8 ms·

Wait, your point is that Zoom is evil because the founder is Chinese?

by skrebbel 6y ago

m-p-3 6y ago
Because of its inevitable ties and implicit subservience to the CCP.
- pesfandiar 6y ago
  The only "relevant" information found in the quote in the GP comment is the nationality of the CEO. How does one jump from the CEO's nationality to inevitable ties and implicit subservience to CCP?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - briandear 6y ago
    Nationality is not a race. Nationality implies a connection with a specific country. And when that specific country is a vast wasteland for human rights and privacy and civil liberties, then yes, it’s relevant.
  - jatone 6y ago
    ignoring the quote for a second we know a few things about this CEO and zoom. 1. zoom's application is sending data to Chinese servers separate from the application functionality servers. 2. the CEO is from china, I'm going to assume he has relatives in china. 3. we know CCP is a completely fucked up government with an absolutely horrible history of civil rights violations, genocide, etc. I wouldn't put it past CCP to be pressuring the CEO by threatening relatives who live in china. this wouldn't be unheard of for CCP. add the the unnecessary data transfer to chinese servers makes it look really bad. its a fairly reasonable conclusion to draw that the CEO is compromised if all the above holds true. more extreme conclusions could just as easily be drawn from that same data that he is literally a foreign agent for china.
    - shaan1 6y ago
      Very true.
    - pesfandiar 6y ago
      I find myself agreeing with most of your points. I mainly took issue with taking a shortcut from "being born and raised in China" to being a hostile Chinese agent (and we don't even know if the CEO has relatives in China that can be leveraged anyway).
  - mcbutterbunz 6y ago
    Didn't Zoom block a US based activist on the request of the Chinese government? I'm not arguing that there is complete subservience to the CCP but this censorship seems like a line was crossed. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/technology/zoom-china-tiananmen-square.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/technology/zoom-china-tia... Edit: Let me also state that I'm not entirely sure what OP's argument was, considering the comment was deleted. I'm merely stating that there seems to be some cooperation with the CCP and Zoom.
    - pesfandiar 6y ago
      I'm aware of Zoom's track record, and it could certainly be scrutinized, criticized, or even boycotted. What we have here is going from "CEO was born and raised in China" to "No wonder why they have to play party with CCP" and "inevitable ties and implicit subservience to the CCP". I can't see the logical connection in the absence of other information. Don't you see a problem with assuming someone's motives purely from their country of origin?
      - g-b-r 6y ago
        Is it licit to at least keep it into account? Or we need Xi Jinping's permission?
admax88q 6y ago
Yeah what the fuck, that was some weird casual racism you don't expect to see on HN.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  I disagree it's "racism." It's how the CCP operates. We can say the same story for different super powers from previous times. People suspected German Ambassador to USA for being a bosch spy. Founder of a communications company isn't that far off. Huawei is a great example. Founders of a company control the companies direction.
  - hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
    Except Eric is not any sort of govt or party representative. He is a naturalized American of Chinese ancestry. In history, this kind of scapegoating was counterproductive.
    - anonymousab 6y ago
      The CCP can and will exert pressure on family members to get expats and former citizens to do what they want. They're not the only country to do so, not by a long shot, but they are particularly brazen about it. Though I think the CEO is less relevant than the critical amount of developers Zoom relies on that are directly living under and subject to CCP malfeasance.
      - justicezyx 6y ago
        > The CCP can and will exert pressure on family members to get expats and former citizens to do what they want. Could you give a few such cases?
        mthoms 6y ago
        Here's a bunch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/31/china-families-interpol-targets-harassed https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/31/china-families-interpol-...
rootsudo 6y ago
While I understand that on the surface seems "bad", you have to understand the CCP taps into people worldwide, and while I don't know his position per se, or finances -- or connection with China today. It doesn't paint a great picture, especially with espionage and CCP tactics. Look at previous German and USA interference w/ GE, Bosch, -- it's the same story. Except now it's highlight as "bad" to point out that connection.
- ilikehurdles 6y ago
  I'm disgusted that in 2020, Americans continue to use the same racist, unfounded smears againts people based on their ethnicity just as they did when they were throwing Japanese-Americans into internment camps.
  - smt88 6y ago
    There are plenty of HN users who won't (or wouldn't, in an ideal world) use any US-based software because of NSA interference. The issue is national origin, not ethnicity. Japanese Americans were thrown into camps for the same reason, but we're not talking about jailing anyone here. We're talking about avoiding a specific product. Another difference is that Japanese Americans were put into camps regardless of how many generations removed from being Japanese they were. No one is arguing that CCP has control over Chinese Americans whose ancestors immigrated here in the 1800s. It's about people who literally grew up in China and/or still have close family there for CCP to threaten.
    - justicezyx 6y ago
      > The issue is national origin, not ethnicity. Japanese Americans were thrown into camps for the same reason ``` Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast.[9] About 80,000 were Nisei (literal translation: "second generation"; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei ("third generation"; the children of Nisei). The rest were Issei ("first generation") immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship under U.S. law.[10] ``` From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... What do you suggest? Should there be a upper limit on the generations to be considered not originated from a nation state? According to what happened to WWII Japanese ethnic Americans, that number seems have to be > 3? And remember that what happened in WWII Japanese internment camp is an evidence that "national origin" as an association was plainly wrong, from the same wiki page: ``` In 1980, under mounting pressure from the Japanese American Citizens League and redress organizations,[30] President Jimmy Carter opened an investigation to determine whether the decision to put Japanese Americans into concentration camps had been justified by the government. He appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. The Commission's report, titled Personal Justice Denied, found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and concluded that the incarceration had been the product of racism ``` Emphasis on the last statement: `the incarceration had been the product of racism`.
throwaway9482 6y ago
A lot of Chinese values are at odds with American values. Someone who is genuinely pro-Chinese values threatens things we often take for granted here in America

