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Senator Josh Hawley's Open Letter to Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom
- baylearn 6y agoNote: I couldn't fit the entire title in HN's title character limit, so replaced it with what it is. Original title: Senator Hawley to Zoom: “Pick A Side: American Principles and Free-Speech, or Short-Term Global Profits and Censorship”
- fxtentacle 6y agoI'm surprised that he even has to ask. Profits it is! Or else you better prepare for a lawsuit from your shareholders.
- ycombonator 6y agoOr the Chinese Communist Party which can make him obsolete as they have done with other Chinese billionaires who don’t two their line.
- mwerty 6y agoExamples?
- robotnikman 6y agoLiu Han might be an example
- mwerty 6y agoThanks
- sukilot 6y agoYuan is a US citizen billionaire.
- Flenser 6y agoOr perhaps shareholders will be more interested in long term profits and start a lawsuit when the short term profits dry up as their paying customers leave them due to censorship and security concerns.
- x0x0 6y agoGiven Hawley's position on 230, this is quite obviously a pure exercise in china bashing.
- catalogia 6y agoHas an American company ever been sued by their shareholders for refusing to cooperate with the CCP?
- xxpor 6y agoIf Zoom had kicked off BLM protest organizers, does anyone think Hawley would have sent this letter?
- barnesto 6y agoyes
- bilbo0s 6y agoIn fairness, hypocrisy is not the exclusive realm of American politicians. All nations are a bit hypocritical in this same manner.
- pageandrew 6y agoI hope so, but maybe not. That said, we have to recognize that there is something uniquely dangerous about an American company capitulating to demands from a foreign adversary.
- menacingly 6y agoif this were to happen, does anyone think Zoom's leadership would survive long enough to receive a letter? receiving a letter is extremely on the mild end of what would happen if the political biases were switched
- notdarkyet 6y agoBut... they didn't, so why try to turn this conversation into a BLM issue? Is this to imply all Republicans are racist? Why not pretend it says U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (D-Mo.) so you can feel better and talk about the merits of the letter and the issue at hand. This is my first comment in 4 years because it is incredibly frustrating to read thoughtless comments that just try to steer this towards a flame war
- wolco 6y agoIt wouldn't be a national concern dealing with foreign spying. What if zoom kicked off your mothers knitting group would a senator comment? No it is not a national security concern just bad customer services. Now if China has a strategy around taking over knitting perhap.
- orf 6y ago> company to choose a side: American principles and free-speech, or short-term global profits and censorship Or both. Like most other companies.
- catalogia 6y agoSenator Hawley has evidently not criticized Zoom alone, but other companies as well. > "One week ago today, I sent a letter to American companies like yours, asking them to put American principles and free nations around the world first."
- orf 6y agoAnd which companies, specifically, did he criticize? One week ago he sent a letter[1] to "American Companies in China". I didn't notice an uptick in paper stocks, so I assume he didn't actually send this letter to all "American companies in China" but instead just put this out there on his website like a fart in the wind. Very brave. 1. https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Hawley-Letter-US-Companies-China-Hong-Kong.pdf https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Ha...
- catalogia 6y agoWhether or not paper vs digital communication is a matter of bravery of cowardice (I'm a bit confused by the supposed connection between these concepts..) seems irrelevant.
- orf 6y agoThe joke was that there are so many American companies in China that to send a physical letter to them would cause paper stocks to rise. And, because there are so many, addressing no company in particular is futile - it’s like a fart in the wind. Nobody will hear it.
- mikestew 6y agoOr both. You're assuming there was ever a dichotomy to being with. Many have demonstrated that a company can have "American principles" and short-term global profits and censorship at the same time. Companies have been doing it since China "opened up" in the 70s and 80s. I would also request that the Senator from Missouri give me a specific list of what constitutes "American principles". I'll bet his list is at least slightly different than my list. But there I go, assuming that a solution was being sought and not just posturing.
- carls 6y agoHave there been any info shared by Zoom explicitly about this decision? And are there any HNers who work at Zoom, or know someone who works at Zoom, who can speak to how this situation is perceived internally?
- deathgrips 6y agoPlease address all correspondence to the CCP intelligence services.
- mfer 6y agoZoom blogged about it... https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/06/11/improving-our-policies-as-we-continue-to-enable-global-collaboration/ https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/06/11/improving-our-poli...
- mandeepj 6y agoChoose American principles and free-speech or face cease and desist
- thinkingkong 6y agoOddly enough Im fairly confident its an American Principle to make as much money as possible as a fiduciary responsibility. So. Pick one.
- sukilot 6y agoThat's a complete myth.
- michaelyoshika 6y agoLesson learned: change your chinese name when your company goes public.
- specialist 6y agoIt's unreasonable to expect any single company to act alone in this. Some pundit (Scott Galloway?) recently made the point that USA flag corporations need the US Government to make this law. I'd be fine if FAANG et al presented model legislation.
