> Observers have said the new law forces companies doing business in Hong Kong to provide user data to the Chinese government as well as to comply with censorship requests.
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.
China will probably keep it mostly kosher on the surface level. But no doubt will be wide open in the background for surveillance. Assuming it wasn't already mostly accessible to them.
I'd be surprised if anything like the firewall happens. More likely to be quiet intimidation or disappearances of people posting stuff online.
Don't forget, however, that for the exact same excuse, the NSA approached american companies who complied with voluntary backdoors for years, until someone betrayed and exiled to Russia.
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.
Because the possibility that you are disappeared for your online activities is likely much much higher in HK now than it has ever been in those other countries.
GCP and AWS both have regions in Hong Kong. If anyone was storing data for serving it to any place outside, I guess this might be a good time to shift it to some neighbouring region.
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.
Hosting outside of Hong Kong is important. Hong Kong can't impound the servers if they're outside the territory, without the cooperation of the server owner/operator or the government where it resides.
Of course, if the owner/operator has employees or assets in Hong Kong, those could be held to elicit cooperation.
It matters a bit, but not that much. Failure to comply comes with a maximum fine of HK$100,000 (US$ 12,500), plus six months imprisonment for service providers. [0]
If HK police repeatedly fine a company, the company may have to stop serving HK or even China.
Apple operates its services inside the great firewall, where the CCP has complete access to its servers. The Hong Kong change is therefore relatively minor for Apple.
So... punish the Chinese people for having an oppressive government by not providing them with the top of the line? It seems more unjust to me. There is no good choice here, only bad and worse — I think Apples presence in China is the lesser of two evils. Same with Google etc.
I don't know if this distinction is that important. If someone from the US imessages or emails someone holding an Apple account in China, then their data will also be revealed.
That’s not true — my iCloud data is not transferred to China because I email a Chinese iCloud user. That message will be revealed, but that is very different from “their data will also be revealed.”
My worry is that the definition of "Chinese users" will be expanded. Right now the assumption is that it's for Chinese citizens, but of course, anyone who registered an account while in China is also thrown in that pile. I have to wonder if this will someday include Chinese citizens who've been living abroad and created accounts while outside of China, people with former Chinese citizenship who've taken another country's citizenship, their children, and so on.
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.
That seems like a valid worry, however, it would be cause for such enormous outrage that I think it’s a route Beijing will never take. Tiktok is a good microcosm of this, it’s already stirring outrage and it’s not even monitoring more than any other surveillanceware (Facebook, Instagram, etc).
China trying to exert its pressures on Chinese citizens abroad has already been happening to not that much outrage in Australia[1] and the United States.[2]
It could be true, because that's just the nature of an autocratic state. Former Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany also suspected their citizens conspiring against them. Which is why they need to tap phones and surveil internet.
Actually the law force any company in the world to comply with it regardless of whether or not its in HK or not. So if you say something in the US critical of china then go to HK you'd still be in trouble
That would require the EU to be introspective so it'll never happen, it was probably intentional anyway. The Europeans know they're losing relevance by the day, if they can legislate away their impotence they can pretend the world doesn't just view them as a senile piggyback to trade with.
Some of the new HK laws are worse then the counterpart in China. (Through practically in long term it might not matter that much as law enforcement/interpretation are another matter altogether).
also if they stopped[1] sharing it indicates that they did so until now (including during the protests):
> 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?
> The company has said that TikTok has not shared data with the Chinese government nor would it, a position that would be difficult — if not impossible — to maintain under the new law.
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?
Young children are obsessed about TikTok, even in Hong Kong, and parents are just too happy to let their kids melt in front of a mobile screen all day just to get some rest.
I’ve actually never really seen it taking off in HK, most people here are obsessed with Instagram and Facebook. Kids are mainly playing mobile games or watching Youtube.
With the ban in India and threat of US ban, this move may be a PR move to say to the US Feds, "No, we're not a CCP tool. We've pulled out of the HK market to avoid data sharing with the CCP!" Essentially sacrificing the already low HK market to keep the much bigger Rest of the World market.
Of course, no one in tech believes them. We'll see if the public and governments believe them.
ByteDance has a different version of TikTok (called Douyin) for the Chinese market, which complies with their censorship restrictions. My guess is they pulled TikTok out of HK to replace it with Douyin.
