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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

#161

Post by alisonatwork »

pnako wrote: post #138
unishark wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And which country would that be? With your apparent standard for freedom of speech, isn't pretty much every country excluded? So now everyone is the same as an authoritarian one-party state that outlaws opposition parties and actively censors all internet websites.

I didn't say it was exactly the same, but it's not terribly different either. Many conservatives or "alt right" types get censored in the west, and some of them have to find hosting in Russia (or on Russian social networks like VK), a country we condemn for censorship. I'm not under the delusion that Russia hosts those people out of respect for freedom of speech, of course, but I find it an interesting observation. I…

Saying "many" conservatives get censored in the west is inaccurate, considering the most popular cable news channel in America is proudly conservative, as are many local news outlets and some of the top national newspapers.

In addition, the few people and organizations that have been deplatformed from social media and other hosting solutions in the west have had that fate befall them due to companies making a decision that it is not in their financial interest to allow that type of content on their platforms, given its unpopularity among other customers.

This is a completely different situation to China, where companies are directed by the government to explicitly censor certain types of content, and individuals are routinely arrested and imprisoned for creating or sharing content that the government does not agree with.

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

#162

Post by _8j50 »

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 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?

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

#163

Post by Lio »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #147
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 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.

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.

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

#164

Post by remarkEon »

darawk wrote: post #59
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…

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 tryi…

>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.

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

#165

Post by jackson1442 »

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…

> 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

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the data held to US law if it's stored in the US? I'm pretty sure the federal government wouldn't take kindly to me storing petabytes of copyrighted works in the US, regardless of whether my clients are in Chicago, South Africa, or Taiwan.

Zoom's datacenters are theoretically in the US, therefore the regulations US consumers should be held to are US regulations. If they want to play the "we follow local laws" card, they could have restricted the meeting in China only.

For the record, I think what the CCP is doing here is reprehensible, but I'm just trying to add my perspective on this specific issue.

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

#166

Post by echlebek »

remus wrote: post #152
xster wrote: post #27

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".

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.

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

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

#167

Post by yorwba »

anonymousab wrote: post #67
joyfulmantis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

> They have absolutely no desire to enforce chinese laws globally. I do wonder about this. Given how many core product developers they seem to have in China, if the CCP demanded they... 'enforce their values' globally, or else, I don't think they'd be in much of a position to say no.

Chinese companies operating mostly in China have refused government requests in the past, because compliance would have been bad for business: https://technode.com/2019/09/19/tencent-alibaba-refuse-to-di...

Of course if the CCP cared more about enforcing the law than about money, nobody could ever say no to them, but fortunately that's not the case, so there's always room to negotiate.

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

#168

Post by Lio »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #62
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…

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?

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.

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

#169

Post by ciguy »

koheripbal wrote: post #140
KerrickStaley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Google and Amazon have their own dedicated fiber between DC sites, but there was evidence that the NSA was still tapping it at some points. So they added encryption between the sites as an extra safeguard.

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

#170

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Lio wrote: post #163
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

Faire point. But what I'm expecting that we already do it: we probably ask for modifications in their software as well, it's not not something we talk about.

> 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.

I would think it's more of a PR move. WeChat has such a reputation it would never make it into the west.

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