TikTok to pull out of Hong Kong
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This is striking, I have not heard of this interpretation of the new law before.
If that’s actually true, any global company (Facebook, Google, Apple, etc.) that remains operating in HK can be assumed to be sharing private communication data/metadata with CCP, regardless of what its privacy policy says.
Hong Kong security law: Police handed power to do warrantless searches, freeze assets, intercept comms, control internet
https://hongkongfp.com/2020/07/06/breaking-hong-kong-securit...
Note that more details are just being released (and hence newer interpretation of the law, or at least part of it):
“On Monday night, the government gazetted the details of Article 43 of the controverisal legislation”.
I'd be surprised if anything like the firewall happens. More likely to be quiet intimidation or disappearances of people posting stuff online.
Not saying both are right, just that this is done from New Zealand to Finland, and it's not very easy to understand why we in Hong Kong are suddenly oppressed by that.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whatsapp-to-suspend-processing-...
Additionally many western companies have their offices in Hong Kong. Does this mean any privileged access that these offices/employees had with data is also now susceptible.
Of course, if the owner/operator has employees or assets in Hong Kong, those could be held to elicit cooperation.
If HK police repeatedly fine a company, the company may have to stop serving HK or even China.
[0] https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1536151-20200706.h...
I was saying that wrt companies who had infra in HK which was serving traffic outside HK. It might make sense to not keep that in HK anymore.
Wechat's surveillance is pushing the idea of what should be monitored by China. It's a real possibility that this will expand into foreign companies with operations in China.
How the CPP doesn't accept peopel giving up Chinese citizenship and how it affects children of affected people is a known problem.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-31/chinese-government-ac... [2]https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/university-of-min...
> And another one. Twitter just confirmed that it stopped all data and info requests from Hong Kong authorities as soon as Hong Kong’s national security law went into effect. That leaves Apple and Google...
What were they handing over last year when many protesters were relying on Facebook products for secure messaging?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/technology/tiktok-google-...
Sure, one problem is weather or not the investigation is just made up to get data for an less lawful investigation.
[1] https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/12803650546557911...
For some definition of the word "free"
(Including a certain two letter propaganda "news outlet" from an Eurasian country)
Are we expected to believe that it was pulled because they were uncomfortable sharing data with the CCP? There is approximately zero chance of this. So why did they do it?
It's absolutely ridiculous a Chinese company would be the first to actually close down the service to protect users, don't you think ?
External and internal optics: anything available in Hong Kong yet unavailable in China is liable to make Hong Kong appear separate of China.
Collective mindset: Western UGC, even if censored to a degree, carries values and notions that threaten CCP’s power and influence over given territory. (I wouldn’t be surprised if TikTok’s Chinese sibling is going to be heavily promoted in Hong Kong, if it isn’t already.)
This move feels very very weird.
Of course, no one in tech believes them. We'll see if the public and governments believe them.
Maybe it is a strategy to deprive HongKong protesters of a platform to post content on?
The first one you can be sure operates under Chinese law and shares data with the Chinese authorities.
The second; my bet is that ByteDance wants to sell it off probably through an IPO on an American exchange. That is why the have hired an American CEO. And that is why they make announcements similarly to Facebook and Google on Hong Kong.
What will happen in Hong Kong? Will all these American social medias be banned because they refuse to follow what is now Hong Kong law?
Essentially expanding the great firewall of China to include Hong Kong ... we will see but my guess is probably not.
No, we don't all love the spyware app called TikTok
WhatsApp with its E2E-encrypted-by-default chat built on Signal protocol is the lesser evil among the popular messengers, since (1) you never risk forgetting to turn E2E on, and (2) once chat is E2E (read: always), there is no turning over of its contents to the government.
Anecdotally, having lived in Hong Kong for two years, I still don’t have Telegram and am yet to meet a person who is not using WhatsApp.
If WhatsApp does get banned, I hope by that time (improved) Signal and (improved and renamed) Riot offer viable alternatives.
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/telegram-rus...
[1] https://cpj.org/2016/05/why-telegrams-security-flaws-may-put...
