Shutterstock, the well-known online purveyor of stock images and photographs, is the latest U.S. company to willingly support China's censorship regime, blocking searches that might offend the country's authoritarian government, The Intercept reported this week. From the report: The publicly traded company built a $639 million-per-year business on the strength of its vast -- sometimes comically vast -- catalog of images depicting virtually anything a blogger or advertiser could imagine. The company now does business in more than 150 countries. But in China, there is now a very small, very significant gap in Shutterstock's offerings. In early September, Shutterstock engineers were given a new goal: The creation of a search blacklist that would wipe from query results images associated with keywords forbidden by the Chinese government. Under the new system, which The Intercept is told went into effect last month, anyone with a mainland Chinese IP address searching Shutterstock for "President Xi," "Chairman Mao," "Taiwan flag," "dictator," "yellow umbrella," or "Chinese flag" will receive no results at all. Variations of these terms, including "umbrella movement" -- the precursor to the mass pro-democracy protests currently gripping Hong Kong -- are also banned.

[...] Shutterstock's censorship feature appears to have been immediately controversial within the company, prompting more than 180 Shutterstock workers to sign a petition against the search blacklist and accuse the company of trading its values for access to the lucrative Chinese market. Chinese internet users already struggle to discuss even the tamest of taboo subjects; now, it seemed, the situation would get a little worse, with the aid of yet another willing American company.

The streaming giant is having to navigate different political and moral landscapes, and calls for government oversight, as it seeks subscribers worldwide. From a report: In September, Netflix released a trailer for the "Breaking Bad" sequel "El Camino." In it, a character sits in a car, lights a cigarette and holds it out the window, its orange tip glowing. The next day, Netflix Turkey released its own version. In it, the character sparks a lighter and puts his hand out of the window. But there's a difference: The cigarette has been edited out. It wasn't the first time Netflix had censored one of its trailers here. In January, the streaming giant edited one for "Sex Education," a series about a teenage sex therapist, to blur a character's hands so you couldn't see the raised middle fingers. These changes may seem small, but they are a sign of Netflix trying to get ahead of regulation it could soon face in Turkey.

[...] In Turkey, and in other countries, Netflix must navigate different political and moral landscapes, and calls for censorship, as it expands worldwide. Its 2018 annual report lists both "censorship" and "the need to adapt our content and users interfaces for specific cultural and language differences" as business risks. India is another country where Netflix has been embroiled in debates around regulation and censorship. In 2017, the company offered viewers "Angry Indian Goddesses," a movie that had been released in Indian theaters in a censored form to avoid offending religious sensibilities.ï Netflix, which is not subject to India's movie theater code, initially showed the censored version anyway, to avoid a backlash from religious viewers. But complaints came instead from viewers who wanted to see the movie uncut. Netflix made that version available and released a statement: "Our members reached out to us and we listened."

An anonymous reader shares a report: People are rioting in the streets of Barcelona. For the last month, hundreds of thousands of people have joined demonstrations in Spain to voice their objection to the jailing of Catalan separatist leaders and support Catalonian independence. As with almost all modern activist and public protest movements, activists are using social media and apps to communicate with and organize public actions. But this week, in a move that puts the Spanish government on par with censorship-heavy places like China and Russia, the country requested that Github block access to one of those apps, by revoking local access to its Github repository. Github, which is owned by Microsoft, complied with the order.

According to Spanish news outlet El Confidencial, last week the government ordered takedowns of websites and app made by Tsunami Democratic, an activist group organizing protests in the region. To try to keep access to the app download alive, Tsunami Democratic moved the .apk file to Github. But the government shut that down, too, blocking the site in Spain. Motherboard tested the download using a VPN, and the Github repo was blocked from Madrid. It's still accessible from the US. Currently, a version of Tsunami Democratic's website (but not its Github repo) is up.

sandbagger writes: The BBC has made its international news website available via the Tor network, in a bid to thwart censorship attempts. The browser can obscure who is using it and what data is being accessed, which can help people avoid government surveillance and censorship. Countries including China, Iran and Vietnam are among those who have tried to block access to the BBC News website or programs. Instead of visiting bbc.co.uk/news or bbc.com/news, users of the Tor browser can visit the new bbcnewsv2vjtpsuy.onion web address. Clicking this web address will not work in a regular web browser.

