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Customers come to the newly opened Apple store in Shanghai, China.

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Apple recently removed some of the virtual private networks from the App Store in China, making it harder for users there to get around internet censorship. Amazon has capitulated to China's censors as well; The New York Times reported this week that the company's China cloud service instructed local customers to stop using software to circumvent that country's censorship apparatus. While caving to China's demands prompts a vocal backlash, for anyone who follows US tech companies in China it was anything but surprising. Apple and Amazon have simply joined the ranks of companies that abandon so-called Western values in order to access the huge Chinese market.

Doing business in China requires playing by Chinese rules, and American tech companies have a long history of complying with Chinese censorship. Every time a new compromise comes to light, indignation briefly flares up in the press and on social media. Then, its back to business as usual. This isnt even the first time Apple has complied with Chinese censors. Earlier this year, the company removed New York Times apps from its Chinese store, following a request from Chinese authorities. "We would obviously rather not remove apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever do we business," Apple CEO Tim Cook said during Tuesday's earnings call, in response to the vanished VPN apps.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of American companies that have aided Chinese censorship. In 2005, Yahoo provided information that helped Chinese authorities convict a journalist, Shi Tao. Shi had sent an anonymous post to a US-based website. The post contained state secrets, according to authorities, and Shi was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Also in 2005, Microsoft shut down the blog of a Chinese freedom-of-speech advocate. A year later, Google agreed to censor its search results in China. Internal documents show that Cisco apparently saw China's "Great Firewall" as a choice opportunity to sell routers at around the same time. In 2006, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco faced a congressional hearing about their Chinese collaboration. I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night," representative Tom Lantos said at the time.

It turns out that some corporate leaders will sacrifice a good nights sleep to reach hundreds of millions of internet usersand potential customers. In 2014, LinkedIn launched a Chinese version of its service with the understanding that doing so would curtail freedom of expression. Users who posted politically sensitive content would get a message saying that their content would not be seen by LinkedIn members in China.

In a 2014 interview with The Wall Street Journal , LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner was upfront about the Chinese bargain. Were expecting there will be requests to filter content, Weiner said. We are strongly in support of freedom of expression and we are opposed to censorship, but thats going to be necessary for us to achieve the kind of scale that wed like to be able to deliver to our membership.

Perhaps LinkedIn figured that, as a business networking site, it could dodge political controversy. But when it comes to China, its never that simple. LinkedIns community, after all, includes China-based journalists. It wasnt long before users complained about receiving notices from LinkedIn that their posts were not available in China. Just this month, journalist Ian Johnson posted one of those notices on Twitter. Twitter is blocked in China, but some people there access it with circumvention technology. In the past, China-based activists have used Twitter to get their message to the outside world. Twitter is a rare American platform that offers relative freedom of expression to the Chinese who are willing to use it.

Bending to China's will doesn't guarantee success. China remains a tough market, even for those willing to censor. Derek Shen, formerly president of LinkedIn China, recently stepped down after the company had less-than-impressive results in China. Problems apparently included missed sales targets and failure to attract new users. In 2010 Google declared wholesale defeat in mainland China, citing problems with censorship and cybersecurity.

Censorship isn't the only challenge: US companies now have to contend with fierce Chinese rivals. Apple has struggled against domestic Chinese competition, including smartphone powerhouses Huawei and Oppo. Uber flailed against incumbent ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing before eventually selling its China operations to its local rival. When it comes to the internet, Chinese users arent necessarily longing to jump over the Great Firewall to gain access to overseas sites. Many are content with domestic products, particularly WeChat, a wildly popular messaging app.

Still, US companies will always try to break through in China. Facebook has eyed the mainland for a while. A Facebook entry may appear unlikely, especially as China temporarily blocked its WhatsApp messaging service. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears willing to go the distance; Facebook has reportedly worked on a censorship tool for the purposes of getting China's approval. Conventional wisdom once held that Facebook would not risk the public outcry following a decision to self-censor in China. But is that really true? All those other companies got away with it, and Facebook probably would too.

So will Apple. The company might take a beating in China, but it wont be because of its moral choices. That doesnt mean that the Chinese internet outlook is bleak. Despite pervasive censorship, information manages to get through. Some circumvention tools will vanish, and others will appear. For every sensitive term that gets blocked, people will find a different word to replace it.

The spread of the internet will continue to expand the space for expression in Chinajust not necessarily thanks to the American companies willing to do whatever it takes to gain a foothold there.

Emily Parker has covered China for The Wall Street Journal and has been an adviser in the US State Department. She is the author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are , a book about the power of social media in China, Cuba, and Russia.