- atarian 6y agoDo open letters from legislators really accomplish anything other than negative media attention?
- Leary 6y agoLooking at the cases of the NBA and Blizzard, no. Next step will be hours of Congressional hearings where politicians invoke fiery rhetorics and company executives use verbal jiu jitsu to dodge out of any legal liabilities.
- coldcode 6y agoExplicitly difficult to serve both China and US interests without pissing off one side or the other (or both). Zoom clearly built a system based on an MVP idea, not imagining that security and being able to block internationally was important, yet it is. Having worked for a bit on a game that had to have Chinese government restrictions in it, I know how hard it is to make their government happy. Even worse is it can change at any time. Zoom should have had someone there who had worked in a similar type of Chinese environment; perhaps they did and no one listened.
- varjag 6y agoOr maybe it should have not, and should've just cut off the whole China, how ever offensive to capitalist sensibilities it is. Let the free market come up with another alternative for massacre-silencing needs.
- throw4453232 6y agoWhy not just license the software to a local company? Or incorporate in Europe and then license it local providers around the world. Let the local providers deal with it.
- duxup 6y ago> Even worse is it can change at any time. There have been some good public quotes about how capricious the censors can be when it comes to movies in China. Big budget movies made in China suddenly can't be shown because ... well sometimes they don't even know. Filmmakers have been pretty open about saying that they don't know what the rules are and they think they're playing it safe and then their film is blacklisted because they think a censor thought that a scene might seem 'sympathetic' to an event barely mentioned in the film, and maybe recently someone in power decided that moment in history was 'wrong'.
- lowmemcpu 6y agoYou can partition the two platforms and setup your business structures to legally support both.
- sneak 6y agoIs he going to be writing a similar letter to Apple? https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/28/17055088/apple-chinese-icloud-accounts-government-privacy-speed https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/28/17055088/apple-chinese-ic... https://sneak.berlin/20200604/if-zoom-is-wrong-so-is-apple/ https://sneak.berlin/20200604/if-zoom-is-wrong-so-is-apple/
- mola 6y agoKinda funny that it's ok for zoom to become a platform for US to monitor it's own civilians but then complain that it's cooperating with Chinese law. Seems to me senator wants zoom to pick sides alright, but it has nothing to do with values or principles
- thecureforzits 6y agoSpeaking as someone who isn't American or Chinese, is it too much to ask for both sides to stop spying on the rest of us?
- afrojack123 6y agoThis is too idealistic. It would never happen. You either build it yourself or choose your spy.
- duxup 6y agoI think there is a great deal more nuance than "ok to monitor".
- briefcomment 6y agoBut those are two different issues. One is about national security, and the other is about civil liberties. Sure it would be nice if both of those were strong, but the consequences of having compromised national security are more likely to result in wide scale disaster than this particular case of weakened civil liberties are. This is because we have some semblance of checks and balances within the country, but much less outside of it.
- sukilot 6y agoThe only function of national security is to preserve life, libery, and the pursuit of happines. it is not a goal in itself.
- briefcomment 6y agoRight, that is why I said bad national security can lead to wide scale disaster.
- aaron695 6y agoRelevant XKCD - https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- massaman 6y agoSuppose Zoom exits China (1.39B potential users) in response. This would almost certainly constitute a breach of fiduciary duty. Censorship is legal. Failing to act in the best interest of shareholders is not. Perhaps legislators should stick to writing laws?
- duxup 6y ago>This would almost certainly constitute a breach of fiduciary duty. Would it? I'm not sure simply operating in a big market or not operating it would qualify as 'breach of fiduciary duty'.
- awillen 6y agoI just don't understand how US government officials can criticize private companies for kowtowing to China because of its importance in the world, when the US government unequivocally does the same thing every day to a much greater degree.
- mips_avatar 6y agoI think Senator Hawley addresses your criticism head-on. China and the United States both have requirements for domestic companies to be in alignment with certain domestic goals. The Chinese and United State domestic goals are absolutely incompatible. A lot of companies think they can find a balance between these two sets of requirements, but Hawley is pointing out that increasingly this is impossible.
- tqi 6y agoSenator Hawley also introduced legislation that could be used to block efforts to implement end-to-end encryption, so maybe this is more about American nationalism than American Principles. "Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has slammed the bill as a 'Trojan horse to give Attorney General Barr and Donald Trump the power to control online speech and require government access to every aspect of Americans' lives.'" [1] [1] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/487372-bill-to-protect-children-online-ensnared-in-encryption-fight https://thehill.com/policy/technology/487372-bill-to-protect... [2] https://morningconsult.com/opinions/a-backdoor-attempt-to-require-backdoors-to-encryption/ https://morningconsult.com/opinions/a-backdoor-attempt-to-re...