In July, GitHub blocked several accounts to prevent users in Iran from accessing several portions of its service. A few days later Amazon Web Services followed suite. With major cloud services pulling support for developers in the country, many lost their academic work and several apps ceased to function. A solution for these developers now is to cut reliance on American giants and build their own services. But there's a catch: Internet in Iran is heavily censored, so they can't rely on local networks.

After Trump backed away from the nuclear deal, there's been a tremendous pressure on tech companies to block IPs from Iran. Plus, Mozilla decided to omit a whole transparency section in its report on the country succumbing to the government pressure. With sanctions on one side and censorship on the other, there's a tough road ahead for developers. Ivan Mehta, a journalist at The Next Web, looks at the issue.

Two senior members of Congress, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), asked U.S. intelligence officials late Wednesday to determine whether the Chinese-owned social-networking app TikTok poses "national security risks." From a report: In a letter to Joseph Maguire, the director of national intelligence, the lawmakers questioned TikTok's data-collection practices and whether the app adheres to censorship rules directed by the Chinese government that could limit what U.S. users see. TikTok, which provides users a feed of short videos, has become wildly popular among teenagers worldwide. "With over 110 million downloads in the U.S. alone, TikTok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore," wrote Schumer and Cotton, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Given these concerns, we ask that the Intelligence Community conduct an assessment of the national security risks posed by TikTok and other China-based content platforms operating in the U.S. and brief Congress on these findings."

Internet giant Comcast is lobbying U.S. lawmakers against plans to encrypt web traffic that would make it harder for internet service providers (ISPs) to determine your browsing history, Motherboard reported Wednesday, citing a lobbying presentation. From the report: The plan, which Google intends to implement soon, would enforce the encryption of DNS data made using Chrome, meaning the sites you visit. Privacy activists have praised Google's move. But ISPs are pushing back as part of a wider lobbying effort against encrypted DNS, according to the presentation. Technologists and activists say this encryption would make it harder for ISPs to leverage data for things such as targeted advertising, as well as block some forms of censorship by authoritarian regimes.

Mozilla, which makes Firefox, is also planning a version of this encryption. "The slides overall are extremely misleading and inaccurate, and frankly I would be somewhat embarrassed if my team had provided that slide deck to policy makers," Marshall Erwin, senior director of trust and safety at Mozilla, told Motherboard in a phone call after reviewing sections of the slide deck. "We are trying to essentially shift the power to collect and monetize peoples' data away from ISPs and providing users with control and a set of default protections," he added, regarding Mozilla's changes.

American companies have an obligation to defend the freedom of expression, even at the risk of angering China, writes The New York Times' Editorial Board. From the article: China's assertive campaign to police discourse about its policies, even outside of its borders, and the acquiescence of American companies eager to make money in China, pose a dangerous and growing threat to one of this nation's core values: the freedom of expression. The Communist state is becoming more and more aggressive in pressuring foreign companies to choose between self-censorship and the loss of access to what will soon be the world's largest market. An old list of taboo topics, sometimes described as the "three Ts" -- Tibet, Tiananmen and Taiwan -- has been joined by newer subjects that must not be mentioned, including protests in Hong Kong and China's mistreatment of its Muslim minority. The Constitutions of China and the United States both enshrine freedom of speech, but China's totalitarian regime has long taken a narrow view of that freedom -- and American companies have long accepted those restrictions while doing business in China. Now, however, China is seeking to control not just what is said in China but what is said about China, too. If China has its way, any topic it deems off limits will be scrubbed from global discourse.

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the United States finds itself in a contest of ideas and principles with a country in its own weight class. But this time is different. The United States and China are economically intertwined: The trade volume between the two countries is the greatest of any between two countries in the history of the world. There is no reasonable prospect of disengagement, nor is that a desirable outcome. The clear necessity is for the two countries to find ways of living together, and coexistence requires respect for differences. Instead, China is engaged in the kind of cultural imperialism it often decries. China insists that its national interest is at stake. So is the national interest of the United States and other free nations. China has taken a hard line, and it's time for the United States to respond in kind. The United States and American businesses have a duty to not appease the censors in Beijing -- even if the price of insisting on free expression is a loss of access to the Chinese market.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties slammed Apple and Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook last week for "censorship of apps" at the "behest of the Chinese government." From a report: Senators Ted Cruz, Ron Wyden, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mike Gallagher and Tom Malinowski expressed concern about the removal of an app that let Hong Kong protesters track police movement in the city. "Apple's decisions last week to accommodate the Chinese government by taking down HKmaps is deeply concerning," they wrote in a letter to Cook, urging Apple to "reverse course, to demonstrate that Apple puts values above market access, and to stand with the brave men and women fighting for basic rights and dignity in Hong Kong." Apple didn't respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Apple removed the HKmap.live app from the App Store in China and Hong Hong earlier this month, saying it violated local laws. The company also said it received "credible information" from Hong Kong authorities indicating the software was being used "maliciously" to attack police. The decision, and the reasoning, was questioned widely. Cook, in a recent memo to Apple employees, said that "national and international debates will outlive us all, and, while important, they do not govern the facts."