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Apple Caved to China, Just Like Almost Every Other Tech Giant - WIRED

BEIJING Moves by business giants Apple and Amazon to stop consumers from using censorship-skirting apps in China have renewed questions about the extent U.S. companies are willing to work with authorities to operate in the vast but tightly controlled Chinese market.

Apple chief Tim Cook attempted to defend the companys decision to remove dozens of apps designed to circumvent censorship from the Chinese version of its app store.

In an earnings call for Apples quarterly financial report, Cook said China tightened its rules on virtual private networks, or VPNs, in 2015, and was now making a renewed push to enforce them.

We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries, we follow the law wherever we do business, he said Tuesday.

By helping Chinese authorities curb the use of many popular VPNs, U.S. tech companies are seen as helping the Communist Party bolster what is already the worlds most elaborate and sophisticated censorship regime, often called the Great Firewall.

In addition to blocking the likes of Google and Facebook, Chinas censors shape what is published online, pull content deemed politically sensitive and, according to a recent study, even intercept images being sent via chat apps.

Cook argued that pulling some apps beats pulling out of the market.

We strongly believe that participating in markets and bringing benefits to customers is in the best interest of the folks there and in other countries as well, he said. And so we believe in engaging with governments even when we disagree.

Amazon also was in the spotlight Wednesday after disclosures that the companys Chinese partner, Beijing Sinnet Technology, sent emails to clients advising them to delete tools used to circumvent censorship. The news was first reported by the New York Times.

An employee told The Washington Post that Sinnet sent clients emails last Friday and again on Monday warning they must eliminate any content that violates Chinese telecom laws. The instructions came from Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the employee said.

On Wednesday, calls to Amazon Web Services' China office went unanswered. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Post.)

When Chinas first and only winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Liu Xiaobo, died in state custody last month, news of his death was all but scrubbed from the Web here. On some platforms, the candle emoji was blocked.

To get around these restrictions, millions of Chinese individuals and businesses use VPNs. Beijing knows this, but so far has let the practice continue, in part because it is good for business and aids academic research.

It is not yet clear how the latest drive to regulate VPNs will play out. In the earnings call, Apples Cook stressed that the company had removed some, but not all, apps.The fact that many VPNs remain could mean the government is focused on regulating the VPN industry, not eliminating it altogether, leaving room for some use.

For a sector focused on privacy, that is still bad news.

Apple claims to just follow the law, but it's just a convenient excuse,said Martin Johnson, the pseudonymous co-founder of GreatFire.org, a website that monitors China's Internet filtering and maintains an app to help Internet users get past the restrictions.In fact, they are actively helping the Chinese government expand its control globally.

When Apple removes an app from the app store of a given country, it affects all users who have registered with an address in that country, regardless of their physical location, he added.

This means that, thanks to Apple, Beijing gets a degree of control of Chinese citizens anywhere in the world.

Yang Liu and Shirley Feng contributed to this report.

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Apple, Amazon help China curb the use of anti-censorship tools - Washington Post

Last week, consumer tech giant Apple removed all major VPN apps from the Chinese branch of its Apps Store, seemingly putting yet another barrier in place for millions of Chinese citizens who might desire to defy their governments pervasive internet censorship system. On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained why Apple chose to comply with the wishes of Chinese censors.

Its pretty simple, in Cooks telling. Unlicensed VPNs are against the law in China now, and Apple has to obey the law, period.

The central government in China back in 2015 started tightening the regulations associated with VPN apps, Cook told investors and media during Apples Q3 2017 earnings and conference call, per TechCrunchs Matthew Lynley. We have a number of those on our store. Essentially, as a requirement for someone to operate a VPN they have to have a license from the government there.

Earlier this year, they began a renewed effort to enforce that policy, he continued. We were required by the government to remove some of those VPN apps from the app store that dont meet these new regulations ... Today theres still hundreds of VPN apps on the app store, including hundreds by developers outside China. We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever we do business.

Heres where Cooks reply gets a little more cynical.

We believe in engaging with governments even when we disagree, Cook continued. This particular case, were hopeful that over time the restrictions were seeing are loosened, because innovation really requires freedom to collaborate and communicate.

Cook compared the controversy to Apples 2016 battle with US authorities over iPhone security features, saying the situation last year was very different because US law was on the companys side. But he added if US law changed, Apple would have no choice but to comply.

In the case of China, the law is very clear there, Cook said. Like we would if the US changed the law here, we have to abide by them in both cases. That doesnt mean that we dont state our point of view in the appropriate way, we always do that.

