Australian Prime Minister, After Registering For A WeChat Account Using Unnamed Chinese Citizen, Finds His Account Sold To Someone Else

from the quite-a-world-we-live-in dept

WeChat is the massively dominant Chinese social media app (plus commerce, plus a lot more), but unlike other apps from China, like TikTok, it has mostly focused on the Chinese market, rather than markets overseas. Nonetheless, it has apparently huge popularity in Australia (which has a large Chinese ex-pat community). As it grew more popular, it's no surprising that Australian politicians began using the service -- even though in order to sign up for an account, you're supposed to be a Chinese citizen. Still, politicians such as Prime Minister Scott Morrison signed up for an account raising some concerns domestically -- though they were mostly dismissed by Morrision and his allies. This was true even after WeChat took down a post by Morrison that criticized a Chinese official.

Of course, things got a lot more interesting when Morrison's WeChat account recently... was somehow taken over by a new account called "Australian-Chinese New Life" and locked out Morrison and his staff from using the account. The new account posted:

"Thank you for your continued interest in our WeChat public account. Scott Morrison, the WeChat public account you previously followed, has moved all its operations and functions to this WeChat public account."

Various politicians in Australia immediately blew up, claiming that this was "foreign election interference" by the Chinese government. However, WeChat owner Tencent responded that there was no government interference or hacking, but rather "a dispute over account ownership." And that brings us to the somewhat sketchy details of how Morrison was able to get an account in the first place. As mentioned above, you need to be a Chinese citizen to open a WeChat account, but it appears that there are some Chinese companies that will effectively rent out a Chinese citizen's identity for foreigners to get a WeChat account. And it appears that's what Morrison did:

For Scott Morrison to open an official WeChat account in 2019, the social media platform needed the account owner to either supply the ID of a Chinese national who would act as the "account operator", or tie their account to a business registered in China.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) used a Chinese agency to register the account, which was tied to an unknown male Chinese citizen from the southern province of Fujian, according to the ID details logged with WeChat.

If that sounds hellishly sketchy for a Prime Minister of a country to do, you're not wrong. And now it's come down to this. According to Tencent:

“The account in question was originally registered by a PRC individual and was subsequently transferred to its current operator, a technology services company – and it will be handled in accordance with our platform rules.”

And apparently the "current operator" is just as perplexed as everyone else that it now controls Morrison's WeChat account, and is in (somewhat reasonable) disbelief that Morrison would use such a sketchy process to sign up for an account:

Huang Aipeng, the legal representative for the Fuzhou software development firm, told Guardian Australia he only learned on Monday that the account belonged to Morrison.

“When I was first told that this account belonged to Morrison, I didn’t believe it at all,” he said on Tuesday. “How could a big head of state have handed over his WeChat account to a single person to manage?”

Huang categorically denied any allegations of foreign interference. “I’ve had absolutely no contact over here with any kind of government-related body,” he said.

Huang said he bought the account for his company as a formal business transaction in keeping with Wechat’s platform migration rules. He bought it directly from an acquaintance with the surname Ji, who could not be contacted.

The guy claimed he bought the account just because it had a lot of followers, which is just kind of perfect in a way. He also claims that he's considering just shutting down the account now that he understands whose account it actually was at first.

Filed Under: australia, china, ownership, scott morrison, social media, wechat
Companies: tencent, wechat

Cord-Cutting Leads To Gaming Studios Exploring In-Game Ads To Unlock Gaming Perks

from the this-is-gonna-suck dept

Advertising in the digital age is always something of a tricky subject. On the one hand, we have made the point for years that advertising is content and content is advertising. The point there is that the more useful and entertaining or engaging advertising tends to be, the more the public looks at it as just more content to consume, while really good content also serves as an advertisement of sorts for the content provider. Many folks simply believe that the public hates advertising full-stop, but that's really not true. Were it true, one of the hallmark experiences of the Super Bowl wouldn't be watching the ads. Instead, ads have to be engaging, fun, or useful. Unfortunately, the vast majority of advertising is otherwise, leading to the public tending to look for ways to not have to experience advertising generally.