8chan's current owner is still having trouble getting the site back online -- and that's due at least partly to lobbying against 8chan by the site's original founder: In early August, web security company Cloudflare stopped protecting the board, and 8chan was immediately swamped with denial of service attacks that crashed it. At first, 8chan found a new home with another security site, Bitmitigate. But in a long and complex chain of events, the new web service company turned out to be renting servers from a different infrastructure firm, Voxility, which wanted nothing to do with 8chan. They kicked Bitmitigate off its equipment, deplatforming not only 8chan, but also the neo-Nazi forum The Daily Stormer, which shared the same server.

It looked like 8chan would jump from host to host, like an unwelcome guest crashing on an endless series of digital couches. But that didn't happen. The last real attempt until earlier this month was some 8chan users trying to revive it through peer-to-peer sharing, only for it to fall apart when users began getting swamped with malware... So far, multiple attempts to get the board back up as anything other than a test version have failed -- and original 8chan creator Fredrick Brennan couldn't be happier...
Brennan has been contacting service providers urging them not to work with 8chan's current owner, Jim Watkins. And the article notes that "Because few companies own the servers that could host a site, the security software to protect it, and the infrastructure to get it out to the world, Watkins has to deal with multiple firms..."

Brennan tells their reporter that "the more [internet service providers] I get to say 'no thanks'... the more they'll have to rely on expensive 'bulletproof' providers who charge more to cover [the] costs of police raids and high powered attorneys."

An anonymous reader quotes the Los Angeles Times: "South Park" is the latest beneficiary of Hollywood's rerun mania. The show's creators and media giant Viacom Inc. expect to share between $450 million and $500 million by selling the streaming rights to the animated comedy, one of the longest-running TV series in U.S. history, according to people familiar with the matter. As many as a half-dozen companies are bidding for exclusive U.S. streaming rights to past episodes of the show, which has been available on Walt Disney Co.'s Hulu in recent years. Viacom and the show's creators hope to secure a new deal by the end of 2019 and could decide on the winning bidder as soon as this weekend, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private.

The value of popular TV reruns has skyrocketed, fueled by new streaming platforms seeking programming that can attract subscribers and provide an edge over rivals. Viacom and "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone expect the multiyear deal to net more than double what Hulu paid in 2015.... One company that probably won't be bidding is Apple Inc., the people said. The tech giant has eschewed controversial programming that could damage its brand, and it's wary of offending China, where it sells a lot of iPhones. "South Park" was just banned in China after an episode mocked the country's censorship of Western movies and TV.

The social media giant said it will not allow users to like, reply, share or retweet tweets from world leaders who break its rules. Instead, it will let users quote-tweet to allow ordinary users to express their opinions. The company said the move will help its users stay informed about global affairs, but while balancing the need to keep the site's rules in check. TechCrunch reports: Twitter has been in a bind, amid allegations that the company has not taken action against world leaders who break its rules. "When it comes to the actions of world leaders on Twitter, we recognize that this is largely new ground and unprecedented," Twitter said in an unbylined blog post on Tuesday. "We want to make it clear today that the accounts of world leaders are not above our policies entirely," the company said. Any user who tweets content promoting terrorism, making "clear and direct" threats of violence, and posting private information are all subject to ban. But Twitter said in cases involving a world leader, "we will err on the side of leaving the content up if there is a clear public interest in doing so." "Our goal is to enforce our rules judiciously and impartially," Twitter added in a tweet. "In doing so, we aim to provide direct insight into our enforcement decision-making, to serve public conversation, and protect the public's right to hear from their leaders and to hold them to account."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, Microsoft announced that it's rolling out filters that will let Xbox Live players automatically limit the text-based messages they receive to four maturity tiers: "Friendly, Medium, Mature, and Unfiltered." That's a long-overdue feature for a major communication platform that's well over a decade old now, but not really anything new in terms of online content moderation writ large.

