Zoom, a U.S. video-conferencing company, acknowledged the Chinese government demanded that it shut down the accounts and meetings of prominent Chinese activists for “illegal” activity.
The company said in a blog post Thursday that the Chinese government notified it in May and early June of four large events to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre that would be hosted via the video chat service. The events, including meeting details, had been publicized on social media, according to Zoom.
“The Chinese government informed us that this activity is illegal in China and demanded that Zoom terminate the meetings and host accounts,” the company said.
“Going forward Zoom will not allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China,” the company added.
The video-conferencing service, which has been heavily used during the coronavirus pandemic, had already been under scrutiny over security issues and its links to China.
Zoom insisted it did not provide any user information or meeting content to the Chinese government after it was reported Wednesday that the accounts of Chinese activists who are based in the United States were closed.
“We do not have a backdoor that allows someone to enter a meeting without being visible,” Zoom added.
Zoom ended three of the four meetings and closed the host accounts associated with the three meetings because they included participants from mainland China. The other meeting was not disturbed because there were no participants from mainland China.
Zoom said it made a mistake by closing the accounts of two Chinese activists in the U.S. and one in Hong Kong, all three of which have been reactivated.
The company also said it should not have shut down the meetings and instead should have blocked participants by country, but it does not currently have the ability to do so. Zoom said it would work to develop technology in the coming days to enable it to remove or block a participant based on country.
“We could have anticipated this need. While there would have been significant repercussions, we also could have kept the meetings running,” it said.
