Yahoo's decades-long China controversy and the responsibility of tech companies

It's a perennial debate: whether American tech companies are contributing to government control of the internet in China. But long before Apple ceded control of local user data to the state or Microsoft was found to have partnered with a Chinese military-run university on artificial-intelligence research, there was Yahoo. Back in the early 2000s, Yahoo was operating a popular search engine and email service in China, and it was one of the first tech companies to be found sharing user information with the Chinese government, leading to the imprisonment of a number of Chinese citizens. The ensuing attention and subsequent lawsuit against Yahoo from the families of two political prisoners landed a big blow against the company. All this probably seems like a lifetime ago, but my colleague Eileen Guo has found that the consequences of Yahoo's actions are still very much felt today.