The worst solution proposed in all of this is to find new and nefarious ways to force the public to view ads. The second worst solution is to coerce them into doing so. And the worst place to do any of this, it seems to me, is in the video game space, where the public has already often times dropped hundreds of dollars on gaming rigs and the games themselves. But that, it seems, is exactly what company PlayerWON is looking to roll out.

A first-of-its-kind in-game advertising platform called playerWON launches this week, allowing big-name marketers that are used to running splashy TV ads the ability to target younger demographics with similar types of spots that will run in video games.

-The platform, which is owned and operated by Simulmedia, a TV ad tech company, will let users determine whether they want to watch a 15 or 30-second video ad in exchange for being able to unlock exclusive gaming perks.

-Simulmedia has struck deals with some of the world's biggest gaming studios, including Electronic Arts (EA) and Tencent's Hi-Rez Studios, its EVP, Gaming and OTT Dave Madden told Axios.

If you're anything like me, your initial reaction to all of this is likely to result in you having convulsions over just how repulsive this all is. But we should take a step back and acknowledge something: this could be done well. The idea of injecting optional advertising into gaming, especially free-to-play games, isn't an inherently awful idea.

No, the real problem is that virtually nobody in the gaming public has, or should have, any faith that this will be done well. What does doing it well mean? Well, for starters:

• The "perks" involved had damned well better be nice-to-haves and/or cosmetic and not offer some kind of boost to being able to compete in or play the game itself. Otherwise, you've broken the balance and experience of the game.
• The ads had better stay short and not interrupt the gaming experience to the point of television, where gamers just leave the room while it plays.
• The ads, as noted in the opening of this post, must be engaging, useful content of some kind.

Missing on any of those three will cause an even larger revolt among the gaming public than will almost certainly already occur. If you need an example of how to absolutely not attempt any of this, 2K Sports has you covered.

Now, while this is largely being spurred on by younger members of the public also being cord-cutters, making them less likely to be reached by traditional advertising, Morgan Stanley seems to think that in-game ad programs like this could be a $2 billion industry. Though, importantly, that projection is based on nearly half of gamers opting into the ads.

I'm sorry, but there's no fucking way that's going to happen, even if this is done perfectly. Not if it's opt-in. What is more likely is that this will only be opt-in for a while and then someone, or several someones, are going to try to first make it opt-out and eventually non-optional. And then you're going to really see the consequences of advertising programs being done terribly, because nobody will buy those games.

Filed Under: ads, perks, playerwon, video games
Companies: ea, simulmedia, tencent

Details Of Unconstitutional WeChat/TikTok Ban Actually Would Make Users Of Those Apps Less Secure, Not More

from the what-the-fuck-is-this? dept

This morning the Commerce Department released the details of how the WeChat and TikTok bans will work. It's possible that the ban on TikTok will get lifted if Treasury Secretary Mnuchin can convince enough people in the administration to buy into the grifty Oracle non-sale, but the WeChat ban is happening no matter what.

The details reinforce two key points:

1. This is way unconstitutional and should be offensive to any 1st Amendment/free speech supporter.
2. The excuses about national security are utter and total garbage, because this would actually make users of those apps significantly less secure.

So, great. We have some applications bans, premised on national security, that are unconstitutional piles of garbage that make people less secure, and the only possible path out is through a grifty deal, pushed deliberately to a large donor to the President, who has said multiple times he's hoping for a kickback on the deal. We're witnessing an astounding bit of corruption right here.

Here's how the "ban" will work. First up, both apps get banned from all US app stores. The following is listed as "prohibited."

Any provision of service to distribute or maintain the WeChat or TikTok mobile applications, constituent code, or application updates through an online mobile application store in the U.S.

That's basically saying: "Apple and Google can no longer put those apps in their app stores." There are 1st Amendment concerns here, in that the executive branch is telling software companies what code they can or cannot host. While the IEEPA law under which this order is being made is broad, this seems ripe for a huge 1st Amendment challenge. The President should not be able to simply ban code from app stores based on an unsubstantiated claim of "national security."

