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"The software reportedly could set off a "Uighur alarm" when it pinpointed someone from the minority group. Uighurs are a largely Muslim group, and have been subjected to extensive persecution by the hands of the Chinese government."

"Information collected includes dates of birth, addresses, marital status, along with photographs, political associations, relatives and social media IDs. It collates Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and even TikTok accounts, as well as news stories, criminal records and corporate misdemeanours. While much of the information has been "scraped" from open-source material, some profiles have information which appears to have been sourced from confidential bank records, job applications and psychological profiles."

"My job was to use technology to make the low-level content moderators' work more efficient. For example, we created a tool that allowed them to throw a video clip into our database and search for similar content. When I was at ByteDance, we received multiple requests from the bases to develop an algorithm that could automatically detect when a Douyin user spoke Uyghur, and then cut off the livestream session. The moderators had asked for this because they didn't understand the language. Streamers speaking ethnic languages and dialects that Mandarin-speakers don't understand would receive a warning to switch to Mandarin."

"As part of her undergraduate research, Alice Xue studied whether a machine could pass a Visual Turing Test by producing images that people cannot tell were made by a machine. Xue trained an algorithm using 2,192 traditional Chinese landscape paintings collected from art museums. The resulting AI-generated paintings were mistaken for being made by humans 55 per cent of the time."

"The IJOP is a massive database combining personal data scooped from automated online monitoring and information manually entered into a bespoke app by officials. It includes information ranging from people's physical characteristics to the colour of their car and their personal preference of using the front or back door to enter their house, as well as software they use online and their regular contacts."

"China's biggest tech stocks dropped sharply after the country approved a strict data privacy law, prompting renewed concerns among investors over the intensity of Beijing's regulatory crackdown."

"BEIJING: Handing over a piping hot meal at exactly the time promised, Chinese food delivery driver Zhuang Zhenhua triumphantly tapped his job as complete through the Meituan app -- and was immediately fined half of his earnings. A glitch meant it inaccurately registered him as being late and he incurred an automatic penalty -- one of many ways, he said, delivery firms exploit millions of workers even as the sector booms. Authorities have launched a crackdown demanding firms including Meituan and Alibaba's Ele.me ensure basic labour protections such as proper compensation, insurance, as well as tackling algorithms that effectively encourage dangerous driving."

"The US battle with TikTok over data privacy concerns and Chinese influence has been heating up for years, and recent measures have brought college campuses to the forefront - with a number of schools banning the app entirely on campus wifi. Students have responded, of course, on TikTok. Taking advantage of viral sounds, they have expressed outrage at their favourite app being blocked at universities like Auburn, Oklahoma and Texas A&M in the past few months. "Do they not realize people in college are actually adults?" one user wrote. "We should make our own independent decision to use TikTok or not," another said."

"Hu Xijin, a former editor of the ruling Communist Party's Global Times newspaper, warned that the use of the health code for purposes other than epidemic control "damages the authority" of the monitoring system and would chip away at the public's support for it. His post on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, on Monday became a hashtag that was among the most-searched earlier this week, drawing 280 million views."

"Cybersecurity researchers say the My2022 mobile app - the official app of the Beijing Winter Olympics - has serious security vulnerabilities and that "all Olympian audio is being collected, analyzed and saved on Chinese servers." Why This Matters: The Chinese government is mandating all Olympic athletes, coaches, and attendees use the My2022 app and, as of Thursday morning, the app is still available in the Apple and Android U.S. app stores where Americans can download it too."