Why did China ban LinkedIn?
Global
Yet another social networking company leaves China due to its stringent compliance and censorship laws.
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn said on Thursday that it was shutting down in China later this year, citing: “a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements.”
Twitter, Facebook, and Google all left the Chinese market in 2009-10, given the stringent censorship laws.
LinkedIn, however, agreed to censor some posts in accordance with the Chinese laws, something that the other American companies were reluctant to do. This is probably why the company lasted a decade longer than the others.
Even in 2014, LinkedIn acknowledged the challenge, saying:
“LinkedIn strongly supports freedom of expression and fundamentally disagrees with government censorship. At the same time, we also believe that LinkedIn’s absence in China would deny Chinese professionals a means to connect with others.”
China is one of LinkedIn’s largest markets, with 54 mn users, behind only the United States and India.
Most recently, LinkedIn was also banned in Russia in 2016 when it was seen as a violator of data subjects’ rights on the grounds of sharing of personal information and server localization.
Apart from China (China’s internet operates behind a system of filters known as the Great Firewall) and Russia, there is a substantial list of countries that prevent their citizens from accessing social networks, such as Pakistan, Vietnam, Iran, Turkey, and some African countries.
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