Second, not only is this all based on unsubstantiated claims of national security, the very text proves how that's bullshit. The fact that these app stores can no longer issue updates means that people who have the apps currently can continue using them, but if there's a security update (say to patch a vulnerability) users can no longer patch those apps. If the goal of this ban is to "protect national security," everything here is exactly the opposite of that. Users will still have the app, but are unable to protect themselves and can only keep using the app if they accept the obsolete and increasingly less secure version of it.

In other words: the whole "national security" claim is a total lie, because the way the ban is implemented gives Americans less security. That sure is one way to fight back against supposed Chinese surveillance through these apps. If it's even true that China is spying on people via apps, they're now in a "don't throw me in the briar patch" situation -- since the US government is forcing these apps to be less secure and to expose even more data to whoever has it.

Another part of the ban that raises significant 1st Amendment issues is that it prohbits:

Any utilization of the mobile application’s constituent code, functions, or services in the functioning of software or services developed and/or accessible within the U.S.

Translating that: it means that no US developer can use WeChat or TikTok's APIs or build software using any of their code. That's deliberately interfereing with the speech of Americans. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not banning apps that allow for communications is a 1st Amendment issue. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not banning apps at all is a 1st Amendment issue. This goes even further: it says that US-based software developers cannot write the code they want. That's a huge 1st Amendment issue.

I discussed this a few months ago but the Supreme Court has already said that code is speech in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (the case about whether or not the government could regulate video games and require age warnings). And, while it's not the Supreme Court, the 2nd Circuit has been even more direct about code being speech protected by the 1st Amendment in the the Universal v. Corley case (about whether or not you could publish code that breaks DRM):

Communication does not lose constitutional protection as "speech" simply because it is expressed in the language of computer code. Mathematical formulae and musical scores are written in "code," i.e., symbolic notations not comprehensible to the uninitiated, and yet both are covered by the First Amendment. If someone [*446] chose to write a novel entirely in computer object code by using strings of 1's and 0's for each letter of each word, the resulting work would be no different for constitutional purposes than if it had been written in English. The "object code" version would be incomprehensible to readers outside the programming community (and tedious to read even for most within the community), but it would be no more incomprehensible than a work written in Sanskrit for those unversed in that language. The undisputed evidence reveals that even pure object code can be, and often is, read and understood by experienced programmers. And source code (in any of its various levels of complexity) can be read by many more. Ultimately, however, the ease with which a work is comprehended is irrelevant to the constitutional inquiry. If computer code is distinguishable from conventional speech for First Amendment purposes, it is not because it is written in an obscure language.

Later in that ruling:

Computer programs are not exempted from the category of First Amendment speech simply because their instructions require use of a computer. A recipe is no less "speech" because it calls for the use of an oven, and a musical score is no less "speech" because it specifies performance on an electric guitar. Arguably distinguishing computer programs from conventional language instructions is the fact that programs are executable on a computer. But the fact that a program has the capacity to direct the functioning of a computer does not mean that it lacks the additional capacity to convey information, and it is the conveying of information that renders instructions "speech" for purposes of the First Amendment.

Based on all of that, it is difficult to see how this broad ban can possibly stand up to 1st Amendment scrutiny on multiple levels. The banning of US developers coding using these companies APIs is a 1st Amendment violation. The ban on US companies hosting their code is a 1st Amendment violation. The ban on apps used for speech is likely a 1st Amendment violation (on par with breaking up printing presses). So, these bans appear to violate the 1st Amendment in multiple different ways.

And for what? The claim is "to protect national security." We already knew that was bogus, and all of the info anyone can get from TikTok is already widely available for purchase. But now with the details coming out, in which it would make the data of US users of these services even less secure by banning updates, we have even more evidence that the national security claims are joke.

