Category: Tech

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Journalism Tech

Google Halts Download of Chinese App Pinduoduo Over Security Concerns

Google Pinduoduo

That’s the headline on my latest story, out yesterday with my colleague Clarence Leong.

It begins:

Alphabet Inc.’s Google blocked downloads of e-commerce app Pinduoduo after versions of it not carried in its app store were found to contain malware, adding to security concerns about Chinese-developed apps.

The Pinduoduo app, which is owned by PDD Holdings Inc., has been suspended from Google Play over security concerns while it conducts an investigation, a Google spokesperson said Tuesday.

Google Play isn’t available to users in China, which is the biggest market for Pinduoduo, a popular e-commerce platform best known for offering deals for goods by banding consumers together. Android users in China can download apps from app stores operated by Chinese tech companies, such as Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc. Pinduoduo had around 750 million monthly active users during the first quarter of last year—the most recent figure released by the company.

Temu, a popular shopping app in the U.S., also run by PDD, hasn’t been affected and is still available to download, according to Google.

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Journalism Tech

Asian Startups’ Confidence in U.S. Banking Wanes After SVB Panic

SVB Asia

That was the headline on a story I wrote last week with my colleagues Raffaele Huang and Clarence Leong.

It began:

SINGAPORE—The failure of Silicon Valley Bank reverberated through startups and venture-capital firms from China to Singapore and India during a roller coaster few days that shook confidence in Asia over reliance on U.S. tech financing.

After frantic efforts trying to secure their money, some startup executives said the incident served as a warning despite U.S. authorities stepping in Sunday to shore up the bank’s customers.

“The SVB problem is an episode that reminds us to review our reliance on investment from the U.S.,” said Wang Guanyan, an executive of a Guangzhou, China-based startup that develops virtual-reality games.

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Journalism Tech

Meta Plans New Layoffs That Could Match Last Year’s in Scope

Meta cuts scoop

That was the headline on a March 10 scoop I wrote with my colleagues Jeff Horwitz, Salvador Rodriguez, and Sam Schechner.

(Mark Zuckerberg announced the cuts a few days later.)

The story began:

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is planning additional layoffs to be announced in multiple rounds over the coming months that in total would be roughly the same magnitude as the 13% cut to its workforce last year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new cuts, the first wave of which is expected to be announced next week, are likely to hit non-engineering roles especially hard, the people said. The company is also expected to shut down some projects and teams in conjunction with these cuts.

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India Journalism Tech

YouTube, Facebook and Instagram Gave Platforms to Indian Cow-Protection Vigilante

Monu Manesar India

That was the headline on March 6 story I wrote with my colleague Jeff Horwitz. It began:

Monu Manesar, the alias of an Indian cow-protection influencer, has spent the past six years documenting his personal war against cattle smugglers on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

In openly violent posts that often clashed with the platforms’ stated content policies, his accounts livestreamed car chases of men suspected to be transporting beef or cows—an animal deeply revered in Hinduism. He and fellow vigilantes filmed themselves ramming vehicles, shooting out truck tires and trading gunfire with alleged smugglers. The posts included anti-Muslim slurs and trophy photos of captives bleeding from the head.

Human-rights organizations warned YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Meta Platforms Inc., parent of Facebook and Instagram, that the exploits posed a threat to human life and encouraged violence against Muslims. The Monu Manesar accounts stayed online and continued to rack up followers, however: 210,000 subscribers on YouTube and nearly 150,000 across Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.

Now police in India are investigating Monu Manesar—whose real name is Mohit Yadav, according to police—and his associates in the deaths of two alleged cow smugglers whose charred bodies were found on Feb. 16 in their burned-out vehicle. The episode has sparked new debate over such vigilantism in India and what role social-media platforms play in fomenting religious violence.

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Journalism Tech

Meta in Talks to Reboot China Business With VR Headsets

Meta Tencent VR China

That’s the headline on my latest story, out last Tuesday with my colleague Raffaele Huang. It begins:

Tencent Holdings Ltd. is in talks to sell Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.’s popular virtual-reality headset in China, home to the world’s biggest pool of internet users.

Tencent, China’s biggest videogame company, has proposed to Meta that it become the exclusive seller of Meta’s Quest 2 headsets in China, people familiar with the discussion said. Tencent has also sought to publish Chinese versions of existing videogames for the device, they said.

The discussions, which began in recent months, are still at an early stage and a deal might not be reached, some of the people said.

Among issues that would need to be addressed are how user data would be handled, whether global macroeconomic conditions would be right for a partnership, and whether any deal between two of the biggest tech companies in the U.S. and China could draw scrutiny from Washington and Beijing, the people said. The two companies would also face China’s tight regulations on videogames.

Currently, the headset and its apps aren’t officially available in China. People there can buy devices from parallel importers on e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Taobao and JD.com Inc., and set up the headsets and download apps with a virtual private network to bypass China’s internet firewall.

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Hong Kong Journalism Tech

Google Faces Pressure in Hong Kong Over Search Results for National Anthem

WSJ Hong Kong national anthem

That’s the headline on my latest story, out Tuesday. It begins:

HONG KONG—Google is under fire from officials and legislators in Hong Kong over a pro-democracy song that is showing up in search results for the national anthem, raising tensions between American tech giants and authorities as Beijing tries to spread patriotism in the city.

