vanezuela and Iran. On top of that, the local law requires Zoom to give data to identify you at which point your life is at risk or a jail term without a trial.

That's what those people face in China.

abc-xyz• 6 years ago

our Twitter and Facebook

Aren’t you a CCP member?

(Sorry in advance if you take offense to me assuming your nationality and political allegiance based on your comment history.)

codekansas• 6 years ago

Do you have a more reliable source than this website? I worked on content moderation at Facebook for several years, I highly doubt that the accounts were deleted because of government pressure

joyfulmantis12• 6 years ago

Following the local laws of countries where a company operates in is a fundamental condition necessary for globalization. The idea that the americans know best and don't need to follow local laws is really just another form of imperialism.

waheoo• 6 years ago

Yup, even google does the best thing it can here.

https://youtu.be/P_UVPTdjxC0

I find it incredibly hypocritical for any american to compalin about china, ya'll fucking made it what it is today.

rayiner4• 6 years ago

It depends on the law. At a certain point local laws transgress international norms and it’s justified for countries and companies that have the power to get away with it to flout them: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-xpm-2013-12-15-ct.... More broadly, it’s akin to how courts in the US will generally enforce judgments of foreign courts, but not if those judgments are based on laws that deviate too far what US courts consider to be the basic norms.

Many companies adopted the Sullivan Principles, prepared by the Rev. Leon Sullivan, a board member of General Motors. The Sullivan Principles asked its signatories to treat all workers equally, in effect calling on U.S. corporations to violate South African law, but only a few acted.
IBM became the first company in South Africa to appoint a black as a supervisor of white employees. On the other hand, IBM's largest client was the South African government, and its computers were used primarily by the military.

joyfulmantis12• 6 years ago

Free speech is a concept even the west is struggling with -- Twitter hiding Donald Trump's tweets for example, or New Zealand banning the terrorists manifesto. If even the bastion of free speech is starting to have second doubts about it, how can you claim the moral high ground when a third country wants to restrict free speech?

NotSammyHagar2• 6 years ago

Human rights are more important than corporate rights. But where does that leave us in the situation, whereas others have said Apple cuts off apps like the one in Hong Kong, and they use the excuse of local laws. Apple and zoom both need to stop enforcing Chinese law, or stop seeing the benefits of being an American company. The ability to complain about your government, to point out injustice, it's a human right, not an American right. I'm safe and sound in the US so I'm not subject to this. But the people of the world should not have their right to public expression taken away by profit driven American companies.

jatone• 6 years ago

america should be cutting ties with china and encouraging our allies to do the same. enough of this shit. china is a bad actor and should be treated as such on the world stage (same with russia).

there is 0 reason to do business with china beyond cheap labor and there are other options for labor.

zo1• 6 years ago

The big downside to going too-far down that road too-quickly is that it might put China in a corner financially. I don't think anyone wants it to get to that point because isolating them quickly will definitely escalate tensions and maybe even war.

Rather: Determined and solid pressure should be put on any expansionist and growth policies that China may have. Reduce and starve them of critical imports, slowly make their businesses un-competitive with tariffs and increasing regulatory requirements for companies that want to do business with China.

Of course, the response to those sorts of suggestions is that they'll buy ill-will from the Chinese people and grown division even further. Agreed, but at this point, that's guaranteed and no matter what we do it'll grow. E.g. Leave it alone and China's authoritarian and technocratic social policies will increase Chinese peoples' division from the West if not downright hatred. But if you intervene, then you're being unfair to the Chinese people that want access to the West in various forms.

What is constant is that China is big threat to global stability and we should be reducing their power so that the eventual conflict is lessened. I don't think we can hope for a "the Chinese people love the world and want peace enough to go against their government" scenario. We're way passed that I would argue. I'm sure a lot if not almost all of the German people wanted peace and weren't anti-semitic, but that didn't stop an authoritarian government from steam-rolling their dissent and turning it into blind compliance. And that was without any large-scale technocratic indoctrination and control mechanisms, just plain propaganda.

kenneth• 6 years ago

Perhaps the US needs a law that states that a company cannot discriminate against users based in the US at the request of foreign governments or to abide by foreign laws.

joyfulmantis12• 6 years ago

So are you saying that companies operating in New Zealand shouldn't follow New Zealand law to ban the Christchurch shooter's manifesto?

gonehome13• 6 years ago

No, I’m saying that there isn’t an immediate answer to any of these questions and companies need to evaluate it themselves when deciding.

The country’s own legal framework isn’t enough to decide for you.

I think your moral relativism is lame, both here and in your other comments. It might feel good to offload that responsibility, but if you do, and you operate in a country that has problematic laws, then your self-assured relativism can get others killed.

threatofrain• 6 years ago

You're basically saying that different nations can't develop their own moral and legal conversations fast enough, and thus an international intelligentsia needs to pick up the slack; a bit of noblesse oblige.