Heres the thing: Apple isnt really engaging Chinese censors so much as complying with their orders, and theres no way removing the VPN apps will somehow result in that censorship being loosened. Its at best a tradeoff between maintaining market access on one hand, and collaborating with the current Chinese censorship system on the other.

Without getting into an argument on the merits of Chinese artist Ai Weiweis work, he hit something on the head in a New York Times editorial earlier this year: Whenever the state controls or blocks information, it not only reasserts its absolute power; it also elicits from the people whom it rules a voluntary submission to the system and an acknowledgment of its dominion. While Apples decision to remove the VPN apps may be mandated by the absolute power of the Chinese state, its also clearly reinforcing part two of the equation, voluntary submission to said power.

Cook, of course, is clearly aware of thiswhich is why he mentioned Apple would have no choice but to comply with a US censorship regime, too. Hes not exactly wrong. But its also a reminder of how any abuse of power requires enablers, and institutions whose bottom line rely on compliance are probably not going to save anyone from autocracy. With a few exceptions, theyll usually comply.

Elsewhere during the call, Cook noted, mainland China sales are doing just fine. The companys poor performance was mostly due to poor sales in the mostly autonomous region of Hong Kong, which has much less restrictive laws on censorship.

[Matthew Lynley]

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Tim Cook Says Apple Had to Comply With Chinese Censors, and They'd Do It in the US Too - Gizmodo

YouTube has announced a new system to catch and flag what it calls controversial religious and supremacist videos hosted on the platform. The platform plans to hide these videos from wider audiences, and demonetize them to prevent their creators from earning revenue from YouTube.

The move was met with widespread skepticism from YouTube content creators.

To crack down on offensive content, the company is using a combination of machine learning and volunteer experts to flag that needs review. It also plans to implement tougher standards for videos that are controversial but do not violate the sites terms of service.

YouTube says it isnt going to remove the borderline content entirely, but will instead place these videos in a purgatory state preventing them from being monetized or promoted. To facilitate these changes, YouTube will be artificially altering its search algorithms to prevent offensive topics from discovery.

Well soon be applying tougher treatment to videos that arent illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of our policies on hate speech and violent extremism. If we find that these videos dont violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state. The videos will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, wont be recommended, wont be monetized, and wont have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes.

According to YouTube, the system, while largely automated, will mix in human reviews in the form of its already established Trusted Flagger volunteer program that works with over 15 institutions to deal with extremist content, including the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL recently released a list naming members of the alt-right and the alt-lite, the latter of which included controversial YouTube personalities like Gavin McInnes, Mike Cernovich, and Brittany Pettibone.

Its worth noting that the Trusted Flagger system was later transformed into the much maligned YouTube Heroes program, which invited the public to help moderate content. It was heavily criticized for giving social justice activists the power to manipulate the platform.

Despite the apparent focus on targeting extremism, YouTubes announcement includes the companys efforts to artificially promote videos through its Creators for Change program, which in YouTubes own words pushes creators who are using their voices to speak out against hate speech, xenophobia, and extremism.

High-profile feminists, including Franchesca Ramsey, are listed as ambassadors and fellows. Notably absent is Laci Green, whose strong 1.5 million subscriber count earns her top billing as the sites most popular feminist. Green has come under fire from social justice advocates for opening dialogue with anti-feminists.

If a video doesnt break YouTubes terms of services then they absolutely SHOULD NOT be attempting to dampen the reach of the video any further, said YouTuber Annand Bunty King Virk, who raised his concerns with The Daily Caller. Who determines whats passable and what isnt? At what point do we finally realize that saying the right thing isnt always about saying what people want to hear?

By these standards, if YouTube existed previous to the Emancipation Act, theyd be censoring videos criticizing slave owners, since being anti-slavery wasnt popular at all, he added. The popular opinion isnt always the right opinion.

Matt Jarbo, who goes by MundaneMatt on YouTube, shared his views with The Daily Caller on the move. They know its almost a non-issue completely, Jarbo said. But due to the controversies surrounding those videos, theyve gotten a much larger spotlight than they deserve.

I do not trust their ability [to automatically flag extremist content], he said. I think they have an algorithm in place to help combat those issues, but its not narrow enough to not impact the skeptical/anti-SJW content.

YouTuber Jeff Holiday told The Daily Caller that he doesnt worry about the policy affecting his revenue, as hes already diversified his income with other platforms, but worries that the crackdown will affect other creators.