Two members of Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing legislative council in recent days have joined the city’s chief secretary in criticizing the Alphabet Inc. unit for showing the song, “Glory to Hong Kong,” among its top results.

Hong Kong’s official anthem has been China’s “March of The Volunteers” since Beijing regained sovereignty over the former British colony 25 years ago. Antigovernment protesters in 2019 adopted “Glory to Hong Kong”—before the imposition of a national security law—and it has featured prominently on Google and YouTube since then.

That has led to confusion in recent weeks at sporting events when the protest anthem was played, angering local officials and triggering an investigation by the Hong Kong police’s organized crime bureau.

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment, though the company has said its search results are determined by algorithms—not by human curation—and that results some might find objectionable can occur when search queries match text on webpages. The company says it only removes content that violates Google’s policies or specific legal obligations.

Last week, a third lawmaker staged a protest with several people at Google’s Hong Kong office. It was a rare show of anger against an American tech firm in a city where access to the internet—unlike in mainland China—has remained mostly unfettered. That is a key reason why global companies operate in the city.

Hong Kong’s No. 2 official, Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki, told media outlets in recent weeks that the government was discussing the search results with Google and its video platform, YouTube.

“It’s about dignity and respect,” said one of the lawmakers, Duncan Chiu.

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Journalism Tech

Kanye West Suspended From Twitter After Swastika Tweet

WSJ story on Kanye West Twitter suspension

That was the headline on my latest, a story out Friday with my colleague Sarah Needleman. It begins:

Twitter Inc. again suspended Kanye West’s account after the musician and designer posted a swastika in a tweet that the social-media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, said violated its rules.

Mr. West, who now legally goes by Ye and had recently returned from a previous Twitter suspension, on Thursday posted a picture of a swastika merged with the Star of David.

Asked on Twitter by a user to “fix Kanye please,” Mr. Musk replied: “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”

Mr. West’s account then began displaying a message saying it was suspended, with no tweets visible.

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Journalism Tech

Twitter Becomes Stage for China Protests Despite Ban by Beijing

WSJ story Twitter China protests

That was the headline on a story out Wednesday I wrote with my colleage Selina Cheng. It begins:

HONG KONG—Twitter is banned in China, but it is proving a critical platform for getting videos and images of protests occurring across the nation out to the rest of the world.

China’s robust internet censors have sprung into action to scrub domestic social media of photos and video streams showing demonstrations against harsh Covid restrictions, spurring citizens to circumvent the nation’s Great Firewall.

Twitter has been blocked in China since 2009, but people in the country are able to access it using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which disguise their locations. They can then send material via the platform’s messaging system to a handful of widely followed Twitter users, who in turn broadcast it globally.

One Twitter user who lives outside China and goes by the name of Li Laoshi, or Teacher Li, said he has been receiving more than a dozen messages per second with protest material at some points since public unrest erupted—the same number he used to get a day—so that he could repost them publicly.

“My daily routine is: wake up, post online, and feed my cat,” he said. The goal of the account, created in May 2020, is to record events that are subject to censorship in China, his profile states. It had more than 759,000 followers as of Wednesday, more than triple the number before protests began, according to social-media analytics site Social Blade.

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India Tech

Meta-Backed Meesho Is Beating Amazon, Walmart in Race for Indian Shoppers

Meesho India

That’s the headline on my newest story, out Saturday. It begins:

An upstart e-commerce service is winning more new shoppers in India than Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart, posing a challenge to the U.S. retailing titans, which have plowed billions of dollars into the world’s biggest untapped digital market.

Bengaluru-based Meesho is leading the burgeoning social-commerce sector, allowing users to sell items by sharing product listings with friends via Meta Platforms Inc.’s popular WhatsApp messaging service, along with Facebook and Instagram. Meta is also an investor in Meesho, with an undisclosed stake.

Meesho was the world’s most-downloaded shopping app during the first half of this year, according to app analytics firm Apptopia, with shoppers pointing to its ease of use, wide selection of products and low prices. Some 127 million people downloaded the app, which is available only in India, compared with 81 million downloads for Amazon and 50 million for Flipkart during the period.

Amazon and Flipkart are “more for the top 1%-5% of the population” in terms of income, specializing in more expensive goods such as smartphones and televisions, said Meesho Chief Financial Officer Dhiresh Bansal.

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India Tech

Proton CEO Is Shutting Down India VPN Servers to Protest Cybersecurity Rules

Proton VPN India

That’s the headline on my newest story, an exclusive out Thursday. It begins:

The Swiss company behind well-known virtual-private-network service Proton VPN is pulling its servers from India, the latest provider to do so in response to new government rules that companies and rights groups say threaten users’ privacy.

India’s agency overseeing computer security will effective Sunday require VPN operators in the country to collect information such as customers’ names, email addresses and the IP addresses they use to connect to the internet. The companies must maintain the data for at least five years and furnish it to authorities when asked.

India’s move will undermine internet freedom and endanger activists and whistleblowers, who often use VPNs to protect their identities from the government, Proton AG Chief Executive Andy Yen said in an interview Thursday. Virtual private networks let internet users shield their location and identities online by encrypting and routing their traffic through “tunnels” between their services and customers’ computers.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect. I find it really sad that the world’s largest democracy is taking this path,” Mr. Yen said. “On paper India is supposedly taking a different path from China and Russia,” where similar rules are in place, he said.

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A related story from a few weeks back is here.