What's more interesting is a "looking ahead" promise Microsoft made at the end of the announcement (emphasis added): "Ultimately our vision is to supplement our existing efforts and leverage our company efforts in AI and machine learning technology to provide filtration across all types of content on Xbox Live, delivering control to each and every individual player. Your feedback is more important than ever as we continue to evolve this experience and make Xbox a safe, welcome and inclusive place to game." Microsoft told The Verge that the ultimate goal is a system "similar to what you'd expect on broadcast TV where people are having a conversation, and in real-time, we're able to detect a bad phrase and beep it out for users who don't want to see that." However, instead of live engineers that are doing the censoring, Microsoft is employing machine learning.

"Activision Blizzard Inc., facing the threat of a boycott, reduced the punishment it meted out to a tournament player who voiced support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy demonstrators," reports Bloomberg: The company's Blizzard Entertainment division originally barred the player from events for a year and stripped him of some $10,000 in prize money. But it said at the end of the week that it would cut the ban to six months and pay his winnings.

The reversal followed an uproar from customers and even U.S. lawmakers, who felt Blizzard was kowtowing to China by punishing the player. Some analysts worried the boycott might take a toll on a company that has already suffered recent upheaval... [C]ustomers and some Blizzard workers felt the reaction was too extreme. In the furor that ensued, several employees staged a protest at its offices in Irvine. They covered up a plaque that read "Every Voice Matters" and held up umbrellas -- a symbol of the Hong Kong protesters.

"In hindsight, our process wasn't adequate, and we reacted too quickly," J. Allen Brack, president of Blizzard Entertainment, said in the statement. Still, he added that "if this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same."
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares another update from Ars Technica: Additionally, the two Chinese broadcasters who interviewed (and possibly egged on) blitzchung during his shout of "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" had been fired; they too have had their punishment changed to a six-month suspension from their jobs as official Hearthstone esports "casters."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Those outside the People's Republic of China (PRC) are accustomed to thinking of the Internet censorship practices of the Chinese state as primarily domestic, enacted through the so-called "Great Firewall" -- a system of surveillance and blocking technology that prevents Chinese citizens from viewing websites outside the country. The Chinese government's justification for that firewall is based on the concept of "Internet sovereignty." The PRC has long declared that "within Chinese territory, the internet is under the jurisdiction of Chinese sovereignty." Hong Kong, as part of the "one country, two systems" agreement, has largely lived outside that firewall: foreign services like Twitter, Google, and Facebook are available there, and local ISPs have made clear that they will oppose direct state censorship of its open Internet.

But the ongoing Hong Kong protests, and mainland China's pervasive attempts to disrupt and discredit the movement globally, have highlighted that China is not above trying to extend its reach beyond the Great Firewall, and beyond its own borders. In attempting to silence protests that lie outside the Firewall, in full view of the rest of the world, China is showing its hand, and revealing the tools it can use to silence dissent or criticism worldwide. Some of those tools -- such as pressure on private entities, including American corporations NBA and Blizzard -- have caught U.S. headlines and outraged customers and employees of those companies. Others have been more technical, and less obvious to the Western observers.

Activision Blizzard suspended Hearthstone pro Chung "Blitzchung" Ng Wai on Tuesday after he spoke up in support of protests in Hong Kong during a post-match interview during Hearsthone's Asia-Pacific Grandmaster tournament on October 6. From a report: Two days later, on October 8, Activision Blizzard suspended him from competing in Hearthstone esports tournaments for a year, rescinded his $3000 winnings from the tournament, and fired the two people who interviewed him. Each year, Hearhstone's best players compete in regional tournaments that narrow the field to 48 Grandmasters. After the regionals, the Grandmasters play for a $500,000 prize pool. After winning a match in the Asia-Pacific regional, Chung streamed a post-victory interview while wearing ski goggles and a gas mask, a look often worn by protestors in Hong Kong to mitigate the effects of tear gas. "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time," Chung said on the stream, a phrase that's become a rallying cry for protestors in Hong Kong.

