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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

#311

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

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.

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.

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

#312
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have international human rights, we could enforce companies to follow those guidelines everywhere if they want to do business on our own countries. Fact is that the US government puts money over the very human rights it’s supposed to believe in. The US isn’t alone in this of course, but it’s where the majority of international human rights infringement companies reside.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ind... Yeah, it’s only as good as the local laws and their enforcement. Something to strive for though.

Human rights don't need enforcement to exist. Part of the point of clarifying rights is clarifying wrongs when that happens.

In other words, rights come from human dignity and inherent value. They do not spring into being by fiat from rulers and politicians.

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

#314
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.

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

#315

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 lif…

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

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.

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

#316
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> They have an iron grip on all information flow.

That's not true. Every other and their mother has a VPN, only that they don't care nearly as much about what you care in this case.

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

#317
post #257

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 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.

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.

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

#318
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> 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 li…

Article 18: most muslims disagree,many islam countries would kill you for conversion

Article 19: this one is silly, every government would persecute you for holding certain opinions even without expressing those opinions. Look at how alleged communists in the US were treated around the time this document was drafted. Or consider holding an ISIS or islamic terrorism symphatizing opinion,people have been detained and persecuted for far less. What if you are spreading the terrorist propaganda? No one will see that as your right.

Article 20) so all militaty draft violate human rights?

Article 21) citizens of any country that does not accept democracy are having their human rights violated?

The whole thing is silly. First of, most of the existing UN members did not sign. Of the members at the time, the vote to adopt this was not unanimous and therefore this document is not accepted by the sovreign governments of many nations at the time. You can say the UNDHR is the opinion of what some humans think a human right is,however it is far from a document all sovreign nations accepted as a defi ition of what rights humans have simply for being human. China and muslim countries combined alone would make up a population majority!

The UN is not an authority nations are subject to. UNDHR is not a treaty adopted by nations. It simply defines these trems as the western majority if the time saw it fit.

Now,there are rights almost all humans accept as rights such as the right to exist and the right to a fair trial (as applied by their society). These are obvious rights commonly accepted by most religions and an peoples.

Or if that isn't a good argument then consider that even the US (the sit of the UN) has been and is currently violating many of the UNDHR articles systemically, a US person should probably not talk about enforcing UNHDR against other countries. Everyone tolerating terrorists having propaganda zoom calls would be the only way I can accept UNHDR application of freedom to express opinion on other nations as a human rights.

My view: the UN is a diplomatic organization not an authority over nations. A document that can define universal human rights must be a treaty reviewed and accepted by legislative bodies of each signatory nation and it can be a universal right only if a super majority of nations and humans (counted by national populations) accept it as such. Look at the criticism section in wikipedia.

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

#319

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.

> 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 ass…

I think whether said law came about from a system with separations of power and a democratic process makes a big difference in palatability.

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

#320

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.

> 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 visi…

Maybe some of us has no double standard. We are against US aggression outside of its borders, especially at tremendous cost to local civilians, local economy and US taxpayers. Also of China's, which is at the cost of human rights globally.
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