Douyin is likely better designed for censorship, data collection and so on, particularly in the context of Chinese language - I'd say the parent comment is right, the goal here is to replace TikTok with Douyin.
Better: it's a way to pull it away from a money-losing market without spooking investors: "Oh it's not that we failed in a Chinese city, it's that new law you know"...
It's absolutely ridiculous a Chinese company would be the first to actually close down the service to protect users, don't you think ?
Lack of purpose: social media app that is allegedly heavily spying on its global users in favor of CCP would not be useful in a territory where Chinese government already forcefully requires anyone to disclose user data to them.
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.)
Are they pretending they aren't a CCP spying apparatus with this move? Seems like simple marketing smoke-and-mirrors to me. Much like Zoom flailing with "privacy" initiatives while being a nation state spying program.
Any large company that has majority ownership in China or primarily employs software developers based in China is a spying apparatus, whether voluntarily or not.
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]
No. I'm saying that Zoom, developed almost entirely inside China, is a nation state spying program. A company's legal jurisdiction does not absolve it of the influence of another nation.
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).
First; remember there are two "TikToks": The Chinese version which is mostly in Chinese and operates mostly in China and then the western version which we all know and love.
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.
Given the reputation of Telegram[0][1], I hope its popularity wanes among Hong Kong people whose mindset is not aligned with furthering CCP goals.
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.
Whatsapp could simple "accidentally" leak data or "accidentally" sell data to Chinese government. Since it is ow ed by Facebook and we have recently of course seen again what ethics mean to Facebook's leader, I would not put it past Whatsapp to do this.
Unlike Telegram, WhatsApp has no recorded history of agreeing to cooperate with a government and implying capabilities of censoring E2E content.
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.
Chinese hardware approved for and used in key Russian networking infrastructure[0], absence of trade/tariff war, joint large-scale strategic military drills past two years, adjacent geography, shared regime traits, etc.
You may have skipped the link in the first footnote in my top-level comment.
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.
> Last month Russia unblocked Telegram, and a quote attributed to its developer indicates they have developed ways to censor chats.
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.
> We don’t know why the ban has been removed, and it’s definitely suspicious but other reasons are possible.
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.
You are right about wanting to know exactly of course.
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?
Acknowledge this happened, clarify what changed, be honest if and how the new state of affairs compromises privacy and under which circumstances (if any) it affects E2E chats.
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.
Signal for sure has improvements it can do but it's not like it's unusable. Why you would think WhatsApp, who is owned by a shady company, run by a robot, is better than signal, is beyond me.
I respect Signal. My primary rationale is that I do not routinely meet people who use it. Coupled with the reports of subpar UI, so far I have chosen not to go through the friction of setting it up and converting my conversation partners to it.
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.
It matters where the servers are hosted. It’s not possible to even host a server in the Chinese region without Chinese government issued identity card. If they had servers in Hong Kong, then they Now fall under Chinese security regulations. (It might be that they had servers in Hong Kong, they are needing to turn them off to avoid their servers falling under the new laws)
Interesting turn of events. Amazon AWS recently opened a region (Apr 19) in Hong Kong. I wonder if it'll have any impact for them and that industry in general. Perhaps Hong Kong will be inside the great firewall in the near future, too.
It doesn't work that way. I'm sure North Korea has laws criminalizing defaming the good name of the Supreme Leader anywhere in the world, but they can't enforce it outside their borders, and neither can HK.
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.
> I'm sure North Korea has laws criminalizing defaming the good name of the Supreme Leader anywhere in the world, but they can't enforce it outside their borders, and neither can HK.
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.
A basic principle of extradition is that the action has to be a crime in both countries, which is why nobody extradites Saudis convicted of witchcraft or homosexuality.
TikTok can just continue with their censorship of Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Falun Gong [0], Uighur [1], and Hong Kong protests [2].
Even without this law, their moderators already banned contents “endangering national security” or deemed “uglification or distortion of local or other countries’ history” [3].
Side note, in my YouTube feed recommendations I got 3 videos lately that were all very clearly Chinese state propaganda.
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.
> YT normally doesn't recommend anything outside the limited few topics I have subscriptions for.
You might not have noticed this in the past, but they rotate through various topics that might be of interest to you and recommend them even if you've never searched for anything like it. They've always done this, there are talks on YouTube from them about it as well.