Not a very reliable mechanism, and kind of a story of a ticking time bomb.

lukevdp2• 6 years ago

The choice for companies is to either follow a country’s laws, or not operate in that country. It’s not moral relativism, it’s just business.

TheSpiceIsLife12• 6 years ago

There is an immediate answer: comply with local laws.

If you don’t like them then lobby to change them.

jcytong6• 6 years ago

One of the traps that the CCP like to employ is to compare their own policies to other countries.

The key difference is that most of the comparisons are towards democratic countries with judicial independence which makes the whole thing irrelevant. Following laws in New Zealand which could be changed if the people there find the laws unjust.

simonh• 6 years ago

Nobody is arguing that the Chinese government’s behaviour is morally equivalent to that of the New Zealand government, or that their justifications first their actions are reasonable or fair. Nevertheless the fact is they are the government of China and anyone working, operating or doing business in China is subject to Chinese law.

This is a difficult issue. I’m sick of seeing big western companies abasing themselves to the Chinese government over activities occurring outside China, such as US sports leagues and media companies suppressing opinions about Hong Kong expressed by people in the US or Europe. That’s got to stop and we need to make it clear to these companies that China’s influence on discourse outside China cannot be allowed.

Nevertheless we can’t expect people working and doing business inside a China itself to four Chinese law. We can push for them to stop doing business in China in extreme cases, but expecting companies to criminalise their own employees to satisfy our consciences is not reasonable.

aristophenes• 6 years ago

Zoom says it is a US company, and the account it banned was a US account. Imagine if everyone did that. China doesn’t get to make their laws for our companies to enforce for us. We have our own laws. Freedom of speech would be dead otherwise.

Zoom needs to own up to being a Chinese company or stop bowing to the CCP, at least outside of China.

jwilliamson• 6 years ago

The US government is currently trying to extradite a Chinese citizen from Canada for defrauding a British bank. The idea that a country's laws only apply to its own citizens or companies did not originate in China.

driverdan• 6 years ago

Yes. They should absolutely fight for free speech rights.

dang• 6 years ago

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23506965)

zamalek• 6 years ago

which requires compliance with local laws even as Zoom seeks to promote the open exchange of ideas.

That's as good as saying "we will kill puppies if local laws require it as Zoom seeks to promote fair treatment of animals." They aren't promoting "open exchange of ideas" and likely never will. Zoom have continuously proven to be profit driven. This is perfectly fine, so long as they don't lie about it (they lie like they breath).

Furthermore, if you are an activist and are using Zoom, you have none of my pity. They have proven their beliefs at every possible opportunity, and then some, for months. You really have to start questioning your belief patterns and critical thinking if you are sharing anything remotely confidential or private on Zoom. Using Zoom for basically anything is the equivalent of "not being able to program the video tape recorder." It's not applying enough thought to the trivial problem at hand, and subjecting yourself to turmoil due to that.

We don't need legal structures for this. Just stop using stupid products, Zoom being one of the best examples.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 6 years ago

It is troubling, but, as others have mentioned, Zoom is not alone here.

What I do not really get is why? Is the Chinese market really that important to Zoom ( especially given nascent anti Chinese sentiment in US )?

jcytong6• 6 years ago

China's the second largest economy and growing which will make them the largest in the foreseeable future.

Wall street is pretty indifferent when it comes to people being locked up/killed in a foreign country (heck probably in their own country).

Where as Zoom CEO, your stock price determines your bonus, your continued employment, but probably most importantly your employees employment and well being. Given a lot of Zoom staff are in China, there is a non-zero risk of their well being at play.

Obviously, they care about their public image too in the US. But China's market is very enticing. :(

astatine• 6 years ago

These skirmishes (Zoom now, TikTok earlier and the ongoing Huawei one) make for interesting shows, for those outside China and the US. China uses nationalism as the excuse for censorship. As long as you don't criticize China you are free to do anything you want. The US uses morality as the excuse for censorship. As long as you don't do anything that violates that particular notion of morality (the American way of life?), you are free to do anything you want. Wonder which will be easier for the 80% of people outside these 2 countries.

chii4• 6 years ago

The american way of life is easier. Because it's demonstrably better so far.

hrktb2• 6 years ago

Feels like the current events aren’t really going in that direction.

And it’s sad because we’d really need to have decent govs and leadership where the power concentrated.

grishka• 6 years ago

Wonder which will be easier for the 80% of people outside these 2 countries.

