Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back Into China
Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back Into
China
By MIKE ISAAC NOV. 22, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief
executive, has cultivated relationships with China’s leaders, including President
Xi Jinping. He has paid multiple visits to the country to meet its top internet
executives. He has made an effort to learn Mandarin.
Inside Facebook, the work to enter China runs far deeper.
The social network has quietly developed software to suppress
posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas,
according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for
anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help
Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked,
these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the
people added.
Facebook has restricted content in other countries
before, such as Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, in keeping with the typical
practice of American internet companies that generally comply with government
requests to block certain content after it is posted. Facebook blocked roughly
55,000 pieces of content in about 20 countries between July 2015 and December
2015, for example. But the new feature takes that a step further by preventing
content from appearing in feeds in China in the first place.
Facebook does not intend to suppress the posts itself.
Instead, it would offer the software to enable a third party — in this case,
most likely a partner Chinese company — to monitor popular stories and topics
that bubble up as users share them across the social network, the people said.
Facebook’s partner would then have full control to decide whether those posts
should show up in users’ feeds.
The current and former Facebook employees caution that
the software is one of many ideas the company has discussed with respect to
entering China and, like many experiments inside Facebook, it may never see the
light of day. The feature, whose code is visible to engineers inside the
company, has so far gone unused, and there is no indication that Facebook has
offered it to the authorities in China.
But the project illustrates the extent to which Facebook
may be willing to compromise one of its core mission statements, “to make the
world more open and connected,” to gain access to a market of 1.4 billion
Chinese people. Even as Facebook faces pressure to continue growing — Mr.
Zuckerberg has often asked where the company’s next billion users will come
from — China has been cordoned off to the social network since 2009 because of
the government’s strict rules around censorship of user content.
The suppression software has been contentious within
Facebook, which is separately grappling with what should or should not be shown
to its users after the American presidential election’s unexpected outcome
spurred questions over fake news on the social network. Several employees who
were working on the project have left Facebook after expressing misgivings
about it, according to the current and former employees.
A Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement, “We have long
said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and
learning more about the country.” She added that the company had made no
decisions on its approach into China.
Facebook’s tricky position underscores the difficulties
that many American internet companies have had gaining access to China. For
years, companies like Google and Twitter have been blocked there for refusing
to yield to the government’s demands around censorship. In 2010, Google said it
was directing users of its search engine in China to its service in Hong Kong,
because of censorship and intrusion from hackers. Other companies, like the
professional social networking service LinkedIn, agreed to censor some content
on their platforms in China.
The current climate for internet companies in China may
not help Facebook. In August, the ride-hailing giant Uber gave up an expensive
battle to crack the Chinese market, selling its Chinese business to an
incumbent rival, Didi Chuxing. More broadly, China has streamlined and
tightened its controls over the internet under President Xi, targeting
influential social media celebrities and adding new reviews to popular online
video sites.
Still, some officials responsible for China’s tech policy
have been willing to entertain the idea of Facebook’s operating in the country.
It would legitimize China’s strict style of internet governance, and if done
according to official standards, would enable easy tracking of political
opinions deemed problematic. Even so, resistance remains at the top levels of
Chinese leadership.
Some analysts have said Facebook’s best option is to
follow a model laid out by other internet companies and cooperate with a local
company or investor. Finding a partner — and potentially allowing it to own a
majority stake in Facebook’s China operation — would take the burden of
censorship and surveillance off the Silicon Valley company. It would also let
Facebook rely on a local company’s government connections and experience to
deal with the difficult task of communicating with Beijing.
Facebook and Chinese officials have had intermittent
talks in the last few years about the social network’s entering the market,
according to employees who were involved in the discussions, though the two
sides have been unable to reach a compromise.
Facebook currently sells advertising for some Chinese
businesses from its Hong Kong office. Among its customers are state-media sites
that act as the propaganda arm of the Chinese government, and that operate
official accounts where they post articles. Chinese citizens who wish to gain
access to Facebook must tunnel in using a technology known as a virtual private
network, or VPN.
It’s unclear when the suppression tool originated, but
the project picked up momentum in the last year, as engineers were plucked from
other parts of Facebook to work on the effort, the current and former employees
said. The project was led by Vaughan Smith, a vice president for mobile, corporate
and business development at Facebook, they said. Like Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Smith
speaks a smattering of Mandarin.
Unveiling a new censorship tool in China could lead to
more demands to suppress content from other countries. The fake-news problem, which
has hit countries across the globe, has already led some governments to use the
issue as an excuse to target sites of political rivals, or shut down social
media sites altogether.
Over the summer, several Facebook employees who were
working on the suppression tool left the company, the current and former
employees said. Internally, so many employees asked about the project and its
ambitions on an internal forum that, in July, it became a topic at one of
Facebook’s weekly Friday afternoon question-and-answer sessions.
Mr. Zuckerberg was at the event and answered a question
from the audience about the tool. He told the gathering that Facebook’s China
plans were nascent. But he also struck a pragmatic tone about the future,
according to employees who attended the session.
“It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling
conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,” Mr. Zuckerberg said,
according to employees.
Paul Mozur contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
A version of this article appears in print on November
23, 2016, on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: For Facebook,
Censorship Tool Could Reopen a Door to China.
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