- China is making the internet less free, and US tech companies are helping
While doing business in China, US tech companies must play by local rules — or leave, as Google did in 2010. Sarah Cook, Freedom House’s senior research analyst for East Asia, tells The Verge that abiding by local regulation is a waste of time. “Rather than develop tailor-made products to comply with China’s draconian censorship rules, we believe tech companies’ resources and ingenuity would be better spent on helping users jump the Great Firewall and access the uncensored version of their products,” she says.
But most companies aren’t doing that. This August, Apple pulled 25,000 apps from its Chinese App Store, claiming they were “illegal” according to local law. In 2017, Apple removed VPN apps that people had used to elude Chinese censorship. When Apple launched the Product RED version of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus in China, it removed any trace of the Product RED branding that’s designed to support AIDS-related charities, in what some critics say may have been a response to China’s anti-LGBT policies. Currently, LinkedIn restricts Chinese users from accessing politically sensitive profiles or posts from people outside the country. Microsoft’s Bing search engine still sanitizes Chinese language search results, nearly a decade after the New York Times first reported on it.
- This Map Shows You How Much Money Every Member of Congress Got from Big Telecom
The map only includes incumbents, so you’ll have to dig a little deeper to get information on other candidates. Still, it’s a good starting place for checking where your members of congress stand before you cast a ballot. In New York, for example, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has gotten $413,307 from ISPs, according to the map, while Senator Chuck Schumer has attracted $1,018,574 in contributions from Big Telecom.
Net neutrality and the influence of Big Telecom is a hot issue for many voters, after the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal net neutrality last year. Major ISPs were in favor of scrapping the rules and used their financial and lobbying power to try to push it through.
- NAFTA, explained with a toy car
- Facebook Is the Least Trusted Major Tech Company When it Comes to Safeguarding Personal Data, Poll Finds
Only 22% of Americans said that they trust Facebook with their personal information, far less than Amazon (49%), Google (41%), Microsoft (40%), and Apple (39%).
“Facebook is in the bottom in terms of trust in housing your personal data,” said Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema. “Facebook’s crises continue rolling in the news cycle.”
http://fortune.com/2018/11/08/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-reputation/
- Half of YouTube viewers use it to learn how to do things they’ve never done
A new Pew research study that surveyed 4,594 Americans in 2018 found that 51 percent of YouTube users say they rely on the video service to figure out how to do new things, and the service proved important both for regular users and irregular users. “That works out to 35 percent of all U.S. adults, once both users and non-users of the site are accounted for,” the study reads.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/7/18071992/youtube-pew-study-education-news-childrens-videos
Photo by Aditya Saxena on Unsplash