Microsoft's LinkedIn Accused by Noted China Critic of Censorship (bloomberg.com) 67
A prominent critic of China based in the U.K. said Microsoft's LinkedIn froze his account and removed content criticizing the country's government, the latest in a series of allegations that the networking website had censored users -- even outside of the Asian nation -- to appease authorities in Beijing. From a report: Peter Humphrey, a British corporate investigator and former journalist who accesses LinkedIn from his home in Surrey, England, said he received notification from LinkedIn last month that comments he had published on the platform had been removed. The comments, seen by Bloomberg News, called the Chinese government a "repressive dictatorship" and criticized the country's state media organizations as "propaganda mouthpieces."
In late April, Humphrey said LinkedIn sent him several notifications that critical comments he posted about China's government and state-controlled broadcaster China Global Television Network, or CGTN, had been removed, on the grounds that the comments constituted "bullying and harassment" or "spam and scams." On April 26, Humphrey said he couldn't access his LinkedIn profile. When Humphrey tried to log in, he said he was met with a message stating his profile had been "restricted" due to "behavior that appears to violate our Terms of Service." After Bloomberg News contacted LinkedIn for comment last week, the company reinstated Humphrey's account and restored some of his comments. Others were not. "Our team has reviewed the action, based on our appeals process, and found it was an error," said Leonna Spilman, a spokeswoman for LinkedIn. Spilman declined to comment further regarding Humphrey's account.
In late April, Humphrey said LinkedIn sent him several notifications that critical comments he posted about China's government and state-controlled broadcaster China Global Television Network, or CGTN, had been removed, on the grounds that the comments constituted "bullying and harassment" or "spam and scams." On April 26, Humphrey said he couldn't access his LinkedIn profile. When Humphrey tried to log in, he said he was met with a message stating his profile had been "restricted" due to "behavior that appears to violate our Terms of Service." After Bloomberg News contacted LinkedIn for comment last week, the company reinstated Humphrey's account and restored some of his comments. Others were not. "Our team has reviewed the action, based on our appeals process, and found it was an error," said Leonna Spilman, a spokeswoman for LinkedIn. Spilman declined to comment further regarding Humphrey's account.
Just an "error", folks! (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft's subsidiary would also like you to know [freebeacon.com] that "This is unrelated to the issue we corrected in 2019." (2019 was the other time that LinkedIn gratuitously disabled his account "in error".)
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You get what you pay for.
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Linked in is one of the most dangerous employment data mining companies. You are on it to be data mined, for current and future employers, who to avoid based on long term data mining, who to exclude. Also for insider trading, lot of high level employees looking for a job, watch out the company sell it's shares.
Linkedin is a pure profit play, you really should not use it, provides zero benefit, just the illusion of one and smart companies would ban employees from using it.
Fall back (Score:5, Insightful)
The comments, seen by Bloomberg News, called the Chinese government a "repressive dictatorship" and criticized the country's state media organizations as "propaganda mouthpieces."
We have enough problems with Hollywood, sport teams, and online game companies exporting China'a censorship already. It's gone beyond a facetious game of hiding behind "following local laws internal to the country".
It is the job of the free nations of Earth to keep the high seas free for speech the same way you work to keep it free from pirates and other localities seeking to dominate it -- so trade may flow.
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I'd just like to note that "anti-Chinese Communist Party" is not the same as "anti-China".
By the way, how much does being a CCP shill pay? Just curious.
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Your opinions are indistinguishable from CCP talking points.
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Aside from a tendency to crush anything that threatens it, China has done a fairly competent job of raising their economic standards while making way for their people to share in the profits.
The only way to gain changes in China's behaviors are to engage them on trade and use that to gain humanitarian changes. This was true when Nixon pivoted to China (after trashing them as the red scourge for decades) and it is true today.
The current path laid out by propaganda outlets like Epoch Times leads to abandoned
Re:Fall back (Score:5, Insightful)
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wow, look at the foreign policy expert here lol
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That is what has worked(Russia/N Korea), what hasn't worked is how we have been dealing with china since Nixon.
They took out money and giggled and laughed while the rich got richer exporting jobs to them by exporting our core jobs to them.
Re:Fall back (Score:4, Insightful)
And what Nixon did was a mistake. China billed itself as liberalizing, which was clearly a farce to get the west to invest. The extent to which the Chinese people have improved their living standards has been in spite of the CCP, not because of it. The claims that poverty has been eliminated are just dependent on Chairman Xi lowering the standard for poverty, not an increase in wealth.