Wait, your point is that Zoom is evil because the founder is Chinese?

m-p-3 6y ago

Because of its inevitable ties and implicit subservience to the CCP.

pesfandiar 6y ago
The only "relevant" information found in the quote in the GP comment is the nationality of the CEO. How does one jump from the CEO's nationality to inevitable ties and implicit subservience to CCP?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- briandear 6y ago
  Nationality is not a race. Nationality implies a connection with a specific country. And when that specific country is a vast wasteland for human rights and privacy and civil liberties, then yes, it’s relevant.
- jatone 6y ago
  ignoring the quote for a second we know a few things about this CEO and zoom. 1. zoom's application is sending data to Chinese servers separate from the application functionality servers. 2. the CEO is from china, I'm going to assume he has relatives in china. 3. we know CCP is a completely fucked up government with an absolutely horrible history of civil rights violations, genocide, etc. I wouldn't put it past CCP to be pressuring the CEO by threatening relatives who live in china. this wouldn't be unheard of for CCP. add the the unnecessary data transfer to chinese servers makes it look really bad. its a fairly reasonable conclusion to draw that the CEO is compromised if all the above holds true. more extreme conclusions could just as easily be drawn from that same data that he is literally a foreign agent for china.
  - shaan1 6y ago
    Very true.
  - pesfandiar 6y ago
    I find myself agreeing with most of your points. I mainly took issue with taking a shortcut from "being born and raised in China" to being a hostile Chinese agent (and we don't even know if the CEO has relatives in China that can be leveraged anyway).
- mcbutterbunz 6y ago
  Didn't Zoom block a US based activist on the request of the Chinese government? I'm not arguing that there is complete subservience to the CCP but this censorship seems like a line was crossed. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/technology/zoom-china-tiananmen-square.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/technology/zoom-china-tia... Edit: Let me also state that I'm not entirely sure what OP's argument was, considering the comment was deleted. I'm merely stating that there seems to be some cooperation with the CCP and Zoom.
  - pesfandiar 6y ago
    I'm aware of Zoom's track record, and it could certainly be scrutinized, criticized, or even boycotted. What we have here is going from "CEO was born and raised in China" to "No wonder why they have to play party with CCP" and "inevitable ties and implicit subservience to the CCP". I can't see the logical connection in the absence of other information. Don't you see a problem with assuming someone's motives purely from their country of origin?
    - g-b-r 6y ago
      Is it licit to at least keep it into account? Or we need Xi Jinping's permission?

