Xiaomi filters certain terms on its smartphones
A climate of mistrust has broken out in the global economy in recent years. The nation hardly plays a role in this, but one conflict has particularly stood out since 2016. At that time, US President Donald Trump came to power and started a trade conflict with China that continues to this day. As a result, Huawei in particular continued to lose ground, and a new report these days is strengthening distrust of Xiaomi.
The manufacturer of mobile end devices, which has so far mainly attracted attention with its affordable hardware, maintains an internal list of words that are filtered out by the device. This is what the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense found out and therefore advises against buying and further using the smartphones. The list was discovered on a Xiaomi Mi 10T.
It turned out that the filter function is not activated by default in Europe. The list contains 449 key words in Chinese characters, such as “Liberate Tibet” or “Independence Taiwan”. The main problem here is that terms could also be secretly filtered for the European market. Because an update would take place without the knowledge of the user.
Smartphones are thus becoming dangerous tools for censorship abroad. Even if the list is most likely only active in China, the publication is likely to severely damage confidence in the manufacturer. Those in charge of the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense even go so far that they generally advise against using Chinese hardware.
Own opinion:
The latest release is shocking, but it should hardly come as a surprise to many people. It is now widely known that the Chinese government is censoring domestic communications and that any smartphone could be used for state propaganda, but it does give a queasy feeling.
Therefore, everyone is well advised not to use smartphones from China. As unbeatable as the devices are inexpensive, the use of the Chinese government for state propaganda or manipulation is just as dangerous.
Via The Next Web