I just scrolled through my home feed for miles and they have disappeared. Indeed literally only seeing videos related to gaming, golf and gaming pcs. Nothing else AT ALL. But old videos like the below were in it a few days ago
Your youtube feed is not as curated as you would think it is. Google adds trending videos there, whether they are old or new, depending on your viewing history. There’s absolutely no way to be 100% in control of the feed.
Those are from the South China Morning Post, which was founded in 1903 and is based in Hong Kong. It's worth reading to learn what's happening there. It is not Chinese state propaganda.
South China Morning Post was taken over by Jack Ma, billionaire card carrying member of the Chinese Communist Party, five years ago. Since then it toes the line of the Beijing regime.
Do you genuinely not understand how someone might buy an unsympathetic publication to leverage its user trust to your own advantage? It is not new, nor China specific.
You have 5 other comments here asserting the same thing.
The parent seems to be correct, the wikipedia page mentions a jornalist being fired for "incorrectly" quoting Jack Ma in relation to the pro-democracy protests
Yea, Machiavellian principles long establish the allowance of such criticism to allow trust and control of the more critical messages. Embrace, extend, extinguish etc. It has either worked on you, or you know what you are doing
I'll be perfectly honest, from someone who repeatedly tweets actual Chinese state propaganda your opinion and dedication to repeating it here is highly suspect.
So if they're uncritical of CCP, then they're propaganda. If they sometimes post criticism of CCP, then they're still propaganda. Only if they post non-stop overwhelming amounts of criticism, do you think they are genuine?
If you go down this line, then there is no way any source can ever be seen as reliable, unless they completely conform to your opinion. How is this in any way a reasonable stance?
My Github history is 10+ years long, my software is used by hundreds of thousands of websites all over the world, I've lived in Europe for 25 years, I respect and participate in European democracy, and you suspect that I'm a CCP shill?
My stance isn't even "CCP is good", but "CCP is complicated, it's not what most people think it is, CCP has problems but the mainstream media representation is often blown out of proportion by 70%, more honest/accurate criticism is possible but requires a better understanding".
You say I'm posting "propaganda". Why can this not simply be "my opinion"? I was born in China, my wife is from China, I have family there, I've witnessed many things. Are you seriously saying that I have no legit opinion on my own of what the truth about China is, and that anything I say that disagrees with you must automatically be propaganda and not genuine?
With so much ridiculous, one-sided anti-China rhetoric going on, half of which can be disproven by walking down the street in China for a couple of days, the other half which is sort-of true but people like you pretending that even the untrue part is fully true and not interested in nuanced discussion, is it any wonder that I'm getting tired of that?
I don't even necessarily consider myself "pro-China". I am willing to enter genuine discussions. But have a look at this research paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3637710
People with attitudes such as yours, are pushing me towards the outcome described in this paper. And I'm not the only one, lots of other Chinese I'm in touch with are increasingly getting annoyed by all the unreasonable hysteria.
Have you been to China? Do you obtain information about China from anything other than mainstream media? What makes you so confident that you're so right and that CCP shills are everywhere?
Do you genuinely not understand how someone might buy an unsympathetic publication to leverage its user trust to your own advantage? It is not new, nor China specific.
Otherwise, I can easily say that you are a CIA agent. And any attempt at proving your innocence is merely a way to cover up your guilt. Do you truly not understand how the CIA might be hiding undercover agents by making them look like reasonable people?
No one is saying you are an agent of the Communist party state apparatus. But you are completely in denial as to the extent of their influence if you think they don't control the media under their purview. You repeatedly retweet literal and unquestionable propaganda and are here defending the honour of the homeland aggressively. You are not a good faith actor in this discussion.
Take a long hard look at your motivations.
You repeatedly retweet QIAO COLLECTIVE propaganda. A completely and undeniable ultra left wing / tankie shill online presence and China Daily.
You can cry victim as much as you want. But you are perpetuating propaganda. Literally. Of course you might just lack the sensibility to parse a news source and determine its meta motivations.
Nah, I think you are delusionally paranoid if you think retweeting a bunch of non-political China Daily tweets about amusement parks, food and entertainment constitutes "propaganda".