The move to counter extremist content is of course a good one in theory, Holiday said. But the language used in their announcement does not fill me with confidence it will be restricted to legitimate extremism. I remain optimistic but wary.

YouTube has a clear bias given who they choose to promote for free on their site such as Francesca Ramsey who perpetually produces vastly disliked videos, he remarked.

That isnt to say there is a case for them censoring controversial content. Ive had a few videos marked advertiser unfriendly, but it hasnt been something perpetual. But hearing they might crack down further does concern me greatly. Again, not for the income, but for the potential disincentives it may cause future creators of controversial politics.

I do think there are valid concerns in Google possibly funding legitimate extremist enterprises, but the fact is that people like to abuse systems, especially automated ones, said YouTuber Chris Maldonado, whos also known as Chris Ray Gun. Its really only a matter of time before this backfires in some ridiculous way.

The curator of Undoomed, a channel that regularly makes light of social justice warriors, shared his concerns about YouTubes new direction.

No one can really say whos going to be impacted by this new road map, and thats the point isnt it? If their policies and terms of service arent there to help guide creators anymore, then why even have them? So really, anyone could be at risk without even knowing it, he said.

I have no problem with YouTube cracking down on terrorist recruitment videos and the likes, clarified Undoomed. What I dont understand is how such videos couldve possibly been considered acceptable under the extant TOS and policies.

I think there is a high probably for collateral damage with this new attitude, he said. Some people could conceivably consider skeptics and anti-SJWs extremists, while all we are doing is arguing for a little common sense, and of course for freedom of speech as demanded by the Constitution.

My suspicion is that trusted flaggers is just a code word for the usual suspects. i.e. the same type of radical left-wing reactionaries that have reshaped Twitter into an Orwellian nightmare, he concluded.

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.

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Popular YouTubers React To Censorship Of 'Controversial' Content - The Daily Caller

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Jewish and social media lit up last month over an advertisement published in the Flatbush Jewish Journal, a Brooklyn weekly.

The ad was placed by social media personality Adina Miles, famous for her rabble-rousing Instagram account Flatbush Girl, and was meant to show appreciation to City Councilman Chaim Deutsch for helping her in a local graffiti clean-up effort. When the Flatbush Jewish Journal refused to run the ad because it contained a picture of a woman and the word girl, Miles placed an emoji over her face and changed her name to Flatbush Boy. The advertisement ran.

This incident, though extreme, is not the first of its kind. For years, a number of Orthodox specifically haredi publications have refused to publish photos of women and even their names for the sake of modesty.

In 2015, the website Behadrei Haredim blurred the faces of the Israeli governments new female ministers in a picture taken at the home of Israels president. That same year, two haredi newspapers in Beit Shemesh blocked a sock ad that showed the feet of a two-year-old female child.

In 2011, the Brooklyn-based newspaper Der Zeitung made headlines when it removed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from a photograph taken in the Situation Room of the White House.

It wasnt always like this. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was known for his efforts to elevate the position of Jewish women. In fact, he was insistent that if a boy was on the cover of the Chabad childrens magazine The Moshiach Times, a girl had be there as well.

In 1973, Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, founder of the Hineni outreach movement, took center stage at Madison Square Garden to spread her message. No one questioned her place on that stage or her right to be a public leader.

Over the past couple of decades, however, a shift in our values has rendered the presence of women in some Orthodox publications practically non-existent.

Censorship of female pictures in magazines is just one of many chumras being put on the community, said Flatbush Girl Adina Miles. Comparing the phenomenon to the spread of antibodies on an invading virus, Miles said its just one of the many gut reactions to the outside world banging on our doors.

The basis for the practice is unclear. The phrase Kol kevuda bas melech penima (a womans beauty lies within) from Psalms and Hinei Sarah baohel (Behold, Sarah was in her tent) from the Chumash are commonly cited as texts from which the laws of tzniut (modesty) are derived. The Rambam follows a Gemara in Kesubot that uses the phrase from Psalms to rule that a woman should not leave her home more than once a month a view clearly not accepted by Orthodox Jews.

But somewhere along the line, critics charge, interpretation has become skewed and women have disappeared.

Certainly if she is tzanuah, there is no halachic case for [the removal of women in publications], said Rabbi Mordechai Weiss, an award-winning educator and speaker. Like many others who have closely followed the controversy, Rabbi Weiss believes the growing practice of censorship is an example of a shift to the far right in Orthodoxy.

I think most people in society are able to look at modest pictures of women without it eliciting impure thoughts, said Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey.

Rabbi Pruzansky calls the practice an unnecessary stringency.

