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

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

#41

Post by joyfulmantis »

dicomdan wrote: post #23
gonehome wrote: post #14

“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 th…

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

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.

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

#42

Post by whiddershins »

HALtheWise wrote: post #36
monocasa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ba…

Not exactly, because if you are based in a certain country, you must follow their laws regardless of where the user is.

Plus obeying local laws in regards to local residents, which don’t apply to this allegation.

So, by this logic, Zoom’s actions only make sense if they are based in China.

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

#43

Post by dheera »

gonehome wrote: post #14

“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 th…

> 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).

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

#44

Post by modeless »

HALtheWise wrote: post #36
monocasa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ba…

US companies may enforce US law but they're not hiding the fact that they're US companies. Zoom claimed not to be a Chinese company while enforcing Chinese law for US users.

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

#45

Post by whiddershins »

kfk wrote: post #29
gonehome wrote: post #14

“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 th…

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 o…

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

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

#47

Post by rayiner »

HALtheWise wrote: post #36
monocasa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ba…

> 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.

And that’s perfectly fine.

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

#48

Post by gonehome »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #33
gonehome wrote: post #14

“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 th…

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 accoun…

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.

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

#49

Post by systemvoltage »

duxup wrote: post #30
gonehome wrote: post #14

“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 th…

Apple blocks things in China right? Zoom performs China's bidding globally.

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.

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

#50

Post by joyfulmantis »

monocasa wrote: post #20
gonehome wrote: post #14

“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 th…

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.

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."

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