Ultimately win-win to the CCP means two wins for them, and none for you. The courts are stacked against foreign companies. You cannot freely transfer money in and out of China, and that is ultimately because the CCP wants your help, but wants to keep the proceeds for their own ethnostate. If you're not Chinese, you can't be a part of it.
The CCP is afraid of falun gong, not because it's some malignant cult, but because they know full well that dynastic changes are often precluded by spiritual movements. This is why spiritual leaders in China must be vetted by the CCP before they an serve in their positions. To the CCP, liberalism is the cult.
It's not unreasonable for people to assume you have some kind of financial or social interest that is shared with the CCP. Even if it's not an explicit agreement, people often try to justify themselves morally, so will become advocates of horrible things so that they can still face their peers. I've encountered quite a number. So there's a whole host of labels that could apply... 50 cent, internet water army, a little pink, or just a western Tankie. Doesn't really matter which one fits best, because in the end, you're someone who seeks to stick a knife in the back of liberalism.
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>>you're someone who seeks to stick a knife in the back of liberalism.
funny... So, being disgusted by some wealthy religion that not only creates disruption in their own country, but also works actively to involve themselves in the politics of other nations through lie campaigns that are so vile they had to create their onw media outlet... is hating liberalism?
In my experience, Liberalism stands for free thought and actions and people under the sway of religious cults rarely accomplish that, even if t
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funny... So, being disgusted by some wealthy religion that not only creates disruption in their own country, but also works actively to involve themselves in the politics of other nations through lie campaigns that are so vile they had to create their onw media outlet... is hating liberalism?
No, but even if that is what you genuinely think you're doing, your comments are clearly to the benefit of an expansionistic regime that is the antithesis of liberalism. You're advancing the same narratives that the CCP media apparatus does in order to undermine democracy and human rights.
And just what beliefs of the falun gong would you say are incompatible with liberalism specifically? I'm not sure how they're interfering in the politics of other nations. Presumably if they've been given asylum in a
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I never mentioned Falun Gong, Epoch Times, or Hong Kong. Did you get to all the items on your checklist?
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Oh, should I gouge my eyes out so I cannot witness what is happening and fall hook line and sinker for your crap?
Falun Gong founded The Epoch Times to propagandize for the religion, posing as a western press outlet based in NYC
History and relation to Falun Gong [wikipedia.org]
The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by John Tang and other Chinese Americans affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement. Tang was a graduate student in Georgia at the time; he began the newspaper in his basement. The founders said they were
Re: Fall back (Score:1)
That's bollocks though. The CCP *is* the Chinese people, and neither of those groups makes the distinction you do.
Think of it as a meta-corporation and it's no different to any of the corporation operating anywhere else in the world.
Re:Fall back (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the job of the free nations of Earth to keep the high seas free for speech the same way you work to keep it free from pirates and other localities seeking to dominate it -- so trade may flow.
This will be a hard battle to win. Hollywood made $9 billion in China in 2019, nearing the $11 billion they made in North America. If half of US viewers boycotted a film because it made regressive decisions to cater to the Chinese market, it is still in the business's best interest to cater to China. China on the other hand is authoritarian; the central government can just make a decision to ban a movie unilaterally.
It would probably take our government having a consistent policy to enforce financial penalties if China bans US entertainment, and then provide the proceeds to the movie studios or sports franchises. Short of that, what would we do about it? No amount of bad press or boycotts are going to make movie studios or sports teams ignore the Chinese market. It is too lucrative.
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What would you expect to happen when there's no laws preventing this, and anything you want your representative to do, will probably be overridden by big business lobbying.
This is how lots of US companies got into bed with China (cheap labour, manufacturing, MBAs, etc) and now they're starting to see that this may not have been a great thing.
Couple this with China growling at Taiwan, and the first thing that's gonna happen in a war is no more silicon chips for the US mil/tech/civ/etc because China just stom
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US/UK/AnyOther country should not be beholden to China. If someone outside of china did something china didn't like, that was legal in their country, then tough titties to China. Of course, that currently doesn't happen because ooo look we'll lose X beelions if we have to pull out of china so we will jump when China says jump.
I don't disagree about what an ideal situation would look like, but what would you actually propose be done? Describing an ideal state is easy (relatively). But getting there in a country with the level of free speech protection and free trade as the USA would be really hard. Ban all business with China? Ask China politely to not ban our products when US companies upset the Chinese government? Get into a trade war every time China asks our companies to do something they don't like?
