Rick Scott Probes LinkedIn, Microsoft on Censoring US Journalists in China (axios.com) 43
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Microsoft and LinkedIn leadership on Thursday questioning why LinkedIn censored the profiles of U.S. journalists from the company's China-based platform this week, according to a letter obtained by Axios. From a report: LinkedIn -- which is owned by Microsoft -- notified several U.S. journalists this week, including Axios' Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, that their accounts will no longer be viewable in China due to "prohibited content" on their profile. In addition to Allen-Ebrahimian, affected journalists include VICE News' Melissa Chan and freelance reporter Greg Bruno. All three have reported on human rights abuses in China.
"I am deeply concerned that an American company is actively censoring American journalists on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party," Scott said in the letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. "Members of the media report information that is critical to helping Americans, including members of Congress, understand the scope of Communist China's abuses, especially its abuses against and surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang," the senator continued. "The censorship of these journalists raises serious questions about Microsoft's intentions and its commitment to standing up against Communist China's horrific human rights abuses and repeated attacks against democracy."
"I am deeply concerned that an American company is actively censoring American journalists on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party," Scott said in the letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. "Members of the media report information that is critical to helping Americans, including members of Congress, understand the scope of Communist China's abuses, especially its abuses against and surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang," the senator continued. "The censorship of these journalists raises serious questions about Microsoft's intentions and its commitment to standing up against Communist China's horrific human rights abuses and repeated attacks against democracy."
Is it Microsoft's Job to "stand up to" China? (Score:4, Interesting)
The censorship of these journalists raises serious questions about Microsoft's intentions and its commitment to standing up against Communist China's horrific human rights abuses and repeated attacks against democracy.
What, precisely, is Microsoft's job in regards to standing up to China? Is Rick Scott pointlessly grandstanding or am I missing something here? Microsoft is a private business and I am not sure I am comfortable with them following Rick Scott's orders, even if it's for the greater good. TMK, there is no law they are violating by complying with Chinese law or requests from Chinese officials.
I am not even sure if censorship is worse than taking a stand and being banned outright. The more Western countries deal with China, the more consumers want Western goods and get exposed to Western Ideas, even if censored. Getting banned by China just isolates them and strengthens the influence of the Gov. Worst case scenario, they become more isolated, like North Korea.
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How about, what is Microsoft's and Linkedln's job in standing up to the NSA and their secret letters? I hope Rick wants them to fight more than just the Chinese.
"America is worse!" (Score:1)
Ever since coming here from the USSR, I remain amazed by anti-Americans defending evil regimes abroad by equating them with things they dislike in the US.
Yes, yes, Beria was terrible, an enlightened Massachusetts "Liberal" would concede. But have you, my young immigrant friend, heard of Senator McCarthy?
Never mind, that Beria killed millions , almost all of them innocent, while McCarthy (even if we conflate him with HUAC [wikipedia.org]) blacklisted hundreds ...
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Equating is exactly the right word here.
It's not even great whataboutis. They are stoning and murdering thousands of homosexuals in the middle east and the retort is "You think that's bad! A bakery in some state REFUSED to bake a customer cake for their wedding!!!" Branch that off with woman's rights, etc.
I'm not saying things can't get better here, but the US is constantly heralded as one of the worst places to live by the same people screaming that we have to leave our borders open and let everyone in
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"American company censoring American journalists"
To me this is the crux of the matter. Clearly the American company, wanting to profit as much as possible in foreign markets will do (almost) whatever the foreign market's administration asks of it so long as they can make money there. The journalists are protected by free speech laws in their native land. They are obviously not protected by those laws outside of their native land (something that Americans forget all the time).
The wrinkle is that the Ameri
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The wrinkle is that the American company, bound by the laws in the same land as the journalist, is applying different rules to those journalists on foreign "soil". The question is "is that okay"?
By this reasoning a Chinese company should be allowed to censor Chinese journalists while they are working in the US*. It doesn't really matter where you are from, you follow the laws of the country you are actually working in.
Now if Microsoft was asked by China to censor US journalists' Linkedin pages in the US and Microsoft capitulated there is a big problem.
*Since it seems that you are arguing that if the citizenship and company are the same it doesn't matter where in the world they are they need to foll
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Literally, yes! (Score:2)
Reverse that. Is it Microsoft's job to kowtow to China? The Censoring is an action being taken. "The more Western countries deal with China, the more consumers want Western goods and get exposed to Western Ideas" This has proven to be a false concept over time.
According to China, it definitely is their job to comply with local laws. Should they? Not sure how I feel personally. I'd love for Microsoft to win the nascent cold war with China for us with their bold LinkedIn stance, but I doubt it makes a bit of difference. If in doubt, I would guess a business would keep in compliance with local laws if it's not against the law in their home country. China does shitty things as do many countries MS does business with. I am not sure it's their role to take a hard
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If Microsoft wants to operate in China then it needs to abide by Chinese law while performing those operations in China. That's not a difficult concept, is it? I suppose you could call that "kowtowing" to the country, but then they don't display illegal snuff porn in England so is that also "kowtowing" to the British?
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Yes. You have to follow the laws of the country where you are operating.
So, if they want to operate in China, their China-based products will have to comply with Chinese law. Just like if they want to operate in the US, their US-based products have to comply with US law. EU products and EU law, etc.
Their choices are to follow Chinese law, or not do any business within China. And their fiduciary duty points very hard to doing business within China.
The idea that we want corporations to pick-and-choose whi
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Reverse that. Is it Microsoft's job to kowtow to China? The Censoring is an action being taken. .
YES it is their job to kowtow to the laws of the countries they operate in. It is not up to them to determine whether they are good laws or bad laws and choose to obey only the laws they like. It would be a shitshow across the world if we allowed companies to do that.
