Congressman Jim Banks is rebuking Microsoft for censoring its LinkedIn account holders who criticize the Chinese government.
This includes users in the United States.
“LinkedIn is pressuring U.S. citizens to remove posts critical of China’s dictatorship because, apparently, ‘regional laws’ compel them to do Xi’s bidding,” Banks tells the Washington Examiner. “That’s a lie. LinkedIn is simply selling out America’s values and national security in order to boost its bottom line.”
The congressman has written to the company, which connects job seekers to job providers.
He demands answers about how LinkedIn cooperates with Chinese censorship.
His allies include Carl Szabo, VP of a trade group called NetChoice. Szabo says that American tech firms “should actively push back on such [censorship] demands. China suppressing the profiles of American users should not be happening.”
Microsoft has a history of aiding and abetting the Chinese Communist Party, Chinazi Party for short.
Although Google withdrew its search engine from China in 2010 rather than (continue to) help China censor search results, the Bing search engine currently operates in China. And you can’t be a search engine in China without helping the CCP to censor.
Microsoft has even provided facial recognition resources used to track the Uyghurs, a Muslim population that the Chinese government has subjected to mass incarceration and torture.
A few years ago Microsoft apparently retreated on that facial-recognition front. But it shouldn’t be doing anything to help the Chinazi government to censor and repress.
Nobody should.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)