China Presses Tech Firms to Police the Internet

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Wall Street Journal:

WUZHEN, China—Picture an internet where tech companies are deputized as crime-fighters, where censors keep radical views in check and where governments work together to achieve global order in cyberspace.

 

That is China’s vision, and its third-annual World Internet Conference that ended Friday was aimed at proselytizing that view to tech executives and government leaders who assembled here from around the world.

 

China’s efforts to promote its concept of the internet had fresh resonance as Western minds now debate whether social media sites should screen out fake news, or if smartphone makers should help police gain access to the secrets locked away in the devices of suspected criminals.

 

As U.S. tech companies wring their hands over their social responsibilities, China presents a clear-cut alternative: nothing outweighs national security interests, as defined by the country’s top leaders.

 

“The private sector must take on the responsibility and duty to fight terrorism,” Yu Weimin, vice president of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the online retailer and one of China’s biggest technology companies, said at the conference.

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Our new Internet overlords?