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Comment by bgee | Hacker News Reader

> communication company that has its entire dev team in China

citation needed

Also, what are you trying to imply by this assertion?

"Zoom is based in California’s Silicon Valley, but it owns three companies in China that develop its software. The Citizen Lab said the structure allowed the company to lower its development costs, but added “this arrangement may make Zoom responsive to pressure from Chinese authorities.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/24/uk-governmen...

The implication is that China is hostile and leverages their power to censor/collect communication information from companies and their people without checks on this power.

They are aggressive in stealing IP from other companies and blocking software they can't control. They have history of wielding their power to pressure organizations to deny or ignore aspects of their history that they dislike (Taiwan, Cultural Revolution) and they pressure companies to hand over PII on people they find to be political threats without due process.

This is not a country you want to be a steward of an encryption identity standard.

I don't think it's true that Zoom has its "entire dev team in China"; doing some research myself reveals Zoom definitely has engineering operations in the US[0][1].

I'm not disagreeing with you on the implications of having engineering teams in China, I think you would like to put that paragraph in your original post to give some context.

[0] Tech job postings in US: https://zoom.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Zoom/0/refreshFacet/318c8...

[1] H1b filing on engineering positions: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Zoom+Video+Communications+...

edit: better formatting and grammar

Thanks - I edited it to soften the language a bit.

Is it called "soften the language" to fix a 100% factual error?

Honestly I feel that if you're arguing in one direction or another and haven't checked the facts, maybe it's better not to argue about it?

The vast majority of the Zoom software development team is based out of companies in China.

They do have support people in the US and a handful of non-support engineering which is why I said thanks and immediately updated the comment to say "majority" instead of "entire" since it's more correct.

That technicality is less relevant to the main point of the argument.

They do have a large R&D presence in China.

As of January 2020, they had 2,532 full-time employees. Of those, 1,396 were in the US and 1,136 were in international locations. Within the 1,136 is "more than 700" employees in R&D in China.[1]

A LinkedIn search for "engineer" working for "Zoom Video Communications" in location "United States" shows up 558 results.[2]

Their entire management team is in the US, and of their 17 data centres, only 1 is in China.[3][4]

[1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1585521/0001... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrent... [3] https://zoom.us/team [4] https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/05/04/navigating-a-new-c...

My point was that you should check your facts before making an argument. Not exactly a crazy idea, right?

Your “point” was to be an asshole, and congratulations you’ve now succeeded twice.

I think you're just being overly sensitive to criticism. Not admitting that you're bullshitting is very weak. Maybe the two goes hand in hand.

If the original claim was "100% of the dev team is in China", and the reality is "only 80% of the dev team is in China", then that'd be a 20% factual error, mathematically speaking.

Or would it be a 25% error, i think it would make most sense to calculate the error-difference in relation to the actual value instead of in relation to the erroneous value.

Good point.

Haha. Do you also calculate levenshtein distance from true to false and say false isn't entirely false but a bit of true? And is it almost factually correct to say that 10 equals 8?

> And is it almost factually correct to say that 10 equals 8?

I mean, from a certain point of view, why not? If you're thinking in terms of 1, they're wildly different. If you're thinking in terms of 1,000,000,000,000, they might as well both equal 0.

Isn't the US actually at least as bad if not worse? Thanks to Edward Snowden we know without speculation that the US "is hostile and leverages their power to censor/collect communication information from companies and their people without checks on this power" (ok, supposedly there is secret judges that secretly check on this power, but that doesn't really do any good does it?). The USA also "pressure companies to hand over PII on people they find to be political threats without due process" (so called "National Security Letters").

Short answer? No. Not even close.

Source: have lived in both countries

Have lived in both, I can say they are equal. Just different culture norms you have to learn to navigate around.

The difference is that in the US we actually get to find out about these abuses.

People don't get disappeared for actively disagreeing with the government.

Usually, but they do get into unfortunate accidents from time to time.

That's true for US citizens. But not so much otherwise.

Edit: Someone disagrees? Consider Guantanamo Bay, third-party renditions, and drone strikes. If China did drone strikes, there'd be a huge outcry.

The just get disappeared into Belmarsh and extradited to who knows where for telling the truth about the US military murdering civilians including journalists from a helicopter gunship.

Not until the second term.

How about renditions (extra judicial disappearings), black sites and extra judicial drone strikes?

I think that while both countries have the technology to facilitate censorship and oppression, the US is much more careful about how they do it. China isn't afraid to use their control over information to assist the oppression of Uighurs in 're-education' camps for example.

Criticisms were/are made against NSA surveillances and in the case where government tried to silence such criticism (Snowden), opinions that support Snowden's actions were made and published, even made into books and movies, without repercussion. Bloggers that support Edward Snowden did not disappear. Movie directors and screenwriters are not made pariah by their industry or sent to Guantanamo.

This sort of whataboutism does not surprise me but it's getting tiring when made repeatedly in disguise of intelligent discourse. It's dishonest because the difference is blatant.

I think at least the public can voice their opinion to certain degree in the US. In China...yeah, good luck with that.

Another citation: https://investors.zoom.us/static-files/09a01665-5f33-4007-8e... (warning, PDF)

> We also operate research and development centers in China, employing more than 700 employees as of January 31, 2020.

You can find more stories from last year talking about that was how Zoom had such a large engineering staff, is that it was cheaper for them to pay for R&D in china than in the US[0].

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead...

The emphasis is on entirety, please see my other reply.

China is a country with even less oversight than the US.

For a company that does security that's concerning.

Not even that. All encrypted traffic in china needs to be decryptable by CCP. Which means if your call in zoom was routed to one of their China servers, then CCP has access to it.

That is on top of the fact that Zoom encryption is weak af.

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