TikTok Plans To Add 10,000 Jobs in US as Trump Admin Considers Banning It

TikTok said Tuesday that it plans to create 10,000 jobs in the United States over the next three years, a substantial increase from the roughly 1,400 employees it currently has in the country. From a report: The announcement comes as the company faces mounting criticism over its handling of user data and its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance….

House Votes To Ban TikTok on Federal Devices

The House has voted to bar federal employees from downloading the video-sharing app TikTok on government-issued devices as part of a $741 billion defense policy bill. From a report: Lawmakers voted 336-71 to pass the proposal, offered by Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), as part of a package of bipartisan amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. The prohibition would extend to…

DNC and RNC Warn Campaigns About Using TikTok

The Democratic and Republican national committees have warned their staffs about using the Chinese-owned app TikTok. From a report: The Democratic National Committee warned Democratic campaigns, committees and state parties Friday to take additional security precautions when using TikTok. In the email, the DNC security team wrote, “We continue to advise campaign staff to refrain from using TikTok on personal devices….

Why Apple Stopped Updating Over 15,000 Games in China’s App Store

Apple “has faced mounting pressure from the Chinese government in recent weeks to comply with local regulations, including that all games show proof of a government granted license,” writes Engadget. And now it’s finally come to a head, CNBC reports:
Apple has blocked updates on tens of thousands of revenue-generating iPhone games on its App Store in China amid rising tensions between…

The US-China Battle Over the Internet Goes Under the Sea

Last week, Washington strongly objected to a new project from Facebook and Google. It’s too risky and offers “unprecedented opportunities” for Chinese government espionage, the Justice Department declared. The project, however, wasn’t about online speech or contact tracing, but concerned an issue that would seem far less politically charged: building an undersea internet cable from the United States to Hong Kong….

Education and Coronavirus: Lessons From Emergency Remote Teaching

By Matthew Rascoff In recent months, almost every university in the world has shifted to emergency remote teaching—a kind of “first aid” for higher education in a pandemic. When the Chinese government closed all higher education institutions in early February, Duke Kunshan University (DKU) in Kunshan, China, was among the first universities to make this […]
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Zoom Confirms Beijing Asked It To Suspend Activists Over Tiananmen Square Meetings

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: U.S. video conferencing company Zoom issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging that the Chinese government requested that it suspend the accounts of several U.S.- and Hong Kong-based Chinese activists for holding events commemorating the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Zoom claims that it only took action because the Chinese government informed…

China Delayed Releasing Coronavirus Info, Frustrating WHO

schwit1 shares a report: Throughout January, the World Health Organization publicly praised China for what it called a speedy response to the new coronavirus. It repeatedly thanked the Chinese government for sharing the genetic map of the virus “immediately,” and said its work and commitment to transparency were “very impressive, and beyond words.” But behind the scenes, it was a much…