And thus, the bans are likely unconstitutional on multiple different grounds, have no national security purpose based on multiple different problems with the deal, and don't seem to do anything other than potentially put a lucrative business deal in the pocket of a top Trump supporter. How is there anyone out there who thinks this is a reasonable thing?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, apis, bans, china, code, commerce department, donald trump, executive order, ieepa, national security, security, updates
Companies: apple, bytedance, google, oracle, tencent, tiktok, wechat

WeChat Users Fighting To Block Trump's Executive Order Banning The App In The US

from the it-would-be-an-issue dept

While the TikTok part of Trump's original August Executive Order got all the attention, we pointed out that it was fairly notable that he issued a nearly identical order to also effectively ban WeChat by blocking any transactions related to WeChat. While WeChat is not that well known or widely used in the US, it is basically central to the Chinese internet, and, as such, is a key part of how many Chinese Americans stay in touch with relatives, friends, and colleagues back in China. So it was perhaps not that surprising that a group of WeChat users in the US quickly sued to try to block the order:

Neither the Executive Order itself nor the White House provided concrete evidence to support the contention that using WeChat in the United States compromises national security. Notably, no other nation has implemented a comprehensive WeChat ban on the basis of any like-finding that WeChat is a threat to national security. The Executive Order was, however, issued in the midst of the 2020 election cycle, during a time when President Trump has made numerous anti-Chinese statements that have contributed to and incited racial animus against persons of Chinese descent—all outside of the national security context.

In a stark violation of the First Amendment, the Executive Order targets and silences WeChat users, the overwhelming majority of whom are members of the Chinese and Chinese-speaking communities. It regulates constitutionally protected speech, expression, and association and is not narrowly tailored to restrict only that speech which presents national security risks to the United States. Accordingly, it is unconstitutionally overbroad. Indeed, banning the use of WeChat in the United States has the effect of foreclosing all meaningful access to social media for members of the Chinese-speaking community, such as Plaintiffs, who rely on it to communicate and interact with others like themselves. The ban on WeChat, because it substantially burdens the free exercise of religion, also violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The Executive Order runs afoul of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by failing to provide notice of the specific conduct that is prohibited; because of this uncertainty, WeChat users in the United States are justifiably fearful of using WeChat in any way and for any purpose—and also of losing access to WeChat. Since the Executive Order, numerous users, including Plaintiffs, have scrambled to seek alternatives without success. They are now afraid that by merely communicating with their families, they may violate the law and face sanctions.

As the complaint highlights, just the issuing of the Executive Order has created panic among people who rely on it to communicate with people in China:

The U.S. WeChat Users Alliance (“USWUA”), Chihuo, Inc., Brent Coulter, Fangyi Duan, Jinneng Bao, Elaine Peng, and Xiao Zhang (collectively, “Plaintiffs”), bring this suit to challenge the Executive Order, which eviscerates an irreplaceable cultural bridge that connects Plaintiffs to family members, friends, business partners, customers, religious community members, and other individuals with common interests within the Chinese diaspora, located both in and outside of the United States. The Executive Order has already harmed Plaintiffs, who are plagued with fear for the loss of their beloved connections, whether it be with friends, family, community, customers, aid recipients of the charities they run, or even strangers whose ideas enrich their lives. They have been forced to divert time, energy, and money to seek alternative communication platforms, download and save irreplaceable digital histories, plan for business closures, find other sources of information, and try to obtain alternative contact information for those from whom they will soon be separated. Even if they succeed to some extent in their mitigation efforts, Plaintiffs will never be able to replace the full spectrum of the social interactivity that WeChat offers, nor will they be able to find any social networking platform with anything close to the same level of participation by the global Chinese diaspora—this is because WeChat’s network effects, generated by its 1 billion-plus daily users, is irreplaceable

The plaintiffs have also filed for a preliminary injunction against the Executive Order (which is set to go into effect on Sunday). There's a hearing on Thursday. So far, the plaintiffs have failed to get expedited discovery, as the judge notes that pretty much everything so far relies clearly on public information, and there's no need for discovery at this point -- not to mention there would be a pretty big argument over what things are actually subject to discovery anyway.