I'm Russian. Neither. We have our own Facebook that doesn't moderate as much and explicitly allows adult content as long as it's marked such.

z9e2• 6 years ago

Eh, but in the US we now have people being banned or censored for political dissent. We’re not heading in a good direction either.

humanrebar2• 6 years ago

The U.S. has high standards for itself. Chinese policies are openly racist, speech is literally criminal, reproductive rights do not exist, government openly censors its citizens, and the list goes on.

totalZero3• 6 years ago

Would you please give me an example of something that the US government is currently censoring based on morality?

idrios2• 6 years ago

I think he's talking about the conversation going on about FB, Youtube, Twitter removing posts that are hate speech, inciting violence, spreading misinformation, etc.

est• 6 years ago

From earlier news:

https://www.axios.com/zoom-closes-chinese-user-account-tiana...

Zhou and other organizers told Axios in a statement. "As the most commercially popular meeting software worldwide, Zoom is essential as an unbanned outreach to Chinese audiences remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during the coronavirus pandemic."

MintelIE2• 6 years ago

Most Universities and companies really don’t care, it seems. Zoom is one of the many shady Chinese companies (yes I am aware of Zoom’s recent change in status here) who we just do business with no matter HOW harmful it could potentially be. Recently there was concern about how certain anti-cheat software included with Chinese games is an effective root kit as well. And several large American firms have been help China build out their surveillance infrastructure which is used to send people to death camps.

dehrmann4• 6 years ago

Universities, I get--there isn't much of an espionage risk with course content--but companies should be worried. China has a reputation for corporate espionage, and while Zoom is nominally an American company, headlines like this remind us it's also very Chinese (dev office, data centers).

MintelIE2• 6 years ago

The recent arrest of Charles Lieber and other professors shows that academia is a big target for the Chinese.

throwaway0613• 6 years ago

Bear in mind that Zoom is a Chinese company — the founding team is Chinese; the core engineering and ops teams are largely in Suzhou and Hangzhou.

So, while they are incorporated in the US and have significant presence in their HQ, their ties to China are stronger than the more-commonly-discussed outsourced-engineering sort of relationship.

koheripbal3• 6 years ago

We are rapidly devolving into separate internets.

Infinitesimus• 6 years ago

I think that is inevitable as long as the top N companies enforce their morals and standards on consumers all over the world.

If the world could agree, we can legistlate these companies to be neutral and grant then protection from some state lawsuits if they don't enforce standards that aren't globally agreed upon (by the UN for instance).

It will be tricky because that means admitting that internet companies are their own independent states and many countries will not be happy with that.

crazygringo3• 6 years ago

When will this meme die?

Zoom is NOT a Chinese company. It is incorporated in and headquartered in the US. Like any American company ever, it follows US laws in the US, and local laws in other companies where it operates. End of story.

Yes their culture certainly has stronger cultural internal ties to China, due to the number of Chinese employees, but what has that got to do with anything? At the end of the day, they're a public, profit-driven corporation trying to make lots of money across the entire world.

It's not like they're secretly and nefariously doing the CCP's bidding, which seems to be the veiled suggestion people keep making.

Seriously, every time someone brings up that Zoom is "really" a Chinese company, it comes across as borderline racism or conspiracy-mongering or both. And while I'd usually never comment on someone using a throwaway account, in this case when you're pushing these kinds of shady "stronger than the more-commonly-discussed" insituations, I think using a throwaway here is representative of exactly the kind of astroturfing that spreads malicious rumors without evidence.

augustt• 6 years ago

When will the meme that hating an organ harvesting totalitarian government == racism die?

malka• 6 years ago

Zoom is a blatant CCP trojan horse. It is very clear where Eric Yuan's loyalty is. And it is not toward the USA.

cammil• 6 years ago

Its easy to blame zoom and Apple and other companies, but if our own elected governments can't stand up to oppressive regimes, why should we expect a private company to?

gorgoiler• 6 years ago

Piffle! At least they only had to suspend an account!

Imagine the outrage if Zoom had been complicit in adding backdoors, or conducting surveillance at the implicit or explicit demands of the state.

(I think Snowden even once claimed Apple’s iOS has an NSA backdoor?)

ridewinter3• 6 years ago

Who here doesn't think that China has similar things and much much worse added to Tiktok, Zoom, etc?

villgax• 6 years ago

So we killed America's Skype & got China's variant.

cheesecracker• 6 years ago

Germany mandates by law that social networks like Facebook or Twitter censor people on government request. I have yet to see the global outrage over it.

paulcarroty• 6 years ago

I'm not surprised. Zoom isn't the one and only service used by China to censor free speech globally:

* https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dfg1ce/list_of_co...

