A new complaint published by the The Intercept realizes that the Apple would be helping to expand the censorship in china for sites in Hong Kongsilently.
The vehicle said there was a list of prohibited sites for users — from the Chinese company Tencent — in the Hong Kong region and that the Safari would basically be following that list, banning domains.
This was discovered after some users tried to access the GitLab website through Safari and received a peculiar message warning that the website had been “locked for user safety”, accused of “providing misinformation”.
It is worth remembering that Tencent is the company behind WeChat and also owns the game League of Legends, as well as part of Epic Games. It basically operates Safari’s “Safe Browsing Filter” in China on behalf of Apple, and is now expanding that censorship to Hong Kong.
As the publication revealed, Apple would have said that it would use this list only for Safari users within mainland China, most likely to comply with the country’s laws. However, Apple would have “discreetly” added a note to its privacy policy sometime after November 24, 2022, stating that “Tencent’s list would be used for devices in Hong Kong as well”.
As a Chinese company, Tencent was already expected to bow to local laws, however, as Citizen Lab researcher Jeffrey Knockel told the newspaper, the surprise is that Apple does the same through the Chinese company: “It is problematic not to only in principle, but also in practice,” he commented.
This measure was possibly taken to maintain good relations with the Chinese government; as we might suspect, Apple declined to comment on the case.
via iMore