The government's opposition to the injunction request is... weird? It basically starts out with a big attack on China that's just sort of priming the pump and hand-waving around the idea that if China is bad then it's self-evident that any app that comes out of China must also be bad. This part of the argument focuses on... companies that are not Tencent/WeChat, but instead does the fear mongering about Huawei and ZTE that (we've noted many times) has never presented any actual evidence of bad behavior by those companies. Also, Huawei and ZTE are not... Tencent.

So then the DOJ just points to a random Australian think tank white paper that says Tencent/WeChat is also bad. They cite a few other such reports, but the "bad" seems to be that China heavily censors WeChat and... duh? But how does that mean it's dangerous in the US and should be banned? Incredibly -- given the frequency with which the President himself has retweeted conspiracy theories pushed by Russian troll accounts -- the DOJ actually argues that because some disinformation is found on WeChat, that's reason enough to ban it:

The Report also observed that the WeChat app is a key tool for China’s disinformation campaigns, citing as one example Australia’s May 2019 election, in which “fake news on WeChat was such a problem that Australia’s Labor Party contacted WeChat owner Tencent to express frustration about posts spreading disinformation.” Id. at 406-07. The Report cautioned that “use of [WeChat] had spread beyond the Chinese Australian community, with about 3 million Australians using WeChat by 2017,” id., and that “almost the entire Mandarin-speaking community in Australia . . . used WeChat,” allowing “Beijing [to] ‘promote particular issues [as] a way of controlling public debate.’”

I find it pretty fucking ironic that at the same time our government is using claims of "fake news" on a social media platform as an excuse to ban it, it is also trying to force American social media companies to no longer be able to moderate "fake news" and foreign propaganda.

Where the government may have more success is by arguing that the claims are "not ripe" because the executive order hasn't been implemented yet. But, that's just kicking the can down the road. Because once it is implemented, the same basic claims will remain. It does argue that the 1st Amendment claim will fail because its content neutral. That is, the DOJ is saying "we're not targeting specific speech, we're just banning an app used for speech.... that happens to be used by lots of Chinese speaking people." I think that's... pretty weak. That's "we're not blocking the printing of your magazine, just ordering the destruction of your printing presses, which might be used to print any magazine." That's not allowed under the 1st Amendment, and it shouldn't be allowed under this order.

Anyway, we should get a ruling at least on the preliminary injunction relatively quickly (given that it's slated to go into effect on Sunday). I hope the court does grant the injunction, but I'd be surprised if it does. It seems much more likely to punt based on ripeness for now. However, this case (unlike the TikTok cases, which may not matter if a deal is reached) could go on for quite a while, and could be pretty damn important in determining if the White House can just up and ban a foreign software application.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, china, donald trump, executive order, free speech, users
Companies: tencent, wechat

Thanks Blizzard: Riot Games Forced To Let Everyone Know They're Allowed To Use Hong Kong's LoL Team's Name

from the riot-riot-riot dept

The fallout from Blizzard's heavy-handed move on a professional Hearthstone player for voicing support for the ongoing Hong Kong protests on a livestream, which included ripping away prize money and issuing a 1 year ban on competing, continues to blaze. But while most of the backlash has been directed solely at Blizzard, the company's actions are having a ripple effect across the eSports landscape.

Depressingly, plenty of folks in the eSports industry are clearly frightened that they might accidentally cross some undefined line with gaming companies and find themselves on the losing end of an international public relations argument. One lovely example of this is Riot Games' League of Legends competitions and streams. There appear to be plenty of folks out there that are self-censoring mentions of Hong Kong to ridiculous levels, including attempts to avoid saying the name of a LoL team, the Hong Kong Attitude.

With all the protests going on in Hong Kong, League of Legends casters appear to be avoiding saying the team name “Hong Kong Attitude” and seem to even be catching themselves when they do. Riot Games, however, says that it has not banned casters from saying “Hong Kong.”

Chinese conglomerate Tencent owns Riot and has a stake in Blizzard.

It may be that last detail that has so many streamers spooked. Still, this all reached enough of a fever pitch that Riot Games decided to put out several statements clarifying that its streamers can in fact refer to a League of Legends team and, tangentially, use the name of one of the more populous cities on the planet. The fact that it had to do this at all is fairly crazy, but the detail here really drives that point home.

