Or perhaps shareholders will be more interested in long term profits and start a lawsuit when the short term profits dry up as their paying customers leave them due to censorship and security concerns.
I hope so, but maybe not. That said, we have to recognize that there is something uniquely dangerous about an American company capitulating to demands from a foreign adversary.
But... they didn't, so why try to turn this conversation into a BLM issue? Is this to imply all Republicans are racist? Why not pretend it says U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (D-Mo.) so you can feel better and talk about the merits of the letter and the issue at hand.
This is my first comment in 4 years because it is incredibly frustrating to read thoughtless comments that just try to steer this towards a flame war
That's beside the point and not constructive to the discussion here. Zoom is behaving badly and a senator did send a letter. The guy is doing the job he is supposed to be doing on our behalf. We don't need to call him out for some hypothetical situation where he may or may not have sent a letter.
The optics are quite different. A foreign government exerting influence domestically is troubling from a national security point of view. I don't think you could say the same about BLM. I would expect the Democrats to launch an equally robust defense of BLM in that case.
Also, you could easily make a statement about why no Democrats have, to my knowledge, pressed Zoom on this? So far, three Republicans have:
> The optics are quite different. A foreign government exerting influence domestically is troubling from a national security point of view.
This is what I would call hypocrisy. The US has a long history of bullying companies from other countries (see the Iran situation for example), but now that they are not the biggest kid on the playground, there is suddenly outrage that other countries do it as well.
And regarding values of freedom, if that is really what you care about maybe it would be a good start to stop supporting despots worldwide and overthrowing democratic governments because they don't favour American businesses.
Senator Hawley has evidently not criticized Zoom alone, but other companies as well.
> "One week ago today, I sent a letter to American companies like yours, asking them to put American principles and free nations around the world first."
And which companies, specifically, did he criticize?
One week ago he sent a letter[1] to "American Companies in China". I didn't notice an uptick in paper stocks, so I assume he didn't actually send this letter to all "American companies in China" but instead just put this out there on his website like a fart in the wind.
Whether or not paper vs digital communication is a matter of bravery of cowardice (I'm a bit confused by the supposed connection between these concepts..) seems irrelevant.
You're assuming there was ever a dichotomy to being with. Many have demonstrated that a company can have "American principles" and short-term global profits and censorship at the same time. Companies have been doing it since China "opened up" in the 70s and 80s.
I would also request that the Senator from Missouri give me a specific list of what constitutes "American principles". I'll bet his list is at least slightly different than my list. But there I go, assuming that a solution was being sought and not just posturing.
> I would also request that the Senator from Missouri give me a specific list of what constitutes "American principles"
You can get a great picture of his (parties) principals by his press releases. Yada yada relgious freedom, police are good, "radical left" is bad, planned parenthood is the devil etc.
I was being ever so slightly facetious (I'm sure a MO Republican's views differ greatly from those of my West Coast Liberal(tm) arse), but thanks for the list as it solidifies what I was merely guessing at. :-)
That has nothing to do with it. Similar letters were written when Activision/Blizzard punished a Hearthstone player for supporting the Honk Kong protests.
It's unreasonable to expect any single company to act alone in this. Some pundit (Scott Galloway?) recently made the point that USA flag corporations need the US Government to make this law. I'd be fine if FAANG et al presented model legislation.
Next step will be hours of Congressional hearings where politicians invoke fiery rhetorics and company executives use verbal jiu jitsu to dodge out of any legal liabilities.
Explicitly difficult to serve both China and US interests without pissing off one side or the other (or both). Zoom clearly built a system based on an MVP idea, not imagining that security and being able to block internationally was important, yet it is. Having worked for a bit on a game that had to have Chinese government restrictions in it, I know how hard it is to make their government happy. Even worse is it can change at any time. Zoom should have had someone there who had worked in a similar type of Chinese environment; perhaps they did and no one listened.
There have been some good public quotes about how capricious the censors can be when it comes to movies in China. Big budget movies made in China suddenly can't be shown because ... well sometimes they don't even know. Filmmakers have been pretty open about saying that they don't know what the rules are and they think they're playing it safe and then their film is blacklisted because they think a censor thought that a scene might seem 'sympathetic' to an event barely mentioned in the film, and maybe recently someone in power decided that moment in history was 'wrong'.
Kinda funny that it's ok for zoom to become a platform for US to monitor it's own civilians but then complain that it's cooperating with Chinese law.
Seems to me senator wants zoom to pick sides alright, but it has nothing to do with values or principles
But those are two different issues. One is about national security, and the other is about civil liberties. Sure it would be nice if both of those were strong, but the consequences of having compromised national security are more likely to result in wide scale disaster than this particular case of weakened civil liberties are.