Yes, I want people to see a different side of China than just "they brought the virus, they are poor/uncivilized, they are communists/brainwashed, they steal our tech". I want to show that Chinese society is largely also a normal society, like yours. Nothing to do with politics and whether you agree with border disputes or whatever. Yes you should take Chinese (or US'es, for that matter) media's political messages with a grain of salt. So what? Even showing society is propaganda now? I can't tell others that Chinese are normal people too who can enjoy their lives, and that China is worth visiting? I call this "against the CCP AND against the Chinese people".
I can understand why you would disagree with Qiao Collective. But a "shill presence", as in, "hired by the Chinese government"? You mean, they can't be legitimately a bunch of independent Asian-Americans who have their own opinions? This is just the same "everybody who has a different opinion than me is automatically a CCP shill" nonsense.
In reality, real CCP propaganda is ridiculously bad. It doesn't convince anybody, it is losing the global narrative, and their propaganda departments are full of idiots who don't get it. You have nothing to be afraid of, for they are incompetent.
I will decide for myself whether I am a good faith actor, thank you very much. I won't let you define who I am. But at this point, it doesn't surprise me anymore that you automatically label someone as a bad faith actor simply for having a different opinion.
Ridiculous. These videos are not even political in nature, they just show events that happen in normal Chinese society. So showing positive societal events is now "propaganda"? It's not okay to have a good opinion of everyday Chinese people? What happened to "we are against the CCP, not the Chinese people"?
As per my other comment to which you replied, it's perfectly possible to embrace allowing criticism to inspire trust in a source so as to best leverage it when you need it.
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
Looks like you are convinced that anybody who doesn't agree with you on China-related topics, is automatically a CCP shill. Let's completely ignore my long online history too. This is not a reasonable stance. It would be as reasonable as me calling you a CIA agent because of your non-stop "anti-China propaganda" (which is actually just your opinion, misguided as I believe it is).
Desperate move to keep up the charade of not being a CCP shop.
On a slightly separate note, given all the virtue signaling of companies like Apple in the context of BLM, its worth reiterating that any US tech company helping the imperial CCP spy and silence its citizens is unambiguously although quite duplicitously with the dark side.
Any doubts the world had that the CCP is peace loving humans just like us, now stand well and truly shattered. They are communists and they are rich. They are more dangerous than the Soviets ever got to be.
All a publicity stunt to make it look like they are not under Chinese control when in reality no one in HK trusts the app so they have nothing to lose as very few users there
Are we supposed to believe that TikTok cares about the privacy of its users and protects them from any inquiry from the chinese officials, or that is even starting a privacy fight with the CCP?! Laughable, c'mon.
I’ll never understand why Twitter killed Vine. It was everything TikTok became but years earlier. Everyone loved it and everyone would immediately start using it again if it came back. My only conclusion is that Twitter was heavily influenced by China so that the Chinese could push their product.
Vine was 6 second long video clips. Comparing Vine to TikTok is somewhat like comparing TikTok to YouTube videos. They are different.
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.
Vine wasn't that long ago - eight years ago we were at the beginning of the hype cycle.
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.
It was one of the most bizarre things. It lost like 100 million users. Its not like twitter did not introduce videos and stories later on. I was particularly sad on reading that one of the co-founders died in 2018
Most likely a futile move. I think ByteDance will learn very soon that when the political will is ample, no amount of technical or legal maneuvering can avoid a state crackdown, in the US or elsewhere.
I think ByteDance is in an unresolvable situation, on one hand they absolutely can't afford losing the China market, that means they have to stay Chinese and loyal to the party; but on the other hand, if they don't sever with China completely, a global ban looks inevitable.
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".
I wonder what that means in practice. Are they going to block HK IPs, take down their app from the local app store, close accounts of HK users or will they simply dissolve whatever business presence they have there and claim that means they're no longer operating there?
I think there needs to be more reporting in this article about how TikTok is structured. India just banned tiktok because of its links to China and there is a news report today that the US is considering the same. Who owns TikTok and what are its links to the Chinese government?
Only the Chinese people can do that. The erosion of human rights will accelerate. Essentially all dictatorships get worse with time, rather than liberalizing. It becomes ever more difficult to retain that position of absolute power, the people grow increasingly weary of it as inevitably broken promises add up over a long period of time.
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.
I would lose my ability to buy cheap chinese products. And the chinese economy would lose the advantage of easy web plaftorms like Aliexpress to export to consumers outside of China.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadThis 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.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whatsapp-to-suspend-processing-...
