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A Xiaomi Phone Might’ve Shipped With A Censorship List In Europe. Now What?
European researchers say they found hundreds of terms the phone could block, including “Tiananmen” and “Hong Kong Independence.” There’s no playbook for what comes next
This summer, the Lithuanian government went public with an astounding finding. A Xiaomi phone sold in Europe — the Mi 10T 5G — could censor approximately 450 words and phrases, it said. The blocklist wasn’t active, but could be activated remotely. It was filled with political terms, including “Democratic Movement” and “Long live Taiwan’s independence.”
After the government published its findings, things got weird. The list swelled to more than 1,000 terms, including hundreds of non-political terms like “pornography,” seemingly to turn the political blocklist into something more generic. Then, it disappeared. “They reacted,” Margiris Abukevicius, Lithuania’s vice minister for defense, told me. “It wasn’t publicized from their side.”
The accusations, which Xiaomi disputes, clarified just how fraught the West’s relationship is with China’s growing technology power. As China-based tech companies like Xiaomi and TikTok flourish, there’s still no playbook in North America or Europe to deal with…