Meanwhile, the government Telegram has apparently agreed to compromise E2E in favor of appears to have closer ties with China than the US does, and seems to be testing[0] GFW-like approaches to internet censorship.
[0] https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/russia-test-drives-its-great-f...
Could you explain what makes you think that’s the case?
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/11/03/huawei-so...
In short: Russia has been blocking Telegram for over a year, demanding developers to compromise E2E encryption of chats. Last month Russia unblocked Telegram, and a quote attributed to its developer indicates they have developed ways to censor chats. The circumstances are hazy and there had been no clear communication from the developer.
This and other issues with Telegram (some of which are mentioned elsewhere in the thread) make it, to me, not trustworthy enough for sensitive uses, Hong Kong situation included.
That’s a stretch. We don’t know why the ban has been removed, and it’s definitely suspicious but other reasons are possible. We are missing information to jump to “telegram compromised their end to end encryption”. Another possible explanation: Russia government doesn’t have infinite resources, spent years trying to block telegram to push them to accept their demand, that didn’t work so they stopped and are investing in other solutions.
Exactly that: we don’t. “Suspicious but possibly OK” is not good enough under sensitive circumstances, especially in addition to the host of other issues with Telegram’s reputation.
The comment upthread suggesting Telegram’s popularity in HK worries me, I should be more active at educating friends.
I have a question though: What could Telegram have done, once unblocked by Russian government, to make sure we know exactly and don't need to be suspicous?
Otherwise they’ll get rumours about “striking a deal” with the government, developer going bankrupt and caving in to the influence of rich Russian investors, and so on.
> [...] Telegram has apparently agreed to compromise E2E [for Russia]
WTF this even mean?
Between Telegram (product co-developed by the creator of the Russian clone of Facebook, owning company of unknown organizational structure) and WhatsApp (product co-developed by co-founder and current CEO of Signal Foundation, current owning company spent a lot of time in recent years under high scrutiny), I consider the latter more trustworthy despite some of its drawbacks.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tech-whiz-behind-vine-and-h...
Lot of TikTok popularity has come from offering songs/lip syncing functionality (done better by their acquisition of musica.ly). That wouldn't have worked on 6 second Vines.
Nobody heard of it until Twitter bought it and then it was only people that care for Twitter that knew what Vine was. Only a minority of these people saw the point of Vine and only a minority of them thought to record a 'vine' for novelty value.
This minority may have appeared to be 'everyone' for the teenagers of the time. But Twitter was not for the teenage demographic. Think of the most famous user of Twitter - Donald Trump - and how old he is and how skilled he is with technology. Okay, he is an outlier, most Twitter users are younger but not that young.
When Vine was getting started the wider web industry were encouraging clients to get a social media presence. Adding Vine videos was never seriously proposed whereas hosting actual video on Youtube, Vimeo or even Instagram was very much part of a social media strategy.
The money just was not there for Vine with the silly six second limitation. Those that had made a name for themselves making content were able to move elsewhere and to 'grow up' into longer length video that did bring them income.
Vine was a failed product once the novelty wore off and the other social media applications had offered their own ways of hosting files that needed a video CODEC to play. Twitter had the good sense to close it down, moving with the times to have video work just fine in the main Twitter product.
There was absolutely nothing to do with China in any of this story. The Chinese Communist Party did not have a fight with Twitter about six second videos so that their all conquering Tik Tok could take over the world. That is an absurd idea. The only conclusion as to why Vine had to go was because it was not profitable.
Their next target now that Hong Kong is done, is obviously the annexation of Taiwan. Xi will make his move on Taiwan this decade certainly. He'll want to bring about a reunion with the mainland during his time in power, to try to ensure a consequential legacy of accomplishment (something he entirely lacks now). China will also continue to solidify its hold on the annexed territory in the South China Sea. I would expect further hostility and conflict with most of its neighbors, as China's territorial and military ambitions expand by the year.