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.
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.
https://twitter.com/alvinllum/status/1280184488857710592
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.
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...
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.
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?
Maybe it is a strategy to deprive HongKong protesters of a platform to post content on?
This move feels very very weird.
Of course, no one in tech believes them. We'll see if the public and governments believe them.
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.)
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).
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.
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.
No, we don't all love the spyware app called TikTok
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_criminality
It does according to Europe and their extraterritorial law called GDPR.
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...
[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)
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.
You might not have noticed this in the past, but they rotate through various topics that might be of interest to you and recommend them even if you've never searched for anything like it. They've always done this, there are talks on YouTube from them about it as well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V14W8A73XW0
Oh and this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1vpLxGktPoA
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.
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.
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...
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.
I'll be perfectly honest, from someone who repeatedly tweets actual Chinese state propaganda your opinion and dedication to repeating it here is highly suspect.
If you go down this line, then there is no way any source can ever be seen as reliable, unless they completely conform to your opinion. How is this in any way a reasonable stance?
My Github history is 10+ years long, my software is used by hundreds of thousands of websites all over the world, I've lived in Europe for 25 years, I respect and participate in European democracy, and you suspect that I'm a CCP shill?
My stance isn't even "CCP is good", but "CCP is complicated, it's not what most people think it is, CCP has problems but the mainstream media representation is often blown out of proportion by 70%, more honest/accurate criticism is possible but requires a better understanding".
You say I'm posting "propaganda". Why can this not simply be "my opinion"? I was born in China, my wife is from China, I have family there, I've witnessed many things. Are you seriously saying that I have no legit opinion on my own of what the truth about China is, and that anything I say that disagrees with you must automatically be propaganda and not genuine?
With so much ridiculous, one-sided anti-China rhetoric going on, half of which can be disproven by walking down the street in China for a couple of days, the other half which is sort-of true but people like you pretending that even the untrue part is fully true and not interested in nuanced discussion, is it any wonder that I'm getting tired of that?
I don't even necessarily consider myself "pro-China". I am willing to enter genuine discussions. But have a look at this research paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3637710 People with attitudes such as yours, are pushing me towards the outcome described in this paper. And I'm not the only one, lots of other Chinese I'm in touch with are increasingly getting annoyed by all the unreasonable hysteria.
Have you been to China? Do you obtain information about China from anything other than mainstream media? What makes you so confident that you're so right and that CCP shills are everywhere?
reasonable question.
Otherwise, I can easily say that you are a CIA agent. And any attempt at proving your innocence is merely a way to cover up your guilt. Do you truly not understand how the CIA might be hiding undercover agents by making them look like reasonable people?
Take a long hard look at your motivations.
You repeatedly retweet QIAO COLLECTIVE propaganda. A completely and undeniable ultra left wing / tankie shill online presence and China Daily.
You can cry victim as much as you want. But you are perpetuating propaganda. Literally. Of course you might just lack the sensibility to parse a news source and determine its meta motivations.
Yes, I want people to see a different side of China than just "they brought the virus, they are poor/uncivilized, they are communists/brainwashed, they steal our tech". I want to show that Chinese society is largely also a normal society, like yours. Nothing to do with politics and whether you agree with border disputes or whatever. Yes you should take Chinese (or US'es, for that matter) media's political messages with a grain of salt. So what? Even showing society is propaganda now? I can't tell others that Chinese are normal people too who can enjoy their lives, and that China is worth visiting? I call this "against the CCP AND against the Chinese people".
I can understand why you would disagree with Qiao Collective. But a "shill presence", as in, "hired by the Chinese government"? You mean, they can't be legitimately a bunch of independent Asian-Americans who have their own opinions? This is just the same "everybody who has a different opinion than me is automatically a CCP shill" nonsense.
In reality, real CCP propaganda is ridiculously bad. It doesn't convince anybody, it is losing the global narrative, and their propaganda departments are full of idiots who don't get it. You have nothing to be afraid of, for they are incompetent.
I will decide for myself whether I am a good faith actor, thank you very much. I won't let you define who I am. But at this point, it doesn't surprise me anymore that you automatically label someone as a bad faith actor simply for having a different opinion.
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
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.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tech-whiz-behind-vine-and-h...
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".
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...