* https://time.com/5557951/china-interference-global-media/

So if you're an activist and still use Reddit, Discord or services from the list above - prepare to be banned. Also check twice any China-affiliated service/products before using.

notsag-hn2• 6 years ago

I struggle to understand how people work hard to build they dream technology, they are also lucky enough for it to take off like zoom in this case, and then they go ahead to do nasty stuff and to fuck up their users! I hope one day we'll really condemn and stop using apps/social media for things like this.

chii4• 6 years ago

if you switched 'Zoom' with 'Google' in the above, would you have made a different argument?

notsag-hn2• 6 years ago

I would put Google there for sure! Google is nasty at other scales anyways. As search engine I use Duckduckgo, but sometimes we don't have much of an option with Google, do we? Mainly on mobile, which the option is Apple, not great.

ngcc_hk2• 6 years ago

2 problems. let us agree china law has issue, can zoom block any account traffic to china. But you note google and Apple has no such issue.

More problematic and deeper issue is how the overall game work for chinese market access and free world market access. As only China sanctioned account can communicate with china but you can use the channel for most, it has an advantage move others have. The market access to billion. As there is no equivalent they will take over a significant percentage of the market with sanction and freedom of speech as a cost. If it connects with india ...

Have to stop that kind of WHO and world trade chinese model, otherwise the free world would be in trouble.

boraoztunc• 6 years ago

Siding with governments, instead of people is wrong. Not a surprise though, Zoom can do anything for money and its position. It is my wrong though, to wait for some kind of soul from corporates.

techgiant_guy• 6 years ago

WhatsApp is addressing 20 person video calls to compete with Zoom & Google Meets.

Ref - https://l1n.com/whatsapp-is-addressing-20-person-video-calls...

IgorPartola• 6 years ago

Remember when Zoom bought Keybase last month and some of us were raising concerns that Zoom is beholden to the CCP and most of the HN discussion thread was defending the company saying how just because they employ a lot of people in China doesn’t mean they will do anything like this? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

ngcc_hk2• 6 years ago

Chinese firm can go into USA, build a firm and control USA media but not USA firm. It is asymmetrical warfare.

War? USA firm are not party and national related. Chinese firm all are.

USA is naive for a long time to look the other way and that china will change to better. So what I treat you fairly but not the other way round meant ok.

Good luck but luck is running out. They do not need to be successful, but once like editing gene of baby. You lost.

If they fail to control their virus handling from low tech like bat eating to virus testing in their 44 p3 lab and the p4 Wuhan one. Just once. Or maybe twice. Humanity lost.

Or done with.

To be fair if all are equal. But if china is more equal than USA in market access. Good luck again

newbie578• 6 years ago

I am amazed yet again how willing are people here to defend Zoom and China, even daring to compare USA to China lol. While the U.S. might not be perfect and it does have its share of problems, it cannot compare to a fraction of China's problems.

Zoom is China's shill, while representing itself as a U.S. company, which should be publicly condemned.

remotists• 6 years ago

I stopped using Zoom right after the privacy and the Facebook data sharing issues propped up. Using Skype and Google Meets at the moment, hopefully these guys don't violate my privacy.

dcanelhas• 6 years ago

If the tool isn't free, why would one expect freedom using it?

dreamcompiler• 6 years ago

Zoom is not a Chinese company in the same way that Huawei is not an arm of Chinese intelligence.

natestemen• 6 years ago

I know this website has a penchant for anti-China everything, but it's funny because every terms of service I've ever read has something in it about complying with law enforcement about giving up data and terminating service. If you're against zoom doing this, I would expect you to be against every other company having this clause in their TOS.

m3kw9• 6 years ago

With China requests it’s a landline for all US based tech companies that needs to operate in China.

beefman• 6 years ago

Is this supposed to be worse than Congress telling Facebook to delete thousands of accounts a quarter that belong to Eastern Europeans who have posted about US politics?

eblanshey• 6 years ago

This demonstrates the issue with an internet designed for centralized services. Zoom is in the position of A) bending to china and not losing their business, or B) ignoring China's request and lose all of China's business.

With a properly-designed decentralized internet, this decision wouldn't even exist. Data and services wouldn't be centralized to a company's servers, and there wouldn't be a way to take down anyone's service. I really wish projects like MaidSafe and other similar ones would take off, but it's a difficult problem to tackle.

a13n• 6 years ago

This seems like capitalism at work.

- Zoom wants to build as big of a business as possible.

- Therefore, Zoom wants to retain access to the Chinese market.

- Therefore, Zoom must work with the Chinese government, to avoid getting banned.

Is this "legal"? Probably, yes.

Is this "required by law"? Probably not, no.

Is this "right"? Depends who you ask, but probably not.

I feel like this summarizes one of the core issues with capitalism. Companies make immoral decisions because they can and it makes them more money.

HashThis• 6 years ago

Zoom sells out citizens to China. US Congress would protect US citizens affected, except US Congress sells out to corporations (zoom).

US Congress -> Sells out -> Zoom -> Sells out -> China

Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request

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