Again, this is crazy. A sentence that consists of "We aren't telling anyone to avoid saying 'Hong Kong'" shows just how effective Beijing's campaign of weaponized offense-taking has become. The entire point of the Chinese government's actions is to keep the Hong Kong protests out of the mouths of those that might be listened to. For this to morph into some of those people censoring themselves into not even mentioning the city's name for a competition that has an entrant from that city must feel like all of Xi Jinping's birthdays and Christmases came at once.

It is now long, long past time for these gaming companies, regardless of minority ownership stakes, to come out in support for the free expression of their employees and affiliates.

Filed Under: chilling effects, china, esports, free speech, heathstone, hong kong, hong kong attitude, league of legends
Companies: blizzard, riot games, tencent

Chinese Giant Tencent Is Suing Bloggers Who Criticize The Company For 'Reputational Damage'

from the free-speech dept

It appears that the idea of SLAPP suits has moved to China. The Chinese internet giant Tencent is apparently fed up with its own users criticizing the company on its own WeChat blogging platform, and has sued a bunch of them (possibly paywalled -- here's another link for the story). The details are pretty ridiculous, even recognizing that China doesn't (by a long shot) have a history of protecting free expression. What's incredible here, of course, is that Tencent could have just shut down the accounts of the WeChatters. But, instead it's trying to completely destroy them with these lawsuits.

“It’s very weird,” said Jianfei Yan, who was faced with a Rmb1m ($140,000) defamation lawsuit from Tencent in March after writing an article about the dominance of the “super powerful” WeChat platform and its potential for data breaches. “If Tencent questioned my comments, they could [have stopped] me publishing them on WeChat . . . but they just directly appealed to the court and sued me.”

Tencent declined to comment on the cases. But in a document submitted in May after a court hearing against Jihua Ma, another of the bloggers, it said it opted against deleting the offending articles on WeChat because doing so “would further cause damage to Tencent’s reputation”.

But suing someone and trying to destroy their lives is not going to cause further damage to Tencent's reputation? How does that work? And, honestly, the lawsuits seem to be targeting fairly mild criticism or people reporting potential bugs. But it also seems most targeted at those who are unable to afford to fight back.

Xuyang Sun, the third blogger, was sued by Tencent for Rmb5m earlier this year after he pointed out that the company’s efforts to reduce children’s time spent gaming could be circumvented. “I think they just pick the soft persimmon,” he said, arguing that his critique was milder than similar attacks levelled by the state-owned People’s Daily newspaper.

And, yes, these lawsuits can ruin people's lives. As Martin Chorzempa, from the Peterson Institute, notes in a tweet, because of China's relatively new social credit system (and a lack of personal bankruptcy), losing such a case when you can't afford to pay the sums Tencent is demanding, can literally destroy your life.

Of course, now some of us are finding out that Tencent is apparently so thin skinned and unable to take even mild criticism, it's going to get people much more interested in what it is Tencent is trying to hide. How do you say "Streisand Effect" in Mandarin?

Filed Under: china, defamation, free speech, reputational damage, wechat
Companies: tencent

China's Tencent Proves You Can Make A Decent Profit From Online Publishing -- If You Have A Platform With A Billion Users

from the blame-the-innovation-gap,-not-the-value-gap dept

A constant refrain from the publishing industry is that it's impossible to make a decent profit from online publishing because of all those people downloading and sharing digital stuff for free. An interesting article in Caixin reporting on the Chinese digital giant Tencent offers an interesting perspective on that issue. It provides an update to a story we wrote last year about Tencent moving into online publishing, with evident success:

Net profit for Tencent's online publishing unit China Literature was 15 times greater in 2017 compared to 2016, according to the company's first annual results released after its blockbuster initial public offering (IPO).

Revenue grew by 60% to 4.1 billion yuan ($648 million), from 2016's 2.6 billion yuan. Profit attributable to shareholders jumped by a staggering 1,416% from last year's 36.7 million yuan [$5.8 million] to 556.1 million yuan [$88 million] in 2017.

