(Censorship in private companies: Apple)

Apple exports PRC censorship to Hong Kong and Taiwan, report says

A new investigation into Apple's censorship of terms used to create product engravings shows that the multinational has not only broadly censored political speech in mainland China, but has partially applied its China censored keyword lists — "thoughtlessly reappropriated" from Chinese sources — to Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The report, published Wednesday by The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, a research lab studying digital threats to civil society, discovered Apple's 1,105 censored keywords were applied "inconsistently" across six regions in Apple's free engraving service, which allows users to put custom names or messages on products like Airpods. (Beijing delegates the burden of censorship to private companies.)

Of the 1,105 blocked keywords Citizen Lab researchers identified, most are applied in the Greater China region, Apple's third-largest market by revenue. About 95% of all the censored terms (1,045) are applied in the mainland China market, followed by Hong Kong (542) and then Taiwan (397), the report says. Apple censors almost as much political speech in mainland China as social speech — content referencing explicit sexual content, illicit goods and services and vulgarity — which is the most commonly filtered content across regions. And because political censorship from the PRC has seeped into Hong Kong and Taiwan, Apple users in these two regions also experience political censorship when they try to engrave words.

In mainland China, researchers found that about 43% of all keywords censored by Apple's engraving service refer to China's political system, the Communist Party, senior government and Party leaders and dissidents. Apple applies 174 of those 458 keywords in the Hong Kong market as well, and 29 in Taiwan. For example, the traditional Chinese phrase 新聞自由, meaning freedom of the press, is censored in China and Hong Kong. Engravings referencing Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao, 毛主席) and Xi Jinping (paramount leader, 最高領導人) are filtered in all three regions, both in simplified and complex script.

According to The Citizen Lab, Apple's public-facing documents "failed to explain how it determines the keyword lists" and the company's censorship in mainland China "may have exceeded" its legal obligations in the market. Much of Apple's censorship in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China on which Beijing has significantly tightened its grip, is not required by local laws and regulations. And in Taiwan, a self-governing island, Apple has no legal obligations to perform political censorship.

Researchers say there are two possible reasons why Apple applies its mainland China censorship in Hong Kong and Taiwan. "One is that this is, in fact, intentional behavior. In which case, it does speak to \[how much] they want to appease the Chinese government," Jeffrey Knockel, co-author of the report and a research associate at The Citizen Lab, told Protocol. "But another possibility, too, is that it's just negligence." In a letter to The Citizen Lab, which Apple shared with Protocol, Chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath wrote that Apple tries to not allow engraving requests that "would be considered illegal according to local laws, rules, and regulations of the countries and regions" in which it is offered.

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https://www.protocol.com/china/apple-china-engraving-censorship

(u/toastedsquirrel)