Obviously each of those re
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Americans are just butthurt because China is going to become the biggest market. Everyone used to pander to America for the American market. Funnily enough only non Americans complained. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.
I agree that is the largest source of the concern from those living in the states. But this new boss is not the same as the old. An authoritarian closed speech society having similar global influence as the USA has had over the past century is a very different and more troubling thing. It isn't just US citizens who are concerned of the rise of China on the global stage.
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Sure, anybody who thinks well of Ayn Rand simply does not realize how utterly full of shit she was, to the point of praising psychopaths. [scmp.com]
If you look deeper, she was obviously psychologically damaged by events early in her life and was only supported by certain wealthy individuals because she praised them constantly, without realizing how morally corrupt they are until they abandoned her in her time of need.
It is a lesson that everybody (not worth tens of millions of dollars) should recognize while working
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FYI, Ad Hominem is not always a fallacy, particularly when the person being attacked is a known liar.
Valid types of ad hominem arguments [wikipedia.org]
Ad hominem arguments, testimony and authority
Ad hominem arguments are relevant where the person being criticised is advancing arguments from authority, or testimony based on personal experience, rather than proposing a formal syllogism.
An example is a dialogue at the court, where the attorney cross-examines an eyewitness, bringing to light the fact that the witness was conv
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It's also for publishing your thoughts and analysis - LinkedIn would like you to think it's a social network.
Really, everyone uses it for job hunting or self-promotion. So people who want to promote themselves as having tech skills write about tech stuff, people who want to promote themselves as managers write about management stuff, and it would seem that people who want to promote themselves as international relations experts and critics of the Chinese government write about the Chinese government.
Re: Good (Score:2)
It's like any social network. Given enough entropy/time, all the things it's generally good manners to hold back on discussing become more of the common discourse. You have to nip it in the butt pretty quickly. Even with that, I use to think of LinkedIn as a more interactive resume but now it's more like a place recruiters can nag me... er network with me.
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Decision time, LinkedIn (Score:3)
Your decision time has come, LinkedIn. It comes to all who try to do business in China, and now it has come to you:
Do you do act to satisfy the Chinese government and alienate your users elsewhere (and possibly even in China)?
Or do you act in the interests of most of your users (who are, when they subscribe, your customers) even when it means you get blocked in China?
There's no doing business in China without getting compromised. Are you going to compromise yourself?
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I believe you are spot on.
There is no reason why Microsoft or Linkedin or Facebook or twitter would limit censorship to just the USA for instance.
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Allowing blogging/articles/comments is always going to end up with politics simply because there's some political stuff they simply can't remove, BLM for instance.
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LinkedIn is big in China and is about the only Western service with user-generated content (social network or otherwise) that is not blocked in China.
Anyone doing business in China attracts attention of the Chinese government and any online communications service attracts extremely close attention. The Chinese government will obtrude into LinkedIn's business whether they like it or not. The Chinese government tries to suppress any criticism of them or of China that they notice.
LinkedIn almost certainly got
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Another social network that needs to die (Score:5, Informative)
Anybody who thinks Facebook is the creepiest social network has never dealt with LinkedIn.
LinkedIn happily lets you stalk people... (Score:1)
Someone has looked at your post! For only $5/month you can creep on them and find out who!
Can't close account?! (Score:2)
Went through the steps to close my LinkedIn account, and it won't let me do the final "Close Account" button. WTF?
Re:Can't close account?! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the solution is right in the post, just publish lots of comments criticizing CCP and voilá, your account will be deactivated!
Automated Moderation (Score:3)
I don't use LinkedIn. I assume there's some sort of functionality for end users to report or flag prohibited content? 50-centers have been known to abuse these features to censor criticism of the CCP on large platforms. A "noted" critic would absolutely be targeted in this manner.
So, it may not be Microsoft bending to China so much as not having enough human moderators looking at content. Any kind of automated removal (remove posts that get X reports in Y amount of time) is likely to be exploited by anyone with enough goons to throw at it.
DUH! (Score:1)
Stones, glass houses (Score:1)
Hard for the US to whine about China when there's been an ever-increasing push for censorship since the 2016 election. And when Julian Assange is being tortured to death in solitary confinement.
Western exceptionalists: don't bother whipping out the "W" word when you're the biggest hypocrites on the planet and have no moral standing to judge others.