If you are by any chance out of the loop, Xiaomi is currently under fire in Lithuania as the country’s Deputy Defence Minister criticized the company for imposing censorship to its smartphones. The Chinese tech giant denied allegations and has now hired a third-party firm that’s going to investigate the Lithuanian’s government claims. It didn’t say which company it hired, though, but it confirmed it’s based in Europe.
According to Lithuania’s Defence Ministry, Xiaomi is blocking certain search terms such as “free Tibet”, “long live Taiwan independence” and “democracy movement”. The minister urged to “throw away” all Chinese phones as soon as possible. Xiaomi said that these filters are turned off for the European Union region.
Then again, the Lithuania government claims the censorship filter could be re-enabled remotely at any time. The Chinese firm argues that these filters are an industry standard and are usually used to protect users from pornographic content and content that is found offensive to local users.
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