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Is Rick Scott pointlessly grandstanding ...
Yes. He's a Republican politician from Florida, that's what they do -- see their Governor Ron DeSantis and US Congressional Representative Matt Gaetz ... (Although Matt apparently also has other hobbies.)
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Microsoft is also not the government and is so allowed to do whatever they please in regard to making this content available. There is nothing controversial about that. The government can't censor us but as we've seen from Twitter, FB, and now LinkedIn that companies are free to do so if they deem it necessary.
This is nothing controversial, nothing will come of this as it is just Scott grandstanding and making himself look foolish.
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Rick Scott, like most Florida politicians, is utterly and totally committed to one ideal above all others: graft and corruption.
The details, I don't know and neither might he; nonetheless, he's looking for an angle.
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Is Rick Scott pointlessly grandstanding
Does Rick Scott know how to do anything else? I don't think even he is stupid enough to have advisors so utterly illiterate that they don't understand what is happening (although he is in Florida, so I guess it's possible). LinkedIn is censoring the journalists' profiles **IN CHINA** to comply with the laws **OF CHINA**. Does he recommend that they violate Chinese law and then get banned from China entirely? I somehow think that he would be a bit perturbed if a Chinese web site displayed content prohibi
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Thinking about it further, it's actually possible that he is that stupid.
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Is Rick Scott pointlessly grandstanding?
Floridian here. He's grandstanding to his base. Somehow his base has become more lunatic, throwing terms like "Chinese corporate communism" (yeah, that's a thing apparently, whatever the hell that means), while displaying a hatred for the same social media from where they get their looney conspiracy theories from.
Seriously, they go like "facebook is censoring me, look how they will censor my post, share if you agree." I've seen people I know in real life truly sharing a post that they claim FB is censorin
Simple (Score:2)
If you want to do business in China, you have to follow the Party's rules. It's not rocket surgery.
Rock--middle--hard_place. (Score:2)
"I am deeply concerned that an American company is actively censoring American journalists on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party," Scott said in the letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. "Members of the media report information that is critical to helping Americans, including members of Congress, understand the scope of Communist China's abuses, especially its abuses against and surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang," the senator continued. "The censorship of these journalists raises serious questions about Microsoft's intentions and its commitment to standing up against Communist China's horrific human rights abuses and repeated attacks against democracy."
So basically you want to those two to be a tool of your aims while the Chinese government wants them to not be a tool for foreign entities. Gee what is a middleman suppose to do?
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"I am deeply concerned that an American company is actively censoring American journalists on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party," Scott said in the letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. "Members of the media report information that is critical to helping Americans, including members of Congress, understand the scope of Communist China's abuses, especially its abuses against and surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang," the senator continued. "The censorship of these journalists raises serious questions about Microsoft's intentions and its commitment to standing up against Communist China's horrific human rights abuses and repeated attacks against democracy."
So basically you want to those two to be a tool of your aims while the Chinese government wants them to not be a tool for foreign entities. Gee what is a middleman suppose to do?
I infer that you consider the aims of the US and the aims of the CCP to be equivalent in their legitimacy. That is not the case.
Hypocrite (Score:3)
So now the media is the good guy for reporting on the crimes of a government. Funny how Republicans don't believe that should apply in this country, and that all the media is fake except for those who trot out the party line. Boy, does that sound familiar.
Re:Hypocrite and plain dishonest (Score:2)
Rick Scott is also misrepresenting exactly how the censorship is taking place. He stated that:
Members of the media report information that is critical to helping Americans, including members of Congress, understand the scope of Communist China's abuses, especially its abuses against and surveillance of Uyghurs in Xinjiang
Linkedin is not preventing Americans, including members of Congress, from viewing the Linkedin accounts of these journalists. It is blocking them from within China. At worst, American citizens living in China without strong connections back to America could be effected, but certainly not Congress.
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Remember the to-do when the names of some of those held at Guantanamo were published, having been copied from publicly available non-classified reports? The Republicans were calling for shuttering the Washington Post for "treason" then.
freedom of activism (Score:2)
Bethany is a anti-chinese-government activist using LinkedIn as a social media platform. I think it speaks a lot about freedom of speech in China, when an anti-china-government activist is concerned about the visibility of her profile _in_ China.
Whereas, if it was a sufficiently inappropriate person in the US, they would be banned from social media worldwide "due to community guidelines"
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There's a big difference between being banned by your government and being banned by a private entity.
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I'm sure if Bethany spouts widely inaccurate information that could result in physical harm to others she will also be banned globally whether she reports that information from the US, China, Antarctic, the Moon, etc.
Microsoft isn't restricting access to these Linkedin accounts based on violations of site policies, they are restricting access to be compliant with the law in China.
Meh (Score:2)
Rick Scott - Medicare Fraudster par excellence... (Score:2)
I believe his company, Columbia/HCA, was hit with a 1.7 billion fine for Medicare fraud. Which totally qualifies him to be a Senator. 'Cuz you know, he was just the CEO at the time, and no CEO has any idea of the actual operations of their organisation.
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He aimed too low, Halliburton was convicted in France of bribing Nigerian officials to the tune of $180 million, and Cheney got to be president (well, nominally vice-president but we all know who was calling the shots).
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Without his approval ? OK, so why didn't he resign ? Why didn't he refuse to sign the check ? Certainly, a man of his abilities and moral rectitude could have found another position.
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He's a Republican, he doesn't believe corporations have to follow any laws.
Don't Senators write laws and stuff? (Score:1)
attacks against democracy? (Score:2)
How about attacks against democracy in this country you stupid fuck!
if only somebody could do something about it! (Score:2)
If Rick Scott wants US Tech companies to stop censoring people abroad, maybe he should make it illegal.