Taiwan’s defence ministry has raised the alarm about disinformation attacks during the recent Chinese military drills and alerted local media to the dangers of helping spread disinformation. Last week Beijing launched three days of military exercises near Taiwan, in retaliation for President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with the US House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in the US. Taiwan’s military and civilian analysts confirmed that Taiwan was also targeted with information warfare. “Last year’s military exercise and this year’s military exercise both used a combination of information and military actions to affect our…
Tag: Media
TikTok unveils European data security plan amid calls for US ban
TikTok has announced a data security regime for protecting user information across Europe, as political pressure increases in the US to ban the social video app. The plan, known as Project Clover, involves user data being stored on servers in Ireland and Norway at an annual cost of €1.2bn (£1.1bn), while any data transfers outside Europe will be vetted by a third-party IT company. TikTok is under pressure in the US and Europe over its links to China via its Beijing-based parent, ByteDance. On Tuesday the White House gave its…
TikTok has been spying on reporters – exactly no one is surprised
Hello and welcome to TechScape. Alex is now off on paternity leave, and in his place a rotating cast of writers will give their takes on the world of tech. Apologies to any readers who have begged Alex for fewer stories about Elon Musk and crypto, but in a post-Twitter takeover world there are no quiet weeks for tech reporters. In the last few weeks, Musk has handed over documents for the latest edition of the “Twitter Files” to controversial author Alex Berenson (with the not-so revelatory news that Twitter…
Job cuts and falling shares: how did it all go so wrong for the US tech sector?
Amazon announced 18,000 job cuts, Apple’s share price fell below $2tn (£1.7tn) and there was more bad news from Tesla: it has been another tough week for big US tech firms. But this has not been a one-off. The ongoing drama at Twitter since its takeover by Elon Musk in October has taken place against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty, retrenchment from aggressive expansion plans and China’s disruptive transition from Covid lockdowns to rocketing case numbers as restrictions ease. In fact this week’s events have been a continuation of…
TikTok’s parent company fires four workers for improper access of user data
ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of popular video app TikTok, said on Thursday that some employees improperly accessed TikTok user data of two journalists and were no longer employed by the company, an email seen by Reuters shows. ByteDance employees accessed the data as part of an unsuccessful effort to investigate leaks of company information earlier this year, and were aiming to identify potential connections between two journalists, a former BuzzFeed reporter and a Financial Times reporter, and company employees, the email from ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen said. The…
China v Jimmy Lai: a tycoon, a trial and the erosion of Hong Kong’s rule of law
Even before his jailing, Jimmy Lai knew he faced a grim future, but insisted on fighting his cause. “Without fighting, we don’t have hope. We don’t know when we’ll win, but we’re so sure we’re on the right side of history, and time is on our side,” the founder of the vocal pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily told the Guardian in August 2020 while on bail, five days after his arrest over allegations of foreign collusion. Beijing’s national security law had come into effect two months earlier. Police had…
China accused of flooding social media with spam to cover up Covid protests
An attempt to flood social media platforms with spam in order to drown out coverage of the lockdown protests in China was probably backed by the Chinese government, according to analysis by a US cybersecurity firm. Recorded Future found that networks of coordinated bot accounts were targeting non-Chinese social media platforms to crowd out genuine posts about the demonstrations with spam content and by hijacking hashtags of names of Chinese cities. It said China’s government was most likely to be behind the tactic. Charity Wright, a senior analyst at Recorded…
New Zealand woman takes Chinese media site to human rights tribunal over ban
A woman is taking New Zealand’s biggest Chinese-language media site to a human rights review tribunal after she claims she was banned from its online message board for posting political content. May Moncur migrated from China 20 years ago and is a permanent resident of New Zealand. The Auckland employment advocate has used the New Zealand-based media company SkyKiwi for more than 15 years, regularly posting links about migrant exploitation or offering employment advice on its most popular message board, “FML”. The company promotes itself as the most influential Chinese…
French regulator called on to withdraw licence allowing CGTN to broadcast from London
France’s media regulator is under pressure to withdraw a licence that allows the Chinese state broadcaster to beam its programmes across Europe from a studio in west London. Ofcom revoked the organisation’s licence to transmit in the UK last year but the China Global Television Network (CGTN) was able to continue broadcasting following authorisation from the French authority. The Chinese network has produced English-language programmes, including those presented by a former BBC Wales Today presenter, from its European hub in Chiswick since 2018. When Ofcom revoked its UK licence, CGTN…
BBC says Chinese police assaulted and detained its reporter at Shanghai protest
Chinese police assaulted and detained a BBC journalist covering a protest in Shanghai on Sunday, releasing him after several hours, the broadcaster has said. “The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai,” a spokesperson for the British public service broadcaster said. “He was held for several hours before being released. During his arrest, he was beaten and kicked by the police. This happened while he was working as an accredited journalist.” Shanghai is one…