Time to boycott Flickr for Yahoo collaboration with Chinese Government?

TJM

You might have noticed the story in today's Irish Times mentioning that Yahoo China has been cooperating with the Chinese government in relation to Tibet:

The official line is that 13 innocent civilians were killed by Tibetan "mobs". China released "most wanted" photographs of suspects captured on film, and the images were carried on Chinese versions of websites Yahoo! and MSN. This has led to further criticism of the role of international internet companies in assisting in tracking down dissidents.

"It beggars belief that Yahoo! is acting as China's right-hand man in its brutal crackdown on Tibetan protesters," said Free Tibet campaign director Matt Whitticase. "Yahoo! knows very well that these protesters will have no access to legal representation and that either execution or long prison sentences and torture awaits any protester arrested in Lhasa. Free Tibet Campaign calls on all Yahoo! subscribers to cancel immediately their accounts."

As you all know, Flickr is now owned by Yahoo. This isn't the first time that Yahoo has been implicated in suppressing dissidents in China. While other companies - such as Google and Microsoft - have been complicit to a greater or lesser degree in facilitating Chinese censorship, reports from the US appear to indicate that Yahoo has gone even further in actively cooperating with the Chinese government to identify dissidents and has been sued in two separate lawsuits in the US for doing so.

So has the time come to start boycotting Yahoo? I'm certainly looking at ways of backing-up my Flickr photostream.

Thirdfox

I'll bite... let me first lay out my background - as a Chinese born Irish national I believe that I have a pretty unique view on what is happening in China and Western media.

Firstly that report by the Irish Times seems a bit sensationalist:

"Chinese officials have admitted for the first time that live rounds were used to quell the protests while hopes of closer ties to self-ruled Taiwan appear to have been dashed by what Taiwanese see as a shocking response."

"The crackdown in Tibet has severely dented hopes of closer ties to Taiwan and has ratcheted up tensions in one of Asia's biggest flashpoints. Today's presidential election in self-ruled Taiwan looked like a sure thing for the pro-Beijing Kuomintang, but shock at the sight of Chinese troops attacking monks in Tibet has led some voters to reconsider."

- The more pro-Chinese KMT presidential candidate has been voted in with more than a 17% margin by the electorate. The referendum on whether Taiwan should seek UN membership under that name (rather than the official "Republic of China") has also been defeated. The people on the island of Taiwan are more concerned about stagnation of the economy than who is ultimately in charge.

"After days of official statements that no lethal force had been used to quell unrest, official news agency Xinhua reported that four people had been shot and wounded in southwestern Sichuan province after police opened fire in self-defence.

- How is this contradictory to what they stated before? The original statement was that no lethal force had been used in Lhasa and Tibet, something the authorities still claim (as far as I know). Sichuan disturbances/riots are in a different province and happened at a later stage.

The point has been made on other discussion forums that if this kind of mass rioting took place in the US, the national guard would undoubtably be called in to restore order.

"The official line is that 13 innocent civilians were killed by Tibetan "mobs". China released "most wanted" photographs of suspects captured on film, and the images were carried on Chinese versions of websites Yahoo! and MSN. This has led to further criticism of the role of international internet companies in assisting in tracking down dissidents.

- How is this different to the US releasing a list of the Iraqi most wanted list? They even made these pictures into playing cards... If you don't subscribe to the view that the people who were involved in the killing and rioting are acting as criminals I do not think you can try to prevent the local Chinese websites from thinking so. Oh and for an update - the official death toll is up to 19 unfortunately.




Moving onto the issue of boycotts - if you feel that strongly about the issue then a boycott might be necessary. But I would ask that people educate themselves about all the facts (and that means taking into account of both the Western and Chinese views) before rushing to judgment.

Just like people calling for a boycott of the Olympic games. I am really tired of explaining the Chinese viewpoint to Irish people because the media refuse to do so (I think the BBC is one of fairest news outlets there is but other stations like Sky give a decidedly biased view). Politicising the games hasn't brought about change when the Americans boycotted the Moscow games or the Soviets boycotting the LA games - do people think that it's going to improve the situation here? For me, this will just lead to the feeling amongst Chinese people that the "West" is against them and trying to make them conform to their ideals of what the world should be like - something that any nation would resent.

In fact, if you are boycotting China - why not boycott it completely? Stop purchasing Chinese goods too. That would certainly make a greater political impact and may get you results (though probably not the ones you want).



Finally, if my post seems harsher than usual than I apologise - I have always tried to keep a discussion on China civil but after stating the same points over and over again and effectively being ignored by most of the posters who seem to just want an opportunity to bash China on biased information I feel like I'm just banging my head off a brick wall.

If the government of Ireland does make official moves to chastise China then I would most certainly make a protest to my local representative.

TJM - I would like to know if you do know why the Chinese feel the way they do over Taiwan, Falun Gong, Tibet etc. You are of course free to disagree with their opinions but I would hope that you try to get a more balanced view on affairs.

Spyral

well ignore flicker and use pix.ie !!

Thirdfox

Here are the examples of all the recent threads on China (that I have responded to, foolishly believing that the internet is someplace where frank discussion can take place over important issues) - you may have to go forward a few pages to get to where my posts giving the other side's story appears. Some posters have thanked me for providing a bigger picture of what is happening (which is why I give such detailed responses) but most posters either ignore my posts or just attack the posts irrationally.

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055245162&highlight=taiwan
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055257704
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055256319
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055255996
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055240594
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055247624

And to answer your question about flickr - (unsurprisingly) I do not think a boycott is necessary.

Mellor

Not being able to as detailed a response as Third above, I will keep this short.
Suggesting a boycott, to me, appears as a sad stance against corpprate world in general. Many groups will take any sort of chance to blacken the names uber-companies.

Above all Yahoo are media based. They used there media position to release images of people who were wanted in the country which the paticular branch of Yahoo was based.

The pictures also appeared on MSN, has anyone suggested that see boycott microsoft, lets all turn of windows based PCs now, of couse not.

Once again, its media, just like the US lists of Iraqis, Afghans and other most wanted (one of whom was hiding in Ireland)

What about the london attacks, there pictures where everywhere. Or a boy that was killed in the UK, the attack was on camera, pictures were released on the internet.

Above all, all these people were viewed as being criminals.

nilhg

I have a deep distrust of these type of calls for boycots at long remove from the original problem, the only valid reason I could imagine to leave flickr would be if they start to censor pictures from people in a trouble spot.

As long as Tibetans (or anyone else) who manage to get their pictures onto flickr (and any hassle they have getting them there is outside the control of flickr) are treated the same as anyone else then what else can they do.

bradnailer

Don't have a problem not using flickr it's a pain in the ass looking at pictures on it.

elven

Besides the tenuous link to flickr I don't think this has a whole lot to do with photography guys, valid as the discussion might be, it belongs elsewhere.