After Trump likely loses the election, there will be a big decision as to whether Biden & his new administration will lay down for Beijing (reduce the confrontation) or continue to ramp the challenge to their geopolitical sprawling. If the new administration chooses to continue to challenge China, the way to do that will be to orchestrate an anti-China group with as many US allies as possible that coordinates against every detail of China's global hegemony quest. Right now the coordination is mediocre. The countries standing off against China are too far out on their own and not in a great position of strength vis-a-vis China (Australia for example); the US should immediately come to the aid of any nation that China tries to intimidate. If India and China conflict militarily, the US should immediately offer military gear that would be helpful. If China threatens Australia's economy, the US should offer to assist economically (we run a trade surplus with them, we can do a lot with that to their benefit). Even better would be if the US organizes a group of three dozen or so nations that work together to do that sort of thing on short notice. The China response & containment bloc of nations. The US + EU + Japan + UK + Canada + South Korea + India + Australia + New Zealand = $50+ trillion in economy, more than enough to restrain China as necessary, and that's a group that can easily work together.
Would it be a net loss for the world? It seems it would add enough pressure to be somewhat useful.
The lack of error correction in the ability to replace bad leaders and freedom of speech isn't just a cultural preference: https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/fr...
YT normally doesn't recommend anything outside the limited few topics I have subscriptions for. I shall don't follow anything political or "Asian" at all... the feed is tightly the same few things.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V14W8A73XW0
Oh and this
It is not Chinese propaganda in any meaningful sense.
But I will give you the two videos look a bit cheesy but hey ... taste varies across the world.
Even throughout the protests, I've always found SCMP to be fairly neutral. But do keep in mind SCMP is owned by Alibaba.
If you're lazy, here are two examples of Beijing-critical articles:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3021310/ch...
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3091580/how-nat...
SCMP has both pro-Beijing and anti-Beijing authors. The stance of an article/video depends heavily on who made it.
This is despite the Alibaba ownership. So no, SCMP is not a propaganda piece.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Morning_Post#Edito...
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3011892/gen...
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/21...
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/2043149...
Sounds to me like they're not doing a very good job at toeing the party line.
You have 5 other comments here asserting the same thing.
Normal Chinese utopia here. Nothing to see.
The point is they showed up on my tightly curated YouTube feed as 5 month old videos.
And, again, you repeatedly post actual propaganda on your twitter feed, so I'm not sure you are as reasonable a commentator as you assert
That said, they can restrict access to externally hosted content for users in Hong Kong, and threaten seizure of assets in HK if the target doesn't comply.
There's a lot more extradition treaties with HK and the PRC than there are with NK. Any country that China can exert significant pressure on could detain and extradite you if China decides you have broken the HK NSL.
It does according to Europe and their extraterritorial law called GDPR.
As for the public opinion in China, the majority thinks this is unfair, coz FB, YT and Twitter "wasn't banned, they themselves pulled out coz they don't want to respect Chinese laws".
Even without this law, their moderators already banned contents “endangering national security” or deemed “uglification or distortion of local or other countries’ history” [3].
Business as usual. No need to pull out.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/tiktok-says-it-doesnt-censor...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks...
[3] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-once-again-come...
It's not even about intentions. You are subject to the whims of the CCP whether you want to be or not.
No company operates from China without such influence. Some are more blatant than others (Huawei is more obviously a spying apparatus than Zoom).
I wish you the best of luck and hope you are able to get out of HK if you wish.
Chinese citizens and organizations are required by China’s National Intelligence Law to support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work. The law also protects any individual and organization that aids it. That’s partly why Huawei is a national security risk. [0]
CCP also sent state officials to private companies. Private companies, including foreign entities, have to establish formal party organizations. [1]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-da...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alibaba-china-party/china...
if anyone will be called racist in this thread, it will probably be you.
If Zoom was developed entirely within the US and didn't lie about E2E encryption or route calls through China so they could be subject to surveillance I'd be more inclined to believe it was an American company with no CCP influence.
The founder's appearance is irrelevant, in this case Zoom is quacking like a duck on its own.
Just for argument's sake, if the founder was totally against CCP spying and would never knowingly engage in that behavior, it's still suspicious. That's because the CCP can apply pressure directly to engineers (remember, it's developed inside China).
Some of the most brilliant engineers I know are "Asian looking". I don't assume they are spies for that reason (and they're not in China, so aren't as subject to influence).