LinkedIn blocking Tiananmen Square posts in China

LinkedIn, the professional networking social media site, has blocked posts related to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests from being seen by Chinese users—and everyone else from seeing posts made by Chinese users on the anniversary, along with whatever else the Chinese government finds distasteful.

The company says the censoring, or “filtering,” is essential to its ability to continue working in the country. With this, LinkedIn joins Microsoft’s Bing, a search site, as another American firm complying with Chinese restrictions on free speech in exchange for access to the growing market. China’s “Great Firewall” blocks tech firms that don’t comply, like Facebook and Twitter, both to censor banned political content and protect domestic competitors.

“But, as we said at the time of our launch in February, it’s clear to us that in order to create value for our members in China and around the world, we will need to implement the Chinese government’s restrictions on content, when and to the extent required,” LinkedIn said in a statement, adding that the company is “strongly in support of freedom of expression.” 

With 5 million users in China, LinkedIn has a long history in the country, being accessible in English since its launch in 2003. It created a site in simplified Chinese this winter, in a bid to bring its services to a market of 140 million professionals. 

Both the English language and simplified Chinese sites now censor Tiananmen Square content, according to Hani Durzy, director of corporate communications for LinkedIn.

A report by Quartz early Wednesday noting LinkedIn’s blocking of Tiananmen Square content said that the network had blocked those posts worldwide. A company spokesman refuted this, saying LinkedIn mistakenly sent notices to users in Hong Kong, where Internet rules are more liberal, saying their content would be filtered on a global scale. According to LinkedIn, this mistake caused the confusion.

“So, bottom line — we are filtering certain content from appearing to members who are within China. We are also filtering certain content posted by members within China from appearing anywhere,” LinkedIn spokesman Durzy told Al Jazeera in an email.

“But we are not filtering any content that originates outside of China from the rest of the world,” he said.

LinkedIn’s policy in this case threads a fine needle, however. If LinkedIn blocks content produced in China from “appearing anywhere,” that also constitutes a global block.

“Technically I suppose you could say that,” Durzy said.

But Durzy said there’s a good reason for this. He explained that LinkedIn blocking the content posted in China protects the user who posts it from having a screenshot boomerang back at them through the Internet—putting the user at risk.

“The safety of our users is a huge priority for us,” he said, adding that the site is not intended for “social or political commentary” anyway. 

Durzy declined say what kind of content will get shot down by the company, but explained that the list of banned topics came from the Chinese government censor.

Information that gets censored in China includes not only references to Tiananmen Square protests, but also dissident speech, Tibetan freedom sites, news about corruption by officials and anything related to Falun Gong, a banned religious group.

Cynthia Wong, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that blocking content globally that’s produced in a censoring country could create a troubling precedent for free speech across the Internet.

“The best practice is if companies are asked to take down content by a government, they’ll only take it down in that country, but leave it up around the world,” Wong told Al Jazeera. “If you take down content from the entire world, you’re taking the internet down to the lowest common denominator.”

She said that some European countries also demand sites remove content that violates local laws against Nazi propaganda or Holocaust denial, but that these pages are still available elsewhere on the Internet.

For countries that might demand more restrictions, companies need to plan ahead.

“They need to have human rights policies in place to either prevent or address human rights harm that can flow from complying with government demands,” Wong said.

As for LinkedIn’s rationale that it’s protecting Chinese web users from retribution by their own government, Wong acknowledged that there are real risks to netizens, but said that Chinese people posting controversial content are aware of what they’re doing.

“I think the user is taking a calculated risk in posting,” Wong said. “Chinese Internet users are quite sophisticated.”

Blocking that from the rest of the world isn’t doing the poster any favors.

“I think that does a disservice to the world and to people in China who want to get their voice heard,” Wong said. “It’s a bit of a difficult precedent because any other government might demand the same thing.”