Free internet and politics. The Zoom platform has closed scheduled events video, at the request of the Chinese government.
The Zoom video conferencing platform, already in doubt over its ties to the Chinese government, says it recently cut off scheduled video events at Zoom to mark the anniversary of its massacre. 1989 Tiananmen Square. The suspension was made at the request of Chinese officials. It also suspended the accounts of three activists who took part in the protests.
According to Zoom in a statement today: “In May and early June, he was notified by the Chinese government of four large, public celebratory June 4 meetings on Zoom, which were posted on social media, including meeting details. The Chinese government has informed us that this activity is illegal in China and asked Zoom to terminate the meetings and their respective accounts."
The company, which has seen its platform quickly rise in popularity and connections, during the coronavirus crisis, now says it should not have suspended the accounts, which were based in the US and Hong Kong, and should not have stopped Zoom events for all participants. Instead, he says, it should have been able to exclude only people who live in the country where it was illegal. But he didn't have it (!!) and that's why he stopped the events.
We read in the announcement:
Zoom does not currently have the ability to remove specific participants from a meeting or to exclude participants from a specific country from participating in a meeting. Therefore, we have decided to terminate three of the four meetings and to suspend or terminate the hosting accounts associated with the three meetings.
Zoom adds that it will no longer let requests from the Chinese government affect its users outside of China. However, the company also appears to be gearing up to build a censorship mechanism into its systems that will be able to block content which the Chinese government does not want to see, from Zoomers inside China.
Despite the its growing success, Zoom has gone through many waves. Accused of security errors in its passwords, design defects, privacy risks and other issues. Zoom quickly released updates and changes, as well as many apologies.
