1st October: Axios journalist Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, who writes the weekly Axios China newsletter and reports on China for the digital news site, awoke a few days ago to an ominous-sounding message from LinkedIn waiting for her online.
LinkedIn notified her that “your profile and your public activity, such as your comments and items that you share with your network, will not be publicly available in China” due to unspecified information and activity on her profile that was judged inappropriate in China. The social media platform said it would work with Allen-Ebrahimian to lessen the impact of her actions, and that it would be delighted to evaluate her profile’s accessibility in China if she updated her “Summary section.”
Allen-Ebrahimian is one of numerous US journalists who received the same LinkedIn letter this week, which, on a more somber note, comes as other US corporations and services, including Apple, Google, and YouTube, have bowed to similar demands in other nations.
Apple and Google, for example, recently removed a voting software made by followers of imprisoned Putin opponent Aleksei Navalny from their respective app stores. Prior to the 2017 Russian parliamentary election, YouTube took down at least one of Navalny’s group’s campaign commercials, however, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki was vague in an interview with Bloomberg about whether this was done at the Russian government’s direct request.
The LinkedIn incident, on the other hand, is notable since it involves a section of a publicly traded US firm restricting US journalists. To put it another way, it’s doing the dirty job of an oppressive state for it.
As a result, lawmakers such as US Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida have expressed their displeasure with the current state of affairs, sending a letter to the leadership of both Microsoft and LinkedIn on Thursday requesting answers. “I am profoundly worried that an American firm is actively censoring American journalists on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party,” it says, among other things.
LinkedIn’s argument is a variation of the same unsatisfactory, oft-repeated posture taken by other American businesses forced to make comparable unpalatable compromises in order to conduct business in other nations.