Extremism is what I would call it, said Naomi Klass Mauer, publisher of The Jewish Press, which has always featured pictures and names of women. I think everything is moving to the right. Its not a halacha if the woman is dressed properly.

Others posit a different explanation for the dwindling appearance of women. Earlier this year, in a Headlines podcast interview hosted by Dovid Lichtenstein, the renowned posek Rav Dovid Cohen said that sales competition is behind the removal of women from some Orthodox publications. Once a publication decides it will not print women, there is a domino effect.

Their competition, Rav Cohen added, cant let them be frummer, so they stop doing it [as well].

(On that same podcast Dovid Lichtenstein noted that when HaRav Chaim Kanievsky was looking through a biography of his wife he asked, Wheres the Rebbetzin? because all the pictures were of him.)

Rabbi Simon Jacobson, former editor of the Algemeiner Journal, said its all about the readership of the publication. If their constituency is one that will not tolerate womens pictures, they are serving their constituency. To Jacobson, it has to do with the wishes of advertisers and readers more than the will of the publishers.

Whether the decision stems from religious or business reasons, the effect is equally negative.

Its overly sexualizing women, said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of interfaith affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Its not a question of dressing provocatively. Its saying that because you are a woman, you are provocative. That is a dangerous message.

Critics of censoring women in Orthodox media point to a growing backlash among many Orthodox women.

Now it comes down to the women in the communities themselves really feeling disenfranchised and resentful, said Allison Josephs, founder of Jew in the City, an organization devoted to correcting public misperceptions of Orthodox Jews.

As an activist, Josephs prides herself on respecting different ways of life, even if she herself may not necessarily align with their schools of thought. However, after interacting with women in haredi communities who voiced their discomfort with the practice, Josephs realized there was a problem.

A reason for the resentment, she said, is the burden it places on the women. In general, women are commanded to dress modestly while men must keep their minds in an appropriate place. Were supposed to exist in a partnership and meet in the middle, said Josephs. When women are removed completely, then men dont have to do their job at all.

On the other hand, some women dont feel burdened at all. A chassidic woman who heads a Jewish organization said she views the removal of women from Orthodox publications as protection for the women, not subjugation.

To others, however, the insistence on the removal of womens names and pictures from the public sphere is far from beneficial. In practice, they say, it goes against the history of Judaism.

Hashem saw it appropriate to include female names when He wrote the Torah, mused Josephs. Are we more frum than Hashem?

In an Instagram post on July 10, Adina Miles wrote, What kind of message are we sending our daughters & sons when they look through a magazine & there are no female faces to be seen? Miles rallied Orthodox men and women alike to join her social media campaign and share pictures with the caption #FrumWomenHaveFaces.

The main goal, she said, was to start a conversation within the mainstream of the community, which I am proud to say has been accomplished.

Other men and women are jumping on the bandwagon. A Facebook group called Put the Women Back in Frum Media! encourages its members to protest for the inclusion of women in Orthodox publications and has fostered an initiative to create a new magazine that would prominently feature modestly dressed women.

The Layers Project, founded by Shira Lankin Sheps, was created in order to publish photographs of Jewish women and give them a space to talk about their experiences without being censored. We need to stop removing women from what we read and do the opposite, wrote Sheps in a blog post titled Put Women Back in Orthodox Media.

The rising opposition is taking the lead in undoing the damage. It is not uncommon now to find essays and articles speaking out against the removal of women from Orthodox media outlets.

For the first time ever, said Miles, alternate voices have a platform that cant be censored.

One voice that stands out is that of Merri Ukraincik. Her essay The Invisible Jew (published last month on hevria.com and in The Jewish Press) describes her fear of all women being systematically washed out of society.

I lack the power to alter the course of a tide that washes our footprints from the shore as if we never touched down at all, she writes. But I know Im not alone.

Ukraincik, like many other Jewish women, is determined to combat the invisibility before it silences all women.

Women have a very strong voice, especially when we join together, she said. Its our greatest strength in trying to effect change.

Women like Merri Ukraincik, Adina Miles, and Allison Josephs, who defy what has become the status quo, are actively fighting for change. Women like Naomi Klass Mauer, through The Jewish Press, and Shira Lankin Sheps, through her Layers Project, are tirelessly defending a womans right to an uncensored presence in print and online.

Beneath the blurry images and silhouettes, you can almost hear the voices of generations of Jewish women. They are perched on the precipice of a new world, bracing themselves for an anticipated leap into acceptance and inclusion.

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Invisible Women: Censorship By Some Orthodox Publications - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com