Zoom claimed they had to remove Chinese participants from the US-hosted meeting but didn't have the functionality to do that so (wrongly) banned the US hosts.

They said it was wrong to do, reinstated those accounts, and are building the functionality to enforce those Chinese laws without ever impacting users outside China.

That's from their blog. https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/06/11/improving-our-poli...

I'll ignore for a second the fact they refused to even acknowledge Tiananmen Square in that post, despite the fact that as was pointed out they're a US company that isn't beholden to China and they're posting in English on their US-based website.

They are actually admitting that they're going to prevent people IN CHINA from connecting to a meeting that is presumably hosted IN THE US. That doesn't make it better, it makes it WORSE. You're basically telling the world that China will dictate how you operate WOLRDWIDE not just in China.

I'm sure that if the US had as strict control over our/their internet as China does over theirs, non-US sites would be forced to operate differently for peers in the US too.

Same reason why Google censored itself for China in 2006. Did people think Google was a 'Chinese company'? Note that this was before Google set up a presence in China.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4645596.stm

I think you're missing the point. Google censored itself in china based on Chinese requests. Zoom censored itself in the US based on Chinese requests.

There's a pretty big difference IMO.

I don't see how it's the same. In Zoom's case organization was in US and call organization was in US and company works by US laws. Why would they censor these accounts? Google on the other hand had to do it to operate in China, had to submit to Chinese regulations.

The same would be if they blocked Gmail of US citizens because of discussions related to China.

I guess I don't consider that the same thing at all. They're censoring searches coming from china to google.cn (hosted in China). They didn't really have a choice, the servers are in China, the users are in China.

What they aren't doing is actively blocking users from China getting to www.google.com, and they aren't censoring searches Chinese users do on www.google.com because those resources aren't hosted in China and aren't subject to Chinese law.

Zoom on the other hand IS blocking users from China accessing resources in the US and while they may have "undone" the ban, they banned US users from their platform for breaking a Chinese law that they aren't subject to. Namely talking about the Tienanmen Square massacre.

they didn't have a choice not to use servers in China?

They actually didn't. Their options were filtered servers in China or no services in China at all. We can collectively be upset at their decision but they ARE beholden to their shareholders as a public company. Abandoning the Chinese market entirely is something they could've tried, but their major shareholders made it pretty clear there would be a change of leadership if they tried.

Unless you've got a magic bullet to give Wall Street a conscience, that wasn't going to happen.

Ok it was the fault of their major shareholders, but then it's ok to make them pay their decision, I think (hoping that they're still holding those shares).

By the way, in general my understanding is that the "beholden to their shareholders as a public company" (and thus forced to make the most remunerative decisions) belief is a myth, a public company is free to make ethical choices (if its major shareholders don't oppose them).

They're the same "local laws" that fine foreign companies billions of dollars for doing business in Iran.