This is because we have some semblance of checks and balances within the country, but much less outside of it.
I just don't understand how US government officials can criticize private companies for kowtowing to China because of its importance in the world, when the US government unequivocally does the same thing every day to a much greater degree.
I think Senator Hawley addresses your criticism head-on. China and the United States both have requirements for domestic companies to be in alignment with certain domestic goals. The Chinese and United State domestic goals are absolutely incompatible. A lot of companies think they can find a balance between these two sets of requirements, but Hawley is pointing out that increasingly this is impossible.
Senator Hawley also introduced legislation that could be used to block efforts to implement end-to-end encryption, so maybe this is more about American nationalism than American Principles.
"Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has slammed the bill as a 'Trojan horse to give Attorney General Barr and Donald Trump the power to control online speech and require government access to every aspect of Americans' lives.'" [1]
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadOriginal title:
Senator Hawley to Zoom: “Pick A Side: American Principles and Free-Speech, or Short-Term Global Profits and Censorship”
receiving a letter is extremely on the mild end of what would happen if the political biases were switched
This is my first comment in 4 years because it is incredibly frustrating to read thoughtless comments that just try to steer this towards a flame war
What if zoom kicked off your mothers knitting group would a senator comment? No it is not a national security concern just bad customer services.
Now if China has a strategy around taking over knitting perhap.
Also, you could easily make a statement about why no Democrats have, to my knowledge, pressed Zoom on this? So far, three Republicans have:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zoom-video-commn-privacy/...
This is what I would call hypocrisy. The US has a long history of bullying companies from other countries (see the Iran situation for example), but now that they are not the biggest kid on the playground, there is suddenly outrage that other countries do it as well.
And regarding values of freedom, if that is really what you care about maybe it would be a good start to stop supporting despots worldwide and overthrowing democratic governments because they don't favour American businesses.
Or both. Like most other companies.
> "One week ago today, I sent a letter to American companies like yours, asking them to put American principles and free nations around the world first."
One week ago he sent a letter[1] to "American Companies in China". I didn't notice an uptick in paper stocks, so I assume he didn't actually send this letter to all "American companies in China" but instead just put this out there on his website like a fart in the wind.
Very brave.
1. https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Ha...
And, because there are so many, addressing no company in particular is futile - it’s like a fart in the wind. Nobody will hear it.
You're assuming there was ever a dichotomy to being with. Many have demonstrated that a company can have "American principles" and short-term global profits and censorship at the same time. Companies have been doing it since China "opened up" in the 70s and 80s.
I would also request that the Senator from Missouri give me a specific list of what constitutes "American principles". I'll bet his list is at least slightly different than my list. But there I go, assuming that a solution was being sought and not just posturing.
You can get a great picture of his (parties) principals by his press releases. Yada yada relgious freedom, police are good, "radical left" is bad, planned parenthood is the devil etc.
1. https://www.hawley.senate.gov/press-releases
And are there any HNers who work at Zoom, or know someone who works at Zoom, who can speak to how this situation is perceived internally?
Next step will be hours of Congressional hearings where politicians invoke fiery rhetorics and company executives use verbal jiu jitsu to dodge out of any legal liabilities.
Let the free market come up with another alternative for massacre-silencing needs.
Or incorporate in Europe and then license it local providers around the world. Let the local providers deal with it.
There have been some good public quotes about how capricious the censors can be when it comes to movies in China. Big budget movies made in China suddenly can't be shown because ... well sometimes they don't even know. Filmmakers have been pretty open about saying that they don't know what the rules are and they think they're playing it safe and then their film is blacklisted because they think a censor thought that a scene might seem 'sympathetic' to an event barely mentioned in the film, and maybe recently someone in power decided that moment in history was 'wrong'.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/28/17055088/apple-chinese-ic...
https://sneak.berlin/20200604/if-zoom-is-wrong-so-is-apple/
This is because we have some semblance of checks and balances within the country, but much less outside of it.
Censorship is legal. Failing to act in the best interest of shareholders is not.
Perhaps legislators should stick to writing laws?
Would it? I'm not sure simply operating in a big market or not operating it would qualify as 'breach of fiduciary duty'.
"Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has slammed the bill as a 'Trojan horse to give Attorney General Barr and Donald Trump the power to control online speech and require government access to every aspect of Americans' lives.'" [1]
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/487372-bill-to-protect... [2] https://morningconsult.com/opinions/a-backdoor-attempt-to-re...