admax88q 6y ago

Yeah what the fuck, that was some weird casual racism you don't expect to see on HN.

rootsudo 6y ago
I disagree it's "racism." It's how the CCP operates. We can say the same story for different super powers from previous times. People suspected German Ambassador to USA for being a bosch spy. Founder of a communications company isn't that far off. Huawei is a great example. Founders of a company control the companies direction.
- hakka-nyu-su 6y ago
  Except Eric is not any sort of govt or party representative. He is a naturalized American of Chinese ancestry. In history, this kind of scapegoating was counterproductive.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    The CCP can and will exert pressure on family members to get expats and former citizens to do what they want. They're not the only country to do so, not by a long shot, but they are particularly brazen about it. Though I think the CEO is less relevant than the critical amount of developers Zoom relies on that are directly living under and subject to CCP malfeasance.
    - justicezyx 6y ago
      > The CCP can and will exert pressure on family members to get expats and former citizens to do what they want. Could you give a few such cases?
      - mthoms 6y ago
        Here's a bunch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/31/china-families-interpol-targets-harassed https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/31/china-families-interpol-...

rootsudo 6y ago

While I understand that on the surface seems "bad", you have to understand the CCP taps into people worldwide, and while I don't know his position per se, or finances -- or connection with China today. It doesn't paint a great picture, especially with espionage and CCP tactics. Look at previous German and USA interference w/ GE, Bosch, -- it's the same story. Except now it's highlight as "bad" to point out that connection.

ilikehurdles 6y ago
I'm disgusted that in 2020, Americans continue to use the same racist, unfounded smears againts people based on their ethnicity just as they did when they were throwing Japanese-Americans into internment camps.
- smt88 6y ago
  There are plenty of HN users who won't (or wouldn't, in an ideal world) use any US-based software because of NSA interference. The issue is national origin, not ethnicity. Japanese Americans were thrown into camps for the same reason, but we're not talking about jailing anyone here. We're talking about avoiding a specific product. Another difference is that Japanese Americans were put into camps regardless of how many generations removed from being Japanese they were. No one is arguing that CCP has control over Chinese Americans whose ancestors immigrated here in the 1800s. It's about people who literally grew up in China and/or still have close family there for CCP to threaten.
  - justicezyx 6y ago
    > The issue is national origin, not ethnicity. Japanese Americans were thrown into camps for the same reason ``` Of 127,000 Japanese Americans living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast.[9] About 80,000 were Nisei (literal translation: "second generation"; American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei ("third generation"; the children of Nisei). The rest were Issei ("first generation") immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship under U.S. law.[10] ``` From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... What do you suggest? Should there be a upper limit on the generations to be considered not originated from a nation state? According to what happened to WWII Japanese ethnic Americans, that number seems have to be > 3? And remember that what happened in WWII Japanese internment camp is an evidence that "national origin" as an association was plainly wrong, from the same wiki page: ``` In 1980, under mounting pressure from the Japanese American Citizens League and redress organizations,[30] President Jimmy Carter opened an investigation to determine whether the decision to put Japanese Americans into concentration camps had been justified by the government. He appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. The Commission's report, titled Personal Justice Denied, found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and concluded that the incarceration had been the product of racism ``` Emphasis on the last statement: `the incarceration had been the product of racism`.

throwaway9482 6y ago

A lot of Chinese values are at odds with American values. Someone who is genuinely pro-Chinese values threatens things we often take for granted here in America