As the article explains, revenues came mostly from payments by readers of the company's online offerings, which cater for a wide range of tastes -- from comics to romance. In total, works are supplied by 6.9 million writers, most of whom are contracted to produce original material for the company. The scale of the operation is similarly large: last year around 11.1 million people paid to use China Literature's services, up from 8.3 million in 2016.

Although those are all impressive figures, it's worth noting one of the key factors driving this business. Tencent is the company behind the WeChat messaging app. Last year, there were 963 million users, so it's likely that more a billion people now use WeChat's powerful and wide-ranging platform. That naturally makes selling China Literature's services much easier.

Traditional publishers will doubtless claim this means they are unable to compete with this kind of platform power, and that they can never generate significant profits online. Their conclusion seems to be that companies like Google and Facebook should be punished for their success. Indeed, this demand has been crystallized into a slogan -- the so-called "value gap", which supposedly represents the money that publishers would have received had it not been for the online giants.

In truth, this "value gap" is more of an "innovation gap": if the publishing companies had embraced the Internet fully in the early days, there is no reason why they could not have turned into Google and Tencent themselves. Instead, publishers have fought the Internet from its first appearance, as they still do. They hanker for the more profitable days of analog publishing, when they were the undisputed gatekeepers. And in their heart of hearts, they secretly hope one day those times might return if only they can persuade politicians to bring in enough retrogressive copyright laws to hobble innovative online companies.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: business models, china, publishing, scale
Companies: tencent

Chinese Internet Users Start To Rebel Against Lack Of Online Privacy

from the just-a-blip-or-the-start-of-something-bigger? dept

We recently reported how China continues to turn the online world into the ultimate surveillance system, which hardly comes as a surprise, since China has been relentlessly moving in this direction for years. What is rather more surprising is that Chinese citizens are beginning to push back, at least in certain areas. For example, The New York Times reports on an "outcry" provoked by a division of the Alibaba behemoth when it assumed that its users wouldn't worry too much if they were enrolled automatically in one of China's commercially-run tracking systems:

Ant Financial, an affiliate of the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, apologized to users on Thursday after prompting an outcry by automatically enrolling in its social credit program those who wanted to see the breakdown [of their spending made via Ant Financial's online payment system]. The program, called Sesame Credit, tracks personal relationships and behavior patterns to help determine lending decisions.

When one of China's business leaders complained publicly about the lack of privacy in China, and how Tencent's hugely-popular WeChat program spied on users, the company's denials were met with another outcry:

Tencent said that the company did not store the chat history of users and that it would never use chat history for big data analytics. The comments were met with widespread disbelief: WeChat users have been arrested over what they've said on the app, conversations have turned up as evidence in court proceedings, and activists have reported being followed based on WeChat conversations.

Meanwhile, the third of China's Big Three Internet companies -- Baidu -- has been hit with legal action over privacy concerns, reported here by Caixin:

Baidu Inc., China’s largest search-engine operator, is being sued by a consumer-protection organization that claims it collected users' information without consent, in the latest privacy dispute involving the country's tech giants.

Two mobile apps operated by New York-listed Baidu, a search engine and a web browser, could access a user's calls, location data, messages and contacts without notifying the user, the Jiangsu Consumer Council, a government-backed consumer rights association, claimed in a statement on its website.

The Chinese government may not worry too much about these calls for more privacy provided they remain directed at companies, since they offer a useful way for citizens to express their concerns about surveillance without challenging the state. It looks happy to encourage users to demand more control over how online services use their personal data -- so long as the authorities can still access everything themselves.

As well as government acquiescence in these moves, there's another reason why Chinese companies may well start to take online privacy more seriously. Аn article in the South China Morning Post points out that if Chinese online giants want to move beyond their fast-saturating home market, and start operating in the US and EU, they will need to pay much more attention to privacy to satisfy local laws. As Techdirt reported, an important partnership between AT&T and Huawei, China's biggest hardware company, has just been blocked because of unproven accusations that data handled by Huawei's products might make its way back to the Chinese government.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: china, internet, privacy, wechat
Companies: baidu, tencent