By Aaron Tilley
Zoom Video Communications Inc.'s rise as a lifeline for many
businesses and individuals during the pandemic is drawing the
company into a fraught area that has caused problems at much larger
tech firms: policing its service.
Zoom has been criticized by some lawmakers and users in recent
months after it blocked public events planned on its service around
politically sensitive topics. At times, those who it blocked as
well as their allies have accused the company of censorship,
echoing charges some lawmakers last week leveled at the chief
executives of Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google-parent
Alphabet Inc.
Zoom was founded in 2011 largely to provide video-communications
services to businesses. But when Covid-19 struck, Zoom won popular
adoption, including by many academic institutions. Many of those
users have relied on a free service the company has offered.
Corporate customers still account for the bulk of its revenue.
Zoom said users may not use its service to break the law,
promote violence, display nudity or commit other infractions. The
policies are similar, though not as sweeping, as those of
social-media companies that also target posts where groups
masquerade as others. The videoconferencing app's rules have
evolved this year, and the company has said it wasn't well-prepared
to handle politically sensitive issues when its use took off during
the pandemic.
In cases where Zoom has taken action and blocked a public event,
the company has said it acted once it became aware of a virtual
gathering that would transgress its rule or local laws. "Zoom does
not monitor meeting content," a company spokeswoman said.
Zoom in September blocked the use of its service for a webinar
at San Francisco State University. The meeting was due to feature
Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist
organization.
The Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel group, said it lobbied Zoom to
block the meeting. Zoom, which didn't identify who alerted it to
the meeting, said it was blocked because Ms. Khaled's affiliation
with a group the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization
violated its service terms. Facebook and Alphabet's YouTube also
removed the meeting, saying it violated their policies around
supporting people or organizations considered dangerous.
Zoom also blocked a series of follow-up Zoom webinars in October
organized, in part, by a pro-Palestinian group in conjunction with
staff at several U.S. and overseas universities to address what
they said was censorship by the company. Zoom's action was earlier
reported by BuzzFeed News. Zoom again said the meeting violated its
rules, because organizers said Ms. Khaled was scheduled to appear.
Meetings about Zoom's alleged censorship where she wasn't due to
appear were allowed to take place, the company said.
"It's an issue of concern to everyone who is in higher education
who is more or less dependent on Zoom," said Andrew Ross, a New
York University professor of social and cultural analysis and
moderator of the event.
It wasn't Zoom's first exposure to the minefield of
international politics. In June, it responded to a request from the
Chinese government and blocked accounts of activists involved in a
videoconference on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Zoom took
action not just against accounts from participants in China, but
also overseas, including in the U.S., saying it was complying with
Chinese law. It later restored the accounts outside China saying
they were suspended by mistake and promised to do better in the
future.
Tech companies increasingly are caught between those who say
they need to take more responsibility for potentially harmful or
controversial content people disseminate using their services, and
others who accuse the companies of censoring certain viewpoints.
But the battle has previously focused on social-media platforms,
rather than a communications tool like Zoom.
"The more visible Zoom is, the more pressure on them to be
content police," said Daphne Keller, a former Google lawyer and now
a program director at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center.
"Content moderation is a big thankless job," she said. "You're
constantly doing a job that users disagree with, or half the public
disagrees with, and you get yelled at by Democrats and
Republicans."
Zoom says it is looking to better handle content issues, but it
is relatively small, with around 3,000 employees in total. Twitter
has more than 5,000 employees, in comparison, and Facebook has
around 15,000 people dedicated just to handling content moderation.
Both have years of experience dealing with such dicey issues, and
have evolved their policies
Aparna Bawa, Zoom's chief operating officer, said it is adding
staff to its trust and safety team to deal with sensitive issues.
"We've taken significant steps," she said at The Wall Street
Journal Tech Live conference last month.
The China incident, she said, sparked soul searching at Zoom.
She said the company aims to "balance both our obligations in local
jurisdictions and our own principles for the free and open exchange
of ideas."
Zoom says it is becoming more careful about what events to block
or allow. The Council on Foreign Relations in September held a
virtual meeting with Iran's foreign minister. The minister was
sanctioned by the U.S. last year, so the meeting would have
violated Zoom's rules. It allowed the meeting to take place after
the think tank showed it had approval from the U.S. government for
a prior meeting with the minister.
Zoom is having to adapt in other areas, too, because of its
unexpected mass popularity. Early in the pandemic, Zoom struggled
to deal with a surge of instances of "Zoombombing" -- where people
gain unauthorized access to a meeting and share hate-speech or
pornographic images -- that became a scourge early when users
didn't properly lock down user sessions. Zoom adjusted its
software, by changing default settings and introducing virtual
waiting rooms, to prevent outsiders from gaining access to
meetings, though instances of Zoomboming still happen.
Zoom's efforts to moderate content also have made the company a
target of U.S. lawmaker criticism. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida,
along with other senators, asked Zoom to explain its actions
surrounding the takedown of the Tiananmen Square-themed meeting. In
a letter, Josh Kallmer, the company's government relations head,
said Zoom wasn't prepared to handle politically sensitive issues.
It would be more sensitive in handling government requests for
account removals, he said, and reject Chinese censorship requests
on meetings outside China.
"We believe that our presence -- and the option for citizens to
use a service like Zoom -- in countries like China and others with
restrictive laws is creating more room for discourse and open
communication to happen," Mr. Kallmer told senators in a letter
viewed by the Journal.
Write to Aaron Tilley at aaron.tilley@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 03, 2020 09:55 ET (14:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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