"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.
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Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
251–260 of 397 posts
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where you can see this most clearly is nudity. Traditionally europe had a more liberal approach when it came to nudity — that was until US platforms came in with their prude nipple policing.
Not Twitter!
Nor reddit by the way!
I think platforms are OK to publish this as long as it's behind an "NSFW" wall/toggle. But platforms like Facebook choose not to have one (not to mention that the policy of real names isn't really compatible with posting NSFW content)
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#253“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 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.
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost every multinational companies have some level of presence in China, even Google has offices there. If we apply your logic, China should be allowed to order search and seizure warrants to those companies for any user information that might related to their national security. Of course, this is absolutely non-sense.
Well isn't it just a matter of what penalties China can enforce on the presence there if they refuse to comply? If the majority of their tech team is there it gets hard to argue that they have no access. Maybe they just threatened someone with the access and with not enough time to speak to legal?
I already told you how to appropriately handle the situation without provoking PRC that much, which is supposed to be just a common sense to multi-national companies. And even PRC probably doesn't want it to get this level of Western media attentions given the political landscape. Even a mere software engineer myself know this; but Zoom just simply messed it up by deciding not to do so.
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wh…
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?
As is brought up every time this is mentioned, freedom of speech is the freedom from suppression of speech, not the guarantee of universal availability of a specific platform for speech. The latter never has been and never should be enshrined in law.
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The idea that your country knows best and that your countries companies can feel free to ignore other countries laws while operating in them is -- imperialism.
So what? If you don't think your country is implementing the best ideas out there--what the hell are you doing?
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#257These 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 lif…
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.
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
they lack the nefarious motive of the Facebooks of the world
No. It lacks the obvious, commercial nefarious motives of the Facebooks of the world.
As many have pointed out, Zoom is believed to be CCP-controlled at some level. That's as nefarious as it gets.
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re on shaky ground there. The US does imprison more of its citizens on a per capita basis than any other comparable nation. The US isn’t the moral beacon it was billed to be. I’ll stop there.
> The USA suffers from some of what it accuses the PRC - it is still not the PRC. > The US isn’t the moral beacon it was billed to be. Agreed. I think one difference being that Citizens can, with great personal peril to their own safety and well being, use the Right to assemble and protest to effect change to address systemic corruption. As an activist with a background in protests in various demos myself, I just won…
People at tiannamem square protested. Tanks turned up and refused to run them over
People in nyc protests, police officers ran them over
Maybe China is worse than the US, but there doesn’t seem to be as much in it as there was 30 years ago.
Re: Zoom Acknowledges It Suspended Activists' Accounts at China's Request
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are rapidly devolving into separate internets.
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 the…
I think of it a little differently. I think as long as their is a potential to exert political power via the internet, then governments will strong-arm companies into doing their bidding.