Smartphone maker Vivo, broadcaster CCTV, and internet giant Tencent said today they are suspending all cooperation with the National Basketball Association, becoming the latest Chinese firms to cut ties with the league after a tweet from a Houston Rockets executive supporting Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters offended many in the world's most populous nation. From a report: Vivo, which is a key sponsor for the upcoming exhibition games to be played in Shanghai and Shenzhen this week, said in a statement on Chinese social networking platform Weibo, that it was "dissatisfied" with Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey's views on Hong Kong. In a tweet over the weekend, Morey voiced his support for protesters in Hong Kong. He said, "Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong." Even as he quickly moved to delete the tweet and the NBA attempted to smoothen the dialogue, Morey's views had offended many in China, which maintains a low tolerance for criticism of its political system. In a statement, the NBA said it was "regrettable" that Morey's views had "deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China." This stance from the NBA, which has grown accustomed to seeing its star players speak freely and criticize anyone they wish including the U.S. president Donald Trump, in turn, offended many.

Earlier today, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said it was also suspending broadcasts of the league's games to be played in China. China remains a key strategic nation for the NBA. According to official figures, more than 600 million viewers in China watched the NBA content during the 2017-18 season. The league's five-year partnership with Chinese tech giant Tencent for digital streaming rights of matches is reported to be worth $1.5 billion. In a statement issued today, Tencent Sports said it was "temporarily suspending" the pre-season broadcast arrangements.

iPhone users in Hong Kong have noticed a change in the latest version of iOS: the Flag for Taiwan emoji is missing. From a report: Previously restricted on Chinese iOS devices, all other regions of the world have continued to enjoy access to all flags in the iOS emoji font, until now. The change, first discovered by iOS Developer Hiraku Wang, means that users with an iOS device region set to Hong Kong will see one less flag on the emoji keyboard than if the region is set to anywhere else in the world (other than China mainland, which also hides this flag). Notably, the emoji Flag: Taiwan is still supported by iOS in Hong Kong. As of iOS 13.1.2, released last week, this is now hidden from the emoji keyboard but remains available by other means. Apple's Hong Kong approach differs from the complete ban on the emoji in China. Any iPhone purchased in China, or purchased elsewhere with the region set to China mainland, replaces the flag of Taiwan with a missing character tofu so it cannot be used or displayed in any app, even via copy and paste.

An anonymous reader quotes the Financial Times: After what the company acknowledges as its "wild" early days, the 35-year-old co-founder is now trying to clean up the edgy website known for provocative discussions and fringe groups, while revamping its advertising offering in a bid to woo big brands and move toward profitability.... [T]empering extreme conversation while also maintaining Reddit's reputation as a radical bastion of free speech is a delicate balance, especially as many among its 330 million users are quick to accuse it of censorship... despite his optimism, the chief executive now faces the unenviable task of convincing prospective clients that their ads will not be associated with any unsuitable content -- without upsetting users who value the site for its freedom of expression....

His approach for wary advertisers is to give them control over where and how their brand is placed. Reddit now has a human-approved "whitelist" of communities that are deemed safe, while advertisers can also opt for "negative targeting" -- requesting that their content not appear near a certain keyword, for example. More broadly, Reddit is looking to clean up its content by investing in a combination of machine learning tools that recognize suspicious or badly behaved accounts, working together with human moderators who oversee the entire site, Huffman said.
The chief executive of the world's largest advertising company tells the newpaper that Reddit's new direction has now "helped make it a much more acceptable site for advertisers."

dryriver quotes CNN: Singapore's sweeping anti-fake news law, which critics warn could be used to suppress free speech in the already tightly controlled Asian city state, came into force Wednesday. Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill, it is now illegal to spread "false statements of fact" under circumstances in which that information is deemed "prejudicial" to Singapore's security, public safety, "public tranquility," or to the "friendly relations of Singapore with other countries," among numerous other topics.

Government ministers can decide whether to order something deemed fake news to be taken down, or for a correction to be put up alongside it. They can also order technology companies such as Facebook and Google -- both of which opposed the bill during its fast-tracked process through parliament -- to block accounts or sites spreading false information.

The act also provides for prosecutions of individuals, who can face fines of up to 50,000 SGD (over $36,000), and, or, up to five years in prison. If the alleged falsehood is posted using "an inauthentic online account or controlled by a bot," the total potential fine rises to 100,000 SGD (around $73,000), and, or, up to 10 years in prison. Companies found guilty of spreading "fake news" can face fines of up to 1 million SGD (around $735,000).